Jeremiah 45:1-5 "Seeking While Suffering"

1:08At the very least, my responses suggest that I do not expect to suffer often or intensely. And I wonder if you might say the same thing. It wouldn't surprise me if you did, because I don't think many modern Western Christians expect to suffer. Suffer. And because we don't expect to suffer, we don't spend adequate time prayerfully developing a biblical theology of suffering. We know the stories of those who suffered in Scripture, and we admire and respect their perseverance and their faith.

1:56But if we're honest, I don't think many of us really expect to go through anything like what they went through. We think to ourselves, times have changed. We have laws and medicine and techniques and technology. That kind of thing doesn't happen anymore. But of course, life in this fallen world is hard. It's always been hard and it will always be hard until Jesus returns. Jesus said, in this life you will have trouble. He didn't say might.

2:44Paul said, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Not might. So in this life, we're going to have trouble. And as followers of Jesus, we're going to be persecuted. In bigger or smaller ways. But in spite of all of the teaching in the Bible about suffering, so many modern believers are just not ready for it. And that might include us. And that means that when suffering inevitably comes, we feel blindsided by it.

3:21We feel like no one sees us, no one understands what we're going through. And once those thoughts set in, no one sees me, no one understands me, then we begin to turn inward on ourselves. Life becomes all about us: what we want, what we deserve, what we think we're owed. We lose sight of others and we lose sight of God and what He's doing in us and around us. And so this morning, God has given us the opportunity to begin or to continue developing a biblical theology of suffering.

4:10From Jeremiah 45, we're going to consider three truths for the suffering. God sees us in our suffering, God shares in our suffering, and God calls us to seek His kingdom in our suffering. Now, before we dive in, I want to take a moment to orient ourselves. As we've learned over the past nine months, Jeremiah is not organized chronologically. It's organized thematically. And so the past two weeks, we have been reading about the fall of Jerusalem and its aftermath that took place in 586 BC. Well, chapter 45, of course, goes back 20 years to 605 BC, the fourth year of King Jehoiakim's reign.

4:59This was the year, if you recall, that God called Jeremiah to write down every word that he had spoken to him and through him over the past 22 years. So Jeremiah did what any good leader would do. He delegated. And he called Baruch, his scribe, to come and write down all of the words while he dictated them. And as you may remember from chapter 36, Jeremiah sent Baruch to the temple to read the scroll aloud in the hearing of all the people because Jeremiah was banned from going to the temple.

5:36He was canceled before it was cool. King Jehoiakim then hears about the scroll. He sends a secretary to retrieve it and read it in front of him. And unbelievably, as the secretary reads God's word aloud, Jehoiakim cuts it into pieces, column by column, and throws it into the fire as fuel. He then puts Baruch and Jeremiah on the most wanted list. So that is what happened in 605 BC. We don't know exactly when Baruch wrote the words recorded in chapter 45, but if I had to guess, I bet it's after King Jehoiakim cut up that first scroll and Baruch and Jeremiah have gone into hiding.

6:22During that time, God commanded Jeremiah to rewrite the entire scroll along with more words that God had given him to add to it, which meant that Baruch had to rewrite the entire scroll along with all the new words that God added to it. So, friends, I think that's the scene. I think Jeremiah and Baruch are in hiding, and Baruch is working around the clock to rewrite this scroll that may have taken him months to write the first time. So, let's pick up now in verse 2, where we will see God sees us in our suffering.

7:00Verse 2, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch. You said, Woe is me, for the Lord has added sorrow to my pain. I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest. Poor Baruch. These verses reveal a man who is suffering greatly. Is just in the throes of despair. Woe is me is not an expression that we really use much anymore, unless you're kind of using it in a joking manner when something happens. But this phrase in Hebrew is an impassioned expression of grief and despair.

7:50And here in Jeremiah 45, those words are perhaps the only words that will do justice to what Baruch is feeling. He has been in pain for a long time, at least as long as he's been Jeremiah's scribe. And it's important to know his background. Baruch came from a wealthy, well-connected family. His brother Soriah was a staff officer in the royal family. He was well-educated and worked as a professional scribe, a lawyer, essentially. And so Baruch could have had a pretty comfortable life.

8:29But instead, Baruch hitched his wagon to Jeremiah, the persecuted, rejected prophet of God. And now, whatever honor he may have felt at being asked to serve as scribe to the prophet of the Lord has now given way to despair. And like Jeremiah earlier in the book, he views God as the source of all of his troubles. He says, Woe is me for the Lord. Has added sorrow to my pain. He was already in pain. Living life on the run is painful.

