Bitterness took root when he began approaching the Word merely as a burden he was called to carry rather than a balm that his soul needed, too.
If the first chapter of Jeremiah’s prophecy recounts his divine call to prophetic ministry, then Chapter 15 is all about Jeremiah’s distressing crisis in ministry. The words in the passage strain the idea that a man of God, one of the Old Testament’s Major Prophets in fact, wrote them. They are words that seem to emerge from a place of deep despair, discouragement, and disappointment; from someone who had taken a beating and was just looking for a breather. In many ways, Jeremiah in Chapter 15 is like a boxer in a heavyweight bout, hobbling to the corner of the mat at the end of the fourteenth round, ready to throw in the towel. He has gone round after round with God’s people, proclaiming God’s words to them, but are they even listening? Have any of his words done anything to turn them around and change their ways?
1. A Prophet’s Breaking Point
Jeremiah’s grief stems from the fact that nothing he has said has amounted to a hill of beans so far (Jer. 6:10; 15:6–7). The people of Judah are still plunging headlong into oblivion, and all he has received for his obedience to the Word of God is a mass of controversy that follows him like permanent mud follows Pig-Pen. “Woe is me, my mother,” the prophet cries, “that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me” (Jer. 15:10). This is Jeremiah at one of the lowest points of his prophetic career. He has been doing just as the Lord commanded him, and look where that’s gotten him? From Jeremiah’s perspective, he has been above reproach the whole time. He wasn’t hanging out with “partyers” (Jer. 15:17). His words and actions weren’t devious or dishonest (Jer. 15:10). “He has been neither a foreclosing creditor nor a defaulting debtor,” John Bright notes. [1] And yet, despite all that, he had become the man everyone else avoids, an outcast among his own people.
There’s a sense in which Jeremiah lays the blame for his chronic loneliness and borderline depression on God. “I sat alone,” he cries, “because your hand was upon me” (Jer. 15:17, emphasis mine). “I was alone because of the great task you gave me to do.” “My predicament and slowly declining mental health are your fault, God. I bear reproach and endure scorn for your sake!” This is the gist of the prophet’s complaint, which spans verses 15 through 18 and sees him admit just how downcast he had become. He feels as though God has forgotten him and that his sorrow is an incurable wound that refuses to be healed. He even concludes by implying that God had failed him. It is startling that the same prophet who once referred to the Lord as “the fountain of living waters” (Jer. 2:13) now says that the Lord is a “deceitful brook,” nothing but a mirage in the desert (Jer. 15:18).
He once had the “joy, joy, joy, joy down in his heart,” but now he’s jaded, cynical, and completely worn down.
Whereas before, he delighted in the words of the Lord as one does a plateful of eclairs, Jeremiah makes the astonishing confession that all his gladness is gone. “My joy is gone,” he moans, “grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me” (Jer. 8:18). He once had the “joy, joy, joy, joy down in his heart,” but now he’s jaded, cynical, and completely worn down. So, what gives? What happened? How did he go from the prophet whose mouth was filled with the word of God to the prophet who questions God’s intentions and trustworthiness? As unsettling as this turn of events may be to read, what occurred in Jeremiah’s heart and life isn’t all that uncommon. To put it plainly, he’s having a pity party. And who can blame him, after all he has been through? The sizable task the Lord had given proved overwhelming, leaving him a bitter, disappointed, and disjointed mess. This is precisely the mess that the evil one relishes to exploit, seizing the opportunity to turn Jeremiah’s depression into full-blown despair.
2. Following Elijah’s Footsteps into Despair
This isn’t the first time one of the Lord’s prophets has confessed his grievances about God to God in an eyebrow-raising string of stanzas. Jeremiah seems to be tracing the mold Elijah set for him centuries before, which either says something about the people God chooses to speak for him or his prerogative to dispense his grace to those who are in the throes of depression, or both. If you recall, after defeating the prophets of Baal in graphic fashion on the slopes of Mount Carmel, Elijah flees for his life from the fury of the wicked queen, Jezebel (1 Kings 19:2–3). The Lord’s seemingly invincible prophet is exposed as a weakling, running for his life, even crying out to his God to “take away his life” (1 Kings 19:5). After being led even further out into the wilderness of Horeb, he laments, “I, even I only am left” (1 Kings 19:14). We should sympathize with Elijah and his acutely melancholy episode. But there’s also a sense in which his despair emerged from his own bloated and mistaken self-importance. Elijah saw himself as the last bastion of the faith of Yahweh in Israel, which is when the Lord reminded him that there were actually still several thousand in Israel who had “not bowed to Baal” (1 Kings 19:18).
The prophet Jeremiah follows a similar pattern of despondency, insisting upon his own uprightness. He, too, saw himself as one of the last faithful men of God. By way of example, there’s a not-too-subtle resemblance between what he says in verses 16 and 17 and what is found in Psalm 1:1–3. According to Jeremiah’s own testimony, he wasn’t “walking in the counsel of the wicked,” nor was he “sitting in the company of revelers” and “scoffers.” Rather, “his delight was in the law of the Lord,” which he gladly “ate” to his heart’s content. He had come to believe that he was the last line of defense between Judah and utter ruin. But after suffering haymaker after haymaker from his own people, he was ready to give up.
There could be any number of reasons for this decline in Jeremiah’s prophetic verve, but chief among them, as I see it, is his apparent forgetfulness that the Word of the Lord is as much for him as it is for “them.” To see the best example of what I’m talking about, one need only glance at Jeremiah’s prayer in the previous chapter:
Though our iniquities testify against us,
act, O Lord, for your name’s sake;
for our backslidings are many;
we have sinned against you.
