The Complaining Prophet
Monologues
Let Me Tell You ...
People Of Faith Speak To Their Times And Ours
I can still remember the words which started me out on my unwilling journey: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." It was God who was speaking to me. Oh, how I wished that the words were not addressed to me! I tried to avoid the call. I said, "I am only a youth." After all, I was only about nineteen. But God said, "I will be with you and deliver you." I then countered that I didn't know how to speak, but God touched my mouth and said, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth."
Perhaps you think that it would be exciting to be a prophet. Well, after forty years as a spokesman for God, I can tell you that it has not been an easy experience: pain, agony, sorrow, sadness, abuse, punishment, rejection, isolation, these things have all been a part of it. But there has been nothing in the role that one would seek if he had the choice. Many times I would have given up this task, but I could not; I was compelled to speak.
Soon after the call came to me, it was confirmed by a vision. I saw a boiling pot with steam being blown from the north, and I heard God saying, "Out of the north, evil shall break forth on the inhabitants of the land." This meant to me that a military power from the north was going to fall upon my people, Judah, and that I was commissioned to provide the warning. I was told that I would meet with opposition from kings, princes, priests, and people, but that I must speak what God commanded, and God would be with me.
My name is Jeremiah. I am from the little village of Anathoth, about two miles north of Jerusalem. I was told to go to Jerusalem to proclaim my message, which I understood was to bring the people back to God.
I thought it best to discover for myself how the people were living so that I could speak from knowledge. What I discovered appalled me! I walked through the streets of Jerusalem and discovered that the people were lying, faithless, and unjust to one another. At first I thought that perhaps it was only the ignorant and poor who did not know God's law, but I found that it was the same among the prominent. I understood that punishment would be inevitable if the people did not change their ways.
The outcome for my people would eventually prove to be a sad one, but perhaps what I learned during my ministry could have some value for you, for people in every age need to evaluate themselves.
One thing I learned is that true religion is not dependent on institutional ritual. My people thought of themselves as unique because they had been the recipients of God's law. But it was obvious from their lifestyle that they did not know God's law. My people had heard the law, but it could not save them, for they did not practice it. Perhaps you, too, know how you should live, but that is no help to you if you don't practice it.
Others were relying unduly on religious rituals. They thought that by the abundance of their sacrifices and the intricacy of their religious observances they could please God. I told them that God was not impressed by sacrifices, but by obedience. God is an ethical being. It was not God who had set up Israel's elaborate system of worship. People had done that, and as a result they had diverted attention from what was absolutely essential to the worship of God: moral obedience.
Consider, for example, the practice of circumcision. It was a mark on our bodies that we were the people of God; and many felt that it ensured God's protection. I told them that the outward mark of circumcision was utterly worthless. It had been intended to signify spiritual dependence and amended lives, but it had come to signify nothing. What was needed was a circumcised heart! A ritual wasn't going to save anyone if it didn't reflect an inner attitude. Perhaps there are rituals that you have been relying on that also need to be reexamined in order to discover their original meaning.
The time I really got into trouble was when I spoke against the temple. You see, religious people tend to think that the place where they worship is the dwelling place of God. My people had been worshiping in the temple for 350 years; it had become hallowed by tradition. I stood up in the court of the temple and told them that the temple wasn't going to save anyone. God could not abide with his people, no matter how ardent their love for the temple, if they oppressed the helpless in society and continued to steal, murder, lie, and gouge one another in the market place. What God desired was morally transformed conduct.
They believed that the temple was some kind of talisman, and that its very presence would protect them from all harm. I told them that if they did not change their ways, God himself would destroy that holy place and send them off to exile. That was going too far for those in authority. The prophets and the priests seized me and accused me of blasphemy. They said that I should die. I insisted that I was speaking only as the Lord had instructed me, and that my purpose was to bring the people to repentance.
They let me go, but I was a marked man; informers eagerly reported what I said, assassinations were attempted, even my own family threatened me, for I was an embarrassment to them. I was hurt, confused, frightened, but nevertheless determined to make my people see what would surely happen if they did not change. I took a pottery jar and broke it before a small crowd at the gate of the city, and I said, "In just such a manner will the Lord break the people of this city into pieces, because they refuse to hear the word of the Lord." When I spoke again in the temple area, Pashhur, one of the temple officers, had me arrested, beaten, and placed in stocks for 24 hours because, he said, I was falsely exercising a prophet's function. In every age, people who do not like what God is saying to them will do all in their power to shut up God's word, even as I was shut up in stocks.
