08 Why Is Life So Hard? (Jeremiah 20:7–18)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta. Today we'll be looking at Jeremiah chapter 20, verses 7 through 18. This is the eighth talk in our series on the book of Jeremiah. You can find lecture notes and links to everything mentioned in the talk on our website at wednesdayintheword.com slash Jeremiah 8. Thank you for listening. Well, the holidays are almost upon us. Thanksgiving's next week. You might not know that because of all the Christmas decorations that are up. But I was looking around and I found on NetDoctor, which is one of these online medical sites, they did a survey of depression at Christmas time, and almost half of their respondents said they dreaded Christmas. And when asked if you're depressed, does Christmas weight make it worse? 57% said often or always. So why do people find the holidays so depressing? The majority of people on, at least in this survey, blamed who they had to spend the holiday with. So, contrary to how how they would like to spend the holiday, they said they had to spend Christmas with their families, and that brought up all the tensions and family sibling rivalry and all that stuff. And then if you have separation, divorce, and singleness, people can be celebrating alone, making them feel isolated. And people who've lost a loved one are usually particularly mindful of that loss at Christmas time. And if you can't travel back to your hometown, you often feel left out. But you know, being surrounded by families and and friends at holidays can sometimes isn't much better because you have all the extra stress of you have to cook a lot more and you have to entertain a lot more and your house has to look perfect, and then all those long-standing hurts and family rivalries kind of come to the surface, and then there's the financial stress of all the extra money you're spending. So why are the holidays so depressing? Well, what bringing that up because the question we're going to talk about today is why is life so hard? So, why does the joy of Christmas, you know, sometimes you think, oh, I'm supposed to be joyful, but if you've lost a loved one, it just doesn't seem so joyful. And how do we get past all the expectations of life is going to be one way, but it's actually another way? Why is life so hard? So in the passage we're studying today, Jeremiah hits rock bottom and he cries out asking that very question. At the beginning of the series, we looked at his call and we saw how God formed him and how he was defining his role as a prophet, and there are several references in chapter 20 back to his call narrative. And there's a sense in which Jeremiah knows that God is writing his story, but he's not happy with the way God is writing it. It's just too hard. And I think we all feel that way at times. We look at our lives and we think, why did it turn out this way? Why didn't it turn out that way? Or we look at other people's lives and we think, well, if my life was more like hers, it would be so much easier. So we all come to this place where we ask, why is my life so hard? Why do I have to endure this particular problem or experience this pain or go through that situation? And in Jeremiah 20, we're going to see Jeremiah ask that same question. So we're going to be looking at chapter 20, concentrating on verses 7 through 18. This whole section is poetry. There are three different stanzas in the poem. The first one is verses 7 to 10, and that's where he kind of starts out painful. The second one is 11 through 13, where he gets hopeful, and then the third, 14 through 18, he crashes into complete darkness. So we go from bad to better to worse. And there's no clean resolution at the end. We're left with this open-ended question, but I think we can learn from that open end. So to set the context, I want to go back to chapter 19. Just to set the stage, Jeremiah has been preaching about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and chapter 19 ends with this. This is 1915. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing upon the city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their neck, refusing to hear my words. So we've talked before how Jeremiah was a prophet to the southern kingdom. He is preaching that Babylon is coming, they are going to win, they are going to level Jerusalem and take the people into exile, but that the exile within will end. And you can imagine that was not a very popular message. The priest hated him because he's prophesying this temple would be destroyed. The people didn't believe him, they didn't want to listen to him. And Jeremiah crossed pass with one particular priest at several points in this book. His name is, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, but we're going to say it's Pashur. And he was the chief officer of the temple. So you can imagine when Jeremiah is talking about the temples being destroyed, he would take this personally because his function was to maintain order in the temple and its grounds and to eject any troublemakers or deal with them. And he probably thought, well, Jeremiah is the chief troublemaker of all. Now you'll notice there are two Peshurs mentioned in the book, the one we have here in chapter 20, and there's another one who's referred to as Peshur the son of Malkaiah. He's a different guy. This is Peshur the son of Immer. This Peshur goes into exile in 597 BC as Jeremiah prophesies. And then we see another man in the office of chief officer of the temple later in Jeremiah. So in the first six verses of chapter 20, we learn that Peshur punished Jeremiah for preaching this