THUS SAITH
THE LORD, STAND YE IN THE ways, and see, and ask for the
old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and
ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We
will not walk therein.
[i]
On occasion, we address a
text that while not a “tough text” exegetically or
interpretively, it is a hard, or at least challenging,
text to face. Jeremiah 6:16 is one of those, and is one
that is desperately needed in our day. I once heard a
comedian quip to his audience, “Have you noticed that
everybody nowadays talks about ‘new and improved’? I
guess that means what we already have is old and lousy.”
As we’ll see, that is, indeed, characteristic of today’s
church.
About 60 years after
the great prophet Isaiah’s death, God called another man
to the terribly difficult task of proclaiming God’s Word
to his own perverted generation on the eve of their
national disaster. It was 626 BC, and that man was
20-year-old Jeremiah. His name is a transliteration of
the Hebrew yirmeyah and seems to mean
“Jah will rise.” Jeremiah’s contemporaries included:
Ezekiel, who preached in Babylon; Daniel, who stayed
faithful in Nebuchadnezzar’s own palace; Habakkuk and
Zephaniah, who aided Jeremiah in Jerusalem; Nahum, who
predicted the fall of Nineveh; and Obadiah, who
proclaimed the ruin of Edom. Someone has said of
Jeremiah: “Amid all the bright stars of Old Testament
history, there is not a name that shines brighter than
that of Jeremiah”.[ii]
I agree and return to Jeremiah often
for encouragement in the responsibilities, rigors, and
even rejections that come with biblical ministry and the
proclamation of Truth.
God called Jeremiah
to minister during the darkest days of Judah’s history.
Following in the footsteps of Israel (the Northern
Kingdom), the spiritual condition of Judah (the Southern
Kingdom) was horrific. There was flagrant idol worship
(cf. chap. 2), including the sacrificing of children to
the god Molech in the Valley of Hinnom just outside
Jerusalem. King Ahaz had set up much of this in Isaiah’s
day. The godly Hezekiah had led in reforms and clean-up
(Isa. 36:7), but his son Manasseh, the most wicked king
in Judah’s history, continued to promote these practices
into Jeremiah’s time (Jer. 7:31; 19:5; 32:35). Many also
worshiped the “queen of heaven” (7:18; 44:19), a title
for Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and
fertility, whose worship involved abominable obscenities
(44:17–19, 25). While King Josiah sincerely tried to
bring reform, sin was too deeply imbedded in the
people’s hearts. As 3:10 recounts, “Judah hath not
turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly,
saith the lord.” He led
the nation in a shallow revival but not in a
heart-changing repentance. The idols were
removed, the temple repaired, and the
worship of Jehovah restored, but the people had
not repented, had not turned to the Lord with
their whole heart and soul. The same is true today of
much so-called “revival,” which often is emotionally
driven and temporary at best. Another striking
characteristic appears in 5:31: “The prophets prophesy
falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and
my people love to have it so.” Like today,
people loved what was preached even though it was not
true! People simply do not want to hear the Truth (2
Tim. 4:1–4).
The setting of our text,
then, is Jeremiah’s vivid description of Jerusalem’s
impending destruction at the hands of the Babylonians,
which would, in fact, come in Jeremiah’s own lifetime.
He repeatedly warns that repentance is the only hope for
escaping ruin.
That brings us to our
text. The picture here is a traveler who is not sure of
the way to his destination. He comes to an intersection
of several paths but does not know which one he should
take. He asks another traveler for directions, who
points him in the right direction and tells him which
path is the right one. There are two key words
here.
First, there
is the word way (or
ways). This is the Hebrew derek, which in the literal sense
speaks of a “road” or “trodden path.” Metaphorically,
then, it refers to a marked-out pattern of life, as in
Proverbs 3:6: “In all thy [patterns of life] acknowledge
him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Deuteronomy 8:6
likewise commands, “Thou shalt keep the commandments of
the lord
thy God, to walk in his [patterns of life], and to fear
him.” We find other verses that speak of either
righteous, pleasant, or wise patterns of life (2 Sam.
22:22; Prov. 3:17; 6:6), but also patterns that are
evil and dark (1 Kings 22:52;
Prov. 2:13).
Second, there
is the word paths. This is
nat?iyb?, which is similar to
derek in meaning and at times modifies
it, as it does here and in Proverbs 12:18: “In the way
of righteousness is life; and in the pathway
[combination of both words] thereof there is no death.”
An extremely significant verse is Psalms 119:35: “Make
me to go in the path of thy commandments; for
therein do I delight.”
