Jeremiah 30:17

If there is any character more especially marked in the Scripture accounts of Christ's advent among men, it is that of a Restorer. He comes to purify some presupposed corruption, to repair some antecedent ruin, to satisfy some preexisting wants. It is the feeling of these wants which in the minds of men perpetuates the corresponding feeling of the necessity of remedy which supports the character and claims of Christianity in the world; while, at the same time, it is the slowness of men to embrace with sincerity and practical earnestness the proffered remedy thus felt to be required, and felt to be real, which renders the faith in the crucified Saviour inoperative and unfruitful.

I. The faith in the Christian sacrifice and its attendant revelation of the Divine character alone answer the demands of the heart and reason of man for a higher state of moral perfection. Men do weary of the wickedness of the world as really, though not indeed so frequently, as of its disappointments. The pre-eminent character of our faith is to reveal before our eyes a kingdom wherein immortally dwelleth righteousness. Is not its great sacrifice the corner-stone of the equity of the whole moral universe, the sacrifice that enables God to be at once just and the Justifier of Him that believeth in Jesus?

II. Christianity offers to maintain a communication between this world and that eternal world of holiness and truth. Here is another want satisfied; the inspiration of weakness made not merely a privilege but a duty. We for ever seek a happiness beyond the reach of chance; Christian prayer beseeches. We seek repose from incessant troubles; Christian prayer is the stillest exercise of soul. We ask even by blind impulses of nature for pardon in the wretched consciousness of depravity. Christian prayer encourages our timidity into confidence.

III. Another particular in which this blessed faith commends itself to our wants, is in its confirmation and direction of that principle of hope which even in our daily and worldly life we are perpetually forced to substitute for happiness. It leaves the tendency, but it alters the object.

IV. But above all its recommendations to the wants and solicitudes of man, the Gospel commends itself by the adorable object which it presents to our affections. The devotion with which we are encouraged to regard the great God and Saviour of the New Testament, the affection with which He has contemplated us, create a new and holy and eternal bond of love, such as in its fulness indeed our fallen humanity could never have anticipated, yet such as becomes an answer to many of the profoundest wants of the soul.

W. Archer Butler, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical, 2nd series, p. 133.

Reference: Jeremiah 30:17.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1753.

Jeremiah 30:21The word Advent means "approach." And after all, what is everything this side of the grave but "approaches?" We approach to hope, we approach to love, we approach to serve, we approach to being—all life is an approach, and perhaps heaven itself will be a never-ending, but an ever-satisfying, approach to the Father.

I. But the first thought with which I have to deal, is the marvel that there should be the possibility of any approach at all between two things so alienated, so separate, so very wide asunder, as a pure holy God, who dwells in light, and that dark, vile thing, a human heart. To show how that possibility was brought about, and then how the capability was to 5e used and turned into fact, that is the aim and the substance of all revelation.

II. Christ's first advent to the earth made other advents possible. (1) There is an advent, when some providence, importunate in its strength, knocks at the door of a man's heart, and a still whisper in his soul tells a presence, and a cord of love draws his affections. (2) There is an advent when God fulfils His own promise, and comes and dwells in a man and takes up His abode in him. (3) There is an advent, when every object we look at in nature and every mercy we taste in providence everywhere, brings God nearer and nearer to a man's mind. (4) There is an advent when Christ shall come in His glory, and bring with Him all His saints. But not one of these advents—of Him to us, or of us to Him—could have been if Christ had not come first to this earth to roll away the barrier. Flesh was the veil that shut the sanctuary, till His pierced body became the veil rent, and the Shechinah shone beyond the circumference of its limits, and it was free to every man to go in and out.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 7th series, p. 219.

References: Jeremiah 30:21.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1673. Jeremiah 31:1.—J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 211.