Gary Hamrick - Courage for the Discouraged
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All right, Jeremiah chapter 45 is where we are for today, and I'm going to read the entire chapter. But don't worry—if you're there, you'll notice it's only five verses. So here we go.
Jeremiah 45, verse 1: This is what Jeremiah the prophet told Baruch son of Neriah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, after Baruch had written on a scroll the words Jeremiah was then dictating.
Okay, so now notice—so in verse 2, Jeremiah's going to speak to Baruch from the Lord. The Lord has a word for Baruch. So verse 2: This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to you, Baruch: You said, “Woe to me! The Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am worn out with groaning and find no rest.”
The Lord said, “Say this to him: This is what the Lord says: I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted throughout the land. Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go, Baruch, I will let you escape with your life.”
I've entitled today's teaching “Courage for the Discouraged.” Courage for the Discouraged.
Let's first pause and pray. Father in heaven, we thank you now as we open up your word to Jeremiah 45. We pray that it would speak to us in personal ways. And I thank you for each person here and for those especially who have come here today maybe a little downhearted. I ask that you would really minister your grace to them and that you would encourage them through this time in your word. And that as we visit this story, you would visit us in personal, powerful ways. And we love you, Lord, and we give you all glory, praise, and thanks and honor. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray these things. And everybody said amen.
Chapter 45 here concerns a direct word from the Lord to a discouraged person by the name of Baruch. Now, who is Baruch, and what is this chapter all about, and how does it apply to our lives today?
So for those of you who are taking notes, first I'm going to give just a really quick background on Baruch the person. The man Baruch—he is a personal secretary to Jeremiah. Jeremiah has been dictating the words that he gets from the Lord to Baruch, and Baruch has been writing them down on a scroll. Baruch's name in Hebrew translates “blessed.” The name Baruch means blessed. In fact, every recited Jewish prayer and blessing even today—the recited ones—begin with the word Baruch: “Baruch Adonai Eloheynu Melech ha'olam,” which translates “Blessed be the Lord our God, King of the universe.” That's how every Jewish prayer and blessing begins today—with that word Baruch, meaning blessed. Blessed be the Lord our God.
And so he bears a very important name—it just means blessed. And he is the son of Neriah, it tells us here in the text, which means he is of the tribe of Judah. And he appears 25 times by name in the Book of Jeremiah, starting in chapter 32, and the last reference we have about him is here in chapter 45.
Now, just for clarification, chapter 45 actually chronologically fits after chapter 36. It is not in chronological order here in your Bibles. It tells us that the time of chapter 45 is the fourth year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah. And so that places it right after chapter 36, because chapter 36 also begins the same way: It was the fourth year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah.
Which means that we're going backwards in time. The last couple of weeks we were together, we talked about the destruction of Jerusalem that happened in 586 BC. Then last week's study, we talked about the remnant of the Jews left in Judah after Jerusalem was destroyed. This chapter 45—we're going backwards. We're going back 21 years before the destruction of the city of Jerusalem. The fourth year of the reign of King Jehoiakim is 607 BC. That's the year of this story.
And Jeremiah's been warning the people over and over again about the impending judgment of God coming from the Babylonians. And so in chapter 36—I'm just going to reference it, I'm going to read a little bit from it; you don't need to turn there if you don't want to—but in chapter 36, Jeremiah is dictating all this impending disaster that's going to come upon the people of Judah, his fellow Jews, because of their rebellion and their disobedience against God. And he's dictating all this, so Baruch is writing all this down.
You have to imagine this. You have to picture this. So here's the scene. I'm going to read it from chapter 36, verses 1 through 4. It says: In the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now. Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, each of them will turn from his wicked way; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin.”
So Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah, and while Jeremiah dictated all the words the Lord had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them on the scroll.
So now you got to keep this in mind. Baruch—his job is he's listening to what Jeremiah is saying. Listen to the chain of events: The Lord is speaking to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is speaking to Baruch. And Baruch is writing on the scroll with a quill, no doubt, you know, and he's just recording all these things. And Jeremiah's telling him all the disaster that's about to come on their own country and their fellow countrymen.
Okay? And so Baruch is hearing this, and he's writing all this down. And I just wonder—was there any pushback, a little bit, from Baruch as he's hearing all this? So Jeremiah is like, “Okay, Baruch, write this down: The Lord says he's going to destroy Jerusalem.” All right. “The Lord's going to destroy Jerusalem. Yeah, he's going to burn it to the ground.” Seriously? Do I have to write this?
