Jeremiah 20:7-9 “O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”

Jeremiah’s complaint can be broken down into three parts. First he seems to say, “I didn’t know I was getting into all of this.” “Lord, why didn’t you tell me how hard serving you was going to be?” He suggests that the Lord didn’t prepare him for the opposition he would face. Perhaps at first the title “prophet” appealed to him. He knew that he would serve an important purpose in doing the Lord’s work. He was a little naive about the trouble it would cause him.

Have you ever felt that way about your Christian witness or service? Not everyone accepts your Scriptural views. Your service to the church hasn’t been free from opposition, roadblocks, and setbacks. Like Jeremiah, we want to whine, “Lord, you deceived me. I’m not having fun anymore. I didn’t know the trouble this could be.”

The second part of Jeremiah’s complaint dealt specifically with the message he had to deliver. “Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long.” In essence, Jeremiah was saying, “I don’t like the negativity. I don’t like speaking against things all the time.”

And there was much for Jeremiah to be “against.” Idolatry, greed, child sacrifice, social injustice, Sabbath breaking, and false prophecies are only a partial list of the sins God sent him to confront. He had the unenviable task of preaching to a people who were about to feel God’s hand of judgment. Jeremiah was tired of it.

The list of sins that need to be confronted in our culture, our church, and ourselves is no shorter than the list before Jeremiah. The temptation is to tone down the talk about sin, emphasize the positive, and try to avoid offending anyone. It is for this reason that Church today seems to be losing its fighting spirit and is more and more willing to be swept along with the spirit of the times.

But who is served if we are ashamed to speak against the things that God’s word speaks against? Abortion kills children. Sexual license kills families and societies. Non-Christian religions and non-biblical teachings kill souls. Don’t be ashamed to be against such things.

In the last part of his complaint Jeremiah complains, “I can’t even stop speaking against evil when I want to.” “But if I say, ‘I will not mention his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” It’s not that he didn’t try, but it was painful to try to hold his convictions in.

Do you find the same difficulty? If you do, it’s not just because you are naturally grumpy or suffer from a pathological need to be critical. The Christian recognizes that there is something vital at stake here. Unrepented sin condemns. We speak against the things God speaks against not to win arguments but to save souls. It is the necessary prelude to sharing the good news that God will completely forgive all sins for the sake of Jesus’ innocent sufferings and death on the cross.

Are you skeptical that being “against” things can work, that it can actually produce any good? Sometimes, like Jeremiah, we might think that all it gets us is ridicule. But God does get his work done this way. A retired pastor once told a convention I attended about a card he received with a picture of a family he didn’t recognize. The accompanying letter was from a lady whom he had confronted for cohabiting with her unbelieving boyfriend nearly two decades earlier. Though she had walked out of his office angry that day, she was thanking him for telling her the truth and not accepting her excuses. Everything he had predicted about where such an unholy relationship would end up came true. Now she had been led to repentance, received forgiveness, and had a new life with a godly husband and children.

Don’t be ashamed to be “against” things you know are wrong. God may turn our present day complaints into future reasons to rejoice.