The Trials of Jeremiah
Prophets of God were human too. They struggled with their feelings. They felt like giving up at times. They wrestled with the unfairness of life. Jeremiah, sometimes called “The Weeping Prophet,” shows this side of himself in the book that bears his name.
This man of God asked God “Why?’ and “How long?” But God didn’t give him the answer we might expect. This is a hard lesson to learn, but this episode shows that God expects us to be adults and face our trials with resolve and not self-pity. We see this determination in Jeremiah as he fought against negative feelings and pushed forward. We also see that the hardships he faced activated strength and faith deep within his soul. That faith came from the Word of God in his heart.
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- Scripture: Jeremiah
- Teacher’s Annual Lesson Commentary on Uniform Bible Lessons for the Churches of Christ 1947
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Transcript
Kerry Duke: Hi, I’m Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you’ve learned with others.
Jeremiah is one of the great examples of suffering in the Bible. He is a man who went through much in his life. He endured a lot of hardship, and we can learn many lessons from him and we can gain great encouragement from this one man in the Bible just by reading this book of Jeremiah. He was a priest and a prophet to the Jews in very wicked times. How bad was the nation of Judah?
Let’s open the Bible to the book of Jeremiah and let’s read some verses to see what this man endured. In Jeremiah chapter six, verse 13, Jeremiah said, “Because from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness.” So throughout the land, from the top to the bottom in the nation, these people were greedy. And Jeremiah saw that. That bothered him. And Jeremiah is trying to tell them to serve God and to take their minds off of what they had and what they wanted and simply love God and serve Him, but they wouldn’t listen. And in Jeremiah six, verse 13, he also says, From the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.”
In other words, they were dishonest. And he says that the religious leadership was dishonest. The prophets were liars; the priests were liars. And when you have a situation like that, that is bound to torment a man with a good conscience like Jeremiah who is simply there to help them. In Jeremiah chapter six, verse 15, he says, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?”
Now the answer ought to be yes. When someone has done something that is disgusting in the sight of God and in the sight of good God-fearing people, that person ought to be ashamed. The Bible says that these people had committed abomination. That means something that is disgusting. So instead of answering yes when he says “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?” he says the answer is no.
“They were not at all ashamed, nor did they know how to blush.” That’s a natural human reaction when we’re embarrassed. When we’re ashamed, we blush; but not these people. Even after they had committed abomination before God, they did not know how to blush. “They were not at all,” he says, “ashamed.” Let’s go to Jeremiah chapter seven.
In Jeremiah chapter seven, God tells Jeremiah to go and preach to the people. In verse two, he says, “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house.” That’s the temple. “And proclaim there this word and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Do not trust in these lying words saying, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these.’” These people thought that they could live any way they wanted to and then go to the temple of God in Jerusalem and say how great this temple is.
This is the temple of the Lord. In other words, they were all talk. They were hypocrites. Notice what he says in verse eight. “Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit.” In other words, just saying all these great things that you say about the temple will not do you any good. It will not put you in the proper standing before God.
Notice what he says in verse nine. “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal and walk after other gods whom you do not know, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered to do all these abominations’?” That’s what they were doing.
Those are the sins they were committing. They were stealing. They were committing murder. They were committing adultery. They were swearing falsely. They were lying and they were burning incense to other gods. And then they had the audacity to come before God in the temple and say we are delivered to do all these abominations and then to praise the temple of God.
These people are purely hypocritical. But if you think that list of sins that he gave in verse eight and nine is bad—stealing, murdering, committing adultery, swearing, falsely burning incense to Baal and other gods—then when you look at Jeremiah chapter seven, verse 30 and 31, you’re probably going to be shocked if you’ve never read these verses before.
If you’ve never heard these verses, you may be downright horrified. In Jeremiah chapter seven, the Bible shows just how far people can go once they leave God. This is one of the most horrific and one of the most unconscionable acts that you’ll ever read in the Bible. Jeremiah chapter seven, verse 30, “For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord. They have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name to pollute it.” In other words, they had put their idols in the temple of God. Now the next verse shows that it gets even worse. Notice verse 31. Here’s the atrocity that is almost unmentionable.
“And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my heart.” You almost have to read that again and say, “Did he just say what I thought he did? Did God actually say that the Jewish people burned their sons and their daughters in fire as an act of worship to these false gods?”