I mean, I just wonder if there was that little dialogue at all. And Jeremiah's telling him all this stuff. Because as he's writing it, he's writing about all this devastation.
I want you to put yourself for the moment in Baruch's shoes. Because here he is hearing this devastation that's coming—the destruction that's coming. Jeremiah's dictating all this. When you're hearing all that's about to happen to your country and your countrymen, it's bound to affect you deeply.
And so no doubt part of chapter 45 is showing us, after he's written all these things as it's been dictated to him, that Baruch just becomes heavy-hearted. He becomes discouraged. And he knows that God is going to be faithful to do what he says. And if God ends up doing what he says—because the people don't turn—there's going to be devastation upon the whole land.
And even if you're righteous in that day—like no doubt Baruch and Jeremiah were—Baruch still knows he's going to be affected by this devastation one way or another. He's living in the midst of it. He's going to be affected by this devastation.
I want you to try to imagine what life would be like if you're on the receiving end of prophecies. Let's just try to insert ourselves in this story and try to imagine. I know it's hard because we live in such relative comfort and peace and security, but I want you to try to imagine someone's dictating to you the word of the Lord, and you're hearing your community's going to be destroyed, your church is going to be destroyed, your own family is going to be separated from you. This is all coming to your country, your community, and to your family.
How would you feel? How would you feel hearing that some foreign army is about to invade you and your life is never going to be the same? I mean, all the normal everyday stuff that you commonly do is going to be totally changed now because of what's about to happen. I mean, you'd be heavy-hearted too.
Just try to imagine—like the thought of how you normally spend your Sunday. So you're here today; you've come to church. And then what do you normally do? Maybe go out to get a bite to eat with some friends, or maybe you go home and have a family dinner. And maybe you look forward—especially on a rainy time-change Sunday—to go home, maybe take that afternoon Sunday nap.
But on this day you go home, and there's another army that's already ransacked your home, confiscated your stuff, taken over your town. And you're homeless, and you're without a job, and your family's been separated from you. I mean, your life will never be the same.
He's hearing all this, and he's imagining all this that's about to happen, and it's weighing on him. So it's no wonder then, when we get to chapter 45 here, what's happening with Baruch is that when he finishes writing all these things, he's discouraged. He's downright despondent.
And he's quoted here in verse 3—if you still have your Bibles open. Notice the Lord says to Jeremiah that he's overheard what Baruch has said. Now we don't know if Baruch has been praying to God and saying these things, or whether Baruch has just been venting, maybe to Jeremiah. Nevertheless, God has heard. And Baruch gets quoted in verse 3.
This is what he says: “Woe to me!” he says. “The Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am worn out with groaning and find no rest.” That's how he describes himself—emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
And I want you to imagine for a moment—you know these words that he uses to describe himself. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever been in a place in your life where discouragement was so thick that it was just palpable and painful? Have you ever been in a place in your life where you were so overwhelmed with sorrow or grief that you were worn out? That's the word he uses here—worn out.
But as exhausted as you were from the sorrow and grief, you still couldn't sleep. Have you ever cried so much that you had no more tears—you were literally all cried out?
Life can be pretty painful at times. David experienced his share of pain. He would write in Psalm 6, verse 6: “I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.”
He would also say in Psalm 31, verses 9 and 10: “Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.”
David would also say in Psalm 69, verse 3: “I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God.”
There have been plenty of people—even yes, Christian people—who have found themselves in the throes of discouragement.
When Horatio Spafford lost his four daughters in a collision of sea vessels at sea—and they drowned, all four of his daughters—Horatio Spafford wrote that all-familiar, one of the classic hymns of our faith: “It Is Well with My Soul.” It happened in 1873 when his daughters died, and he wrote that hymn in that same year, 1873.
And in that hymn he describes the grief that he experienced as “sorrow like sea billows roll.” He describes the anguish of his heart, the sorrow of his soul, that would come in like billowing waves—just sorrow that comes. And some of you have experienced some really devastating things in your life; you know exactly what he's talking about—that you might have a good day or two, but then there's this wave of sorrow, wave upon wave upon wave upon wave, separated by maybe some calm every once in a while, but then a wave of sorrow.
Now in that song, however—as we know—he also talks about how he was visited by the peace of God that came in like a river. And so he describes the waves of sorrow being met by the rivers of peace. But nevertheless, he did not deny his sorrow. He didn't pretend like it didn't exist. He was deeply in anguish—who wouldn't be?
