Author's Note: This sermon was delivered at a summer camp called New Life Northwest in Washougal, Washington on June 23rd, 2004. The introduction, a mock resignation, apparently shook quite a few in the audience as rapt attention was paid to the rest of the sermon. At the end, someone spontaneously called for a standing ovation to all the preachers that were present.

I’m sorry. I just can’t do this anymore…

I’ve tried. The Lord knows I’ve tried, but I’m just out of gas…

Oh man, my biggest fear was that this would happen when I was up in front of people…

Folks, I’m really sorry to ruin your evening, but I just can’t preach another sermon. Right now I just wish that God would come and take me home. I’m so sorry.

I haven’t even told my wife this yet, and honey, I’m sorry that it had to come this way, but as of tonight I’m resigning my ministry.

Ralph, I let you down, brother. Had I known this would happen, I would have declined to have you put my name on the list of speakers. I hope that you can forgive me, but as of this moment, I am Dave Redick, private Christian. Don’t ask me to preach. Don’t ask me to teach because I’m through.

Again, I’m sorry to ruin your evening, but I quit.

But I can’t quit! I know too much! That was all just a ruse. I’m not really quitting. The truth is, I don’t want to quit and even if I did – I can’t. I believe the message in this book too much to quit. Yes, sometimes the devil tempts me to quit. I get on a self-pity jag. But then again I realize that I can’t quit. I know too much.

Why did I say I was quitting? To get before you frame of mind of Jeremiah when he penned Jeremiah 20:9. Would you look it up in your Bibles?

These words have probably saved many preachers and church leaders from throwing in the towel. When Jeremiah wrote them he was ready to quit. He’d had it.

Let’s take a look at this verse in its context. Follow along as I read the verses immediately before and after this one. We'll read verses 7-18. This is a very erratic passage of scripture. As we read, to help you focus on the passage, I want you to give me the "thumbs up" sign when we read a verse that declares the prophet’s faith or the "thumbs down" sign when we read a verse that shows his discouragement and despair.

Jeremiah almost sounds schizophrenic! Statements of doubt and despair intermingled with stubborn declarations of faith and trust in God. It sounds pretty inconsistent. Yet what man preaching for God hasn’t had such a time of doubt and self contradiction, maybe on some Monday after one of those long 16 hour Sundays or perhaps in the wake of a group of disgruntled people leaving the church for trivial reasons?

If you were on the pulpit committee, and someone sent a resume that looked like these verses, would you want him to come to preach in your congregation? Jeremiah was really struggling!

Jeremiah was a prophet during one of the most difficult times in the history of Judah. His assignment would make most of ours look like a stroll in the park. The Northern Kingdom was already gone – overrun by Assyria. The Southern Kingdom was about to be ground under the boot of Babylon. What wasn’t ground under would be taken captive – and God wasn’t going to stop it. God told Jeremiah to instruct the people to surrender to the Babylonians because their defeat was certain. He told them that if they surrendered completely they would live - though they would still be taken captive. If they didn’t surrender completely, they and their city would be destroyed. It wasn’t a popular message to preach while the king was trying to raise an army to defend the city. The more people that heard Jeremiah, the fewer that were willing to take up arms. Jeremiah’s sermons of surrender made him look like a traitor – an agent working for the enemy. His message from God wasn’t popular with anyone in Judah.

Three empires clashed in that day in their quest for dominance - Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. All that remained of Judah was the city of Jerusalem, which was nothing against any one of the three. When Nineveh, the capital of Assyria fell to the Babylonians, Jehoiakim, king of Judah panicked and went to Egypt to fortify his alliance with Pharaoh against Babylon. Jeremiah, speaking by inspiration of God, told him not to go and warned him that in going to Egypt he was leaning on a flimsy reed that was going to break and that it would do him no good whatsoever – a prediction that would come true. It wasn’t what the king wanted to hear. Shut up, Jeremiah! Cease and desist! You’re going to get yourself killed.

As though the palace’s hatred for the truth were not enough for the Jeremiah to deal with, he received the same kind of rejection from the leaders of the temple. You would think that priests and prophets would hang together for the sake of the word of God, yet the toughest opposition Jeremiah faced was from within.

