Jeremiah’s ComplaintMy Understanding: Prior to this dialogue that Jeremiah had with God in prayer, and in anguish of heart and mind, the priest, Pashhur, “the chief officer in the temple of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying” judgment of God against the people of God because:
7 O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived;
you overpowered me and prevailed.
I am ridiculed all day long;
everyone mocks me.
8 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.
9 But if I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more 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.
10 I hear many whispering,
“Terror on every side!
Report him! Let’s report 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.”
11 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.
12 O LORD Almighty, you who examine the righteous
and probe the heart and mind,
let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause.
13 Sing to the LORD!
Give praise to the LORD!
He rescues the life of the needy
from the hands of the wicked.
• They had forsaken their God – the One and Only true God
• They had followed after other “gods” that were not gods (idolatry)
• They were shedding innocent blood, and
• They were stiff-necked and would not listen to God’s words
After Pashhur heard Jeremiah prophesying “these things,” he had Jeremiah beaten and put in stocks (restraint; confinement) at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the LORD’s temple. When Pashhur released Jeremiah the next day, Jeremiah prophesied the word of the LORD to Pashhur. He prophesied God’s judgment against him and against his friends and against all of Judah. Pashhur and his friends, to whom Pashhur had prophesied lies, pretending to speak for God, would go into exile and there they would die and would be buried.
Jeremiah’s emotional response, thus, to all that had just taken place, and to how he had just been treated at the hand of Pashhur, was to express his emotional state to God in feeling as though God had not adequately prepared him for this ministry to which God had called him. He had been an obedient servant and messenger of God to the people, and yet he was mistreated by the “religious” leaders of his day, even by the chief officer in the temple of the Lord. Jesus Christ was treated the same way by the same group of people.
God had prepared Jeremiah for this possibility, and he did tell him what he could expect - see Jeremiah 1 where God told Jeremiah that the people would fight against him but that God would be with him and he would deliver him. Yet, it seems we can never realize the full impact of those words of God to our hearts until we actually go through the circumstances God told us ahead of time that he would take us through. All through the New Testament we are told, that as servants of the Lord, that we will go through hardship, persecution, betrayal, even at the hands of those closest to us, that we will share in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, and that some of us may even be put to death for our faith in Jesus Christ. So, it should not surprise us when we are rejected, persecuted, pushed aside, mocked, betrayed, and ultimately face being killed for our faith in Jesus Christ.
Jeremiah described to God his plight, even though God knew what Jeremiah was going through, yet Jeremiah needed to cry out his emotions to God. Jeremiah expressed to God in prayer that he was:
• Ridiculed all day long
• Mocked by everyone
• Asked of God to cry out, speaking and proclaiming violence and destruction
• Insulted and reproached (accused, scolded, criticized and reprimanded)
• Whispered against: “Terror on every side! Let’s report him!”
• And, betrayed by his friends, as they were waiting for him to slip so that they could prevail over him and could take their revenge upon him.
Yet, Jeremiah knew that he could not stop speaking the words of the Lord. “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,” said Jeremiah. I identify with Jeremiah here. Do you? God has called each one of us who believe in Jesus Christ to be his witnesses and his servants and to speak his words, found in the Holy Bible, to the lost and to the people of God, yet many do not want to hear God’s words, only the parts that make them feel good about themselves, but not the parts that confront them with their sin and that call for repentance and obedience to God. They don’t want to hear that God will actually judge his own people if they do not repent of their ways and they do not return to their One and Only true God by forsaking their idols. So, when we share the whole gospel and not just the parts people like to hear, we may, as well, face many of the same things as did Jeremiah, and, in fact, the New Testament tells us that is what we should expect when we are true ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Even though Jeremiah was in anguish of heart and mind over this mistreatment at the hands of the chief officer of the temple of God, yet he stood confident in who God is, and in who he, Jeremiah, was, and in who he had been called to be, with God within him and at his side helping, encouraging and strengthening him for the task before him. He knew that God would rescue him emotionally and would bring much comfort and strengthening to his heart and mind, and he also knew that one day God would physically rescue him, as well, from the hands of his persecutors. So, he sang to the Lord and he gave praise to the Lord, even in the midst of his suffering and anguish of heart and mind.
I find it interesting that Jesus’ worst persecutors and his murderers were the religious leaders of his day in the temple of God. Jeremiah faced this same kind of mistreatment as did Jesus many years later, and at the hand of the top spiritual leader in the temple of God. And, times have not changed all that much, either. When we choose to truly walk with God in faith and obedience to his commands for our lives and we choose to put our lives on the altar of God as living sacrifices, and we walk away from our idolatry and the sins that had so easily entangled us previously, we will face persecution from brothers and sisters in the Lord who are living worldly lives, and we will face rejection and abandonment from the religious leaders in our churches because of our testimony for Jesus Christ, and for the sake of sharing the whole gospel of Jesus Christ, which many church leaders today are watering down to where it is no gospel at all and is giving people a false hope.
Yet, we must be encouraged in knowing we are obeying God and his word and we are giving out the messages, from his word, that the Lord desires that we give to his people and to the lost, and we must remain confident in our relationships with our Lord Jesus, in who he has called us to be, and in what he has called us to do, and to know that He is within us fighting the battle for us, and that he will deliver us if we will put our trust in him and not let the fear of man overtake us.
Jeremiah ended this prayer to God with a lament that he had even been born. Job lamented something very similar to this to God in prayer. Both men were righteous before God and were true servants of the Lord, but they were still human, and they hurt when they went through times of persecution, false accusations, and feelings of abandonment even by God Almighty, who had allowed them to go through such suffering. Jeremiah could not understand, in his present emotional state, why God had allowed him to even be born to see such trouble and sorrow and to end his days in shame.
Yet, that is exactly what happened to Jesus Christ. He was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Men hid their faces from him. He was mocked, spat upon, rejected, betrayed, denied, abandoned, falsely accused, beaten, imprisoned and ultimately hung on a cross, although he had done no wrong. He went through all of this so that he could take upon himself all our sins, crucifying them, burying them, and then rising from the dead, triumphing over them so that we could be free from the penalty of sin (eternal punishment in hell and eternal separation from God), and so that we could be free from the control of sin over our day-to-day lives.
When we come to genuine faith in Jesus Christ, via repentance and obedience to God in turning from our sins and in making a conscious decision to now follow the Lord Jesus Christ in all that we do, we are, thus, crucified with him so that we (our flesh natures) no longer live, but Christ lives within us, and we now live by faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, and we live and walk in faith and obedience by his grace and power at work within us. Life with Jesus Christ, therefore, means to share in the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. Yet, he will not abandon us. He will never leave us or forsake us. He will be with us always, giving us hope, encouragement, strengthening, teaching us his ways, filling us with his peace and joy, even in the face of much suffering, keeping us from sin, leading us to victory, and in daily comforting us with his presence within us, as we continue to walk in his grace and love. I pray today that all servants of the Lord who are suffering persecution for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ will be comforted in knowing that God is with us and he will give us all we need.
Speak, Lord / An Original Work / May 8, 2011
Speak, Lord, for Your servant’s list’ning to You.
Let me hear You speak in love and in truth.
Guide me, I pray. Teach me Your way.
Speak, Lord, while I bow before You now.
Speak, Lord, fill me with Your peace and Your joy.
Let Your Holy Spirit’s work now employ.
Strengthen within. Keep me from sin.
Speak, Lord, words that lead to victory.
Speak, Lord, so that I might walk in Your ways.
Let Your love o’er-flow in my heart today.
Be my desire. Set me on fire.
Speak, Lord, comfort me with Your presence.
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