Yes. They did this in a place called the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. They practiced human sacrifice. They didn’t sacrifice their enemies. They’re sacrificing their own sons and their daughters. The Bible says there’s such a thing called natural affection. That’s the feeling that God placed within us to have love for our own flesh and blood. The Bible talks about that in Romans one, verse 31 and II Timothy chapter three, verse three. These people had reached a point where they were without natural affection, and we’re talking about God’s people here. We’re not talking about the Gentiles. The Gentiles started this and then the Jews adopted it because they wanted to be like other nations. They wanted to be like everybody else. They wanted to be like the world, and so to fit in, they adopted, they accepted, even this atrocity that we know of as human sacrifice. Jeremiah lived when the Jews were doing this. Jeremiah knew about all this. How could a man live knowing that his people were guilty of these things?
No wonder he had such pressure. No wonder this was torturing his mind. But let’s keep going. In Jeremiah chapter eight, beginning in verse 18, Jeremiah, after he’s talked about the sinfulness of these Jews, says, “I would comfort myself in sorrow. My heart is faint in me. No wonder, we would say. After all he’s seen, after all he’s been through, Jeremiah said my heart is faint in me.
In verse 20, he says, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people, I am hurt. I am mourning. Astonishment has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no recovery for the health of the daughter of my people?” He’s crying out to God. He’s sorrowful for these people. He’s not just angry asking God to destroy his people. He’s wondering why they won’t repent, why they won’t listen. So Jeremiah is undergoing great emotional trauma. He is under a severe amount of stress because he’s sent to these people to turn them from their sins, to help them to have a good life because all they have to do is repent and turn to God, but they won’t listen.
And as a matter of fact, not only do they not listen, but they seem to be getting worse. Sometimes we talk about what the worst suffering is. We talk about different kinds of physical pain, and yet when we look at emotional pain, when we look at heartache and emotional stress, we’re reminded of Jeremiah because Jeremiah didn’t have any physical pain at this point as far as we know now.
Job had both physical pain and emotional pain. Jeremiah doesn’t have any physical trauma. He’s not sick. The devil hasn’t struck him with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the top of his head, but he’s undergoing severe emotional stress. Look at it in chapter nine. Jeremiah chapter nine, verse one.
These are some more familiar verses perhaps to a lot of readers. “O that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people,” that is, the Jewish people, “O that I had in the wilderness a lodging place for travelers, that I might leave my people and go from them, for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.” Jeremiah says in the first place I’ve cried my eyes out for these people. It’s not because Jeremiah had something done personally to him. It’s because he loves these people. He wants the best for these people, but they don’t want the best for themselves.
Does that sound familiar? Not only that, he said I’m ready to get away from all this. I’m ready to be alone. And sometimes we do need to be by ourselves. Jesus did in Mark chapter one, verse 35. He rose up a great while before it was day and went out into a solitary place and there he prayed. In John chapter six, verse 15, the Bible says that he left the multitude and went out into a mountain and there prayed.
Jesus told his disciples in Mark chapter six, verse 31, “Depart into a desert place” or a deserted place “and rest for a while, for there were many coming and going,” insomuch that the disciples did not have even time to eat. But the situation with Jeremiah is worse. Jeremiah didn’t say I wish I could get away by myself because everything is so busy and people are just pulling at me and I have so many responsibilities to other people that I just need some time for me.
He didn’t say that. He said the reason that I need to get away is because you can’t trust anybody. He said they’re all adulterers. And then in verse three he said, “And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth, for they proceed from evil to evil. And they do not know me, says the Lord.” So he says in verse four, “Everyone take heed to his neighbor and do not trust any brother. For every brother will utterly supplant and every neighbor will walk with slanderers. Everyone will deceive his neighbor and will not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies. They weary themselves to commit inequity.”
We’re talking about the world that Jeremiah lived in. It was a hard time, and it put a lot of pressure on this godly man. Let’s look at Jeremiah chapter 12 at one of the famous passages on the problem of evil. In this book we’ve referred to this before, but let’s go into it again here and see what God said to this man who was suffering inside.
In Jeremiah chapter 12 verse one, Jeremiah is talking to God and he said, “Righteous are you, O Lord, when I plead with you.” You’re a righteous God. You’re a just God. And yet I have something to say to you here. “Yet let me talk with you about your judgements.” Let me ask you some questions about how you deal with people and how you don’t deal with some people.
