Jeremiah is a challenge to the status quo.
Jeremiah is a challenge to our comfort zone.
I want us to get real about this before we drift and wander into other areas of biblical study.
I want us to get comfortable with the reality of what Jeremiah bith represents and presents throughout this journey.
7 Weeks into the Jeremiah Journey
After 7 weeks, I wonder about this journey together.
Jeremiah is 52 books. An entire year is 52 weeks.
By simple calculation, we should complete our journey by the end of 2018.
However, Jeremiah is more than a book of the Bible. Jeremiah is more than a biblical character. Jeremiah is beyond a prophetic figure preached and taught Sunday by Sunday in churches around the world.
Jeremiah is a Challenge to the Status Quo
For many of us, we tend to favor the contemporaries of Jeremiah more than the prophet himself. We rest on the laurels of our good works and the good vibes of how good things are going with God’s grace and His countenance shining upon us.
We need a wake up call.
We are too aligned with the status quo. We are too attached to traditionalism. We are far too conservative in our approach to ministry. We are way too complacent with our attack on social issues.
We have to see the challenge for us in Jeremiah’s calling to call out things as they truly are in God’s eyes. The prophetic voice is oftentimes called upon to stand up to authority, to speak out against watered-down spirituality disguised as religion rather than routine, and to simply say “Thus sayeth the Lord” with boldness before the people.
We need to face the challenge to the status quo.
Jeremiah is a Challenge to Our Comfort Zone
We need to see Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet,” as a scriptural mirror held up before our very souls. We need to see how much of ourselves can be seen in Jeremiah. We need to see how much of our spirits reflect a similar spirit to that of Jeremiah.
- Jeremiah Speaks Truth to Power: He dealt with fellow ministers of the Lord who wanted him to shut up and shut down the prophetic calling out of Israel and its leadership. It got him bound in chains. It got him on the wrong side of society, even his own kin.
- Jeremiah Struggled with His Message: Any preacher, missionary, minister, evangelist or other type of servant of the Lord understands this. Some of what we are called to say and do in the name of the Lord takes us to a place where we find more struggle and strife than we find comfort. We are forced to seek the Lord repeatedly, especially when we realize what we have as our obligation to the Lord. We struggle with it because we understand cause and effect. We struggle with it because we can see the end result of how our sermons, Bible lessons and messages will be received by the people.
- Jeremiah Submitted to the Lord: Despite what his calling took him through, Jeremiah faced the challenge. He struggled but he submitted. He struggled with his own qualifications to even be a prophet but he submitted to the Lord. He said he would not share the Word of the Lord any longer but he came around in the same breath and submitted to the Lord. He submitted to the Lord and faced the prophetic challenge.
Jeremiah represents a challenge for us to get out of comfort zone and to get more comfortable with what God is truly calling for us to do with our lives, our voices, our purpose.
Our Journey Continues. . .
5 “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever. – Jeremiah 7:5-7 (ESV)
Chapter 7 gave Israel a challenge to once again to repent. It addressed the nation’s idolatry, its wickedness, its injustice and its depth of transgressions. It offered Israel an out.
As we move into chapter 8, keep Jeremiah’s predicament in mind. He was not an outsider. He was from among this same nation of people. These were his countrymen. These were his kin. These were his own people. Look at the depth of emotion that arises from Jeremiah in chapter 8. See how he is personally touched by his challenge to preach prophecy to his people.
