Jeremiah: The Weeping Prophet
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Lesson #3: Obedience To God's Call Often Results In Unjust Suffering
Jeremiah preached and called the people to repent for nearly forty years and was met with rejection and abominable treatment by both those who were supposed to be his friends and by the Babylonians who carried him off to exile.
• JEREMIAH 20:1-2 Jeremiah was put in the stocks
• JEREMIAH 26:11 Some of the leaders call for Jeremiah to be executed for saying Jerusalem was going into exile
• JEREMIAH 36:23 King Jehoiakim orders the scroll of Jeremiah's prophecies to be cut up and burned
• JEREMIAH 38:6 Jeremiah was thrown into a water tank and left to drown but the tank was empty and he sank into mud
• JEREMIAH 43:2 Jeremiah is called a liar for saying that God had told him to go down to Egypt
Lesson #4: Although We May Feel Abandoned By God, God Is Utterly Faithful
In The Book of Lamentations we see Jeremiah crying out to God, complaining about the way he had been treated for being obedient to what God had called him to say.
In the first half of LAMENTATIONS Chapter 3 Jeremiah complains that it's just not fair the way he had been treated for being obedient to God's call.
1 I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath;
2 He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light;
3 Surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.
And he continues in this vein for another seventeen verses.
But then Jeremiah reminds himself - and us - of God's utter faithfulness
in verses 21-26
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,“therefore I will hope in him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Jeremiah As A Forerunner Of Christ
When we look at Jeremiah's life, we see many of the characteristics we see in Christ as depicted in ISAIAH 53:3
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (ESV)
