I have been taking my time going through Jeremiah for over a month now. Jeremiah is such a powerful book, with so many great insights. Especially into the tragedy of the prophet being ignored. One of the most remarkable things we see in this book is that no matter how much Jeremiah is proven right, most of the Jewish people refuse to accept he is actually speaking for God.
After again being proven right about the exile and all that goes with that, we read in Jeremiah chapter 42,
"42 Then all the commanders of the forces, and Johanan the son of Kareah and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest, came near 2 and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Let our plea for mercy come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant—because we are left with but a few, as your eyes see us— 3 that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do.” 4 Jeremiah the prophet said to them, “I have heard you. Behold, I will pray to the Lord your God according to your request, and whatever the Lord answers you I will tell you. I will keep nothing back from you.” 5 Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to all the word with which the Lord your God sends you to us. 6 Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.”
7 At the end of ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. 8 Then he summoned Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces who were with him, and all the people from the least to the greatest, 9 and said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your plea for mercy before him: 10 If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I relent of the disaster that I did to you. 11 Do not fear the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid. Do not fear him, declares the Lord, for I am with you, to save you and to deliver you from his hand. 12 I will grant you mercy, that he may have mercy on you and let you remain in your own land. 13 But if you say, ‘We will not remain in this land,’ disobeying the voice of the Lord your God 14 and saying, ‘No, we will go to the land of Egypt, where we shall not see war or hear the sound of the trumpet or be hungry for bread, and we will dwell there,’ 15 then hear the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: If you set your faces to enter Egypt and go to live there, 16 then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine of which you are afraid shall follow close after you to Egypt, and there you shall die. 17 All the men who set their faces to go to Egypt to live there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. They shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I will bring upon them.
18 “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: As my anger and my wrath were poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so my wrath will be poured out on you when you go to Egypt. You shall become an execration, a horror, a curse, and a taunt. You shall see this place no more. 19 The Lord has said to you, O remnant of Judah, ‘Do not go to Egypt.’ Know for a certainty that I have warned you this day 20 that you have gone astray at the cost of your lives. For you sent me to the Lord your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the Lord our God, and whatever the Lord our God says, declare to us and we will do it.’ 21 And I have this day declared it to you, but you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God in anything that he sent me to tell you. 22 Now therefore know for a certainty that you shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go to live” (Jer. 42:1-22).
The Jewish remnant here feigns honest inquiry. They tell Jeremiah that they now believe him, and want to hear what God has to say. But it is evident that they really just want to hear what they want to hear. They are not interested in the word of the Lord, they are interested in hearing Jeremiah tell them what supports their ideas and plans. They want God to grant them their own desires. This is evident by what we read next in chapter 43,
"43 When Jeremiah finished speaking to all the people all these words of the Lord their God, with which the Lord their God had sent him to them, 2 Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the insolent men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie. The Lord our God did not send you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to live there,’ 3 but Baruch the son of Neriah has set you against us, to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they may kill us or take us into exile in Babylon.” 4 So Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces and all the people did not obey the voice of the Lord, to remain in the land of Judah. 5 But Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces took all the remnant of Judah who had returned to live in the land of Judah from all the nations to which they had been driven— 6 the men, the women, the children, the princesses, and every person whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan; also Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch the son of Neriah. 7 And they came into the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the Lord. And they arrived at Tahpanhes" (Jer. 43:1-7).
After all that Jeremiah had said was proven true, these hardhearted people still considered him to be a liar. The book of Jeremiah, overall, emphasizes that they felt this way about Jeremiah because he never told them what they wanted to hear, only what they were supposed to hear. Rebellious people cannot bear to be continually told they are wrong, and they cannot bear to continually be told their way is foolish. They want what they want, and they will surround themselves with people who tell them what they want. Even if they keep facing destruction and disaster because of it.
I wanted to share this to encourage those of you who have been consistently proven right over the last couple of years, but have still been ignored by many. In fact, like me, you might have even experienced some of those people who observed you were right and resent you for it, rather than heed warnings. Being right had the opposite effect than you thought it would. Don't be surprised at this, because none of us are prophets like Jeremiah, none of us (that I know of at least) are hearing direct revelation from God on these issues, we are just making judgement calls with the best information that we have, and though imperfectly, we were able to predict a certain trend based on those observations. Therefore, it makes sense why people would not instantly start to heed what you said, just because you are right, because they have reasons to not even like hearing this from you at all, and as you are just another fallen person they can easily justify ignoring your insights.
Don't be upset about this, or worried about this, because even Jeremiah, a true prophet of God experienced this, and his batting average as a true prophet was 100%. Much higher than ours. Yet still people refused to listen to him and accept him. Such is the lot of those who speak with a prophetic voice, even if they are not precisely prophets, "11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Matt. 5:11-12). Because we are not prophets it is understandable that people will just not really care that we got this right, or that right, or even a few things right. They know what they want to know and they know what they want to hear, and there are plenty of people around them who will feed that desire, tell them what they want and that will gain most of their attention. Such is how things are.
All we can do is speak the truth as best as we can, knowing we will get plenty of things wrong. Humbly acknowledge that only God knows all things, and we don't have a complete picture ourselves, and leave people to be free to find out if the authority or voice they accept is of any help to them or not. It's not incumbent on us to convince people, only to speak the truth as we best understand it, and we expect others to do the same for us.
I take comfort in Jeremiah, because if a great man of God like him can be completely ignored so consistently, then how much more should the rest of us not worry that it happens to us. The truth is at the end of the day we all only see through a mirror darkly, and we all have to learn certain things for ourselves. We can live in the freedom and grace that this affords all of us, and thank God, that we are not responsible for the harm that comes to our neighbour, if we have sought to warn them, and vice versa. As evil increases, so will the pressure increase on people to ignore those who warn about it, but such is the way it has always been in times of distress. Just be faithful to the truth as you know it. Leave the rest to God.
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