Jeremiah
15:15–20 - The faithful prophets,
such as Jeremiah, suffered persecution and rejection in anticipation of Jesus’
Cross. Yet the Lord did not abandon them; He remembered them, and He was with
them to deliver them.
Jeremiah calls upon the Lord to deliver him from the assaults
and slander of his enemies. On what basis—his own righteousness? No; like David
in the psalm for Sunday (above), Jeremiah pleads on the basis of his trust in
the Lord: ‘I am called by your name, O Lord,
God of hosts.’ We can call upon the Lord
in our times of trouble for the same reason: we belong to Him. Though the
proclamation and preaching of His Word, and through the holy Sacraments, God
makes us His own and delivers us from the tyranny of sin.
In Jeremiah 15:19-21 God offers a
response to the prophet’s complaint. As is often the case in Scripture, God
answers the prayers of the people not with the response they want to hear. We
are offered this reminder, “The hazard of
such honest prayer, as we shall see, is that Yahweh can be equally honest and
therefore abrasive in response to prayer.” [1]
Jeremiah 15:20 is nearly a verbatim
quote of 1:18-19, “And I for my part have
made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the
whole land -- against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the
people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail
against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you.”
A Prayer for
patience: O God, by the patient endurance of Your only-begotten
Son You beat down the pride of the old enemy. Help us to treasure rightly in
our hearts what our Lord has borne for our sakes that, after His example, we
may bear with patience those things that are adverse to us;[2]
[1] Walter
Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1998), 114.
[2]
Lutheran Service Book © 2006 Concordia Publishing House, St, Louis
4 Woodcut “The Crucifixion: by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld, copyright ©
WELS for personal and congregational use
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