Dear Westminster Family:
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! Let me encourage you to include a worship service in your 4th of July week-end plans…whether you are in town or on the road.
This week we are going to takes a brief look at the life of Jeremiah who is often referred to as the “weeping prophet.” One commentator described the reason for Jeremiah’s tears as follows…
“Jeremiah wept out his prophecies on deaf ears and lived to see his beloved people given over to famine and the sword. His loftiest counsels were ignored, his writings torn to shreds by a tyrant King, his name blackened, his life hunted, and his worst predictions horribly fulfilled before his tear-filled eyes. He was indeed a weeping prophet, ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.’ (Isaiah 53:3)….Jeremiah’s message was one of doom. He delivered it faithfully despite persecution. His warnings were ignored and ridiculed, and his best counsels treated with contempt. He was a lonely man, maligned, misunderstood, maltreated, and without the solace of family. He loved Jerusalem with a patriotic fervor, yet was accused of being a traitor because he told the truth to his people.”
I don’t know about you, but I would have had a very short career as a prophet. What made Jeremiah persevere? Perhaps it was his clear sense of God’s call on his life. In Jeremiah 1:4-10, the prophet describes this call, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations….Do not say ‘I am a youth’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you….Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant.”
Jeremiah found true freedom in the midst of life’s frustrations because he had great confidence that he was doing God’s work. He set a powerful example of what it means to “find our voice in a hostile world.”
See you in church.
Pastor Gary