God called Jeremiah to be His prophet when he was just a youth, perhaps 18 to 20 years of age. The mes­sages God gave this young man for the people of Judah were not popular. Time after time, he called the Hebrew nation to repentance. But His calls went unheeded.

Jeremiah warned that because of the unrepented sins of Judah, God was going to allow the nation of Babylon to march against Jerusalem. Jeremiah's words from the Lord made him seem a traitor to his country.

While kings, priests, and prophets were counseling resistance to Babylon, Jeremiah urged everyone to sub­mit to the enemy. For this, he was threatened, thrown into prison, locked in stocks, dropped into a muddy pit without food, assaulted, and finally hauled off to Egypt with a resistance group after Jerusalem was burned in 586 B.C.

Jeremiah's messages are still valuable today be­cause he calls sin by its right name. He shows the way back to God's favor. And Jeremiah pulls aside the curtain and gives God’s faithful ones an encouraging glimpse of a glorious future.