Jeremiah, the Wailing Prophet

Jeremiah, the Wailing Prophet

 

The year was approximately 626 B.C. and the Jewish people in Judah had become so corrupt that unless they turned from their evil ways, God would bring an end to their nation. God called Jeremiah to be His messenger or prophet during this difficult time.  Jeremiah would deliver God’s messages to the Jewish people begging them to return to God and warning the people of God’s severe punishment if they didn’t.

 

Jeremiah was not popular with this rebellious Jewish generation.  They tried to kill him and did not want to hear what he had to say.  They had turned away from worshipping the God of their fathers and they had hardened their hearts against God.  So, they took out their anger on Jeremiah as he traveled from town to town crying and begging his fellow Jews to come back to their God before it would be too late.

 

Jeremiah said that God’s message was like a burning fire inside his body and he couldn’t keep it in.  (Jeremiah 20:9)   He was called “the wailing prophet” because he spent sixty years traveling from town to town crying, begging and wailing as he cried out God’s message to the stubborn people of Judah.    

 

God tells the Jewish people what they have done wrong. Jeremiah delivers His message: “Everyone is given to covetousness:  from the prophet even to the priest.  Everyone deals falsely, for they have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’  When there is no peace. (Jeremiah 8:10a-11) Bible scholars say that the religious leaders superficially tended to the wounds of the people.  They told the people not to be concerned about their sinful lifestyle when they should have been telling them to be concerned and to come back to their God.

 

God goes on recounting the many sins of His people through His prophet, Jeremiah.  “For they are all adulterers.  And an assembly of treacherous people.  Like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies.  They are not valiant for the truth on the earth.  For they proceed from evil to evil.  And ‘they do not know Me’, says the Lord.  Everyone needs to watch out for his neighbor, and do not trust any brother:  for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will walk with slanderers.  Everyone will deceive his neighbor and will not speak the truth. “ (Jeremiah 9:2b-5)  The Jewish people’s many sins have caused a breakdown of families and personal relationships.  God begs them to return to Him.

God is crying out for His people: “They have walked according to the dictates of their own hearts and after the Baal gods…”  Therefore, says the Lord God of Israel: …” I will scatter them also among the Gentiles whom neither they nor their fathers have known…”  (Jeremiah 9:14 and Jeremiah 15a-16) The people of Judah were burning or sacrificing their little children to the heathen god, Baal.  It seems that when gross sins are allowed to flourish in a country, it is the little children that suffer the most! 

 

God, the Father, continues grieving for His lost children, the people of Judah.  “Woe is Me for My hurt!  My wound is severe.  Truly this is an illness that I must bear.  My tent is plundered, and all my cords are broken.  My children have all gone away from Me.  And they are no more.”    (Jeremiah 10:19-20) The deeply distraught heavenly Father has lost everything. 

 

God, the Father continues spilling out His deep grief over His lost children.  How He misses them and the fellowship they had.  How He longs for their return to Him. Is their any grief worse than the grief of a parent who has lost a child?

 

God, the Father, cries out in His overwhelming sorrow that He must punish His beloved children.  A desperate Father who must use tough love as a last resort!  Tough love, because real love is always forgiving but also always just.  With a breaking heart the heavenly Father calls His lost children “the dearly beloved of My soul”.  But then He compares His beloved children to a lion in the forest coming out against Him.  And, He compares them to a vulture. 

 

Have human parents ever felt like their beloved children are attacking them as a lion in the forest attacks its’ prey?  Have human mothers and fathers ever felt like their precious child – their dearly beloved - has become like a vulture to them – waiting to pick them over when they die?

 

 God, the Father cries out through His messenger Jeremiah: “I have forsaken My house; I have left My heritage:  I have given the dearly beloved of My soul into the hand of her enemies.  My heritage (My children) is to Me like a lion, in the forest.  It cries out against Me:  Therefore, I have hated it.  My heritage is to Me like a speckled vulture:” (Jeremiah 12:7-9a)    

 

His heritage, (His children) were also compared to a pleasant vineyard that has now become a desolate wilderness because no one follows the Lord.  Scripture says: “The whole land is made desolate, because no one takes it to heart.”  (Jeremiah 12:11b) The heavenly Father had had so much joy with His children. Israel was symbolized as a holy people, “a kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) They had enjoyed an intimate relationship with God as His covenant people.   But now a rebellious generation has thrown it all away.

 

All of the Bible teaches us that God is a God of love but also a God of justice.  Love and justice cannot be separated. A God of forgiveness when we repent and a God of judgment when we don’t.  And some Christians have a difficult time with that.  They try to make God into what they want instead of who He is in our Bible.

 

A parent who loves her child is a parent who steps in and corrects or disciplines the child when the child does something wrong.  A good parent loves their child too much to let him grow into a selfish hateful person.  And our Father God loves us too much to let us remain in our sin.  He calls us to Himself, to follow His laws, to accept His Son as our Savior and to trust His goodness. 

 

The book of Jeremiah was written approximately 2,600 years ago.  But we can learn from Jeremiah that our heavenly Father was broken hearted when His people turned away from Him so long ago. And He finally had to punish them.  God, our Father is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8) and He is heartbroken today when we turn away from Him just as He was back then.   

 

 Over and over God warned the Jewish people what they were doing was wrong.  He said: “Each one of you follows the dictates of your own heart so that no one listens to Me.”  (Jeremiah 16:12b) They “followed their own heart” or did their own thing back then.  And we can “follow our own heart” now and do our own thing.  It is only too easy to do whatever we want to do or what is popular to do, even when we know that God has called what we are doing wrong.  God gives us laws to follow. He will put His law in our hearts, and He forgives us when we go astray.  But we have to want to follow Him.       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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