Great Prayers No.4 Jeremiah's Prayer - Why me, Lord?

Thank you for joining us for this evening's lecture. I hope you enjoy it. Jeremiah 20, O Lord, Verse 7, O Lord, you deceived me and, I was deceived, you overpowered me and prevailed.

I am ridiculed all day long, everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long.

But if I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, his word in my heart is like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in. Indeed I cannot.

I hear many whispering, terror on every side, report him, let's report him. All my friends are waiting for me to slip, saying, perhaps he will be deceived, then we will prevail over him and take our revenge on him. But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior, so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.

They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced, that his honor will never be forgotten. O Lord Almighty, you who examine the righteous and probe the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause. Sing to the Lord, give praise to the Lord, he rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked.

Cursed be the day I was born, may the day my mother bore me not be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, a child is born to you, a son. May that man be like the towns the Lord overthrew without pity, may he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon, for he did not kill me in the womb.

With my mother as my grave, her womb enlarged forever, why did I ever come out of the womb? To see trouble and sorrow, and to end my days in shame. This could well have been the reading of last Sunday evening when we were putting up the question, where is God when it hurts? Here is a preacher asking, why me Lord? And if there are never occasions in your life when the subjects we dealt with last Sunday night and this twin subject this morning don't affect you, then I reckon you have lived a very charmed existence. In fact, I find it hard to believe that anyone goes through life without ever asking some questions in regard to the sovereignty of God and what he permits.

The Bible says that if having walked with men you find difficulty, then how will you cope with horses? How will you compete with them? If having to confront minor problems, how will you deal with the major problems? The Bible is nothing if not realistic. It will not allow the theology of some of our ill-thought-out choruses which speak of life being happy forever after having trusted Jesus as Savior. It will not even allow the conclusion that the blood of Jesus has not only cleansed us from sin, that is absolute, but as a result he has triumphed over sickness, therefore it is impossible for any who follow in the footsteps of Jesus ever to be ill.

The Bible does not say that. And the challenge comes from God's Word. Having coped at one level of difficulty, how are you going to respond when possibly pressures increase and the dilemma is greater? Now, Jeremiah, he was a sensitive man.

If ever there was a man who shouldn't have gone into the ministry, it was Jeremiah. I remember once in my theological college of years ago being informed by one of our tutors that one of the things you never did with a congregation is get yourself so close that emotionally you're affected by anyone's individual circumstances. I found of a college course which was exceedingly well thought out that to be the most unhelpful, most unhelpful thing that was ever said.

How can you relate to the difficulties of others without relating at an emotional level? And here is Jeremiah. He's a sensitive man. He was born in a little village called Ananoth, which was some miles from Jerusalem.

It became a sort of dormitory town like Bethany, like Jericho for the priests. When they couldn't sleep in Jerusalem, they would go there. And it was amongst the clergy that he really spent his earlier years.

There was a king by the name of Josiah. He was a very great man. He turned his back on the practices of his father and he instigated a reformation and revival which broke out in southern Israel.

And there was just a lapse, or rather there was just a time of common denominator between the ministry of Jeremiah and that of the king Josiah. Jeremiah too was in the vanguard of this movement for reform. The established church, inverted commas, so to speak, in those days was really quite disgraceful.

It had given up on the theology of Moses. Things were allowed in Israel which really caused God to blush. And Josiah, credit to him, brings around this renewal and returns them to the practices of their forefathers.

And Jeremiah, he becomes the preacher who's still around when Josiah has gone. There's also another preacher and his name is Pashur. You come across him in the first verse of this twentieth chapter.

And he is all that Jeremiah is not in terms of personality. He's a charismatic, small c, a charismatic figure. When he speaks, people come along and they listen in their dozens, in their hundreds.

Now one of the things about Pashur which distinguishes him from Jeremiah is this, that he does not go along with the reformation movement. Someone has defined a popular preacher as someone who combines massage with proclamation. In other words, you bring a pleasing message.

To change the metaphor, you give a sweet. You give chocolate. You deal with the niceties.

