Introduction

Jeremiah was a prophet in ancient Israel. He preached to the southern kingdom of Judah until Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians around 586 B.C. It was a tough time to be a prophet of God. God’s people had long since turned away from the true God and had relied on idols instead. They didn’t want to hear God’s Word. Jeremiah told the people things that they didn’t want to hear, so he was very unpopular.

Nevertheless, Jeremiah was faithful to God and kept preaching God’s call for repentance despite false accusations, intimidation, threats, and other persecutions. Jeremiah is a great role model for faithful Christian preachers in a self satisfied world where the people don’t think that they need God, or who think that they have God under their thumb and can make Him do what they think is best for them.

I was an admirer of the prophet Jeremiah long before I received my call to be a minister of the Gospel of Christ. I had hoped that the message of salvation that I was preaching and teaching would have been received with greater acceptance than pre-captivity Judah. Though I was certainly not perfect, I was a faithful preacher of Christ and I did my best to get my congregation to accept the blessings of Christ, who is the savior of sinners. Unfortunately, they did not want a Christ who was the savior for sinners, because that meant that they would have had to acknowledge their sin. They wanted to be “uplifted” and admired, not humbled.

I remember one Sunday morning Bible class where I stated that my favorite Old Testament prophet was Jeremiah. One member of the congregation seemed a little upset by this comment and asked, “What do you mean by that?” I explained that I admired Jeremiah’s faithfulness in the face of opposition. I was certainly not accusing anyone in my Bible class of unfaithfulness like the Israelites in Jeremiah’s day. However, God’s Law has the effect of convicting sinners, and those who trusted in themselves were convicted of their unfaithfulness. Things did not go well for me after that, though I never suffered the intense persecutions that Jeremiah suffered.

My worst suffering was simply the sense of helplessness in seeing that the message of forgiveness and salvation that I worked so hard to bring to the people I loved was falling on deaf ears. It was like watching a train wreck and trying to warn the conductor to put on the brakes before he crashed, but he didn’t believe he was in any danger so he ignored the warnings and went along full speed into destruction. This certainly does not compare with all that Jeremiah went through, but it was enough.

In many ways it was made clear to me that things would go easier for me if only I would change the message that I was preaching. They wanted me to give a little more praise to their self-righteous acts. The way they put it was that they wanted to be uplifted. I lifted up Christ instead, but that wasn’t what they wanted. Instead of giving more praise to unrepentant sinners, I gradually became more direct in my calls to repentance, though I am ashamed to say that I don’t think I ever attained the directness that both John the Baptist and Jesus used in their dealings with the Pharisees of their day. The strong accusations of John and Jesus were needed in my congregation, but I tried to soften the hard hammer blow of God’s Law. Nevertheless, from the people’s reaction I believe they got the point, but unfortunately they were as stubborn as ancient Israel.

The articles which will be posted here are some of the monthly newsletter articles that I wrote during my tenure as the pastor of what was St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Detroit. These are not all of my articles because I have repented of some (mostly earlier essays) that I wrote that I suppose were just meant to please the people. You can see that with only one possible exception (near the end in 2005) I do not directly damn my readers as enemies of Christ, instead I am always concerned with turning the reader to Christ as the savior from sin. I do not put myself above anyone in the need for Christ’s saving forgiveness. In all of these articles I find that I am condemned first of my sins since I know my sins better than I know the sins of others, but I find that I am also first to receive forgiveness through faith in Christ. You, the reader, should also apply the Law to yourself where necessary and don’t shy away from it. I did not write these essays to condemn the readers, but to show people their salvation in Christ Jesus.

May Christ bless your meditations on these articles.