Jeremiah 19:14-15 - Homiletics

The warning confirmed.

The warning of the discourse in the valley of Hinnom is confirmed by a repetition of it under more ordinary circumstances.

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CONFIRMATION OF THE WARNING .

1. It was repealed . The scribe must bring from his treasury things old as well as things new. Men need "line upon line." Unpopular truths must not only be revealed once for all, they must be impressed upon people until they are accepted.

2. It was repeated in the temple . The horrible associations of Tophet were wanting there. All was decorum, order, propriety. Yet the message was not the less true there than in a more congenial place. Terrible truths must be uttered in face of the religious respectability of our Church worship. Such outward correctness should not make us forget the true condition of men's hearts, which is apparent enough in the darker scenes of life, in the Tophets of iniquity. We are tempted to be deceived by the appearance of religions assemblies into a blindness to the greatness of sin which is visible enough in common life.

3. It was repeated in the ears of all the people . The leaders were first selected to hear the warning ( Jeremiah 19:1 ). But it was not confined to them. The people generally were guilty. They had quietly acquiesced in the wickedness of their great men. Nay, they had furthered, them, in it ( Jeremiah 5:31 ), had followed their example, and become guilty' of similar crimes. They, too, must not expect to escape in the hour of judgment.

II. THE FORM IN WHICH THE WARNING WAS CONFIRMED .

1. It was epitomized . Truth needs to be broken up into detail that it may be clearly understood and vividly conceived by the imagination. But it is possible to lose ourselves in details and miss the drift of the sum of them. Hence the advantage of broad, sweeping enunciations of principle.

2. It was repeated as a prediction of real facts . The warning was not to be regarded as an empty threat, nor as the indication of a danger that might be evaded. 'I will bring … the evil that I have pronounced,' etc. It is both weak and cruel to threaten without the intention of executing the threat—weak, for the hollowness of the alarm is soon discovered by experience, and then it is impotent; cruel , for why create distress about a mere "bogey" danger? God is merciful, but firm. His threats are conditional, but, while the conditions subsist, the execution is as certain as any event that depends on the uniform laws of nature.

3. It was repeated without diminution . All the evil pronounced will fall on all the towns. The effect of stern warnings fades with the lapse of time. We are tempted to think that things will not be so very bad as at first seemed likely, and to take comfort from such reflections. But danger is not lessened by our growing indifference to it.

4. It was strengthened by an appeal to the increasing necessity for it. "Because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words." A deep consciousness of guilt makes the just punishment of it seem inevitable. Willful persistence in wickedness after warning can only increase the guilt and make the punishment the more certain and the more severe.