message of destruction. Look at 20 verses 1 through 2. Now Peshur the priest, the son of Immer, who was the chief officer in the house of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. Then Peshur beat Jeremiah the prophet and put him in stocks that were in the upper gate, at the upper Benjamin gate of the house of the Lord. So he hears Jeremiah preaching that disaster is coming, that Babylon's going to win. He beats him and puts him in the stocks. And the language is unclear whether he himself did the beating or he just ordered someone to do it. It could be either way. And the stocks is a word for prison. So don't think like colonial stocks where you would stand with your head and arms and a yoke. This is probably a very small, locked room where you were unable to stretch out or stand up. So you'd be put in this cramped, confined space, unable to move or straighten for a period of time. So our passage picks up after Jeremiah's release from prison, and I think this is probably his response to that situation. So let's look at the first stanza, verses 7 through 10. O Lord, you have deceived me and I was deceived. You have overcome me and prevailed. I have become a laughing stock all day long. Everyone mocks me. For each time I speak I cry aloud. I proclaim violence and destruction, because for me the word of the Lord has resulted in reproach and derision all day long. But if I say, I will not remember him, or speak any more in his name, then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it. For I have heard the whispering of the many, terror on every side, denounce him. Yes, let us denounce him. All my trusted friends, watching for my fall, say perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him and take our revenge on him. So these verses start out really dramatically. Jeremiah accuses God of deceiving him, overpowering him, and prevailing against him. And watch the use of the word prevail in this passage. It's one of our key words. Now think about Jeremiah probably expected when he was called to be a prophet, this would be a great calling, because this would be like, you know, being a Nobel Prize-winning professor, where you're an expert in your field and you're going to be famous, and you can bask in all that respect and authority, and the community would seek you out because you have the word of the Lord and they would want to learn the word of the Lord. And life would be good because you're going to be one of the elites. This would be good. But instead, what he gets is he's ridiculed, he's mocked, he's beaten, he's imprisoned. So he's saying, God tricked me. I thought being a prophet was going to be this one kind of calling, but in fact, it's something very different. It looks very different. And he uses very strong language here. The language of being deceived, overpowered, and prevailed upon has sexual overtones. It's like he was preyed upon and then ravaged. This is not a polite complaint. This is raw and bitter. This is very hurt accusations against God. And he's referring back to his calling, saying, You tricked me, you called me into this, you told me I was going to have this kind of life. You told me you made this life for me from before I was born. And look how terrible it is. One commentator observed, only one who walked intimately with God would dare to speak as Jeremiah did. And we're going to talk more about that in a minute. So he complains that his suffering are a direct result of his calling. Look at verse 8. For each time I speak, I cry aloud, I proclaim violence and destruction, because for me the word of the Lord has resulted in reproach and derision all day long. This verse has a parallel structure where he says, I speak and I cry out, and I have to speak about violence and destruction, but speaking about violence and destruction causes me violence and destruction. It causes me insult and reproach. So, in a sense, he says, Look, God, it's your fault I'm experiencing all this pain. This calling that you gave me has resulted in great personal suffering. When I speak, the message you've given me, it's a message of violence, and it just brings violence back on my head. And he can't stop. Look at verse 9. But if I say I will not remember him or speak any more in his name, then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it. Because what's the obvious solution for Jeremiah? If your calling's causing you pain, you quit. You know the old joke, doctor, my arm hurts when I do this, and the doctor says, Don't do that. You know, that's the obvious solution. That's the simple one. Stop the thing that's causing you the pain. Abandon your calling. But he can't stop. He says, when I neglect the word of God, when I try to stop preaching, God's word burns like a fire within him until he threatens to boil over and he has to let it out. He can't stop preaching. Now, I just as an aside, I find that verse very interesting because I've been teaching Bible study since I was in my 20, and it's almost every year I get to a point where I'm burned out and I think, I'm gonna quit. This is just too much work, takes too much time and effort, I'm not gonna do this anymore. And every time I try to quit, it's like my soul dries up and blows away. I have this compulsion. I have to go back and study the Bible. And then when I study it, I get to a point where I feel like I'm gonna burst unless someone, I can tell someone what I've learned. So it was encouraging to read this in Jeremiah and think, oh, maybe I feel a little bit of what he felt. So he can't stop, but his preaching results in persecution. Look at verse 10. For I have heard