Recently we have been reading in the book of Jeremiah. To further my
understanding, I have also been reading Lamentations, the book most likely
penned by the same author. Todays exhortation is taken from these two similar
books.
One of my Biblical heroes is the prophet Jeremiah. But I surely would not
want to have had his life! His life, like that of Paul's, was a series of horrible
events that would probably cause even the most faithful believers to rethink their
commitment to God. His countrymen continually refused to believe him, and
chose rather to plot his destruction in order to silence him. And if this were not
enough, he also had the misfortune to live through the destruction of Jerusalem
and the beginning of the exile of the Hebrews to Babylon. Literally no thing in
his life was stable enough to provide him any comfort or security.
But what makes Jeremiah different from Paul, and what inspires such fear
and trembling in me when I read his story, is his sensitivity to the horrors of his
life. While I admire Paul for his emphasis on grace and his humility regarding
his weakness and sin, I can't quite empathize with his calmness in the face of
disaster. Jeremiah, on the other hand, cries out -- and quite loudly! He holds
back nothing in his reaction to the events around him. His lamentations over the
destruction of Jerusalem show a soul deeply afflicted by the suffering of the very
people who refused to listen to his warnings. Even though he had foretold all of
it, he was still deeply grieved by Jerusalem's fall. Where we might expect him to
say "I told you so", we get rather a series of well-crafted verses filled with horror,
fear, sorrow, and, surprisingly, hope.
But the Book of Lamentations is only one side of Jeremiah's sensitivity to
suffering. The other side is found in the book which bears his name, in which his
prophecies to his people are interlaced with his complaints to God over his
situation. I can think of no Biblical author whose personal misery is so
well-recorded. To give an example of his suffering, at the height of his misery,
having been framed and thrown into a dungeon, Jeremiah is convinced that
without the Lord’s help he will die (Jeremiah 37:20). He wins a reprieve from the
king, but this does not do him much good, as the king almost immediately hands
him over to the Jews to be put to death; he is imprisoned in the muddy pit of a
cistern until he is rescued from certain death by an Ethiopian eunuch. Certainly
it is Jeremiah who offers up the most frightening prayer in Scripture. His prayer
in chapter 20 starting at verse 7 opens with the lines "O Lord, thou hast
deceived me and I was deceived" and concludes from verse 15 with "Cursed be
the man who brought the news to my father, saying, 'A baby boy has been born
to you!'...Because he did not kill me before birth, so that my mother would have
been my grave...Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and
sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame?"
As much as I wish Jeremiah did not have to endure such suffering, I
admire his outspoken honesty regarding how miserable his life was. His prayer
in chapter 20 comforts me because it shows me that I can be completely honest
with God. I do not have to pretend that everything is great just because I have
chosen to believe. God is big enough to handle my bitterest complaints, and
God's love for me is so great that my complaining and whining cannot separate
me from it. Jeremiah's honesty to God is as inspiring in these days of
pseudo-Christianity as it is frightening. We in the Truth have not been taught to
admit how hard our walks are, much less that we are anything less than satisfied
with what has happened to us without God’s intervention..
While I was reflecting on how miserable Jeremiah's life was and how
unhappy he was, I thought to myself, "Well, when you go against God's will, you
can expect to be unhappy." But Jeremiah wasn't disobeying God, he was doing
everything exactly as he was told. Jeremiah was miserable because he obeyed
God!
Jeremiah's honesty is indeed comforting and inspiring, but this does not
make his life less frightening. I am truly amazed that someone as sensitive as
he was survived (physically) as long as he did; I take this to be a sure sign of
God's presence as the strength in Jeremiah's life. Jeremiah himself in chapter
1:6 states that he was young and perhaps too timid for such a task. How else
could someone so apparently unsuited to his calling remain so faithful? I am
convinced it was only because it was God who called him to the task. In modern
religion, we hear from well-meaning encouragers that “God never puts on us
more than we can bear”. In fact, we are told this so often that we have actually
begun to believe it! But the uncomfortable truth is, God often and deliberately
allows us more than we can bear. Why would God do this? So that the world
may see that there is something more than human in our ability to withstand life's
horrors. God uses us to reveal God's own power and God's own love, to reveal
that God is both capable of and willing to see us through every challenge we
face.
