Jeremiah Life & Ministry - Part 2 — Charles Price

Well, good morning. If you have your Bible with you, and I trust you do, we're going to turn to Jeremiah 12 this morning as the basis from which we are going to look into the aspect of this book that we're going to look at this morning.

Yesterday, we looked at the state of the nation when Jeremiah came to his ministry. There was a renewal taking place. It was superficial as far as the people was concerned, though genuine as far as the King Josiah was concerned, and we looked at Jeremiah's message to that situation.

Jeremiah’s Personal Circumstances and Ministry Context

But today, I want to look at some of Jeremiah's own personal circumstances, and I'm going to read the first five verses of chapter 12. I'm reading from the New International Version, where he addresses himself to God and he says, You're always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before you.

Yet I would speak to you about your justice. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease? You have planted them and they have taken root. They grow and bear fruit. You're always on their lips, but far from their hearts.

Yet you know me, O Lord. You see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep to be butchered. Set them apart for the day of slaughter. How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered because those who live in it are wicked?

The animals and birds have perished. Moreover, the people are saying, He will not see what happens to us. And then God speaks, If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?

If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan? That's as far as we're going to read. Jeremiah had a very tough task. He preached for the last 40 years of Judah's history until the Babylonian army moved in and destroyed the nation, took them off into exile.

And during those 40 years, there was no response to Jeremiah's preaching. And God told him in advance there would be no response. In fact, three times God said to him, Don't pray for the people that you're going to preach to.

In chapter 7 he said that, in chapter 11, in chapter 14, and then in chapter 15, the Lord said to me, it says, Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people.

Send them away from my presence. Let them go, said God. Now I imagine it was a bit difficult to get enthusiastic, wouldn't you think? I mean if I came to speak here this week and God said to me, Don't pray for these folks at Kezek.

They're going to be so hard, so set in their ways, nothing's going to happen. They're not going to respond, but preach anyway. I'd find it very difficult to get enthusiastic to do that for five mornings.

And yet Jeremiah for 40 years preached to a brick wall. Not only that, but he was a very lonely man. He wasn't a loner, quite the reverse. Jeremiah was the kind of man who craved friendship and companionship.

And yet in chapter 16, God imposed three prohibitions on him. He said, Don't marry and have children, because if you do, you will give the impression there's a future for this land, and although Jeremiah was a romantic, we can deduce that from many of the things that he says and the way he speaks.

God says, Don't marry. Second prohibition, he said, Don't go to a funeral, because if you go into a house and you show sympathy, where I have withdrawn my blessing from the people, and you weep over their agony, when I am going to let them go to the natural destruction to which they're heading, about which we'll talk a bit tomorrow.

So Jeremiah never go to a funeral. And he said in that same chapter, Don't accept any invitation to a party. Don't enter a house where there is feasting and sit down to eat and drink. Just sit on the sidelines, Jeremiah, and be miserable.

Don't participate in expressions of joy and feasting and marriage. Not only that, but right through those 40 years he experienced persecution. God said to him when he called him in Jeremiah chapter 1, in verse 19, he made a promise to him.

He said, They will fight against you, but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the Lord. But they will fight against you. They're not going to be indifferent to your message.

And right through the book, I haven't time to give you all the references to the physical persecutions Jeremiah faced, but just one or two of them in chapter 11 in his hometown of Anathoth, it says that the young men of Anathoth, contemporaries of Jeremiah plotted to take his life.

In chapter 15, he complains, he describes himself as a man with whom the whole land strives and contends. Everyone curses me, he says. In chapter 18, it says they attacked him with their tongues. They slandered him.

They plotted to kill him in chapter 18. In chapter 20, the priest of Pasha, it says, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. He had him put in the stocks at the upper gate of the Lord's temple and they beat him in the stocks.

In chapter 26, as soon as he had finished prophesying on one occasion, the priests, the prophets, the people seized him and said, You must die. Chapter 32, they threw him into prison. Chapter 37, he was beaten and put into a vaulted cell where he remained a long time.

In chapter 38, they threw him into a cistern and it says that there was no water in the cistern, only mud and Jeremiah sank down into the mud. In Lamentations 3, which is a postscript to the book of Jeremiah, he says, They hunted me like a bird.

