The conspiracy.

“Then the Lord said to me, there is a conspiracy among the people of Judah and those who live in Jerusalem. They have returned to the sins of their forefathers, who refused to listen to my words. They have followed other gods to serve them. Both the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the covenant I made with their forefathers. Therefore, this is what the Lord says: I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them.” (Jeremiah 11:9-11)

Strong words! Not an easy message for the young prophet from the country town of Anathoth to bring to the sophisticated city-dwellers of Jerusalem. Jeremiah was still in his late teens: it was the year 621 BC, there was great excitement in the air following the discovery of the Book of the Covenant during the repairs to the Temple initiated by King Josiah.

Two-fold Deception

Once he had read the Deuteronomic penalties for breaking the Covenant, the King had called a great assembly in Jerusalem where he renewed the Covenant on behalf of the nation and then enforced the destruction of the shrines on the high places throughout Judah. But the ‘Great Reform’ had not reached the hearts of the people, who still longed for the exciting ceremonies of the local gods at the village shrines.

They crept back secretly to these places in the countryside, while the people in the town built little shrines on the rooftops of their houses so that they could continue their idolatrous practices. They thought their ways were hidden from the King (and also from God), particularly if they only went onto the rooftop by night, when the darkness would cover them from detection.

But they did not reckon with the observant young Jeremiah, who not only kept his eyes open but had learned to get into the presence of God, where a two-part conspiracy was revealed to him. One part was designed to deceive the King and the other part was directed against Jeremiah himself – and it was coming from his own family.

Josiah’s ‘Great Reform’ had not reached the hearts of the people, who still longed for the exciting ceremonies of the local gods.

Betrayal and Treachery

Jeremiah’s own family and friends in Anathoth, his home-town, were plotting against him. He said he felt “like a lamb led to the slaughter” (Jer 11:19). His own flesh and blood were plotting to assassinate him; “Let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more” they said.

How could Jeremiah’s own family be so cruel and so treacherous? But this is what happens when men feel their livelihoods to be threatened and their whole way of life to be endangered. Jeremiah was publicly supporting Josiah’s Reform, which would effectively have put his own family out of work – certainly out of the prosperity they were presently enjoying!

They were ministering at the high places in the countryside – supposedly in the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel. But these were pagan shrines where the priests were practising a form of syncretism, mixing the worship of Yahweh on altars set up to offer worship to the local Baals, supposedly ‘gods of the land’ who required various forms of fertility rites. These practices were popular with the people in the countryside where their livelihoods depended upon the productivity of the land.

Renegade Priests

Jeremiah’s family had been regarded as renegade priests for some 300 years. They were descendants of Eli, whose sons had behaved disgracefully. During King David’s lifetime there were two chief priests, Zadok and Abiathar. Zadok backed Solomon to succeed David, but Abiathar favoured David’s eldest son, Adonijah. In order to secure the throne, Solomon assassinated his older brother and promptly dismissed Abiathar, telling him to go back to his fields in Anathoth (1 Kings 2:26) and his family line was reduced to a minor priestly role from that day.

It is very possible that Jeremiah was unhappy with the priestly activities of his family at the country shrines. In order to fulfil the prophetic calling upon his life, he distanced himself from their activities and went to Jerusalem, where he would almost certainly have been in the great assembly called by Josiah.

Josiah’s Reform required the destruction of all local shrines at the high places. It further required the centralisation of all worship at the Temple. This effectively reduced Jeremiah’s family of priests to a minor role of serving in the Temple on a rota that would give them occasional service, while cutting them off from practising at the countryside shrines on the high places. This no doubt drastically reduced their income.

Jeremiah was publicly supporting Josiah’s Reform, which would effectively have put his own family out of work.

Hated for Putting God First

Jeremiah suddenly found himself the most hated person in Judah. He had publicly backed the King and now he was speaking in the streets of Jerusalem and railing against the people burning incense to foreign gods. He said there were as many shrines in Jerusalem as there were streets in the city.

Jeremiah not only prophesied disaster upon the whole land and upon the city of Jerusalem, but he actually told the people that God had instructed him not to offer any plea or petition for the city, because God would no longer listen. God would refuse to listen to the people in the time of distress which was coming upon the land.

“The Lord Almighty”, he said, “who planted you, has decreed disaster for you, because the house of Israel and the house of Judah have done evil and provoked me to anger by burning incense to Baal” (Jer 11:17). Jeremiah’s family had been supportive of these practices and to them he must have seemed a traitor who had to be removed. They were saying “Do not prophesy in the name of the Lord or you will die by our hands” (Jer 11:21).

Jeremiah was now discovering that being a prophet was a lonely task. It is very sad when families are divided, but for Jeremiah his primary loyalty was to the Lord. Jesus recognised this principle and he even went so far as to say “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37).

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 Jeremiah's call to ministry.

“The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations’” (Jer 1:4).

This was Jeremiah’s personal testimony which laid the foundation for his life’s work. His ministry was not a personal career choice; it was a response to the compulsion to declare the word of God, similar to that which Paul felt when he declared “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor 9:16).

The phrase “The word of the Lord came to me” means ‘came into being’ or was ‘birthed’ within him. This birthing actually took place in the womb, where the Spirit of God began forming the word of God in the unborn child from the moment of conception. Before the tiny body of Jeremiah began to take shape within the womb of his mother, God was planning to use him as a prophet to the nation.

