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Objective

In this lesson, we’ll see that God accomplishes His work through our faithful service, even when we face suffering and persecution for His name.

Key Verse

Jeremiah 1:9: Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth.”

Introduction

Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry during the reign of good King Josiah, but he would witness some of the darkest days in Judah’s history. He prophesied for over forty years, watching his beloved nation spiral toward destruction and eventually seeing Jerusalem fall to the Babylonian army.

Jeremiah 25:3-4: For twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day—the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened. And though the Lord has sent all his servants the prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or paid any attention.

When the terrible destruction finally came, Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations to express his deep grief over Jerusalem’s fall. This earned him the title “the weeping prophet,” but his tears were not tears of despair—they were the tears of a man who truly understood God’s heart for His people.

Jeremiah came from a priestly family in the small town of Anathoth, where only priests lived. His father was Hilkiah, who may have been the same high priest who discovered the lost scroll of God’s law in the temple during Josiah’s reign. This background gave Jeremiah intimate knowledge of both God’s Word and the spiritual condition of Judah’s religious leaders.

Jeremiah 1:1: The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin.

In this lesson we’ll examine three essential aspects of Jeremiah’s service to God:

• Jeremiah’s call from God
• Jeremiah’s suffering for faithfulness
• Jeremiah’s heart for God’s people

During this turbulent period, God also raised up another prophet named Ezekiel who ministered among the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Though these two men served in different locations, their messages beautifully complemented each other and demonstrated God’s faithful care for His people both in Judah and in exile.

Jeremiah’s Call

Throughout Scripture, we see how God calls His servants to specific tasks. We’ve studied how God called Abraham to leave his homeland, Moses to deliver Israel from Egypt, Gideon to lead Israel against their enemies, and Elisha to succeed Elijah as prophet. In the New Testament, Paul reminds us that every believer has received a calling from God to serve Him.

Ephesians 4:1: As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

2 Timothy 1:9: He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.

Jeremiah gives us one of the clearest examples in Scripture of how God calls people to serve Him. His calling reveals four essential principles that apply to every believer’s service for God.

Jeremiah 1:4-10: The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord. Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

From these verses, we discover four truths about God’s calling on our lives:

First, God has a plan for our lives. Before Jeremiah was even born, God had chosen him and set him apart for His purposes. This doesn’t mean we have no choice in how we respond to God, but it does mean that God sees the end from the beginning and has good works prepared for us to walk in.

Second, we often feel inadequate in ourselves. When God revealed His plan to Jeremiah, the young man immediately protested that he was too young and didn’t know how to speak well. Moses made similar excuses when God called him. Our sense of inadequacy isn’t a disqualification—it’s an opportunity to depend on God’s strength rather than our own abilities.

Third, God promises to be with us. The Lord assured Jeremiah that he should not be afraid because God would be with him and would rescue him. This is the same promise God gives to every believer. We don’t serve in our own strength, but in the power of the One who has called us.

Fourth, God enables us for the work He gives us. When the Lord touched Jeremiah’s mouth, He was symbolically giving him the ability to speak God’s words with authority. Whatever God calls us to do, He will equip us to accomplish it.

(Notebook Moment: Think about a time when God asked you to do something that seemed beyond your abilities. How did you see His strength made perfect in your weakness?)

God always gives us a message when He calls us to serve Him. Jeremiah was given a message that contained both judgment and hope. Notice the powerful verbs that describe his commission: “to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

The parable of the potter in Jeremiah 18:7-10 uses these same pairs of verbs—”to uproot and tear down” and “to build and to plant”—to describe God’s authority both to judge and to restore nations. These words highlight that God’s servants must sometimes deliver difficult messages about sin and its consequences, but they also get to proclaim the wonderful hope of restoration for those who turn back to God.

There was more emphasis on judgment in Jeremiah’s message because Judah was about to be destroyed for their persistent rebellion against God. But even in the midst of announcing judgment, Jeremiah delivered some of the most beautiful promises about the coming Messiah. God would establish a new covenant through Christ that would write His law on people’s hearts rather than on tablets of stone.

Jeremiah 31:33-34: “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Jeremiah’s Suffering

Serving God faithfully often comes at a great cost. Jeremiah learned this truth through painful personal experience. His obedience to God’s calling brought him intense suffering and persecution that lasted throughout his long ministry.

The opposition began in his own hometown. The men of Anathoth—his neighbors and fellow priests—wanted to kill him because of the messages God had given him to speak. How heartbreaking it must have been for Jeremiah to discover that his own people had turned against him!

Jeremiah 11:21: Therefore this is what the Lord says about the people of Anathoth who are threatening to kill you and saying, “Do not prophesy in the name of the Lord or you will die by our hands.”

This rejection by his own people was something Jeremiah shared with Jesus Christ, who also faced the greatest opposition from those who should have welcomed Him most warmly. When Jesus preached in His hometown of Nazareth, the people became so angry that they tried to throw Him off a cliff.

Jeremiah was thrown into prison multiple times for delivering God’s messages. On one occasion, a temple official named Pashhur had Jeremiah beaten and put in the stocks overnight because he didn’t like what the prophet had said.

Jeremiah 20:1-3: When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the official in charge of the temple of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the Lord’s temple. The next day, when Pashhur released him from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, “The Lord’s name for you is not Pashhur, but Terror on Every Side.”

