Hank Smith: 00:00:01 Welcome to FollowHIM, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I’m Hank Smith.

John Bytheway: 00:00:09 And I’m John Bytheway.

Hank Smith: 00:00:11 We love to learn.

John Bytheway: 00:00:11 We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you.

John Bytheway: 00:00:15 As together we follow Him.

Hank Smith: 00:00:20 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of FollowHIM. My name is Hank Smith, I’m your host. I’m here with my co-host who I will describe as turning my morning into joy. Now, let me explain this, John. John, you turn my morning into joy because we usually record our podcast in the morning, and I sit down, I get ready, and when I see your face here to record, it turns my morning into joy. Now, that’s not what the Lord meant here in Jeremiah. Morning is spelled a little different, but I just had to say thank you for turning my mornings into joy.

John Bytheway: 00:00:54 Hank, I’ve got my improve appearance slider all the way to the right. It’s taxing my laptop to the max, but-

Hank Smith: 00:01:02 The fan is really cooking this really cooking this morning. Hey, we are in the book of Jeremiah and Lamentations this morning, John. Who is joining us today?

John Bytheway: 00:01:13 Well, I’m so happy to have Dr. Michael Wilcox back again, S. Michael Wilcox, whom we’ve had before. And our audience loves Brother Wilcox, and we do too. A quick introduction. Mike Wilcox received his PhD from the University of Colorado and taught for many years at the Institute of Religion adjacent to the University of Utah. He’s spoken to crowds at Education Week, has hosted tours to the Holy Land, to China, to church history sites and beyond. He also served in a variety of callings including bishop, counselor in a stake presidency. He’s written many articles and books including House of Glory, Sunset, 10 Great Souls I Want to Meet in Heaven, Twice Blessed, Finding Hope.

John Bytheway: 00:01:55 He and his late wife, Laurie, are the parents of five children and 14 grandchildren. And I’m reading this introduction out of, I think this might be your latest book, Holding On. And the subtitle is Impulses to leave and strategies to stay. This was published in 2021. And we’re just really glad to have you back and excited to have you help us through Jeremiah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:20 Thank you. Appreciate being here. It’s always fun. Can’t think of two people I’d rather chat with about scriptures.

John Bytheway: 00:02:26 Oh, that’s so nice.

Hank Smith: 00:02:28 Mike, you find yourself doing a lot of tours and traveling. If one of our listeners wanted to go on a tour with you or go traveling with you, how do they look that up?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:36 I always travel with a company called Fun for Less Tours, and we go all over the world.

