Jeremiah 12:5 If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? and if in the land of peace… Jeremiah had to pay the price of singularity. He had to learn not only to do without the sweet incense of popular favour, but also to stand unflinching even when it turned into the hot breath of hatred. He had to submit not only to be without friends, but to see friends become foes. This experience through which the prophet passed is a cruel one It either makes a man or mars him, and nearly always hardens him. It creates an indignation, a holy anger sometimes against men, sometimes against the strange, untoward state of affairs, sometimes against God. Jeremiah here is kicking against the pricks which have wounded the feet of men for centuries: how to account for the fact that in a world governed by a righteous God righteousness should often have to suffer so much. His indignant soul, on fire for justice, cries out that it ought not to be so. Jeremiah's wherefore about the wicked is really a why about himself. Why am I bared to the blast in following Thy will and performing Thy command? why are tears and strife my portion? why am I wearied out and left desolate, though I am fighting the Lord's battle? That is the prophet's real complaint. Notice the answer, surely the strangest and most inconsequent ever given. The complaint is answered by a counter-complaint. Jeremiah's charge against God of injustice is met by God's charge against Jeremiah of weakness. "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? Though in a land of peace thou art secure, yet how wilt thou do (O faint-hearted one!) in the pride of Jordan?" The "pride of Jordan" means the dangerous ground by the river, where the heat is almost tropical and the vegetation is rank. It is jungle, tangled bush wherein wild beasts lurk, leopards and wolves and (at that time also) lions. The answer to the complaint against the hardness of his lot is just the assertion that it shall be harder still. Does it seem an unfeeling answer? It was the answer Jeremiah needed. He needed to be braced, not pampered. He is taught the need of endurance. Only a heroic soul could do the heroic work needed by Israel and by God; and it was the greatest heroism of all which was needed, the heroism of endurance. Nothing worth doing can be done in this world without something of that iron resolution. It is the spirit which never knows defeat, which cannot be worn out, which has taken its stand and refuses to move. This is the "patience" about which the Bible is full; not the sickly counterfeit which so often passes for patience, but the power to bear, to suffer, to sacrifice, to endure all things, to die, harder still, sometimes, to continue to live. The whole world teaches that patience. Inch by inch each advance has to be gained, fought for, paid for, kept. It is the lesson of all history also, both for the individual and for a body of men who have espoused any cause. Christ's Church has survived through her power to endure. The mustard seed, planted with tears and watered with blood, stood the hazard of every storm, gripped tenaciously the soil, twining its roots round the rocks, reared its head ever a little higher, and spread out its branches ever a little fuller, and when the tempest came held on for very life; and then, never hasting, never resting, went on in the Divine. task of growing; and at last became the greatest of trees, giving shelter to the birds of the air in its wide-spreading branches. It is the same secret of success for the individual spiritual life. "In your patience ye shall win your soul. This method is utterly opposed to the world's method of insuring success, which is by self-assertion, aggressive action, force for force, blow for blow. Patience, not violence, is the Christian's safety Even if all else be lost it saves the soul, the true life. It gives fibre to the character. It purifies the heart, as gold in the furnace. What do we know of this heroic endurance? In our fight with temptation, in our warfare against all forms of evil, have we used our Master's watchword, and practised our Master's scheme? Think of our temptation in the matter of foreign missions, for example. We are easily made faint-hearted about it. We say that results are disproportionate to the effort; or rather (for that is not true) we are overpowered by the vastness of the work. If we find our small attempt a burden, how can we face the vaster problem of making the kingdoms of this world the kingdom of God and His Christ? If we are wearied in our race with footmen, how can we contend with horses? We are so easily dispirited, not only in Christian enterprise, but also in personal Christian endeavour. We are so soon tempted to give up. We need some iron in our blood. We need to be braced to the conflict again. We need the noble scorn of consequence. What have we done, the best of us, for God or for man? (Hugh Black.) Parallel Verses KJV: If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? |
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