They threw me into a pit and I almost drowned. The waters came over my head, he says. They mocked me in their songs. They used to tell Jeremiah jokes. And he says, I laughed until I realized they were about me.

Jeremiah’s Inner Turmoil and Emotional Struggles

And if these were some of the external struggles and difficulties that Jeremiah faced, that was bad enough, but he was wracked with internal struggles as well. He was depressive by nature. He's what we would call today a melancholic temperament.

We call him the weeping prophet. In chapter 9, he says, 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. I wish my head was like a spring and my eyes were like fountains and psst, I could just spurt out all my tears, he says.

When you go to preach these days, there's usually a glass there with a bit of water in case you dry up. When Jeremiah arrived to preach, they probably put a sponge in the pulpit to clean up the mess afterwards.

He wept because of the inner anguish that he experienced. And he had an emotional makeup that swung like a pendulum. Sometimes he was high and then a few moments later he would be low. Just turn to chapter 20 if you like for a moment because it's well illustrated in this chapter though it's evident in other parts of the book as well.

In verse 7, he says, Oh, Lord, you deceived me and I was deceived. What has happened is in the previous chapter, he's taken a clay pot and smashed it on the ground and said, This is what God says I'm going to do to you people.

And the people responded by being angry and this is when they beat him and put him in the stocks. And Jeremiah in the stocks says, Oh, Lord, you deceived me and I was deceived. You overpowered me and prevailed.

I'm ridiculed all day long. Everyone mocks me and he is really discouraged. Then he says in verse 9, But if I say, I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name. If I say, I'll quit. I'm throwing in the towel.

I'm giving up. If I say that, he says, His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I'm weary of holding it in. Indeed, I cannot. If I say I'm going to give up, there's this fire in my bones, he says.

It begins to, to, to flame. And in verse 11 he says, But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior. And he's getting high again, getting excited again. And in verse 13 he says, Sing to the Lord. Give praise to the Lord.

He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked. And now he's hit a real high spot. But look at verse 14, the next verse, Cursed be the day I was born. And he swings right back down to the bottom again.

Years ago when John Denver was popular, he used to have a song. It had a line in it that I used to listen to. Sometimes I fly like an eagle. Sometimes I'm deep in despair. That was Jeremiah. He never knew what kind of mood he was going to be in.

Because within his own heart and life, there was this turmoil. And we know more about the personal life and problems and struggles and fears and disappointments of Jeremiah than any other Old Testament character.

You know, I'll tell you something very interesting when you read through this book. All his fears, his complaints, his questions are expressed alone before God in secret. When he's out amongst the people, he is bold.

He's uncompromising. He is fearless. He says, thus says the Lord. He delivers his message with boldness and he goes back home, closes the door, sits down and weeps and says, God, why did you tell me to say that?

You playing games with me? Well, it's against that background I want to understand chapter 12. Because the people in his hometown of Anathoth in the end of chapter 11 are plotting his life. They want to kill him.

The Problem of the Prosperity of the Wicked

Now, I love the honesty of verse 1. You are always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before you, yet I would speak with you about your justice. God, I know you're always righteous, but I have to be very honest with you, God.

I have a problem with your justice. And here's his problem. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do the godless live at ease? Well, Jeremiah wasn't the first and he won't be the last to have raised that question.

Why is it that a man can turn his back on God and life seems to flow smoothly for him? Yet there's me, says Jeremiah, in contrast. You know me. Here I am. I seek to please you and honor you. And I'm in trouble all the time.

My life is threatened. I'm going through emotional torture. Asaph, who used to play the percussion in the temple in Jerusalem in Solomon's day, wrote a psalm, Psalm 73, and he says, I almost backslid over this very question.

He says in Psalm 73 verse 2, as for me, he says, my feet almost slipped. I nearly lost my foothold for I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. And he goes on to say it's very much a generalization.

They have no struggles. Their borders are healthy and strong. They're free from the burdens common to man. They're not plagued by human ills. That's of course a generalization. Yet he says in verse 8, they scoff, they speak with malice.

