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… If troubles, slow as footmen, surpass us, what will we do when they take the feet of horses? and if now in our lifetime we are beaten back and submerged of sorrows because we have not the religion of Jesus to comfort us, what will we do when we stand in death, and we feel all around about us "the swelling of Jordan"? What a sad thing it is to see men all unhelped of God, going out to fight giants of trouble; no closet of prayer in which to retreat, no promise of mercy to soothe the soul, no rock of refuge in which to hide from the blast. Oh, when the swift coursers of trouble are brought up, champing and panting for the race, and the reins are thrown upon their necks, and the lathered flanks at every spring feel the stroke of the lash, what can we on foot do with them? How can we compete with them? If, having run with the footmen, they wearied us, how can we contend with horses? We have all yielded to temptation. We have been surprised afterwards that so small an inducement could have decoyed us from the right. How insignificant a temptation has sometimes captured our soul. And if that is so, my dear brother, what will it be when we come to stand in the presence of temptation that prostrated a David, and a Moses, and a Peter, and some of the mightiest men in all God's kingdom? If the footmen are too much for us, won't the odds be more fearful against us when we contend with horses? But my text suggests something in advance of anything I have said. We must all quit this life. Oh, when the great tides of eternity arise about us, and fill the soul and surround it, and sweep it out towards rapture or woe, ah, that will be "the swelling of Jordan." Our natural courage won't hold us out then. However familiar we may have been with scenes of mortality, however much we may have screwed our courage up, we want something more than natural resources. When the northeast wind blows off from the sea of death, it will put out all earthly lights. The lamp of the Gospel, God-lighted, is the only lamp that can stand in that blast. The weakest arm holding that shall not be confounded; the strongest one neglecting that shall stumble and die. Oh, I rejoice to know that so many of God's children have gone through that pass without a shudder. Someone said to a dying Christian: "Isn't it hard for you to get out of this world?" "Oh, no," he says, "it is easy dying, it is blessed dying, it is glorious dying"; and then he pointed to a clock on the wall, and he said: "the last two hours in which I have been dying, I have had more joy than all the years of my life." General Fisk came into the hospital after the battle, and there were many seriously wounded, and there was one man dying, and the general said: "Ah, my dear fellow, you seem very much wounded. I am afraid you are not going to get well." "No," said the soldier, "I am not going to get well, but I feel very happy." And then he looked up into the general's face, and said: "I am going to the front!" But there is one step still in advance suggested by this subject. If this religion of Christ is so important in life, and so important in the last hours of life, how much more important it will be in the great eternity. Alas! for those who have made no preparation for the future! When the sharp-shod hoofs of eternal disaster come up panting and swift to go over them, how will they contend with horses? And when the waves of their wretchedness rise up, white and foamy, under the swooping of eternal storms and the billows become more wrathful and dash more high, oh, what, what will they do "amid the swelling of Jordan"? (T. De Witt Talmage.) 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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