| It’s no secret that we live in a society marked by much cultural and relational fragmentation. Pew Research tells us we view each other with more suspicion than at any point in the last 60 years. Sociologists note that people are not only marrying less, but even living together and partnering less.
Despite Mosaic’s experience, newspapers and journals report shrinking church attendance across the United States. Surely our wise and loving God has something better for all of us!
And He does.
What might help address the pain and heal our wounds? Of all the resources we might find in our hour of need, the Hebrew Prophet Jeremiah shows us: we need the Word of the Lord.
Why Jeremiah?
Jeremiah had words: his book is the longest in the Christian Bible.
Jeremiah had tenure: he ministered across three different “presidential administrations.”
Jeremiah had impact: his culture was fragmenting—and into his moment, the Word of the Lord came and shook a nation.
The God who speaks turned Jeremiah the person into Jeremiah the prophet, and sent him not only to “uproot and tear down,” but “to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10).
I think by hearing “the Word of the Lord” through Jeremiah to an ancient people, we, too, might be built up and planted more securely in our modern moment.
Over the next six weeks, we will be on a journey through Jeremiah, trying to experience the power of the blazing passion and dramatic poetry that flowed out of his tears and heart.
As we do, my prayer is that we would sense that we really are not alone in this world and that our hearts would be marked by the deepest sense of “God + Us.”
I pray that we would also hear “the Word of the Lord.”
We’ll see you on Sunday, in chapter one, verse one.
Morgan Stephens
Lead Pastor |