And he says in verse 13, surely in vain have I kept my heart pure. In vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I've been plagued, I've been punished every morning. And Asaph says, you know, I almost backslid over this very question.

Because as I seek to serve God, as I seek to please God, as I seek to honor God, God doesn't seem to respond to me. Life is difficult. And yet outside of Christ, outside of God, there are these people who are living in total disinterest in his purposes and yet they seem to be having such a good time.

David also raised the same issues in Psalm 37. Job asked the same question. And his friends of course didn't help because they said if you do trust God, life will go well for you. Which God said at the end of the book was nonsense.

Well, we sympathize with Jeremiah, I'm sure. There are probably some folks here this morning. Things in your life have gone wrong one after another. Yet folks who don't seek to trust God and love God seem to be having such an easier time.

Why should the godly suffer? Why shouldn't God intervene and make life easy and demonstrate his blessing on us by lifting us out of these trials and trouble? Well, there are two possible solutions to the dilemma in this chapter, chapter 12.

Jeremiah’s Demand for Judgment

The first is Jeremiah's solution in verse 3 and then God's solution in verse 5. Let me read you what Jeremiah says in verse 3. He says, you know me, O Lord. You see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep to be butchered.

Set them apart for the day of slaughter. Now, here's Jeremiah's solution. God, why don't you butcher them? Why don't you slaughter them? Now, if you say, well, this was obviously a little slip of the tongue.

Jeremiah was having a bad day. Let me read you what he said in chapter 17 and verse 18. Chapter 17 and verse 18. He says in verse 17 for its context, do not be a terror to me. But in verse 18, let my persecutors be put to shame.

But keep me from shame. Let them be terrified. But keep me from terror. Bring on them the day of disaster. Destroy them with double destruction. Be careful, Jeremiah. Be very careful, Jeremiah. There's a little self-righteousness sneaking in here.

And he says, God, you know me, you know them. Why don't you not only destroy them or bring on them disaster, but do it with double destruction? In chapter 18 and verse 23, next chapter. But you know, O Lord, all their plots to kill me.

Do not forgive their crimes or blot out their sins from your sight. Let them be overthrown before you. Deal with them in the time of your anger. And Jeremiah says here, God, don't forgive them. Don't cleanse them.

Don't offer them any hope. And don't just deal with them when you're in a good mood, God. Deal with them when you're angry. And in Lamentations, which serves as a postscript written after the destruction of Jerusalem, which he laments the devastation of the city.

In chapter 3 and verse 61, he says, O Lord, you have heard their insults, all their plots against me, what my enemies whisper and mutter against me all day long. Look at them sitting or standing. They mock me in their songs.

Pay them back what they deserve, O Lord, for what their hands have done. Put a veil over their hearts and may your curse be on them. Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord.

Well, that's a very simple solution, Jeremiah. Thank you very much. What should God do about the wicked? Wipe them out. Make them pay for it. Hurt them. Do it when you're angry. Well, of course, we have known those sentiments, haven't we?

Sometimes we see paraded in front of us on our TV screens, those who've been made heroes and we know that they're godless and their example is godless. And we say, God, why don't you do something? Why don't you strike them?

God’s Call to Endurance in Hardship

That was Jeremiah's solution. And then God speaks in verse 5. So, what God says. If you have the NIV, it writes God's answer. If you have the authorized version, it's not as obvious. This is God speaking now, but it is.

It's addressing Jeremiah and he says this, if you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?

Jeremiah, if you're complaining now, running with men, what are you going to do when I run you with horses? If you're complaining now, you've fallen down in safe country, how are you going to manage in the thickets by the Jordan?

And chapter 49 says, there are lions in the thickets by the Jordan. Now, the word says, God, Jeremiah, toughen up. Not in the sense of overcoming weakness, for it's in weakness that we discover God's strength, but in the sense of your self-pity.

In the sense of your feeling you deserve an easy time from God says, God, in effect, toughen up. Because if it's hard now, Jeremiah, it's going to get worse. If running with men is weary, running with horses is going to exhaust you.

You know, as servants of God, we have no grounds on which we can expect to be set free from difficulties. God's promise is not that He changes our environment, but He changes us. That is, He doesn't take us out of the difficulties.

