Jeremiah and The Preacher's Paradox

O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed.
Jeremiah 20:7

Why does Jeremiah feel as though the LORD has deceived him?

Because, on the one hand, Jeremiah pays a great cost to preach:

I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, "Violence and destruction!" For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long."
Jeremiah 20:7-8

For I hear many whispering. Terror is on every side! "Denounce him! Let us denounce him!" say all my close friends, watching for my fall. "Perhaps he will be deceived; then we can over come him and take our revenge on him."
Jeremiah 20:10

Preaching is so costly to Jeremiah that it leads him to curse the day that he was born. He would prefer to have never been born than to be a preacher (Jeremiah 20:14-18).

But then, on the other hand, Jeremiah is compelled to preach:

If I say, "I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot."
Jeremiah 20:9

There is a passionate desire within Jeremiah to preach. He can't help but to preach. There's nothing else he'd rather do.

Jeremiah is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. And he knows that God has put him in this place. That's why he feels as though the LORD has deceived him (v.7).

So what's he going to do? Stop preaching in order to avoid having to pay the great costs that come with preaching? Or continue to preach in spite of the costs?

But the LORD is with me as a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble; they will not overcome me. They will be greatly ashamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten. O LORD of hosts, who tests the righteous, who sees the heart and the mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you have I committed my cause.
Jeremiah 20:12 (emphasis added)

There's no stopping him. Jeremiah is going to preach. He's going to preach because, in spite of the reality of the hardship of his calling as a preacher, he trusts the God who called him. It's to this God that he commits his cause irrespective of whatever suffering comes with it. And not only will he commit his cause to his faithful God as he continues to pay the cost of preaching, he's going to sing praises to his God while he does so:

Sing to the LORD; praise the LORD! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers.
Jeremiah 20:13

This is the preacher's paradox. Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.