The World Needs Mercy
Jeremiah 15:15-21
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Key Text: Jeremiah 15:18
Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail.
Readers of a certain age are bound to remember a popular variety show called “Hee Haw,” which featured a weekly version of four overall-wearing cast members singing a plaintive song written by Buck Owens and Roy Clark:
Gloom, despair, and agony on me,
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery –
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all,
Gloom, despair, and agony on me!
Each line would be punctuated by a load moan, and the chorus was followed by a four-line poem designed to elicit laughter before returning for another sad rendition of the chorus. [DD]
While the Hee Haw gang found comedy in misery, the prophet Jeremiah’s despair was no laughing matter. In today’s text, Jeremiah confronts God with hard questions, including one many of us may have asked in the face of personal trials: “Why?”
“Why me, Lord?” (vv. 15-18)
The prophet Jeremiah lived during the years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and into the early years of the exile (See “The Hardest Question” online for more on this). He was called by God to proclaim an unpopular but familiar message: the people’s persistent selfishness and refusal to follow God’s teaching would soon result in judgment.
The book of Jeremiah can be confusing because its various prophecies, narrative accounts, and historical supplements are not presented in a neat chronological order. [DD] So, though our text is from chapter 15 of 52 chapters, it’s not necessarily from early in his ministry. Chapters 2-24 consist mainly of oracles promising judgment against Jerusalem and Judea, the sort of preaching that continued right up until the exile.
Jeremiah was not, by any means, a popular prophet. Crowds did not flock to hear him. Already considered an outsider because of his descent from an exiled priest, he was often at odds with the powerful priesthood and court prophets in Jerusalem. In addition, his use of metaphors – including one that involved waving around his dirty underwear – did not sit well with many (13:1-11). [DD]
Jeremiah accused the priests and prophets of being too cozy with a corrupt society that benefitted the rich to the detriment of the poor, facilitating a ritual religion with little attention to ethical behavior.
Jeremiah was a keen student of current affairs and recognized the looming threat of the Babylonians, but the court prophets supported the priests’ complacent claim that God would never allow the divine dwelling place in the temple to be destroyed. With assurance that Jerusalem was secure, many people felt little motivation to heed Jeremiah’s call for repentance and obedience to God (see 7:1-15 for a good example).
Neither priests nor royal officials accepted Jeremiah’s critique, but tried their best to silence him. The priests would not allow him to enter the temple. When he sent a list of oracles to the king, Jehoiakim tried to arrest him (chapter 36). Jeremiah remained hidden for a while, but when he tried to leave the city he was arrested, beaten, and thrown into a prison operated by the priests (37:11-15). Even Jeremiah’s family turned against him (11:21, 12:6).
Is it any wonder that Jeremiah was a master of lament who became known as “the weeping prophet”?
Jeremiah believed he had been called by God from the womb (1:4-5), but he reached a point of wishing he’d never been born. In a companion lament to today’s text, he cried “Woe is me, my mother, that you ever bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land!” (15:10). Jeremiah knew that his message put him on the outs with others. He preached because it was a fire in his bones that he had to express (20:9), not because he enjoyed it.
Feeling alone and unappreciated, Jeremiah prayed for God to vindicate him before those who made his life miserable (v. 15). The prophet felt pulled apart: on the one hand, the knowledge that he had a special relationship with God [DD] led him to speak of hearing and embodying God’s words as “a joy and the delight of my heart” (v. 16).
At the same time, the burden of those words – expressed as “the weight of your hand” had dictated a lonely existence in which he could not experience the pleasures of ordinary life known to others (v. 17).
From that lonely, desert place Jeremiah asked why. “Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail” (v. 18). [DD]
Jeremiah felt that his pain was unending. He had once proclaimed that God could be trusted as a fountain of living water (2:13), but reached a point of accusing God of being like a dry wadi – a stream bed in the desert that runs with promising water when the spring rains come, but quickly dries up when the summer begins.
Jeremiah was not the last to have preached water and breathed dust.
I’ve had that experience, and perhaps you have, too. Faithful living, like faithful preaching, may put us at odds with our culture and on the outside looking in.