He equips us to go into the difficulties. And often, the intensity of the battle is not a sign that things are going wrong. Rather, it is the evidence things are going right. What did Paul say to Timothy when he wrote to him, 2 Timothy 3, verse 12?

He said, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Listen to this, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Paul said that to Timothy.

Timothy, you want to live a godly life? Not only are you going to experience persecution, but those who persecute you will get worse. And that's a promise. Now, I've never seen it on a calendar, because we're very selective about the promises that we want to read every day.

I don't know anybody who claims this one or memorizes it, but it's part of our Bible. When Jesus, in Matthew 10, sent out the disciples for the first time, they'd been with Him up until now, and He had done all the preaching and performed the miracles, and they had simply picked up all the pieces left after feeding the 5 ,000 and kept the kids away when they tried to overcrowd Jesus, which is not what He wanted them to do, but that's what they did.

And then in Matthew 10, He says, I'm sending you out, and you're going to preach the gospel, the kingdom of heaven. You're going to raise the dead. You're going to heal the sick, freely receive, freely give.

And they probably got very excited. At last, at last, Peter probably thought to himself, I can do something. And then he said this in Matthew 10, verse 16, for I'm sending you out like sheep amongst wolves.

What happens when sheep and wolves meet? It's fairly obvious, isn't it? The wolves roll on their backs, the sheep tickle their tummies, the wolves say all sheepy things like, hallelujah, amen. What happens when sheep and wolves meet?

Sheep get into trouble. Now, said Jesus, you're the sheep. You're the vulnerable one. Sometimes we have the idea, and sometimes we stick out our spiritual chests, and we say, we're going to conquer. And as we're going to see later this morning, there is truth in that, and we need to believe that truth.

I'll tell you this, in the process, many of us are going to be beaten and hurt. You see, being on top is not always going to be our prerogative. We may get tired, we may get scarred, we may get hurt, we may get lonely, we may be misunderstood.

But don't opt out when that is so. That's why I believe it's a very important principle to see the guidance of God as something positive. That is, God leads us to things rather than from things. And I'm forever meeting people who want to go from things because they're difficult.

Normally, God's guidance is not given negatively. And if you want to leave something, hang in there until God calls you to something else. There'll be a number here, and you're dying to leave your church.

Hang in there. God leads positively. He called you to things. But where is God in all this? How do you survive in this? Well, of course, God is not indifferent. He is never indifferent. It says in Psalm 56, the NIV says, you list my tears on your scroll.

I like the authorized version rendering which says, sorry, Psalm 56 verse 8, you put my tears in your bottle. Why does God keep our tears in his bottle? Is it because he has some morbid interest in them?

No, because he knows that our tears are almost always an investment. You learn far more from your tears than you ever learn from your laughter. And despite the tears that Jeremiah shed, the second book, Lamentations, which literally means crying, he needs to know something, and you and I need to know something.

God’s Unseen Work and the Measure of Fruitfulness

And it's this, that God is doing something even when we cannot see it. Jeremiah never knew what God was doing through his life. What he did know was that God had called him, because we have the record of that in Jeremiah chapter 1, and I'm so glad it's there.

Because God called Jeremiah as a young man and said, before you were ever born, I set you apart as a prophet. And when Jeremiah said, but I'm only a child, I'm young, God said, you must go to everyone I send you and say what I command you.

Jeremiah said, God, I'm putting you into this prophetic role, this ministry. I will give you what to say. And yet after 40 years of preaching, there was nothing to show for it. No one listened. At one stage, he took his prophecies, which his scribe Barak, his secretary, Barak had written down, took them to the temple and read them outside to the crowds that were there.

And suddenly went back to the palace. King Jehoiakim was now on the throne, and he said, a man's been reading some prophecies that threaten the future security of our nation. Jehoiakim said, bring that man here.

And he brought Barak into his palace, and it says it was a winter's day, and Jehoiakim was sitting in front of the fire, and he had the prophecies read to him. And as these prophecies were read, it says that King Jehoiakim took a penknife and he cut off the prophecies they were read, threw them into the fire, had the next read, cut off those, threw them into the fire.