What a lot of people may not know about that song—he might be familiar with that story in many ways—what a lot of people don't know is that shortly after that terrible tragedy, Horatio Spafford and his wife had another child. It was a little boy, and they thought, here is the joy to replace our sorrow. But when that little boy was four years old, he got scarlet fever and died.
What you also may not know from that song is that Horatio Spafford wrote the words in 1873, but the musical score was not added until 1876—three years later. The musical composition was written by a man named Philip Bliss. And Philip Bliss, in 1876, wrote the musical composition for that song. It got published then as the song that we know now today: “It Is Well with My Soul.”
And in that same year, 1876, that Philip Bliss wrote the musical composition, he and his wife were on a train in Ohio, and it derailed. And Philip Bliss survived and went back into the wreckage of the train to rescue his wife. And when he did, the train became engulfed in flames, and the two of them died, and their bodies were never recovered.
When sorrow like sea billows rolls. Discouragement comes in all shapes and sizes and forms. Heartache is no respecter of persons.
A lot of people get discouraged in this world. Some even of our great church fathers of the early faith suffered from depression. Martin Luther in the 16th century—he endured many instances of discouragement. He suffered most of his life and would write about it often, describing it with words like this (quote): “melancholy, heaviness, depression, dejection of spirit, downcast, sad, downhearted.”
Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher of the 19th century, said that his discouragement started when he was 24 years of age in 1858. Charles Spurgeon later recalled (quote): “My spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for.”
He would go on to say that he battled against what he called (quote) “causeless depression” his whole life. He said (quote): “This shapeless, undefinable, yet all-beclouding hopelessness cannot be reasoned with.” He said fighting this type of depression is as difficult as fighting with mist.
So when we read here in chapter 45 of Jeremiah that Baruch describes his situation with the words sorrow, pain, being worn out, groaning, and without rest—it's a picture of a lot of people. Or at the very least, it's a picture of what any number of us have experienced, are experiencing, or may experience to some degree or another in the course of our lifetime.
And what I want you to notice with me are a few things from this chapter to help give us courage in our discouragement.
The first is this—for you note-takers, write down: God cares about us in our discouragement. God cares about us in our discouragement.
This whole chapter, Jeremiah 45, is about a personal word from the Lord through Jeremiah for one guy—Baruch. It's a personal word that the Lord is visiting Baruch with so that he might know he's not alone—that God hears and God knows and God cares.
God has seen and heard what Baruch is going through. And this is incredible for us to recognize because at this time God is speaking to the whole nation of Judah through the prophet Jeremiah because of their rebellion and their sin and their disobedience against God. And so God is using Jeremiah to speak to an entire nation.
And in this moment, God puts on pause a message for the nation so that he might deliver a message for one person. One person. That's how much God cares.
God cares about every single thing that you and I face. And even though he's the God of the universe, he is never distracted by the masses to be unconcerned for the one—for you.
God cares. He cuts through the national message here in this chapter for a personal message for one guy. Jeremiah—God says to him, “I got a word today.” Jeremiah's probably thinking, “A whole word for the nation? Okay, what is it you want me to say?” “No, no—this is a word for Baruch. I want you to tell this guy a personal word.” That's how much God is intimately familiar with every single thing in our lives.
Now I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but it is still possible—God can still operate this way—whereby by his Spirit he puts a word on somebody's heart to share with another person. And when God does that, it's a wonderful thing.
I have been the recipient of that kind of thing from time to time. And the Lord has put different things on my heart for certain people at different times. It doesn't happen frequently—and by the way, you have to always, you know, carefully measure those kind of things. You know, sometimes people who approach me like, “I have a word for you.” You know, me: “Okay, not sure.” You know, but then there are others—and so you gotta weigh those things. You know, we shouldn't be non-discerning or gullible about just anything. We should weigh things.
But God can still work that way by his Spirit. And you know, often though it doesn't happen regularly—but often if the Lord puts something on my heart for somebody else, I'll just basically say, “Hey, listen, you know, I just kind of feel this burden in my heart to say this. Now I'm just going to kind of leave this with you—if this is from the Lord or not, you can figure that out or decide, or you know—but I just want to be faithful to at least say this much.”
