The Story of God: Jeremiah

Listen along as we continue our series through the Bible.

Jeremiah
Jeremiah 1:4-10 - Jeff Reading

Prophets: A real encounter with the presence of God, leading to speaking the truth of God to the people of God.
Accusation
Repentance
Consequence

“We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don’t see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.” - Eugene Peterson

Jeremiah 13:17 - 
Jeremiah 29:11

Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah. This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God. But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know. This realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops. If we use our ego as the center from which to plot the geometry of our lives, we will live eccentrically. - Eugene Peterson

Jeremiah x image/file

3:6-11

7:5-7

Jeremiah (like other prophets) exposed the idolatry that underlay the spiritual, political, economic and social disintegration of his society. The issue in the Bible is not just “Do you believe in God or not?” Everybody believed in gods of some sort. The question was, “Who is truly the only living God?” And if that God is indeed Yahweh the God of Israel, then there are consequences in real life – as shown in the Torah. Yahweh demanded justice for the poor, compassion and equality for foreigners and refugees, systemic redress for poverty, structural mechanisms to protect the homeless and family-less from abuse and destitution, fair and equitable distribution of land, integrity in the judicial system, humility, simplicity and morality in the government (as opposed to wealth, women and weapons) - Chris Wright

25:11

31:31-34

52:31-34

If we forget that the newspapers are footnotes to Scripture and not the other way around, we will finally be afraid to get out of bed in the morning. Too many of us spend far too much time with the editorial page and not nearly enough with the prophetic vision. We get our interpretation of politics and economics and morals from journalists when we should be getting only information; the meaning of the world is most accurately given to us by God’s Word. - Eugene Peterson