Jeremiah 16:14,15

I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.

Larger providences

Thus epochs are made; thus new dates are introduced into human history; thus the less is merged in the greater; the little judgment is lost in the great judgment, and the mercy that once appeared to be so great seems to be quite small compared with the greater mercy that has healed and blessed our life. This is the music, and this is the meaning of the passage. What is experience worth? It is worth exactly what we make of it; it will not follow us, and insist upon being looked at and estimated and applied; it is, so to say, either a negative or a positive possession; we can make it either, according to the exercise of our will and inclination. How often we vow not to forget our experience; yet it is stolen from us in the night time, and we awake in the morning empty-handed, empty-minded, beggared to the uttermost point of destitution. We write our vows in water; who can make any impression on the ocean? whole fleets have passed over the sea, not a track is left behind where the waves were sundered; they roll together again, as if with emulous energy they seek to obliterate the transient mark of the intrusive ships. It is so with ourselves. Let no man think he has sounded the whole depth of God’s providence in this matter of punishment or of benediction and blessing. History has recorded nothing yet; history is getting its pen ready for the real registration of Divine ministry in human affairs. No judgment has yet befallen the world worth naming, compared with the judgment that may at any moment be revealed. Do not mock God; do not defy Him or tempt Him: what you have had is but the sting of a whip; He could smite you with a thong of scorpions. Rather say, God pity us, God spare us; remember that we are but dust; a wind that cometh for a little time and then passeth away: smite us not in Thine hot anger, O loving One; in wrath remember mercy. We do not know what plagues God could send upon the earth. Be not presumptuous against the Divine government; do not say, God cannot do this, or send down that judgment; if He forbear, it is because His mercy restrains, not because His judgment is impotent. By a natural accommodation of the passage, we may be led into quite another line of thinking and illustration: “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said. .. but”; and between these words we may put in our own experience, and our own commentaries upon life and destiny. Thus: Behold, the days come that it shall no more be said that we have a Creator, but we have a Redeemer. Men shall not talk about creation. There are some men who are content to talk about one infinitesimal speck of creation; they have not learned the higher philosophy, the fuller wisdom, the riper, vaster law. They are gathering what they can with their hands; they are first the admirers, secondly the devotees, and thirdly the victims of the microscope. They have made an idol of that piece of glazed brass; they who mock the heathen for worshipping ivory and stone and tree and sun, may perhaps be creating a little idol of their own. Behold, the days come when men shall no longer talk about the body, but about the soul. It is time we had done with physiology. If we have not mastered the body, what poor scholars we have been! And yet how far men are from having mastered it in the sense of being able to heal it! Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when men shall no more talk about human deliverance, or deliverance from human extremity, but they shall talk about liberation from diabolic captivity; they shall say they have been loosed from their sins, they have been disimprisoned and set at liberty as to the dominion of their passions and desires and appetences; they shall speak about the higher emancipation, and everywhere men shall be eloquent about the Deliverer who drew the soul from Egyptian and Chaldean tyranny, and gave it liberty and joy in the Holy Ghost. The whole subject of human speech shall be changed; men shall not talk about Egypt, but about Canaan; they shall not talk about the law, but about the higher law; they shall not talk about the outward, but about the inward. Thus dates are introduced into human history. The time will come when men will not speak about being born, but about being “born again.” Your birthday was your deathday,--or only the other aspect of it. Date your born-again day from the beginning, the morning of your immortality. Drop the lower theme, seize the higher; dismiss the noise, and entreat the music to take full possession of your nature. Behold, the day is come, saith the Lord, when men shall no longer talk about prayer, but about praise. The old prayer days will be over; they were needful as part of our experience and education, but the time will come when prayer will be lost in praise; the time will come when work will be so easy as to have in it the throb and joy of music; the time will come when it will be easy to live, for life will carry no burden, and know the strain of no care; the days of anxiety will be ended, solicitude will be a forgotten word, and the companionship of God and His angels shall constitute our heaven. (J. Parker, D. D.)

God’s care over His people

A crew of explorers penetrate far within the Arctic circles in search of other expeditions that had gone before them--gone and never returned. Failing to find the missing men, and yet unwilling to abandon hope, they leave supplies of food carefully covered with stones, on some prominent headlands, with the necessary intimations graven for safety on plates of brass. If the original adventurers survive, and on their homeward journey, faint, yet pursuing, fall in with these treasures, at once hidden and revealed, the food, when found, will seem to those famished men the smaller blessing. The proof which the food supplies that their country cares for them is sweeter than the food. So the proof that God cares for us is placed beyond a doubt; the “unspeakable gift” of His Son to be our Saviour should melt any dark suspicion to the contrary from our hearts. (W. Arnot.)