A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.
Our sanctuary
This book of Jeremiah is a very thorny one--it might be called, like his smaller work, “The Book of Lamentations.” Our text is as a lily among thorns, as a rose in the wilderness; the solitary place shall be glad for it, and the desert shall rejoice. The words sound like sweet music amid the crash of tempest. The bitter tree yields us sweet fruit. The weeping prophet wipes away our tears.
I. The true place of our sanctuary. It is not at Jerusalem, nor yet at Samaria; it is not at Rome, nor yet at Canterbury. The place of our sanctuary is our God Himself. “God is our refuge and strength.” “Lord. Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”
1. He is viewed under the aspect of a sovereign reigning in majesty--“A glorious high throne is the place of our sanctuary.” Many refuse to worship God as reigning: they have not yet grasped the idea that the Lord is King, so that they cannot understand the song, “The Lord reigneth: let the earth rejoice.” For that includes, first, Divine sovereignty, and some men grow black in the face with rage against that truth; they cannot endure it. He will make His own election, and He will distribute His mercy as seemeth good in His sight. Now this God whose sovereignty is so much disputed is our God; a glorious high throne for absolute dominion and sovereignty is the place of our sanctuary. To Him whose sovereign grace is the hope of the undeserving we fly for succour. Besides sovereignty, of course, His glorious high throne includes power. A throne without power would be but the pageantry of vanity. There should be power in the King who ruleth over all: and is there not? Who shall stay His hand, or say unto Him, “What doest Thou?”
2. Forget not that the Lord reigns in exceeding glory. The excellence of His dominion surpasses all other, for He is the blessed and only Potentate. Every act of His empire exhibits His glorious character, His justice, His goodness, His faithfulness, His holiness.
3. It says, “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.” It is a very blessed thing to come back to the fact that the Lord has not newly assumed a throne, from which He has newly cast out some former king. As His is the most potent of empires, so is it the most ancient. God is never taken by surprise; He has foreseen all things, and worked them into His grand plan. God is working evermore for a glorious purpose, which shall one day make the universe and all eternity to sing with rapturous joy that ever God determined to do what He is now doing.
4. When the prophet alludes to the place of our sanctuary, our mind is naturally led to feel that there must be some kind of place where God especially reveals Himself. The place where He mainly revealed Himself among men was the temple, to which I have said Jeremiah somewhat alludes. Now, where was the temple built? It was built upon that mountain whereon Abraham took his son Isaac to offer him up as a sacrifice. A ram caught in the thicket was the substitute for Isaac; but there was no substitute for Jesus, the Son of God. He died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. But there, where the most instructive of all types of the heavenly Father’s love was exhibited, there must be the temple wherein God would converse with men and make for men a place of sanctuary. The temple itself was built upon that site, and there it was that God dwelt visibly between the wings of the cherubim, above the ark of the covenant, over that golden lid which was called the mercy seat. What was that ark of the covenant, but a type of our Lord Jesus Christ in a most instructive way. The sacrifice of Isaac and the ark of the covenant were only types of that greater sacrifice, when He who is the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, went up to the Cross, and on Calvary “it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.” It is natural that the Lord should meet with us in grace in the place where He put His Son to grief. There, where He made His soul an offering for sin, the Lord becomes well pleased with us. Now, then, the place where we worship is God Himself revealed in the person of His dear Son. I pray you, never try to worship anywhere else. Christ is the one altar, the one temple, the one sanctuary.
5. In addition, the Lord God is our refuge; for a sanctuary was a place to which men fled in the hour of peril Is not Jesus our refuge from present guilt and from the wrath to come?
