Now Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him there, saying,
“Why do you prophesy as you do?”
Jeremiah 32:3a
Jeremiah and Job could probably have related to each other. Both went through horrible ordeals, and they sometimes wondered where God was in the midst of it all. We’ll look at Job on another day, but today we focus on Jeremiah, who suffered repeated persecutions over a long period of time.
Jeremiah’s writings make up the longest book in the Bible as far as total word count. He prophesied during the reigns of five kings of Judah. The first was a good king, Josiah, but those who followed were not. Jeremiah’s prophecies were not of the warm fuzzy type, but were instead bad news. He confronted the people on their sin and idolatry, and warned of judgment if repentance did not occur.
Jeremiah was arrested and spent much of his life in captivity within his own country until Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians (38:28). He was also confined to the courtyard of the guard, which was basically house arrest with soldiers (32:2-3, 33:1). He was beaten and put in the stocks by the official in charge of the temple (20:1-2). In other words, he was persecuted by the very people who were supposedly also serving the Lord. At another point, Jeremiah was surrounded by an angry mob (26:8-9). He was beaten again and wrongfully confined to a dungeon and then to the courtyard of the guard once again (37:12-21). In the next chapter he was lowered into a cistern to die of starvation (38:6-13). So, you can see it was a tough life!
All of this happened to Jeremiah because he was being obedient. He was merely conveying messages from the Lord to His people. And he had to watch the downward spiral and eventual downfall of the kingdom of Judah. He also prophesied over other nations that would be judged.
Doesn’t sound like a fun job or an exciting life, does it? Who would want to convey a message of God’s judgment to others? But I ask you this, what choice did Jeremiah have? What choice do any of us have if God is telling us to do something?
On the future Day of Judgment, we will have no excuses (Revelation 20:11-15). We will answer for everything we did and didn’t do. It will be useless to blame the hardship, persecution, or martyrdom we wanted to avoid. If our name is in the book of life, we will be with the Lord forever, but our reward will be much less. See the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-29 about obedience in relation to reward.
We must be compelled to act in obedience to God’s direction, regardless of the circumstances. That often means a more challenging life here, but a greater reward in heaven.