STUDY THEME: SERVING ON PURPOSE. 2-19-06
“DEALING WITH DOUBT.” JEREMIAH 20: 1-13.
JEREMIAH 20: 1-6, 7-10, 11-13.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO JEREMIAH 20.
In last Sunday’s lesson Jeremiah was 32 years of age. In Jeremiah 7 he preached his third message to apostate Judah. He called himself “One born to be at odds with and in opposition to the whole world, and while he lamented the necessity, he never flinched from the task.
The 10 tribes that made up the Northern Nation of Israel had been carried away captive in 722 B.C. by the Assyrians. In Ch. 2 Jeremiah catalogued the many sins of Judah and warned of the Babylonian invasion in the near future.
Judah had forgotten God, made themselves gods, ought security through alliance with pagan nations and polluted the land with their immorality.
Jeremiah’s second message contained in Ch. 3 through 6 points to the future glory available if only Judah will repent. We are here reminded of 2nd Chronicles 7: 13-14 where God spoke to Solomon following the dedication of the new Temple. God laid down the ground rules for a successful society. “When I shut up the heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” This same prescription is available for the ills of America today.
Since last Sunday you have read the first of Jeremiah’s Temple Sermons in Jeremiah Ch. 7-10; will you please read this week the other Temple sermon found in Jeremiah 26: 1-24.
Jeremiah showed himself to be a man who was unafraid to speak God’s Word. He went to the sacred temple and condemned the nation’s blatant hypocrisy.
He did this at a time when the political and religious leaders were encouraging people to trust in the presence of the temple as assurance that God would protect them….no matter what.
Often during turmoil, people turn to religion for security, even if they never do so at other times. However, turning to religion may not be the same as turning to God. People can go to church every time the doors open, and unless the church going is reflected in how they live each day their church going is deceptive.
The true and lasting security is found only in God through a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. In Him we find security for the life and the life beyond death.
PLEASE READ JEREMIAH 20: 1-6.
Prior to the confrontation described in these verses, the Lord had instructed Jeremiah in 19: 1-2 to take a clay jug or pot to the Hinnom Valley, at Jerusalem’s southern edge. There, in the presence of some of the city’s elders and priests, the prophet shattered the jug to symbolize the destruction God would bring on His people. He returned to the temple courtyard, and continued proclaiming God’s judgment. The stage was set for a dramatic confrontation between Jeremiah and the temple leaders.
Pashur (PASH huhr) was a priest who had apparently held some significant administrative authority in the temple area. The word translated chief-officer and related expressions often denoted important leaders or officials.
When he heard Jeremiah prophesying, Pashur decided to act---perhaps to ensure or restore order to the temple courtyard. This Pashur, the son of lmmer the priest was a different person from “Pashur, the son of Melchiah who is mentioned in Jeremiah 21: 1 and 38: 1 and was a close advisor of King Zedekiah. There are two other men with the same name Pashur found in the Bible. People in positions of authority are all the more accountable for their actions.
Our Pashur’s actions revealed his attitude as he ordered the prophet beaters. Perhaps Pashur was so angry that he struck the first blow before ordering that Jeremiah be beaten or whipped. This is the first recorded act of physical violence done to Jeremiah. In addition to beating Jeremiah, Pashur put him into stocks. He had already made up his mind not to believe Jeremiah’s words.
Stocks were an instrument of punishment that confined a person to a small area.
We do not know the precise location of the Upper Benjamin Gate, but it probably was on the north side of the temple area because Benjamin’s tribal territory lay directly north of Jerusalem.
Worshipers would have walked past Jeremiah and had the opportunity to mock and taunt him.
Jeremiah was in the stocks until the next day---an experience that certainly was both painful and humiliating. When released he uttered a new name the Lord had given Pashur. That name was Magor-missabib (MAY gahr-mi SAY bib), which means “terror is on every side.”
The rebellious priest’s new name described the coming terror he would experience at the time of God’s judgment of Jerusalem.
Pashur was one of those little men who misuse their authority. Many of these are the strutting dictators of the world, but some are religious people. Pashur was only doing what Caiaphas would do centuries later when he took the lead in condemning Jesus. They claimed to be defenders of the faith and protectors of the temple.