You never cope with the areas that need to be corrected. And you will find in the insights that you're given into the ministry of Pashur that that describes him. He was a clergyman given to massage, a masseur of the people.

He said peace when there was no peace. He predicted that all in the garden was lovely and that one could push on one side the reforms that Josiah had instituted. Jeremiah spoke against this and remained true to the reformation of the king.

And when he went back to his native Ananoth, Jeremiah becomes unpopular because he has told the clergy that they too need to reform. And so on one occasion, you remember Jeremiah and you'll recall this because I preached on it not so long ago. He goes in Jerusalem to the potter's house and there he watches the potter as he forms a particular vase.

The vase is imperfect. And Jeremiah sees the potter as he remakes it. And he believes that Israel can be remade.

But he also appreciates that if the reformation principles are tossed out then fissures, cracks will come into the pottery and Israel will no longer exist as a nation set out especially for the Lord. And so Jeremiah has Pashur and the leaders of the clergy and they leave Jerusalem for they're in the trail of Jeremiah and he takes one of these vases and he lifts it up and having spoken against the nation, he throws the vase down on the ground and it fragments. And Jeremiah says, this is what God is going to do with Israel.

And as a result, Pashur, who is the leader of the temple, has Jeremiah imprisoned. Pashur, who controls the house of God, has incarcerated the man who brings the word of God. And you find Jeremiah in the 7th verse of this 20th chapter suffering for the proclamation of the gospel as he understood it in those days.

There never has been a preacher, popular, who cuts where the word of God cuts, who corrects where the word of God corrects. It's not that people do not want to hear from God, what they want is for God to speak to them what they want to hear. But the message of the prophet, the message of the preacher, is always to proclaim what God has entrusted to him.

And so, as a result, Jeremiah finds himself in great difficulty. Pashur has been renamed by Jeremiah. Look at verse 3. The Lord's name for you is not Pashur, but Megamithabib, for God will make you a terror on every hand.

Now the interesting thing is that in the preaching of Jeremiah, the thought of terror and judgment was forefront. And the very name that Jeremiah gives to Pashur becomes a nickname, a stigma that is directed towards the prophet himself. He too is called Megamithabib, the man who is always preaching judgment, the brimstone and fire individual who increasingly becomes a source of contempt in our nation.

So you see, what opens up for us as we read from the 7th verse through to the 18th verse of this chapter are the dire circumstances of Jeremiah. He's in the stocks. He won't be the first, neither will he be the last.

There was a sense in which Joseph was in the stocks, certainly he was incarcerated for bringing the word of the Lord. Paul and Silas too will lose their freedom because they discharge God's message in their generation. And let's face it, it's not always easy to take that sort of difficulty.

Now yours may be lesser. Maybe, unlike Gary, you've never been threatened with imprisonment. But you have known times when God has allowed to break out upon you the things that you would never have chosen.

How do you cope? Do you know one thing about the Bible which makes it unique? There are several. But one thing is this, it's utter honesty. You see, here is this man, Jeremiah, and he's a successful preacher, a sentimental man, yes, an emotional man, yes.

But a successful preacher, successfully discharging what he knows from the Lord. He's also a human being. And it hurts.

It hurts to be marked. It hurts to be in the stocks. It hurts to have your body fixed in a position which does not allow you any degree of comfort whatsoever.

However, when Jeremiah has his private moments, you find that the passion with which he preached is the passion that he also displays before God in terms of his personal walk with the Lord. He does not give himself as he could do to the libraries of Jerusalem. He does not read the history of Babylon which is available to him.

What you find that Jeremiah doing when he is on his own in the stocks is speaking to the Lord with that same passion that he used when he preached. What a man is in private is always a revelation. And sometimes the tawdry press, the gutter press in the 20th century, in the latter part, is more concerned about a man in private than what he does in public, with the net result that the majority of people know more about Prince Charles' private life than they know about the Prince Charles Trust and what he endeavours to do for the benefit of the nation.

