The broken bottle.
That was a strange scene—the royal family, the nobles, the chief priests, together with the populace of Jerusalem, gathered, at the summons of a prophet whose power could not be ignored though his teaching was opposed, in the valley of Hinnom, now reeking with the odors of foul crime; and the prophet facing them, alone and fearless, with a common potter's vessel in his hand, while he draws a most awful picture of impending calamity, and sternly charges his audience with the terrible wickedness which is bringing it upon their heads, and brings his discourse to a dramatic climax by breaking the vessel to pieces.
I. CONSIDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE DISCOURSE.
1. It was addressed especially to the leaders of the people (Jeremiah 19:1). "To the poor the gospel is preached," but to the great sterner messages must often be declared. Nothing in the history of the prophets is more exemplary than the directness of their accusations of guilt in high places. They were no flattering court preachers. Yet they were court preachers. -They did not reserve their harsh words for the poorest and lowest of the people, as modern popular preachers are too apt to do. The leaders were first in crime; they should be first in responsibility.
2. It was spoken on the site of the greatest wickedness. The guilty people had the memorials of their crimes before their eyes while judgment was being pronounced for them. Men naturally shun these valleys of Hinnom, these scenes of old sins, the sight of which stings the conscience. But they must revisit them. It is sometimes the duty of the preacher to take his hearers back in memory to the circumstances of the past which they would gladly forget.
3. It was dearly and boldly expressed. The language was precise, detailed, and graphic, the description of the approaching ruin vivid and appalling. Jeremiah used no euphemisms. His words are enough to make our blood curdle as we read them, more than a score of centuries after they were spoken. How must they have sounded in the ears of the criminals who heard them as the sentence of their own doom? Lurid pictures of future punishment frequently strike one as unreal, as though only drawn for effect; they rouse unbelief in some, despair in others, or a hardening in sin. Yet a clear and uncompromising statement of the scriptural revelation of the horrors of the future is not to be set aside for more pleasing doctrines, especially in preaching to the great and the self-satisfied.
4. It was accompanied by a significant action. Jeremiah broke the bottle in the presence of his audience. This would strike the eye and impress the imagination. It is not enough that we convince the reason of a truth; we must rouse the imagination to realize it before it will be effectual. The Eastern imagery of the Bible is useful to us in this way. The preacher finds the value of illustrations in making truth vivid and interesting. Ideas may be received through the eye as well as through the ear.
II. CONSIDER THE SUBJECT OF THE DISCOURSE.
1. It accused of sin,
We must feel the intensity of guilt to realize the justice of punishment.
2. It denounced a most terrible doom. This was to correspond to the crimes committed. The Tophet of sin was to be the Tophet of punishment. They who had sacrificed children to Moloch would eat the flesh of their sons, etc.
3. It exposed the rottenness of false confidence. "I will pour out the counsel of Judah." People imagine that somehow, without repentance, by ingenuity or by daring, they may escape the consequences of their sins. They will find that all such devices must end in ignominious failure.
4. It was accompanied by a symbol of hopeless destruction. The bottle was broken.
The warning confirmed.
The warning of the discourse in the valley of Hinnom is confirmed by a repetition of it under more ordinary circumstances.
I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CONFIRMATION OF THE WARNING.
1. It was repealed. The scribe must bring from his treasury things old as well as things new. Men need "line upon line." Unpopular truths must not only be revealed once for all, they must be impressed upon people until they are accepted.
2. It was repeated in the temple. The horrible associations of Tophet were wanting there. All was decorum, order, propriety. Yet the message was not the less true there than in a more congenial place. Terrible truths must be uttered in face of the religious respectability of our Church worship. Such outward correctness should not make us forget the true condition of men's hearts, which is apparent enough in the darker scenes of life, in the Tophets of iniquity. We are tempted to be deceived by the appearance of religions assemblies into a blindness to the greatness of sin which is visible enough in common life.
3. It was repeated in the ears of all the people. The leaders were first selected to hear the warning (Jeremiah 19:1). But it was not confined to them. The people generally were guilty. They had quietly acquiesced in the wickedness of their great men. Nay, they had furthered, them, in it (Jeremiah 5:31), had followed their example, and become guilty' of similar crimes. They, too, must not expect to escape in the hour of judgment.
II. THE FORM IN WHICH THE WARNING WAS CONFIRMED.
1. It was epitomized. Truth needs to be broken up into detail that it may be clearly understood and vividly conceived by the imagination. But it is possible to lose ourselves in details and miss the drift of the sum of them. Hence the advantage of broad, sweeping enunciations of principle.
2. It was repeated as a prediction of real facts. The warning was not to be regarded as an empty threat, nor as the indication of a danger that might be evaded. 'I will bring … the evil that I have pronounced,' etc. It is both weak and cruel to threaten without the intention of executing the threat—weak, for the hollowness of the alarm is soon discovered by experience, and then it is impotent; cruel, for why create distress about a mere "bogey" danger? God is merciful, but firm. His threats are conditional, but, while the conditions subsist, the execution is as certain as any event that depends on the uniform laws of nature.
