“Therefore, thus saith the Lord ... If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth.”
It was in the midst of the wreck and ruin, of Israel, that these words were uttered. They convey to us most important and needed instruction for days of very similar character. The student of the Word of God should not surely be ignorant that the “last days” of christianity are the “perilous” and not the prosperous “times.” (2 Tim. 3:11This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. (2 Timothy 3:1)). And anyone who will look at the description which follows in the passage referred to, may easily see that in very deed in such like times we are.
The word to Jeremiah, then, may well be much in our hearts in the present day. “Precious” and “vile” are mingled in strange sort around us. We are in a field where tares and wheat are growing cp together unto the harvest, and where on every side manifest confusion prevails. To accept things in the mass as of God is utterly impossible. To reject them in the mass is equally impossible. Hence, where there is the least earnestness and energy of christian life, godly discrimination has of necessity-to be used, and the principle seems indeed of the simplest and most self-evident sort, that the ed precious” must be taken from the “vile.”
But what is precious, and what is vile? Clearly the words imply some certain knowledge. It is not the mere exercise of any so-called right of “private judgment” that is in question. God, speaking by His Word to us, “he that is of God heareth God’s words” (John 8:4747He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. (John 8:47)). This is the only safe and healthful principle. To suppose that God could teach two opposite things as truth would be to dishonor Him. To suppose that He who has given His word would leave a really honest soul in doubt as to what He has spoken would be equally so. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
There is a sad lack among us of proper Christian conscience. Conscience, I mean, which holds for right and wrong, not what would be so merely according to the standard of things obtaining among those with whom we have grown up, but what the Word, simply and meekly listened to, declares as such. Without this, however, it is absolutely impossible to know what in God’s sight is precious, and what is vile.
But there another danger besets us. For in this judgment of things around, if we are not very much before God, the search is very apt to become an occupation with and even search for evil instead of a gracious desire and search after good. A hard and critical spirit is engendered. Harsh and perverted judgment is formed in consequence; and not only do we become incapable of real critical discernment, but the whole tone and temper of the soul is deteriorated.
The Lord’s words to Jeremiah intimate a very different employment and a very different spirit. Not toleration of evil. The “vile” is recognized and judged as vile; but the “precious” is what the heart is set upon. And it is not only frankly owned as there, wherever and in whatever association it may be found, but as that which is dear to God, its rescue is sought from the defilement with what is corrupt and evil.
And do not the words, “if thou shalt take forth the precious from the vile,” seem to imply that, with the effort, there will be, at least, some very happy success in this direction? The soul occupied with evil soon fails to discern what is really such, and still more, perhaps, loses power to separate the good and evil. The soul occupied with and delighting in what is good, learns’ to detect evil readily because it knows what is good; but beside that it has the secret of power to separate as well as to discern.
Oh, for this ability to be as “God’s mouth” among men! His who, if He speak, cannot speak in levity, nor yet in harshness; cannot tolerate evil, but aims to win from it and not to judge for it. Where are we, beloved brethren, as to this? Do we know how to be jealous for God’s truth, yet manifesters of God’s love? Do we know how to walk in a narrow path with a heart that knows no narrowness? Do we know that “love.” which, as an apostle puts it, “thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth”?
The Lord give us more of a Jeremiah’s spirit, and more of what was Jeremiah’s blessed privilege in a day of abounding iniquity.