So Jeremiah was pleading
with the people to follow the
old trodden and true
paths. The word old
is ‘ôlam. While this word is used more
than 300 times to indicate indefinite continuation into
the distant future, there are at least 20 instances
where it refers to the past. Joshua 24:2, for example,
looks back to “the flood in old time,” indicating
previous generations. Here, then, it looks back even
farther in the sense of generations, as it also does
later in Jeremiah 18:15: “Because my people hath
forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity, and
they have caused them to stumble in their ways
[derek] from the ancient
[‘ôlam] paths, to walk in paths
[nat?iyb?], in a way not cast
up.”
Jeremiah also begged
the people to follow the good way. The
word good is
t?ôb?, which has a huge range of
meanings: “good, pleasant, beneficial, precious,
delightful, right, well-pleasing, fruitful, morally
correct, proper, convenient.” The Creation narrative of
Genesis 1 best expresses all these aspects of meaning
when God declares each facet of His handiwork to be
good. Likewise, Jeremiah called the
people to this kind of behavior.
What, then, are the
old paths? It is obvious that the “new
(or modern) paths” the people were taking were that of
apostasy and idolatry. We would submit, therefore, that
the old paths, both
then and now, consist of two basic principles:
doctrine and duty.
I. The Old
Path of Doctrine
Today’s popular “new
paths” are clearly and proudly marked with what amounts
to flashing neon road signs: entertainment, pragmatism,
relativism, tolerance, user-friendliness,
seeker-sensitivity, self-fulfillment, personal
prosperity, motivational speeches, pop-music, social
relevancy, and others. We want the “new and improved.”
Do you remember the some 7,000 wonderfully quaint
Burma-Shave road signs that existed from 1925–1963? They
were replaced by huge, unsightly billboards because
people were now moving too fast to see the old signs.
Likewise, the profound truths of Christianity are being
replaced by the monstrosities we have just
listed.
Henry David Thoreau
wrote in his Journal on
September 2, 1851: “The more we know about the ancients,
the more we find that they were like the
moderns.”[iii] Likewise, I have no doubt
that today’s “new paths” had their 626 BC equivalents
when God called Jeremiah. The people in that day no more
wanted doctrine and absolute Truth than do most people
in our day, and so replaced it with things they thought
were better. Worse, both then and now, is that
leadership carries much of the blame. As 5:31 again
indicates, and as has been observed often by many,
responsibility, accountability, liability, and other
characteristics lie squarely on the shoulders of
leadership.
Is it not odd that some in
the secular world seem to know more about true
leadership than do so-called “Christian leaders”? We
have many in church leadership today, for example, who
proudly say they are “managers,” but as writer and
management consultant Peter Drucker (1909–2005) well
puts it: “Management is doing things right; leadership
is doing the right things.” Where are the men of God who
are driven by what is biblically right instead of what
is popular? Similarly, Warren Bennis (1925– ),
organizational consultant, author, and widely regarded
pioneer of the field of leadership studies, writes: “The
manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges
it.” Likewise, where are the men of God today who are
challenging what is fashionable and proclaiming the
Truth? I was also struck by this statement by noted
Harvard professor and author Robert Coles (1929– ):
Abraham Lincoln did not go
to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out
what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with
percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or
that group or what they found in exit polls a year
earlier. When will we have the courage of
Lincoln?
Indeed, where are the true
leaders in today’s church? Where are men who instead of
taking polls and organizing focus groups to see what
people want in a church, proclaim Truth no matter what
the reaction of people might be? Arthur W. Pink
(1886-1952) put it well when he wrote:
It is natural
that the preacher should wish to please his hearers, but
it is spiritual for him to
desire and aim at the approbation of God. Nor can any
man serve two masters. As the apostle expressly
declared, “For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the
servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10): solemn words are those!
How they condemn them whose chief aim is to preach to
crowded churches. Yet what grace it requires to swim
against the tide of public opinion, and preach that
which is unacceptable to the natural
man.[iv]
We would, therefore,
submit, that there is nothing as foolish and destructive
as the de-emphasis, downplaying, and disregard of
doctrine and theology. I must admit that words truly
fail to adequately express this principle. Without
doctrine, there is no direction, no compass, no
foundation, no core. Everything is shallow, surface,
superficial, and even spiritually suicidal.