The latter never balances out the former, but the fact that in these days we are so concerned about the tawdry, so concerned to demean people publicly, is a reflection, a poor reflection, on our society. But there is a sense in which, when you look at Jeremiah, you are glad that the inspired writer goes behind the scenes, burrows a little hole through the wall into his privacy, and you find on five occasions in the prophecy the sort of confessions of Jeremiah, Jeremiah confronting the Lord, and he does so, I say, with that same degree of emotion and passion as when he preaches publicly. So here he is in a sort of semi-private situation, there are others which are even more so, and what do you discover him doing? He's asking questions.

Lord. And the language is here so blunt in the original that I hesitate to give it to you, and will stay with the translation that the NIV has opted for, oh Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived. You overpowered me and prevailed.

Lord, when Israel was in a right relationship with the Lord, in the Old Testament, very often the analogy of marriage is employed. Israel is seen as being God's wife, and the Lord as Israel's husband, and here is the situation of a broken marriage. Lord, you've deceived me.

Pashur, his lot, the establishment, doing well, Lord. Look at me. I can't shift my neck.

Look at me. They are now mocking me with the very designation that you gave to Pashur. They're saying I am Mr. Fire and Brimstone.

All day long I'm ridiculed. In language that is very much like what you find in Job's chapter three, so Jeremiah pours out his complaint to the Lord, his pressures are external, those of the scorn that's heaped upon him, but his pressure is also internal. My problem is that I'm a preacher, and I try to start preaching, but the word of the Lord is so powerful, in my heart it's like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones.

I'm weary of holding it in. Indeed, I cannot. You see his point? Internally, externally, he's in difficulty, and he does not blush to bring his problem to the Lord, and I think we need to give a corrective to ourselves.

If we think that sometimes when we run into difficulty, and our minds are filled with questions, we are necessarily sinning. God gave us an intelligence. God gave us an inquiring spirit, provided that you take the shoes from off your feet and appreciate you're on holy ground.

I say it is not wrong to ask questions of God. The wrong comes when God does not answer eloquently enough for you, or resolve the difficulty at the moment, and you refuse to give to him the possibility that time and eternity will balance the situation. What God asks from you is patience.

What God asks from you is time, but God never says to you, don't ask your questions. Oh Lord, if I said I will not mention your name, and that's the reason why I'm in difficulty, I'm weary with holding, I can't do anything, but speak. There are those who whisper terror on every side, you see that's the slanderous term, this is the prophet, report him, let's report him, they're waiting for me to slip, they've got the Sun reporter just around the corner, waiting for me to do something that will disgrace me and to placard it in front of everybody, and I can't cope with that strain Lord.

Perhaps he will be deceived, then we will prevail over him and take our refuge on him. You see he has a problem, he has a problem with a God who doesn't seem to be as involved in his circumstances to the degree that he would like. He has a problem with people, his friends so-called, the clergy of his day, what it's more he's got a problem with himself, look at verse 14, curse me the day that I was born, he believes that not to have existed would be better than to exist, and I dare say that there are people in the tabernacle who have at some point in their lives thought the same.

I am utterly worthless, my life so filled with pain, better for the man who heard that my mother had me in her womb to have snuffed out the life of me and my mother than me to have been born. You can hardly get into much more of a dire depression than that can you? May that man be like the towns the Lord overthrew without pity, verse 16, may he be like Sodom and Gomorrah, may he hear wailing in the morning a battle cry at noon. Now you have to slip this back into the context, you see here is not a piece of closely reasoned theology.

Here is a man spontaneously reacting to the problems and the pressures that are his. You can't read the Bible like philosophy. The Bible does not always give you a compact argument.

The Bible is not even a systematic theology. The Bible is a compendium of writings of people who have learned from the Lord and who have punctuated their learning sometimes by giving us insights into life as they understood it. It's a real book for real people.

It doesn't cross all the I's, it doesn't dot all the I's, it doesn't cross all the T's. But it gives you a back cloth of faith, a back cloth of interpretation, a belief that despite all the vicissitudes, the changes of life, God is. But here is Jeremiah you see and he's having to really work at it, as Job has to work at it, as to a lesser extent Paul had to work at it, as he writes to the Corinthians and said we despaired even of life itself, not that he was suicidal, as far as the Apostle is concerned it was the pressures.