the whispering of the many, terror on every side, denounce him. Yes, let us denounce him. All my trusted friends watching for my fall say, perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him and take our revenge upon him. So he's faithful to his call, but everyone's out to get him. Even his trusted friends are watching for him to make one little mistake or let his guard down for a moment so they can take their revenge on him. He can't stop preaching. His preaching results in persecution. He's doing what God called him to do and giving him responsibility for, and it's resulting in suffering. Now think about that. Because what do we think should happen when we do the right thing? We do the right thing and everyone should praise us, right? You do the right thing and everyone should say, Oh, great, and you get praise and glory and honor, and you get the key to the city, and everyone should love you and pat you on the back and say, What a great job! And blessings just rain down on your head because, after all, you're doing the right thing. But instead, Jeremiah got beaten and thrown into prison. So here's the first thing we learn from Jeremiah in this passage. Doing the right thing does not guarantee an easy life. So, contrary to our expectations, doing the right thing does not guarantee that you'll have an easy life. In fact, I think in many cases it means the opposite. Peter writes on the same theme, this is 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 12 through 14. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you. He says, Look, don't be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes your way. It's not strange, it's not unusual. Verse 13, but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice with exaltation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rest on you. It's the same idea. He says, look, don't be surprised. You do the right thing, persecution comes at you. If you're reviled because you're doing the right thing, if you're reviled for the name of Christ, you're blessed because that shows that you are His. So following God may mean you go to a dark place. It may be a place of loneliness or ridicule or persecution. And in chapter 15, 17, Jeremiah Jeremiah writes, Everyone else was happy but him. This is 1517. I did not sit in the circle of merry makers, nor did I exalt. Because of your hand upon me, I sat alone, for you filled me with indignation. Basically he's saying, I had no friends, I couldn't go out and have fun with my friends and do what they were doing. We know he never married. He has says he has no rest and relaxation because of the job the Lord has called him to do. So our dark places may look different depending on what God has called us to. Some people in the world are being ridiculed, beaten, and executed even today for their following the Lord. That's not true for most of us here in America, at least for now. But God could call us into other kinds of dark places. Maybe it's not getting the job you want, or losing a friend, or being ridiculed for your faith, or not being able to get pregnant, or having a really difficult marriage, or a difficult illness, or just being lonely and not feeling connected to anyone around you. So I don't know where you're at now, what things you may be suffering or going through now or in the future, but we can learn from Jeremiah that this is normal. This can be a normal part of the Christian life. If you may be doing the absolute right thing and it's still normal, it doesn't mean you've disobeyed God necessarily. And those places can feel hopeless. In verse 7, Jeremiah says God deceived him and prevailed against him. In verse 10, he says his enemies are deceiving him or hoping to deceive him and prevail against him. So he's trapped. No matter where he looks, it doesn't look good. Everyone's against him. And he's saying, Life is just too hard. The people around him are making it harder. God seems to be making it harder. And he says, basically, this calling does not seem to be such a good deal. Immediately after that, he goes into praise. His tone changes completely. So we have this intense, raw, not very polite, you know, not restrained in any way, complaint to God. And then the next section, 11 through 13, he is completely upside down. It's a whole, he's like turned around entirely. So let's look at that. This is 20, 11 through 13. But the Lord is with me like a dread champion. Therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will be utterly ashamed because they have failed with an everlasting disgrace that will not be forgotten. Yet, O Lord of hosts, you who test the righteous, who see the mind and the heart, let me see your vengeance on them, for to you I have set forth my cause. Sing to the Lord, Praise the Lord, for he has delivered the soul of the needy one from the hand of the evildoers. So this stanza is what commentators call an expression of trust. It's a common form of Hebrew poetry. It's often in the Psalms and in the prophetic writings, and the key thing is it begins, but God, almost entirely, something like but the Lord, or but God. Here's all the stuff that's happening around me, here's what my life looks like, but God. Here he says he's with me like a mighty warrior, he's or a dread champion. So here's the way it looks if you focus on the outward circumstances, but here's what I know God is actually doing, and you get this expression of trust. And again, one of the key words here is prevail. So in the previous section, Jeremiah was upset that God had prevailed against him and tricked him into this calling. He's angry that his