When I was released, I was forbidden to enter the temple area. I cursed the day that I was born, that I should find myself in this predicament. I hadn't asked for this job; it was thrust upon me. I didn't want to be the bearer of evil tidings; I didn't enjoy bringing bad news. Nevertheless, I was suffering because of it. I felt that God had seduced me, used me for his purposes, and abandoned me. I decided to keep silent, but the words became a burning fire in my bones; I had to speak.
About that time I was led to take another approach. I received a revelation that I should write down the contents of my preaching ministry up to that point. I hoped that the cumulative effect of my words might succeed where my messages individually had failed. I hoped that my people might return to God and be forgiven. So I dictated my sermons to my friend, Baruch, and then asked him to go and read the words of the scroll publicly in the temple, for I was forbidden to go there. Some nobles got hold of the scroll and had it read before the king. In an effort to demonstrate his utter contempt for the word of the Lord, the king cut off every few columns of the scroll as it was read, and threw the pieces into the fire. There was now no hope for Judah. I could and did write a new scroll, but I could not make the people or the king change their ways. They were depending on religious institutions, which could not save them.
A second thing that I learned is that true religion is not dependent upon national survival. My people felt that our nation was special, that it would always survive. They could quote the promises of some of the past prophets who had spoken of such survival. The problem was that they didn't take seriously the conditions of those promises: that they must live just and upright lives, serving the Lord.
There was no reason to think we were God's pet any longer. More than 100 years before, the Assyrians had swooped down on our sister kingdom, Israel, and taken her people into exile. When that was pointed out to my people, they said, in effect, "Ah, yes, but those people really were unrighteous, and God was punishing them." Somehow, my people couldn't get the message that this could happen to them too.
In 605 B.C. we lost a major battle with Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, and we became tributary to him. It became clear to me that Babylon was "the foe from the north," which I had seen in my first vision. I urged the king and people not to provoke Nebuchadrezzar, so that things would go well with us, for I saw him as the unwitting instrument of God, sent to correct us and to cause us to examine our lives.
My preaching was to no avail. At the urging of Egypt, our king stopped paying tribute, and in 597 Nebuchadrezzar defeated our forces, captured our city, and took the king and10,000 of our leading citizens into exile in Babylon. A new king was put on the throne, but our cities were left intact. In no time, the people were again discussing rebellion. They were so hopeful that the exiles would return, that they listened to anyone who said it would be soon. And the prophets and priests told them what they wanted to hear. I could see that the exile would be long, and that my people had better forget this talk of rebellion, or the Babylonians would come and utterly destroy our land and take more people into captivity.
They would not listen. In time, the foreign ministers of some of the small powers around us gathered in Jerusalem for a secret conference to discuss revolt. I felt led to become a demonstrator. I put a wooden yoke on my neck and paraded all through the city, saying that we had better recognize the situation that we were in: that the Lord of creation had allowed this to come to pass and that we had better learn to live peaceably under this yoke. Of course, that was not a popular message, but the people needed to hear it. Hananiah, one of the prophets who wanted war, took the yoke from my neck and broke it in pieces, saying, "Thus says the Lord: 'Like this will I break the yoke of the king of Babylon within two years from the neck of all the nations.' " I responded that nothing would please me more, but it was not to be, for Hananiah's words did not take into account Judah's moral condition. Time would bear out who was right.
Eventually, the worst happened. The king was persuaded to revolt. Judah was attacked, her towns destroyed, and Jerusalem surrounded by Babylonian troops. By now, the king had come to believe that I did, indeed, speak the word of the Lord, but he was not able to stand against the contrary opinion of the nobles, who were against me, and who sought to destroy me. I told him and all who would listen that we should surrender, or Jerusalem would be destroyed.
Now they became concerned for social justice and gave orders that all slaves should be freed. They said they did it to please God. In reality, those who owned slaves could no longer afford to feed them in a besieged city, so the reason for releasing the slaves was really economic. About that time Egypt made a weak gesture of coming to our aid, and the siege was lifted. The people thought they were delivered, and the first thing they did was to put their slaves back into bondage.
The Babylonians returned and we were once again laid under siege. This time I knew that the end had come for our beloved city. Still, I wanted to show my people that there could be hope for the future. An incident which occurred about that time helped me to make the point. A cousin, who owned property in Anathoth, was in need of money, and sought to sell me the property, even though it was now occupied by foreign troops. I accepted the opportunity, and had the deed publicly notarized and publicly filed, for it was my way of saying that one day houses and fields and vineyards would again be sold in the land. I, who had been so pessimistic, felt that I now needed to demonstrate some hope.
