Scripture
(By Dave, 15 min)
Jeremiah 20:7-12
Jeremiah’s Complaint
You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me.
Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long.
But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name, his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.
I hear many whispering, “Terror on every side! Denounce him! Let’s denounce him!” All my friends are waiting for me to slip, saying, “Perhaps he will be deceived; then we will prevail over him and take our revenge on him.”
But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten.
Lord Almighty, you who examine the righteous and probe the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance on them, for to you I have committed my cause.
When a prophecy seems false
Jeremiah was called by God to encourage repentance and prophecy Judah’s destruction for its egregious sins. History helps to explain what the prophet was experiencing in today’s Scripture verse. After his prediction of calamity from the north, a Scythian hoard came from the north to fight in Egypt. To do so they passed just west of Judah. They plundered along the way and returned leaving Judah largely unharmed. Jerusalem was not attacked and was not in ruins.
Some Biblical scholars speculate that both the people of Judah and Jeremiah saw the Scythians as the predicted means for Judah’s destruction. Because they did no harm, Jeremiah was puzzled. Why did the Lord deceive him with a false prophecy? Because of it, he is disgraced in his community and fits the classic definition of a false prophet described in Deuteronomy. The book has some very harsh words about false prophets: “But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.” You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken.” (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).
The disdain for Jeremiah among the men of his hometown is severe and they begin to threaten his life if his prophecies do not stop. Perhaps this was the last straw for them because Jeremiah supported King Josiah’s religious reforms. Those reforms removed all local altars of worship, a likely source of income for Judah’s priests. Jeremiah came from a community of priests, and, not surprisingly, these are the people who are plotting against his life.
Today’s Scripture verse is one of six so-called confessions of Jeremiah that depict his conversations with God about these events. The poor man is very conflicted. On the one hand, he doesn’t know why he was deceived by God and given a presumed false prophecy (later realized). Consequently, he would like to stop being a prophet to avoid the misery he is going through. But God’s words burn in his bones like a fire, and he must speak them.
Our prophetic role
I wonder what a modern-day prophet looks like. We don’t seem to have any towering prophetic giants like Israel did. Maybe things are different in our times. Indeed, Jeremiah himself conveyed God’s message of a dramatic change to occur in those who follow God: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33). This came true with Christ who left us with the Holy Spirit, indelibly writing God’s law into the fabric of our being. Because of this, I suspect each one of us has a prophetic role to play.
That role is perhaps most apparent in our responsibilities as parents. We inform our children of God’s principles and tell them the impact their choices will create. When they are young it’s easy because parents are the only source of knowledge. But as our children go into the world they form their own opinions, and suddenly we find ourselves dabbling in the world of Jeremiah.
For example, suppose you strongly counsel your children towards the biblical concept of sexual fidelity in marriage. You tell them how devastating it is to a relationship when adultery is committed and how beneficial it is when a couple knows they can trust each other. Your child, let’s say it’s your son, comes home from college during a break between semesters. One night he ostensibly goes out to play cards with his high school buddies. Unbeknownst to you, he is going to have sex with a married woman with whom he’s had a relationship since college began. The next day you notice a dent in the fender and ask him what happened. After the lie he spun to avoid your moralizing falls apart, the truth emerges. He dented the fender in the parking lot of his girlfriend’s apartment.
Your son is ignoring everything you taught him about relationships as a child. As he describes his life choice, you are shocked that he seems to have no shame in it. Even now as you confront him, he seems unconcerned. In fact, he has disdain for you as you confront him over this misbehavior. As the conversation unfolds, you realize that he doesn’t consider his action adultery and in fact finds adultery an archaic concept promoted by controlling churches to stop the natural inclination of humans to have multiple partners. It’s a ridiculous restriction on love that needs to be left in the Stone Age from which it came.
As your brazen son stares at you an insight dawns. You are now Jeremiah. God gave you a message to pass on to your son warning him about adultery and telling him about the benefits of fidelity in marriage. But he and his friends believe it’s a false message. Moreover, he is living the life you told him is bad, and it seems anything but bad. He and his girlfriend are enjoying it. Clearly your counsel was untrustworthy. It didn’t pass the Deuteronomy test. Thus, you are a false prophet who was led astray by some pretend man with a white beard in the sky.
Your son’s derision at you is palpable and for a moment you question if you are correct in your counsel. Like Jeremiah, you become uncertain in the veracity of the message you conveyed. Like Jeremiah, you are now ridiculed by your son who no doubt talks about his puritan parent with his more enlightened friends. Like Jeremiah, you begin to believe if you would just be quiet perhaps you could get away from his ridicule and, more importantly, protect your relationship with him.
What does a modern-day faithful prophet look like? Exactly like Jeremiah. Perhaps we should take a hard look at this man of God who more than any other prophet opens a window for us into his soul.
Jeremiah’s response
Steadfast in the truth
The most important of Jeremiah’s lessons is to be steadfast. In his confessions, the prophet refuses to abandon his faith in God or to renounce his call. He questions God mightily and at times haughtily. He wishes desperately for those oppressing him to be removed and to suffer. He wonders openly why he was ever born, but he does not turn from his call. God’s word was a burning fire in his heart and bones that had to be spoken even when doing so caused his friends and family to turn against him.
The hypothetical mother described above has a choice to make. Every father, brother, sister, or friend has the same choice to make. Will we follow Jeremiah’s lead and continue to speak God’s truth to the people we care about? Or, to avoid ridicule and protect relationships, will we extinguish the burning fire of God’s word in our bones and turn from Christ’s call on our lives to be a light in the world? If Jeremiah is to be our teacher, we cannot turn from representing Christ in the world and must speak God’s truth.
