It was before the birth of Jeremiah that God, without prior notice, reached down and marked the priest to be His prophet. Jeremiah was to serve God in times of unsettled political conditions, which explains why God commanded him not to marry, 16. 2, nor was he to enter the house of feasting, 16. 8. Few men of God have had more bitter experiences than Jeremiah. His kindred betrayed him, and the people of his native town threatened his life if he continued to make unwelcome predictions, 11. 21. Every day reproach and ridicule were his companions, 20. 8. So completely was everyone arrayed against him that he called himself ‘a man of contention to the whole earth’, 15. 10. Jeremiah is called ‘the weeping prophet’; he had a reputation for tears, but his tears were not for himself, they were always for others. Despite his emotions, he was a man of great courage and declared the message given him by God, even though it was unpopular and unwelcome. Never once did he flinch under persecution, not even when priests and prophets and the common people conspired to kill him. Instead, he shed ‘a world of tears’ for his people. Jeremiah is an object lesson to all Christian workers who are persevering in the work of God, albeit with leaden hearts because of the indifferent attitude shown toward them by others.
No more fitting introduction to Jeremiah could be given than by stating where God ‘found’ him (among the priests), and what He made of him (‘a prophet unto the nations’). The prophet starts his autobiography by pointing to the emotional experience of a most critical day in his life – the day God called him. He was living in Anathoth, growing up in a God-fearing environment when the call of God came. The way in which he answered the call, ‘Ah Lord God! Behold I cannot speak: for I am a child’, revealed his natural sensitivity and feelings of weakness. But God knew whom He was calling. Recording the details of that moment, Jeremiah makes us aware of the sovereignty of God in his call; ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee’. Such language reveals the purposes of God for youthful Jeremiah; age is no barrier with God.
