Sermon Bible Commentary
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 Itake 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. 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. 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.