The Heroic Prophet

Introduction

Our nation is in crisis and it can seem quite hopeless at times, I understand how daunting it can be. That’s why I’ve decided to look closer at the prophet Jeremiah for our Daily Scripture Series in order to see if we can all  find some hope, strength, guidance, and peace during these dark and trying times in our nation.

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What if your pastor stood up before you in church on one Sunday morning and said, “God is on the side of terrorists. God is against America and He is for our enemies. God is raising up the terrorists to punish the United States of America. God hates our religious worship. It is an offense to Him. And that is why God is going to use the terrorists to bring about the destruction of this nation.”

What in the world would you think of your pastor after hearing all of that?

And then suppose that same pastor was arrested and charged with treason. Suppose he was publicly assaulted and all his writings were burned because of his condemnation of America’s religious practices. And suppose he not only refused to disavow his offensive words but he repeated them even more forcefully.

That sounds a lot like the situation recorded in the book of Jeremiah. These were the kinds of messages Jeremiah was called by God to deliver to the kingdom of Judah.

God told Jeremiah to tell the nation of Judah that He hated the idolatrous religious practices of the nation. Because of Judah’s disobedience, God was raising up the Babylonian Empire to punish and destroy the nation. Judah’s only hope of survival lay in complete surrender to the Babylonians. It was a message that sounded treasonous to the people of Judah.

So the people rejected Jeremiah. They refused to listen to him. They isolated him and persecuted him day after day.

Imagine what it was like to be Jeremiah-hated and completely friendless. Imagine if all your old friends turned away from you and abandoned you. How would you feel if you didn’t even have the comfort of a spouse because God had commanded you to remain single during the difficult days ahead?

That was the intolerable situation Jeremiah found Himself in. Yet, in obedience to God, he endured the unendurable, day after day, year after year.

What if you wanted to give up the lonely life of a prophet? What if you wanted to quit? Suppose you prayed, “God, take this calling away from me! It’s too hard. It’s too lonely. And it’s futile; the people won’t listen to me. I’m just wasting my life trying to deliver this message to the nation.” How would you feel? Especially knowing full well that your nation was in full crisis meltdown. By the way, there are plenty out there right now that think our very nation is in a full crisis meltdown.

Jeremiah wanted to walk away from his calling as a prophet and a preacher, but he simply couldn’t. Why? Because the Word of God burned deep inside of him. Despite the harshness of his message, Jeremiah loved his people and his nation. No doubt much like many of us today who love our own country. It was his deep love for his nation that encouraged him to preach a message of judgment and terror against  them. He wanted to bring them to their senses before it was too late-before God allowed the enemies of the nation to swarm over the borders and take the people into captivity in a foreign land.

If we look hard enough around us today, you would think there should be a prophet out there right now trying to send the exact same message to not just believers but to all Americans about the very same thing as Jeremiah.

I see Jeremiah as probably one of the most heroic prophets ever. Each of the Old Testament  prophets had a distinct calling and a distinct message from God. Ezekiel preached about the glory and majesty of God. Isiah prophesied about the salvation of God and the coming of the Messiah. Amos thundered against the rich and powerful who oppressed the poor. But Jeremiah stands out from among all the prophets for his dauntless courage and perseverance in the face of persecution. He preached for forty years, and he never saw a glimmer of success in his ministry. The other prophets were able to see their message have at least some impact on the nation, but sadly, not Jeremiah.

God called Jeremiah to a ministry of failure. But God also called Jeremiah to a ministry of faithfulness. He was not focused on results. Whether or not the people responded to his message was up to the people-and to God. Jeremiah knew that his only responsibility was to faithfully deliver God’s warning to a nation under judgment.

Jeremiah lived in the last days of a decaying nation. Sound familiar? He was the last prophet to Judah, the southern kingdom. Judah was all that remained of the nation of Israel after the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria. The ten tribes of the northern kingdom were led away into captivity by the brutal Assyrian conquerors. Those tribes never returned to the promised land but were absorbed and assimilated by their pagan captors. Today, they are known as the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” Jeremiah’s mission was to preach to the remnant in the southern kingdom.

Jeremiah preached to the nation of Judah during the reigns of five kings: Josiah, the last good king; Jehoahaz, who was on the throne only three months; Jehoiakim, one of the most evil kings of Judah; Jehoiachin, who was captured by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon after only three months on the throne; and Zedekiah, a puppet ruler  installed by Nebuchadnezzar. During Babylon’s final siege of Jerusalem, the Babylonians captured Zedekiah, killed his sons in front of him, then put out his eyes and led him into activity in Babylon. The city was destroyed and the temple of Solomon was razed.

The book of Jeremiah still speaks loud and clear to us today. Problem is, are we listening?

The tragedy of Judah in Jeremia’s day is not merely a story of events from long ago. It is an urgent warning to all of us today. The same patterns of wickedness and idolatrous religion that stained the national character of Judah is now rampant in the world today, and more importantly, right here in our own nation.

The book of Jeremiah is set in a time of national crisis and steep moral decline mirroring our own United States. The very same kind of spiritual cancer that was slowly consuming the life of Judah is metastasizing in the nations of the world today. Across the globe, we see racial hatred and social injustice, rampant crime, and political corruption. When sin is widespread in a land, the natural consequences of that godlessness will result in the failure of the country to thrive. But worse it’s happening in our own backyard.

So, no matter where we live, as we study the prophecy of Jeremiah we need to ask ourselves: What can we learn from the history of Judah? How can we prevent history from repeating itself in our time and in our nation? What is God saying to us from the pages of Jeremiah?

Though Judah failed to heed Jeremiah’s warnings and was ultimately conquered and taken captive, that doesn’t have to be our fate. Jeremiah taught the people of Judah what they must do when the world was falling apart around them. The answers are here in this book, and from Jeremiah’s prophecy for that land, we can learn how to live as people of light in a culture of darkness. We can learn how God plants the seeds of new life amid destruction and judgment. “The Lord will restore you” (Jeremiah 15:19). That reality for any people during any time period.

Jeremiah speaks to us across the ages, and we desperately need both its warnings and its message of hope. As I’ve been studying the book of Jeremiah, I’ve come to love it even more than before and I think that you will too. At least I hope that will be the case.

Daily Questions

1. List ways in which what happened in Judah that are similar to what’s happening in our country today.
2. How can you spread the word of repentance?