All that he was undergoing in terms of being a disciple of Jesus Christ was life threatening. And so he pens that comment, that rare autobiographical word to the Corinthians, we despaired even of life. Why verse 18, did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my day, my days in shame.

Now God doesn't answer the question, neither did he answer the question as far as Job was concerned. Again, some of our 20th century theologians are far more clever than the Bible is. There are certain questions the Bible does not address head on.

What it gives is basic information for you to hang on in the circumstances in which you find yourself. And here is Jeremiah, oh yes he'll come out of jail, but it's not a life that is happy ever after that you come across when you go to the 21st chapter and to the 22nd chapter because later on you'll find him languishing at the bottom of a clay pit. So how does he cope? How do you cope when things fall out in your life in the way that you would not have chosen? Says Jeremiah in the 11th verse, and the illogicality of his statement from verses 11 to 13 is very pronounced.

He moves from despair and despondency, because that's what happened from verse 10 and in front of, and that's what happens from verse 14 and following. He moves from this despondency and sandwiched between his depression, there is this singular piece of information which Jeremiah gives you about himself. It doesn't add up, but then when you're going through difficulty, things do not necessarily add up in the way that you evaluate them intellectually.

The Lord, he says, is with me like a mighty warrior, so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and thoroughly be disgraced, their dishonor will never be forgotten. Oh Lord Almighty, you who examine the righteous and probe the heart of mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.

And then, can you believe it, the man who moves out of depression and back into depression sings the doxology, verse 13, sing to the Lord, give praise to the Lord, he rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked. Do you ever have that experience? You come into the tab and maybe you were feeling a little despondent and depressed, and then the atmosphere, the singing of the hymns, maybe the proclamation of the word, a number of things, they lift your spirits, and there you are, if one can use the expression on cloud seven. Give it an hour or two, or give it the following day, and you've dropped down again.

Have you had that experience? Well at least I can tell you this, Jeremiah also had it. Thank God, I say, for the honesty of the Bible, Jeremiah is able to hang on, because the framework in which he interprets his life is a framework of the love of God, the sovereignty of God, and the realization that one day, come wind, come weather, God will make sense of all your circumstances. Now here's our beloved Lord, the disciples have got problems, they often had, and Jesus never stopped them from voicing their problems for bringing their questions.

He doesn't tell them off for that, but on one occasion he says, what I do now, you don't know, but you will know. Remember those of you who were present last week in that very moving evening service, I can say that unblushingly because I only had a little part to play, but remember the line that was quoted, not until the loom is silent will the shuttles cease to fly, when God unfurls the pattern that explains the reason why the dark threads were as needful in the weaver's skillful hands as the threads of gold and silver for the pattern he had planned. There were dark threads that the Lord brought into the life of Jeremiah at this time, and he is honest enough to say, Lord, it compels me even to question whether you have been faithful to me.

And then he pushes that thought on one side, and comes to grips with the thought that God is indeed a mighty warrior, and that ultimately those who bring Jeremiah such difficulty will be dealt with by him. So we're back again to our Lord, and with this we prepare to come around the table. You see, here is Jesus with his almost-Jeremiah experience.

He's in the garden, and his freedom will soon have gone. And the intensity of his psychological state is depicted by the bloody sweat that's on his forehead. And he says, facing the prospects of the cross, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

You see, the humanity of our Lord was real. This is why you can approach him with your doubts and your difficulties. He understands that.

But he goes on to say, but if not, Lord, your will be done. So the good Lord takes you into your blacker moments as well as into your brighter moments. Sometimes the blackness is as a result of your sin and your rebellion.

Sometimes it's not. It's just at the human level, a fluke of circumstances. He didn't let Jeremiah go.

He didn't let his son go, until that point uniquely when God turned his back on his son, which he will never do as far as you are concerned, when his son became sin. There is a love that will not let you go. There is a faithfulness which will remain constant.

