Sunday Service 31st August

Prayers of complaint

31/8/25

Call to worship

Hymn 181: For the beauty of the earth

Time for all : Amanda

Hymn 568: When I’m feeling down and sad

Reading:  Jeremiah 20: 7-13 Gil (first prayer of complaint)

Prayer

Reading: Jeremiah 20: 14-18 Gil (second prayer of complaint)

Hymn 565: My life flows on in endless song

Sermon

Prayer

Hymn 161: O God, our help in ages past

Benediction

Welcome to our meditation for 31^st of August.

We are stating a series on prayer.

And in the Bible there are many types of prayer. The most common prayer found in the Bible is not a prayer of adoration, telling God how wonderful we think he and his creation is,

And it isn’t prayers of thanksgiving

Or even prayers asking God for things, called prayers of petition,

but prayers of complaint.

Here’s a thing you may not have realised. The Bible wasn’t written to be in chronological order, but more often is put together in theme order, that things of the same theme are put together.

So in this part of Jeremiah two prayers are put together, because they have the same theme of complaint. And Gil will lead us in those readings and prayer.

Sermon

I cannot overstate how violent these readings are today.

We sometimes forget that the translation of the Bible we use was created so that a ten year old could understand it...and because of that some of the words used are...tempered.

So these first few verses that Gil read

‘Lord, you have deceived me and I was deceived..

You are stronger than am, and you overpowered me.’

These are the words of being seduced and raped. In other parts of the Bible the words used are words used to describe rape incidents.

Jeremiah feels violated by God, violently and without consent violated.

Jeremiah has given the message that God wanted him to give...no...forced him to give.

It was a message that Jeremiah feels that no one wants to hear.

And this prayer of complaint and anger comes just after he has been prophesying in the Temple. Jeremiah, in the past, had given prophecies that God was like a potter who made the pots, and while the pots were forming a stone could get into the clay and distort the vase as it was spinning round the potter’s wheel.

The message was that the potter would remove the stone and start again; and that was a message that had some hope to it. God hadn’t given up on is people, he could reshape them.

But now Jeremiah had used a finished pot, and smashed it, destroyed it, giving the message that God had given up on his people, he was going to destroy them.

This prophecy was given as the Babylonian army was moving towards the city.

People were scared, people were frightened.

And the chief officer of the temple had decided enough was enough and arrested and beaten up Jeremiah, he had him put in stocks over night.

When Jeremiah was realised the next morning he was lashing out at everybody.

He lashes out at the officer...telling the officer that he and his family will be taken into captivity and they will all die in a foreign land.

And then he has these two prayers of complaint.

The first one lashing out at God. God had seduced him, and now he felt corrupted.

God had forced him like a rapist forces his victim...and he felt his humiliation was public, everyone was laughing at his shame.

It’s all a waste of time.

No matter what he says, the people don’t listen...worse they attack him.

And that prayer ends with Jeremiah having some hope that at least his enemies will be disgraced in time, that God will take his revenge.

The second prayer of compliant starts, ‘Curse the day I was born.’; probably not written at the same time but put together because in the Bible often the writers wanted to put things together in themes.

So as one prayer of complaint was written, they put another one in there because they follow the same theme.

And in this one Jeremiah is lashing out at himself.

He imagines the day his father is told his wife is pregnant, usually a day of rejoicing.

In Jeremiah’s eyes that messenger of hope should be cursed, if he had known the life that child would have had then he would have demanded the child be destroyed in the womb; better for the child if it had been aborted.

For in Jeremiah’s eyes the life he had led was a wasted life.

What am I supposed to say about these passages?

I have two messages I want to give.

There is the one I would have wanted to give to Jeremiah if I had been his mentor at the time.

And there is one I want to give to you.

As it turns out I have been reading and studying Jeremiah for the last month.

What I would want to say to Jeremiah is based on ideas from those readings, and from experience as a mentor and an interim moderator, watching Peter develop and watching other probationers, people with a calling from God, who are seeking to find churches to work in.

And this would be my message to Jeremiah.

You need to change your message.

Or rather, you need to change the heart you give the message with.

Jeremiah’s message was a message that the people were in danger, that if they didn’t change their ways then the Babylonian empire was going to destroy them, wipe them out.

Jeremiah was warning the people that just because God’s temple was in their capital city that alone would save them, that a few desperate prayers would be enough.

They needed to really trust God, really follow God, really live the life God wanted them to have.

Now there is nothing wrong with that message.

I truly believe that that is the message that God gave him.

But...and this is where I believe Jeremiah got it so wrong.