From the moment of conception, God was moulding the character of the man he was preparing for the most difficult and exacting ministry of any of the biblical prophets. Before he was born, Jeremiah was set apart for this special task of conveying the word of the Lord to the nation in the most critical period of its history since its formation in the wilderness, under the prophetic leadership of Moses.

A Prophet in a Priestly Family

Like the Prophet Samuel, whose mother gave him to the Lord while he was still in her womb, Jeremiah must also have had a special mother – a woman of prayer and faith. We know nothing about her except that she was the wife of a priest, a descendant of Zadok and Abiathar, whose heritage went back to the time of Eli and Samuel.

Like the Prophet Samuel, whose mother gave him to the Lord while he was still in her womb, Jeremiah must also have had a special mother – a woman of prayer and faith.

Abiathar had been King David’s chief priest. He was dismissed by Solomon in an effort to prevent opposition to his taking the throne from his older brother Adonijah who he murdered (1 Kings 2:25-27). Abiathar and his descendants were exiled from living in Jerusalem to live in the village of Anathoth. Although only two miles distant, it was a million miles away in terms of social influence. Jeremiah was raised far away from the aristocratic priestly families of the Temple.

Jeremiah’s family must have suffered from a strong sense of social inferiority which made them incredibly sensitive to having a pariah amongst them. The priest’s role was to maintain the religious traditions of the nation and to oppose any changes, whereas the role of the prophet was to challenge the status quo in the name of God. To have a prophet in a priest’s family would have been seen as a tragedy, and as Jeremiah notes, even his own family sought to take his life, but God revealed their plot to him (Jer 11:18-23). As Dean Inge once said, a priest is never so happy as when he has a prophet to stone!

God’s Creation from Conception

Jeremiah’s testimony that the word of the Lord was birthed in him from the time of conception is a recognition that the pre-birth period in the womb is of great importance for character formation. Yet in contemporary Britain, 8.7 million babies have been destroyed since the legalisation of abortion in 1967. We are a nation steeped in the blood of the innocent – throwing away as unwanted, unloved and uncared for, the most precious gift of life that only God can give.

The record of Jeremiah’s birth shows that God knows each one of those whom he creates in his own image from the moment of conception. At the end of every working day in our hospitals, a black bag full of babies is taken out of the back door and thrown into the incinerator. What is God saying to the men and women who care so little for the gift of each tiny life? How many great men and women who could have served the nation have been burnt in the fire – who could have discovered a cure for cancer, become a great preacher or a righteous Prime Minister? What if Jeremiah’s mother had aborted him?

The record of Jeremiah’s birth shows that God knows each one of those whom he creates in his own image from the moment of conception.

Jeremiah speaks of God’s horror at the detestable practices of burning babies in the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom outside Jerusalem. He links this directly with God’s judgment coming upon the nation (Jer 7:30-34). This is a sobering thought for us today.

Only a Child

When the call of God came to Jeremiah, his response was “Ah, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” But the Lord said “’Do not say, “I am only a child”. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you’, declares the Lord” (Jer 1:7-8).

Jeremiah was probably still in his teens when this message came to him and he protested at his youthfulness and his inability to undertake such an enormous task. Yet, as the son of a priest he would have been schooled for the priesthood; an important part of which would have been learning the Torah – the teaching that God gave to Moses. He would also have been taught the history of the nation and would have learnt to understand God’s dealings with his covenant people.

Jeremiah’s training for the priesthood was part of God’s intended preparation for his prophetic ministry, despite the fact that his family did not know that they were training a prophet – not a priest! It was probably at this point, as a teenager, that Jeremiah began refusing to undertake the duties of a priest. The word of the Lord was already stirring within him, alerting him that he would not be taking his turn as a minor priest on duty in the Temple. He was destined to preach outside the Temple, not inside its precincts!

If this was the first time that Jeremiah had distinctly heard the Lord speaking directly to him, it was right that his reaction was that he was unfit for such a task. Like Isaiah of Jerusalem some 200 years earlier, who had felt his own inadequacy and cried out “For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips”, Jeremiah also recoiled from the awesome task of taking the word of God to the nation. But immediately the word came “Do not say, ‘I am only a child’. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.”

Jeremiah’s training for the priesthood was part of God’s intended preparation for his prophetic ministry

Trusting the Promise of God

Then came the promise in which Jeremiah was to trust for the rest of his life; “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you”.

The very fact that he was going to need divine power to rescue him must have been a daunting experience for the young man. Certainly, that promise would be put to the test as Jeremiah later faced angry mobs, or outraged priests, or a cruel king. But the God who had watched over Jeremiah’s earliest character formation in the womb was a God who keeps his word and never forgets his promises.

There would be many times when Jeremiah’s faith would be severely tested, but the strength of the Lord was always sufficient for him, even when he was in the stocks being pelted by a mob, or dropped down a well to sink in the mud. God never deserted him and always enabled him to bring the word of the Lord to a generation who had ears to hear but never heard, and who had eyes to see but never saw.

They had minds to understand, but were never able to interpret what they saw or heard because they rejected the word of God through his chosen one. This would eventually bring tragedy upon the nation.

What is happening today when God is clearly shaking the nations and the whole natural Creation? Will the prophetic word of God be heard in the land and heeded by men and women in time to prevent tragedy? Or, will our generation, like that of Jeremiah, live to see the warnings of God ignored and tragedy unfold?

This article is part of a series. Click here to read other instalments.