To interpret the now in terms of that is not always possible, but you are to believe when you cannot see, and to hold on when sometimes your grip seems to be frail, and to realize the day will come, as it did with Jeremiah, when you will sing to the Lord and give praise to the Lord, and thank God that he did give you life on this earth. Let's sing. Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, 51, nor to be all else to me save that thou art.

Thou my best thought by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light. From the third verse, be thou my battlefield, number 51. Please be seated, and let's retain an attitude of prayer.

Father, it wasn't always easy to run with men, let alone keep up with horses. It wasn't always easy in the early years of our lives, when factors were less complicated, and now some of us are finding it difficult to jump. Some of us are finding it hard to cope with life's circumstances, but we praise you that you who ministered to Jeremiah and met him in his need, rather than release him from it, will you meet with us? We spoke of your presence, the fragrance of Jesus.

We prayed in the words of the song the little boy sung, that you would make your presence felt here, and we believe that there's a special way, as we take bread and wine and remember our Lord Jesus, so you mediate your power and your strength. And we need it, Lord. We need it so much.

Help us to eat and drink worthily, remembering that our salvation was brought by a tremendous sacrifice. Help us to eat and to drink with thanksgiving in our hearts. There's only one man in this church who I've ever joined and sat behind him on a camel.

And as far as I know, there's only one man in our church who's ever been in jail in Pakistan. We've got a dedication, and I'd like Mr. and Mrs. Goodall to come forward, where are they? We've got Gary and Chris, and I think they probably feel, Gary, that what I was just saying was not quite true. Let's just get Gary here for a moment, Chris, and I'll come and embarrass you later.

Is that so? Yes, yeah. What abouts was the, what abouts was the camel? That would have been on Karachi beach, I guess. And how did you finish up in jail? That was in Bahaulapur, and we were arrested for, because we were distributing gospel literature and the mobies didn't like it.

Did you know about him being a jailbird? Oh yes, I did, yes. How long have you been married? Just over a year. And this little lass? Five months, four months, sorry.

And what names? Hannah Grace. Any reason for Hannah Grace? Firstly, it was going to be Hannah, but then Chris's favourite name was Hannah, and so my favourite name was Grace, and so we decided on Hannah Grace, and then later found out that Hannah means Grace, so that was a confirmation that it was the right name. You had a rough time, are you okay now? Yes, I'm fine now, thank you, yes.

It's good to have you with us, let's just put this down for a moment. And boys and girls, what's happening, and men and women too, perhaps I should explain because we've always got visitors here, is that at the tab, though we don't criticise other churches for so doing, we don't baptise babies, we wait until they get a little bit bigger, and when our young folks have made their own confession that Jesus is Lord and Saviour, then we open the baptismal tank, and we plunge them in, and we're getting so ambitious now that we're going to put a high diving board in. So what they do, mums and dads, they bring their children to the tab, and they promise the Lord that they'll do their best to bring up their boy, their girl, to know the Lord Jesus as Saviour, and they ask that those of us who are adults, who love them and have an appreciation of their family life, that we'll remember them also in our prayers.

So Gary and Chris, to ask you the obvious, is it your desire this morning to thank God for the gift of this lovely little girl? Yes, it is. Do you promise as best you can to bring her up in such an environment that when she gets older, she may trust the Lord Jesus and confess Him as her Saviour? Yes, we do. And would you like the prayers of the people here to ask that God will make you to be successful parents? We do, very much.

Let's stand, shall we? A lovely verse that we've got is, I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him. Certainly that's true. You prayed for this lovely little lass.

Let's have her for a moment or two. Father, we do thank you for this lovely little girl and we commit Hannah Grace to you. We thank you for dear Gary and for your leading in his life and the way that you've blessed him.

We thank you for Christy too and just commit her to you. We thank you that during the difficulty of the birth, she nonetheless knew your presence and we thank you that she's well and strong. We thank you for this beautiful little lass.

We remember how Hannah in the Old Testament became such a gracious woman of God and we ask that the same may be the experience of this baby right now. We commit her to you mentally, physically, spiritually, bless her and prosper her and be with her dear parents and give to them the expertise to be good parents and for this little life to find life in Jesus in the years that are to come. For his name's sake, Amen.

Amen.