O you hope of Israel,
its savior in time of trouble,
why should you be like a stranger in the land,
like a traveler who turns aside to tarry for a night?
Why should you be like a man confused,
like a mighty warrior who cannot save?
Yet you, O Lord, are in the midst of us,
and we are called by your name;
do not leave us
(Jer. 14:7–9).
Notice in those three verses, all the instances of “we,” “our,” and “us.” In this very public proclamation, Jeremiah willingly identifies himself with the sinful bunch of Judeans who were already feeling the tremors of God’s judgment and were set to get the full brunt of it. He was one among that crowd. Compare that, though, with his me-centered protest in Chapter 15, where the primary sufferer and victim is Me, Myself, and I (a.k.a. Jeremiah). “Woe is me,” he cries. “I sat alone.” “My pain.” “My wound.” The difference between the two chapters is stark, begging the question: How does something like this happen? How does a man called to preach to God’s people suddenly start preaching at them, down to them?
3. It’s Not Me, It’s Them
Somewhere along the way, Jeremiah forgot what it means to delight in the Word of the Lord. This is something to which we are all prone. We relish Scripture one minute, only to forget it the next. The only thing we’re consistent at is our inconsistency, especially when it concerns deep, prayerful consideration of God’s Word. Reading it is a constant battle, one in which we are forced to wrestle with the worst parts of ourselves. To avoid that, we resort to reading Scripture while thinking about those in our list of contacts or circle of friends who need to hear it. “Man, this verse is so good,” we say to ourselves, “So-and-so should really learn how to apply this to their life!” (I know I’m not the only one guilty of that, right?)
The point is that Jeremiah’s discouragement and disillusionment didn’t come out of nowhere. Rather, they weaseled their way into his heart and soul when the words of God became a message “they” needed to hear and heed instead of a message that confronted his own desperation. Bitterness took root when he began approaching the Word merely as a burden he was called to carry rather than a balm that his soul needed, too — when the Word became a tool to fix others instead of an announcement of God’s promise and patience for him. This is effectively what God tells him. After Jeremiah finishes his self-pitying protest, the Lord calls him out for some of the vile and “worthless” things he has been uttering. Some of Jeremiah’s words were nothing but a pile of rubbish, for which he needed to repent and start uttering “what is precious” once again (Jer. 15:19). In so doing, he’d “be as my mouth,” that is, as the mouth of the Lord, which is an allusion to that initial moment when the Lord put his words into his mouth (Jer. 1:9–10).
4. The Grace of God for a Bitter Prophet
This is a staggering exhibition of God’s response to followers who are bitter, disappointed, and discouraged. Maybe you’ve been therefore, perhaps even recently, or maybe you’re there right now. Whatever the case, we all endure seasons of great discouragement and frustration. Yet God doesn’t let us stay there. “God is gracious,” Christopher J. H. Wright comments. “God understands disillusionment. But God does not let his servants wallow in it, but calls us back in repentance and recommissions us to his service once again.” [2] It’s no accident that the Lord’s message to his disgruntled prophet is almost an exact copy of what he told him years prior (Jer. 15:20–21; cf. 1:8, 18–19). What was declared at the very start of his prophetic ministry was still valid, still true, and still for him. In other words, the one who was commissioned to proclaim the words of the Lord was being invited to rediscover his delight in those same words.
This, too, is what God does for us through his Holy Spirit. He invites us to pause, take a breather, and rekindle our appetite for his Word, realizing none of it has changed, even the tinsiest bit (Ps. 119:89; Isa. 40:8; Matt. 24:35). Consequently, if we’re feeling sour, bitter, or discouraged, the problem isn’t with the Word God’s given us; the problem’s with us. Even if everything else around us fades away or crumbles to dust, even if all our fervor for the things of God curdles, God’s word of grace and promise stays the same. It’s like a meal that never spoils or turns sour. God’s Word is evergreen — it’s perennially fresh and always exactly what our souls need to hear. It’s a feast to which all are invited, one that never ends (Jer. 15:16).
When Jeremiah was worn out, God pointed him back to his words.
Unlike the buffet at Golden Corral, the buffet table that is God’s Word only gets better the more you eat from it. The more you study the Scriptures, the more it becomes the joy and delight of your heart. It’s a process, to be sure, especially since the more you read it, the more you come to realize just how desperately sinful you are — but that’s the whole point. God’s Word isn’t merely a series of words on the printed page. It’s a book that’s “living and active” (Heb. 4:12). It’s a word that doesn’t just tell us about something; it introduces us to someone. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life,” the Lord Jesus once told a gaggle of well-meaning Jews, “and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). The reason, therefore, we can always find the words of God to be our joy and delight is because Jesus is their very heart. He’s the point of it all. He’s the appetizer, main course, and dessert all rolled into one.
When Jeremiah was worn out, God pointed him back to his words. God does the same for us. When we are bitter or burned out, he points us back to the Word who took on flesh for us. He invites us to the meal of his word, where we don’t just hear promises spoken; we see them fulfilled. God’s message to his downcast prophet is the very message that God’s Son came to accomplish. He’s the one who comes to where we are to invite the desperate and downcast to be redeemed and restored. He’s the one who welcomes the lost, the empty, and the hungry to find their fill at a banquet that never sours. So come to the Word and eat your heart out.
