How the Weeping Prophet Found Joy

Jeremiah means “exalted of the Lord,” or “established by the Lord.” He was the son of Hilkiah. Anathoth, his hometown, was in Benjamin, about three miles northeast of Jerusalem.

The first time the word of the Lord came to young Jeremiah was when he was a child in the 13^th year of the child King Josiah, which was the year after Josiah’s reformation had been accomplished. Jer. 3:6 tells us, “The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.”

We also learn in 2 Chron. 35:25 “and Jeremiah lamented for Josiah.” Jeremiah not only lamented for Josiah when he died but he lamented the fact that Josiah’s great reformation was ultimately a failure. The reformation never took root in the hearts of God’s people and their acquiescence to the boy king and the law was only… a facade.

The book of Jeremiah abounds in personal allusions.

No other prophet inserts personal comments about his own emotional turmoil about his fallen people reeling in spiritual bankruptcy as much as Jeremiah. He was always interesting to me. Known as “the weeping prophet.” No other prophet wept for the people of Israel like Jeremiah. So many outbursts in Jeremiah and in Lamentations. He would write in Lam. 1:16, “For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye, runneth down with water…”

Yet, even in a book called Lamentations, the weeping prophet would still praise God for His faithfulness. He wrote famously, in Lam. 3:23, “great is they faithfulness.”

I suspect today many of us can empathize with Jeremiah. How difficult can it be for any of us to put ourselves into his sandals today feeling sorrow about our very own idolatrous, rebellious nation that has become an affront to the living God, hating the very God who loves them. Not only that, like Jeremiah, we can see the end of the road, the inevitability of judgment to come.

On the other hand, Jeremiah was also a man of great courage, which I love. He had the boldness of a lion. He was a man of prayer. He was a man of action. He was faithful in the discharge of his commission as a prophet. In the presence of his people, he was unwavering in his proclamations about their spiritual condition and the judgment to come. But in the presence of the Lord, he was a broken man. He trembled at His Word filled with godly fear.

His life of service and suffering was one of great solitude. He was commanded to remain unmarried (16:1-4). He was forbidden to enter the house of joy and feasting (16:8-9). He even doubted whether his whole work was not a delusion and a lie. In 20:7, he’d write, “I am in derision daily. And every one mocketh me.” And like Job he cursed the day of his birth. In20:14, he’d write, “Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed.”

He was betrayed by his own kindred (12:6-10). His fellow citizens of his home town, Anathoth, wanted to kill him (11:21-23). In his bitterness, he spoke of himself in chapter 15 as “a man of contention to the whole earth”. When Jeremiah heard from the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar was called to be given dominion over His people (27:6), Jeremiah urged Israel to submit to Nebuchadnezzar. The people marked him as a traitor to their country.

Of course, false prophets came on the scene who contradicted him with false messages. On one occasion when the temple courts were filled with thousands of Jews, Jeremiah stood before them all and uttered the message that Jerusalem would be a curse, that the temple should share the fate of the tabernacle at Shiloh (26:2-8).

So, of course, the priests, the false prophets, and the people demanded his death.

But the Lord protected him.

Still greater were his sufferings under Zedekiah. His struggles with the false prophets continued. They called him a madman (29:26). They urged his imprisonment. Then he appeared in the streets of Jerusalem in bonds with a yoke upon his neck (27:2) showing all of them the coming fate of Judah. A false prophet smashed his yoke and gave a lying message to the people that the Chaldeans should be destroyed within two years. The Chaldeans came to conquer them. Then the Egyptian army arrived, and the Chaldeans ran away, which created a dangerous condition for Jeremiah, because it appeared that the false prophets were correct.

Jeremiah tried to escape his hometown of Anathoth. When that was discovered, he was charged with conspiring with the Chaldeans (37:14). In spite of his denials, he was thrown into a dungeon. Later, he was thrown into the prison pit by the princes to die there. But then, he was again mercifully delivered. When Jerusalem was destroyed, Nebuchadnezzar protected him (39:11). After being carried away with other captives as far as Ramah, he was set free.

Then Jeremiah had to decide – should he go to Babylon to live under the special protection of the king or remain in Judah with the governor Gedaliah. He chose Judah.