Eventually, the city was taken, everything in it was destroyed, thousands more were taken into exile, and Judah and Jerusalem were absorbed into the Babylonian Empire. Because I had urged my people not to revolt I was allowed to remain in the land with some few others who were to till the soil and care for crops. That was not the end of things. In this calamity I had already discovered that true religion is not based on institutional ritual. Now I understood that true religion is not dependent on the survival of the nation either.
The third thing that I discovered is that true religion is an affair of the heart. God showed me that one day he would set up a new covenant with his people. Not like the old covenant, written on tablets of stone, which the people received at Sinai. That covenant always had about it requirement and obligation: it was something imposed from outside the person. But the new covenant would be written on the hearts of individuals. God would put his law in the innermost being of a person, so that to know the law would be to do it.
A time was coming when people would recognize that the Lord is not the God of the Jews only, but the God of all creation. They would see that the Lord is not tied to one land or one temple, for God may be worshiped by anyone, anywhere, when God is worshiped from the heart.
I know that true religion is an affair of the heart, because God granted me a foretaste of that kind of religion in my own life. He called me personally and I responded. That doesn't mean we were always in agreement, however. You may recall, I didn't want the job in the first place. But such was our relationship that God did not abandon me. We were friends, and I was permitted to express myself, for it was a relationship of love.
It was that personal relationship which sustained me when all the familiar landmarks of nation and religion were disappearing. I believe that such a relationship can also sustain you, whatever you are called upon to endure. You may be strengthened in trouble, but do not expect such a relationship to protect you from trouble; I certainly did not find that. And do not expect always to understand what God is seeking to do, for in the final analysis God is sovereign, and we are God's subjects. That was brought home forcefully to me by one further experience I had. And with this I close.
I happened to go into a pottery shop one day, and I observed the potter making a vessel from a lump of clay. He had almost completed the vessel, when some imperfection was found in it. Undismayed, he mashed the marred vessel into a lump again, set the wheel turning, and worked the clay into another vessel which met with his approval. At that moment a new insight dawned upon my mind. It was the realization that Judah, although it was a spoiled vessel, was still in the hands of God, a God of infinite resourcefulness, and of abiding, enduring love. God's intention for his people had been frustrated, but not defeated. The Divine Potter still loved his clay. Whether we are talking about Judah or about any people, God has an intention for us. It may be temporarily thwarted because of our imperfections, but one day God will use all that we are or have been to bring his purpose to pass. If we want to be part of that purpose, what we have to do is to cooperate.
Perhaps you think that it would be exciting to be a prophet. Well, after forty years as a spokesman for God, I can tell you that it has not been an easy experience: pain, agony, sorrow, sadness, abuse, punishment, rejection, isolation, these things have all been a part of it. But there has been nothing in the role that one would seek if he had the choice. Many times I would have given up this task, but I could not; I was compelled to speak.
Soon after the call came to me, it was confirmed by a vision. I saw a boiling pot with steam being blown from the north, and I heard God saying, "Out of the north, evil shall break forth on the inhabitants of the land." This meant to me that a military power from the north was going to fall upon my people, Judah, and that I was commissioned to provide the warning. I was told that I would meet with opposition from kings, princes, priests, and people, but that I must speak what God commanded, and God would be with me.
My name is Jeremiah. I am from the little village of Anathoth, about two miles north of Jerusalem. I was told to go to Jerusalem to proclaim my message, which I understood was to bring the people back to God.
I thought it best to discover for myself how the people were living so that I could speak from knowledge. What I discovered appalled me! I walked through the streets of Jerusalem and discovered that the people were lying, faithless, and unjust to one another. At first I thought that perhaps it was only the ignorant and poor who did not know God's law, but I found that it was the same among the prominent. I understood that punishment would be inevitable if the people did not change their ways.
The outcome for my people would eventually prove to be a sad one, but perhaps what I learned during my ministry could have some value for you, for people in every age need to evaluate themselves.
One thing I learned is that true religion is not dependent on institutional ritual. My people thought of themselves as unique because they had been the recipients of God's law. But it was obvious from their lifestyle that they did not know God's law. My people had heard the law, but it could not save them, for they did not practice it. Perhaps you, too, know how you should live, but that is no help to you if you don't practice it.
Others were relying unduly on religious rituals. They thought that by the abundance of their sacrifices and the intricacy of their religious observances they could please God. I told them that God was not impressed by sacrifices, but by obedience. God is an ethical being. It was not God who had set up Israel's elaborate system of worship. People had done that, and as a result they had diverted attention from what was absolutely essential to the worship of God: moral obedience.