For decades on God’s behalf, Jeremiah stretched out his hand to the people of Judah and assured them that if they would just repent and turn back to God, they would be spared the destruction that was coming. Time and again they refused the message. In the incident that provoked Jeremiah’s complaint to God that contains our text, God had told the prophet to go and buy a piece of clay pottery. He was to gather some of the senior priests and elders together in the valley of Ben-hinnom near the potsherd gate of the wall around Jerusalem. It was a site where Israelite children had been sacrificed to Baal. Perhaps if the political leaders wouldn’t listen to Jeremiah, the religious leaders would. There in the sight of the elders and priests, Jeremiah was to break the jar and say, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Just so shall I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter's vessel, which cannot again be repaired…. This is how I shall treat this place and its inhabitants,’ declares the Lord…". Not a very appealing message. In fact, did you notice in verse 8 of our text Jeremiah’s complaint that his message was always negative? "For each time I speak, I cry aloud; I proclaim violence and destruction…." He lived in a day when, unless people repented, which they weren’t going to do, there was simply no positive message to preach.

The prophet faithfully did what God told him to do – complete with the smashing pot object lesson - and then to drive home his point, he went from the valley of Ben-hinnom and stood in the courtyard of the temple and proclaimed the same message of approaching calamity to the people. The thing was overheard by the chief officer of the temple guard, a man named Pashhur. But Pashhur wasn’t one who was faithful to Jehovah’s message. He promptly arrested Jeremiah, had him beaten and then to add insult to injury, locked him in stocks in a place where he could be publicly humiliated. It was presumably after the prophet’s release from this incident that he penned the words of our text, including his famous "fire in my bones" statement saying that in spite of all the difficulty, he couldn’t stop preaching God’s word.

Oh, that there were more faithful men in the church today like Jeremiah! Men who will preach God’s truth even if they are ridiculed and rejected by men. Men who, even if they must stand alone, will do so with courage because they know what is right. Men who will stand against the homogenization of truth and error even when they get little or no support from others. Let’s look at a few of the elements of Jeremiah’s faithfulness. While faithfulness is a Christian attribute that is important to all of us, in this message I want to specifically address those who preach or could preach the word of God. The first thing to notice is that:

Verse 9 says,

What was he referring to when he said "it?" What was it that he couldn’t hold in? What he couldn’t hold in was his knowledge of God’s word. That’s the way it is with the word of God in some men’s lives. "Is not my word like fire?" God says in Jeremiah 23:29. There is something about the word of God living in certain men’s hearts that simply cannot be held in. I’m not fully sure how it works but I know that some of you here have experienced it. Year after year I see you at your post, serving God. You’ve grown older. You’ve experience setbacks, trials, and troubles. But you don’t quit. And I suspect it is like Jeremiah - you can’t quit. Is it supernatural or is it simply that a man knows it and believes it and God places within his heart a driving compulsion to speak it?

Many years ago when I was in school still wondering whether or not I would actually be able to do this work of a preacher, old Brother A. Word said to a bunch of us, "If you can do anything else besides preach, then go do it." And he invited us to leave school right then and there. I didn’t fully understand the significance of his words at the time. I remember thinking, "I’m not going anyplace else," but I didn’t really understand his point until years later. He was saying to us that we needed to commit all or nothing to this work of ministry of the word. The ministry of the word takes 100% of a man’s effort and energy. His devotion cannot be divided. He thinks about it all day long and into the night. He cannot just dabble in it. He must be absorbed in it. It must be his life. Nothing else can compare to it. Ministry of the word is a calling, not a career. I shudder when I hear men today who speak of their "preaching career." It suggests that they are nothing but hirelings. You can leave a career in the blink of an eye if something better comes along. But you cannot leave a calling without intense feelings of compulsion and responsibility.

Does God call men into ministry of the word today? Is there some kind of audible or supernatural verification that comes from the Almighty when He wants a man to preach? There never was in my case. All I know is that I didn’t leave school on the day A. Word issued that challenge and what I found in time was that the more I studied the word of God and placed it in my heart, the more I felt the compulsion to preach it. It did indeed, in time, become like a fire in my bones that I could not shut off. This is not theatrics – and I’m not boasting. Some of you men here tonight know what I’m talking about. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:7, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels…." He knew what some of you know, that though we are simply clay pots beset by human weakness and frailty, we are the receptacles of the most precious gift in the world! It cannot be hidden. It cannot be suppressed.