Many years ago I
heard Vance Havner make this statement, and I have never
forgotten it: “Evangelism is to Christianity what veins
are to our bodies. You can cut Christianity anywhere and
it will bleed evangelism. Evangelism is vascular; it’s
our business.” I agree with that totally, but I would
like to build on the analogy: Doctrine is to
Christianity what bone marrow is to the physical
body. Bone marrow produces blood cells: red
cells carry oxygen and have a lifetime of 120 days;
white cells are part of the immune system and
have a lifetime of a few days to years; and
platelets are involved in
blood coagulation and have a lifetime of about nine
days. All that is what doctrine does. Some “cells”
sustain and enrich our lives, others keep us healthy
from things that would harm us, and still others heal us
when we are injured. Further, as cells have limited life
spans, the “marrow of doctrine” continues the work of
replacing the exhausted cells with fresh ones. While
some today insist that “doctrine is not practical,” such
an idea is ludicrous, as we will see in more
detail.
Another statement, this
one by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, is also one that often comes
to mind: “The most foolish of all Christians are those
who dislike and decry the importance of Theology and
teaching. Does not that explain why they fail in
practice?”[v] Why are many
Christians weak and shallow? Why do many fall to any new
trend that comes along? Why do many fail to discern
false teaching? Why do many fail to be consistent,
faithful, and obedient? Why do many succumb to
temptation? Why do many collapse when someone challenges
their faith? Because they do not
know doctrine. Sadly, they are not being taught
doctrine by their pastors; they are not being taught
that God’s Word alone is Truth. They are being
taught that Truth is relative and can be found in many
other places. That is why they fail, and that is
why Christianity continues to degenerate. The more
modern trends that arise, the more biblical
truths that are sacrificed on
the Altar of Change. As Charles Spurgeon so well said:
“The Holy Ghost rides in the chariot of Scripture, and
not in the wagon of modern thought.”[vi] Far too many Christian
leaders today are sitting in wagons instead of standing
in chariots.
Contrary to popular
thinking, doctrine and teaching are repeatedly, over and
over again, emphasized in Scripture. The word
doctrine, in fact, appears 45
times in the New Testament, 11 of which are in reference
to Jesus’ own ministry. Regarding Jesus’ Sermon on the
Mount, we read: “And it came to pass, when Jesus had
ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his
doctrine, For he taught them as one having authority,
and not as the scribes” (Matt. 7:28, 29). We also read
in Mark 4:2: “He taught them many things by parables,
and . . . doctrine.” Parables, we should remember, were
not for the shallow hearer. Matthew 13:10–17 makes it
clear that parables were for Jesus’ true followers. If I
may be so bold, the Joel Osteen crowd, and other such
groups, don’t get them. Those with hardened hearts
cannot understand deep truth. J. Wallace Hamilton wisely
said, “Our modern age is a pushover for the shallow and
the shortcut. We want to change everything except the
human heart.”[vii]
What, then, was the
emphasis at the birth of the Church? Acts 2:42 documents
this for us: “And they continued stedfastly in the
apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of
bread, and in prayers.” Is it not interesting that there
is nothing here about cultural relevance, “appealing to
seekers,” or addressing “felt needs”? There’s not even a
single word about music here (or anywhere else in Acts),
while today this has become by far the main emphasis and
prominent feature.
Coming to the
Epistles, a key verse is 1 Timothy 4:13: “Till I come,
give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to
doctrine.” “Give attendance” translates prosecho, which was a nautical
term for holding a ship in a direction, to sail onward.
The idea, then, was “to hold on one’s course.” And what
course was Timothy to hold? Not entertainment or “felt
needs,” rather on the Word of God alone. Specifically,
Timothy’s course was to be set on three
emphases.
First,
reading. The definite article
(“the”) appears before “reading,” indicating the
specific practice of public reading. Because of the
scarcity of manuscripts, the practice of reading and
explaining Scripture in the synagogue (Acts 15:21 and
Luke 4:16f) was carried over into the church (Col. 4:16;
1 Thess. 5:27). First and foremost, then, it is the
reading of God’s Word that should fill our
churches.
Second, Timothy’s
course was to be set on exhortation. The Greek (paraklesis) refers to an admonition or
encouragement for the purpose of strengthening and
establishing the believer in the faith (see Rom. 15:4;
Phil. 2:1; Heb. 12:5; 13:22). In short,
exhortation is the application of the
exposition of Scripture. Expository
preaching has all but vanished today, but
exposition—which by its very nature will be doctrinal—is
what will challenge God’s people to obey the Truth of
God’s Word and warn them of the consequences of not
doing so.