Hank Smith: 00:02:43 How do you want to jump into Jeremiah today, Mike? We’re in the second half of Jeremiah and this book, Lamentations. We’re not as familiar with it as we have been with the book of Isaiah that we’ve been studying for so long. How would you want to approach this?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:55 There’s a lot to try and cover. And nice thing about Jeremiah, we know a little bit more about his life than we know about the life of Isaiah. But maybe a couple of stories that will give the feel, the thematic power of Jeremiah. Just see this image up in heaven of God’s got four, five men lined up he’s going to call in to be prophets. We know from Jeremiah, the first part, you would’ve talked about that last week, God knew him.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:03:25 There’s Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel, Lehi, they’re all standing there. And Jeremiah’s last in line. And the Lord says to Isaiah, “Well, I’m going to give you this great gift of poetry, and you’re going to write some of the most beautiful prophecies and descriptions of God. People will study you forever. You’ll be a little confusing to some of them. And you’ll get to work with Hezekiah, one of the great kings.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:03:52 And Isaiah says, “Well, thank you. I appreciate that.” And then Lehi, “Well, Lehi, I’m going to give you a whole new world. Now, you’ll have to wander in the wilderness for a while, and you’re going to have a couple of sons that will give you fits and a broken heart. But I’m going to give you two other wonderful sons that’ll be prophets. And you’ll have a promise land.” And Lehi says, “Okay, that’s good.” “Ezekiel, Daniel, you’re going to be carried captive. But Daniel, you’ll be in the court, you’ll be counselors to kings. You’ll have a lovely little time in a lion’s pit. Other than that, life’s going to be pretty good for you.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:04:29 And then Jeremiah steps up, and the Lord says, “Well, now, Jeremiah, nobody is going to believe anything you ever say to them. They’re going to persecute you. They’re going to drop you in pits. They’re going to put you in the stocks. No matter how many times you’re right, they’re not going to listen to you. And eventually, they’ll haul you into Egypt, and then there they’ll kill you.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:04:56 I just feel a little bit bad for Jeremiah assignment wise. He gets a pretty tough assignment and we learn quite a bit about prophets and the soul of a prophet. When I read Jeremiah, I think about the soul of a prophet.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:05:12 There’s a Greek myth that would fit Jeremiah really, really well. And it’s the myth of a woman, she’s named Cassandra. Cassandra is the daughter of the king of Troy during the Trojan War. She was loved by the God, Apollo. The Greek gods were always falling in love with mortal women. And in order to try and gain favor with her, he gives her the gift of prophecy, that she will always be able to see the future and be correct in what she sees in the future.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:05:50 But Cassandra still resists, after he’s given her the gift, his amorous advances. And so in anger and frustration, Apollo says, “Well, I can’t take the gift back, Gods can’t take gifts back, but I will add a curse to it. And the curse is that nobody will ever believe any prophecy that you give.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:06:15 All through Cassandra’s life, she’s constantly correct in everything that she says, but nobody ever believes her. For instance, when the Greeks leave the Trojan horse to be pulled into Troy, it’s Cassandra that says, “No, this is going to be the end.” But of course, nobody ever believes her.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:06:37 In a sense, Jeremiah is the Cassandra of the Old Testament. He’s right again and again and again. He gives comforting things. He has some major themes. He’s a political prophet. His major messages certainly towards the latter half of the book of Jeremiah to the court: “Don’t fight the Babylonians. Submit to the Babylonians. Don’t fight them, and you’ll be all right.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:07:13 They take some of the people captive. Ezekiel goes captive, Daniel and Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego go captive into Babylon. But Jeremiah’s message is, “You can’t fight the Babylonians. You can’t win. Trust in God. Just submit to them.” Which is a political message, not a very popular political message, but that’s his message. And since he’s a Cassandra, nobody’s going to believe him. They will make alliances with the Egyptians hoping that the Egyptians can save them. And as a result of that, they’ll be destroyed, the temple will be destroyed. Jeremiah is a very political prophet. Sometimes people don’t like religious people fiddling with politics. It can be good and bad. Now, his second theme has to do… Since they’re going to be carried away captive, you have to have hope. Always, the Old Testament prophets have hope. They always give hope. There is forgiveness, as the lesson title is, the mourning will be turned to joy.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:08:20 The second is that they will return. And that return has a lot of fulfillments; they’ll be built back up again. And we can talk about three or four different ways that that fulfillment comes in Jeremiah’s second major message regarding gathering them back, returning to the land.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:08:41 I used to run cattle when I was a boy, and we were branding one time. And we used to separate the calves and the cows from the bulls and the steers after we branded. And I had just pushed the calves with their mothers up through a fence, up a little slope, and we’d kept the steers and the bulls in the corral. One of the bulls, a little anxious that his harem was being taken away from him, broke through the corral and started lumbering up the hill.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:09:07 And my uncle, whom I idolized… He was the major male of my life. I had never disobeyed my uncle. We were about 100 yards away, and he yelled at me, “Head the bull, Mike, head the bull.” I started turning my horse down the hill. Now, the smart thing to do would’ve been just to stay at the gate, not let him get through, but this was my John Wayne hero moment. I’m going to stop this rampaging bull who’s lumbering up the hill towards me. And so I got my horse going about as fast as you could get going down that hill.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:09:44 As I went down, I could see my uncle at the bottom of the hill just frantically waving his hands back and forth and yelling, “No, Mike, no. Go back to the gate. No, no, don’t come down the hill.” And I saw my cousins. There was always a little bit of a one-sided competition between me and my cousins for being real cowboys. And I thought he thought I couldn’t do it. And he was sending my cousins, because they were getting on their horses to come after the bull. And I was determined to get to that bull first so I ignored my uncle. For the first time in my life, I disobeyed and I just got that horse going down that hill as fast as I could with my uncle waving, “No, Mike, no. Stop.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:10:33 Now, my uncle wasn’t worried about me proving that I could stop a bull, but he knew with the sage brush and the rocks and the slope of the hill that anybody running a horse that fast down that kind of hill was liable to roll the horse. He was worried about my neck and being seriously injured. But I’m John Wayne smelling sage and the wind blowing my hat off, and I’m going down the hill full bore. And I did roll the horse. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t get my foot out of the stirrup and I’m slammed to the ground, and the horse rolls over me and slams me to the ground and rolls over me. And when, stop, the horse was lying on me. And I’m sitting there, and I can remember out of the corner of my eye seeing my uncle on those bow legs that he had running up the hill to pick up the pieces.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:11:28 Because of that, I’ve gave myself a little phrase to remind myself, and I’ve tried to teach my children in classes the phrase old eyes see best. Old eyes see best. They’re experienced. And as young people whose eyesight may not always be as good, we do call prophets seers. They’re seers. They see things.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:11:54 And my vision of Jeremiah, in one sense, I like him as a Cassandra. He’s also at the bottom of the hill waving at the children of Israel. “No, don’t do this. Don’t rebel against the Babylonians. Don’t trust the Egyptians. Trust God. Don’t keep on this destructive path.” And it’s not just they’re relying on the Egyptians and rejecting Babylon’s yoke for a while, it’s they’re worshiping false gods and listening to the wrong voices, and they’re riding down the hill for a fall.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:12:30 That is one way of looking at some of the thematic elements of what Jeremiah is. And he’s the Cassandra of the Old Testament. The people are ignoring him. He’s the uncle at the foot of the hill waving, trying to stop disaster. And he doesn’t turn away after disaster comes and say, “Well, you stupid people, I told you so.” He will weep. And that’s what Lamentations is all about. That’s one way of looking at Jeremiah.

