Bible Verses That Freak Me Out # 26 – "Lord, you tricked me!" - Jeremiah 20:7

The Prophet Jeremiah by Rembrandt

Nobody volunteers to be a prophet. I heard this recently from a Lutheran pastor, and thought about Moses, Isaiah, and of course, Jonah, all of whom went to various lengths to get out of the job.

It’s not hard to see why. Telling people what they don’t want to hear is always difficult, and the prophets got to tell people in some unique ways that often involved their own suffering, and traditionally, martyrdom.

Take Jeremiah for an example. The northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed about 100 years before Jeremiah got the call to announce the impending doom of Judah. He served as a prophet for about 40 years – his entire life, in other words.

And he got some specific instructions concerning how his life would differ from those around him. He would not get married or have children. He would not attend weddings or funerals. (Jeremiah 16 :1-13) The first was essentially a death sentence for an Israelite – at this point most future hope was centered on children. The second meant Jeremiah was absent from the most important social events of his culture. The reason: there was no point in getting married, having kids, celebrating other people’s weddings, or even mourning the dead, because soon Judah would be destroyed. “You won’t get to enjoy your marriage,” Jeremiah’s absence said, “and soon there will be so many dead it will be impossible to mourn them all.”

Yikes. Kind of a downer.

Jeremiah is fairly unique in that we get to see at least some of his reaction to his vocation, in passages like these:

“Why has my pain been perpetual and my wound incurable? Will You indeed be to me like a deceptive stream, with water that is unreliable?” – Jeremiah 15:18

“O Lord, you deceived me and I was deceived; you have overcome me and prevailed!” – Jeremiah 20:7

Are we uncomfortable yet? Does this seem a little too honest? Do we not like the idea of discontented prophets? Do we not like our own feelings of distrusting or disbelieving God when we feel like He’s pulled the rug out from under us? Do we not like the way God doesn’t seem to line up with His reputation for being a God of love and justice?
What do we do then?

Jeremiah 20:9 is instructive – “But if I say, ‘I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,’ then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.”

Two things:
1) Jeremiah apparently tried to quit
2) It didn’t take

When you feel like your bone marrow is on fire if you aren’t doing your job, that’s a pretty good indication that you have strong feelings about it. And however much Jeremiah hated his job – he had to do it.

And it’s a good thing he did. In his lifetime Babylon took anybody who was anybody – king, princes, priests, craftsmen – and they went in exile to Babylon. Ten years later the Babylonians came back and burned Jerusalem and Solomon's temple to the ground.

In an ancient worldview, there would normally be only one way to interpret this. If two countries fought, it wasn’t just the armies fighting, it was their gods. If Egypt beat Assyria in battle, it meant Egypt’s gods were stronger. Simple.

So when Babylon conquers Yahweh’s country, and burns down His temple, the most natural interpretation for Babylonians and Jews would have been that Babylon’s gods beat Yahweh, and possibly that Yahweh was dead. The Jews in exile could literally look out their windows in Babylon and see the temples of the gods who beat their God.

Except…there was this prophet named Jeremiah. He had told them over and over that this would happen, and that it was in reality Yahweh’s plan. Jeremiah also said Yahweh would return them from exile (something that never happened to anybody before). And maybe, just maybe, Jeremiah was right. After all, hadn’t Yahweh done it before, thousands of years ago, with another unwilling prophet who came to a foreign country and said “Let my people go?” God seemed to have this pattern of re-creating His people from seemingly impossible circumstances. Slavery. Idolatry. Exile.

So, thanks Jeremiah. You had a rough go of it. But through you God did something that doesn’t happen except when a person gets a message from beyond the confines of this world, when there is a fire in their bones that has no natural explanation – through you God gave His people hope.

Jesus, Worry, and Naps

You know something Jesus and I apparently have in common? The ability to go to sleep nearly anywhere, and sleep through nearly anything.

Jesus manifested this ability on a boat in the middle of a storm, a storm in which his disciples, several of whom were professional fishermen, thought they were going to die.


"You guys woke me up for this?"

That sounds like me. A person I am very close to, but who will remain anonymous, but who is my wife, has in the past been a little upset with me as I have attempted to sleep through a tornado, people being arrested outside our bedroom window, and probably some other disastrous stuff I can’t remember because I was asleep.

There are several ways to interpret this. One is that I tend to be generally pretty even keel (a little boat humor, there). For things like tornados, I figure there isn’t a whole lot I can do, so I may as well stay comfortable.

Another way is to go super-spiritual, and assume I have achieved a Christ-like level of enlightenment and faith. That is, after all, what Jesus asks the disciples upon being roused. “Why are you afraid? (Answer: We are all going to die!!!) How is it that you have no faith?”

Another way to interpret my ability to rest in extreme circumstances is that I am lazy. I prefer to think of it as resting before I get tired, but why quibble?

So, as with many virtues, there seems to be a balance, and a basic lesson at the heart of it all. First of all, there is the balance between worrying and being lazy, or between resting peacefully and planning ahead.

Jesus specifically tells us not to worry in the Sermon on the Mount. Even more specifically, he says not to worry about what we will eat or what will wear.

Let’s take the latter one first. Who worries about what to wear? Not just thinks about it, but worries about it? Two kinds of people: 1) people who are very, very concerned about how they look, to the degree that they look at a closet full of clothes and say, “I don’t have anything to wear,” and 2) people who literally don’t have anything to wear.

I think we can safely assume that the Galilean peasants Jesus addressed on the mountain were in the second category. And Jesus tells them not to worry about it.

Similarly, who worries about what they are going to eat? Not worry in the “Should I eat Chinese or Italian?” or “Is this fattening?” kind of way, but genuinely worries about where their next meal is coming from? The desperately poor. And Jesus tells them not to worry. His comforting word to them is that God feeds the birds. The irony here is that birds (with the exception of pigeons, thanks, youth group) are not known for being fat. “Eating like a bird” is not a euphemism for eating heartily.

So Jesus tells desperately poor people, “Don’t worry about it.” But Jesus also tells many parables whose lesson is “Be ready!” and “Plan ahead!” - most notably the Parable of the Talents.

The key here, I think, is Matthew 6:33. “Seek first His kingdom, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”

The difference between worry and planning ahead is that one factors God into the equation and one does not. The difference between being relaxed in the midst of a crisis and being lazy is that one factors God into the equation, and the other does not. Both worry and laziness are thinking and living in a circle. One is consumed with anxiety about everything, and one is careful of nothing. Both are going nowhere fast. When God gets factored in, both circles straighten out into a line. Worry turns into a plan placed in God’s hands, and laziness turns into rest at the right time, and work at the right time. And whether working or resting, when God is factored in, our lives are meeting a Purpose.

I am very grateful to the anonymous person, who is also my wife, that she plans ahead. It has saved us time, embarrassment, and a lot of money. I think we make a good team, and can remind each other at various times to remember to factor God into our dealings in the circumstances of our lives.

So, there’s Jesus’ negative command: “Don’t worry!”
And, there’s Jesus’ positive commands: “Seek first His kingdom” and “Be ready!”
And then there’s this truth at the heart of both of them: “For your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”