And at the end of the reading, it says, Jehoiakim was totally unmoved, and all the prophecies had been thrown into the fire. And Barak had to go back to Jeremiah and say, Jeremiah, I read your prophecies to the king, but he's thrown them all in the fire.

And Jeremiah was so angry, it says in Jeremiah 36, that he sat down and rewrote his prophecies. And it says, and this time he added many more words. So maybe originally he was supposed to be a minor prophet.

But because of Jehoiakim, we've got this mammoth 52 chapters. But he wrote them angry. And the anger of God in Jeremiah comes through this book, as well as the compassion of God. And then at the end of those 40 years, Judah was overrun.

And after an 18-month siege of the city of Jerusalem, the city was captured and devastated and razed to the ground pretty well by the Babylonian armies. Most of them were taken away into exile. And as Jeremiah, along with many of the others, were chained together to be marched off to Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the king, sent word to the commander of the invading army and said, there's a man in Judah called Jeremiah.

He's been preaching for 40 years about the doom of the nation. He's undermined their morale. If you find him, treat him well. And the commander found Jeremiah amongst the exiles as they were going back.

A few of the poor people had been left in Judah to till the ground and keep it tidy with their Babylonian overseers. And he found Jeremiah and said, Jeremiah, if you want to go to Babylon with your people, you can go.

If you want to stay and go back to Judah, you can go back to Judah, and you can live wherever you please and do what you like. Well, of course, Jeremiah did not like the implication. He had been really serving the Babylonian interests.

He'd been serving God's interests and no else. But he said, well, thank you. I'll go back to Judah. And he went back to Judah. And the Babylonians had appointed a governor called Gedaliah. You can read this in a lot of chapters of the book.

He set up his headquarters in a town called Mizpah, about 8 to 10 miles north of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was unlivable then. So they moved into Mizpah, set up the Babylonian government of Judah. And after seven months, some of the Jewish people who had been left behind in Judah and the leadership of a man called Ishmael, who was of royal stock, got together and they planned a coup d 'etat.

They went to Mizpah and arranged an interview with Gedaliah, along with his soldiers. And in the course of that meeting with Gedaliah, they suddenly drew their weapons and assassinated Gedaliah and killed the soldiers who were with him.

And some of the Jews who were around there also in Mizpah threw their bodies into a cistern and tried to reclaim the independence of Judah. And they came to Jeremiah and they said, Jeremiah, what should we do now?

You're a man who listens to God. What should we do now? And it says, Jeremiah asked God and 10 days later, God answered him, it says in Jeremiah 42. But during those 10 days, these people began to panic because they said to themselves, now the word has gone back to Babylon that we've assassinated the governor and tried to retake the province.

They're going to come and they will utterly destroy us and wipe us out and show us no mercy, which, of course, they intended to do. And after 10 days, Jeremiah came back and said, this is what God says, stay here in the land.

Don't go to Egypt. Whatever you do, don't run away. And they said, Jeremiah, you've taken too long to get your message. We've made our plans already. We're going to Egypt. And they kidnapped Jeremiah, took him against his will, marched him off to Egypt where he probably dined.

We have no record of Jeremiah. After he'd walked through the city of Jerusalem and written his laments and then was taken off to Egypt. And if before Jeremiah died, you or I had met him in Egypt and said, Jeremiah, God called you more than 40 years ago.

What have you accomplished? He'd probably burst into tears and say nothing. Just a few sympathizers, Barak, who was his secretary, but he had to write a whole chapter for him. And Jeremiah 45 saying, do you think great things for yourself, Barak?

Think them not. Had to keep him humble. Man called Ebed-Melech, an Egyptian who saved Jeremiah from a pit on one occasion. And later, God spoke to Ebed-Melech and said, you trust in me. So Ebed-Melech, if not a convert, was a sympathizer.

But he wasn't a Jew anyway, he was an Egyptian. And a man called Ahiakim, who supported Jeremiah when people wanted to kill him in chapter 26. Few sympathizers, 40 years Jeremiah might answer of tears, hardship, persecution, loneliness, isolation, and even the fear that God has been playing games with me and deceived me.

