DISCIPLE

by F. B. Meyer Jeremiah 27 Ours the shame to understand That the world prefers the lie; That, with medicine in her hand, She will sink and choose to die! Ours the agonising sense, Of the heaven this earth might be, If, from their blank indifference, Men woke one hour and felt as we! Houghton  When Jeremiah was first summoned to the work of prophet, it was summarized under six distinct divisions. He was set over nations and kingdoms to pluck up, and to break down, and to destroy, and to overthrow; to build and to plant (1:10). Two thirds of his work was therefore in the direction of destruction. It is not pleasant or easy work. No one would choose to stand amid the choking dust of the crumbling brickwork, which is being destroyed to make way for some palatial structure to be erected on the site. Vested interests, long-establishe d abuses, lucrative wrongs, cry out loudly against any attempt to interfere with their existence. But Elijah must precede Elisha; a

 The  Rechabites – Example of Faithfulness Text: Jeremiah 35 It is the general tendency amongst men to ask what is the practice of the majority; what is done by those in their rank and station; and what will be expected of them. We drift with the current. We allow our lives to be settled by our companions or our whims, our fancies or our tastes; and if ever we have a momentary qualm, in contrasting our lives with the standards of primitive simplicity, of which Scripture and old biographies are full, we excuse ourselves by saying that so long as the main purpose is right the details are unimportant. This reasoning is wrong. We make a grave mistake in supposing that the main purpose of our life is something different from that which reveals itself in details. What we are in the details of our life, that we are really and essentially. The truest photographs are taken when we are unprepared for the operation. The true man, therefore, is always settling his life in its details as well

Of the prophet Zephaniah practically nothing is known beyond what he himself tells us in the first verse. His pedigree is traced back through four generations, and the date of his ministry is given as “in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.” Those were days of blessing and revival for a remnant; but the mass of the people, though outwardly reformed, were in the sad state described in this book and in the early chapters of Jeremiah. The object of the Spirit in Zephaniah was, therefore, to warn the formalists of coming judgment, and to comfort the hearts of the godly residue who had a little strength, and had not denied His name. In fact, the prophecy of Zephaniah has much in common with the New Testament letter to the Philadelphian assembly, contemplating a condition of things answering in large measure to what we see at the present time— a day when many vaunt themselves in Laodicean pride while walking in utter indifference to the written Word of God and despising a