Jeremiah: Persevering Prophet

OK, now that I have (once more) put sad things behind me and am trying my best to look forward instead of back, I find that I am being led to study Jeremiah.  I have NEVER done an in-depth study of Jeremiah and at the moment I am a little rusty at all things spiritual.  So I hope to get lots of help to fill in any gaps that might appear.

The first chapter of Jeremiah tells us what the Lord's plans are for Jeremiah:

"See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant." (Jeremiah 1:10)

 

That is the scripture that pulls me forward into this study.  The Lord pulls us down, when necessary, only to build us up, properly, in His ways, rather than in our own. He does so to individuals and to nations as well.

 

Of course, here He is speaking about nations; nations that His ordained prophet, Jeremiah, will speak either against or for using the very words of God Himself.

 

Things of the flesh must be pulled down to make way for things of the Spirit of God.  We will see this throughout Jeremiah, I suspect. 

 

And much of Jeremiah speaks, prophetically, of things to come, either in Jeremiah's own time, or shortly after, or even as late as today and in the coming years of our own lifetimes.

 

But we will get into all that.  First, a preface.

 

My Bible tells me that part of Jeremiah's ministry coincided, in time frame at least, with Daniel's and Ezekiel's and Zephaniah's and Habakkuk's.  Because we read the bible from book to book, rather than in proper chronological order, we can miss out on the fact that several prophets of God were functioning in their service to the Lord all at the same time, having different ministries and operating in different geographic locations, yet all having one clear recurring message, which I paraphrase here:

 

"Repent or calamity will follow." 

Words revealing the nature of the one true God who, while merciful to man far beyond what we can comprehend at times, is still to be always fearfully respected and obeyed because of His great power in judgment. This is important for us today to remember.

 

Because Jeremiah lived only two miles north of Jerusalem in a town called Anathoth, and because Jerusalem was located in Judah, God's message through Jeremiah was primarily to the nation of Judah. [Remember that at this time, David's kingdom called Israel had been divided into north and south after David's death; north was still called Israel, south, which included Jerusalem, was called Judah.]

 

Here is an excerpt from my Bible pages preceding The Book of Jeremiah that I can relate in some ways to our own nation:

 

"The downhill slide of the nation [Judah] continues virtually unabated through a succession of four godless kings during Jeremiah's ministry. The people wallow in apostasy and idolatry and grow even more treacherous than Israel was before its captivity. They pervert the worship of the true God and give themselves over to spiritual and moral decay. Because they refuse to repent or even listen to God's prophet, the divine cure requires radical surgery. Jeremiah proclaims an approaching avalanche of judgment..." (The King James Open  Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985.)

 

We will obviously find that Jeremiah's message to the nation of Judah is not well-received, causing Jeremiah both severe persecution and loneliness at the same time, making him want to resign as prophet, and landing him the nickname of "The Weeping Prophet."  No one wept more perhaps than Jeremiah, and no one wanted to "quit"  God's service perhaps more than Jeremiah, yet he persevered to Judah's bitter end.

 

I hope that this study of Jeremiah, and seeing the prophet in all of his suffering and loneliness that at times feels similar to our own, will encourage us to persevere as well, as we hear the words of God as spoken through this prophet in warning to the unrepentant people of God that comprised the greater part of the nation of Judah.