He says, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” There is our old familiar word. Why? Jeremiah the prophet is asking the same question that we have seen many righteous men in the Bible ask—Why, Lord? Why do wicked people prosper? These wicked people that he’s been talking about and that we’ve been reading about—those Jews who lied and stole and committed adultery and murder and even sacrifice their children in flames to a false God—he says that they were prospering in this world, and Jeremiah says, why God? Why would you allow that? Why are they so happy? It just seems like that they have it good, and those of us who are trying to do what’s right, which was a very small number, seem to have it bad.
In verse two, he said, “You have planted them. Yes, they have taken root. They grow. Yes, they bear fruit. You are near in their mouth, but far from their mind. But you, O Lord, know me. You have seen me. You have tested my heart toward you.” So he asked God to do something about it. In verse three, he says, “Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter.” In other words, he’s praying God punish these people. Give them what they deserve. This is not right. This is unjust. “Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter and prepare them for the day of slaughter.”
So Jeremiah wants God to take vengeance on these evil people. Then he asked the other question that we’ve looked at so many times in verse four: “How long will the land mourn and the herbs of every field wither? The beasts and birds are consumed for the wickedness of those who dwell there because they said, ‘He will not see our final end.’”
These wicked people are mocking God. They’re saying he doesn’t see it. He doesn’t know what we’re doing. He doesn’t see where this is headed. He will not see our final end. And Jeremiah with his heart breaking is saying how long Lord? How much longer are these people going to do this? Why are they prospering and having a good life? And how much longer are you going to tolerate this? How much longer are you going to allow this? Jeremiah wanted God to act.
Jeremiah wanted God to execute his justice on these people. He wanted God to take vengeance on these people. He wants to know when God is going to do that. Now, God responds to him beginning in verse five, and it’s interesting what God says to him and what God does not say to him.
God did not comfort him. God did not take pity on him. God did not speak encouraging words to him and say, “Jeremiah, I understand what you’re going through. But I’m going to be with you. I love you, and I’m going to stand by you and encourage you all the way.” He did not show those words of compassion to Jeremiah.
You say: “But Jeremiah is struggling. Jeremiah is having trouble with this problem.” Now, what you need to do is to realize that this is sometimes how God deals with you. God doesn’t always send compassion in your troubles. Sometimes God says, I understand that, but you’re going to have to man up. You’re going to have to bear up.
In other words, you’re going to have to be an adult here. We don’t like those words. We don’t like it when a preacher says those words, but God is saying to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 12 verses five and six, you’re going to have to man up because if you think that this is hard, then what are you going to do when it gets even worse?
So let’s look at it here in Jeremiah chapter 12, verse five. God says to Jeremiah, after Jeremiah has said, why and how long, God says in verse five, “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses?” Now that’s an illustration. If you’ve run with people, that is with men, and you’re tired, then how are you going to be able to contend or compete with horses?
Now the illustration is yes, you’ve got it hard. Yes, you’re up against it here because these people won’t listen to you. They won’t repent, and as a matter of fact, they’re making fun of you. They’re persecuting you, but it’s going to get worse. Jeremiah, you need to buckle down. And you need to dig down deep in your faith in me and trust in me because I will stand with you. But you’ve got bigger battles to face.
We don’t like to hear that in life. That’s not the most encouraging or the most compassionate news that we would like to hear. Do you remember the story of Achan in the book of Joshua in the Old Testament? God had sent the Israelites into the land of Canaan, and the first city that they came to was Jericho. And God warned the Israelite soldiers not to take of the silver and the gold and the brass and the iron that they found in the city of Jericho or any of these cities. Those things—the silver, the gold, the brass, and the iron—were to be dedicated to the temple of God. So God said don’t take any of that for yourself.
But one man named Achan saw some gold and he saw some other items and he took them. In other words, he stole them. So they won the battle with Jericho, and the next city that they were to attack was a city called Ai. And Joshua said we don’t need all the soldiers there. Let’s just take about two or three thousand men and attack. And they were soundly defeated by the people of Ai.
And the Bible tells us in verse six that Joshua tore his clothes. He “fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord, even till the evening, he and the elders of Israel, and they put dust on their heads and Joshua said, ‘Lord God, Why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us? O, that we had been content and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan. O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turns its back before its enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear it and surround us and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name?’”
