You're listening to the Allander Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan returns to a series engaging the chaotic stories of four characters in the Old Testament,

Jacob, Joseph, Jeremiah, and Jonah. Dan invites us to consider the story of Jeremiah,

whose life leads us to wonder what

it means to be a prophet, to wrestle with the world of extreme complexity, and ultimately

to recognize the cost of following God's calling in our lives.

Of all the J's that we will address, the one that I'm about to engage is the one that I'm the least fond of, and certainly in some

ways most intrigued by, and that's Jeremiah.

And we know Jeremiah as the weeping prophet, but I've actually entitled this, really the

mad prophet. I mean, he's angry

and he's crazy. And those realities, I don't want to dismiss as just sort of a passing

allusion to the oddities and uniqueness of this book. It's a complicated book, and he is a complicated person.

And with that, I think it's so very, very important to sort of set of context, and at least

from a pretty well-established understanding of Jeremiah's life. He begins around 626 BC, and his work goes on

to about 586. It's during the period of time in which the Northern Kingdom, Judah,

is basically being overrun, will be overrun by the Babylonians. In some ways, think

again of Israel as this little land bridge between a southern kingdom, Egypt, and these powerful

northern kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon.

And this is a season in which Babylon is basically overcoming and destroying Assyria.

And Egypt is trying to keep, in many ways, Babylon from sort of taking over the world.

And so it comes along the side of Assyria.

But they get blown out in a couple battles and retreat.

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