“We’ve had enough of your messages from the Lord. So, if you don’t keep your mouth shut, you’ll live to regret it.” That’s what the men of Jeremiah’s hometown told him (Jeremiah 11:21), but they weren’t the last bullies to try to silence believers, were they? From violent attacks by Boko Haram and Fulani Islamic militants on Nigerian Christians, to the Western “cancel culture” that shouts down or drags into court anyone who dares to deny their increasingly bizarre demands for sexual freedom, Christians continue to suffer at the hands of unbelievers.

And that’s because Jeremiah wasn’t the only one who “was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter” (Jeremiah 11:19). No, by suffering because he was being faithful to God, he was just sharing the experience of Jesus, the One Isaiah said would be oppressed and afflicted, but Who wouldn’t even open His mouth in protest (Isaiah 53:7).

And Jesus warned all those who follow Him to expect the same sort of treatment: “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also” (John 15:20). To put it in technological terms, suffering because we are faithful to Jesus is not a bug in the Christian life – it’s a feature.

But so is the justice of God. For God told Jeremiah that He would “bring disaster on the men of Anathoth” (Jeremiah 11:23) because of their impious threats. In fact, God said He would bring disaster on all Jerusalem and Judah because they had broken their covenant with the Lord (Jeremiah 11:10-11). In the same way, we can be confident that all those who continue to oppress the Lord’s people will get what is coming to them on the Day that Christ returns to judge the living and the dead: “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him” (Revelation 1:7).

So, how are we Christians called to respond to the persecutions that will come our way until that time? Instead of taking matters into our own hands, Jeremiah shows us how we should pray: “But, O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, Who tries the feelings and the heart, Let me see Thy vengeance on them, For to Thee have I committed my cause” (Jeremiah 11:20). May we continue to depend on the Lord, even as we wait for Him to do justice in His way and in His time.

Jeremiah 11:18-23 (NASB)

18 Moreover, the LORD made it known to me and I knew it; Then Thou didst show me their deeds.
19 But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter; And I did not know that they had devised plots against me, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, And let us cut him off from the land of the living, That his name be remembered no more.”
20 But, O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, Who tries the feelings and the heart, Let me see Thy vengeance on them, For to Thee have I committed my cause.
21 Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the men of Anathoth, who seek your life, saying, “Do not prophesy in the name of the LORD, that you might not die at our hand”;
22 therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, “Behold, I am about to punish them! The young men will die by the sword, their sons and daughters will die by famine;
23 and a remnant will not be left to them, for I will bring disaster on the men of Anathoth– the year of their punishment.”