Prep+ Podcast #4

Transcript

(This is a transcript generated by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy or content by Crossroads)

Hi growth groups. Leader, welcome to the Prep Plus podcast. We're up to study for in our series of Jeremiah. And you might be feeling like the studies have been quite heavy. This one is heavy as well, but there is hope. And I will say that next week there's a change of tone. We're going to shake it up and we're going to be looking at Romans, and then there is more hope coming.

But we are really in this book of Jeremiah, which is very much given to us as the people of God, to convict us of our need for God's mercy. How about, I pray? I'm going to base my prayer on the big prayers that we have for this series on page 35, as we look at Jeremiah as the Man of Sorrows, let's.

Let's pray. O mighty God, we can be really fearful. We can be really flaky. We can be driven by fear rather than by you, mighty God. Would you use this word in Jeremiah 22? Strengthen us to persevere under trials as we see Christ, the true man of sorrows, mighty God, you know the people in our group, you know their futures.

You know the kind of trials that they may face in life in general and also for being Christian. So, father, would you use this time this week to please equip us for the future that we don't know, but you do to strengthen us to be people who stand up for Jesus, even under trial. And we pray in Jesus name, Amen.

If you haven't had the chance yet, then why don't you grab a pen and go prep the study and then come back? We're on page 11. Study for Jeremiah 20 Man of Sorrows. In this chapter, we're really getting to know Jeremiah himself a bit better. We kind of met him in chapter one, and in some ways we're kind of unpacking chapter one verses 18 to 19.

Do you remember that bit? That's when God said to him, behold, this day I make you a fortified city, and iron pillar and bronze walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its officials, 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, declares the Lord, to deliver you.

And to some extent this study is unpacking those verses. That's what chapter 20 is kind of doing. It's one of the chapters that really zooms in on Jeremiah himself, who he was before God, and the suffering that he endured to be the mouthpiece, the prophet of God. At this, at this time, when Judah is on the on the operating table, there they are close to death.

And these are those. This is the clear. She's still alive. Can we get this country back and repent back to God? So we have the structure diagram there. You'll see that we're at chapter 20 and there's a little fire symbol there, because in this one we have that a famous line about the fire in his bones, asking the group to read out chapter 21 to 18 and just listen out to repeated words.

It's worth just being aware and being prayerful about the heaviness of this passage. Jeremiah goes pretty dark. He's feeling pretty dark and just mindful of how that might play out for different people in your group. So you might want to be prayerful and thoughtful about that. I'll let you you will have done the prep on those questions there on page 12.

Really, it's kind of circling around some observation questions around the opposition that Jeremiah is facing. You could dig up some of those extra references. There's so much opposition that he faces in Jeremiah of lots of different types. So you could dig deeper into that if you wanted, or just you describe them yourself and then trying to pull together that.

We just see so much anguish and yet confidence from Jeremiah. We do have a bit of a discussion of that fire, shut Up in my bones, which is such a famous quote from the book. And then in questions four and five, just thinking through how we see Jeremiah kind of pointing forward to the anguish and confidence of Jesus, particularly before his death, and just thinking through how is Jesus so different to Jeremiah?

Is there a way that, well, Jeremiah is suffering to speak, Christ is suffering to save? Then those questions in 13, just really trying to reflect a bit more deeply on this anguish in suffering. And that second point, what are the truths, particularly if you have a younger group, perhaps they haven't gone through a lot of suffering yet.

Some of them may well have, no matter what age, but we are all going to suffer and go through tough seasons, and God's Word can equip us ahead of time. So what are the truths that he gives us to help us persevere? And that final point they're just thinking through what kind of oppositional cost are you most fear giving people the time and space to reflect on that quite deeply.

You could choose to have them share that in pairs, because it is quite deep. I thought I would read out a quote, because you will notice in this chapter that there is a dizzying kind of flip from verses 14. Let me just get it in front of me. Oh, I'll say about verse seven when he says, oh Lord, you have deceived me.

And I was deceived. It seems like Jeremiah, he's just feeling tricked, even though I think that's a sensation and not reality, like God is pretty upfront about what it was going to be. But he. This is one of those chapters where where Jeremiah is so raw about what it's like to be God's person, God's prophet. And you may have noticed there's a real shift between verses 13 and 14.

Verse 14 is pretty confronting. Indeed, 14 to 19 is pretty confronting, and it was tempting to say, why don't we just stop at 13? I can tell you that, but we have to. I just wanted to we want to present God's Word as it is. And I thought, though it might be helpful for me to read out some sections from records biography, this is what he says about that shift from 13 to 14.

Jeremiah's mood swung from praising to cursing with dizzying speed. One verse is high praise and the next utter despair. Some scholars have concluded that they can hardly belong, that 14 can hardly belong after verse 13, and they see chapter 20 as a hodgepodge of Jeremiah's sayings. Even Calvin was mystified. Perhaps Jeremiah had forgotten himself, but these verses do belong together.

They may not belong together by logic. But who says the life of the soul is always logical? Jeremiah's curses follow his praises, because that is the way it was during his dark night of the soul. And then over the page he says, perhaps you need the same reminder. Are you suffering? Are you ridiculed by your friends or family enemies waiting to trip you up?

Are you weighed down by the ungodliness of contemporary society? Are there times when you wonder why you came out of your mother's womb? This is why. Because God set you apart for salvation and for ministry. Just like Jeremiah before the beginning of time, he planned to save you in Christ. And he quotes Ephesians one four. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

Then he set you apart to do his work. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for goods, work for good works, that we might walk in them. Suffering can place a giant question mark over our lives, but the grace of God always has the last word. I just thought I'd include those quotes, because this is a really heavy part of the book, and it does raise big things.

And depending on where your group discussion goes, sometimes it's helpful to have done some thinking in that space. So yeah, praying that our groups really kind of grapple a bit with the opposition that we can face as Christians, the way that we can really suffer. And the hope that we can have because of how Christ suffered to.

So I pray it's a great week in your group.