Jeremiah 12

Have you ever question God about your trials and tribulations?  In todays passage Jeremiah asks the classic question: “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (v1)  (This is classic because it was asked often by Godly people: e.g. Job. 21:7-15; Psalm 73:3-7; Hab. 1:3.)  And while Jeremiah is concerned that they don’t know God (v2), his motivations are personal (v3-4).  He says to God, You know me, You have seen me.  What he means is, God, You should know better than to let these wicked men carry out their threats against me!  I am not the problem here; they are!  Again I ask, have you ever had these thoughts?

Listen carefully to God’s answer.
•    v5-6: Jeremiah, things are going to get worse for you, not easier.
•    v7-13: Your message will not change; I have forsaken the people I love.
•    v14-17: I will bring them back.  But even then, if they don’t call on Me the way they have called on Baal, then I will really pluck them up off the land.  (God did this in 70AD at the hand of the Romans.)

Persecution or difficulty is the norm in serving God.  “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12).  Paul said these words to Timothy shortly before giving his life in the service of Christ.  He was trying to warn Timothy that hard times would come.  Paul was encouraging faithfulness.  Jesus did the same for His disciples (John 15:18-25).  The world hated Me, He said, and if you act like Me they will hate you as well!

What do we find in our day among evangelical Christians?  It appears to me that the only passage in Jeremiah anyone ever quotes is 29:11: “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”  These words, co-opted from a letter to the exiles in Babylon, were in fact not what those people wanted to hear.  God was telling them, don’t plan on coming back to the land; for now, make yourself at home in Babylon, the place you detest.  Yet we love to hear these words.  Of course we know God has promised us heaven.  But really, are these the words we want to say to our brethren who are being beheaded in mass numbers in the Middle East?  Are these the words we want our children to hold on to as we prepare them for life in an increasingly hostile world?

May I suggest that far more helpful would be the words God spoke to Jeremiah in this chapter?  “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses?  And if in the land of peace, in which you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?”  Let us speak the truth to ourselves and those around us to prepare for what is normal for godly people, as God did to Jeremiah and as Paul did to Timothy and as Jesus did for His Apostles.  Then let us faithfully seek to be godly people, people that look more and more like Christ.