“My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.” (Jer 4:19 AV)
Jeremiah is a special kind of prophet.
He is tasked by the divine hand of God to preach to a people who are
about to lose everything. There will be
no repentance. There will be no
revival. Judah was heading towards
military defeat at the hands of Babylon.
The ten northern tribes had already been in captivity for several
generations. God’s people refused to
turn back to the God who brought them out of Egypt and not sit in jeopardy of
their liberty and lives. No matter what
messages Jeremiah preaches, there will be no change. Much like the preaching of Noah and his three
sons. While they were preparing the ark,
they preached repentance and judgment. Noah
and his three sons did not have one single convert. Only eight souls went into that ark. Lot was another. He lived righteously, yet vexed his righteous
soul at the influence of the cities in which he dwelt. He was God’s man and he couldn’t even save
his own wife. These men were asked to do
the impossible. They were asked to
preach with no hope of souls from their efforts. Jeremiah, called the weeping prophet,
preached his heart out and Judah completely ignored him. He saw what was coming and that was why his
bowels moved as they did. He could see
the train wreck, but no one was willing to move.
I feel sorry for my doctor. I don’t
know how he does it. He cares for many patients,
myself included, who don’t live a perfectly healthy lifestyle. We are getting better. We are starting to watch what we eat and
exercise a bit more. However, a
healthier lifestyle and the maintenance medications we are on are not going to
stave off the inevitable. Sometime in
the future, distant or near, this earthly tabernacle will cease to function. When the clock is slowly ticking down, my
poor doctor warns me of habits that may hasten that day. He is a top-notch clinician. He watches my blood draws like a hawk. He is the best doctor in the whole Milwaukee
area. I can assure you! He looks at all the labs and when he
diagnoses a problem, it is not merely by symptom. He wants to know the lab numbers. He orders specific tests and narrows down the
issue. In the end, whatever treatment is
followed, another problem will crop up.
I don’t know how he can treat patients like me who don’t always follow
his educated advice. He has to go home
every night knowing the vast majority of his patients will disregard what he
knows is best for them and return months later with a different problem. It has to be truly disheartening.
This is what every messenger of God faces no matter the
generation. The overwhelming majority of
souls one shares the love of Christ with will reject what they deeply and
desperately need. This doesn’t stop with
the lost. When the preacher mounts the
pulpit, at any given time, he may be addressing a largely deaf audience. What is worse is he can see what is on the
horizon. He knows the great falling away
which precedes the coming of the Antichrist is upon us. He can see the overall condition of the world
and the church at large. He knows things
will not get better until they get worse.
Yet, like Jeremiah and Noah, he still declares the word of God with
compassion and concern. His bowels are
moved at the condition of mankind and knows there is very little he can do
about it. He is looking for that one drowning
swimmer who will scream for help so he can rescue the perishing. The task in front of us is daunting and
emotionally draining. Only by our love
for Christ, the lost and the sheep, and the power of the Holy Spirit can we
continue in the valiant effort. We need
to pray for the Jeremiahs. He quite. He gave up.
That is until the message of God’s plan burned in his bones like a
fire. Pray for one another. Prayer for you preacher. Pray the Spirit to keep alive the flame of
the gospel lest he burns out with the reality of the situation.
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