We live in a world of uncertainty. Conflict between nations is escalating not just militarily, but also economically. We should not be surprised that our faith will be attacked by others. Jesus spoke of the end of times as a time of uncertainty and danger. Conflict and polarization between family members will also happen. We certainly saw glimpses of that during Covid which shocked many, but what will happen when more is at stake in the future? Jesus, in warning about desperate times, also gives a word of hope.
You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. Everyone will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. Stand firm and you will win life.[i]
Later in this passage we read things that will intensify and get worse before the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.[ii]
We have seen these terrible cycles happen in the past. World wars, famine, and plagues. We saw in the first century in the Jewish revolt against Rome, some of these texts speak directly to the devastation of a nation. These elements of despair also happen in our personal worlds, when death strikes suddenly, or relationships take an unexpected turn and termination of the relationship becomes a reality.
What happens when your future looks bleak, and you are struggling with discouragement? God promises to be with us in those dark and difficult seasons of life, even when we feel our lives are at risk. The temptation is to be overcome by fear. Fear can easily begin to affect our thinking and emotions. It is in these times that we need to hear God’s words speaking into our life situation. What then should our aim be in life when we do not foresee better days ahead, but know that the times ahead will become more devastating? So, how do you move forward when you see only darkness, sorrow, and pain ahead?
Such was the case for Jeremiah’s recording secretary, Baruch. He knew that God was about to judge the people, as he not only recorded Jeremiah’s words, but was also asked to deliver the message of future destruction to a people who were in a state of rebellion and denial.
When Baruch son of Neriah wrote on a scroll the words Jeremiah the prophet dictated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, Jeremiah said this to Baruch:[iii]
Roland Harrison explains that chapter 45 occurred earlier in the ministry of Jeremiah.
Chronologically this passage is out of order, and should follow 36:8. Baruch is reproved for being depressed about his future, and is given a promise of personal survival to sustain his hopes.[iv]
The context of the message follows Jeremiah’s message during the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim in which Baruch had written it down on a scroll and read it to the people at the temple. The response was apprehension on the part of some of the people, which in turn reinforced Baruch’s fears.
Then the officials said to Baruch, ‘You and Jeremiah, go and hide. Don’t let anyone know where you are.’[v]
Why did they give this counsel to Baruch? These officials were sympathetic to the message of Jeremiah as read by Baruch, but they were concerned about how the king would respond to the message of impending judgment upon the nation and they were right in their assessment.
After they put the scroll in the room of Elishama the secretary, they went to the king in the courtyard and reported everything to him. The king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and Jehudi brought it from the room of Elishama the secretary and read it to the king and all the officials standing beside him. It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the firepot in front of him. Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the firepot, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes.[vi]
In other words, they showed total disdain for the message and dismissed it as merely the words of a man. Their hearts were indifferent and hard toward God. There was no trace of repentance and brokenness over their sinfulness.
Even though Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. Instead, the king commanded Jerahmeel, a son of the king, Seraiah son of Azriel and Shelemiah son of Abdeel to arrest Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet. But the Lord had hidden them.[vii]
Though this chapter is historical in the moment it occurs, it may have been placed at this point in the writings of Jeremiah because they are now fulfilled. Baruch is one of the few who will survive God’s judgment on His people in Egypt.
What about this message to Baruch applies to us today? It certainly applies in moments of uncertainty, or when we see a very challenging and difficult future. How should we respond? There are three things we can learn from a time of despair that can help us experience hope.
I. THE FIRST THING IS TO BRING OUR COMPLAIN TO GOD
We find throughout Scripture people of faith in times of crisis bemoaning their current condition of feeling abandoned, even by God. Here are some examples from Psalms. Jesus, Himself cried out from the cross these very words.
My God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?[viii]
Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.[ix]
Listen to my words, LORD, consider my lament. Hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.[x]
These are but a few examples of the many we find in the Scriptures. Here we see Baruch, bemoaning his life’s situation. The first verse gives us the time frame of this particular word and why it caused distress in Baruch. In the second verse we see God’s response and answer in the following three verses.
When Baruch son of Neriah wrote on a scroll the words Jeremiah the prophet dictated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, Jeremiah said this to Baruch: ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to you, Baruch: You said, “Woe to me! The Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am worn out with groaning and find no rest.”’[xi]
Here we see in verse three that Baruch is blaming God for the state of his soul. “The Lord has added sorrow to my pain.” He is worn out and groaning and can find no rest. Robert Davidson explains some possibilities about Baruch’s despair.
The reason for his despair we are not told. Perhaps he was depressed by the harsh content of the scroll Jeremiah dictated to him; perhaps he was conscious of the dangerous situation in which he was placing himself by reading the scroll in public (36:5-6); perhaps he shared Jeremiah’s despair at the nil response the prophet was getting to his message. It could be—and this would fit in with the opening words of verse 5, “do not seek great things for yourself?”—that he was beginning to realize that by throwing his lot with Jeremiah, he was ruining his own career prospects.[xii]
Philip Ryken relates to our struggles as human beings in his comments on this text:
The words of Baruch’s lament thus describe all the difficulties of life in this fallen world. In one way or another, they touch every trouble of the human heart. When God’s people come to worship on the Lord’s Day, many of them are worn-out. They are tired from their professional work, their schoolwork, or their housework. Day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year their jobs, their families, and their ministries gradually wear them down.