9:12Rewriting the longest book in the Bible by hand is painful. But now God has added sorrow to his pain. What is this sorrow? He doesn't elaborate, but it's not hard to guess. When the leaders of your people and almost all of the people in your nation have rejected God, have turned away from him, and God has spoken through his prophet, who also happens to be your boss, that judgment is coming in the form of Babylon, and Babylon is going to destroy the city and burn the temple down and take nearly everybody into exile. It is a wonder that he could see through the tears to write anything at all.

10:02But he plugs away day after day, night after night, rewriting the scroll by hand in hiding, adding many more words to the original words. And so he says, I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest. Baruch is suffering. And when you are suffering, you feel like no one sees you. Like you are abandoned, all alone. But friends, that's not true. God saw Baruch in his suffering. I want you to look again at verse 3.

10:47God says to Baruch, you said, woe is me. Now, this sounds like a dumb question, but stay with me here for a second. How does God know what Baruch said? God knows what Baruch said because he never took his eyes off of him. He never stopped listening to him. He never stopped watching over him. Baruch may have felt alone and unseen, but friends, God saw him. God heard him. And God never left him. And then God speaks to him through Jeremiah back in verse 2. Let this sink in. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to you.

11:45In the course of human history, how many people get a personal word from God to them? Not many. But Baruch is suffering, and God sees him, and God hears him, and God loves him. Friends, God sees us in our suffering. And that truth is illustrated all throughout the Bible. In Genesis chapter 16, after Sarah commands Abraham to sleep with her servant Hagar, Hagar conceives a child, which creates a rift between the two women. Sarah, Abraham's wife, deals harshly with Hagar, her servant, and Hagar runs away.

12:36But God meets her in the wilderness. He comes to her and promises to bless her and multiply her offspring. And look at what Hagar says. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees me. For she said, Truly here, I have seen him who looks after me. At the beginning of the book of Exodus, God's people have been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. And I want you to take a look at what Moses records at the end of chapter 2.

13:19During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning. And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. My friends, when you are suffering, infertility, loneliness, the death of a loved one, financial strain, health problems, mocking, or ridicule, or persecution because of your faith. When you are suffering, it is easy to feel like nobody sees you.

14:23You feel unseen at times, even by people who love you. Your spouse, your friends, sometimes even your fellow church members. But when you are suffering, God sees you. God sees you, and God knows. He saw the people of Israel in their suffering. He saw Hagar in her suffering. He saw Baruch, and he sees you. He sees you in your suffering. And when we are suffering, God speaks to us through his word, just like he did with Baruch, and through his people who are filled with his spirit, just like he did through Jeremiah to you and to me.

15:30Friends, God sees us in our suffering. He sees you in your suffering. But God doesn't only see us in our suffering, he shares in our suffering. Let's pick up in verse 4. God says to Jeremiah, Thus shall you say to him, Thus says the Lord, behold, what I have built, I am breaking down, and what I have planted, I am plucking up. That is, the whole land. As we've seen, Baruch is suffering. He's had sorrow added to his pain. His sorrow and his pain are real. God sees, and God knows.

16:30But, friends, when we are suffering, we tend to take our eyes off of everyone else, off of other people, and off of God, and what He's doing in us and around us. And we focus our eyes on our own pain and sorrow. That is what happened to Baruch. If you look back at verse 3, look at all of these personal pronouns: me, my, I, my, I. It's like a Toby Keith song. So, in verse 4, God says to Baruch, Behold, look, pay attention, fix your eyes on this. God says, What I have built, I am breaking down, and what I have planted, I am plucking up. That is the whole land. In other words, God is saying to Baruch, I see your pain and your sorrow. I see and I know.

17:36But, Baruch, if you are in pain, imagine how I feel. 2,000 years ago, I called your ancestor Abraham from a life of paganism, and at 100 years old, I gave him a child and promised to bless that child and make a great nation out of him. 400 years later, a million of his descendants were in slavery. And I brought them out of Egypt by many miracles and led them into a promised land flowing with milk and honey, flowing with every good blessing. I gave them everything, and how did they repay me?

18:24They turned away from me over and over and over to other gods. They sinned against me and they broke my laws. They said that they didn't want anything to do with me. And so, like a devoted husband weeping over an unfaithful wife, I wept for this people. I called them back to me, but they would not come. And so, Baruch, I understand your suffering. Can you understand mine? This is an image of the Cologne Cathedral. It is one of the greatest church buildings in the world. For that matter, it is one of the greatest buildings in the world. Those twin spires are over 500 feet tall.

19:26People come from all over the world to visit Cologne Cathedral. It took 632 years to build. This is a sandcastle. It was completed in an afternoon. If some kids came by and knocked this down a few minutes later, the kids who built it would feel genuine sorrow and pain over what they had built because it had been destroyed. But if somebody came and destroyed the Cologne Cathedral, imagine what people would feel then. This is what God is saying to Baruch.