Now what will you expect God to say to him? Would you expect God to say, “I’m sorry about that, Joshua. I’ll be with you, but you’ve got a problem there, and if you’ll take care of that first, then you’ll be able to prosper.” Listen to what God said to him. “The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Get up. Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned and they have also transgressed my covenant, which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things and have stolen and deceived, and they’ve also put it among their own stuff. Therefore, the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their back before their enemies, because they have become doomed to destruction.”
God didn’t show pity here. He told Joshua you need to get up off your face. Don’t feel sorry for yourself because Israel has a problem. You need to deal with a problem here. And what God said to Joshua is basically what God is saying to Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 12.
Listen to it again. In verse eight of chapter 12, he says, “If you have run with the footmen and they have wearied, you, then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace in which you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?” That evidently refers to the time when the Babylonians come.
He says if you think it’s bad now then you need to realize that it’s going to get worse. Notice what he tells him in verse six. God told Jeremiah you have problems in your own family. You can’t even trust your brothers. You need to deal with that, so you’re going to have to really show yourself a man to do this great work.
He says in verse six, “For even your brothers, the house of your father, even they have dealt treacherously with you. Yes, they have called a multitude after you, but do not believe them,” he says, even though they speak smooth words to you. If you have family problems today, just remember that Jeremiah long ago had family problems too.
That’s just one of the problems that he had to endure. Let’s go to chapter 15. In chapter 15, verse 15, Jeremiah said, “O Lord, you know; remember me and visit me. Take vengeance from me on my persecutor. In your enduring patience do not take me away. Know that for your sake I have suffered rebuke. Your words were found and I ate them, and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart. For I am called by your name, O Lord God of hosts. I did not sit in the assembly of mockers nor did I rejoice. I sat alone because of your hand.” Jeremiah is saying to God, yes, I’ve endured all this. I’ve put up with all this. I haven’t backed down. I haven’t done evil, and yet you have filled me with indignation.
He says in verse 18, why? There’s our question again, Jeremiah 15, verse 18. “Why Lord, why is my pain perpetual?” It just won’t stop, and my wound incurable. It just seems like that there’s no fix for this. He says my trouble refuses to be healed. And then he says something in the last part of verse 18 that, if it’s not disrespectful, borders on being disrespectful to God because Jeremiah is frustrated.
He’s getting angry. He’s like job. Remember that Job became so angry that he said some things to God that he shouldn’t have said. Well, when you look at the book of Jeremiah, you find that Jeremiah is very similar to Job in those ways because Jeremiah did say some things about God that he should not have said in the last part of verse 18.
He’s talking to God and he said, “Will you surely be to me like an unreliable stream as waters that fail?” In other words, you go to a stream of water, you expect to get the water, and it’s not there. It doesn’t give you what you thought that it would give to you. He’s saying you’re like that, God. Now the King James is even more blunt because the King James says, “Will you be to me as a liar?”
It uses that word liar! But God didn’t strike him dead. He didn’t give him leprosy or anything, but He did correct him. Verse 19: God said to him, “If you return,” in other words, if you get back up on your feet, spiritually speaking, if you get your thinking right and get back on the right track of mind, Jeremiah, “then I will bring you back. You shall stand before me. If you take out the precious from the vile, you shall be as my mouth, but let them return to you, but you must not return to them.” And he says if you do this then I’m going to make you a fortified bronze wall. They will fight against you, but they will not be able to prevail because I’m going to deliver you.
It’s just amazing what this man went through. In chapter 16 verses one through four God told Jeremiah not to take a wife and have children. Now that might seem like a form of punishment, but it was not. God was not punishing him here. God was protecting him because God said in Jeremiah chapter 16, verse one, “The word of the Lord also came to me saying, you shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place and concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in this land: they shall die gruesome deaths.” That’s going to happen when the Babylonians come. So it might seem that on top of everything else, Jeremiah cannot even enjoy a simple pleasure called the family. He can’t enjoy that. He can’t get married, he can’t have children, he doesn’t have anybody to support him and to be with him in those hard times and just to enjoy life. This man did not have a natural, normal, enjoyable life because God had chosen him to do this work.
