It Makes Me Want to Weep

Jeremiah is often referred to as “the weeping prophet” because of the sorrow he felt for the sins of his people. Just reading the first few chapters makes me want to weep, and I didn’t experience as Jeremiah did the call to speak God’s words to a people who had no desire to hear the message. Jeremiah was young and afraid, and for good reason—many of the prophets who came before him were treated cruelly because of the message they brought. Even so, God called Jeremiah as a prophet and told him that his youth was of no matter “because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak” (Jer. 1:7, NASB). The words Jeremiah spoke revealed that God’s judgment came to his peculiar people because they forsook him, created idols with their own hands, and offered sacrifices to them (Jer. 1:16). In chapter two, God reminds the people of the devotion they formerly had for him and their particular status before the Lord as holy (vs. 1-3) and reminded them of his miraculous deliverance and provision (vs. 6-7). In typical human fashion, God’s chosen people “went far from [him] and walked after emptiness and became empty” (vs. 5). God gave them everything in a land flowing with milk and honey, but they “defiled [his] land” and made an “abomination” of the inheritance they had received (vs. 7). Add to that their demands for a king (against God’s pleasure) and keepers of the law who didn’t even know the nature of God, rulers who sinned against him, prophets who chose to prophesy in Baal’s name instead of speaking the difficult truth God would have them speak, people who chased after things that did not profit and could not satisfy (vs. 8), and it is enough to make me want to cry. What really makes me want to weep is the comparison I can make between the people of Judah and our nation today. We, too, have changed any glory we could have in God for things that are of no benefit to us (vs. 11). Maybe we don’t create, bow down, or worship creatures instead of the Creator, but we let anything and everything come before God; in doing this, we have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Rom. 1:25). As God sent judgment on Judah for their idol worship, we too will receive judgment, but of a different form. Romans 1:28-32 paints a foreboding picture of the penalty for people who no longer saw any need for God:

“God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not

proper, being filled with unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy,

murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent,

arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”

We, like Jeremiah, are called to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). If we do this, God will plant seeds, water them, and harvest them in due time through the work of his word and his spirit. The alternative to our living lives that glorify him and spread the good news of his gospel makes me want to cry.