Jeremiah 23:7-8

The Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them.

Divine persistence

Faith, even our own trembling faith, can hold on, perhaps, to the past; it retires upon the past in order to fortify its position. There are its reserves, its supplies. It looks back, and as it looks the big words stand out, the high memories awaken, the ancient story revives again. “God was a King of old. The works that were done upon earth, He did them Himself.” We can believe it still. God was about in those days, long ago. Men met Him in the way. “The hand of the Lord was upon me.” Yes! in the past, in days long ago, we are sure of God; and this, not merely out of traditional habit, nor merely because it is far off and remote. No! it is rather because the present is never really grasped or understood in its true significance until it is past. The present disguises its inner glories in a suit of drab; it is busy with small affairs; it has no leisure to sit at God’s feet and brood. So the present is always being misjudged and misinterpreted by those it holds prisoners in its tiresome meshes. Only as it passes off into some quiet distance from us do the frivolous incidents drop away out of sight and hearing, and the superficial vulgarities fall back into insignificance, and the real heart of the mystery is felt in its work upon us. It is no glamorous illusion which gives wonder to the present as soon as it is past. Rather, it is become wonderful because it has shaken itself free from the illusion which veiled it from our eyes while it was still with us. We see it now in its actual worth as part and parcel of a continuous existence, not as an isolated accident that comes and goes. So it wins dignity and pathos and beauty. So strange--this transfiguration of the common-place by the past: an old brick wall, a garden walk, a turn of a lane--all can become sacred and mystical because of those unknown to us who once walked there before we were born. And this is right. This is their truth. And so, too, our past, as we turn to review it, is really recognised to have possessed an importance which escaped us when it was within our living grasp. We see now how momentous were the issues involved in this or that ordinary and temporary decision which we took as it came along, without anxiety or strain. There lay, we now acknowledge, the parting of the road for us. There and then our souls were indeed at stake. Our whole future turned on what we saw or did that day. A day at the time so unmarked, and dull, and unmomentous. How little we remembered God as we did it! Yet it was He, before whose eyes we were at that moment become a spectacle to men and angels, at that passing moment when we made our choice. Yes! it is no glamorous illusion that the past throws: it is the actuality of things which it discloses. The past reveals God at work in the acts of judgment by which we stand or fall under His searching light. Therefore it is that the Jew, reading out his national past, saw and found God at work everywhere in it. Jewish prophecy was concerned with the past, at least as much as with the future. The prophet looked back and read into the facts their deep inner interpretation. Old events were recognised by him for their spiritual value; now they were lifted into the light of the Divine will. “When Israel came out of Egypt and the house of Jacob from among the strange people, Judah was His sanctuary and Israel His dominion. The sea saw that and fled. Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like young sheep.” Not at the moment of the deliverance could Israel have sung out that clear song of recognition. The escape out of Egypt was probably sordid enough at the moment; troubled, confused, dismal. Only long afterwards, when it had been clarified by the purifying process of time, could the prophet’s eye pierce below the surface disarray and see the whole scene as a vivid and unthwarted drama; only after long review with vision purged could the singer pronounce that “God came from Teman and the Holy One from Mount Paran.” Backed by the strong assurance that God was with our fathers, that God brought up His people out of Egypt, Faith must make its great venture and recognise that the God who was alive and active in the past is the same God to-day and for ever. This drab and dismal present which rings men ruefully round with its noisy bustle, with its troublesome futilities, holds in it urgent and supreme the living energies of God. When it has dropped away from them into the past they will see and know it. How disastrous, then, to cry out, when it is too late, “Surely God was in this place and I knew it not.” Why not wake up at once, in the very heart of stony and forlorn Bethel, and see now the golden stairs laid between heaven and earth? Here is the prophet’s task, to declare that what God did once, He may yet do again. If He brought up His people out of Egypt, He can yet deliver them out; of captivity in Babylon. Ah! that is the difficult, the impossible thing to believe. That is when and where