John Bytheway: 00:13:02 I’m still wondering what happens to a young man with a horse on top of him. How did you come out of that event?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:13:09 Well, I was lucky. My cousin, she rolled a horse chasing a calf once and broke her back, so I was very lucky that I ended up with bruises and cuts and was really sore but not any permanent damage, thank heaven. It was a great lesson. And it helps me with Jeremiah now. It helps with all the prophets. They’re all saying that. But nobody like Jeremiah is waving at the people in terms of turnaround because Jeremiah is going to witness the great disaster. Isaiah sees it in vision, I guess. Ezekiel hears about it and Daniel hears about it. They’re already in Babylon when the temple is burned and the city destroyed. But Jeremiah sees it, and so it is probably appropriate that there is a little book attached separate to Jeremiah called Lamentations because they’re going to rebuild that temple, and then the Romans will destroy it again.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:14:09 But if there is one thing that really defines the Jewish people in particular, it is the lamenting of the loss of their temple. At the moment of your greatest joy, a marriage, is that very Jewish, this mingling of sorrow with joy, they crush the glass to remind them that the temple is destroyed. And Jeremiah sees it, he sees it. We’ll talk maybe a little later, they put in the Come Follow Me manual a painting by Rembrandt. He captures something essentially in paint of Jeremiah. That’s one way of feeling Jeremiah and what’s going on in Jeremiah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:14:56 I love telling this story. It’s a beautiful story, and it does capture a great element of chapter 31, the main verse that they’ve taken. It’s one of the most important verses of Jeremiah: “I will turn their mourning into joy, will comfort them, make them rejoice from their sorrow.” And you get Jeremiah’s sorrow in lamentations. Jeremiah 31:25 says, “I have satiated the weary soul. I have replenished every sorrowful soul.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:15:37 Now, there is in the Jewish people, and you’re going to see it in all the prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Josiah, Joel, Micah, they all have this sense, this spirit of joy, hope, longing, yearning for a time of peace where everybody will leave them alone. They’ll rejoice that longing, hope, sorrow, mingling that probably Jeremiah, among all the prophets, is the best illustration of that strange combination of emotions that will define Judaism and the Jewish people from Jeremiah onward, certainly from Rome onward.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:16:27 I like to ask people, “What was the number one song of the 20th century? The most influential song of the 20th century voted by the National Academy for the Arts and the recording industry, the motion picture screen guild.” They all vote the same song, it’s my favorite song sung by the Tabernacle Choir, as the number one most important influential song of the 20th century. In 100 years, which one do you think got it? I’ll give you number two. Number two was White Christmas. Irving Berlin. Written by a Jewish son of an immigrant. Well, the number one won the Academy award for best music in 1940; an interesting year. Was written by a Jewish son of an immigrant family from Eastern Europe named Isadora Hochberg. Now, nobody’s ever heard of Isadora Hochberg. Nobody’s even heard of his Americanized name. He Americanized his name to Edgar Harburg. And he had a nickname from his youth, Yipsel, so everybody called him Yip Harburg.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:17:46 And Yip Harburg was a second generation Jewish immigrant. Between 1880 and 1920, two and a half million Jews from Europe, mostly Eastern Europe and Russia came to the United States. He wanted to be a songwriter. Now, he ends up selling appliances. His parents are poor. And the depression comes, and he writes the anthem for the Great Depression. Everybody knows this song. Nobody knows Yip Harburg, but everybody knows the song. If I start you, you’ll finish it. Buddy, can you spare-

John Bytheway: 00:18:22 A dime.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:18:23 … a dime?. That’s Yip Harburg. A lot of people feel that song put Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. Well, in 1939, the Jewish immigrants to America… I don’t want to get too far off on this because we want to dive into Jeremiah, it’s just if I get this song in your mind, it’ll help you understand Jeremiah and all the prophets from this point on and that mingling of hope and longing.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:18:49 The Jews very quickly could see that the motion picture industry was going to be very influential, and they wanted to raise the opportunity for middle class Americans to have great works of literature. A lot of people can’t afford to go to the theater, but television was going to be the way of bringing, edifying powerful entertainment to the American… And so Hollywood is really begun by Jews. Every major Hollywood studio, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Warner Brothers, MGM, they’re all started by Jews.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:19:25 And in 1939, again, think of what’s going on in Europe in 1939. Louis Mayer at MGM wants to take a children’s book and make it into a movie with color for the first time. And what’s that children’s story?

