Fire in My Bones

Jeremiah considers keeping his mouth closed. His logic is, while I can’t keep God from speaking to me, I don’t have to speak for him. It doesn’t work. Impression without expression leads to depression. The message of God, once inside the prophet, is so potent it eats away at him until and unless he works out what God has worked in. He can’t suppress it. He’s like a trumpet without a mute. There is no mortal governor capable of keeping the message down; it just bellows out. It’s like a fire in his bones.

Jeremiah is stuck. He is a prophet. By definition he has an unpopular message. You’ve heard the phrase popular preacher or well-loved pastor, but we don’t usually use the phrase popular prophet. Even if there is such a thing, the words sound discordant. God raises a prophet up because there is a problem to address. The call is not popular, and it is equally unshakable. Jeremiah can no more cease to be a prophet than he can change his age. It’s in his DNA. Literally. Remember, in 1:5 God called Jeremiah with the words,

I chose you before I formed you in the womb;

I set you apart before you were born.

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

As the sinew was coalescing on Jeremiah’s bones, God knew that those fingers would point down to man and up to God, that the feet would take him to stand where few were willing to stand, and that the vocal cords would arrest the attention of the nations. God made him for this reason. And for this reason he cannot escape.

So Jeremiah feels that God has deceived him, that his message will never be received, and that he was trapped with no way of escape. An unpopular prophet, an unwanted message, and an unalterable call: he is called and stuck.

Yet there is some good news. There is a reason we should be encouraged: God fights for us.

Jeremiah 20:11-13

This is not the fourth point of the sermon. It does not fit with the other three. This is the contrast. We have an unpopular prophet with an unwanted message and an unalterable call, but we have an unstoppable Warrior who fights for us. How glorious!

Jeremiah says all this in one breath: “Well, I feel like God tricked me, I hate what I am doing, and I don’t even want to do it, but in the midst of that, God is going to scare my enemies out of their minds! He is a dread warrior.” He knows he is unpopular, he knows he does not want to do it, he knows he is hated, but he knows God is going to defend him. What a wonderful concept! Look at the imagery here:

Then he prays that God’s vengeance will be on them because—get this—he has committed his cause to God.

What an emotional ride! The mental picture evokes Jeremiah on a windswept hillside cliff with his fists toward heaven. He is telling God that he does not want to do this. Jeremiah is so unpopular, but he is trapped and must be a prophet. As he talks to God, he counsels himself. He realizes the irrationality of telling God off. So two massive things happen: he acknowledges that God is the ultimate Judge, so he asks this Judge not only to try his case but to defend him as well. He goes from resenting God to trusting God in one breath.

Life as a preacher has its ups and downs. It’s good to know that one of the seminal prophets in history—someone God tapped to speak the truth and someone God hardwired in the womb for prophetic ministry—could, in one breath, resent God and trust him. What’s more, the God we serve chose to allow this to be in the pages of Scripture. Nothing glossed over there.

By the way, there is an important lesson here: God is the opposite of passive-aggressive. He’s always in your face!

God is always active. God is never passive. It’s just all out there.

If Jeremiah were to journal this privately then tear it out and throw it away, something would be lost. This passage is not whispered, it is screamed. With the same voice that called for repentance, the custom-made prophet yells out to God. In the end he was not just complaining; he was counseling himself. He would have made a horrible counseling client if he did not tell the truth. So he did. His angst led him to the truth that God was going to take care of everything.

When we discuss our unwanted call, we have an unstoppable warrior. There is strength in honesty. But the strength is not ours, it is his. He is on the other side of honesty. The question is, Are we willing enough to follow him there? It’s as scary as it is real.

Pastor Ronn Dunn would often use the illustration of God unplugging us. What he meant is that we have all these valued sources of life, like an electric wall outlet overloaded with a dozen different plugs. When we are overloaded with idols, idols from which we think we are drawing strength, God has a tendency to unplug them. One by one. When he unplugs one, you at first freak out, then you realize you can live without it.

Life is the process of God’s getting more of me. From God’s perspective, he is yanking all the other things out so I can see that he is all I need. What a glorious God we serve! Jeremiah is totally unplugged. He tells God as much. And in doing so, he acknowledges God and is now free. He commits it to the dread warrior.

One would think that after such a compelling message, the prophet would tie this up in a neat bow and move on. After all, this passage follows the up-down trajectory we all want: situation, rising tension, and release of tension. He has a problem, he knows God is the solution, so the problem is solved. But then again, this is Jeremiah. So the end is not the end—he adds a somber lament—and that’s perfectly fine.

Those of us who believe the gospel see it everywhere. We see the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus in the child who expresses faith in Christ. From that young life, God gives new life. We see the gospel in the horrid souls tortured by the consequences of sin who, when giving their lives to Christ, find new life. Death followed by resurrection. So it’s somewhat natural, I suppose, that we would want to see that everywhere, even when it does not ultimately exist. This is what theologians call an “overrealized eschatology,” meaning that, while all the promises of the gospel are given to us, the ultimate expression of the gospel, God’s victory over sin and the devil, will not come until some time later. Revelation 19 is as real as if it were right now, but it’s not real right now. Jesus is the warrior Messiah, but the execution of his enemies is stayed at the moment. They have more time to be saved; we have more time to live in a lost world. The one entails the other.

All that to say, the messiness of Jeremiah is, in this way, comforting. He has this full-blown expression of trust and confidence in God, yet he is confident that it’s not over.

The messy ending is encouraging, but that’s not its function. Jeremiah is not thinking of how to encourage us thousands of years later. This is not a greeting card; it’s a journal entry. He is not pretending authenticity so he can relate to us; it’s simply that raw. And in his honesty he really is encouraging. Even in the midst of difficulty, God is our dread warrior. He fights for us.