Dear Friends in Christ Jesus,
We often speak of our fellowship. By that, we mean the positive aspects of our faith and confession we have in common. We have a belief in the true God in common. We have God’s love for us in Christ in common. We share a love for Christ and desire to obey God’s will with thankful hearts. Another thing we have in common is our daily struggle against the sinful flesh.
No matter what our calling-husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter we share also crosses others place on us because of our faith and confession. Those struggles and crosses come whether we are public servants of the Word, or royal priests going to work or attending school or staying at home.
The answer to these common struggles is daily repentance and faith. When our flesh gets the best of us, God calls us to repentance and works it by his grace. When crosses threaten to crush us, God enables us to bear them by his grace. This grace in the midst of common struggle is not new with us. The prophet Jeremiah needed it and experienced it before us.
Join with me in applying the lesson of Jeremiah’s Common Struggle in His Calling to our hearts. He was faithful to God’s Word yet persecuted. He was repentant of his doubts and renewed.
Jeremiah’s daily calling was preaching the Word of the LORD to apostate Judah. He loved his and God’s people. His strong desire was for them to turn from their idolatry, and return in repentance to their God. Rather than receiving the people’s gratitude and love for his efforts, Jeremiah received rejection and persecution. His feelings about this are reflected in his nickname, “the Weeping Prophet.”
This is how we see Jeremiah here. Jeremiah knew God understood his situation. He called on his Lord to avenge those who persecuted him. The LORD’s words had come to him easily and he “ate them,” i.e. he took them to heart and mind. Those words were “my joy and my heart’s delight.” Jeremiah had been long-suffering and patient in his calling. He was faithful to God’s Word, yet persecuted.
We have this struggle in common with Jeremiah. We are faithful to God’s Word, yet persecuted. We have opportunities to witness to our faith and confess the hope that we have in Christ’s righteousness and his offering up of himself on the cross as payment for our sins. At times, this persecution comes because people do not understand what we believe. Other times, it is more that they do understand and do not want anything to do with it.
This is true especially when we talk about our sins and God’s righteous anger against our sins. None of us wants to be told that by nature we are dead in sin and God’s enemies with no hope of salvation by our own efforts. An eternity in hell for unbelief is not a popular truth. Rather than be glad for the warning, many reject that truth and persecute us for speaking it.
That can be frustrating for us. It was for Jeremiah. That frustration can lead to blasphemy. We begin to question God’s Word. We begin to question our calling to be his witnesses. We begin to make all kinds of horrific accusation against God. Jeremiah accused the LORD of constant grace and refreshment as being like a “deceptive brook” that promised water and then is dry when you go to draw from it and like a “spring that fails.” He was in severe pain and felt this apparent rejection by God as “a wound grievous and incurable.”
What terrible sin comes up from our hearts and out of our mouths when our flesh gets the best of us. This is our common struggle with Jeremiah. He was faithful to God’s Word, yet persecuted. That persecution was a cross the LORD asked him to bear and he wanted nothing to with it. Jesus warns us in our gospel lesson about not being willing to bear our crosses. “He must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
How was the “weeping prophet” able to go on? He was repentant of his doubts and renewed.
Jeremiah was able to do this because the LORD did not turn away from him in anger.
The LORD continued with Jeremiah in love and spoke to him. The Hebrew is clearer than the English is. The LORD told Jeremiah to repent, to turn from his sin, and then the LORD said that I will turn you. Repentance is necessary. God works that repentance through his grace. Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 5:21, “Turn us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be turned.”
The LORD called Jeremiah to take the vile from the precious. This was the call to repent of sin, turn from it, and clean the house of faith of the vile things that mix with the good things of faith. This would enable Jeremiah to continue to serve the LORD and his people. There was comfort and strength in his forgiveness. The LORD would make Jeremiah “a wall” so that no one would be able to overcome him. God promised the prophet whose weeping has turned into joy, “I will save you from the hands of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the cruel.”
In our common struggle with Jeremiah in our callings, we receive that call to daily repentance and faith. God turns to us in the gospel of grace and forgives us. This stops our weeping over our sins. It lifts the burden of our crosses even as the crosses remain, and we stand strong against our enemies. We continue in our various callings.
The LORD had called Jeremiah before he was born to be his own and his servant. The Lord has called us to be his own. Even when we sin like the saints of old, God’s gracious promise calls us to repentance so we can continue in our calling as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. Amen. <SDG>