As the others saw fruit during that time, Daniel, who was a few years younger than Jeremiah. Jeremiah had already been preaching 40 years at the time of the exile. Daniel was one of the aristocratic young men of Judah taken into exile.

He was a young man then, but Daniel saw fruit. Daniel remarkably even saw Nebuchadnezzar himself, the king of Babylon, converted. Daniel chapter 4, it's a great chapter that. It's the official testimony of Nebuchadnezzar published as a tract to be distributed to the whole Babylonian world, telling of his conversion.

Others saw fruit, but Jeremiah never did. When he died in Egypt, he left behind in his tent nothing more than a rolled-up scroll of his prophecies to which no one had ever listened. But he didn't know this.

He didn't know in that rolled-up scroll was one of the longest books of the Bible. He had no idea that 2 ,500 years later, Jesus, the Messiah whom he anticipated, would sit one day with his disciples in the Caesarea Philippi and say, who do people say that I am?

What are the rumors about me? And they'll say, some say you're Jeremiah. Jeremiah would say, well, how in the world would they know about me? Jeremiah had no idea. Sorry, not 2 ,500 years later, 500 years later, 2 ,500 years later, we would sit in a tent in the north of England, the place he'd never heard of.

Unless you're a British Israelite and believe Jeremiah came to England, which isn't that what they believe, or Ireland or somewhere? I think they believe he went to Ireland, didn't they? He had no idea 2 ,500 years later, you and I would sit in a hot tent on a Tuesday morning or for this week and hopefully benefit from this man.

God sometimes gives us the privilege of seeing lots of fruit, and when he does, always say thank you to him. But for many of us, we never see it. When you see what God is doing in your life, be grateful, but don't take it too seriously.

Most of us reap what other people have sown anyway. We're all workers together in this. But you see, the lesson from Jeremiah regarding fruitfulness is this, never try to measure your effectiveness by the results of your life.

Measure your effectiveness by the cause of what you do. If we measure our value or our effectiveness by the results of what we do, we'll probably get tempted to manipulate the results. But if we measure the value of what we do by its origin, by its cause, that back in Jeremiah 1, God says, you must go to everyone, I send you.

Jeremiah, you're not just a loose cannon wandering around trying to do your own thing. I'm sending you. I'm putting you in the place where you are. Not only am I putting you there, I will give you what to say.

You must say whatever I command you. And when you know you are where you are because God put you there, and you're doing what you're doing because God called you to do it, then you don't have to see the fruit.

Faithfulness, Calling, and God’s Larger Purposes

You see, sometimes when we say rather glibly, God has a wonderful plan for your life, we can be in danger of deceiving ourselves. You see, God has a wonderful plan, but it's a wonderful plan for God. And it isn't necessarily a wonderful plan for you or for me.

Jim Elliott and his four colleagues, a number of years ago now, martyred and their bodies left in the river in Ecuador. Jim was 29 years of age. God had a wonderful plan for Jim Elliott. It wasn't very wonderful for Jim.

I read some time ago that there are 10 ,000 people who have gone to the mission field because of Jim Elliott and his colleagues and the story that Elizabeth Elliott has written about them and the story of Jim in particular.

I don't know how anybody works that out and counts that. But I was speaking at a conference of missionaries in Ethiopia a while ago, and I quoted that, and at the end of that meeting, there were only a hundred or so folks there.

Somebody came to me and said, I'm here because of Jim Elliott. I was at a conference of European missionaries, last year meeting for a week on the Adriatic coast in Italy. In the course of one of the messages, I mentioned that again.

Two people after that meeting came and said, I'm here because of the life of Jim Elliott. When Jim Elliott said, Lord, have your way in my life, God said, thank you. Thank you, Jim. At 29, your body will lie in the river, martyr.

Your widow will have a broken heart. Your orphan daughter will never know her father. But thank you, Jim. It's not very good for you, but it's wonderful for me. If you measure the blessing of God by the evidence of goodness in your own experience, Jeremiah would have to have written his whole life off.

But God and agenda far bigger than what was evident in those 40 years. There's a great verse in John 13, verse 7, which I only noticed a couple of weeks ago, where it says Jesus speaking at the time that he washed the disciples' feet, and Peter objected.