II. I am to speak concerning whose who depart from God. Alas, that there should be such!--men who leave the river for the desert, the living for the dead! Who are they? The text says, “All that forsake Thee,” and “they that depart from Me.” See, then, that this text has a bearing upon us, because these people of whom we are now going to speak were not an ignorant people who did not know God, or how could they be said to forsake Him? At one time, evidently, these people had something to do with the Lord, but after awhile they forsook Him. What did they do? They no longer sought unto the Lord as once they did, but ceased to be fervent in their service. At first they ceased to worship Him, they took no delight in His ways; they tried to be neutral, they were lukewarm, careless, indifferent, they forgot God. After thus declining in zeal, and refusing outward worship, they went further; for he says they had departed from Him--they could not endure the Lord, and therefore went into the far country. They said unto God, “Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.” They went into open sin; they disowned their God and broke His commands: some of them even dared to blaspheme Him. The course of sin is downhill. The man who once forgets his God soon forgets himself; and then he throws the reins on the neck of his lusts and goes from sin to sin, forgetting his God more and more. The most hardened of sinners will one day be ashamed, saying, “I acted unprofitably to myself.” Such shame will come over you forgetful ones one of these days. It may not come upon you till you die, but it is very probable that it will assail you then. When in your dying hours, what a dreadful thing it will be to be filled with shame at the remembrance of the past, so as to be afraid to meet your God, ashamed to think that you have lived a whole life without caring for Him! What will it be to wake up in the next world and to see the glory of God around you--the glory of the God whom you despised! Oh, the shame that will come over the ungodly in judgment! “They shall wake up to shame and everlasting contempt.” Great men and proud men will be small enough ere long; and careless and profane persons will be miserable enough when that word shall be fulfilled--“All that forsake Thee shall be ashamed.” And then it is added that they “shall be written in the earth”; that is, if they turn away from God they may win a name for a while, but it will be merely from the earth, and of the earth. O worldlings, you have your riches in this poor country which is soon to be burned with fire. Your pleasures and treasures will melt in the fervent heat of the last days. Your life’s pursuits are a short business, ending in eternal misery. The text tells us that there shall come something besides this: they that forsake God shall one day be sore athirst even unto death, “because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.” There is for the soul but one fountain of water, flowing, cool, clear, ever refreshing. “All my springs are in Thee,” said David; and so may we say, for our only source of supply is the Lord our God. If a man turns away from God, then he forsakes the cool fountain, he goes to broken cisterns that hold no water, and he will perish of thirst.
III. Let us look at the comers to God. Those who come to God--how do they come? They come away from all the world. O soul, if thou wouldst have peace, come away to your God. Never take your place with those who shall be written in the earth. How did believers come to God of old? Jeremiah came sick and needing to be saved, for he cried, “Heal me, O Jehovah, save me.” That is the way to come. But come to God with faith. It was grand faith of Jeremiah which enabled him to say, “Heal me, and I shall be healed.” Sick as I am, if Thou wilt act as physician to me I shall be cured: if Thou save me, lost as I am, I shall be saved. Come along, poor sinner. “Where, sir?” say you. To God in Christ Jesus. And come with this acknowledgment on your tongue,--“For Thou art my praise.” We have a good God, a loving God, a tender God, a gracious God, a God full of long-suffering and mercy and faithfulness to us poor sinners. This is good argument in prayer--“I have made my boast in Thee, O God, I pray Thee let not my glorying be stopped. Be to me as I have declared Thou wilt be.” But suppose you cannot say so much as that, then put it this way--“Heal me, O Lord; heal me this morning; save me, O Lord; save me at once, and Thou shalt be my praise. Lord, I promise that I will never rob Thee of the honour of my salvation; if Thou wilt but save me Thou shalt have all the glory of it.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God our sanctuary
The godly soul has a sure defence and aid in his living, loving Father and God. In every time of earthly need and trouble this is his chief consolation, and the source of serene and abiding joy
I. Thy necessity of a divine refuge. Times come when the hardiest and most self-reliant is made to feel that he is but feebleness, vanity, and dust. Protection, comfort, and settledness for the soul can alone be found in God.
1. We are victims of moral evil.
2. Of mental and physical sorrows.
II. The nature of the refuge afforded.
1. Lofty and glorious in position. There we may obtain--
(1) Mercy.
(2) Grace.
(3) Pardon.
(4) Strength.
2. All-sufficient in resources. Help for every circumstance, need, age.
3. Perpetual and abiding in duration. (James Foster, B. A.)
Man’s refuge-A glorious high throne
The word sanctuary at first meant anything separated and set apart for a holy purpose; later it came to designate a place used exclusively for sacred services; and then we find it used to express one chief end of a sacred place--an asylum--a place of refuge to which the guilty may fly and be safe.
