JEREMIAH'S PIT

You do what God tells you to do, and you end up dumped in a cistern sinking up to your armpits in mud.

You know, Jeremiah isn't called the "weeping prophet" for no reason. Look at the poor guy: Pashur has him beaten and put into stocks. (Chapter 20:2) Priests and prophets seize him and threaten death. (Chapter 26:8) Captain of the guard arrests, beats and imprisons him. (Chapter 37:14) He is dumped into the cistern, courtesy of the king. (Chapter 38:6) And, this was a man doing what God told him to do.

I'll bet he did a lot more than just "weep." If I were in his place I would have cried and howled and bawled and yelled and screamed at God. If God treats his friends this way, what does he have in store for his enemies.

Jeremiah spent 40 years (626 to 586 B.C.) telling three kings (Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah) what God had planned for the land of Judah. And, the news wasn't good, like it's Black Monday on the stock market. Jeremiah is like the doctor who tells the patient that he has cancer, that it's terminal, and "oh, by the way, your bill is $20,000."

The prophet's message was that the King of Babylon was going to come into the nation of Judah and clean house. Well, Nebuchadnezzar came to Judah and cleaned house all right. As you can expect, Jeremiah had a hard time keeping friends. He only had three or four who are named. I mean, he wasn't a real popular kind of guy to be around. He kept getting arrested, beaten, and imprisoned.

Other prophets told the king that everything was going to be fine, but Jeremiah kept telling people that the armies of Babylon were going to be eating from tables in Jerusalem: not a real popular message and not a real popular guy. People prefer being told good news, whether it is true or not. Jeremiah (626 B.C.) touched a period of history that is unique. He almost reached back to Isaiah (740 B.C.) and he stretched forward to Ezekial (597 B.C.) and beyond to Daniel. During this period of time, Israel was conquered (722 B.C.), the City of Nineveh fell (612 B.C.), the great battle of Carchemish was fought and the Egyptian armies destroyed (605 B.C.), Jerusalem fell to the Babylonian armies (586 B.C.), and the best and brightest of the population of Judah, including Daniel and friends, were taken into exile in Babylon.

It was 200 years of history, chronicled not only by the biblical writers, but also by the scribes of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. Let's back up. Jeremiah was a young man, a priest, a descendant of Levi and Aaron. He is familiar with the sacrificial system initiated by God through Moses. He is acquainted with the grandeur of the Solomonic Temple and life in Jerusalem hundreds of years before Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar are born.

Life could have been nice and cozy for Jeremiah. But, God called him. God told Jeremiah that before Jeremiah was formed, he (God) knew him. God chose him for a long and difficult task, i.e., to warn his people of impending destruction because they had committed two sins: they had left the Lord their God (streams of living water), and they had turned to false gods (broken cisterns).

Baruch records a disturbing event in the 18th chapter of the book of Jeremiah. The prophet is told by God to go to the potter's house and there he will be told God's message. He arrives and sees the potter working on a pot which turns out to be defective, so the potter makes it into another and different vessel. And, God's message is, "house of Israel, can I not do with you as the potter does? . . . Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand."

We all know that God can do whatever he pleases with nations, mankind, planets, and the universe, I mean, he created all of it anyway, didn't he. He doesn't exactly have to ask for our permission to make changes, does he? But, we don't like it, do we? We don't like the idea that some one whom we cannot control has the ability to dictate what we are going to look like, both physically, emotionally, and socially. We are disturbed to think that God might have some control over whether I was born in Los Angeles to Caucasian parents, or Beijing to Chinese parents, or Nairobi to African parents, or in a drug infested ghetto, or a upscale Wilshire Boulevard condominium.

Just how much involvement does God have in our being who and where we are anyway? Well, Jeremiah records that, "Before you were formed, I knew you." Is it any wonder that Jeremiah weeps? God formed him, God knew him, God called him, God tells him to go speak for Him, and Jeremiah is arrested, imprisoned,beaten, threatened with death, dumped into a cistern up to his armpits in mud, and avoided like the plague by those who know him. If God treats his friends like this, how does he handle his enemies? 

 

All of this brings us back again and again to man's problem with God. We don't understand him, and we don't understand his plan for us. We do not like "not" being in control of our destiny. So, when cancer strikes down a 28-year-old mother of two; or an auto accident maims and kills a family of five; or an evil despot murders tens of thousands of countrymen because they look or speak differently, we feel that God is capricious or arbitrary in his dealings with mankind.

For most of our adult life we have wanted a God who perfectly designed the universe which now operates upon fixed principles, and we equate this to mean, evil people will suffer bad things, and good people will receive good things in life. And, of course, we are good people, so we should be receiving God's good things. But, we keep seeing good people getting whacked over the head with the disasters of life which none of us can look at without questioning God's moral integrity.

Or, as Jeremiah would put it, God I did just what you told me to do; I obeyed you down to the smallest detail, and look at me! God, why must I do all the suffering?

Friend, you don't do all of the suffering. It helps to look at Jesus in Gethsemane. It helps to look at Jesus on a cross at Golgotha. Whatever and however God handles pain and suffering, He walked our path too. The wracking cry of, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" must pierce the heavens for eternity. Was God out of control? Or, was He in total and complete control, willing to absorb pain and suffering as he became "just like us." I don't know why God does what he does. But, I do know that he was "tempted/tested in all points like as we are, yet without sin" so that he might become our Great High Priest, able to intercede for us in all of our heartaches and sorrows and bitterness of spirit as the troubles of life come our way.

The miracle of it all for those who trust in God as the Rock of their Salvation is that when life has dealt you its cruelest blows, you can proclaim with a smile on your face and peace in your heart, "It is well with my soul." Understanding God and what he is up to in his universe is not as important as believing that the God who created and sustains you also loves and keeps you, through the hard times as well as the not so hard times.