THE OUTSIDER

Early on in his prophetic ministry Jeremiah gave vent to the following words, “To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so that they cannot hear. The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it. But I am full of the wrath of the Lord and I cannot hold it in.” (Jer. 6:10). He was still a very young man when he said this, and had expected to be heard and thanked for his timely warning about the state of his nation and the danger it faced of judgement. He received precisely the opposite. Apart from a few companions, he was rejected, persecuted and remained so for the rest of his life. He was always an outsider to his nation.


The prophetic burden for his nation, however, burned strong and deep within, and he could never escape from it. The sin was all too plainly there in the nation, laid bare before his eyes – “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike (all those leaders who should have known better), all practice deceit. They dress the wounds of my people as though it were not serious”. (6:11) But still he could find no audience ready to listen to his warning. He suffered a great deal of hurt and despair, and increasingly so as the years passed.


Much later on in his ministry he remonstrated with the people with these words, “For twenty three years the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.” (Jer. 25:3)He had persisted with warnings of judgement, his ministry reflecting the enormous patience of the Lord much more perhaps than his own. But his word to the nation had not really penetrated. Indeed the resistance had grown harder, and now his word, prompted by God, was to become much more severe until judgement and disaster actually fell on Judah and the surrounding nations. He lived to see it happen all round him, still the outsider.


Some fifty two long chapters of the book of Jeremiah record this daunting ministry and this daunting episode of history. These were not given to us simply for historical interest, but as a record of God’s awesome dealings with nations – as important today as they ever were. Tragically the response to them is very much the same as it was in Jeremiah’s day. Even our “priests and prophets”, let alone our national leaders, treat the clear message of judgement in these chapters as outside the pale of modern acceptable thinking. They are branded as “fundamentalist” or “immoral”. For me that very fact makes them all the more relevant and incisive. It utterly verifies what this prophetic book has to say, and makes hugely relevant Jeremiah’s cry of, “Who will listen?”


God himself knows the “outsiders”, and walks with them, for that is where the nation has sought to place even him.



Bob




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