20:21He doesn't minimize his pain and his sorrow, but he does put it into perspective. Baruch is suffering with and for his people. But God, who is breaking down what he has been building since the beginning of human history, is suffering infinitely more. Because for any parent, there is nothing worse than watching your children suffer, even if it's because of their own choices. When we suffer, it's not just that we feel unseen. And so we feel that no one understands what we're going through.

21:06But God does. And that's because God shares in our suffering. In John chapter 11, Jesus' friend Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, gets sick and dies. And by the time Jesus gets to Bethany, Lazarus has been dead and in the tomb for four days. Martha comes out to meet him and she tells him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And a short time later, her sister Mary comes out and she falls at Jesus' feet and she says the same thing, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

22:02Because you see, adding to the pain and sorrow of their brother's death is the fact that they asked Jesus to come a week ago when Lazarus was still alive. They knew that Jesus loved Lazarus, and so they figured that he would come right away. But he didn't. And Lazarus got sicker and sicker, and then he died. And now Mary is crumpled up in a pool of tears at his feet, overcome with pain and sorrow. But look at what John records.

22:57When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. My friends, how much we learn about the heart of God in this passage. Jesus could have left for Bethany as soon as he heard that his friend Lazarus was sick, but he didn't. He waited until Lazarus died, and then he told his disciples, We are going to raise Lazarus from the dead. That is why we're going to Bethany.

23:51Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet when he saw Mary weeping, he was deeply moved. Moved in his spirit, and he was greatly troubled. And when they took him to the tomb, he burst into tears. Brothers and sisters, Jesus did what he did to show everyone there that he is the resurrection and the life, that he has the power to raise the dead. But I do not want you to miss this.

24:34Jesus did what he did, the way he did it, to show us that when we suffer, he suffers with us. He was moved by Mary's sorrow and troubled by Mary's pain. And when Martha and Mary and all of Lazarus' friends went to the tomb and wept, Jesus wept with them. There may have been times when you have suffered and you felt neither seen nor understood. Maybe that's how you feel today. But friends, God sees you in your suffering. And more than that, God shares in your suffering.

25:31There is no sorrow in your life, no pain that you will ever experience that your God does not understand. And that is because he took on flesh and he lived among us, experiencing everything that we experience, including all of the sorrow and all of the pain of life in this broken world. Jesus sees you, and Jesus understands you. God shares in your suffering. Let's finish up in verse 5, where we'll see that God calls us to seek his kingdom in our suffering.

26:20God says through Jeremiah to Baruch, And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. For behold, I am bringing disaster upon all flesh, declares the Lord. But I will give you your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go. Like all of us, Baruch had hopes and dreams. And Baruch had worked really hard to achieve them. It was not easy to become a scribe. It was at least as hard as becoming a lawyer. Today, we don't know what great things Baruch imagined for himself, but he probably envisioned his life turning out very differently than it did.

27:14When he agreed to become Jeremiah's scribe, I'm sure he did so out of a genuine desire to serve God. I believe that most people who take ministry positions do so out of a genuine desire to serve God. But even if Baruch genuinely desired to serve God, and even if he took the position as Jeremiah's scribe without any awareness of ulterior motives, suffering has a way of revealing what's really going on in our hearts. And in Baruch's case, suffering revealed that he wanted great things for himself.

28:01Now, listen, that does not need to mean that Baruch wanted sinful things for himself. Maybe the great things that Baruch wanted was to be used by God to start a great revival in Jerusalem. To see people turn from their sin and idolatry back to the Lord to avert the coming Babylonian invasion. That's not a sinful thing to want. And maybe after the revival, he invented. Envisioned himself becoming a great faithful teacher of God's law. And that God would use him to teach the people of Jerusalem and Judea and maybe even to the ends of the earth. And people would hear his faithful words and see his holy life and want to emulate him, would want to become his followers.

28:58We don't know. But whatever great things Baruch sought for himself, God says that's not going to happen. Instead, God would bring disaster in the form of the Babylonian army. And as a consolation prize, Baruch would get to keep his life. Now, I'm willing to bet that Baruch was hoping for more than just not dying in exchange for serving the Lord. I'm not judging him for it because I think if we're honest, we all hope for more too.

29:44I mean, when you've gone through suffering, have you ever thought to yourself, God, why is this happening? This isn't fair. I go to church regularly, I give and I serve. I try to share Jesus with people that I meet. I live with integrity. I seek to obey your commands, and this is what I get. I've had those thoughts. And I'm willing to bet that you have too. Until we suffer, we don't realize that those thoughts have been there all along.

