“People to meet in heaven: Jeremiah”
Jeremiah 1:1-3
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
If you want to know the truth, Dr. Pemberton wasn’t even a doctor. After all, who would trust a product called, “Mr. Pemberton’s Triplex Liver Pills”? At least, that’s what he thought! That’s why he called himself “Dr. Pemberton” instead.
But even though he wasn’t a doctor, he did know a lot about medicine, for he was a corner druggist, a pharmacist. And sometime after he moved from Columbus, Ohio to Atlanta, Georgia, and after he created, “Dr. Pemberton’s Indian Queen Hair Dye,” this obscure pharmacist starting fiddling with some home-made, basement brew.
What he wanted to do was to create a cure for headaches and hangovers. He experimented with extracts of fruits and nuts and leaves for months, but that was just for taste. If he was going to cure a headache, he would need a stimulant. Probably caffeine. And he would need something to take away the pain. Maybe cocaine?
And finally, after he came up with just the right formula, he needed a little financial help. So he took a jug of his reddish-brown syrup to another pharmacy, Jacobs Pharmacy, one of the largest in the city of Atlanta.
What was in it?, the manager wanted to know. Dr. Pemberton said it was a secret. Just mix it with some water and drink it.
Jacobs tried it and liked it, so he agreed to sell it. But sales were slow. Apparently, the people of Atlanta weren’t suffering from headaches that summer. In fact, sales were so slow, Pemberton could have sold the whole thing, formula and all, for a couple thousand dollars. But that’s when fate stumbled in.
You see, one morning, a customer came into the pharmacy suffering from a hangover. And the clerk remembered Dr. Pemberton’s syrup and went to mix some. But he was new on the job and didn’t know the correct procedure, so he used carbonated water, instead of plain water, by mistake.
And it’s a good thing he did, because that clerk, by mistake, made the very first glass of Coca-Cola!
Sometimes things don’t work out quite as well as we had planned. Just think of Thomas Edison, for example, whose teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Or Walt Disney, whose editor fired him because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Or Sidney Poitier whose acting director told him to go home and stop wasting his time.
Anyone else probably would have given up. But today, we’re glad they didn’t.
So it was for a man, a prophet, named Jeremiah. If there was anyone who could have given up, who should have given up, it was the prophet Jeremiah.
If you would, please turn with me in your Bible to page 796 as I read the words of Jeremiah chapter 1. I’ll start at verse 1: “The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month. Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.’ But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say, “I am only a youth”; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.’”
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
It was some six hundred years before Christ, the final days in a crumbling nation. The northern kingdom had already fallen, pillaged and plundered by Assyria and now, a hundred years later, the southern kingdom was next.
Time after time, God warned them to give up their idols and return to Him, but time after time, they refused. So He had no choice but to tear them apart, one-by-one. And now, He sent His prophet Jeremiah, to give them one last chance.
But things didn’t go as well as anyone planned. In fact, today we call Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet,” not only because he cried tears of sadness, and not only because he knew judgment was about to come. We call him the “weeping prophet,” because no matter how hard he tried, the people refused to listen. Even more, God told him to never marry and to never have children. Even his own friends betrayed him and turned their backs on him. And while other prophets witnessed some success, at least for a little while, it was like he was talking to a brick wall.
No prophet endured more, no prophet suffered more, and no prophet grieved more than Jeremiah—which is why we want to meet him in heaven!
What words of judgment did he speak against them? Turn with me to page 819 as I read the words of chapter 17. Verse 1: “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of their altars, while their children remember their altars and their Asherim, beside every green tree and on the high hills, on the mountains in the open country. Your wealth and all your treasures I will give for spoil as the price of your high places for sin throughout all your territory. You shall loosen your hand from your heritage that I gave to you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you do not know, for in My anger a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.”
Now turn to page 829 as I read the words of chapter 25. Look at the right-hand column, at verse 30: “You, therefore, shall prophesy against them all these words, and say to them: ‘The Lord will roar from on high, and from His holy habitation utter His voice; He will roar mightily against His fold, and shout, like those who tread grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. The clamor will resound to the ends of the earth, for the Lord has an indictment against the nations; He is entering into judgment with all flesh, and the wicked He will put to the sword, declares the Lord.’”
And for all that he said, what did they do to him? First, they wanted to kill him (chapters 11, 18 and 38), his own relatives betrayed him (chapter 12), men beat him and put him in stocks, then laughed at him, ridiculed and mocked him (chapter 20), they put him in prison (chapter 32), they accused him of treason and threw him in a dungeon (chapter 37), they dropped him into a muddy hole in the ground and left him for dead (chapter 38), and if tradition is true, they took him to Egypt and stoned him to death.
As the writer to the Hebrews once said: “Some faced jeers and flogging, chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them.”
What does all this have to do with us? Just like Jeremiah, we too are on a mission, a divinely-appointed mission. God has given us a great work to do, to share His Word and to live His life in our time and place. And, sometimes, it’s the most difficult thing we could ever do.
And just like Jeremiah, we too live in a nation that cares little for God. In January of 1973, for example, the Supreme Court of our United States voted 7-2 to legalize abortion, to allow women to take the lives of their unborn. Today, on average, 3,700 children will die, by abortion, in our United States. And tomorrow, 3,700 more. And the day after that, 3,700 more. Since 1973, there have been some 59,000,000.
How Jeremiah wept over his nation. And, sometimes, so do we.
Even more, our heartaches never seem to end—when our doctor says there’s nothing anyone can do, when your wife tells you she wants a divorce, when your boss calls you in and says, “We’ve decided to let you go,” when you pray for your son or daughter to come back to the Lord, but their heart remains cold, when your spouse is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, when the college of your dreams turns you down.
Just like Jeremiah, our griefs and heartaches, our trials and troubles never seem to end.
Blaise Pascal was a famous seventeenth century French mathematician, scientist and philosopher. Today, if atmospheric pressure is important to you, you can thank Blaise Pascal.
But in November of 1654, some seven years before he died, something happened that rocked his faith in God. Whatever it was, from that moment on, his life would never be the same.
Then strangely enough, when Pascal died seven years later, his servant was putting away his clothes when he happened to notice a note he had sewn into his coat, right over his heart. The note was so important to him that, as the servant soon discovered, Pascal would take it out and move it every time he changed his clothes.
In part, this is what it said: “Jesus Christ. I have fallen away. I have fled from Him, denied Him, crucified Him. May I not fall away forever. We keep hold of Him only by the ways taught in the Gospel. Renunciation, total and sweet. Total submission to Jesus Christ. Eternally in joy for a days’ exercise on earth. I will not forget Thy Word. Amen”
These words were so important to him, they would change the course of his life. That’s why he sewed them into his coat, over his heart.
When we think of Jeremiah, the grief he endured and the rejection he suffered, we can’t help but think of our Savior Jesus. For as another prophet wrote, the prophet Isaiah, He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. As One from whom men hide their faces, He was despised and we esteemed Him not.
And just like Jeremiah, He too completed His God-given, divinely appointed mission through His suffering and death on the cross, that you and I might be saved.
As Peter once preached on the festival of Pentecost: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
We thank You, dear Father, for Your prophet Jeremiah. Grant that we too may accomplish our God-given, divinely-appointed mission, as we seek to share the good news of our Savior Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen