Jeremiah 20:7-18 – Serving a Dangerous God

Jeremiah was a whiner. Plain and simple. Sure, he was one of the great prophets of Jerusalem, and he proclaimed God’s message faithfully during a difficult and dangerous time. But he complained and whined around all the time. Maybe you know some people like Jeremiah: they’re never satisfied and constantly complain about something or other. In fact, the Dutch have even turned his name into a verb; it mean “to complain.” When a child is fussy or whiny, the frustrated Dutch mother will exclaim, “Jeremiah je niet so!” Or, “Quit your jeremiahing!” I gave my mother plenty of practice with that line.

God should have known what he was getting into with Jeremiah. His whining started at the very beginning of his career, when God called him to be a prophet. Picture the scene: the very presence of the Almighty Lord of the universe enveloped Jeremiah and gave him these profound words of commissioning: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Wouldn’t that just blow you away if the Lord ever said something like that to you? Before Jeremiah had even been born, God had great plans for him: to be his messenger to the world. But how does Jeremiah respond? “Oh, God, you don’t want me to do that. I’m just a kid; I don’t know how to speak well.” So God has to go on for nine more verses to convince Jeremiah that he would fill him with the power and ability to do great things in his name. Instead of receiving his prophet’s commission with gratitude, Jeremiah argued. God had to convince him to take the job.

I wonder if God ever regretted it. Sure, Jeremiah did a great job of being a prophet. All of Jerusalem listened to him. Everyone from the king and the high priest down to the foot soldier in the army and the man in the street listened to him. But Jeremiah hated his job. He kept complaining to God about what he was doing. The Bible records at least five or six of his complaints. Well, when it’s in the Bible we give it a fancy name. They’re called “laments.” Doesn’t that sound so much nicer? Well, don’t let the label fool you. Jeremiah whined, complained, and bellyached his way through the chores that God had in store for him.

Now, maybe I’m not giving Jeremiah enough credit. To be fair, he had a remarkably difficult task in front of him. The nation of Judah had lost its spiritual moorings and had drifted away from faithful devotion to the Lord. Oh, they still went through the rituals at the temple in Jerusalem. But it had become an empty meaningless ritual. The gods and idols of the neighboring nations were so much more interesting, and so the people followed them as well. So at first, Jeremiah’s job was to tell everyone to get back to God, to give him the honor and worship he deserved. But it didn’t take long for it to be obvious that the message wasn’t sinking in. So Jeremiah got a different message. Now, because the people had abandoned God, Jeremiah had to go around telling everyone that God was going to wipe out their nation. The pagan empire of Babylon would conquer them, with God’s blessing. That was bad enough. But then, when the Babylonian army attacked and surrounded Jerusalem, Jeremiah went around telling everyone that they should surrender. If they would surrender to the Babylonians, God would spare their lives and help them rebuild. But if they didn’t, he would wipe them out.

Now, how do you think that message was received?! At the point of greatest crisis in the nation’s entire history, Jeremiah is telling everyone to give up. What do you think Winston Churchill would have done if the preachers of London told everyone that they should lay down their arms and surrender to the Nazis? How do you think Scarlett O’Hare would have reacted if Rhett told her to welcome General Sherman to Atlanta? How would we have responded seven years ago if someone told us to give up, convert to Islam, and hand control of our nation to Osama bin Laden? It’s ludicrous even to imagine doing such a thing, and it’s enough to make your blood boil to think that someone would suggest such a thing. But that’s exactly what Jeremiah did. He marched around the fortifications of Jerusalem, shouting out to the soldiers: “Give up! Put down your weapons! God wants you to let the enemy win.” He went up to the king and demanded that he sign a surrender with the Babylonian general. He stood on the steps of the temple, where everyone was going to ask for God’s deliverance from the enemy, and told them that God had abandoned them and wouldn’t pay any attention to them. To put it mildly, Jeremiah was not a popular fellow. He was arrested, beaten, and thrown into prison. People mocked him and spat on him when he walked down the street. His own family conspired to kill him. Most scholars think that Jeremiah was a relative of the king, partly because that’s the only thing that would have kept him from being executed for treason.

No, maybe Jeremiah had a right to complain. I suspect he had lots of second thoughts about agreeing to become God’s prophet and putting up with all the grief and frustration that it had caused. If we want to understand his prayer of Chapter 20, we need to keep in mind everything that he went through that led to it.

Translation is a funny thing. When we move from one language to another, we can tweak our word choices to make them more acceptable. The opening line of Jeremiah’s prayer is a classic example of translating the teeth out of a message. In the NIV, his prayer begins “O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived.” In the NRSV, Jeremiah complains that God “enticed” him. Other translations say that he overpowered or seduced him. No matter how shocked you may be to hear Jeremiah complain about being deceived, enticed, seduced, or overpowered by God, it’s nowhere near the shock you’d feel if you could read the original Hebrew. Let’s put it this way: the word that Jeremiah used here is the same word that we find in Exodus 22:16, when a man “seduces” a woman and makes her sleep with him. A better translation might be rape. Or, a four-letter word that begins with f. That’s what Jeremiah thinks about being a prophet. He has been violated by God in the most degrading way. In a way that we don’t want to talk about in polite company. So our accommodating Bible translators softened the blow by using nicer words.

But the fact remains. Jeremiah agreed to do what God wanted him to do, and now he was paying the price. He felt used by God. His life would have been so much easier if he could have just done what he wanted to. But instead, because of God, he was living in constant torment and ridicule. God had suckered him into a raw deal with all that sweet talk about being called and set apart from before he was born, about all the glorious things he would do in the name of the Lord.

But the worst of it for Jeremiah was that he couldn’t just quit. He was a prophet, whether he wanted to be one or not. The Lord’s message burned inside of him, trying to get out. Jeremiah couldn’t help but to proclaim it, to do exactly what God wanted him to do. He was in a no-win situation. If he acted like a prophet and proclaimed God’s message, even his closest friends would try to kill him. But if he didn’t, the agony of holding in the message was just too much. No wonder Jeremiah ended his prayer by wishing that he had never even been born.

But in the midst of his prayer, even though he was in such turmoil and distress, even though he was so outraged at what God had done to him, Jeremiah blessed the Lord. He praised God for his might and prayed that his enemies would be vanquished. Even though being faithful had cost Jeremiah so dearly, he committed himself once more to God. He didn’t do it with joy and happiness; he was miserable and wished that he could die. But Jeremiah’s faithfulness didn’t depend upon his emotions. His commitment to God had nothing to do with the “goodies” that would come along with it: riches, honor, joy, peace, eternal life, or whatever. Jeremiah the complainer is for us a shining example of faith: following where God leads, no matter how terrible the path will be.

There are those who try to attract people to faith in God with descriptions of how much better life will be for them if they believe. But Jeremiah’s story seems to fly in the face of these promises. Following God may at times be the toughest kind of life of all. But if we’re like Jeremiah, we do it anyway because we recognize that there’s something more important than having a good life. It’s not about us; it’s about God. Our task is to do whatever it takes to glorify him.

So what do we do if we come upon times when we feel like Jeremiah, when it seems like God has duped us, overpowered us, or even worse? How do respond when life just seems to come apart for us, when God seems to let us down, or even turn on us? At such times, Jeremiah continues to be an example for us. His prayer can be our prayer. Don’t worry about being rude to God, or using nasty language. This is God we’re talking about, after all. If he can create the world by saying a word, if he can redeem the human race on a cross, surely his shoulders are big enough to take anything we hand to him.