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Four Interesting Things to Know About Jeremiah

Jeremiah is an anti-Moses. There are many parallels between Moses and Jeremiah. For example, they both responded to God’s call with reluctance, saying they were unable to speak well. Jeremiah’s preaching also draws heavily on Moses’s preaching in the book of Deuteronomy. But, Jeremiah is a kind of “anti-Moses.” Whereas Moses led the people out of captivity in Egypt to the promised land, Jeremiah’s preaching drove them out of the promised land and into captivity in Babylon. Moses was a mediator, who prayed for God’s people and whom God used to establish his covenant with them. But Jeremiah is a kind of broken mediator. He was forbidden to pray for the people, as God declared that the covenant was officially broken.

Jeremiah teaches us about the Word of God. Jeremiah uses the words “word” and “words” more than any other book of the Bible. Beyond that statistic, Jeremiah gives us insight into the power of God’s words, the impact they have on the prophet, and even the means God used to inspire the text of Jeremiah itself as Jeremiah’s preaching is collected and edited by the scribe Baruch. In the words of Jeremiah, we see the word of God working powerfully to bring about God’s purposes on earth—purposes of judgment and purposes of salvation.

Jeremiah shows us that faithfulness is often difficult. Jeremiah is sometimes called the “weeping
prophet.” God called him to preach a message of wrath and destruction against his own people! The people did not care for the message or the messenger. Even his own family tried to murder him.
Delivering this message was almost unbearable for Jeremiah—he compares it to a burning fire in his bones (20:9). Yet, reading Jeremiah can be an unexpected encouragement to those of us who would take up our cross and follow Jesus today. In Jeremiah, we see that discouragement and frustration are not necessarily signs of disobedience or faithlessness, nor are they proof that God is not at work.

Jeremiah shows us Christ. On the one hand, as a prophet, Jeremiah foretells the coming of Christ. He
 predicts the coming of the new covenant, which Christ would inaugurate in His own blood (Jeremiah 31:31, 1 Corinthians 11:25). But Jeremiah’s own life and ministry point to the better ministry of Christ. This broken mediator points to the need for the one Mediator, Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 2:5). Jeremiah was forbidden to pray for his people, but Jesus always intercedes for us (Hebrews 7:25). Jeremiah could not bear even the message of God’s wrath as it burned in his bones, but Jesus bore the reality of God’s wrath in his own body until the last smoldering ember of that fire was exhausted. Jeremiah saw Jerusalem destroyed and the temple burned. Jesus is building us into a living temple where God’s
Spirit dwells in man, and preparing for us the New Jerusalem where man will dwell with God. All glory be to Christ!