John Bytheway: 00:19:42 Wizard of Oz.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:19:43 You had mentioned it, John, The Wizard of Oz. And they asked Yip Harburg, second generation Jewish immigrant, to write the lyrics first. And they decide to write the very first song Judy Garland’s going to sing. And now you know what’s the most influential song of the 20th century? Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:20:09 Now, when we listen to Somewhere Over the Rainbow, we think of Judy Garland. And it was really hard to get that song into it because there’s nothing in the Wizard of Oz about over the rainbow or wishing for lands over the rainbow. But Yip Harburg and Harold Arland fought to keep that song in. They took it out several times. Number of reasons. They didn’t want Judy Garland in a barnyard singing a song for too long. They wanted to get her out of the barnyard. It wasn’t in the book, it wasn’t in the novel. Slowed the beginning of the movie down, so they kept eliminating it. And Harburg and Arlen kept insisting, and finally Louis Mayer, who was a bit of a sentimentalist, said, “We’ll leave it in.” And the rest is history. It becomes the single most influential song of 100 years. Everybody knows Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:21:04 What they don’t realize, that it is a song written by two Jewish boys in 1939. 1940, the Academy Award, the Oscar will be given to that song. And what’s going on in Europe in 1939 and 1940? If you think about the lyrics, and I’ll quote them here to you, you understand a whole new perspective on Over the Rainbow. If you understand that new perspective, you grasp something of the power of the emotional impact of Jeremiah and all the prophets and something that all of us have in us, this yearning, longing in our mournings, in our sadnesses, in our imperfect worlds, whatever they might be for joy and rejoicing and an end to those things.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:22:10 And it’s just more powerful if you make Somewhere Over the Rainbow not about a little Kansas girl. What in the world would a little American Kansas girl be singing a song like that for? But a little Jewish boy, fresh out of the shtetls of Eastern Europe would understand that song.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:22:31 Here’s the lyric: Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me, where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops, that’s where you’ll find me. Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh why can’t I? If happy little blue birds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh why can’t I?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:23:27 And there’s something in, Harburg and Arland married Jewish yearning and longing that all of us feel in our own ways, but they especially could feel. They bonded Jewish longing and yearning for a better world, a happier world with American, in this case, optimism and hope. And that mingling of longing, yearning, sorrow with the hope that that song catches and that we all love, and hopefully, you’ll love it more when you know the background behind it and who wrote it and the timing of the writing of it and what’s going on when it’s being written. That, for me, and I maybe will share that later, why that song in a personal way has such power as it transfers into my life out of Jeremiah chapter 31.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:24:32 I know that’s a long introduction. I’m sorry I did too much Cassandra and Uncle Verlin waving his arms and Yip Harburg’s Over the Rainbow, but I can’t think of any way to grab the power of what Jeremiah means and what all the prophets… That spirit. And we’re going to be looking at some of the other prophets, but especially Jeremiah because he had the greatest cause to mourn. He saw the temple burnt, he saw the nation destroyed. And he could have prevented it had they only listened to him, but they don’t listen to him. Those are some of the themes.

