Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we started hanging out with the major prophet Jeremiah. He comes from a long line of priests,

but gets a call from God to be a prophet, so he hires a scribe named Baruch

to write down his prophecies which span roughly 40 years and five kings of Judah. In addition to

Jeremiah's prophecies, Baruch writes down some of the stories from Jeremiah's life as well,

and it's not an easy one. Jeremiah is referred to you as the weeping prophet because he carries some

deep grief over the state of the people of Judah. It's easy to imagine prophets as these

self-righteous people who just go around telling everybody else what they're doing wrong. But more

often, what we actually see is that God has a way of putting them in tough circumstances so they can feel

the pain of the people. It helps them stay humble, and it also has a way of increasing the

potency of their message. When God first calls Jeremiah, he refuses to prophesy, but then God

rebukes him, confirms him, and encourages him with the reminder, I am with you.

Then God gives him three assignments, to pluck up and break down, to destroy and overthrow, and to build and plant.

Just reading that, doesn't it remind you of all the other prophetic books we've read so far?

There will be destruction, but there will be restoration.

God gives Jeremiah two visions,

then tells him what he's about to do. He's going to send a conqueror from the north,

and we already know this refers to Babylon, and they're going to destroy Jerusalem. This is a judgment on the people of Judah who have turned their backs on God. Then God tells Jeremiah that

he shouldn't be afraid, because while God does promise a battle, he also promises a victory.

In chapter 2, God tells Jeremiah to walk through the streets of Jerusalem and recount the story

of God's relationship with Israel out loud, which is,

they used to love him, but over time they gradually forgot all he had done for them.

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