When Jesus asks his disciples who they say he is, the responses are probably as expected - Elijah the great prophet, the one who called down fire from heaven, and John the Baptist, a man of the wild who drew crowds with magnetic attraction, and then there’s Jeremiah. 

It’s hard to believe he’s even in the same breath as the other two. He has been coined as the suffering servant. A man who could only watch from afar as his family died in Babylonian captivity. He was beaten, cast into a muddy cistern, threatened with death. Not exactly the kind of cushy life you grow up dreaming of. 

Jeremiah’s frustration is perhaps best captured in Jeremiah 20:7 “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived”  That word ‘deceived’ is stronger than you think, in the Hebrew it means to be ruled over - it was used in the context of a young man stealing a young woman’s virginity. 

In other words, Jeremiah is saying, “God, you raped me.” And yet, somehow this is the last time in the book of Jeremiah that he complains. How? He works through his hardship and he trusts God. Yes, Jesus was a suffering servant, if you follow after Jesus don’t be surprised if you also find yourself here -the key, keep exercising faith, don’t be deceived out of God’s plan.