Others have pain, especially physical pain. They have a life-threatening illness or suffer from a chronic ailment that will torment them until they die. For some, sorrow is added to pain. They remember the death of loved ones or lament the passing of happy days. Still others have groaning. It is good to know we do not suffer alone. The servants of God in the past had the same struggles we have. Yet they found God faithful in every situation. The Bible is not silent about the trials and sorrows of life. One of the reasons for its continual relevance is that it speaks to every troubled emotion of the soul. It assures us that sorrow and groaning are common to humanity.
The Bible also assures us that we have a Savior who understands the trials of life. Jesus Christ was “a man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). He was worn out with groaning in the Garden of Gethsemane. He went through the pain of dying for sins on the cross. Therefore, when we turn to God with our troubles, we are not turning to someone “who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). On the contrary, Jesus has the most tender compassion for every one of his suffering children.[xiii]
We are encouraged to bring our cares, burdens, fears, and anxieties to Jesus for in him we discover mercy and grace for our time of need.
II. THE SECOND THING IS TO RECEIVE CORRECTION WHEN OUR PERSPECTIVE NEEDS TO CHANGE
How do we move forward when our thinking is dampened by trial and we are in anguish, hurt, and sorrow? Our judgment is clouded. In the darkest hours of Job’s life, we hear such bitter anguish as he demands an answer from God as to why this is happening to him. He is trying to hold God accountable to him. Yet, when God comes to Job and challenges him, Job realizes that God does not owe him an explanation. That is a shocking thought to our sensibility. God does not owe us an explanation. God is not accountable to us, while we are accountable to Him. We see in the final chapter of Job after God explains that He will answer Job’s questions, if Job can answer His. God is asking Job to explain some of the mysteries of life, which Job readily admits, he has no clue. Here is Job’s response.
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.[xiv]
God also, responds to Baruch’s complaint with a challenging correction regarding his perspective.
But the Lord has told me to say to you, ‘This is what the Lord says: I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted, throughout the earth. Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life.’[xv]
Once again, God is telling His servant that He is not accountable to him. God doesn’t owe us an explanation. God is being consistent with His character. But I think we gain an insight into the heartbreak of God in verse four.
A. God’s heartbreak at seeing what He has created being destroyed by our sinfulness.
The statement of destroying what God had created should be seen as a painful expression. While Baruch is bemoaning the fact that life is not going the way he wants it to, God is suffering. He sees how sin is destroying everything in its wake. God is seen destroying what He had created because if left unchecked, it would spread like a disease.
Maybe, I can best frame God’s heartache in this way: Jesus is approaching the city of Jerusalem during the last week of His earthly life. Luke gives us a window into the soul of God (Jesus is God in the flesh). Jesus looks over the city and weeps. Here we see the broken heart of God as He sees the fruit of rebellion, their rejection of God’s salvation in Jesus and what will come of it, the destruction of the city and being scattered and exiled once again.
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.[xvi]
If only they had received Jesus, they would be saved. The same is true for us. If we receive Jesus as Lord and surrender to Him, we will be saved from impending judgment. Luke reveals why judgment came upon the Jewish people in that hour.
They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.[xvii]
God suffers over our sinful state, just as everyone understands when we deeply love someone who is living a self-centered, sin-filled life that is destroying them and those around them. God understands human pain and suffering. John Stott shares the powerful intimacy of God’s heart toward us in his book, The Cross of Christ. “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross…in the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? God suffers with us and for us.”[xviii]
B. God’s rebuke at our self-centeredness.
Philip Ryken insightfully points out from the Hebrew text the self-focus of Baruch’s complaint.
God was telling Baruch to stop being so selfish. God looked into his heart and saw how self-centered he was. Notice how often Baruch used the first-person singular in his lament: ‘Woe to me! The Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am worn out with groaning and find no rest’ (v. 3). He sounds even more self-centered in Hebrew, because nearly every word ends with a first-person possessive pronoun: my woe, my pain, my being worn out, my groaning, my finding no rest.’
Ultimately Baruch was blaming God for his troubles. It was ‘the Lord’ who had added sorrow to his pain. Even when it has a physical component, despair is always a spiritual matter. Dissatisfaction with life is dissatisfaction with God.
As depression turns against God, it turns inward upon the self. Baruch could not see beyond the boundaries of his own troubles. He spent all his time thinking about how tired he was, how much pain he was in, how many griefs he had to bear. But God cut right to the heart of Baruch’s real problem: He was seeking something for himself.[xix]
Self-pity is an awful thing. It destroys your life, keeps one trapped and justifies sin. May we look away from ourselves to God’s loving grace and mercy and be set free from our self-pity. Only then can you move forward. A few of you may remember Thelma Austin, one of the founders of our church family. One day after building their dream home, her husband told her he didn’t love her, and he was leaving her for another woman. It crushed her, and she ended up in the psych unit in Ponoka, a broken-hearted woman. What changed her life was when a patient came along and wrote with her lipstick on her mirror the letters, PLOM. Thelma said, “What does that mean?” The patient responded, “Poor little old me.” It was a wake-up moment. She eventually came to faith in Christ and was one of the most joyous and loving people I have ever met.