Third, Timothy’s
course was to be set on doctrine. There’s that word again. To the ancient Greeks,
didaskalia meant imparting information and
later the teaching of skills. Another Greek word
translated doctrine is didache. While its basic meaning is also
“teaching,” it places more stress upon what is taught
than does didaskalia. A noted Greek authority says
this about didache:
Paul’s use of didache in Romans and I Corinthians may
be contrasted with the usage found in the Pastoral
Epistles. In the former epistles the scope of the word
is left undefined, whereas in the Pastorals (cf. II Tim
4:2; Tit. 1:9) didache has probably become
a given body of doctrine which is to be inculcated
as such.[viii]
The vital meaning of
didache, then, is that it speaks of what
is being taught, that is, a body of
doctrine. A key
verse here is 2 Timothy 4:2, where we find the crucial
significance of didache. Writing to pastor Timothy, Paul
declared with no ambiguity, apology, or alternative:
“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season;
reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and
doctrine.” He goes on in verses 3 and 4 to give a reason
for this, namely, that the time will come when people
will not put up with this and will seek teachers who
will humor them and tickle their ears to entertain them.
In spite of such attitudes, however, Paul commands
Timothy to preach anyway, to change absolutely
nothing in his method. The modern idea that
methods must change with the times is a lie.
Writing to
another pastor, Paul declared
the exact same crucial responsibility of leadership:
“Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught,
that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and
to convince the gainsayers” (Titus 1:9). To further
cement this concept, Paul added to Timothy: “Hold fast
the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in
faith and love which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13).
“Form” is hupotuposin, which refers to “a
pattern, sketch, or outline.” Paul impresses upon
Timothy that there is a definite pattern or outline of
doctrine that he taught his student. Why? So Timothy
would be thoroughly grounded in the Word of God and
thereby able to discern false teaching. Only doctrine
does that.
What was Timothy to do
with such doctrine? He was to teach other men so that
they could in-turn teach others (2 Tim. 2:2). We also
read in 1 Timothy 4:6: “If thou put the brethren in
remembrance of these things [i.e., “the word of God and
prayer” in verse 5], thou shalt be a good minister of
Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of
good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.” It is
doctrine and prayer-soaked teaching that nourishes and
builds up God’s people and is the epitome of a “good
minister.”
Neither is all this
confined to the New Testament. The Old Testament
repeatedly emphasizes the critical nature of truth,
doctrine, and teaching. A fascinating incident appears
in Isaiah 28:9. The corrupt prophets and priests were
disgusted by Isaiah and asked with contempt: “Whom shall
he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand
doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn
from the breasts?” In other words, who are you treat us
like children with endless repetition of the same
things? We can think for ourselves.” They went on in
verse 10 to mimic that great man of God as if he were
speaking baby talk: “For precept must be upon precept,
precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line;
here a little, and there a little.” Likewise, many today
say, “We are too sophisticated, too well-read, too
well-informed for old, out of date doctrine. We are
modern and relevant.”
With all that in
mind, and many more verses we could cite, it continues
to amaze me that something as clear as this mandate to
teach doctrine to God’s people can be so easily ignored
by much of the church’s leadership today. Popular
thought has replaced the principles of
Truth.
This leads us to consider
for a moment the true old paths of
theology that have also all but vanished. Throughout the
history of the Church, every time the historic Doctrines
of Sovereign Grace have been challenged, those
challenges have been humiliatingly defeated.
Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism, and a whole
horde of other heresies have repeatedly arisen in an
attempt to destroy, or at the very least dilute, the
true Gospel, and every time they have been exposed for
what they are. And so it is again today, but sadly with
unprecedented success. The historic doctrines of the
Reformation, which themselves are woven into the very
fabric of Scripture, are under violent attack, and the
attackers are winning. It is sad, indeed, not to mention
catastrophic, that Arminianism, Pragmatism, and
Relativism rule most of today’s church with an iron
hand. Things that throughout church history were
recognized as heresy are now the status quo of
orthodoxy. Where are the men who will return to the
old paths?
Having considered
the old path of doctrine,
this leads us to consider briefly the other side of that
coin.
II. The Old
Path of Duty
Again, a popular
mantra nowadays is that doctrine is not practical. Such
statements demonstrate either a total ignorance of
Scripture at best or deliberate deception for ulterior
motive at worst. Doctrine is most certainly practical. A
case in point (or actually cases) is the consistent
practice of Paul in his Epistles of first presenting
doctrine and then duty. In Ephesians, for
example, chapters 1–3 deal with doctrine (our
riches in Christ), while chapters 4–6 apply that
doctrine to duty (our
responsibilities in
Christ).
