Jeremiah 23:33-40 - Homiletics

The burden

I. IT IS A MISTAKE TO REGARD THE REVELATION OF TRUTH AS A BURDEN . It comes to lighten our burdens. At first it may seem to increase them by making us conscious of them. It opens our eyes to our own condition. The very light may serve to reveal the existence of the deep mystery all around us, which was not felt while the soul slumbered in darkness. Yet the light does not make the darkness that fringes its radiance. Revelation does not create the burdens of which it makes us conscious. It has rather the opposite effect.

1. All truth clears away some of the burden of superstition . Men people the unknown with horrors. Midnight shadows shroud dread nightmares. Daylight dispels the shadows, and the evil dreams melt away.

2. Divine truth is expressly designed to liberate the soul from spiritual burdens . It is a light of blessing, not a message of death; an evangel promising consolation to the weary. Even the darker elements of truth have this object to attain, since the evil that they reveal is only made manifest that we may see how to escape it, or be prepared to endure it, or receive it so as to profit by it. On the whole and in the end the truth of God is revealed for the loosening of the weary weight of men's greatest burdens, the burden of unforgiven sin, the burden of impossible duty, the burden of unendurable sorrow, the burden of unintelligible mystery.

II. MEN WHO DO NOT RECEIVE THE REVELATION OF TRUTH MAY REGARD IT AS A BURDEN . Thus these Jews derided Jeremiah by mocking his language with words, however, which expressed their own sentiments if not their deeper convictions. To them his word was a weariness, a very burden. Is it not so regarded by many? We should note the causes of this sad mistake.

1. Ignorance . The word is heard, but it is not understood. On the outside it is harsh. This is the characteristic of much Divine truth. Far off it sounds like grating thunder, terrific and repellant. We must be near to hear its sweet but hidden music.

2. Want of sympathy . All truth is burdensome to those who have not sympathy with it. Spiritual truth is a weariness to the unspiritual.

3. Partial faith . Jeremiah's words produced enough conviction to rouse fear, but not enough to lead to confidence in the wisdom, righteousness, and goodness of God in his acts of discipline and chastisement. A weak faith always makes truth a burden. To be joyous and exultant we must be trustful.

III. THE REJECTION OF TRUTH WILL BRING A BURDEN , The revelation is not a burden, but the neglect of it will make one (verse 36). Men turn from God's truth for the trouble they think it threatens. They will find that this very act will bring the greatest trouble upon their heads.

1. This involves the loss of the blessing that truth is designed to bestow upon us. If we reject the truth we must bear the inevitable which the acceptance of it would have lightened. We then go our own way to meet unaided the crosses and toils of life.

2. This involves the addition of a new burden of guilt for the sin of rejecting truth. A willful rejection of light is, of course, wicked and most culpable in the sight of God. It must bring trouble.