Consider, for example, the practice of circumcision. It was a mark on our bodies that we were the people of God; and many felt that it ensured God's protection. I told them that the outward mark of circumcision was utterly worthless. It had been intended to signify spiritual dependence and amended lives, but it had come to signify nothing. What was needed was a circumcised heart! A ritual wasn't going to save anyone if it didn't reflect an inner attitude. Perhaps there are rituals that you have been relying on that also need to be reexamined in order to discover their original meaning.
The time I really got into trouble was when I spoke against the temple. You see, religious people tend to think that the place where they worship is the dwelling place of God. My people had been worshiping in the temple for 350 years; it had become hallowed by tradition. I stood up in the court of the temple and told them that the temple wasn't going to save anyone. God could not abide with his people, no matter how ardent their love for the temple, if they oppressed the helpless in society and continued to steal, murder, lie, and gouge one another in the market place. What God desired was morally transformed conduct.
They believed that the temple was some kind of talisman, and that its very presence would protect them from all harm. I told them that if they did not change their ways, God himself would destroy that holy place and send them off to exile. That was going too far for those in authority. The prophets and the priests seized me and accused me of blasphemy. They said that I should die. I insisted that I was speaking only as the Lord had instructed me, and that my purpose was to bring the people to repentance.
They let me go, but I was a marked man; informers eagerly reported what I said, assassinations were attempted, even my own family threatened me, for I was an embarrassment to them. I was hurt, confused, frightened, but nevertheless determined to make my people see what would surely happen if they did not change. I took a pottery jar and broke it before a small crowd at the gate of the city, and I said, "In just such a manner will the Lord break the people of this city into pieces, because they refuse to hear the word of the Lord." When I spoke again in the temple area, Pashhur, one of the temple officers, had me arrested, beaten, and placed in stocks for 24 hours because, he said, I was falsely exercising a prophet's function. In every age, people who do not like what God is saying to them will do all in their power to shut up God's word, even as I was shut up in stocks.
When I was released, I was forbidden to enter the temple area. I cursed the day that I was born, that I should find myself in this predicament. I hadn't asked for this job; it was thrust upon me. I didn't want to be the bearer of evil tidings; I didn't enjoy bringing bad news. Nevertheless, I was suffering because of it. I felt that God had seduced me, used me for his purposes, and abandoned me. I decided to keep silent, but the words became a burning fire in my bones; I had to speak.
About that time I was led to take another approach. I received a revelation that I should write down the contents of my preaching ministry up to that point. I hoped that the cumulative effect of my words might succeed where my messages individually had failed. I hoped that my people might return to God and be forgiven. So I dictated my sermons to my friend, Baruch, and then asked him to go and read the words of the scroll publicly in the temple, for I was forbidden to go there. Some nobles got hold of the scroll and had it read before the king. In an effort to demonstrate his utter contempt for the word of the Lord, the king cut off every few columns of the scroll as it was read, and threw the pieces into the fire. There was now no hope for Judah. I could and did write a new scroll, but I could not make the people or the king change their ways. They were depending on religious institutions, which could not save them.
A second thing that I learned is that true religion is not dependent upon national survival. My people felt that our nation was special, that it would always survive. They could quote the promises of some of the past prophets who had spoken of such survival. The problem was that they didn't take seriously the conditions of those promises: that they must live just and upright lives, serving the Lord.
There was no reason to think we were God's pet any longer. More than 100 years before, the Assyrians had swooped down on our sister kingdom, Israel, and taken her people into exile. When that was pointed out to my people, they said, in effect, "Ah, yes, but those people really were unrighteous, and God was punishing them." Somehow, my people couldn't get the message that this could happen to them too.
In 605 B.C. we lost a major battle with Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, and we became tributary to him. It became clear to me that Babylon was "the foe from the north," which I had seen in my first vision. I urged the king and people not to provoke Nebuchadrezzar, so that things would go well with us, for I saw him as the unwitting instrument of God, sent to correct us and to cause us to examine our lives.
My preaching was to no avail. At the urging of Egypt, our king stopped paying tribute, and in 597 Nebuchadrezzar defeated our forces, captured our city, and took the king and10,000 of our leading citizens into exile in Babylon. A new king was put on the throne, but our cities were left intact. In no time, the people were again discussing rebellion. They were so hopeful that the exiles would return, that they listened to anyone who said it would be soon. And the prophets and priests told them what they wanted to hear. I could see that the exile would be long, and that my people had better forget this talk of rebellion, or the Babylonians would come and utterly destroy our land and take more people into captivity.
