Jeremiah knows the culture in which he served. He understood that no matter what he’d say the people would not listen. Even though he continually pleaded with his people to turn back to the God that loved them with an everlasting love, he 07 missionknew they would not listen. He, along with many of the other prophets had been given a “mission impossible.” God says, “do it anyway.” Jeremiah understood that the enemies of God’s people were about to destroy Jerusalem and the very residence that God took for Himself in the Temple. And because the love of His people ran cold, God would let them. Actually, God used the foreign powers as an instrument to discipline His children. Jeremiah warned them. In Jeremiah 4:7 he made it perfectly clear, “A lion has gone up from his thicket, a destroyer of nations has set out; he has gone out from his place to make your land a waste; your cities will be ruins without inhabitant.” Lions have been found in many remains of ancient Babylon.

There is a sense in which the mission Jesus gave us is also a “mission impossible.” We know that in the end God’s World Order, His Kingdom will only be established when He returns to set it up Himself. But He promises us that the destruction or the “great tribulation” as He calls it will not fall upon us but it will fall upon an unbelieving world. There’s nothing we can do to stop it. It seems to cruel to look forward to it in some ways. Do we really want those people destroyed? No, of course not, we want them saved as Jesus does. Some will be saved and that’s our hope and motivation.

I like what Bob Wilkin writes, “Do you remember how each episode of the old TV show ‘Mission Impossible’ began? An unseen voice would come out of a tape recorder that was programmed to self-destruct: ‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is …’ Similarly in the faith realm, the Lord is saying to believers, ‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to represent your divine Sovereign and His new world order of which you are now a part.’ God won’t force you to represent Him, but He will give you the opportunity to distinguish yourself in service in a world where people of faith are strangers and pilgrims. It’s your mission. Do you choose to accept it?”[1]

[1] Robert N. Wilkin, Confident in Christ : Living by Faith Really Works (Irving, TX: Grace Evangelical Society, 1999), 149.