Adult Lesson Plan

Read it, then ask before explaining: what do you notice about the order of what God says and what Jeremiah says?

Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. (Jeremiah 1:4–5)

Three verbs stack up before Jeremiah has done anything: God knew him, sanctified (set apart) him, and ordained him. Jeremiah's answer is the natural one: "Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child" (verse 6). Notice that God does not argue with his self-assessment. He does not say "yes you can." He says, "I have put my words in thy mouth" (verse 9). The qualification is not Jeremiah's ability; it is God's authorship. This is why the manual says Jeremiah's story is also yours. Alma describes the same premortal pattern for those called to God's holy order, "called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works" (Alma 13:3).

Even three minutes here gives the class the week's sharpest image. Read the verse and ask one question: why does God call this two evils and not one?

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:13)

The first evil is leaving the fountain. The second is the labor of building a replacement that fails by design. A cistern only holds what rain and human effort put into it, and only until the plaster cracks. A fountain gives water it did not receive from you. That is why this is a Christ image: at Jacob's well He offers water that becomes "a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14). Jeremiah returns to the title in Jeremiah 17:13, calling the Lord "the fountain of living waters." The adult question writes itself: what have we hewed out that cannot hold?

Standing at the temple gate, Jeremiah attacks the crowd's favorite slogan:

Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these. (Jeremiah 7:4)

The repetition is the point; they had turned the building into a charm. Jeremiah then sends them to Shiloh, the sanctuary about twenty miles north where the tabernacle stood for generations before it was destroyed (Jeremiah 7:12). Excavations there show a burn layer from that era. The argument is blunt: God abandoned His first dwelling place when Israel corrupted it, so the Jerusalem temple carried no automatic guarantee. Worship without amended lives is a broken cistern with a roof on it.

For classes drawn to the cost of discipleship. Pashur has beaten Jeremiah and locked him in the stocks overnight. Released, Jeremiah complains bitterly to God, and then says:

But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. (Jeremiah 20:9)

Anguish and faithfulness in the same breath. He wants to quit and cannot. This verse gives permission for honest complaint inside real obedience.

Doctrinal Discussion

Foreknowledge is not fatalism. It is a Father who knew you before mortality and prepared work for which you were positioned. President Russell M. Nelson taught: "Your Heavenly Father has known you for a very long time. You, as His son or daughter, were chosen by Him to come to earth at this precise time... You were chosen not for your bodily characteristics but for your spiritual attributes, such as bravery, courage, integrity of heart, a thirst for truth, a hunger for wisdom, and a desire to serve others" ("Decisions for Eternity," Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2013, 107). He adds that some attributes you developed premortally and others you can develop here. Pair this with Abraham 3:22–23 and D&C 138:55–56.

Questions for Path A:

• Does foreordination mean your path is fixed, or that your preparation is real? What is the difference?
• Nelson lists spiritual attributes over "bodily characteristics." Which of those attributes do you think you brought with you, and which are you still building?

Idolatry, framed by Jeremiah, is a trade rather than an accident. The things Judah trusted, foreign alliances and idols, all required upkeep and all failed under pressure. The invitation is to return to the fountain before the dry season, not after it. Nephi drew the same contrast, warning against trusting "in the arm of flesh" (2 Nephi 4:34). The living water is Christ Himself, and the tree "planted by the waters" flourishes in drought while the shrub in the desert does not (Jeremiah 17:5–8).

Questions for Path B:

• What makes a cistern feel safer than a fountain, even though it holds less?
• How do you tell, before the dry season, whether you are drinking from the fountain or from something that will crack?

Jeremiah 16:14–15 claims the latter-day gathering will eclipse the Exodus as Israel's defining rescue, as God brings His people "from the land of the north" and sends "fishers" and "hunters" to find them (verse 16). Jeremiah 3:14 adds that it happens "one of a city, and two of a family." The Exodus rescued one nation from one land; the gathering reaches every scattered branch and brings them to covenant with Christ. President Nelson taught that gathering scattered Israel "is the greatest challenge, the greatest cause, and the greatest work on earth today" ("Hope of Israel," June 3, 2018).

Question for Path C:

• Why would God call a scattering-and-return greater than the Exodus? What does "one of a city, and two of a family" tell you about how the gathering actually happens?

Practical Application

A man in his fifties built his sense of worth on his job title and his standing at work. A reorganization erases the title, and he discovers how much of his identity drained out with it. Ask the class: what would it have looked like for him to have been drinking from the fountain all along, so that the loss hurt without emptying him? This is Jeremiah 2:13 in a work life. The point is not that careers are idols; it is that anything we make the source of our security will eventually crack, and Christ is the one source that gives what we did not put in.

A woman has served faithfully for years and lately feels the mockery Jeremiah felt, the sense that obedience is not "working" and that speaking up about her faith costs her socially. She is tempted to go silent. Jeremiah 20:9 gives her language: the word can still burn even when you are weary with forbearing. Faith does not require that the complaint disappear; it requires that you cannot finally let go. Ask: what keeps a person going when discipleship stops paying visible dividends?

Closing

Jeremiah's whole book hangs between two images of God: the fountain He is, and the potter He remains. The people forsook the fountain and dug cisterns that failed; yet God still reworks marred clay "as seemed good to the potter" (Jeremiah 18:4). Both are true of your week. Whatever cracked cistern you named in silence, the fountain is still open, and you are still on the wheel. This week, notice one place you have been carrying your own water, and go back to the source before the dry season comes.