Later in his ministry, when Jerusalem was under siege, Jeremiah was thrown into a muddy cistern and left to starve because the king’s officials accused him of discouraging the soldiers with his prophecies. If a compassionate Ethiopian official hadn’t intervened, Jeremiah would have died in that pit.

The enemies of God’s truth have always tried to silence God’s Word. During Jeremiah’s ministry, King Jehoiakim demonstrated his contempt for God’s message by taking the scroll that contained Jeremiah’s prophecies and burning it piece by piece in his fireplace.

Jeremiah 36:23: Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the firepot, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire.

But here we learn one of the great lessons from Jeremiah’s ministry: God’s Word can never be stopped. When the king destroyed Jeremiah’s scroll, God simply told the prophet to write it again—and this time, God added even more words of judgment against the king who had tried to destroy His message.

(Notebook Moment: When you face opposition for your faith, how does it encourage you to know that God’s truth will ultimately triumph, no matter how powerfully people try to suppress it?)

Jeremiah’s Heart

One of the most remarkable things about Jeremiah was his heart. Despite the way his people rejected him and caused him to suffer, he never stopped caring deeply about them. He wept over their sin and their coming destruction with genuine love and compassion.

Jeremiah 8:21-22: Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?

Jeremiah 9:1: Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.

This is why Jeremiah became known as “the weeping prophet.” His tears were not signs of weakness—they revealed a heart that understood God’s love for His people and grieved over their rebellion.

Jesus showed this same heart when He wept over Jerusalem. Like Jeremiah, Jesus was rejected by His own people, and like Jeremiah, He knew that terrible judgment was coming upon the city He loved.

Matthew 23:37-39: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

The intensity of Jeremiah’s ministry sometimes overwhelmed him, and he became so discouraged that he wanted to quit. He even complained to God that he felt deceived and mocked by everyone around him.

Jeremiah 20:7-9: You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.

This passage shows us something beautiful about authentic service to God. Even when we feel discouraged and want to give up, there is something inside the faithful believer that cannot stop sharing God’s truth. His Word burns like fire in our hearts, and we cannot keep it to ourselves.

For Jeremiah, God’s Word was not a burden to bear but food that sustained his soul. Even in his darkest moments, he found strength and joy in the Lord’s promises.

Jeremiah 15:16: When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, Lord God Almighty.

Two Prophets, One Message

During the same period when Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem, God raised up another faithful servant named Ezekiel who ministered among the Jewish exiles in Babylon. These two men never met, but their ministries beautifully complemented each other and showed how God was working through His people both in Judah and in exile.

Both prophets received dramatic visions of God’s glory and were commissioned to deliver difficult messages about coming judgment. Both used vivid object lessons to help people understand God’s truth—Jeremiah bought a field to demonstrate hope for restoration, while Ezekiel acted out the siege of Jerusalem with a clay tablet. Both proclaimed the same message about personal responsibility before God and the promise of a new covenant written on the heart.

The correspondence between their ministries shows us that God’s truth is consistent and that He raises up multiple witnesses to confirm His word. While Jeremiah warned those still in the land about the consequences of continued rebellion, Ezekiel prepared the exiles to understand why judgment had come and how they could maintain hope for future restoration.

Together, these two prophets demonstrate that God’s servants may work in different places and circumstances, but they serve the same faithful God and proclaim the same unchanging truth.

Conclusion

Jeremiah stands as a powerful example of faithful service despite suffering and persecution. His life reminds us of an important truth: following Jesus will sometimes bring us opposition and hardship. Jesus Himself warned us that this would be the case.

Matthew 5:11-12: Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Jesus promised that those who follow Him will face persecution, and He warned that we would be hated by the world just as He was hated. Paul reminded Timothy that godly living will always bring some form of persecution, and Peter taught that we should not be surprised when we face trials for our faith.

Around the world today, millions of our brothers and sisters in Christ face intense persecution for their faith. They are imprisoned, beaten, and even killed because they refuse to deny Jesus Christ. Their courage and faithfulness in the face of such suffering challenges us to examine our own commitment to following Christ, even when it costs us something.

(Notebook Moment: How do the examples of persecuted Christians around the world today inspire you to live more boldly for Christ in your own circumstances, even when the opposition you face may seem small in comparison?)

When we suffer for our faith—whether through persecution, rejection, or hardship—we should remember three encouraging truths:

First, our suffering cannot compare with Christ’s suffering. When Jesus hung on the cross, He experienced not only physical torture but also the spiritual agony of being separated from His Father as He bore our sins. Whatever we endure for His name is light compared to what He endured for us.

Second, our suffering cannot compare with God’s love and grace toward us. Paul declared that nothing—not tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword—could separate us from the love of Christ. God’s grace is sufficient for every trial we face, and His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

Third, our suffering cannot compare with the reward we have in heaven. Jesus promised that those who lose their lives for His sake will find eternal life, and Paul reminded us that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.

Like Jeremiah, we are called to be faithful witnesses of God’s truth in a world that often rejects that truth. Like Jeremiah, we may face opposition and suffering for our faithfulness. But also like Jeremiah, we can find strength in God’s presence, joy in His Word, and hope in His promises. The God who sustained the weeping prophet through forty years of faithful service will sustain us as we serve Him with the same unwavering commitment to His truth and love for His people.

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