John Bytheway: 00:25:16 I like that backdrop of emotion and feelings about it. In the Come Follow Me manual, it begins, “When the Lord first called Jeremiah to be a prophet, he told him that his mission would be to root out and to pull down. And in Jerusalem, there was plenty of wickedness to root out and pull down. But this was only part of Jeremiah’s mission. He was also called to build and to plant. What could be built or planted in the desolate ruins left by Israel’s rebellion? Similarly, when sin or adversity have left our lives in ruins, how can we rebuild and plant again?” And then it tells us the answer lies in the branch of righteousness, the promised Messiah. With all of that that you’re talking about, there’s an answer.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:26:06 Chapter 8, verse 22, is there no balm in Gilead? There was a certain healing oil. Gilead was on the east side of the Jordan River. “Is there no physician there? Why, then, is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:26:32 That’s a question, I suppose, we get asked of all of our own challenges. We do have a physician and there is a balm in Gilead. And Jeremiah, his prophecies of the branch, Jeremiah does not speak as much messianically as Isaiah does. Isaiah’s the big messianic prophet. But you do have little moments in it like this and other places.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:27:00 Our major image of understanding the Savior and what He did for us is a lawyer metaphor. The Eastern Orthodox, it is a physician metaphor. In Western Christianity, I can’t remember if we did this once before, sin is broken law. And I’m going to be tried before the bar of God, and I need a lawyer, I need a defense attorney, I need somebody to plead for me. And Jesus becomes the advocate with the Father.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:27:34 But Jesus also is the great physician. In Russian orthodoxy, for instance, it’s the physician image of Christ. We are created in the image of God, and that image, when we sin, is marred. We’re sick, we’re diseased, we have a wound, and we need the wound to be healed. I don’t need a lawyer when I’m wounded. Alma says, “Do you have the image of Christ engraven in your countenance?” That’s very Eastern Christianity. And Christ’s job is not to plead for the Father or to take the punishment for me, his job is to heal me, to close up the wound, to end the disease.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:28:18 That’s why he heals so many lepers, to give that idea. The leper comes to Jesus in Mark 1, and he says, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou can make me clean.” And Jesus, moved with compassion, touched him and said, “I will. Be thou clean.” And that’s what we all do. We all come to Jesus. I go to him every day and say, “Master, if thou wilt, thou can make me clean.” And he, filled with compassion, touches us all and says, “I will. Be thou clean.” There is a balm in Gilead; it’s mercy, it is forgiveness, it is compassion. And there is a physician there. If my health is not recovered, it’s because I’ve not availed myself of that physician and that healing.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:29:12 If you want to jump to Lamentations for a second, you get that hope and longing, sorrow, but always hope. All the prophets always give hope, always hope. I go to the third chapter of Lamentations. Now, these are beautiful verses; I wish we looked at them more. I’m going to start in verse 21. He mourns in chapter one and two of Lamentations, and now he says in his mourning, in his sorrow, in the ruins of Jerusalem, “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:30:06 Some of them are already in Babylon. I got Daniel, Ezekiel, the three brothers, they were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were part of Zedekiah’s family. They’re safe in… We hate to say safe in Babylon, but they’re going to come out of Babylon. And he says, “We’re not all consumed. And some of them stay in the land of Israel. His compassions fail not. They are new every morning.” I can’t tell you how much that’s comforting to me, that every morning his mercy and compassion is renewed. “Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, sayeth my soul, therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope,” and I love the second part, “and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It’s every morning it’s renewed, and I just wait for him.” I seek him. I hope in him. He has healing. He’s the balm of Gilead. He’s the physician who will close up my wound and make the image of God that’s in my countenance shine out again.