THE PROPHETS: INTRODUCTION/PATHOS Lesson # 2
JEREMIAH 8:18-9:1
I. Introduction: Pathos
A. The Question of Damnation and Judgment.
Q Were the prophets intense preachers? Did they preach about coming judgment?
An = Often times they did. They were intense men. As we saw last week they were willing to pay great costs to speak out God’s Messages.
Q What do you think of hell-fire and brimstone preachers? Why?
An = To add to our discussion let me quote Rev. Bernard Guekguezian: “There are some preachers who preach about hell and are glad that you are going there and others preach the same message and convey, with all their heart they do not want you to go there.” In a similar vein, J. Vernon McGee once said: “No man should preach about hell without a tear in their eye.”
B. Understanding the Inner Being of a Prophet.
Q Can we understand what a prophet felt like or really thought in his inner being?
An = Let me share with you two thoughts from a Jewish scholar: Abraham Heschel. He has written two books on the prophets that are well worth buying and reading. Heschel was first a philosopher and not a biblical scholar but when the “Jewish holocaust” took place he was motivated to study the prophets. What drove him was he saw how bankrupt modern philosophy was in addressing the reality of the pain involved in the holocaust. In his view secular philosophy could not aid society in stopping something like the holocaust and it drove Heschel to read the Bible. He never left biblical studies. About the prophets he says two things.
1) “To comprehend what something is, it is important to suspend judgment and think in detachment.
Q What is Heschel saying? Do you agree?
An = Heschel believes to fully understand an event, book, person, etc. one must stand back and think without making judgments. One should strive to be objective! Be detached and attempt to think logically. When you are detached you answer the question: “What is it?”
2) To comprehend what something means, it is necessary to suspend indifference and be involved. This answers the question: “What does it mean?” How do we understand what the prophets or the prophetic role really meant? We must not think in detachment but we have to be involved. Until we feel what they felt, we are not really reading the prophets. We want to try to both feel what they felt and objectively observe what they were and what they said. Both must be done.
Note: As we look at the biblical prophets who bore these messages Heschel also advises that we must avoid two excesses.
1) Do not emphasize theology at the expense of the prophet’s humanity. Heschel says that a prophet is not a microphone. He is a real human being. The prophet used metaphors from his culture and his feelings were his. He spoke from his very own experience as a human being. He says Jeremiah did not check out from his culture, his human perceptions and feelings when he answered the call to preach the words God gave him.
2) One must not interpret the prophets merely through psychology. The other excess is to reduce, via psychology, the prophet’s experience to a personal subjective experience. The OT prophets say that there was something beyond themselves speaking with them. Something outside of them came to them. It was of the divine; the word came from God Himself. Therefore you cannot throw away the theology (the divine aspect) by stressing the prophet’s humanity.
Balance is the key. Once you go either way you lose the Biblical Prophet.
II. Prophetic Pathos: A Major Aspect of Being a Prophet.
Q Can love cause pain in life?
An = One of the greatest causes of pain to good people is triggered by what they love. God called Jesus to love the world and He called His prophets to love their nation. The prophets were lovers of their people. They were part of their people and identified with them. They were not critics from the outside but willing to identify with their people and suffer with them.
Note: No prophet stood aloof from those he spoke to. They loved their people. They were also privy to the revelation of God’s intentions. Their difficulty was caused by the following facts:
1) They loved their people.
2) They had revelation of their people’s coming judgment.
3) They knew that the judgment was caused by their people’s sins against God and each other.
4) They knew there was a way out from the coming judgment: repentance. If the people repented and stopped what they were doing then they could be saved. There was hope. The nation could avoid judgment. Therefore they told their people what their sins were, so they could repent and be saved.
5) The problem was that the people did want to hear such messages and hated the prophets for telling them such disturbing declarations.
With these facts in play, the prophet’s pain began. First it came from their people’s rejection because no one likes to be rejected. An example many of us understand is when a parent has a child who rejects them during the teenage years. Second, their pain grew because they knew the judgment was coming and they feared for their people. It tore their hearts to see the coming destruction. They were allowed to see the coming death with alarming clarity, and it became a deep source of pain.
There was a way out of their pain: stop preaching and warning the people. They could stop caring about their people’s future. In other words, stop loving.
Q Do you know of parents, teachers or clergy who stopped loving?
Q How did the prophet’s know judgment was coming?
An = God told them. Either they heard words audibly, (or they heard words in their minds) or they were instructed through visions. Let me give you an example of Jeremiah’s preaching.
>>>> Have someone read Jeremiah 9:20-22.
Now, you women hear the word of the Lord; open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament.
Death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses; it has removed the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares.
Note: The phrase “death has climbed in through our windows” was a quote from a well known Baal myth everyone in that geographical region knew. The phrase would have jarred them.
Say, “This is what the Lord declares; ‘Dead bodies will lie like dung on the open field, like cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather them.’”
Note: See 9:21-22 Jeremiah seems to have seen a vision of bodies lying like mown hay. He saw the empty streets, vacant of children, and young men. He was horrified. Until we see how terrified these visions were to the prophets we will not understand the passion with which they preached.
>>>> Have someone read Jeremiah’s conversation with God: 8:18-19.
You who are my comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me.
Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away; “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King no longer there? Why have they aroused my anger with their images, with their worthless foreign idols?”
Q Who is speaking in the first sentence and who is speaking starting with the word “Listen”?
An = It appears that the first sentence is by the prophet and the rest is a response by God.
>>>>Have someone read Jeremiah 8:20-21
The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”
Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?
Q What is the prophet stating?
An = He knows his audience has rejected his message of warning and their fate is one of doom. However, their coming judgment will fall not just on them but on the prophet himself.
>>>>Have someone read Jeremiah 9:1.
Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.
Q Is this preaching of an angry, hateful man or are these the words of a man who loves his people?
An = Jeremiah is often called the “Prophet of Tears”. He saw things so personally. His nation’s coming pain became his pain. Even though we may not experience all the cataclysmic experiences that Jeremiah (or Ezekiel) did, it seems like our nation too is headed for judgment.
Q What can we learn from Jeremiah?
An = Perhaps as the weeks go by we will gain insight into our own task and find God’s Word to us as Jeremiah did for his nation.
Note: When we learn to love as God does, we will experience pain.
Q Does the Christian’s pain end?
An = In God, pain does end. If we choose to bear it, because He has given it to us, then He will become active to redeem. Jesus’ life ended in shame and heart break, but glory followed with his resurrection. From His pain we all have benefitted.
Jeremiah did not stop loving and therefore in God he won. Jeremiah did not win many in his own time period but he did win enough of his peers that his words were recorded for us. After the disaster hit the people still alive could not make sense of what they experienced until they reviewed Jeremiah’s words. In addition, Jeremiah’s life has impacted generation after generation since his death. In fact, the Jews call him the “lover of the nation”. Countless Christians have also all through the history of the church drawn deeply from his words as well.
>>>> Have someone read Psalms 126:5-6.
Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.