I. Man’s refuge. No creature so much needs the shelter and defence of a safe hiding place as man. His sources of danger are more than can be numbered. Beset with foes, he is in constant need of shelter, and often cries out for deliverance. What so welcome to him as a refuge! Physically regarded, as possessed of a body over which disease and death reign, how often does he sigh for some asylum, which may furnish a defence against these invaders of life! How is he to escape the feeling of terrible desertion and unimaginable dangers, how help crying out for some refuge from “the fightings without, the fears within,” and the foes on every side? And, looking still deeper, when we see that he is the subject of a disease deceitful above every other--a disease which pertains to his whole nature--an “incurable wickedness,” and when we hear him cry out in anguish of soul, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver into from this body of sin and death,”--who does not rejoice at the very idea of refuge? How hard it is not to complain against God, and to demand “wherefore He has made man in vain!” How still harder to believe that there is a refuge for man which has been set up from the beginning! But in all times of deepest trouble, when human helpers fail and the hour of extremity comes, the strange thing is that the universal instincts of man’s nature do lead him to look for help, and though he passes away apparently unhelped, he does so looking for help. You may have stood among a crowd, upon the shore, watching some vessel tossed on the tempestuous billows which threatened to overwhelm her until at length a mighty wave washed over her and swept her clean of every living soul. And as that sea overwhelmed her there arose from the breast of everyone of the gazing crowd, “God help them!” Was that prayer an unconscious self-delusion in that moment of agony, or is there help for man in all times of his need? Or you may have listened to a judge passing the awful sentence which doomed a fellow creature to death--and whilst telling him there was no longer mercy or hope for him on earth, pointing to heaven and assuring him of hope and help in God. Was that judge dishonouring his judicial robes, and deceiving that poor wretch by this solemn mockery of pretended mercy, or is there an open door of hope in heaven for the poor outcasts from earth? And we have all read of the poor thief upon the Cross, turning, whilst paying the last penalty of the law with his life, in penitence to the Saviour and praying, “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom”; and we know the gracious answer he received, “This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” Was our Lord deceived in this promise, or did He knowingly deceive the miserable victim of crime in the moment of his extremity? Oh no--there is help for the helpless, help for the hell-deserving, shelter for the defenceless, a refuge for the outcasts. “The just God,” who is also a “Saviour”--oh, how I love that combination--hath said, “Look unto Me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth; for I am God and there is none else.”
II. Man’s refuge is a sanctuary. A place which is only a refuge furnishes but a temporary shelter. To the shipwrecked, a naked rock jutting out of the sea would be a glad refuge from the devouring waves; but it would not be a refuge long. But a refuge, which is also a sanctuary, a Divine house, affords not only shelter, but rest, repose, and satisfaction for all we need or can desire. The house of God may well be a home for man. And he who enters such a refuge soon discovers that it will be to him all his desire.
III. Man’s refuge is not only sacred, but royal. “A glorious high throne is the place of our sanctuary.” The house of God, “the dwelling place of the Most High” is also the seat and source of all rule, authority, and power. “Under the shadow of the Almighty,” man finds a sure defence for the whole breadth of his nature, in the midst of every possible circumstance, throughout the whole course of his history. The security and defence vouchsafed to him are of the highest character, and inseparable from the nature of the throne, which has become his refuge. The sanctuary-refuge-throne is holy, and the holiness of the throne is its defence and security. The power of the throne is the defence of man’s refuge. But the throne, which has become man’s refuge, is not merely a symbol of power, but also of power surrounded with becoming glory. There is “the pomp which surrounds a throne.” The throne gathers up and crowns every excellency.
IV. This sanctuary-refuge-throne is spoken of as an exalted throne. It is high enough to embrace not merely man’s individual nature, in all its integrity of body, soul, and sprat, but the whole race--the earliest sons in all the height and might of their experience, together with the latest born in the feebleness of beginning life. And not merely the race of man, for, under its exalted height is gathered together, in one unity of blessed life, all the elect, from the archangel before the throne to the weakest and meanest of the sons of men.