And it's a wonderful thing. And I can tell you, to have been at the receiving end of that—in fact, just this past Friday. Just this past Friday, just having kind of a down day—it happens to us. And in the middle of the day my cell phone rings, and on the cell phone it said “No Caller ID”—which, you know, like, don't answer that. And so, but I had to answer because we had a dishwasher delivered yesterday, and on Friday they're supposed to call to tell me when they're delivering it on Saturday. And so like, I had to answer it.
So I answered the phone. It was my friend Daniel Messiah. Okay, now Daniel Messiah—how many of you remember Daniel Messiah from when he's been here before? For those of you who don't know, Daniel Messiah was Egyptian-born and raised in Egypt, raised a Muslim, very devout Muslim. And then he had a personal encounter with Jesus, got radically saved when he was still in Egypt, left Islam, became a Christian. And then because of that, he was arrested in Egypt, put in solitary confinement for eight months. And then he was released, and then eventually came to the United States. And now he has a wonderful ministry reaching Muslims. Just a dear brother who loves the Lord.
And so he says to me—says, “Gary, you are my brother from another mother.” All right, so that's the kind of friendship we have. And so I answer, and I said, “Daniel, why is your phone showing up No Caller ID?” He goes, “Well, you must only have my mobile number. I'm calling from home.”
“So I needed to call you today.” And I said, “All right, well, so what's going on?” He goes—he says, “I was praying for you”—I'm trying to do my best Egyptian Daniel impersonation—he said, “I was praying for you this morning, and God spoke to me, gave me word for you—word of encouragement.” And so he told me specifically what the Lord had told him to say. And it was just a wonderful word of encouragement to me.
And then we had a chuckle because he said, “I have to be honest with you—I argued with God about this.” I said, “What?” Because, yeah, yeah—because, you know, he said, “I minister to Muslims. Muslims, in fact—he even contacted the congresswoman who was talking anti-Semitic stuff this week”—and so that's a whole other story. He goes, “So I, you know, me—as I confront, I talk about truth, I want Muslims to know truth and be free.” And he says, “All these Muslims are trying to kill me.” So I say to God, “Why can't that word be for me?” He says, “No, God said, ‘Daniel, dis word for Gary. You call him.’”
I said, “Well, Daniel, thank you, and I'll be praying for you.” But Proverbs 25:11 says, “A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” And it was a word aptly spoken.
Now listen—the Lord may not always deal that personally with us. It's wonderful when he does. But the main takeaway from this that I want us to see here in this first point is that God knows and God hears and God cares about us.
David, when he faced his own distress, would write in Psalm 55:17: “Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice.” Solomon, his son, would write in Psalm 72:12: “For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.”
Because that's our God. He knows what we're going through. He is personally, intimately acquainted with every discouraging, troubling thing that we face—just as he did here with Baruch.
The second point I'd like you to jot down is number two: that God should not be blamed for our discouragement.
Baruch's quote by the Lord here in verse 3 is accusing God of adding sorrow to his pain. He says there in verse 3: “The Lord has added sorrow to my pain.”
Now, just so we can get the perspective again—this chapter really follows chapter 36. Here's what was happening in chapter 36: Jeremiah dictated these prophecies. Baruch wrote them down. But then Jeremiah was not able—he was restricted from going publicly to proclaim these things. So Baruch took the scroll, and he went to the temple of the Lord, and from a window he read the scroll to all the people.
The officials of the king overheard because they were there as well, and they were alarmed by these things that the prophet was saying. They told the king. The king said, “Bring Baruch with the scroll here.” Baruch brings the scroll. He reads it to the king Jehoiakim. And as he's unraveling the scroll and reading it, Jehoiakim the king takes a penknife and cuts that portion and throws it in the fire. And then Baruch unravels some more and reads it, and the king cuts it and throws it into the fire. And he burns the entire scroll—but he listens to it, ends up burning the entire scroll, and basically refuses to heed the warning and turns a deaf ear.
And then he issues an APB—he wants to arrest Jeremiah and Baruch, and he wants to kill them. And the Bible says in chapter 36 that the Lord hid Jeremiah and Baruch. So the king was very intentional in trying to kill them.
So with that backdrop, what's going on in Baruch's life—no doubt, and the reason why he's saying the Lord is adding sorrow to my pain—is because here's a guy who's just trying to be faithful. He's just tried to do what Jeremiah is telling him to do and write down these things. He's trying to serve God and honor God in the process. And he's basically gotten to this point where he's thinking—this is what's inferred here—he's basically saying, “I'm just trying to live for you, Lord. I'm just trying to serve you. I'm just trying to do what I'm being told to do. I just want to honor you. And yet it's not working out. You know, all this devastation is going to come, and what's my life going to look like at the end of all this? People are trying to kill me now just because I'm trying to serve you.”
