Bible Commentaries
Jeremiah 17

Verse 11

Jeremiah 17:11

I. The Bible has nothing to say against a man's getting rich by just and honourable means. The need of money, and a moderate desire for it, form a most valuable incentive to industry. We would not be assured that the blessing of the Lord maketh rich, if wealth were necessarily an evil. To be altogether indifferent to material profit, so far from being a recommendation, betokens an unmanly and defective character. You ought to wish to increase your substance, if God will give you grace to use it well.

II. We learn from the text that riches unrighteously gotten are no blessing. It is our Maker's design that wealth should be begotten of industry: real hard work. There is no royal road to opulence; and, as Solomon said nearly three thousand years ago, "he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent." To make money rapidly, even by honest means, is perilous; how much more so by questionable methods?

III. As the text teaches, the penalty on the acquisition of unrighteous gain generally follows even in this life. Perhaps this does not hold so markedly in our times as under the Old Dispensation, because immortality with its just retribution is now more clearly revealed. Still, no thoughtful person can fail to see how often a terrible Nemesis pursues the fraudulent man even in "the midst of his day," and how, at his end, even the world styles him a fool. Some unexpected time comes, some monetary crisis, some commercial disaster, and all his hoarded gains take wing and fly away; the unprincipled man is left, like the silly partridge, to sit disconsolate in an empty nest.

J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned Forearmed, p. 61.

References: Jeremiah 17:12-14 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1786. Jeremiah 17:14 . G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 26; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1658.

Verse 12

Jeremiah 17:12

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, and with an infected nature he travels an infested road. Beset with foes, he is in constant need of shelter, and often cries out for deliverance.

II. Man's refuge is a sanctuary. A refuge is no place to rest or abide in. A place which is only a refuge furnishes but a temporary shelter. 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." The house of God is also the seat and source of all rule, authority, and power. It is a throne. From which we learn that the house of God, which is man's refuge and home, is its own defence. A throne incapable of its own defence is no longer a throne.

IV. This sanctuary-refuge-throne is spoken of as an exalted throne. Man needs a high defence. Our refuge towers above all, not only covering the need of our present station, but of all its future possibilities of growth.

V. And this exalted throne is glorious in the history of its exaltation. Its exaltation has not been by might but by right. That the throne became a refuge has given a hallowed joy to the universe. The refuge crowns the throne.

VI. Our refuge has been set up from the beginning. The provision for the requirements of man's fallen nature was no after-thought, but a forethought. His refuge-sanctuary-throne was "set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was."

VII. Note the personality of the refuge. (1) An impersonal refuge could never afford shelter and defence for man against his personal foes. (2) An impersonal refuge 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.

W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons, p. 161.

References: Jeremiah 17:14 . Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 245.Jeremiah 17:17 . Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 120. Jeremiah 18:1-4 . Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 152.