Jeremiah boldly spoke God’s message. God still calls believers to speak His message regardless of the consequences. Jeremiah’s statement “this is what the Lord says” stressed his role as God’s messenger. Pashur had punished Jeremiah for speaking what God had told him to speak. Tragically, sometimes believers do experience sad consequences for speaking out in God’s name. Yet, we should dare to be His faithful messengers.
Terror would fill Pahur’s life as he personally witnessed God’s judgment fall on Jerusalem and its citizens. Many people would fall by the sword of the mighty Babylonian army. Pashur would not only hear of the judgment, but he would see it with his own eyes as it fell on him and those he loved. He who thought judgment would never come would observe it first hand.
Jeremiah had been predicting judgment by a foe from the north. Here is the first reference in the book to the identity of the invaders. The Lord said through Jeremiah, I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon. Many Jews would be killed and others taken as captives into exile.
Jeremiah predicted that Pashur and his family would be taken to a foreign land, where he would die and be buried. Jeremiah knew that Jews dreaded being buried outside the Promised Land. He accused Pashur of having prophesied lies. Since Pashur was not a prophet but a priest, in what way could he have prophesied lies?
Pashur almost certainly took the opportunity to speak a word of judgment in public about Jeremiah and his actions. These would take the form of repudiating Jeremiah’s words and actions and claiming divine judgment on him.
The king of Babylon was Nebuchadnezzar who would serve a God’s instrument of judgment against Judah and Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar would defeat Judah, capture thousands of Judeans, and deport them to exile in Babylon. Others he would slay with the sword.
Jerusalem’s wealth would become the property of Nebuchadnezzar’s army, as would all the goods and products for which people had toiled long and hard. The Judeans would lose everything they had. Perhaps most significant of all, the treasures of the kings of Judah---that which represented the country’s might and prestige---would be taken.
Do we put things in our life above our relationship with God? He wants nothing in our life to cloud our relationship with Him. He will provide our needs as we put Him first. Matt. 6:33 says “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The Lord is not pleased when people speak lies in His name. Careful study of His Word will help us know the truth so we can speak it with confidence. When we speak God’s message, we are to do so regardless of the consequences, just as Jeremiah did. God’s Holy Spirit will guide us to understand His Word and help us lead others to know His will through the Word. We are to be bold and faithful.
PLEASE READ JEREMIAH 20: 7-10.
What was Jeremiah thinking and feeling during those long painful and humiliating hours in the stocks? The rest of Ch. 20 gives us some indication of his feelings and thoughts. He felt angry, frustrated, hurt, humiliated, betrayed, and confused.
Jeremiah’s encounter with Pashur took its toll on his emotional state. He struggled with the difficulties he faced as God’s prophet. After the prophet did not see the ministry impact he desired, he grew frustrated to the point of accusing God of deceiving him. At the same time, he spoke to God openly and honestly, just as we should do when we take our struggles and doubts to Him.
Jeremiah openly, honestly revealed his feelings. He charged God with deceiving him. He asserted that God had seized a helpless young man and prevailed over him---Jeremiah never really had a chance. Sometimes we may feel trapped by our circumstances, but Jeremiah felt trapped by God.
Vs. 9 presents an option Jeremiah considered and possibly tried to implement He considered how it would work if he didn’t mention the Lord or speak any longer in His name. Years ago evangelist Vance Havner spoke to an audience of seminary students and faculty members about what to do when they became discouraged and disillusioned in their ministry. He said they could “resign,” meaning they could quit.
Or they could become “resigned” to an unproductive and less than victorious ministry. Or they could be “re-signed” by going to the Lord and asking Him to anoint them with new power and send them back to their tasks.
Jeremiah considered the first option. But he ran into a wonderful problem. When he tried to suppress God’s message and did not deliver it as commanded, he said that His message becomes a fire burning in my heart.
God’s Word was like a fire shut up in his bones. He tried to hold it inside and not proclaim it, but he cold not do so. He had to preach it or he thought his heart would burst. God’s call and message through him were inescapable.
Jeremiah was impaled on the horns of a dilemma. He wanted to quit because of his doubts and disappointments. God was telling him to keep on preaching. The people were telling him to stop preaching and were looking for a way to shut him up. They were spreading gossip behind his back concerning the message he kept delivering to them.
They had given Jeremiah a nickname: Terror is on every side. That sentence translated the name God gave to Pashur: “Magor-missabib,” in vs. 3.
