By J.C. Philpot
Preached at Providence Chapel, Croydon, on Lord's Day Morning, June 6, 1869
"Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these evidences, this evidence of the purchase, both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open; and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days." Jeremiah 32:14
As it will be my aim and object, with God's help and blessing, to lay before you this morning the spiritual meaning of these words, I must first call your attention to their literal and historical connection and signification; for these two modes of interpretation are always based upon, and coincide and harmonise with each other. A few scriptural instances will abundantly shew this. Thus, when our Lord gave a spiritual and experimental interpretation to the manna which fell from heaven, to the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, to Jonah being three days and three nights in the whale's belly, we should find, upon examination, that all these spiritual explanations were based upon, and coincided with the literal signification of these Old Testament types.
So when Paul spiritualises, as the term is, the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac,--the one as the seed of the bond woman, the other the child of promise; his two wives, Sarah and Hagar, as representing the two covenants; and the passage through the Red Sea as prefiguring spiritual baptism; in all these instances he bases the spiritual meaning upon the literal; so that the two harmonise and coincide with each other. So, also, when he applies to our Lord such passages as: "I will be to him a Father and he shall be to me a Son," to prove his divine Sonship (Heb. 1:5); "I will put my trust in him," to shew his sacred humanity (Heb. 2:13); "He hath put all things under his feet," to prove his present power and glory,--all these spiritual interpretations of passages in the Old Testament strictly coincide with their literal meaning and historical connection.
We are not, therefore, at liberty to take any passage of the Old Testament, and what is called spiritualise it as our wisdom and fancy may suggest. Ignorant and presumptuous men have often taken deep and obscure passages of the Old Testament, and spiritualised them after their own fancy, to display their lofty wisdom or their profound knowledge of divine mysteries; and what has often been the result but to please shallow, light-minded professors, and make themselves justly, and the Scriptures unjustly, the laughingstock of fools? The Holy Ghost does not lead men into such wild vagaries; for God gives to his saints and servants by his grace not only "the Spirit of power, and of love but of a sound mind" (2 Tim. 1:7), which keeps them from carrying their carnal wisdom into his word of truth and turning that into a showplace for their real or fancied abilities.
I shall now, therefore, call your attention to the historical and literal connection of our text; for on that I hope to build a spiritual and experimental interpretation.
The words were spoken by Jeremiah to Baruch, in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, when the king of Babylon's army was besieging Jerusalem, and about a year before its final capture. He was at this time shut up in the court of the prison in the king of Judah's house; and the cause of his imprisonment was his faithfulness in prophesying to Zedekiah, that the Lord would give the city into the hand of the king of Babylon, that he should take it, and that the king himself should not escape out of the hands of the Chaldeans, but surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, who should speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes should behold his eyes. Now, when thus shut up in prison, the word of the Lord came unto him to forewarn him of a certain circumstance which was about to take place, that thus he might he assured that it was of the Lord, and be prepared to act accordingly.
"Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth; for the right of redemption is thine to buy it." Now, according to the Jewish law, if this land were sold to any casual purchaser, Jeremiah, as the next of kin, was at liberty, if not actually required, to redeem it, by paying the amount of its profits calculated to the year of jubilee, when it would return to the family. The Lord, therefore, apprised Jeremiah beforehand that his cousin, who was in possession of the land and who wished to sell the property, would come to him in the prison and bid him buy what we call the reversion, so as to prevent his having to redeem the land at another time from the purchaser.