Let us be honest for a minute. How many of us, as mere men and
women following Christ, have not at some point understood Jeremiah's prayer in
chapter 20? How many of us have not wished never to have been born rather
than to struggle with our humanity on the one side and our faith on the other?
Even after God has proven His love for us everyday, how many of us have never
felt that our calling is a burden? Do we not get tired of having to explain our
actions within our faith? Do we not see others turn against us for following our
convictions instead of our human hearts? Do we not feel that, no matter how
much we want, the truth of God's gospel simply will not stay silent within us? Do
we not find ourselves shaking one fist at God for our situation and lifting the
other in praise to God's faithfulness? Jeremiah's prayer in chapter 20 easily
covers the entire span of emotions we face as true believers. And like Jeremiah,
God will use our weakness to reveal God's power and love.
But if Jeremiah was obedient, then why was his life so miserable? It was
because of the content of God's message to Judah given by Jeremiah in that
prophesy. God would no longer protect their beloved nation. Jerusalem would
fall. They were forced into Babylon to pray for the well-being of their enemies.
And lest the people misunderstand, chapter 24 makes the message clear: the
people God finds favor with are the ones who went into exile; being spared the
agony of captivity is not a sign of God's favor! This must have challenged
everything the Hebrews thought they understood about the nation of Israel. Can
you imagine if the Christadelphian Ecclesias around the world were told that
their country would be conquered, meeting houses destroyed, and that we would
be taken into exile in Russia? How would we react if we were to learn that losing
everything we have is a sign of God's favor? It's no wonder the people of Judah
refused to believe Jeremiah! God's word to them contradicted everything they
thought they knew about God's work in their history.
This is exactly where we as believers in the truth fit in today: We are
proclaiming a message from God that goes counter to everything the world has
understood for centuries. We are the outsiders proclaiming to have
rediscovered God's truth, and this threatens the worlds’ view of itself. Our
message forces it to question whether it has greatly misunderstood scripture.
Our calling by God raises the threat of changes that may force the current
culture to let go of some of its most cherished tenets. But we must not forget
that Jeremiah's message went unheeded, and that unfortunately, we have no
guarantee that ours won't follow suit. Still, God has brought us a long way, and
if God is willing, we will have the success that Peter and Paul had in bringing the
Greeks into the kingdom rather than the rejection Jeremiah had in getting his
people to repent.
But the final result is not for us to worry about. We have been given a
message of hope and restoration, and we must be faithful to proclaim it. It will
not be easy, and we can be certain that at times our lives will be miserable and
our suffering unbearable perhaps in a time to come, to the point of death. But if
we are living in obedience to God, then we are in the safest place imaginable.
For God will be our strength, our peace, our hope, and our glory; these are not
things we will have to find within ourselves. We will find them in God's presence
in our lives, in God's whispers of love which wash over us and refresh us, and in
God's faithfulness to keep the promises we have received through scripture and
through our redeemer Jesus the Christ. In the midst of our suffering, God is with
us, closer to us than we are to ourselves, and God's concern for us is even
greater than our worry for ourselves. In the midst of our suffering as a result of
our faithfulness to God, there truly is no better place for us to be.
Jeremiah, with God's help, endured the worst of lives in order to deliver
one of the most challenging prophecies in scripture. Likewise, we are delivering
a challenge to ourselves regarding what God is allowing to happen in our lives,
and we too can count on God to sustain us. And let us not forget that Jeremiah
was also given a message of hope and of restoration, including one of the most
comforting passages found in scripture: Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans
that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for calamity to
give you a future and a hope."
God is good, and God is faithful. We are not guaranteed that our
obedience will prevent us from suffering, but we can rest assured that God will
bring us into safety and into joy, and that the time will soon come when all
people shall hear our song of praise and shall rejoice with us in the fellowship of
believers.