C. Stop seeking greatness for ourselves.
Baruch was told not to seek greatness for himself. What about us? What about our lives? What is our purpose in this life, but to seek God’s glory? If we are going to learn the meaning of what is being said to Baruch, we need to examine the perfect life. Everything about Jesus’ life was counterintuitive. He did not seek greatness for himself but became a servant to those dismissed as insignificant.
Patty and I were doing a devotional together this past week entitled: ‘What is Greatness” and I want to select a few thoughts from it.
In a culture obsessed with influence and status, where success is often measured in terms of followers and likes, Jesus and his teachings give us a path that is still revolutionary today. ‘Whoever would be great among you must be your servant’ (Mark 10:43-44). Jesus spent time with people who could offer nothing in return. He touched those society had deemed untouchable. He gave dignity to people who’d been overlooked and forgotten. His actions weren’t calculated moves for social capital or carefully staged ‘photo ops’-they were genuine expressions of a revolutionary idea that true greatness isn’t measured by who’s serving you, but by who you’re willing to serve.[xx]
III. THE THIRD THING IS TO EMBRACE GOD’S PROMISE OF DELIVERANCE
In the correction that God was speaking into Baruch’s life, He laid down a promise of personal deliverance.
Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life.’[xxi]
The idea is that Baruch’s life would be the spared and he would escape with his life in all of the moments of destruction around him.
Here is the principle laid down for us in our lives. The way to life is to be willing to lay it down in service to Christ. This is the cost of discipleship. When we live like this, we will experience the life that God promised us in John 10:10. Fullness of life only comes as we embrace the life that Jesus is modeling for us. When we stop making life about us, we can really begin to live. Jesus in explaining what it means to be his disciples or followers.
Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.[xxii]
In 1951, Eberhard Bethge published Letters and Papers from Prison, the correspondence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to the world outside of prison. He was imprisoned for his part in the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler. One of the texts of Scripture that Bonhoeffer found solace and challenge came from Jeremiah 45. The struggle of Baruch, the scribe of Jeremiah, his anguish and complaint, God’s response by challenging and promising him safety in a perilous hour brought instruction and solace to Bonhoeffer.
We realize more clearly than formerly that the world lies under the wrath and grace of God. We read in Jer. 45: ‘Thus says the Lord: Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up … And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not; for, behold, I am bringing evil upon all flesh; … but I will give your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go.’ If we can save our souls unscathed out of the wreckage of our material possession, let us be satisfied with that. If the Creator destroys his own handiwork, what right have we to lament the destruction of ours? It will be the task of our generation, not to ‘seek great things,’ but to save and preserve our souls out of the chaos, and to realize it is the only thing we can carry as a ‘prize’ from the burning building. ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flows the spring of life’ (Prov 4:23).[xxiii]
Bonhoeffer is challenging that the real issue of life is to be faithful to God.
So, what are we to glean from this interchange between God and Baruch, as we looked at his complaint, God’s correction, and finally God’s assurances or promise? Am I looking at an earthly bleak future? Am I focused on my groaning, pain, and despair? Or am I hearing God’s word, promising me life as I seek not for myself greatness, but God’s honor and glory?
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[i] Luke 21:16-19, The New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan, 2011.
[ii] Luke 21:26-28.
[iii] Jeremiah 45:1.
[iv] R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah & Lamentations, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, Vol. 19, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1973), 169.
[v] Jeremiah 36:19.
[vi] Jeremiah 36:20-24.
[vii] Jeremiah 36:25-26.
[viii] Psalm 22:1.
[ix] Psalm 4:1.
[x] Psalm 5:1-2.
[xi] Jeremiah 45:1-3.
[xii] Robert Davidson, Jeremiah, Vol. 2, The Daily Study Bible Series, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1985), 155.
[xiii] Philip Ryken, Jeremiah and Lamentations: From Sorrow to Hope, (Wheaton, Il: Crossway Books, 2016), 637.
[xiv] Job 42:3.
[xv] Jeremiah 45:4-5.
[xvi] Luke 19:41-42.
[xvii] Luke 19:44.
[xviii] John Stott, The Cross of Christ, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986),
[xix] Philip Ryken, Jeremiah and Lamentations: From Sorrow to Hope, 637.
[xx] You version, ‘What is Greatness” 2025.
[xxi] Jeremiah 45:5.
[xxii] Mark 8:35-38.
[xxiii] M. C. Callaway, Jeremiah through the Centuries, (J. Sawyer, C. Rowland, J. Kovacs, & D. M. Gunn, Eds.; 2020). 320–321.