Jeremiah had proclaimed so often the coming terror that people though of him as “Mr. Magor-missabib.” Because Jeremiah was denouncing their sins in his messages, the people said to one another: Report him; let’s report him! Report also means “denounce”. Jeremiah denounced the priests, the kings, and the people of Jerusalem. So they denounced him.
Jeremiah 20:7-18 is the most famous of the “Confessions” of Jeremiah. These confessions were intimate personal words Jeremiah addressed to God. They include complaints against God and against those who hurt him. They were spoken boldly in candid straight-forward ways.
Vs. 7 sounds blasphemous at fist sight. Jeremiah said to God, “Thou has deceived me, and I was deceived.” The Hebrew word for deceived was used to describe the seduction of someone. In a seduction, one experienced person lures an inexperienced person into doing what is wrong.
In what way did Jeremiah use such a strong word to describe God’s action toward Jeremiah? The prophet seems to have felt that the Lord had taken advantage of him when God called him. He complained to God, “Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed.”
God called Jeremiah even before he was born. He gave Jeremiah little choice in the matter. God ignored the reasons Jeremiah said he could not serve. To be fair, God did tell the young man that he was being given a hard task under difficult circumstances, but nothing prepared Jeremiah for just how hard and painful his calling had turned out to be.
God had promised to be with him and to shield him. Jeremiah could identify with the words of Gideon when he said to the angel in Judges 6: 13, “If the Lord be with us why then is all this befallen us?”
Jeremiah was most disturbed by the misunderstanding and mistreatment at the hands of others. He said, “I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me. I am a laughing stock all the time: everyone ridicules me.” The memory of the humiliation while he was in the stocks was fresh in his mind. But this was not an isolated incident. Jeremiah continued: “For whenever I speak, I cry out—I proclaim: Violence and destruction! Because the word of the Lord has become for me constant disgrace and derision.”
This was a daily experience. As Jeremiah fulfilled his calling by preaching God’s judgment on Judah, he faced constant rejection, and ridicule.
If Jeremiah felt that God had deceived and overwhelmed him in his call and he felt that his work was a failure, why didn’t he quit? At times Jeremiah dreamed about having a place of safe retreat to which he could go and leave his troubles behind. At some other point he seems to have resolved to not make mention of the Lord, nor speak any more in His name.
However, Jeremiah found that he could not remain silent. “His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones.” Jeremiah continued his testimony. “I became tired of holding it in, and I cannot prevail.”
It’s hard to know whether Jeremiah thought it was good that the fire in his bones kept him preaching. In this context, he may have considered it only another way that God overpowered him.
In vs. 10 Jeremiah returned to his complaint about the sorry way that others treated him. He hard “the gossip of the multitudes.” I hear many whispering.” Fear on every side” in Hebrew is the same as the name Jeremiah gave Pashur in vs. 3---“terror on every side!” It seems to Jeremiah “everyone I trusted watches for my fall.”
Jeremiah’s fellow countrymen spoke as if they were at war with Jeremiah, and that Jeremiah had done them enough wrong that they wanted to take their revenge on him.
Modern readers might say that the prophet was paranoid—that he thought everyone was out to get him. If ever a person had the right to feel that way, it was Jeremiah. Others were after him. Even the people of his hometown Anathoth tried to silence him in Jer. 11:21-22. His former friends joined in the common hatred of Jeremiah. They resented being told they were displeasing to God and were going to be destroyed as a nation.
In what sense was Jeremiah expressing doubts? He was not plagued with doubts about the existence of God. His doubts were more about the ways of the Lord in giving him such a thankless and dangerous task. “Few men in history have been compelled to suffer indignity, hostility, and personal cruelty so undeservedly or so pointedly because of the failure of others as was Jeremiah.” Given his turbulent, justice loving nature and the persecutions that became his lot, the “everlasting why” is an inevitable outcome . Remember Jeremiahs ministry lasted 40 years and he did not preach a message of hope until toward the end of his ministry
Jeremiah was not the only believer in Bible times and since to have doubts and questions. In a way, Jeremiah’s experience teaches us how to deal with such negative feelings. Part of Jeremiah’s problem was that he thought he had failed.