V. This exalted throne is glorious in the history of its exaltation. Its exaltation has not been by might but by right. Righteousness has been pleased and the law magnified throughout the holy pathway of ascent from a humble refuge to the glorious high throne. In becoming a refuge for the destitute, the abandoned, the lost, the throne has revealed the charms of the holy order and eternal righteousness by which triumphant conquests are made over every form of disorder and wickedness. Fugitives from the consequences of violated law, as they enter the refuge become obedient to law; the wicked become righteous; the sinful are made holy.
VI. It has been set up from the beginning. The provision for the requirements of man’s fallen nature was no afterthought but a forethought. The refuge was ever latent in the unbroken depths of the throne, and, for the revelation of its fundamental glory, needed to be opened up. The history of man unfolds the eternal purpose, and will be no mean history when complete. It was the joy of the Eternal Wisdom, whose “delights were with the sons of men” “ere ever the earth was”; it will be His joy when the earth is no more. The discords of human history lie between two harmonies, the one in which they have no place, the other in which they have been resolved. In man’s nature is struck the keynote of those pre-established harmonies, the melody of which is being written out in his history as a fitting song with which to celebrate the close of his earthly career, and the reconciliation of all things.
VII. The personality of this refuge. An impersonal refuge could never afford shelter and defence for man against his personal foes. Moreover, the impersonal could never afford rest to, nor become a home for man. Man needs man, a human security, a human joy, a human home, a warm maternal bosom on which to rest; not even God as God, but God as man. Is there such a person? One who is a refuge for man and a sanctuary for God? One who is also a throne, a throne exalted by a glorious history, and yet set up from the beginning? Oh joy of all joys, that God has revealed to us One possessed of all these attributes! We make our first acquaintance with Christ as a refuge. We seek in Him deliverance, shelter, and safety. Having made the experience of Him as a refuge, we begin to find He is more than a refuge, that He is a Divine house, a blessed home, a home in the house of God. Then, as we enlarge our acquaintance with our home, we find it a house of many mansions, opening up out of each other height above height, until a very throne is displayed to us--the throne of God, rising out of the refuge for man--and that the refuge is lost in the throne. And then as we gaze upon the throne which has hidden the refuge in its glory, the humanity in the Divinity, we begin to discover the refuge again in its deeper depth, something human in the depths of the Divine, and that it gives its own lustre to the central glory of the throne. And we perceive that this eternal humanity in the depths of Deity which gives a lustre to the eternal glory is the humanity which is the Alpha and Omega of man’s earthly history. And seeing this we refuse to it all dates and proclaim it to have been ever from of old, and that it “became” the eternal Son in the bosom of the Father, nay, “behoved Him to be in all things made like unto His brethren that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people”; nay, more, that it “must needs have been” that He might “enter into His glory”! Hallelujah! God has made Himself one with us in our necessities that we may partake of His glory. (J. Pulsford, D. D.)
Adoring exclamations of a soul gazing on God
I. A wonderful vision of what God is. There are three clauses. They all seem to have reference to the temple in Jerusalem, which is taken by a very natural figure of speech as a kind of suggestive description of Him who is worshipped there. “The Sublime Porte” is properly the name of a lofty gateway which belonged to the palace in Constantinople, and so has come to mean the Turkish Government--if government it can be called. So we talk of “the Papal see.” Or, again, the decision of “the Chair” in the House of Commons. So the prophet takes outward facts of the temple building as symbolising great and blessed spiritual thoughts of the God that filled the temple with His own lustre.
1. “A glorious throne”--that is grand, but that is not what Jeremiah means--“A throne of glory” is the true rendering. In the Old Testament, where “glory” is ascribed to God, the word has a very specific meaning, namely, the light which was afterwards called the “Shekinah,” that dwelt between the cherubim, and was the symbol of the Divine presence, and the assurance that that presence would be self-revealing, and would manifest Himself to His people. The throned glory, the glory that reigns and rules as King in Israel, is the idea of the words before us. It is the same throne that a later writer in the New Testament speaks of when he says, “Let us come boldly to the throne of grace.” We all can draw near, through the rent veil, and walk rejoicingly in the light of the Lord; this glory is grace; this grace is glory. This, then, is the first of Jeremiah’s great thoughts of God, and it means--“The Lord God omnipotent reigneth,” there is none else but He, and His will runs authoritative and supreme into all corners of the universe.