But Gedaliah was murdered by Ishmael and his associates, about which Jeremiah had warned him. Then the people took him captive and forced him to emigrate with them to Egypt against the Lord’s will. The last glimpse we’re given of the prophet’s life is in Tahpanhes, uttering there a final judgment in Jer. 43 against everyone sneaking away to Egypt. They would all die.

Nothing is known of Jeremiah’s death, but he is preeminently the great weeping prophet, the man who hath seen many afflictions. Jeremiah witnessed the departure, one by one, of all his hopes of a national revival and Israel’s return to a proper relationship with the Lord. He became to his own people a prophet of evil, dashing to the ground the false hopes with which the people were deluded into believing by true false prophets.

Jeremiah was stuck in a no-win situation to plea with a corrupt people refusing to return to the God of their Fathers, and he would plea with them to the bitter end when God’s judgment would be fulfilled with the destruction of all things by Nebuchadnezzar.

If it were not for Jeremiah’s trust in the God of Israel, for his hope of a better future well beyond his many awful predicaments, a hope of a future perfection in their relationship with the Lord in a kingdom here on earth in a New Covenant, if it wasn’t for all those hopes, no doubt Jeremiah’s heart would’ve failed within him under the weight of all his sorrow.

That future vision Jeremiah had of life in the kingdom on Earth was so clear and so bright, which also ironically made him a prophet of hope and the prophet of the Lord’s coming glory. Despite all the sorrow and all the prophecies about the judgment to come, he was a prophet of hope. In the midst of all that prophetic doom, he still saw in his mind’s eye the dawn of a brighter day. He saw the New Covenant. He saw the future relationship between his people and the Lord, between all mankind and God, during the Lord’s reign out of Zion.

The personal center of faith the people of Israel lacked in his lifetime would during the kingdom become perfect with a perfectly righteous Christ, ruling over all men on the earth. They, as a nation, would gather round the person of Christ, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS, the Son of David, Israel’s coming king. In chapter 23 we find a great prophecy of about restoration in the kingdom. He speaks of the days when the righteous Branch, the King, is to reign, when Judah will be delivered and Israel shall dwell safely (23:5-8). Greater still are the prophesies about the New Covenant in chapters 30-31.

The Book of Jeremiah is principally composed of testimony appealing to the conscience of his people on the context of their horrific spiritual condition with an eye to the judgment to come if they didn’t repent, or change their minds about God. Judah had forsaken Jehovah. Their repentance under Josiah was but a façade. The kings who succeeded Josiah brought about the complete, spiritual ruination of a people turned away from God. The prophet’s heart was overwhelmed with grief, because of his love for his people. At the same time, he was filled with a deep sense of their poor standing before the eyes of God. His phenomenal comprehension of the spiritual state of Israel produced this continual conflict in his soul between the value of his people as the people of God, and a holy jealousy for the glory of God and His rights over His people, rights which they were abandoning with great aplomb.

So he pleaded with them. He had stood in the breach for them before Jehovah, but he saw that it was all in vain. His own people rejected God and the testimony that He sent them. God Himself would no longer hear prayers made for Israel.

Still Jeremiah faithfully prophesied for the Lord despite this no-win situation, which was a truly sorrowful task, and one that made the prophet a man of deep sorrow. And although he could always say that, if the people repented, they would be received in grace, he knew full well that his people had not one inkling of ever repenting.

At one point, his anguished cry rings out in Jer. 9:1: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” Jeremiah made it abundantly clear to his nation the reason God’s anger was kindled against them: In Jer. 5:25, he says, “YOUR INIQUITIES have turned away these things, and YOUR SINS HAVE WITHOLDEN GOOD THINGS FROM YOU’‘. In 15:6. He says, “THOU HAS FORSAKEN ME, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward: THEREFORE WILL I STRETCH OUT MY HAND AGAINST THEE, AND DESTROY THEE; I am weary with repenting”.

Yet, Israel refused to respond to God’s warnings and now judgment was to be executed against her. Little wonder, then, that he wept sorely and was heavy hearted as he saw the Gentile nations closing in upon his people.