Of the many duties of the
Christian, for example, the chief is godliness.
Salvation is a transforming experience, and the result
of true conversion is godly behavior. Paul made this
clear in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them,” which he
then enumerates in chapters 4–6. He also made this clear
to the Corinthians: “Therefore if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature: old things are passed away;
behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
It is doctrine, therefore,
that results in the production of godly behavior.
Writing again to Timothy, Paul declared:
If any man teach
otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the
words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine
which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing
nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of
words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil
surmisings, Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds,
and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is
godliness: from such withdraw thyself. (1 Tim.
6:3–6)
The principle here
could not be clearer: There is a definite
correlation between truth and godliness and error and
ungodliness. In other words, right doctrine will
produce right conduct, while wrong doctrine will produce
wrong conduct. Period. This truth is not only
biblical, but also logical. Why? Because how can we live right and
do right
unless we know right? And
knowledge always comes by
doctrine. Truth cannot be discovered; it must be
revealed.
Another duty of
doctrine is obedience. The modern teachings of
easy-believism, no lordship, no repentance, and others
are simply additional heresies that have further
contributed to the decline of the true Christian
message. Obedience is implicit in the Gospel.
Our
Lord
made the issue clear: “If ye love me, keep my
commandments. . . . If a man love me, he will keep my
words . . . He that loveth me not keepeth not my
sayings” (John 14:15, 23,
24). The Apostle John picked up on this and wrote in his
first Epistle:
Hereby we do know that we
know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I
know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar,
and the truth is not in him. But whoso
keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God
perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. He that
saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk,
even as he walked. (1 John 2:3–6).
All this is
duty that flows from doctrine. Is duty the
cause of salvation? Of
course not, for that would be works salvation.
But duty (like works) is most certainly
the result of
salvation and evidence of it.
Another aspect of such
obedience is that it continues in the believer’s life as
he or she is exposed to the Word of God. One might know
the Bible from cover to cover, be able to recite every
doctrine, plumb every prophecy, and quote entire
passages, but if there is little or no obedience,
knowledge means nothing. Knowledge without application
is less than worthless—it’s actually destructive. As
Paul told the Corinthians, “knowledge puffeth up, but
[love] edifieth” (I Cor. 8:1). Facts simply make us
arrogant. It’s the application that makes us humble.
For example, when
you read, “Lie not to one another, seeing that ye
have put off the old man with his deeds” (Col. 3:9),
then obey it by never saying anything with the
intent to deceive, embellish, or mislead. When you
read, “The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and
they go down into the innermost parts of the belly”
(Prov. 26:22), as well as, “The tongue can no man tame;
it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (Jas. 3:5),
then obey it by never gossiping and being careful
about every word you say. As Paul commands, “Let your
speech be alway with grace seasoned with salt, that ye
may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Col. 4:6).
When you read, “Now I beseech you, brethren, by
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the
same thing, and that there be no divisions among you;
but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same
mind and in the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10), along
with, “Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in
the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3), then obey it by
striving never to be the cause of a disunity or
disharmony among God’s people. Reading a command of God
without obeying it is rebellion, and if we
disobey God’s Word, chastisement will come in one form or another. And the more
knowledge we have the more responsible we are for it and
the more serious is the disobeying of
it.
We could continue, but I
think the challenge is clear. Are we going to walk the
new paths of contemporary thought, which change daily
and result in our wandering aimlessly through the
wilderness? I fear we have not only left the old
paths, but have reseeded them to erase that
they ever existed. Or are we going to clear away the
overgrowth and walk the old paths that
lead straight and true to the destination of glory? Let
us, indeed, walk the old paths, the
paths that were trodden by such men as, to name only a
few: Gresham Machen (1881–1937), Charles Spurgeon
(1834–92), J. C. Ryle (1816–1900), Robert Dabney
(1820–1898), Charles Hodge (1797-1878), John Dagg
(1794–1884), Jonathon Edwards (1703–1758), George
Whitefield (1714-1770), John Owen (1616–1683), John Gill
(1697–1771), John Calvin (1509–64), John Knox (1505–72),
Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), Martin Luther (1483–1546),
John Huss (1369–1415), Augustine (354–430), Athanasius
(293–373), the Apostles, and our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ Himself.
My dear Christian Friend,
let us walk the old paths for the
praise of God’s glory and rest for [our]
souls, not the new ones that lead to ruin. Let
us never say, as did the Judeans, We will not
walk therein.
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible Church
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