enemies are plotting against him so that they could prevail against him. But here he's turned that around, he's confident his persecutors will not prevail. On the contrary, they're going to fail because God is with him. So they will experience eternal shame while Jeremiah's shame and suffering is temporary. So that raises the question: how did he change his tone so quickly? Is this just, you know, the plastic smile that he's putting on to cover up the pain? I don't think so. He gives us an explanation in verse 12. Notice there's a little word for and a clause that follows it, and for often introduces the reason or the cause for something. So here's the explanation, I think, as to how he can express this bitter complaint and then turn around and offer joyous praise. Yet, O Lord of hosts, you who test the righteous, who see the mind and the heart, let me see your vengeance on them, for to you I have set forth my cause, or to you I have committed my cause. I think this is the source of the turnaround. He brought his complaint before God. He told God in no uncertain terms how upset he was. He complained about the ridicule, the pain, the perse persecution with brutal honesty. He pours it all out and he lays it at God's feet, and he says, What I'm doing is committing my cause to God. I've expressed myself to him, and now I am free to rest in the knowledge that he is in control, and it is in his hands. So it's this complain and then rest in the one you have complained to. He's told God how hard things are, and then he rests, knowing that God is going to do what's best. So there's this complain, rest in God's judgment. He's turned to the only one who can actually solve the problems, the only one who can give him hope and sustain his strength and his faith and his weary bones. And having done that, he's free to praise. So this is the second thing we learned from Jeremiah 20. We complain to God, then we rest in his judgment. And you see this all the time. When my kids were little, they loved to play together. It was one of their favorite things to do. They liked having their friends over, but when they they also liked it when their friends could leave so they could play with each other. But of course, when they played with each other, problems erupted. You know, one would take a toy the other one wanted, or someone would take a turn that was too long, or do something the other one didn't like. And when these fights erupted, they had a choice. They could take matters into their own hands, which sometimes they did, and exact vengeance, in which case, you know, they'd hit or grab or push or whatever to get what they wanted. Or they could come crying to mommy and say, Mommy, make it right, because mommy had the power, the proper wisdom and perspective to decide who got punished and who didn't, what kind of retribution should be taken and how to put things right. That's one of the roles we parents play with our kids. We establish justice. So our children are to bring their concerns, their complaints to us parents, to let us know what happened, and they expect us to have the wisdom to solve the problem. And sometimes they even suggest a punishment. You know, I think my sister really should go into timeout or whatever. But it's our decision who, if anyone, gets punished and how. It's their job, their role to complain, then they trust us to use good judgment. And that's what we see Jeremiah doing here. He brings his complaint before God, and then he rests in God's sovereign justice. So I don't think this is fake praise or a plastic smile. I don't think He's saying these cliches because he knows he's supposed to say them. That's the Christian thing to do. I think he can speak this praise because he has brought his pain to God and now he trusts him with us with it. So that teaches us this two-part dynamic of expressing our pain to God and then trusting him for the outcome. This kind of complain, rest, complain, rest. We get those out of balance and we have troubles. We complain without rest. We're in trouble. Sometimes we can't rest because we haven't complained. So sometimes, you know, we're full and overflowing with complaints. We can't believe what's going on. We complain to everyone who'll listen, to our spouses, our friends. And sometimes we complain to God, but then we forget to step back and say, I've committed my cause to Him. I've told Him honestly, brutally honestly, maybe how I feel and what's going on. Now I can rest. And other times, and I think this happens a lot in Christian communities, we expect people to rest before they've had that chance to complain. So sometimes committing your cause to God is a process. It may happen quickly, but it could take weeks of repeatedly going back to God, of laying it at his feet every time the stress starts building or the pain starts coming. But what's true, I think, of most Christian communities is we're very uncomfortable with unresolved pain or people in the midst of a hard time. So we want to fix it. We want it to get resolved right away. And we exert this kind of subtle pressure to say, move on to that praise thing, even if they haven't reached that place yet. So we want people to rest, but we have to be willing to give them time to sort through those emotions to come through them, to bring their complaints before God. And that's kind of, I think that's what we want. We all have these lists of phone numbers on our refrigerator, you know, who you call in the case of emergency, you know, the doctor, the dentist, the gas company, poison control. When something happens, we want to be able to call someone and someone that