Now let’s turn to a very important passage on this whole issue in Jeremiah chapter 20. In Jeremiah chapter 20, the Jews arrested Jeremiah. Why? Because he told them the truth. He was preaching the truth, and Jeremiah told them this nation will fall to the Babylonians (Jeremiah chapter 20 verses one through six). Then he said in verse seven, “Lord, you induced me and I was persuaded, you are stronger than I, and I have prevailed now.
That’s the New King James Version. The King James says, Lord You “deceived me and I was deceived.” What could he be talking about there? What does he mean when he says, Lord you have misled me—because that’s basically what he’s saying here. Well, in Jeremiah chapter one, God promised Jeremiah that he would take care of him, and yet what we find here is that Jeremiah has been arrested and Jeremiah is complaining to God. You said that you would protect me. You said that you would be with me and look at what’s happening to me here. It keeps happening over and over again, and he became so discouraged that he decided to quit. He decided to quit preaching. Verse eight: “For when I spoke, I cried out. I shouted violence and plunder.”
In other words, that’s what these people were guilty of. That’s what I preached against because the word of the Lord was made to me a reproach and a derision daily. These people rejected him on a daily basis. When you preach the word or when you just as a Christian talk to other people about the gospel and they throw that back in your face, that’s hard to take, and it’s hard not to take that personally. Sometimes you get your feelings hurt, it hurts and it angers you. It hurt Jeremiah deeply, and he said this didn’t just happen one time or two times or three times. He said this happened on a daily basis, and so he reached the point in verse nine where he said I will not make mention of him nor speak anymore in his name.
I’ll just quit. I’ll just live my life and I won’t even speak to these people. I’m going to quit talking to them. I’m going to quit preaching to them as he says, “I will not speak anymore in his name.” Now, this is a prophet of God Almighty. He heard the voice of God. But he became so discouraged because of the rejection and the persecution and the sin that he saw all around him that he just decided to give up.
He decided that he was not going to do any good. Preachers today often go through times like this. We feel like that we’re not doing any good. We feel like that nobody is listening. We wonder, in our minds, what difference would it make whether I preached or didn’t preach. Jeremiah said I reached that point and I decided I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not going to take this anymore. And if you’re not a preacher still sometimes you reach the point where you say I’m just tired of this. I’m tired of the battle. I’m tired of the struggle, I’m tired of the hardships, and I’m just going to quit.
But the Bible tells us in verse nine what delivered him, and it was not a miracle from heaven. It was not a vision from God. It was not some kind of special operation of the Holy Spirit that just clicked something in his mind. He said here’s what happened: “But his word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary of holding it back and I could not.” Jeremiah said I decided to quit. I decided not to say anything more about God or to speak in His name any longer, but he said I could not do that. And the reason was because of the word of God in his heart. It was because of what was in his soul. He said it was like a burning fire shut up in my bones. He said I couldn’t hold it back.
Now, that is what motivates us today and realize that we are like Jeremiah as Christians today. Sometimes we want to just pull back and say, “I’m not going to say anything to anybody because nobody wants to hear it. People are against us, people persecute us” and sometimes we pull back like that.
And yet the word of God inside of us is like a burning fire and we say I can’t do that. I have to speak out. I must say something. But I want you to notice what happens in Jeremiah chapter 20, verse 11, after he says this, after he went through this struggle inside. Sometimes as a human being he would still struggle. Now he’s going to take you deep inside his heart here.
Notice in verse 11 that he says, “But the Lord is with me.” Verse 13: “Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord.” And yet in the very next verse, verse 14, he said, “Cursed be the day in which I was born. Let that day not be blessed in which my mother bore me. Let the man be cursed who brought news to my father, saying ‘A male child has been born to you,’ making him very glad. In verse 17 and 18, he said, “Because he did not kill me from the womb, that my mother might have been my grave and her womb always enlarged with me. Why did I come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my day should be consumed with shame?” Does that remind you of job? Job talked exactly like that in Job chapter three!
What are we seeing here? Humanity. We’re seeing that Job was human. We’re seeing that Jeremiah was human. Our emotions go back and forth. Our emotions are like a rollercoaster. They’re up and down and so don’t be discouraged when you go through that up and down cycle. Jeremiah knew what that was about.
Sometimes he’s talking like he’s very encouraged and then he’s very depressed. This is the inward struggle that we all face. Jesus said, the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and that is a very important part of dealing with the problem of sin and suffering in this life.
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