Jeremiah 36:3

A DREAD UNCERTAINTY

‘It may be.’

Jeremiah 36:3; Jeremiah 36:7

The words tell of an awful uncertainty as to the future of the chosen people.

Will they repent? ‘It may be——’

Let us recognise—

I. The even balance.—Could anything be more soul-stirring than to realise that a crisis so momentous had come? In Jeremiah 36:3 it is the voice of God, in Jeremiah 36:7 the voice of Jeremiah in echo. Divine love and prophetic zeal were linked in a supreme effort to turn the scale of destiny for a whole people. A people, too, with a history that has no parallel for its marvels of providence and grace. Now they stood on the brink of a precipice of disaster. Before the last step, the dreadful plunge, is taken, another effort is to be made to save them. ‘It may be——’ Among us there may be some for whom the personal crisis is just as momentous, just as urgent. Who knows the hour at which he passes over the line when God and His messengers are to make the last great effort to save him? Is it always at death? One dare not say ‘Yes, always!’ Might it not be here and now, in the hour when God speaks home some searching truth to the heart? Has He sent forth for some of us to-day His message that may never be repeated, saying, ‘It may be that [they] will hear … that they may return … that I may forgive.’

II. The favouring conditions.—A series of prophecies, twenty-three years long, culminated in Jeremiah 25:1, a vivid forecast of Babylon’s victory over Jerusalem, and the fall and captivity of the Jews. This was trumpeted forth in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 25:1). Probably at that very time Nebuchadnezzar had just defeated the forces of Egypt at Carchemish, and was marching towards Jerusalem. In a few months the city was captured. But Nebuchadnezzar, being called away, shortly left the vanquished city (2 Chronicles 36:6; Daniel 1:1), and before the year closed God stirred up Jeremiah to repeat all his warnings given in those long twenty-three years. Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation in some secluded hiding-place, and took, it seems, some nine months to prepare his awful message. Then, when the people had themselves arranged a day of fasting, in view of their calamitous estate, Baruch came forth and spoke the words of Jeremiah, in which was the voice of God (Jeremiah 36:1). Was there not everything to make the message effective? If only the people’s heart had been sincere in their day of fast, how could they do other than hear, heed, and repent? For us it is a matter of the greatest moment that we should not miss our crisis. If it comes in the solemn hour of worship, though it be on some ordinary Sunday, we shall look back upon it and feel that only hardened perversity could have blinded our eyes to its meaning. Is it our crisis now?

III. The disaster.—There is the burning of the roll. So impotent to do away with the prophecy. Cf. the case of Luther’s books. ‘Do you imagine that Luther’s doctrines are found only in those books that you are throwing into the fire? They are written where you cannot reach them, in the hearts of the nation.’ Then the dread captivity, now inevitable. But withal the remnant and the restoration, and every good promise wholly fulfilled. For the many, spite of all the tender mercy and longsuffering of God, desolation and misery; for the few, repentance, hope, and salvation. For us, too, there is the overshadowing of a great possibility of disaster, but also a promise and hope that never fail.