Taking Jeremiah Personally (Jeremiah 1:1-5) Series

Note: I benefitted greatly from Skip Heitzig's sermon on Jeremiah from his "The Bible From 30,000 feet" series.

Good morning. Please turn to the book of Jeremiah in your Bibles.

INTRODUCTION:

Anyone want to guess what the number one song of 1971 was? You’ve probably guessed, just because of where we are in our read through of the Bible. But if you haven’t clued in yet, the number one song was not ”You’ve Got a Friend” by James Taylor. That was #19.

It wasn’t “Take me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver (sorry, Mike). That was #8.

No, the number one song in 1971 was “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night. It is best known by its first line: "Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine.”

“Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine. Never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine. And he always had some mighty fine wine."

It goes to show you a couple of things. First, it doesn’t take a whole lot of brain cells to write a number one song. But secondly… For every Boomer in here that’s ever complained about how dumb today’s music is, just sit down. Because our generation made “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” the number one song of 1971.

But I do wonder if Three Dog Night might be responsible for people’s misconceptions about the book of Jeremiah.

Once a student in a college level introduction to the Old Testament course was asked to summarize the message of Jeremiah. Well, he hadn’t studied, so he had no idea what the book of Jeremiah was about. So he wrote down, Joy to the World. All the boys and girls. Joy to the fishes and the deep blue sea! Joy to you and me.

And maybe you came in thinking the exact same thing. You were like, “This is going to be the best three weeks of my life. What an upbeat, positive book this is going to be!

And then you find out, it’s not!

See, Jeremiah was not a bullfrog. Jeremiah was a bullhorn. And his message was not Joy to the World. It was SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT. It was a very unpopular message to the people of Judah. He was God's bullhorn, announcing to anyone who would listen what was about to happen to Jerusalem.

Jeremiah is sometimes referred to as the last prophet of Judah, because it was during his forty year ministry that Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BC. The temple was destroyed, and the entire population was led into exile.

Jeremiah is also called the weeping prophet. You see, unlike Jonah, who hated the Ninevites and didn’t want to see them repent, Jeremiah loved his countrymen, and he begged them to repent. Jonah didn’t want the Ninevites to repent, but they did. Jeremiah wanted to see the Jews repent, but they didn’t.

He witnessed the Babylonian invasion. He watched the city burn and the temple be destroyed. He was with the people of Jerusalem as they were led away into captivity.

And it broke his heart.

I’ve heard it said that no one has the right to preach about hell until they weep for the people who are going there. And Jeremiah wept for his people.

For 52 chapters. That’s what makes it so tough to read. The message of Jeremiah isn’t joy to the fishes and the deep blue sea. It was, “Flee from the wrath that is to come.” You could summarize the message of Jeremiah with three words: Warning, Weeping, Wrath.

So why do we study Jeremiah today? In our Bible reading plan we have three straight weeks of Jeremiah. Can’t we just do a two day overview and then move on? When are we going to get to the New Testament?

The truth is, I don’t know that I’ve met anyone that loves Jeremiah. I don’t love Jeremiah. But I also have never met anyone who doesn’t need the message of Jeremiah. It’s not just his message. You’re right—if all it was was his message, then we really could do a synopsis and move on. But I think we learn as much from Jeremiah the man as much Jeremiah the book. Jeremiah was a prophet who struggled with his call, doubted God, accused God of lying to him, got beaten up (by a priest, for crying out loud!), put in jail, slandered, thrown into a hole in the ground and left to die. At one point the king of Judah cut up his prophecy line by line and threw it in the fire.

But he never gave up. He never walked away from God. For 40 years he stayed in the same place, with the same people.