And here's how we can sound in a similar way as Christians. We could end up from time to time looking at our lives through the lens of our discouragement—and often even looking at God through the lens of our discouragement—and we basically say something like this: “You know, all I've tried to do, Lord, is to live for you. I've just tried to be faithful. I go to church. I wanted to raise my kids in the way of the Lord. I just tried to honor you. Sure, nobody's perfect, but I've tried to be a good Christian. And ever since I've been a Christian, this has happened and that has happened and the other thing has happened. And I'm not really convinced that you care.”
And this is a kind of thing that we can do with God. And the warning here is: don't blame God.
Here's what happens, friends—listen: If you think God is the source of your pain, who are you going to turn to as the source for your help? Because God is our ever-present help in time of need. We can't go around blaming him for some of the discouragement we face in our world.
Friends, the fact of the matter—and this is important for Christians to understand—when Jesus died on a cross, he did not die on a cross to improve our lives for this earth. Now that might happen in some ways as a natural default—because when Christ dies on a cross and we come into relationship with him, it improves my life in immeasurable ways. It helps me to navigate this world better.
But Jesus didn't die on the cross with the intention of just trying to improve your life or my life for earth. He died on the cross to prepare our lives for heaven. Because he knows that this earth is wicked and corrupt and deceitful and has its share of discouragement and despair and crises and disease and death. If the world had none of those things, then why would we need to be rescued from it?
Jesus dies on a cross—in fact, Galatians 1, verse 4 says that Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age. He didn't come to just improve our situation here. He came to transform our lives, change our hearts, and take us to heaven when we die—because he's preparing us for our ultimate reward, not just improved life here.
This is not just “Jesus is a fix-it for your life to improve your situation on earth.” Jesus is a Savior to rescue us from this world and to take us to a place where eventually Revelation 21 says there will be no more sorrow, no more pain, no more death, no more mourning, no more crying—for the old order of things has passed away. “Behold, I make all things new.” That's our ultimate hope and our ultimate reward.
And so in the meantime, we do live a life that has its share of discouragement. I am convinced that God has spared us from a lot of stuff that we don't even know—we don't even know because, you know, if we experienced it, then by definition we wouldn't have been spared of it. So I think there are things—and we get to heaven, we're going to realize God spared us of a multitude of things. And so we need to thank him and praise him in spite of the fact that we don't even know what those things might necessarily be.
But the fact that sometimes we do experience pain and discouragement in this lifetime is a reminder that that's why Christ died on a cross—to rescue us from our own sins and from a sinful, fallen world.
This is why Paul would say in Romans 8:18: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” He saw and he knew and understood: We're not living for Christ just for this life—we're living for Christ for the life to come.
And so may we be faithful and not blame him for our discouragement.
The last point—real quickly—the last point I want you to notice here in chapter 45, verses 4 and 5.
Verse 4: The Lord said, “Say this to him: This is what the Lord says: I will overthrow what I have built”—this is God speaking through Jeremiah—“I will overthrow what I've built and uproot what I've planted throughout the land. Should you then seek great things for yourself?” He's asking Baruch. “Seek them not. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go, I will let you escape with your life.”
In other words, what God is saying here is: I am sovereign over the nations, and I am sovereign over your life. He says, “I'm about to bring judgment on the people here. It's discipline—because I love them. I want to confront them and purge them of their sin and idolatry. I'm about to bring judgment on this land,” he says. “But—Baruch—but I'll let you escape with your life. You're not going to die. You're not going to perish over this.”
We need to understand God's sovereign place. Daniel, who was a prophet during the same time period—Daniel was already in Babylon. He was taken away with some of the first captives in 606 BC along with his young friends. He was probably a teenager. He's now in Babylon, and God uses him as a prophet there in Babylon, where Jeremiah's here in Judah.
And Daniel will live out the rest of his life in Babylon. He'll never go back to Israel. He'll die an old man in Babylon. And he will serve the kings of Babylon: Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar's son, and Nebuchadnezzar's grandson.
And Daniel prophesies, and he speaks to the kings of Babylon in Babylon. And God basically says to the Babylonian Empire through the prophet Daniel: “I'm going to overthrow you because you've been too harsh with my own people. I wanted to use you as the rod of discipline, but you've been too harsh. You've overstepped your discipline of my people. So therefore I'm going to uproot your kingdom, and I'm going to bring the Medo-Persian Empire.”
