Peter Barnes | Jeremiah 20:7-18
SERMON NOTES
IT IS ALL TOO MUCH!
Jeremiah 20:7-18; 2 Cor. 4:7-18
– depression affected even the genial Charles Spurgeon. Jeremiah was isolated as God’s prophet (15:17-18; 20:1-6)
1. Jeremiah is torn between God’s Word and the world’s opposition.
– 20:7-10; in the midst of his troubles, Charles Simeon marked Jeremiah 20:9 in his Bible
– 1 Peter 4:3-4; Martin Luther in 1527: ‘For more than a week I was close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled in all my members. Christ was wholly lost. I was shaken by desperation and blasphemy of God.’
2. The believer knows the answer.
– 20:11-13; Jeremiah almost pulls himself out of the Slough of Despond, but what he knows and what he feels are not the same.
– C. S. Lewis wrote The Problem of Pain, but when his wife died wrote A Grief Observed
3. Jeremiah relapses.
– 20:14-18; like Elijah in 1 Kings 19:4 or Job in Job 3:11; Thomas Brooks: ‘Though my comfort is gone, yet the God of my comfort abides.’