Studies in Jeremiah - Serving on Purpose

Serving on Purpose – Jeremiah Style

This week’s lesson begins a four part series entitled “Serving on Purpose.” Based on the call to the Prophet Jeremiah, we find that God puts out the call for each of us – each of us. This is not just the preachers, pastors, evangelists, missionaries and other “usual suspects,” it is to each of us in our own individual way.

“Starting Now” asks the question: “when God calls will you take the call or screen it?”





“Paying the Price to Serve God” reminds us that service is not all glorious pep rallies with Cliff Barrows and the 5,000 voice Crusade Choir singing “Just As I Am” while all the busses wait just for you. There ultimately is a price to pay – it costs us something – it ain’t free. Are we willing to pay that price?



“Dealing with Doubt” has nothing to do with Monty Hall, it is about (drum rollllll)……….. doubt. What about when God’s call doesn’t seem clear or we doubt we have heard Him right “You mean you want me to do what?”






“Doing My Part” ask us to put all these together and determine exactly what is my part. Then, of course, as Henry Blackaby would say, it leads us to a “crisis of faith and belief” when it concludes with, “. . . so OK, are you going to do it or not?”


As we said, all four lessons are based on the Book of Jeremiah. (Unlike the TV series, “The Book of Daniel,” the Book of Jeremiah has not been cancelled and is still running strongly in syndication some 2600 years later. [That’s a lot of episodes!]


The Book of Jeremiah is named after the Prophet and chief protagonist of the Book who was one of God’s pre-exilic spokesmen to the Southern Kingdom of Judah. He lived circa. 626-580 B.C.

This was stormy time in the history of man and especially so for the Nation of Judah. As you will remember, after the glorious and prosperous reign of King Solomon, the Kingdom was divided between the followers of his two sons and became two separate countries. Moral decline which actually began during Solomon’s time, set in and judgment fell on both kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom, of Israel, comprised of the ten tribes fell around 750 B.C. to the Assyrians. They cease to bean independent nation at that time and basically vanished from the stage of history.
The Southern Kingdom, Judah includes the two remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin. It ultimately suffered a similar fate at the hands of the newly rising stars of history, the Babylonians, though Judah as reconstituted after the captivity and continued to be an important player in history.

As Jeremiah is speaking his prophesies, Babylon is ascending and the then great Assyrians are in decline. At this time, a much weakened Judah finds itself “ham sandwiched” between the perennial power of Egypt on the West, Assyria on the North and Babylon on the Northeast, East and South.

Through much of the period of Jeremiah’s prophesy, he finds himself prophesying that Judah will fall to the feared Babylonians and will suffer an external captivity. This prophesy came true and lasted 70 years. [It is interesting to note that in Hebrew numerology, the number 10 is the number signifying man and the number 7 stands for completeness or perfects, thus 70 or 7 X 10 is the perfect control or ascendancy of man over Judah.]
Jeremiah’s prophesies were in stark contrast to much of the prophesy of his compatriot prophets, many of whom, though not all, proclaimed a much more acceptable idea that Judah would overcome the Babylonians or that at worst, there would be a short captivity of only a couple of years. In other words, they prophesied that there would be a recession while Jeremiah cried “destruction.”

For this obvious, Jeremiah was not well liked, The people, like us, did not want to hear bad news and they transferred this dislike of the message to the messenger. Thus, the call of Jeremiah was to a distasteful – though completely necessary - task, not a job Jeremiah relished at all.
So it is for us, God sends out the call for each of us to serve. Sometimes it is to the great and glorious and people will like us. But, sometimes it is to bring tidings of bad news. We are all presented with the call; will we pick up the phone?