Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds. Therefore this is what the Lord says about the prophets who are prophesying in my name: I did not send them, yet they are saying, ‘No sword or famine will touch this land.’ Those same prophets will perish by sword and famine. And the people they are prophesying to will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and sword. There will be no one to bury them, their wives, their sons and their daughters. I will pour out on them the calamity they deserve.

• Jeremiah 14:14-16

You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived;
    you overpowered me and prevailed.
I am ridiculed all day long;
    everyone mocks me.
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.
But if I say, “I will not mention his word
    or speak anymore 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.

• Jeremiah 20:7-9

The word came to Jeremiah from the Lord when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur son of Malkijah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah. They said: “Inquire now of the Lord for us because Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is attacking us. Perhaps the Lord will perform wonders for us as in times past so that he will withdraw from us.”
But Jeremiah answered them, “Tell Zedekiah, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am about to turn against you the weapons of war that are in your hands, which you are using to fight the king of Babylon and the Babylonians who are outside the wall besieging you. And I will gather them inside this city. I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm in furious anger and in great wrath. I will strike down those who live in this city—both man and beast—and they will die of a terrible plague.

• Jeremiah 21:1-6

The Sunday school class where I teach is studying Jeremiah and has studied the book for a long time and we are finally halfway through the book.  We read one chapter.  Answer the questions in the study guide, and then there is not enough time to even read the next chapter,

But I am getting quite distressed.  I do not know how people can be so dismissive of Jeremiah.  I have even likened myself to Jeremiah in a shallow sense, but that is in the past.  People say that Jeremiah is a man of sorrows, and they have many reasons to be sorrowful.  Then, you quiz them, and their grandparents all died.  Guess what!  Grandparents die.  We all face death in our families.  I have been passed over for promotion, but others have had that happen.  People get divorced these days with such regularity, can you call that a sorrow?

The point is that life is full of sorrows and I don’t know of many people that come close to Jeremiah‘s life.  And the second Scripture above is the key reason, regardless of the sorrows that we face.  Jeremiah’s job was to tell the king bad news when the king had many people filling his head with good news.  They were afraid to kill Jeremiah in that Jeremiah might be telling the truth, but they put him in chains, in a cistern, in a prison.  He was beaten.  His life was threatened more than once.  And yet, God’s message would burn inside him, and he had to proclaim it.

That is the proof of living a Jeremiah life.  If you are the only one telling the truth and the news you have to tell is not good news.  And you tell the bad news, knowing you will be punished in some horrible way.  Yet, you cannot remain silent.  And that happens time and time again for your entire life.

That’s when you can claim a life similar to Jeremiah.

But teaching roughly one chapter of Jeremiah per week and then not having Sunday school for almost twenty weeks of the year, we will go for nearly two years trying to finish one book, a book where current events can be seen on nearly every page.

We need to repent as a nation and a world, but there are other people who say we need to push the gas pedal to the floor as we approach the cliff.

It gets depressing, but even that is not the life of Jeremiah.

In the end, God wins.  God has this.  But it might get a little sticky in the meantime.  Just hang in there.  You probably don’t have it as bad as Jeremiah did.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.