the ordinary temper of faith collapses and recoils and surrenders. Egypt! They can see it all, feel it all God’s arm was outstretched to save, and He spake; and His great presence went out to them; and His voice was heard like the voice of a trumpet, exceeding loud. But Babylon, where they now lie in captivity! How hard and grim those iron walls of fact which hold the people fast! How relentless the immense pressure of its tyranny! Day follows day, and all days are the same; and the night comes following the day; and no watchman can tell them any news; and no cry shatters the night! Nor even are the people gathered in Babylon. They are not assembled and compact, as once in Egypt, ready to move altogether if the opportunity ever came. No; they are now hopelessly divided--scattered to the four winds; lost in detachments amid a crowd of swarming cities. Nothing can happen; there is no sign; they see not their tokens. Heaven above them is as brass, and the earth as iron. No God appears. “Well enough in Egypt! We would have gone out with Moses then with willing feet; but we see no Moses now. Things are too strong for us; they shut us in. We listen, and no voice answers. It is different now; it can never be again as it once was.” So we can fancy what these poor, faint souls to whom Jeremiah is writing must have murmured. As if Egypt had not looked just as hard and just as motionless to those who first heard the summons of Moses; as if it had not all been as grimly incredible then. And therefore, that same chill of despair that now overshadows them beside the willows of Babylon need not prevent another day like that of Moses arising as glorious as in Egypt. Another prophetic epoch will be known and named for ever. So the prophet announces. Once again the faith which is strong enough to face and defy the repellent facts of the present shall see its God rise as of old. We ourselves are sorely aware of conflict between our faith as it gazes back at the past, and our faith as it faces the shill and staggering present. We who can yet hold on to our belief in what happened long ago, find no heart to declare this might happen again to-day. God might be seen as visibly at work; Jesus Christ might be heard calling us with as clear a voice as that which fell on the ears of fishermen washing their nets by Galilean waters. The present wears so horribly material an appearance, and it looks so absurdly remote from Spirit and from God. “There is no God here,” we cry; “ Christ cannot be alive no angels sing here of peace and goodwill. So everything about us asserts with might and main; it defies us to say our creed in front of it without laughing or without breaking down in sobs. Yes; but was not the present always what it feels to us to-day? Did it not always look as hard and commonplace and godless? The inn at Bethlehem was as noisy and regardless as Fleet Street to-day. The people felt life then as commonplace an affair as it seems to us on Ludgate Hill to-day. The past witnesses through all its long centuries to the actual reality of the living deed done by God in our midst. Again and again in dark days those who believed it to be true have dared to realise it in their own present day afresh, and have found it answer to their appeals. There was a revival, as we say, a revival in the present of what was once for all asserted in the past. As God who had delivered men from Egypt verified Himself anew in the God who can deliver out of captivity, so Christ who rose and lived has quickened a new generation sunk in its sloth; has named a new epoch, has brought in a new day; and men have started from their sleep to find that it was true what they had always dimly believed, Christ is alive, Christ is at work here on earth; the impossible can happen; the incredible change can stir and can transform; it is all true. It shall no more be said merely that God liveth who once raised Jesus from the dead; but God liveth--our own God--who still raises in Jesus Christ those who were dead in trespasses and sins into newness of life for evermore. Why not? Why not now? The old creed is being battered by ruthless attacks on its past records, and there is only one triumphant answer--a revival of its ancient efficacy in full swing here and now. Christ, we feel, may have once raised a dead world into life, but He cannot do it again. Are we going to acquiesce in that? Are we going to try to keep our faith, and yet confine it to a day long dead? If Christ cannot do it now, then He never did it. If we resign the present to its godlessness, then we shall not long retain our belief in God in the past. No; we have but one obligation: to rally first on the past, and in its strength to dare the present. Why should not we take our belief in Jesus Christ as seriously to-day, and let it be done again? Oh, for this outrush of a great revival! We have lingered and languished so long is not the moment near for some reaction from our spiritual lethargy? The night has been so prolonged, there must surely be a streak of dawn. (H. S. Holland, D. D.)