Peter Marshall’s prayer would have helped give Jeremiah perspective: “Our Father in heaven, give us the long view of our work and our world. Help us to see that it is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.” Jeremiah failed to call the nation back from the judgment toward which it was rushing. In this sense he failed, but he failed in the works of God, which shall ultimately succeed.
These verses 7-10 reveal certain things about Jeremiah. Obviously he was sensitive about being effective in service. Though his preaching was loud and forceful at times, he tended to be an introspective person.
He obviously was a man of God, but he was also a man of like passions to other believers. He was a man of prayer. Some of his prayers contained complaints to God; other prayers were prayers of praise for God’s goodness. And most important of all, Jeremiah never actually gave up though doubts assailed him from time to time.
Should believers be hones toward God concerning their doubts? Honesty is the first step in receiving help from the Lord. Acknowledge your doubts, but also accept God’s help concerning them.
PLEASE READ JEREMIAH 20: 11-13.
God is a mighty awesome one; a mighty soldier standing at my side, what a might God we serve!
Jesus has promised, in Matt. 28: 20 never to leave us. Reflecting on this amazing truth helps put life’s biggest challenges in perspective. No trial is too big for the Lord: no enemy is too great; no struggle is hopeless. The God who knows all the stars by name will give strength to His weary, doubting people (Isa. 40:25-31).
Jeremiah’s persecutors hoped to prevail against him, but instead they would stumble and fall. Their plans would fail, and when these persecutors realized they had not succeeded, they would be utterly ashamed.
In stark contrast to God’s vindication of His prophet, everlasting humiliation that would never be forgotten would seize Jeremiah’s opponents.
Sometimes believers struggle with doubt because they fail to remember God’s eternal perspective. God may vindicate our work in this life, or He may do so in the age to come, but He will vindicate His people. He maintains ultimate control over every situation. What a way for God to reveal Himself in the moment of doubt and need! Jeremiah saw God as more than able to deal with all of Jeremiah’s enemies.
Jeremiah implied that the Lord provided him the strength and victory that he needed. Also because the Lord was with him and not his persecutors (as they thought), his persecutors would stumble and no prevail. They would not be removed, but they would be kept from defeating or stopping Jeremiah from preaching.
God’s power rules over every situation. Not only would the persecutors not succeed in shutting up Jeremiah or running him away, but they would become an everlasting humillation that would never be forgotten.
Judith Edwards, who directs lesson education for the Baptists of New Mexico said that, years ago, one of my daughters was angry about something a friend had said about her. In describing the situation, she said to me, “I can’t help how I feel.” I responded, “Yes, you can.” I explained that choosing to believe that friend did not mean to hurt her would help her feel better.
When we feel discouraged, doubtful, or even despairing, we can turn to God’s Word for comfort.
2 Cor. 1: 20 says that God will fulfill all His promises. What challenging situation is causing you to doubt? Spend some time reading your Bible and asking God to encourage you with His truth that He is in control.
Jeremiah’s discouragement again surfaced as the chapter concludes in vs. 14-18. He cursed the day he was born. His mother had though it a blessed day, but Jeremiah’s suffering had led him to conclude otherwise. The prophet expressed disappointment th t God had not killed hin in his mother’s womb. He could not understand why his life had to witness and experience so much struggle, so much sorrow, so much shame.
Perhaps at some time in your life, you have felt as challenged by doubts and struggles as Jeremiah was. Maybe you even feel this way now. Indeed, Jeremiah’s life demonstrates that serving God offers no guarantee of easy living. The Lord may call us to serve Him in ways that stretch us to the limit, where life’s struggles seem overwhelming and our prayers seem to go unanswered.
Faced with such challenges, Jeremiah chose to press on, and so must we. He did not understand all God’s ways, just as we may not. However, he did know that somehow he could keep trusting God in every situation.
Likewise, God has not promised to show us the reason for everything we encounter in our service for Him; but He has promised in Phil. 1: 6 to equip us for whatever He calls us to do and to give us the strength to complete it. H who rules in power over every situation includes our situation too.
True faith is not having all our questions answered or all our doubts resolved. Our weak faith sometimes asks God questions and expresses doubts, but faith trusts and obeys the Lord. And above all, faith is expressed in worship.
Worship is the best antidote for doubts and questions. Worship brings us into the presence of the God whose ways and thoughts are as far above us as the heavens are higher than the earth. (See Romans 11:30)