Bible Commentaries

Jeremiah 9:1

The "weeping prophet" is the title often given to Jeremiah. He is not a popular prophet. Unhappy men are not commonly popular men. Yet this one had ample reason for the depression under which he lived and the minor key which runs through the strain of his writings. He had a most delicately sensitive nature, a most profound attachment to the cause of God, an intense patriotic love of his native land; yet it was his lot to live at an age when the people of God had fallen into most fearful apostasy, and the most terrible judgments were impending over them. It was his mission to tell the people of their sins, to rebuke the nobles for their oppression, the humbler orders for their vileness, the priesthood for their falseness, even his fellow-prophets for their infidelity to the living God. To his own times and people he was the prophet of doom.

I. Jeremiah represents a class of good men and women of whom some exist in every age. There are some good men of whom it must be conceded that they are not gay Christians. They have a peculiarly sensitive and deep nature. Their religion is proportionately deep and tender.

II. Christians of the broken heart, it must be confessed, are not apt to be popular with the world; very hard things are said of them, very unjust judgments they have to bear in silence.

III. The class of men and women of whom Jeremiah is the type possess a very profound style of Christian character. Eternity will show to us all that some of the world's great souls are among them.

IV. Such Christians as the weeping prophet represents are men and women of great spiritual power. The world does not like them, but cannot help respecting them. We love realities after all. We feel the power of the man who knows the most of them and feels them most profoundly.

V. Who can help seeing that brokenhearted Christians are in some respects very nearly akin to the Lord Jesus Christ?

VI. These Christians of the broken heart are sure of a very exalted rank in heaven.

A. Phelps, The Old Testament a Living Book, p. 7.

Reference: Jeremiah 9:1.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 150.

Jeremiah 9:23-24

There is at least so much similarity between the nature of God and the nature of man that both God and man can take delight in the same thing. The spirit of the text is saying, "Take delight in lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness because I take delight in them; come up to My moral altitude, place your affections where I place Mine.

I. "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom: (1) because of the necessary littleness of man's vastest acquisitions; (2) because the widest knowledge involves but partial rulership.

II. Is man then without an object in which to glory? It is as natural for man to glory as it is natural for man to breathe; and God who so ordered his nature, has indicated the true theme of glorying. Man's glorying is to be restrained until he reaches the "Me," the Personality, the living One. Let him that glorieth glory in knowing God as a moral Being, as the righteous Judge, as the loving Father.

III. The whole subject may be comprehended in four points. (1) God brands all false glorying; (2) God has revealed the proper ground of glorying, that ground is knowledge of God, not only as Creator and Monarch, but as Judge, and Saviour, and Father; (3) God, having declared moral excellence to be the true object of glorying, has revealed how moral excellence may be attained. Loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment are impossibilities apart from Christ; (4) God has revealed the objects in which He glories Himself. "For in these things I delight, saith the Lord." They who glory in the objects which delight Jehovah must be drinking at pure and perennial springs.

Parker, City Temple, vol. iii., p. 481.

References: Jeremiah 9:23-24.—J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 357; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 150; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 484, and vol. xxiii., p. 139; E. Johnson, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 148. Jeremiah 10:10-12.—J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii.,p. 133. Jeremiah 10:11.—J. Hiles Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvii., p. 155. Jeremiah 11:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 838. Jeremiah 12:1.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xx., p. 277.