Bible Stories for the Young
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Do you remember Jeremiah and how when he was a boy, God told him he was not too young to obey?
Well, Jeremiah DID obey. But even though Jeremiah loved and obeyed God, almost NO ONE else around Jeremiah did. After King Josiah of Judah died, the kings that came after him didn’t listen to God, and most of the people disobeyed God and didn’t love Him at all.
Jeremiah tried and tried to help other people change their attitudes and learn to obey God too. Jeremiah cried and cried out to the people to change.
He warned them that if they didn’t obey, God would have to discipline them.
Day after day, month after month, year after year, Jeremiah cried out, “Come back, stubborn people! It’s so sad because you seem to like doing bad things and hurting God! Now the Lord God will have to let bad things happen to you.”
But lying prophets would tell the people, “Nothing bad will happen to you. You will only have peace.”
So, Jeremiah would stand in the marketplace and shout, “Don’t believe the lying prophets and priests. They lie. They say, ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace. They say, ‘It’s safe, it’s safe’ when it is NOT safe.”
Jeremiah would sit by the road and yell, “You people have stubborn and rebellious bad hearts, you have turned off the path and have gone the WRONG way! Come back!”
But the people were so stubborn. Jeremiah tried and tried to help them, and Jeremiah cried and cried when they wouldn’t listen.
Have you ever cried? Why have you cried? Sometimes people cry because they get an owie. Sometimes people cry when they don’t get their way (Oh, that’s bad. Please don’t do that.) When you explode into tears, much of the time the root of your pile of tears is because you were filling up on me, me, me.
But Jeremiah cried because he was sad for other people and how they were treating God with their disobedience. So, learn from Jeremiah and save your tears for the things God cries over—the things that make Him sad.
Jeremiah said, “Since my people are crushed, I am crushed. I cry and cry. Is there no doctor to help God’s People who are hurt? I wish my eyes were a sprinkler of tears so that I could cry all day and all night for these people.”
But the people just got angry at Jeremiah. They even tried to hurt him.
Jeremiah said, “I am made fun of all day long. All I get to talk about is sadness and badness. But if I say, ‘I will not say God’s word anymore,’ then God’s word starts to get hot in my heart — like a fire burning me on the inside. I can’t hold God’s word back. I have to say what God tells me to say.”
God says, “If My clay is not molding into the right shape, don’t I have the right to do what I want with it to reshape it? If you softly accept My discipline, you’ll be okay. You’ll need to softly serve in Babylon for 70 years, but then I will bring you home, home, home.”
Jeremiah stood in the courtyard of the Lord’s house and told all these things to the people. But when they heard it, the “prophets,” “priests,” and the people rushed at Jeremiah wanting to kill him. But there were a few people who knew what Jeremiah said was from God, so they protected Jeremiah and kept him from getting killed.
Later, God told Jeremiah to write down all the words that He had told Jeremiah about the discipline that was coming. So Jeremiah’s friend, Baruch, wrote down all the words on a scroll. Then Baruch went and read the scroll to the people (since the last time, Jeremiah had almost been killed).
When one man heard what Baruch read about God’s plan to discipline them by allowing the Babylonians to take over, he ran and told the city princes and officials all about it. The princes and officials asked Baruch to read the scroll to them. And after that, all the princes and officials agreed that the king needed to hear God’s message.
But… the officials knew it was not good news they were bringing to the king, so they told Baruch, “Baruch, go quickly. Find Jeremiah and find a hiding place. And don’t tell anyone where you are.”
Sure enough, when the scroll was read to the King, he was not happy. After each section of the scroll was read, the king cut off that section of the scroll and burned it in the fire until there was nothing left of the scroll. (That’s very foolish and disrespectful to God, isn’t it?) The king tried to find Jeremiah and Baruch so that he could hurt them, but the king didn’t find them because God had given them a good hiding place.
So, Jeremiah tried and tried, and Jeremiah cried and cried. But the stubborn people would NOT listen.
But he never gave up trying to help the people because he knew that God would take care of anyone who softened their heart. Remember that the next time you start to feel stubborn. God will take care of those who soften their hearts to Him and listen to His correction.
Jeremiah later did something that some people might think was a little odd. During the same time that Jeremiah was shouting out to warn the people that God was going to let the Babylonians take over the city and tear it down, Jeremiah got out his money and BOUGHT a piece of land. Can you imagine spending your money on land that is about to be taken away or wrecked up? Well that is what Jeremiah did. He did it to show the people around him, “But God says He WILL bring us back home to this land one day and make it a beautiful place once again. So I am buying this land to show you that after the discipline, better times will come.”
In fact, one of the messages from God that Jeremiah wrote down was about a very special new Deal that was coming in God’s Big Story.
He wrote: “Oh yes, there is a time coming!” The Lord declares! “When I will make a brand new agreement. It’s not like the covenant I made when I brought those people out of Egypt. Even though I kept My side of the deal like a never-leaving husband, they broke the deal I made with them. But, I will make a New Deal. In this New Deal, I will no longer write My rules on stones, but instead I will write them on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be My people.
“And it won’t just be a few people who go around teaching My law to their friends and neighbors saying, ‘Know the Lord by doing this, know the Lord by doing that.’ It won’t just be people trying their best to ‘be good.’ Instead, with this new Covenant, all My people will really KNOW Me — know ME! From the littlest of them to the greatest of them—every single ONE. Because I will forgive their sins and I won’t even think again about the wrong things they did! And that’s GOOD news!”
Later in Jeremiah’s life, he was in prison for a time. Some people tried to kill him by putting him down in an old well with no water... just mud. But someone saved him by lowering down a rope and pulling him out.
But Jeremiah pretty much stayed in prison until the Babylonian king named Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, and then he ordered Jeremiah be released. (You’ll learn more about Nebuchadnezzar soon.)