knows what they're doing, and then rest in the fact that they will make a good decision. And that's what we do with God. We complain, but we rest. That's a critical aspect, I think. And we see this in other scriptures. We'll see, you see Moses complaining to God at times. David, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is probably the quintessential one, the pouring out his heart, and then not my will, but your will. We see Paul at some time despairing of life. That's how we relate to God. In the midst of the pain, we go to him, we complain, and then we rest. So we started with his complaint, which God led him into this dark place because of his calling. We see his expression of trust and resting in God's judgments. And now the passage should end, right? We're done, good, wrapped it all up, and yet we have this next section where the tone changes again. He goes back to complaint, only this time it's darker, it's more painful, and it's more hopeless. This is him and his most raw. There's nothing held back here. So the first complaint is the kind of thing you might get if you ask someone at church on Sunday morning, uh, how are you doing? And they say, Well, you know, things aren't very good right now. I'm having a tough time. This is what you might get if you ask them at 1 a.m. You know, when they can't sleep and they're all alone and they're completely overwhelmed. This is Jeremiah falling apart. Look at 20, 14 through 18. Cursed be the day when I was born. Let the day not be blessed when my mother bore me. Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying, A baby boy has been born to you and made him very happy. But let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without relenting, and let him hear an outcry in the morning and a shout of alarm at noon, because he did not kill me before birth, so that my mother would have been my grave and her womb ever pregnant. Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame? So he's cursing the day of his birth. This is a common explanation for people in difficult situations. We see it in the book of Job. We see it in things like Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's Hamlet. The idea is no existence at all would have been better than what I'm experiencing right now. But he goes further than that and he curses the man who brought the news of his birth. It's like, okay, it's not enough to say I shouldn't have been born. He's even cursing the messenger. Now, this is speculation on my part, but I think one of the reasons he's cursing the messenger is because he was a messenger. And that's what's causing him pain. The message he's he's burdened to deliver is what's causing all the pain. So I think he's lashing out at the messenger because he's tired of being God's messenger. And then it gets worse. As we keep reading, he's kind of sinking deeper and deeper, and he says, okay, it's not enough that to curse the day he was born and the messenger, he says, Why didn't that messenger kill my mother so that I would uh her womb would have been my permanent grave? That that's pretty dark, you have to admit that. Well, that is hitting rock bottom, and we're not used to seeing that kind of angst or emotion in the Bible. But we see Jeremiah here complain to God, trust him, and now we see him falling apart again. And I don't know about you, but I've had those kinds of meltdowns where you just feel terrible about life and you think there's no way you can get up in the morning, you can't face one more day. And I love the fact that in God's words we see a prophet who had this unique relationship with God hitting that same place. So here's the third thing we learned from Jeremiah. It's normal to experience both those highs and those lows. I think having this passage in the Bible suggests that this is a normal part of our experience as we follow God. We trust Him sometimes, we fall apart sometimes, sometimes we hit bottom. It's a normal part of the Christian life. But we're not really comfortable with Christians hitting bottom. We think, well, it really shouldn't be like that. Maybe you have some unconfessed sin in your life, or maybe you just need to trust God more, or maybe you're not doing this or that or whatever. And there's this attitude in Christian circles sometimes that it's not okay to struggle, that it's not okay to struggle like we see Jeremiah struggling here. And yet that doesn't make sense with what we see in Scripture. The Bible shows us Jeremiah cursing the day of his birth. We see David looking back over his life after the Absalom story with deep regret and depression. We see Paul despairing of life at one point. And I think we have to realize that's normal. And I worry that in our Christian community it's not usually okay for people to get really discouraged or depressed. We want to fix them right away. It's like we have this narrow bend of acceptable emotion that's that's okay. And if you're sadder than you're supposed to be, or you're happier than you're supposed to be, then something's wrong and we don't like it. We want you to kind of fit into the happy medium. When I edit these podcasts, I use this feature called a compressor, which levels out all the highs and lows, so it makes the volume more even when you're listening. So it basically takes a bunch of sound that's bouncing up and down in this dramatic range, and it compresses it down to this nice, even, narrow range. And sometimes I think that's what we do as Christians. We expect each other to fit in the nice narrow range of emotions, but the Bible shows us there's a wide range of emotions. Spiritual