2. “High from the beginning.” It was a piece of the patriotic exaggeration of Israel’s prophets and psalmists that they made much of the little hill upon which the temple was set. Jeremiah felt it to be a material type, both of the elevation, and of the stable duration, of the God whom he would commend to Israel’s and to all men’s trust. “High from the beginning,” separated from all creatural limitation and lowness, He whose name is the Most High, and on whose level no other being can stand, towers above the lowness of the loftiest creature, and from that inaccessible height He sends down His voice, like the trumpet from amidst the darkness of Sinai, proclaiming, I am God and there is none besides Me. Yet while thus “holy”--that is, separate from creatures--He makes communion with Himself possible to us, and draws near to us in Christ, that we in Christ may be made nigh to Him.
3. He is “the place of our sanctuary.” That is, as though the prophet would point as the wonderful climax of all, to the fact that He of whom the former things were true should yet be accessible to our worship; that, if I might so say, our feet could tread the courts of that great temple; and we draw near to Him who is so far above the loftiest, and separate from all the magnificences which Himself has made, and who yet is “our sanctuary,” and accessible to our worship. Ay! and more than that--“Lord! Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” In old days the temple was more than a place of worship. It was a place where a man coming, had, according to ancient custom, guest rights with God. God Himself, like some ancestral dwelling place in which generation after Generation of fathers find children have abode, whence they have been carried, and where their children still live, is to all generations their home and their fortress.
II. The soul rapt in meditation of this vision of God. To me, this long-drawn-out series of linked clauses without grammatical connection, this succession of adorning exclamations of rapture, wonder, and praise, is very striking. It suggests the manner in which we should vivify all our thoughts of God, by turning them into material for devout reverence; awestruck, considering meditation. We should be like ruminant animals who first crop the grass--which being interpreted means, get Scripture truth into our heads--and then chew the cud, which being interpreted is, then put these truths through a second process by meditation on them that may turn into nourishment and make flesh.
III. The meditative soul going out to grasp God thus revealed, as its portion and hope. “O Lord! the hope of Israel.” I must cast myself upon Him by faith as my only hope; and turn away from all other confidences which are vain and impotent. So we are back upon that familiar Christian ground, that the bond which knits a man to God, and by which all that God is becomes that man’s personal property, and available for the security and the shaping of his life, is the simple flinging of himself into God’s arms, in sure and certain trust. Then, every one of these characteristics of which I have been speaking will contribute its own special part to the serenity, the security, the Godlikeness, the blessedness, the righteousness, the strength of the man who thus trusts. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
All that forsake Thee shall be ashamed.
A backslider ashamed of his conduct
A London City missionary writes: “One Sunday afternoon, when out visiting, I noticed a soldier. He was in a great hurry, but I soon caught him up, gave him a tract, and, walking with him, spoke to him about his soul. In reply he said, ‘I only wish I was the same as I used to be. For four and a half years I was a Christian. I worked for Christ with all my heart, and was never so happy as when so engaged. I made up my mind to enlist. I thought I should get on all right, but when my companions knew I was a Christian, they made it so hot for me I could not stand it, and gave in.’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘what would your country think of you if you were a coward in the face of an enemy? And should you fear to face the foes of Jesus Christ? When the greatest danger surrounds you, then it is your duty to be most faithful, not only to King Edward, but to King Jesus.’ The young soldier was deeply moved, and said, ‘I do thank God for meeting you. I will give my heart to Jesus again, and by God’s help I will be true to Him. I will not be a coward again, but will confess Him tonight in the barrack room.’”
Shall be written in the earth.--
Where is our name being written
Prudentius rightly saith, that their names that are written in red letters of blood in the Church’s calendar, are written in golden letters in Christ’s register in the book of life; as on the contrary, these idolaters whose sin was with an iron pen engraven on tables of their hearts (verse 1) are justly written in the earth. (John Trapp.)