But I’m not saying these things only for my benefit. I’m saying them because perhaps there are a few young men listening to my voice who have wondered whether they might be used by God to preach the word someday. I want to encourage such a person thinking along those lines to continue to pursue the word of God. Learn all you can about it. Volunteer to speak when you can. It may well be that in time you will discover what some of the others of us have discovered – that is, that God has placed within you a compulsion to teach and preach God’s word that cannot be shut off.

We are not prophets today in the same sense as in Jeremiah’s day. God does not reveal His word to us directly. But we have the word of God nonetheless in our Bibles. It can live in us just as it did in Jeremiah, and I believe the compulsion to preach it is no less intense.

Because of the word of God within him, Jeremiah knew that utter destruction was on the way and that there was still time to avoid it. He knew too much to shut up. He was burning up with passion for what He knew. He was a man of character who would never be able to live with himself if he were to stop speaking what he knew was true. This compulsion overruled rejection. It overruled opposition. It overruled criticism. Yes, he was a man of flesh and he struggled as a man of flesh. We read of it in the text. But even with that he found that he could not shut it off. Paul understood what I am talking about. He said in 1 Corinthians 9:16, "I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel." Peter and John said in Acts 4:20, when ordered to stop preaching the message of Christ in Jerusalem, "We cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard."

Like a man who hears the screams of people trapped in a burning building, a man with the word of God in his heart simply cannot walk away and do nothing. While others might say he is a fool, he finds that he cannot walk away – even in the face of danger.

Does the word of God dwell within you in that way? Could it with a bit of diligence? Is that sense of compulsion is welling up within you, and making itself known?

It was the word of God that was like a fire in Jeremiah’s bones.

Jeremiah had a burden that is seldom born by preachers living today. Most, if not all, of the message assigned to him was negative. That’s what he was complaining about in verse 8 of our text: "Each time I speak, I cry aloud; I proclaim violence and destruction…." He was truly a prophet of doom – not because he was some morbid character or aberrant personality but because that is the message God called him to preach.

It is a tremendous burden to have to tell people what they don’t want to hear. It’s one of the reasons there is so much stress today put on preaching to people’s "felt" needs. You have to scratch where they itch or they’re not going to listen. At least that is the mantra coming from some church growth circles. Carefully edit out all that offends, all that stresses, all that makes "seekers" uncomfortable, all that is ridiculed today. Such preachers will sometimes insist that they still preach the Word of God with conviction just like they always did – and often they do preach what they preach with conviction. Some of them are very "powerful" in what they preach. But the problem isn’t with what they preach. The problem is with what they don’t preach.

They don’t talk about sin anymore – unless it is mentioned as some sort of hang up or hindrance to living a full life here and now. They don’t talk about judgment because they know that many of their hearers will not listen to anyone who sounds "judgmental." They say very little about eternity because people don’t want to think about that now. They don’t mention the exclusivity of the gospel because radical "tolerance" has won the day. They don’t talk about hell. Some of them don’t even believe in it anymore.

It’s all about what’s happening now: How to have a happy home, how to be successful in your business, how to recover from… divorce, drug addiction, depression. I’m not saying that such things are unimportant. It’s not what is preached that is the problem. It’s what isn’t. Jesus said, "What does it profit, a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?"(1) The most important needs are the needs of the soul – needs which ironically are seldom "felt" without being exposed by the clear preaching of the gospel.

Paul reminds us in Acts 20:27 in his message to the elders of Ephesus that he was innocent of the blood of all men because he did not shrink from declaring the whole counsel of God. If declaring the whole counsel of God is what it takes to make a teacher of God’s word innocent of the blood of all men, what will become of those who, by design to promote "growth," because of peer pressure, or by neglect, leave out all the important parts that aren’t popular?

Again I remind you that Jeremiah’s message was almost all negative! Yet he didn’t shrink from preaching it.

A man was visiting his boyhood home when a storm hit. As he looked out the front window a strong gust of wind toppled a large tree in the front yard. After the wind stopped the man went outside look at the tree. As he examined the trunk he realized that wind hadn’t been the only thing that brought the tree down. The inside of the trunk was rotten – eaten away by disease. Then he recalled that as a boy he had used a hatchet to chop away some of the tree’s bark when it was just a sapling. Over the years water had seeped in and disease had found an opening. Though the tree had looked big and strong over the years, it was decaying from within. Eventually it couldn’t stand even the normal course of storms.

Something that I have observed on my watch is that sometimes compromises are made in order to build numbers in the church. People come and are welcomed into the body without ever fully obeying the gospel. They like the programs of the church so bring their friends. Then once the numbers are gathered, it becomes impossible to correct the compromise without driving them all away again. So the compromise is perpetuated. Then after awhile, even the messenger no longer sees the need for such correction and even begins to argue against it.

We need men like Jeremiah who will not shrink from those parts of God’s word that people don’t want to hear. We must also, in this day especially, preach to those "unfelt" needs – especially the need to prepare for eternity.

There is no other way to explain his faithfulness to the message for so long.

Back in the days when church parsonages were more popular, a preacher moved into a new house owned by the church. He tells of finding numerous paint cans in the garage with a little bit of paint in each one. There were a lot of different colors but not enough of any one color to do a complete job, so he decided to mix them all together. He came up with a new color that he called "Preacher Gray."

I’ve seen "Preacher Gray" in a lot of sermons. No, I don’t mean the sermons are boring. Many preachers today could rival stand-up comedians in their ability to perform. What I mean is that there is no specific color in their teaching and certainly not enough of any one color to offend anyone.

Yet may I remind you that we preach a gospel that is offensive by its very nature. In Luke 4 we read the account of Jesus returning to His hometown of Nazareth to preach. At first they marveled at the wisdom of His words. Then as He began to teach them that God was going to soon offer the gospel to the Gentiles, they began to get angry. They didn’t want to hear that. Mark 6:3 says "They took offense at Him." Luke tells us that they were so angry that they took Him out to the brow of a hill and were going to throw Him off a cliff!

Of course, you know what people ultimately did with Him as he continued to preach the gospel. They crucified Him.

Over and over again, as Paul and his companions went from city to city they were met with two kinds of people – those who heard their preaching and accepted it and those who heard their preaching and rejected it. At that point they were sometimes asked to leave, sometimes arrested, sometimes beaten, and sometimes driven out of town. Offense went with their preaching. Until a person understands and is convicted of his sin he cannot be saved. Some people won’t stand still for that.

Paul quoted Isaiah in his letter to the Romans when he said, "Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. He who believes in Him will not be disappointed."(2) He was describing Jesus as a "rock of offense."

Peter made essentially the same point when he told his readers that Jesus, for those who did not believe, would be "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense."(3)

If we preach the true gospel, there is going to be offense. No, we shouldn’t be obnoxious or intentionally try to offend people. But where the gospel is preached in its fullness, some people are going to be offended. Conversely, if you want to preach so as not to ever offend people, you’re going to have to change the gospel.

That is precisely what is going on around us. Churches have become so "seeker sensitive" that they are deathly afraid of offending anyone. So they don’t teach all the truth. They fear the disapproval of men more than they fear the disapproval of God.

Jeremiah offended just about everyone in Israel: The king, the priests, the elders, the people, the false prophets. What a burden to bear! In Jeremiah 26:7-9 we read, "And the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord. And when Jeremiah finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, ‘You must die!’" Talk about offense!

How is it that Jeremiah could continue a lengthy ministry in the face of that kind of opposition? All I can think of is that he feared the disapproval of God more than the disapproval of men.

No, this isn’t a license for preachers to abuse people or be offensive in their manner. 2 Timothy 2:24 says, "The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition…." Patience and gentleness are called for, but people must still be corrected. And when they are corrected some will be offended.

The thing that stands out most to me about Jeremiah is that he was faithful to what God told him to preach. While he struggled with the message of condemnation that he was charged to deliver, and sometimes wished he could quit, he never did.. He finished his course.

I admonish each of you who are preaching the gospel now, if you need to, to recommit yourself to faithfulness to God and finish your course. God will reward you. Stay the course. Don’t quit.

And to any young man who at this very moment feeling the tug on his heart to consider being a preacher for God, don’t resist it. Learn all you can about the word of God. Let it grow in your heart. Be faithful to whatever God gives you to do. He will lead you along the track he wants you on and He will reward you. There is no greater calling in the world than being a preacher of the word of God. God needs men who will stand up for Him and not faint away. If I or one of the other preachers here can help you answer your questions, don’t be afraid to ask. Though God is ultimately in charge, we will do whatever we can to give you guidance.

Finally, to those of you who don’t preach – I admonish you to encourage those in your life who preach the word of God. Honor them for their work. Tell them that you appreciate them.

Footnotes: Use your "back" button to return to your place.

1. Mark 8:36
2. Romans 9:33
3. 1 Peter 2:8

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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