Jeremiah was frightened about giving that message, and in his fear that made him angry that he had to give that message.

In turn Jeremiah became angry for God. He believed that God was angry with his people, God was punishing his people, they deserved to be punished for following other gods and acting unjustly to the poor. They were getting what they deserved.

That was the tone in which he gave his message.

Imagine you’re my daughter.

And you’re going out late at night.

And I catch you just before you’re going out.

And I tell you to go upstairs and get changed.

But you refuse...now I feel my authority has been threatened.

So I tell you that if you go out like that you are no more than a slut and you will be leading boys on and you will get what you deserve.

And when you come home and you have been attacked, you feel that I, your father, will feel vindicated for all I said.

Will you listen to your father next time, or will you feel that your father only cares about his authority.

That was Jeremiah.

I would have told Jeremiah that he was so concerned about the message of God, that he had forgotten the heart of the message of God.

That God had given his message in love.

If God was angry and vindictive then he wouldn’t have given a warning.

It was because God cared that he was giving his warning.

And Jeremiah forgot, or was so preoccupied with his own fears, that he forgot to tell the people WHY God was warning them.

Imagine you’re my daughter.

And you’re going out late at night.

And I catch you just before you’re going out.

And I ask you to go upstairs and get changed.

But you refuse...but I love you, and care deeply about you.

So I tell you I am concerned that there are a lot of drunk boys out there that make bad choices and I don’t want you to be a victim and you to be hurt.

That if she is going out can she at least stay alert, stay with friends, have some pepper spray on her, or a Taser. Keep my phone number on speed dial and phone me if she feels.

It’s the same message, but a very different heart.

My message to you however would be different.

I pray that you never feel in your heart that anger and frustration and want to lash out.

But if you do...God can take it.

There may be times when life feels so hard, and so pointless, that everything is so desperate...that you feel like lashing out the way Jeremiah did.

Again I say...God can take it.

The last thing God wants is pretend prayers; where you are telling God in your prayer what you think God wants to hear from you.

What God wants to hear is the truth.

So if you are in a place that you just want to scream, then scream.

If you are in a place where you want to accuse God of unfairness then tell God he is unfair.

If you are in a place that you want to tell God that following him is a complete waste of time then tell him.

If you are in a place that you hate God then tell God that you hate him.

You cannot insult God more than Jeremiah insulted God.

When the writers of the Bible were putting the Bible all together there was a reason these things were kept in.

Because we needed to hear it.

We needed to hear that God was OK with us talking like that to him, because if that is what we feel then that is what we feel.

And here is the hope.

Jeremiah was kept in the Bible because his message was a message of hope.

That if we are honest with God, brutally honest with God,

especially when things are going badly and we don’t understand what we are meant to do

or what the way forward may look like,

or that there may even be a way forward...

then after we are exhausted and have stopped screaming...

we will hear God’s still small voice.

telling us that we are still loved, we are still cared for, that he is still watching over us.

The book of Jeremiah finishes not with vengeance, not with anger, not with justification....but with kindness.

Because God is still caring for his people, God never gives up on his people, and that is where the hope is found.

That is what Jeremiah found, and that is what I hope we find too.

So if you need to complain to God, complain, for if we are honest to God about what we feel, maybe we will be open enough to hear how God honestly feels about us.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father

You are a God of relationship.

But often we do not seek that relationship,

we do not come to you in prayer,

and there is a emptiness with us, we feel far from everyone, we feel disconnected.

And in our immaturity we try to hide from those feelings, we fill our life with busy-ness and entertainment, hoping to distract ourselves from the gnawing within ourselves.

How often we feel we cannot come to you,

we don’t know what to say to you,

we are scared of what you might say to us,

of the commitment you might ask from us.

And then something goes wrong.

And we are so angry.

Angry that you might not want to help us, might want to punish us.

Angry that we have lost control and don’t know how to get it back.

Angry that we want your help but are too ashamed or too proud to ask.

Give us the courage to give you our anger

To be honest...about ourselves and You.

When we shout out curses for the life we are living and how isolated we feel...help us.

Help us see that you have always been there, will always be there.

When we question our very purpose and existence, when we feel our life is pointless and meaningless...help us.

Help us to see that you love us and seek us...and always will.

When we relentlessly nag you about things of which we really have no understanding, When we fail to see any bigger picture or that there may be a lesson we need to learn and a trust we need to begin....help us.

Help us to believe that no matter what, no matter how dark life may feel, that your light is guiding our next step, and just asking that that next step is with you.

So that like Jeremiah, we may believe in the end that there is hope, and our hope is with you

Amen.