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:31:34 And then I’m going to skip a few verses. Verse 31, “For the Lord will not cast off forever. But though he cause grief…” Sometimes he lets the consequences of our actions fall upon us. “Yet will he have compassion,” according to the multitude of his mercies, “for he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of man.” He doesn’t want to see us sorrowful, he wants us joyful. But we make decisions that bring unhappy consequences on us. And Jeremiah becomes a wonderful personification of God because Jeremiah, he’s never happy in their downfall. He never says, “I told you so, you guys. I told you so. I’m glad this happened to you.” “He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:32:40 And then I skip again a little bit, what does happen in our lives, in verse 39, “Wherefore doth a living man complain a man for the punishment of his sins?” It’s the American way to blame somebody else. It is the modern way. All these bad things, I’m having trouble. Now, a lot of challenges in our life come because this is life. Life is opposition. “It is better for us to pass through sorrow,” Eve says, “that we may learn.” We’re going to learn from things. We’re down here to learn, but we complain about it.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:33:18 And after that beautiful talk in Lamentations about mercy and God forgiving and they’re renewed and the multitude of his mercies… And he doesn’t want to cause grief. He doesn’t afflict willingly, but we do sometimes pay the price of our own decisions, and then we complain about them. “Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:33:41 And then Isaiah Jeremiah gives this counsel. Instead of complaining, “Let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord.” Let’s figure out what went wrong and why and change and turn. And I don’t need to make excuses and I don’t need to complain, I just go to the Lord, and he forgives.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:34:08 And then I’d go right across the column in Lamentations to the 58 verse, Jeremiah now praise, “Oh Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul. Thou hast redeemed my life.” If I will not complain, I’ll search, try my ways, turn, know how merciful He is, sometimes wait quietly for His salvation, hope in Him, He will. Now I do have the image of the pleader. I do have the lawyer image. “Plead the cause of my soul He will redeem my life.” Jeremiah does have a lot of beautiful things to say. And I didn’t know if last week you were going to talk about is there a balm in Gilead.

Hank Smith: 00:35:01 We didn’t, no.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:35:02 Like I say, it’s in spiritual, very beautiful, soft, so that’s part of that spirit I guess in the land over the rainbow, there is the dream that I dare to dream, that I can be forgiven, that I can be healed of whatever is probably really does come true, really does. Jeremiah is a prophet full of hope. And he had a lot of pain in his life.

John Bytheway: 00:35:37 Wow. You spoke of a physician metaphor and a lawyer metaphor, a healer and an advocate. Those are coming from different, did you say eastern Christianity? Is that just we use them both?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:35:50 Well, we use them both. They’re all justified. Different religions have what I call different connecting places, different parables that hit them stronger, different miracles that hit them stronger. You can’t explain the redemption of Christ without metaphorical language; you just can’t do it. As Frederick Ferrari said, it’s wrapped in a mystery and a shroud. We’re just not going to understand it. We have faith in it, we’ll believe that it works.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:36:21 And so people try to explain it, and one of the ways they explain it, and Jesus himself does it, he uses metaphorical language. And western Christianity gravitated to the lawyer, and Protestantism gravitated to the lawyer image. There’s a judgment. We break laws, there’s a punishment of fix to the law. We will be before the bar of God. You see all that legal language, and so I need someone, plead for me.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:36:50 And I get that in Lamentations. He says, “You’ve pleaded the causes of my soul.” But we also get the physician in Jeremiah is there, and it’s one of the most beautiful in all the Old Testament of the healer image of Christ. Is there no balm in Gilead? There is a medicine, there is a soothing. And balm soothes it. That image of balm, it’s a soothing thing. Is there no physician here? There is a physician. Jeremiah will call him the Branch, capital B because he’s an offshoot of David’s house. And that image of a family tree, and that off of David’s house, a branch, you will have hope in the branch, capital B, that will come from David. The Branch is going to have the balm of Gilead, the Branch is going to be filled with mercy, the Branch is going to plead the causes of our soul. The Branch’s mercies are renewed every morning, and so, Don’t lament too deeply, Jeremiah says to us. Don’t stay in a state of sorrow, because there’s always hope something.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:38:11 And for the Jewish people, for Israel and for us, we can apply Jeremiah to the restoration. There’s ways we can apply it. But it’s part of the power of Jeremiah and all the prophets. You’re going to get it in all the prophets. There is an over the rainbow land for all of us.