30:26And friends, that is one reason that God allows suffering into our lives. Suffering is like a black light. It reveals things that were there all along, but you just couldn't see them. In Matthew 16, Jesus and his disciples take a field trip to Caesarea Philippi, which was a district that was filled with all these different temples dedicated to idols. And after Jesus asks his disciples who people say that he is, he asks them, who do you say that I am? And Peter, of course, replies with the famous confession, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now look what happens next.

31:21From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the empire. Elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Now, Jesus affirmed Peter's confession. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the Messiah that they have been waiting for. But he is not the Messiah that they have been expecting. He hasn't come to lead a revolution, he has come to suffer and to die. Look at how Peter responds.

32:04And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you. Peter could not believe his ears. Suffering and death, and that is not, that is not what he thought Jesus came to do. And that is not what he signed up for. Peter signed up for a revolution with swords that would end with Jesus on the throne. But look at how Jesus responds to him. But Jesus turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

32:57Friends, Peter has been following Jesus for three years. Years. He is genuinely devoted to him. He wants to serve God. But the very mention of suffering is enough to bring out and reveal what has been in his heart the whole time. Like Baruch, Peter is seeking great things for himself. He is seeking a kingdom of his own making, not the kingdom of God. Friends, that is what suffering does for us. It reveals what is really going on in our hearts. Like Peter, we can convince ourselves that we are really living for the kingdom of God.

33:46But suffering is the black light that reveals what has been there all along. We just couldn't see it. It shows whose kingdom we're really working to build. God's or our own. Brothers and sisters, suffering is hard. And when we suffer, we feel like no one sees us and no one understands. And when that happens, we lose sight of God and we become focused on building our own kingdoms instead of his. The good news is that even when we feel like no one sees us, Sees us in our suffering, God sees us.

34:34He not only sees us in our suffering, but he shares in it with us. And that is demonstrated most clearly in the gospel. God sees the greatest suffering that we have comes from sin, from our own sin and the sins of others. And God sees that apart from his gracious intervention, we will spend the rest of our lives enslaved to our sin and all of our eternity under his righteous wrath because of it. But God doesn't just see us suffering in our sin.

35:18God sent his only begotten son, Jesus, to share in our suffering. At the beginning of his ministry, the Spirit of God led Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. And Satan's last temptation was that he would give Jesus all the kingdoms of this world if Jesus would just bow down and worship him. But Jesus refused. He quoted Deuteronomy 6:13, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone you shall serve. At the very End of his ministry, when he knew that the time had come for him to be betrayed and arrested and beaten and crucified, he went out to the Garden of Gethsemane with some of his closest friends and he got down on his knees and he prayed, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

36:20And that is because Jesus was not just fully divine, he was also fully human. And the prospect of suffering scared him. But at the end of that prayer, he prayed, Yet not my will, but yours be done. From the beginning of his life and his ministry to the end of his life and his ministry, Jesus did not build his own kingdom. He sought the kingdom of God. And then Jesus went to the cross to suffer in your place and mine for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserved.

37:02He suffered all of it: the physical agony, the emotional and spiritual agony of the Father turning his face away from him. He suffered for you, friends. He suffered for me. He suffered for every one of us who suffer and groan and find no rest from our own sins and the sins of others. He died and was buried, and the third day he rose again from the dead. And now all who trust in him will be forgiven and counted righteous and adopted into God's family forever.

37:45Friends, atheism tells you that your suffering is meaningless. Hinduism tells you that your suffering is the result of the bad things that you did in the past. Buddhism and New Age philosophies tell you that suffering is an illusion that you can overcome with the right strategies. But only Christianity presents you with a God who sees your suffering, who shares in your suffering, and who sent his only begotten Son to suffer in your place so that you would not have to suffer for eternity.

38:44So, new life, whether you are suffering now or you are preparing for the inevitable suffering that will come in your life, let us fix our eyes on our suffering Savior. Let's pray. Father, my heart is heavy this morning, and I don't know a fraction of all the suffering that is going on in this world. My heart is heavy just knowing the suffering that is going on in this room with the many people that Pastor Cody prayed for, with the many people that we are thinking of with our own suffering that we know and that nobody else knows about.

39:58My hearts, our hearts are heavy. I am so thankful that against atheism, you have said that our suffering is not meaningless against Hinduism, you have said that our suffering. Suffering is not the result of bad things that we've done against Buddhism and New Age religions. You have said that our suffering is not an illusion, it is real and it hurts. And so this morning we fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who left the glory of heaven and took on flesh with the primary purpose of suffering and dying and rising again for us, so that the suffering that we go through in this world can be the worst that we ever experience.

41:20I pray that you would grant hope to those who are in the midst of suffering today. That they would fix their eyes on the one who sees them and who understands them. Help us all to seek your kingdom in our suffering. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at New Life CS. Dot net.