“Because I called you” (vv. 19-21)
One might expect Jeremiah’s bold accusations to be answered with a lightning bolt, but God was willing to let the prophet have his say. God’s ego is not threatened by feverish and angry prayers – a lesson we would do well to learn. Jeremiah, like Job, learned that God respects an honest prayer more than empty words couched in platitudes.
God can hear our shouts and bear our fury without taking offense, because God understands that life can be hard and following God’s way is not always popular.
But God is not done with us and does not leave us groveling in self-pity. When Jeremiah accused God of being a deceitful stream, Yahweh did not respond defensively, but patiently explained that Jeremiah needed to change his orientation.
Jeremiah, the great prophet of repentance, was instructed to repent.
On God’s behalf, Jeremiah had challenged Israel: “Return, O faithless children; I will heal your faithfulness” (3:22). Now God charged the prophet: “If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me” (v. 19a).
Had Jeremiah intended his heated complaint as a letter of resignation? Whether Jeremiah was ready to quit or not, God was not finished with him. He was to continue serving as God’s voice to the people by speaking “what is precious and not what is worthless.” It was not Jeremiah’s job to gain acceptance by becoming like the people: it was their responsibility to turn to God and become more like him (v. 19b).
Jeremiah may have felt weak and oppressed, but God promised to make him like “a fortified wall of bronze.” Others might fight against him, but they would not prevail, “‘for I am with you to save you and deliver you,’ says the LORD” (v. 20).
The good news is that Jeremiah remained faithful and continued to preach. When the Babylonians carried others into exile in 597, they allowed Jeremiah to stay in Jerusalem. Before Jerusalem was destroyed ten years later, Jeremiah found his way to Egypt, where he continued to prophesy and send letters of encouragement to the exiles.
God never gave up on Jeremiah, and Jeremiah never gave up on the people, even when being caught in the middle caused him pain.
What about us?
So where does this story leave us?
Have you ever tried to do the right thing, but others criticized your best intentions? Or, have you sought to live a good life but discovered that you were not immune to sickness or financial hardship or to tragedy?
We don’t have to become a lightning rod prophet in order to experience disappointment in life, even despair – but we can be sure that God does not want to leave us in that dark place, captive to fear or immobilized by frustration.
In God’s response to Jeremiah we may hear a similar challenge to focus less on ourselves and more on God’s calling – to get back to the work of being faithful and to trust God for the strength we need.
On the other hand, what if we find ourselves, not weeping with Jeremiah, but complacently living our lives with little thought for what God expects of us? How many of us find church little different from civic clubs or social events with the exception that alcohol isn’t allowed?
Do we feel even a hint of the tension tearing at Jeremiah’s soul, or are we so self-focused that the needs of a hurting world and the call to a life of service don’t even register? Do we care enough about the plight of others to be upset that things aren’t any better? Do we not complain because we don’t really care?
Writing in Feasting on the Word, Angela Dienhart Hancock offers a chilling observation: “The anger that wells up between prophet and world, and between prophet and God, is evidence of love. Only those who love experience hurt, anger, and doubt. The indifferent are just fine.” [DD]
Hancock goes on to note that however complacent we may be, “God never has been, and never will be, indifferent toward us.”
Where do you find yourself in today’s text? Wherever we stand, Jeremiah’s lament and God’s response have a message for us. Will we hear it?
Adult Teaching Resources
Download the PDF of teaching resources for this lesson.
This PDF contains the Teaching Guide, Digging Deeper, and Hardest Question pages.
Read Scripture online: Jeremiah 15:15-21
Youth Teaching Resources
Social Media Challenge
Share what God has called you to do across your social media platforms. If you don’t know what God has called you to do, share instances when you have live out the Fruit of the Spirit.
Additional Links/Resources
Read Scripture online: Jeremiah 15:15-21
Download the PDF for youth teaching resources using the button below. This PDF contains the Teaching Guide for this lesson:
Video
Encourage youth to check out this video ahead of the lesson.
“Gloom, Despair, Agony on Me” from Hee Haw
Via www.youtube.com
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