maturity is not getting to a place where you don't get too sad or too excited. Spiritual maturity is turning to God in the midst of that, whatever it is, no matter how high or how low. And that brings us to the fourth thing we learned from Jeremiah. He falls apart, but he falls apart to God. Look where he's going with that pain. This is a direct address to the Lord. He is talking to God. Even in the midst of his meltdown, he's turning to his relationship with his father. So he's cursing the day of his birth, he's weeping, but he's weeping in worship. So this passage is dark, no doubt about it. But notice what he doesn't say. He curses the day of his birth, he curses the messenger, he wishes he were dead, but he never curses God. He does not ever cross that line. Even when he hits rock bottom and falls completely apart, he falls apart at God's feet. Job does the same thing when you see his wife telling him, just curse God and die in chapter 2, and he says, No, that's one thing I can't do. He said plenty of other things to God, but he never curses God. And we see Jeremiah come short of that as well. I think if he did curse God, then we'd have a true tragedy. That would be just weeping. But he's not just weeping, he's weeping in worship. He's angry, he's bitter, he's depressed, he's spiteful, but he is all of that in a conversation with God. He never turns away. Remember, he commits his cause to God, the one who can truly help. And that's the last thing I think. Even at our darkest moments, that's where we want to go, to God's feet. It's okay to hit those rock bottom passage times in our lives, but the place you want to go is to God and all of that. And we can be brutally honest with him and tell him how we're feeling and what's going on and how it seems unfair or too overwhelming. But we go to him with it and let and then rest, seek that rest that he is in control. So the passage concludes with Jeremiah asking a question, I think the one that's really on his mind, why? Why was I born so that I could experience such pain in 2018? Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow so that my days have been spent in shame? He's basically saying, Why was I ever born if this was the life I was going to live? This is the life you called me to. And we don't get an answer in this passage. But I think we know the answer from other scripture. It ends with an unanswered question, but it's not really unanswered in the rest of Scripture. Yes, God asked Jeremiah to endure terrible difficulty, but it's for a purpose. Look through all the New Testament letters that talk about suffering, and they speak over and over again that there is a purpose behind it, that this is for the sake of something, that this isn't random, this isn't just capricious on God's part, that He is telling a story, that story has a great and glorious ending. This is part of it. We may not understand what the purpose is this side of heaven, but there is always, always a purpose. And I think that can give us the courage to endure. So that brings us back to the question: why is life so hard? Well, it's hard because God may ask us to endure really difficult things, because that's part of the story. Part of Jeremiah's pain was caused by doing the right thing, by fulfilling his calling and doing exactly what God asked him to do. And the Bible is pretty clear that just as the world hated and persecuted Jesus for the message he brought, so Jeremiah is persecuted and hated for the message he preached. And we will be hated and persecuted at times because of being Christians. Another part of his suffering just comes from living in a fallen world. He's living in a sinful, broken world in the midst of a rebellious generation, and judgment is coming. So life is hard because we live in a world that is still sinful. God has not yet made everything right. We have hope. We wait for the kingdom of God, we wait for the day of justice when God will finally free us not only from the penalty of sin but its presence and power. So we wait for the Lord to come back and set us, set things right and take us home, but in the meantime, we're going to experience the consequences of our own sin and the sin of those around us. That's just part of living in a fallen world. Since Jeremiah doesn't actually answer the question, I want to turn to the book of James for a minute because James speaks to the same theme and he answers the question. He begins his letter with a call to remain steadfast through trials, and he comes back to that in his conclusion. This is James 5, verses 7 and 8. Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also be patient, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. So he's been talking about trials and being joyful in trials and standing firm in trials, and he's encouraging them to live their lives with this confident, eager expectation that the Lord is coming, the trial will end, the Lord is compassionate and merciful, and he will make things right. And he gives us this analogy. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth. I think his analogy is life has seasons. Seasons unfold one after the other, like the farmer. You get rain and then you get drought. You get planting, then you get reaping. You sow your seed and then you wait for the rains, and then you wait for the sprouts, and then you wait for the plant to bear fruits, and each season follows another, and the seasons will come and go. And I think his analogy is life has seasons too. There are going to be seasons of plenty, there are going to be seasons of famine, there's going to be seasons of spiritual rain and spiritual famine and spiritual drought, and there will be spiritual harvest. So these seasons come and go, and our job is to wait patiently for what the Lord will do. So we accept the hardships, the drive spells, because we know they're part of the process of bringing fruit in the end. We can't just jump over the hard parts and skip along the top of life going from good time to good time. That's not how it works. There are peaks and valleys. So we wait, standing firm in the promises. So in agriculture, we get hardship is reasonable because farmers know there are ups and downs. There are going to be rains, and then there's going to be drought, and then there's going to be flood, and then, but eventually there will be a harvest. And James is saying trials in life are like that. They will end, they have a purpose, their purpose will be revealed, and our job is to wait patiently. Now, he's not insisting that we be uh that we be happy in trials. As we've seen from Jeremiah, we may feel nothing of the sort, but we face them with the settled conviction of the but God is a mighty warrior. I can commit my cause to him and trust to him. And trust in his justice. So we face them with the settled conviction that there's a purpose behind it, not a random purpose, but a great, wonderful, valuable purpose, and that we can walk through them with confidence that they're preparing us for the day that's coming. They're dressing you in a sense for the day when you will meet the Lord and be perfect and complete and lacking in nothing. Now, of course, the obvious question is, how long? How long do I have to wait? How long do I have to endure? And notice James says in 5.7, until the coming of the Lord, which I take to mean as long as it takes, till God comes back and takes you home or puts it right, you just it may not get better this side of heaven. It might, but it might not. You just wait until God reveals his purpose. So that's the goal we're working toward, the goal of taking us to maturity, spiritual maturity, of being with the Lord when he comes again, when all things will be re made right, when we will be made perfect, complete, mature, lacking in nothing, every tear will be wiped away, and every right will be wrong. And essentially what James encourages them to do is go the distance. Stand firm and be strong. Wait as long as it takes. Keep your eyes on that promise. It's a promise worth waiting for. So learn from the farmer. Seasons come and go. Work, rest, work, rest. Like the farmer, or as we've seen in Jeremiah, complain and then rest in God's judgment. Tell him, be brutally honest with him, but commit your path to him and trust him. So you plant your seeds and then what do you do? You wait. You wait for the early rains, you wait for the late rains. Or we would say, do whatever God has called you to do, and then wait. Sometimes it's drought, sometimes it's flood, sometimes everything is just right. So Jeremiah's suffering, though, was not, you know, a little dry season between the early and late rains. We could describe his more as wave after wave of persecution and punishment and this overwhelming uh storm. He had a very difficult life. There was no easy button for him to push. So we don't see him answering in this passage, why is my life so hard? But we see other scriptures saying, in the end, there's a purpose for it all. In the end, there is a God behind everything. He's redeeming, he's working, he's putting things right, he's telling the story, that story is worth telling. Even in Jeremiah, we're going to look at the passages where he talks about the exile will end, and that's a promise for us too. One day we will see those promises fulfilled. We will see the wonderful, glorious goal that all the trials have taken us to. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4 17, for this momentary light affliction is preparing us for eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. He's talking about what Jeremiah is just going through. He calls it light momentary affliction. You know, that that didn't seem so light what we were reading. And yet his point is compared to what's coming, compared to the glory that's coming, it's not even comparable. This momentary light of fiction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. That's the promise. The trial will end, and it is taking you someplace you really want to go, to a place of a strong, mature faith that will stand on judgment day and be washed clean by the blood of Jesus. So one day the trial will end, one day the purpose will be revealed, and it will be more wonderful than we can ever imagine. Because the day is coming, it really is coming when God's going to turn to his son and say, It's time, go and bring my children home. That day is coming, and it's our job to wait patiently for it. Let's pray. Father, we know that life is hard. And I just pray for each person here, because I know in a room this size there are people experiencing some really dark times. Maybe they're hit, they've already hit bottom, maybe they're about to hit bottom, and I just pray that this truth would ring through to them, that we would know that you are our God in the hard times, whether it's joy or pain, whether it's darkness or light, in a specific moment in our lives, that you are still God, and we can worship you in all of it. And I pray that for each of us as we face those difficult times, uh, that you would keep our faith strong, keep our hearts turned to you, and that it would be a time of strengthening us in our relationship with you, and not a time where we are tempted to turn away. We ask all this indeed today.