They would not listen. In time, the foreign ministers of some of the small powers around us gathered in Jerusalem for a secret conference to discuss revolt. I felt led to become a demonstrator. I put a wooden yoke on my neck and paraded all through the city, saying that we had better recognize the situation that we were in: that the Lord of creation had allowed this to come to pass and that we had better learn to live peaceably under this yoke. Of course, that was not a popular message, but the people needed to hear it. Hananiah, one of the prophets who wanted war, took the yoke from my neck and broke it in pieces, saying, "Thus says the Lord: 'Like this will I break the yoke of the king of Babylon within two years from the neck of all the nations.' " I responded that nothing would please me more, but it was not to be, for Hananiah's words did not take into account Judah's moral condition. Time would bear out who was right.
Eventually, the worst happened. The king was persuaded to revolt. Judah was attacked, her towns destroyed, and Jerusalem surrounded by Babylonian troops. By now, the king had come to believe that I did, indeed, speak the word of the Lord, but he was not able to stand against the contrary opinion of the nobles, who were against me, and who sought to destroy me. I told him and all who would listen that we should surrender, or Jerusalem would be destroyed.
Now they became concerned for social justice and gave orders that all slaves should be freed. They said they did it to please God. In reality, those who owned slaves could no longer afford to feed them in a besieged city, so the reason for releasing the slaves was really economic. About that time Egypt made a weak gesture of coming to our aid, and the siege was lifted. The people thought they were delivered, and the first thing they did was to put their slaves back into bondage.
The Babylonians returned and we were once again laid under siege. This time I knew that the end had come for our beloved city. Still, I wanted to show my people that there could be hope for the future. An incident which occurred about that time helped me to make the point. A cousin, who owned property in Anathoth, was in need of money, and sought to sell me the property, even though it was now occupied by foreign troops. I accepted the opportunity, and had the deed publicly notarized and publicly filed, for it was my way of saying that one day houses and fields and vineyards would again be sold in the land. I, who had been so pessimistic, felt that I now needed to demonstrate some hope.
Eventually, the city was taken, everything in it was destroyed, thousands more were taken into exile, and Judah and Jerusalem were absorbed into the Babylonian Empire. Because I had urged my people not to revolt I was allowed to remain in the land with some few others who were to till the soil and care for crops. That was not the end of things. In this calamity I had already discovered that true religion is not based on institutional ritual. Now I understood that true religion is not dependent on the survival of the nation either.
The third thing that I discovered is that true religion is an affair of the heart. God showed me that one day he would set up a new covenant with his people. Not like the old covenant, written on tablets of stone, which the people received at Sinai. That covenant always had about it requirement and obligation: it was something imposed from outside the person. But the new covenant would be written on the hearts of individuals. God would put his law in the innermost being of a person, so that to know the law would be to do it.
A time was coming when people would recognize that the Lord is not the God of the Jews only, but the God of all creation. They would see that the Lord is not tied to one land or one temple, for God may be worshiped by anyone, anywhere, when God is worshiped from the heart.
I know that true religion is an affair of the heart, because God granted me a foretaste of that kind of religion in my own life. He called me personally and I responded. That doesn't mean we were always in agreement, however. You may recall, I didn't want the job in the first place. But such was our relationship that God did not abandon me. We were friends, and I was permitted to express myself, for it was a relationship of love.
It was that personal relationship which sustained me when all the familiar landmarks of nation and religion were disappearing. I believe that such a relationship can also sustain you, whatever you are called upon to endure. You may be strengthened in trouble, but do not expect such a relationship to protect you from trouble; I certainly did not find that. And do not expect always to understand what God is seeking to do, for in the final analysis God is sovereign, and we are God's subjects. That was brought home forcefully to me by one further experience I had. And with this I close.
I happened to go into a pottery shop one day, and I observed the potter making a vessel from a lump of clay. He had almost completed the vessel, when some imperfection was found in it. Undismayed, he mashed the marred vessel into a lump again, set the wheel turning, and worked the clay into another vessel which met with his approval. At that moment a new insight dawned upon my mind. It was the realization that Judah, although it was a spoiled vessel, was still in the hands of God, a God of infinite resourcefulness, and of abiding, enduring love. God's intention for his people had been frustrated, but not defeated. The Divine Potter still loved his clay. Whether we are talking about Judah or about any people, God has an intention for us. It may be temporarily thwarted because of our imperfections, but one day God will use all that we are or have been to bring his purpose to pass. If we want to be part of that purpose, what we have to do is to cooperate.