John Bytheway: 00:38:29 I’m thinking of, used to confuse me as a kid, the Book of Mormon saying that says, “All is well in Zion.” And we will now sing Come, Come, Ye Saints and really sell it in the last verse. And it just used to confuse me as a kid until I could see what you’re talking about. There was an all is well, and should we die before our journeys through. There was an eternal the song was asking us to have. We are in the midst of we’re burying people every morning on the plains and we’re trying to say, “All is well,” because we have the expectation of redemption in God and forgiveness and healing. But boy, right now we’re really in a hard place. It took me a while to see, oh, I see what the Book of Mormon is saying when you’re in temporal security, don’t go around saying, “Oh, all is well, all is well in Zion.” But on the plains, what they were singing was this mixture of deep trials, but there’s hope in the midst of all of this.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:39:32 We have to learn to live with a bit of ambiguity and paradox. All of our lives have that mixture. There is sorrow, but there is always the hope. And sometimes the Lord does say, Well, I…” He speaks pretty strong in Jeremiah occasionally, but there’s that softness that surfaces again and again and again.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:39:58 If you look at that painting, it’s in the Come Follow Me manual, this painting is in the Reich Museum in Amsterdam. Just Google Rembrandt, Jeremiah mourning over. In the original painting, it’s not very big, you can see that that lighting that’s coming from the left is from the fires of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is being burned as Jeremiah sits there. And actually, in a very good quality copy of that painting, on the left hand side you can actually see in miniature on the left Jerusalem burning and a tiny, tiny little figure with his hands over his eyes, which is Zedekiah, fleeing, mourning also or he’s going to have his eyes put out by the Babylonians.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:40:52 And you look at the face of Jeremiah in that. Rembrandt just had a power of capturing the emotion of scriptural stories. He catches a beautiful painting of Bathsheba, when she gets the letter from David saying to come and see me and she knows what’s going to happen, just he does one of Delilah just as they’re coming in to capture Samson. And she has this look on her face of what have I done? Then he does another painting that has a look of exaltation. He just had a power.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:41:23 And I can’t think of an artist who captures Jeremiah in paint quite like that painting does if you get a really good copy and you realize that he is sitting in front of the destruction of Jerusalem. And does he look happy? No. Is this a I told you so? Is this a you guys should have listened to me?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:41:49 The Babylonians, when they take over, because they know he’s been trying to get the Jews not to rebel, they reward him. There’s a miniature little verse we might miss. It’s in Jeremiah 40 when they’ve taken them captive, most people, but they’ve left some. I’m in chapter 39 now, 11 and 12. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon gave charge concerning Jeremiah to the captain of the guard. “Take him, look well to him, do him no harm, but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee.” Jeremiah is in good stead with the Babylonians because he had counsel, don’t rebel.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:42:33 He’s not taken into captive. He stays. He’s given the choice. You can go where you want. And he’s in prison. He chooses to stay with his people. And Rembrandt catches that moment. He’s loosed, he’s out of the prison where he is been held during the siege of Jerusalem. And he is told in chapter 40, verse 4, “I loose thee this day from the chains which were upon thine hand. If it seemed good unto thee, come with me into Babylon.” Daniel’s there, Ezekiel’s there. “I will look well unto thee. But if it seem ill unto thee to come with me into Babylon, forbear, behold all the land is before thee, whether it seemeth good and convenient for thee to go thither, go.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:43:20 And then this tiny little idea at the bottom of verse 5: “The captain of the guard gave him victuals,” food, “and a reward and let him go.” Now, that’s the verse that Rembrandt decided to paint. The fires light in his face from the destruction of Jerusalem. Zedekiah, tiny little figure off in the left with his eyes put out going into captivity. And can you see in that painting the reward the Babylonians gave him? All that little pile of welt there sitting. He’s leaning on a book. Rembrandt loved books. He loved to put especially scriptures in his paintings. You’ll see him leaning. He’s got the reward. Does he look happy to have it? No. He is filled with sorrow. And you sense that sorrow.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:44:15 And in that, Jeremiah becomes, as I say, a personification of God for us. Chapter 13, verse 17, for instance: “If you will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride. And mine eyes shall weep sore and run down with tears because the Lord’s flock is carried away captive.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:44:45 Now, that’s not only the mourning of Jeremiah, that is also the mourning of God and the Savior. If I go to Jeremiah 17, verse 16, “As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee. I’ve not given up.” He says, “I’m not going to talk about God anymore. That’s it.” But it was like a fire in the bones. I’m guessing you talked about that last week.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:45:16 Verse 16, “As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee, neither have I desired the woeful day thou knowest.” I didn’t want this. I’m not happy with my reward from the Babylonians. I’m not glad I’m right. I mourn and I weep over you. Sometimes humanity, we’re glad. Well, you deserve it. Not Jeremiah or God.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:45:44 You go to Lamentations and you get that same thing in Lamentations chapter 1, verse 16 after he talks about the destruction of Jerusalem. Again in that painting, the fire’s lighting Jeremiah’s face. Verse 12, “Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by?” Can you see people passing by looking at Jeremiah there in that painting? “Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done unto me.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:46:25 Then I jump down a little bit again. He talks about what the Lord has allowed to happen to his people. Verse 16, “For these things I weep. Mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me. My children are desolate because the enemy prevaileth.” And that’s not just Jeremiah, that’s Jeremiah’s God. That’s how he feels. It’s not joyful to be right. God has no joy in it. And Rembrandt captures that. I’m really glad they put that painting in there. Rembrandt was a master at capturing the moment of a scripture.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:47:15 And for me, Over the Rainbow in music somehow captures the power of Jeremiah and many of the prophets. And Rembrandt’s painting really, really captures the spirit of lamentations. You look at, you see it and you understand, here’s my rewards, my people are walking by, I’m weeping. They’re not going to listen to him, they’re going to come to him again and ask him for counsel. He’s going to give it. But he’s Cassandra; nobody ever believes him in the latter part of Jeremiah’s life.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:47:51 Later on, there’ll be a rebellion. The Babylonians put a man named Gedaliah in charge of the residue they’ve left. Not everybody’s taken captive. And a man named Ishmael murders, assassinates Gedaliah. This is a real political book.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:48:09 A man named Yohanan now comes and chases Ishmael off the throne. But they’re all afraid now. “My gosh, we killed the governor the Babylonians appointed. Now what do we do? They’re going to come and kill us all. Let’s go to Jeremiah and ask Jeremiah what we should do.” And you’d think, okay, but now they’re going to listen to him. Aren’t they going to listen now? But he’s Cassandra, he’s Uncle Verlin and waving his hands down at the bottom of the hill.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:48:38 And they say, “What should we do?” And he says, “Stay here. Don’t go to Egypt. Stay here and you’ll be all right.” You didn’t kill Gedaliah, Ishmael killed him. Stay here.” And then Jeremiah says, “But I know you’re not going to listen to me. You asked me for counsel. You’re not going to listen to me.” Which is exactly what happens. These are in the latter chapters of Jeremiah. I’m not reading them to you, but you can read that story in the latter chapters of Jeremiah. And they come to him and they say, “God didn’t tell you tell us not to go to Egypt. We are going to Egypt, and you’re coming with us.” And so they take him to Egypt. And tradition has that he is killed in Egypt. They never learn to listen to him, even when he has been right so many times.

