An absent God deplored.
The dearth told of in foregoing verses and the misery caused thereby led to the conviction that God had abandoned his people. In these verses and throughout this section down to Jeremiah 15:9 we find the prophet pleading with God to return. In these verses we are shown—
I. THE CAUSES WHICH HAD BROUGHT ABOUT THE DIVINE WITHDRAWAL FROM THEM. Their "iniquities," "backslidings," "sins" (Jeremiah 15:7). Nothing else has such power; sin only can shut out God, but it always will and does.
II. THE HAPPY MEMORIES WHICH MADE IT SO BITTER. God had revealed himself to them in such endearing manner. He had been ever "the Hope of Israel." He had inspired, maintained, and justified that hope again and again. And he had become the Hope of Israel through having shown himself so perpetually "the Savior thereof in the time of trouble." The memory of God's servants was stored with recollections of such deliverances, national and individual, from troubles temporal and spiritual; vouchsafed, too, not because of Israel's deserving, but out of God's pure bounty. Now, it was these happy memories which made God's present dealings with them so terrible to bear.
III. THE SAD CONTRAST BETWEEN THE DIVINE MANIFESTATIONS NOW AND OF OLD. We have seen what he had been to Israel, but now, the prophet complains, he is to them very far from what he was then. He is "as a stranger," "a wayfaring man," as one "taken by surprise," as one strong but yet unable to help. Their enemies would taunt them with the reproach that either God was as a stranger, and therefore did not care for them; or, if they denied that, then it must be that there was a stronger than he, who had taken him by surprise and prevented his rendering help to his afflicted people. Either he would not or he could not—on one of the horns of this dilemma they by the force of their present circumstances were thrown. And there can be no doubt that the great mystery of life, its sins and sorrows, do often force perplexed and troubled minds perilously near to one or other of these 'conclusions, which nevertheless faith affirms to be alike false, and will never admit for one moment.
IV. THE SOURCES OF HOPE UNDER CIRCUMSTANCES LIKE THESE. They are:
1. The Name of God. This the prophet pleads (Jeremiah 15:7). He confesses that all their own conduct is altogether against them. They can have no hope in themselves. But the Name of God remains to be urged in his pleading, and therefore it is this Name that he does urge. "Do thou it for thy Name's sake." Here is a fact which cannot change. When driven out of all hope in ourselves by reason of our sins, we may yet hope in God, and plead the grace and goodness that are evermore in him.
2. The presence of his appointed ordinances and his chosen dwelling-place in their midst. This is the meaning of Jeremiah 15:9, "Yet thou art in the midst of us," The temple, the altar, the sacrifice, the priests, the ark, were all there; the appointed channels of communication between God and his people. And so long as we may go unto his footstool, and the throne of grace is open to us, there is hope in that. God will come to us again in the way of his holy and appointed ordinances, if we will go along that way to seek him.
3. They were the objects of history. We are called by thy Name." Israel was so. God had chosen them at the first. "When Israel was a child, then I loved him." And it is because of that undying love of God, they who for their sins have lost his presence may yet win it back again.
V. THE PRESENT DUTY. Prayer. The prophet betook himself hereto. "Leave us not," he cries (Jeremiah 15:9). And nothing barred the success of this prayer but that the people for whom he prayed had no heart in it. God stood ready to forgive and restore. The prophet's prayer was fully answered on the part of God. But those for whom he prayed were not ready, and so their judgment went on. But for ourselves, if we deplore an absent God, let us betake ourselves to these potent arms of all-prevailing prayer, and God shall ere long be again known to us as of old as our Hope and our Savior in time of trouble.—C.