"When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the official in charge of the temple of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, 2 he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the Lord's temple. 3 The next day, when Pashhur released him from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, "The Lord's name for you is not Pashhur, but Terror on Every Side. 4 For this is what the Lord says: 'I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; with your own eyes you will see them fall by the sword of their enemies. I will give all Judah into the hands of the king of Babylon, who will carry them away to Babylon or put them to the sword. 5 I will deliver all the wealth of this city into the hands of their enemies--all its products, all its valuables and all the treasures of the kings of Judah. They will take it away as plunder and carry it off to Babylon. 6 And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house will go into exile to Babylon. There you will die and be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied lies. You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. 8 Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. 9 But if I say, "I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." -- Jeremiah 20:1-9
What I find interesting about this is that the previous chapter ended like this:
"Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the Lord's temple and said to all the people, 15 'This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: 'Listen! I am going to bring on this city and all the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiffnecked and would not listen to my words."
Jeremiah was actually trying to save as many people as he could! God had already decided to punish His unrepentant people and told Jeremiah to speak His will to the people. Jeremiah was beaten and tortured for simply speaking the truth to a stiff-necked people who wanted to believe that "everything would be ok." Comfortable in their sin and disobedience, they hated the true Word of the Lord and listened instead to false prophets who told them what they wanted to hear.
Now don't get me wrong; I'm not about doom and gloom! But if one looks honestly and from a purely BIBLICAL perspective at our society, all around us is the chaos of sin just about unrestrained. And many of "God's people" applaud. God has always raised up servants to declare to those He loved "what thus sayeth the Lord" and to be willing to suffer for that Word. With all the perversions of today, what do you think God wants to say? Surely, it's not that we are all about to be promoted or that we can speak our houses into existence!
The need is great for the Jeremiahs in our Nation to be willing to endure persecution and to still declare the Word....with fire in their bones!!!!
