the Third Week after Easter
Click to donate today!
Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Jeremiah 43:3—Baruch the son of Neriah setteth thee on against us.
When men do not like the Word of God, they imagine that someone has set the speaker on against them. A poor woman came to us a few weeks ago, in a terrible condition. She had induced her husband to come to a service, and the address seemed so exactly adapted to him, dealing with his sins in the plainest terms, that nothing could convince him that she had not given the preacher a full and detailed account of his life, and had set the speaker on against him. When they got home he ill-treated her with great cruelty. But that service and her patient suffering were ultimately overruled to work a great change in him.
How strange it is that ungodly men always think the Word of God is against them, whereas they are set against it! The wind would not be so keen in their teeth, if they were not steaming so quickly against it.
But there is a solemn lesson here for us all. Whenever the Word of God makes us wince, or God’s messenger presses sorely on us, we are apt to turn aside the point by some superficial and unreasonable excuse. We catch up the first foil we can lay hands on, in order to ward off the missile. We find some excuse to blunt the edge of the sword. It is easy to impute a bad and personal motive. There is always a Baruch the son of Neriah in the question. It is not we who are wrong, but the prophet who is prejudiced against us. As Ahab said of Micaiah, "I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." We can only grow in the divine life by exposing ourselves to the reproofs and searchings of the divine Word; and allowing them their due weight.