Not only had the nation forsaken God, but they had turned on Jeremiah as well. In vs. 15, Jeremiah laments to the Lord, “know that for Thy sake I have suffered rebuke” In verse 18, he says, “Why is my pain perpetual and my wound incurable, which refused to be healed? Wilt Thou be altogether unto me as a liar and as waters that fail?” He’s asking, essentially, why won’t you heal my pain? Why are the wounds of my enemies continually inflicted upon me? Why must all this suffering continue?

THE REJOICING HEART

Yet, in the midst of all that despair, Jeremiah was driven to God and His Word for relief.

“THY WORDS WERE FOUND, AND I DID EAT THEM; AND THY WORD WAS UNTO ME THE JOY AND REJOICING OF MINE HEART: for I am called by Thy name, O Lord God of hosts” (Jer. 15:16).

In vs. 15, he says, “for thy sake I have suffered rebuke,” and at the end of verse 16, he says, “for I am called by Thy name, O Lord God of hosts.” It was for that reason that his enemies hated him. For that reason he knew that God would always stand by him. He was called by the God of this universe to be a testimony for Him before a wicked and perverse nation just as we are called before a wicked and perverse world, and there is joy in that calling and joy in fulfilling all that God has called us to be as the ambassadors of His Son.

In the beginning of vs. 16, he says, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart”. In the midst of his anguish and depression and in the midst of all that hatred and persecution from his own people, he sought the words of the Lord and found them. “Thy words were found, found by me.” He sought His Words. He found His Words, and His words became his joy and rejoicing in his heart.

This is a timeless principle. As it was for Jeremiah, so it is for us. The source of joy and comfort for us dealing with the spiritual bankruptcy of this world is only found when we take the time to seek His Words to us. We don’t simply read His Words casually. We do as Jeremiah did. We eat them. We fully digest His Words. We take them in. We seriously consider His Words. We meditate upon them. We give ourselves wholly over to them. And the result will be for us, just as it was for Jeremiah, that “thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart”.

The joy, the power, the change in us by His Word is timeless across all ages.

David wrote in Psalm 119:103, “How sweet are Thy Words unto my taste! Yea sweeter than honey to my mouth!”

We are all across all ages made anew by the Word of God. Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:23, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”

We grow by the Word of God. I Peter 2:2, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.”

We are built up by the Word of God. Paul told the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:32, “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”

We are sanctified in our walk by the Word of God. In John 17:17, the Lord prayed to the Father, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”

We are made clean through the Word of God. The Lord told His disciples in John 15:3, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.”

We are to go everywhere and preach the Word of God. II Timothy 4:2, Paul wrote, “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.”

In I Peter 1:24-25, the apostle writes, “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” David said in Psalms 119:89, “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven:” He said in Psalms 138:2, “I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth; for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.” He said in Psalms 119:140, “Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it:” He said in Psalms 119:161-162, “Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word. I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil:” He said in Psalms 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

This brings to mind one of my favorite paragraph’s in Baker’s Dispensational Theology:“The Bible is a Hammer (Jer. 23:29) with which to break the hard heart; it is a Critic/Discerner (Heb. 4:12) of the “thoughts and intents of the heart”; it is a Mirror (2 Cor. 3:18; Jas. 1:25) to reveal the true condition of man; it is a Laver (Eph. 5:26; Ps. 119:11; John 15:3) for the washing of the defiled; it is Seed (Luke 8:11; 1 Pet. 1:23) for the soil; it is the Sun (Ps. 19:1-6) for the seed sown; it is the Rain and the Snow (Isa. 55:10,11) for the seed sown; it is Food (Job 23:12) for the hungry,–milk for babes (1 Cor. 3:2; Heb. 5:12, 13) bread for the more mature (Deut. 8:3; Isa. 55:1, 2), strong meat for the full grown (1 Cor. 3:2; Heb. 5: 12-14), and Honey for all (Ps. 19:10); it is Gold (Ps. 19:10; 119:72) for the poor; it is a Lamp (Ps. 119:105; Prov. 6:23; 2 Cor. 4:6; 2 Pet. 1:19) for the traveler; it is a Sword (Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12; Rev. 19:15) for the soldier; and it is Fire (Jer. 20:9; 23:29; Ps. 39:3) to impel the believer to service.”

Which brings us back to Jeremiah 15:16, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts.” The words of God to us always brings “Joy and rejoicing” when they are found.