But how do we speak the truth? The mother in our story will approach her son in the way God leads. We are not Jeremiah living in the time when the law was on tablets. When the law of God is written on our hearts how it is conveyed to another at the level of the heart is dependent on the relationship and God’s guidance. In fact, I believe Jeremiah’s lesson to us is not so much about how to speak the truth of God, but to not turn away from speaking it when the Spirit urges us onward. To do anything less will leave us “weary of holding it in”.
Do not be persuaded
When God responds to Jeremiah’s second confession, he passes on another principle for our mom and us to follow: Your relatives, members of your family– even they have betrayed you; they have raised a loud cry against you. Do not trust them, though they speak well of you. (Jeremiah 12:6) God is counseling Jeremiah not to trust even members of his own family when they stroke his ego.
At the core of this counsel is that the words of people, even the mom’s son, should not be taken at face value when they are antithetical to God’s word. The son of our story is influenced by his desire to continue his sexual affair, and he will argue strongly that God’s word is wrong. The lesson from Jeremiah is that we must resist such persuasions.
There are consequences
Jeremiah acknowledges God for revealing a plot against his life in his first confession. He expresses confidence that the Lord will judge rightly and seeks Godly vengeance on those who wish to kill him. God assures Jeremiah that those who want him to stop speaking in God’s name will come to absolute ruin. Is this the fate of our wayward son?
It is, but again the context is different. Jeremiah was speaking to the nation who would reveal God’s character to the world and enable all to see why Christ was so necessary. Our mom does not speak to an entire nation, but to her son alone. Her spirit is trying to guide his spirit. But even here God’s principles are always true and defying them results in unwanted consequences. Those of us who have lived a while know that having an affair with a married person always results in pain to someone. Because this is true, the message from the prophet to all of us is that God is trustworthy and to walk away from His principles is to walk away from peace.
If our mom truly loves her son, for his sake and that of the married woman she must find a way to pass on God’s truth to her wayward boy. Moreover, if she ignores the Spirit’s urging and remains quiet, the peace that comes from trusting God will leave her. As her son embraces wrong and experiences the consequences of doing so, she will be left wondering why she did not try to stop him. A harsh guilt that burdens the heart relentlessly. Indeed, not following God in any capacity produces consequences.
Take it to God
A fourth lesson Jeremiah teaches us is to take everything to God. The prophet was despondent believing God deceived and overpowered him to deliver a false message. Rather than swallow this up, he takes it directly to his boss. He hides nothing from his creator. His last confession includes these words: “Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought my father the news who made him very glad …” (Jeremiah 20:14-15).
When God puts a fire in us to be a light to the world, He knows what will happen firsthand. He walked in this world and received its ridicule and far worse for speaking the truth. There is no one better to whom we can go with our troubled hearts.
Our pretend mother need not go to bed suffering alone at the disdain from her son. She can take that to God and lay the blame directly at His feet. If it weren’t for His word burning inside her, she would not feel compelled to say anything to her son. Like Jeremiah, she has a valid complaint that God hears knowing from personal experience exactly how she feels. She will receive no condemnation from God, but she will receive the truth.
Not present in today’s Scripture verse are God’s responses to Jeremiah in several of his six confessions. When Jeremiah complains that he’s been a good man and yet everyone curses him, God responds: “Surely I will deliver you for a good purpose; surely I will make your enemies plead with you in times of disaster and times of distress (Jeremiah 15:11). God is telling Jeremiah and our mother that He will be there for them. To our mom, His words convey that eventually her son will come home to the truth when the times of disaster and stress for his behavior come calling. Therefore, she can be at ease (well, as much as possible) as she gently tries to persuade him.
But God also tells Jeremiah to be strong. What he complains about today may be worse tomorrow. When Jeremiah laments about how the wicked seem to prosper and how the faithless live at ease, God has a warning for him: If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan? (Jeremiah 12:5). That message is to us as well. Our mom is being warned that there will be tough times ahead if she persists in holding firm to God’s truth with her son. Get ready, He warns, and persevere for the sake of your son whom God is trying to reach through you.
The why of it
When perceived as a false prophet, Jeremiah remains steadfast in his call, resists ungodly persuasion, understands the consequences (on him and others) of defying God, and takes the entirety of it to his Lord for help. Why through it all does he persevere?
The purpose of trying to influence someone (or a nation) with God’s word is to help them. God wants to help the person we are counseling and we are His vehicle for that help. When our mom describes the consequences of being in an adulterous relationship with her son, her reason for speaking is not to condemn, but to help.
While God’s consequences for our son’s behavior will always be his in this life, so too will be the Lord’s blessings should he repent those sins and move to obedience with God. We know this from multiple prophets including Jeremiah: “If you, Israel, will return, then return to me,” declares the LORD. “If you put your detestable idols out of my sight and no longer go astray, and if in a truthful, just and righteous way you swear, ‘As surely as the LORD lives,’ then the nations will invoke blessings by him and in him they will boast.” (Jeremiah 4:1-2). The goal of our mom is to move her son into the world of God’s blessings rather than the world of God’s consequences. Jeremiah’s lessons are important for us so that we might persevere as he did in this call.
I hope the lessons I perceive in Jeremiah speak to you. I hope that as you carry forward as an emissary of God you will feel His strength with you and be filled with compassion for those you try to bring home to God’s way. Most importantly, I pray you are successful every time you speak the truth of God and that your efforts will bring another soul the blessings that come from doing what is right in this world. Maybe, the same efforts will nudge a new soul to hear the Spirit within and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Then he or she will forever be made right with the God of grace.
Dave
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