Lection: 1 Timothy 2

September 21, 2025

Jeremiah 8:18 – 9:1
1 Timothy 2:1-7

“Starting with Lament”

I wonder if you noticed the immense grief and frustration of the Prophet Jeremiah in our first Scripture reading this morning. “My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick,” he laments, “I am broken, I mourn, and horror has seized me.” And then he goes on to describe how his head is like a spring of water and his eyes like a fountain of tears because he is weeping day and night for his people.

This is why Jeremiah is often called “the weeping prophet,” because he lived in a time when God’s people were turning away, doing terrible things, and suffering the consequences of their sin – being conquered by Babylonian powers and being sent into exile. And Jeremiah, the young prophet appointed by God to speak the Word of the Lord to the people and call them back, is absolutely devastated by the fact that they are not responding in good way.

If you go back a little in the book, chapter 7 is an account of all the wrong things that the people are doing. It includes injustice, oppression of foreigners, orphans, and widows, shedding innocent blood, and … Read more »

September 22, 2013

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
1 Timothy 2:1-7

“There is a Balm in Gilead”

Jeremiah is often labeled “the weeping prophet,” and there is no passage that warrants that label for him better than today’s passage in which he cries and laments over the situation of the people of Judah. The problem is that the people of Judah are refusing to change their ways and turn back to God.

Jeremiah has denounced the confidence they have put in the temple and sacrificial rituals automatically to save them, but they will not listen and continue to provoke YHWH to anger by their idols. God has promised punishment, but even this does not change their perpetual and unrepentant backsliding. No matter how many times the prophet warns them, they won’t seem to listen, and so Jeremiah weeps in frustration and despair.

There are times when we also might feel like weeping when we look around at our world today. The last few months have certainly included many tragic events that may have given us cause to weep for the poor people of our world:

– the collapse of an unsafe garment factory in Bangladesh which killed and injured thousands of workers,

– the derailment of train cars of oil which caused the … Read more »