John Bytheway: 00:49:31 What I appreciate what you’ve done here is I feel like, for so much of my life trying to learn the gospel, I’ve just heard the phrase the Babylonian captivity. This sounds like the moment, the most crucial moments of that captivity. Where it began.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:49:50 This is where it begins. Yeah. And what we usually think of as a bad thing, and if you are using Babylon as an image of the world, which people do, you are taken captive. They’ve been worshiping the gods of the world so the world takes them captive. That’s what happens to you. You worship the gods of the world, the world takes you captive. You get lost in the world, and you’re taken captive.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:50:13 But at the moment of the captivity, the Lord’s chosen prophet is telling them, “Submit to the Babylonians, and it’ll be all right to you. Submit to the Babylonians, and they won’t destroy your temple.” They’ve taken some captive. Eventually they’ll come back. It’s Jeremiah who says in 70 years they’ll come back. But they don’t listen.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:50:44 You do have another theme through here. When you look at a single prophet’s book or writing or life, sometimes you’re looking for repetition. Now, when you see repetition, that is a little flag waving that this is important. I want you to get it. Let me give you some repetitions about prophets. Since we’re in 30, let’s go to Jeremiah 32, verse 33, and then I’ll back you up a little bit on this. Jeremiah 32, 33, “They have turned unto me the back and not the face, though I taught them rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not hearkened to receive instructions.” The idea is that prophets are always ahead of the times. Prophets never go with the times, not because they’re behind the times, as a lot of people want to think they are, but because they’re ahead of the times. They are seers. Here he is saying, “I teach them, rising up early.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:51:58 Let’s see how many times we can find that phrase. If I go all the way back to chapter 7 of Jeremiah, verse 13, you’ll see it. “I speak unto you, rising up early and speaking, but she heard not.” Now we go to verse 25 in Jeremiah 7: “Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt, unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants, the prophets daily, rising up early and sending them.” That’s the third time he says it. Let me go to chapter 25 of Jeremiah. I don’t want to beat this too much to death, but it’s sometimes good to see it. 25:4, “The Lord has sent unto you all his servants, the prophets, rising early and sending them, but ye have not hearkened nor inclined your ear to hear.” now I go to chapter 26, just a few pages away, verse 5, “To hearken to the words of my servants, the prophets, whom I sent unto you, both rising up early and sending them, but ye have not hearkened.” Well, I turn a few pages to chapter 29 now, verse 19. “They have not hearkened my words,” say at the Lord, “which I send unto them by my servants, the prophets, rising up early and sending them, but ye would not hear.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:53:47 And then finally, after it’s all over and he’s been right about absolutely everything and they’re asking him about going to Egypt. And they’re not going to follow, they’re not going to listen to him this time either because, like I say, he’s Cassandra. And so in 44, Jeremiah 44, they’ve just accused him. “God didn’t tell you to tell us not to go to Egypt.” Verse four, chapter 44, “How be it I send unto you all my servants, the prophets, rising early in sending them, saying, “Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.” But you see that, that’s a powerful theme in Jeremiah. It’s a theme that we need to think about in our own lives. You see that in, for instance, the word of wisdom where the Lord says, “I warn you and forewarn you. I’m giving you the word of wisdom before alcoholism and drugs and all these problems are going to really be a problem for you.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:54:46 The ’50s was the best time of the last century. In 1950. Well, what a lovely time. Morally, ethically was a great time. That’s David O. McKay’s prophet, and what’s he saying in the ’50s constantly? He’s talking about the family, the family, the family, the family. And sometimes saying, “What do you mean the family? This is Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best decade. What is this massive emphasis on the family that David O. McKay is giving? And then what happens? The ’60s hit, and the ’60s, we wipe out American morality pretty much from the ground up. They’re always ahead.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:55:23 President Kimball, what’s his great message? Lengthen your stride, missionary, missionary. His great vision of how the gospel’s going to be spread throughout the world. And that’s in the 1970s. And then what happens in 1989? The Berlin wall comes down, and all of a sudden massive areas of the world all ready for the preaching of the gospel.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:55:45 Even COVID, for heaven’s sakes, we could say before we had to Zoom our classes. And what’s the great message of President Nelson? It’s home centered, church supported. Now, he gave that before COVID. And what happened in COVID? Well in COVID, it’s home centered, church supported. And we could do that with every prophet. We could talk about when the seminary program started and family home evening and all. They’re always rising up early, and they’re ahead of the times.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:56:30 If I just picked up the proclamation on the family, in light of Jeremiah, given back in President Hinckley’s time, it ends with a warning, ends with a warning. It has all this emphasis on society and marriage and children and the roles. And then in the very last part, with Jeremiah in mind, with Cassandra in mind, with my uncle waving his hands at the bottom of the hill and me running down the hill on my horse, certainly going to roll it, they say, “We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring or fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God.” That’s a warning to individuals.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:57:30 Then they give a societal warning. You can almost say it’s a political warning. Jeremiah is a very political prophet. He’s in politics. I don’t want to talk about politics a great deal, but his message and the latter part is about who to make an alliance with, how to solve a political challenge of his day. That’s the big part of his latter part. Further, we warn them back in the proclamation, “Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.” That’s a sobering, sobering thing to read about. And I have to say, with the idea of prophets rising up early, what is it that they see? We certainly see the family and traditional values attacked a great deal.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:58:37 I just picked this up on the way, I didn’t know if we’d get to this. I never know where we’re going to go totally. Can I bring a little Confucius in here? We’ve got Yip Harburg, so might as well put a little Confucius in here. Confucius is the main prophet of China. And notice what he warns. This is six centuries before Christ. “The ancients, who wish to bring order to their states, would first regulate their families. And those who wish to regulate their families would first cultivate their own personal lives. And those who wish to cultivate their own personal lives would rectify their minds,” they would control their thinking, “and make their intention sincere. And those who wish to rectify their minds would extend their knowledge.” And that’s a step by step situation. And then he says, “Only when the personal life is cultivated, the family will be regulated. And when the family is regulated, the state will be in order. And when the state is in order, there will be peace throughout the world.” That’s as prophetic a vision as anybody can get by the greatest sage or thinker in Chinese history. The state will take care of itself if the family is solid. And so I look at the proclamation all about family and the emphasis on family in the Latter-Day Saint church, and my testimony level goes really high. They see something.

John Bytheway: 01:00:31 Please join us for part two of this podcast.