The love of God.
In these chapters, the thirtieth and the thirty-first, we have a delightful change from the prolonged accusations, warnings, and threatenings which form the staple of well nigh all that has gone before. Here we have a series of good and comfortable words designed for the encouragement of God's people in the midst of the sorrows of their exile. This verse declares that the love of God was the real cause of all that had befallen his people. Now—
I. WITHOUT DOUBT THERE WAS MUCH IN THEIR HISTORY THAT SEEMED TO BE VERY CONTRARY TO WHAT LOVE WOULD DO. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love" said God. "What!" we can imagine a perplexed soul exclaiming—"What! love, everlasting love, and Israel a scattered people, her throne overturned, her kings slain or in exile, her people perished by tens of thousands, her temple and city burnt with fire, her lot so exceeding hard, bitter, and hopeless! Where is the love in all this?" And so it is still. It is hard to persuade men to believe in the love of God; to understand how, under the omnipotent rule of a beneficent and loving God, these many things can be which we know by experience are—pain, loss, disappointment, death, and yet worse, moral evil, sin in all its forms; and the darkness in which we continue in regard to all these. Who can understand all this, or adequately explain the great mysteries of human life?
II. BUT NEVERTHELESS GOD'S LOVE IS AT THE ROOT OF ALL THINGS. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love" was true for Israel and is true for us. For note in regard to Israel:
1. The purpose of God towards them was such as love only would cherish. What of honour and glory and blessing did God not design for his people! The whole of the Scriptures teem with his promises and declarations as to this. They were to be his people and he would be their God, in all the fulness of blessed meaning that such an assurance intends.
2. And there was no other way whereby his gracious ends could be secured, less painful than that which he had been constrained to adopt. We may be sure of this; for the same love that first formed the gracious purpose would be certain to choose the most direct and happy means to secure it. For:
3. It was in the power of Israel—a power which they exercised with fatal effect for themselves—to compel God to take circuitous routes to reach his designed end. The heart of a people cannot be dealt with as God deals with mere matter. The power of choice, the free will of man, can baffle for a long time the benevolence of God, and delay and thwart not a little the accomplishment of that on which his heart is set. They would try their own ways, and only when they had found how full of sorrow these were would they consent to God's way. And all this involved long weary years and much and manifold sorrow.
4. And what was true of Israel is true of mankind at large. God has purposes of grace for man. He so loved the world, and loves it still. But sin can for a while baffle God, and compel the use of the pains and penalties which we see associated with it, in order to eradicate the love of it from the heart of man.
III. NO OTHER KEY SO UNLOCKS THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. If we find it hard at times even with this key, we shall find it much harder with any other. No malignant being would have implanted love in human hearts. The existence of that one blessed principle in man renders the word of the faithless servant, "I knew thee that thou wert a hard man," forever glaringly untrue, A capricious being would not have established "the reign of love" which we find everywhere. The settled uniformity of the principles on which God's universe is governed disprove that. An indifferent being, such as the Epicureans taught that the gods were, would not have contrived so many means whereby the ease and comfort of his creatures are secured. Only a God of love would be to man what we perpetually see God is to us. The innumerable and palpable proofs of his beneficence affirm this, and when we regard the sorrows and ills of life as but love's sharp remedies, they will not disprove it.
IV. OUR WISDOM IS TO ASSUME, EVEN WHERE WE CANNOT PROVE IT, THAT THIS IS SO. For thus we shall surely come to find more and more "the soul of good" that there is in even the most evil things, and we shall be able to "both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."—C.