And Daniel steps up and he tells the kings of Babylon this. In Daniel 2:21, Daniel says that God changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. In Daniel 4:17 he says: “The Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men.”
And so God is basically saying here to Baruch: “Since I'm sovereign over the nations and over your life, who should you seek great things for—you or me? Baruch, is this about your fame, your glory, your name? I'm the one sovereign over the kingdoms. I'm the one sovereign over your life. Should you be living to exalt your own name? No, no,” he says. “You should live to exalt my name.”
And Daniel the prophet, when he confronts Belshazzar—the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar—in Daniel chapter 5, verse 23, he says the reason why God is going to overthrow the Babylonians—and it happened that very night that Daniel prophesied this—he said in Daniel 5:23 to Belshazzar: “Because you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.”
Your life and all your ways are held in the palm of God's hand.
There are plenty of people in our world who live to make a name for themselves. They thrive—they're drunk on notoriety and fame. They promote themselves, they brand themselves, they market themselves—all for what? For a world that will forget about them in five minutes after the next self-promoting person steps forward.
As Christians, though, friends, we have to have a different mindset. Tiger Woods once said (quote): “Money and fame made me believe I was entitled. I was wrong and foolish.” (end quote)
Listen—if God promotes you, if God makes you successful, if God gives you a platform—use it. Don't abuse it. Because the same God who gave you all that can take it away in a minute. He wants us to exalt his name. He wants us to lift up his name. He wants us to glorify his name—even in our discouragement.
This is his point to Baruch. Baruch—he says to him, “You see that I am sovereign over the nations and over your very life. Why are you trying to make something great for yourself?”
So it's an indication to us that Baruch struggled with this a little bit. One of the greatest things that we can do to ourselves to discourage ourselves is to spend the futility of our time trying to make our name great instead of God's name great.
I think Baruch had a little of that going on here. Because what he looks at is all that's going to happen to his world and how his life's going to get turned upside down and nothing's going to be the same as it once was. He's basically thinking, you know, “What's going to happen to me in my career and my name and what's good—how's this going to impact me?”
And God was like, “How about instead of seeking great things for you, you seek great things for me? Because I'm going to preserve your life through it.”
That's how God ends this whole thing. At the end of verse 5 he says: “For I will bring disaster on all people”—because he's going to bring his judgment, declares the Lord—“but wherever you go, I will let you escape with your life. You're going to be fine. I'm going to take care of you.”
And it's the last point, folks: God should be exalted through our discouragement.
It's actually important—not necessarily easy, but it's actually important—that we worship our way through our discouragement. That we honor God no matter what our circumstance. That we don't blame him. That we still continue to exalt the one who holds the nations and our very lives in the palm of his hand.
In fact, in Psalm 42:11 the psalmist says: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Amen.
Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you for your word here in Jeremiah 45—as a word for us today. That in the same way that Baruch was a man who described his life with sorrow and pain and groaning and without rest, you visited him in a personal way through the prophet Jeremiah. In the midst of all that was going on in the world and in the nation of Judah, you put all that on pause to speak to one man.
Thank you, Lord, that you care about us. Thank you that you are intimately aware and acquainted with everything that we're going through. And may we never forget that you hear and you see, you know and you care about us.
It's easy to start to feel all alone, Lord, among the masses of the universe. But thank you for this gentle reminder that in the midst of all the masses of people, you took time to speak to one.
Forgive us if we blame you, Lord, for our situation. We need to turn to you as the God who helps us—not the God who is responsible for our hardship. Forgive us, Lord, when we look at life through the lens of our discouragement and blame you. May we turn to the one who is our ever-present help in times of trouble and cling to you.
And Father, we pray that we would just continue to worship you no matter what our circumstance—because you are worthy of our praise. That we would exalt you and honor you and praise you through our discouragement—because you hold our lives in the palm of your hand as our Father and as our God.
We love you, Lord, and we thank you that you first loved us and sent Jesus to die on a cross for our sins, to rescue us from this present evil age. And we look forward to that day where one day we will be with you, and there will be no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain—for the old order of things has passed away. “Behold, you tell us, you make all things new.”
Strengthen our hearts, Lord. And I pray that you would especially minister to those who are discouraged today. Fill them with an extra measure of your grace. Remind them of your love and strengthen their hearts, Lord.
We thank you together in Jesus' name. And all God's people said amen.