3. It was repeated without diminution. All the evil pronounced will fall on all the towns. The effect of stern warnings fades with the lapse of time. We are tempted to think that things will not be so very bad as at first seemed likely, and to take comfort from such reflections. But danger is not lessened by our growing indifference to it.
4. It was strengthened by an appeal to the increasing necessity for it. "Because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words." A deep consciousness of guilt makes the just punishment of it seem inevitable. Willful persistence in wickedness after warning can only increase the guilt and make the punishment the more certain and the more severe.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR
The breaking of the potter's vessel.
Another symbolic action, but in this case the revelation to the mind of the prophet was not dependent upon its being performed. It is because of the public significance of it he is enjoined to perform it. The "elders of the priests" and the "elders of the people" are invited to the scene.
I. THE SYMBOL. This was a "potter's earthen bottle [or 'vessel']," and thus had to be carefully distinguished from the "clay" spoken of in Jeremiah 18:1-23. The latter is soft and unshaped, and may be molded as the potter wishes; but the vessel is already formed and hardened into a certain definite shape, which it is impossible materially to alter. As that represented the stuff or material of which nations and institutions could be made, this must stand for the Jewish nation, with its character historically matured and fixed. Jehovah had already given it the form he intended it to assume, and placed it in certain relations with himself as a theocracy. The historic institutions and nations of the world are the creation of God. He has raised them up and controlled the forces that molded and determined their specific character and work. "The powers that be are ordained of God." The position, character, and life of individual men are also his work. No man is "self-made" in any fundamental sense of the word. A gracious providence has nurtured and cared for him; and, it may be, saving grace has redeemed and sanctified him. He "is the noblest work of God."
II. THE ACTION. This was threefold, viz:
1. The vessel was bought. "Get;" literally, "buy." Jehovah had redeemed Israel to be a people for himself. The outlays of Divine love and mercy are suggested. The providence and grace of God are now being expended. The blood of Christ was shed for all nations, "the Jew first, and afterwards the Gentile;" and for every man born into the world. "Ye are not your own: ye are bought with a price. A deeper, obligation is thereby incurred to him, and a grander authority on his part justified. We are all made and saved, or, as it may be expressed, made and remade by him.
2. It was probably poured out. Jeremiah 18:7, "I will make void [literally, 'pour out']." This action would be natural under the circumstances, and highly impressive. And if it be objected that the vessel was empty, that very fact might still render the action the more emphatically significant. Their counsels were also vain and empty. God suffers wicked nations and men to devise evil, but only as it works out his own ends is it allowed to be executed. He will bring to naught the counsel of the ungodly. That which is devised without his blessing will come to no successful issue.
3. It was broken. (Jeremiah 18:10.). This was intended to depict the extreme and final character of the impending, judgment—"As one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again" (Jeremiah 18:11). The nationality of the Jews was to be destroyed. The Babylonion captivity, although only obscurely predicted, is apparently alluded to; but some hold that, as this was but an incomplete fulfillment, the Roman conquest must have been meant. All nations and individuals are on their trial, and may be subjected to this extreme penalty. God holds the sovereign power in his own hand. There is no remedy; the past is irrevocable. And there is no appeal from his sentence, when the limit of his forbearance has been Fussed.
4. It was disgraced by being cast into Tophet. A double purpose was thereby expressed. The scene of idolatrous rites was to be disgraced by being made the burial-place of the slaughtered thousands of Jerusalem, as, on the other hand, such a burial and the necessity for it would be humiliating to the metropolis of the faith.
III. THE ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES.
1. It was done in presence of the representatives of the nation. "Take of the ancients [eiders] of the people, and of the ancients of the priests." They were probably responsible for the national guilt, and by their personal and artificial influence might be able to avert the catastrophe. Those who influence a nation's life—kings, princes, statesmen, ministers of religion, authors, etc.—should be specially appealed to in cases of national sin. So the parent for the child. It is both respectful and just that such persons should be addressed in the first instance. But every man is responsible for his own sin. His intelligence and moral nature must, therefore, be addressed.
2. The language used was such as to recall the general penalties to be incurred by breaking the Law. (Deuteronomy 28:1-68.) The fact was thus suggested that the judgment was willfully and knowingly incurred. There is nothing new about the evils that come upon transgressing nations and individuals, or about their history. It is not for man to judge. God knows the reasons for his procedure, and the sinner himself is not ignorant.
3. The meaning of the breaking of the vessel is fully explained beforehand. This is ever the Divine order. There is "space for repentance" given even to the worst sinners. No man will go wholly unwarned into perdition. Nay, even the historic and so-called secular character of nations, institutions, and individuals is precious in God's eyes, and effort is constantly made to convert it into an influence of blessing. The sinner is offered the "means of grace" that he may become a saint and a servant of the Most High. And it is only as he obstinately continues in his sin that the irrevocable judgment falls.—M.
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY