Jeremiah 31:27

A GOOD TIME COMING

‘The days come.’

Jeremiah 31:27

I. The hopefulness of God’s message to Israel.—The kingdom was doomed, but yet there were good times coming. The characteristic of true religion is that it has always more future than past. An ill day for a people, a church, or any one person when they look back. Henceforth, said St. Paul (2 Timothy 4:8); our Golden Age is ahead of us—

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

Jeremiah looked beyond the Captivity; Jesus looked beyond the Cross. Notice, that two great blessings would mark the happy future. The people would be numerous and prosperous. This is suggested under the figure of a sowing; a land sown thick with people and with beasts used for agricultural purposes. No blessing has ever been promised by God to a people afraid of having a large population. Lands suffer more from under-populating than from the reverse. So do people and families. The richest blessings are promised, and have come, to large households.

II. Personal responsibility.—Proverbs are good or bad as they are applied. There is no end of meanness and worldliness and sin of other sorts which trades on proverbs and finds in them apologies for evil, and incentives to wrong. Now this proverb carries a certain amount of truth in it. There is a law of heredity, and we do all suffer from the sins, as we profit by the virtues, of our ancestors. Yet the moral aspect of this universal law must be limited somewhere. We are not responsible for inheriting infirmities of temper, or predisposition to bad habits, any more than we are responsible for inheriting a tendency to weakness in the lungs, or an inclination to stammer. But if a man knows his parents were consumptive, he is responsible for his treatment of his chest; and if his father stammer, the son should make voice culture a special study. Here, as in many other places, we are treated as free and responsible agents; and the fact of this personal responsibility is insisted on: Every one shall die for his own iniquity.

Illustrations

(1) ‘The prophet catches a glimpse of blessing in the future. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord.” The Lord sees hope for us when we can see none. This suggests the value of the Divine promises. They are always glimpses into the future. They are given to cheer us in our present darkness. There is no hour so full of gloom in the life of any child of God, but if he will only open his Bible he will see gleams of light bursting through the overshadowing clouds. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.” What a blessed thing is hope! “Behold, the days come.” Yes; it will not be always dark and sad. We can say this in every time of misfortune, adversity, or sorrow. Better days are coming. We ought to learn this truth well. We ought never to grieve inconsolably, however bitter the sorrow; we ought never to despair, however hopeless the circumstances appear. God calls down to us in His words of promise, telling of light that already gilds the far-away hill-tops.’

(2) ‘Fathers may well beware of eating sour grapes, and so setting the children’s teeth on edge. “I wish,” says Bunyan, writing of the time when, as a young man, he was reproved for profanity, “that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so accustomed to it that it is in vain to think of a reformation, for that could never be.” ’