God's Creatures, God's Commission
Jeremiah 1:1-10
Ken Whitt February 18, 2007
Jeremiah’s Call and Commission
1 The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3 It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.
4 Now the word of the LORD came Jeremiah saying,
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”
7 But the LORD said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.
8 Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
9 Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,
“Now I have put my words in your mouth.
10 See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
Keeping in mind what you just heard about Jeremiah, about God’s relationship to him and God’s call upon his life…
Do you really believe God loves you and has had His hand on your life from the beginning and that God has a purpose for your life? Do you really believe that God loves you, has a plan and purpose for your life and is even now carrying that out?
Or, do you think that you don’t matter, that your life is meaningless, that there is no great purpose for your being on this earth, and that it would not matter to God if you just cashed in your chips and left the game?
We’re going to explore those questions with the help of the prophet Jeremiah today.
You need to know a couple of things about Jeremiah. You need to know that Jeremiah did not want to do what Jeremiah was told to do. He was called to be a prophet to the nations. His job description was of vast consequence, but he didn’t want to do it. Who would want to do what Jeremiah was called to do? His job was the King and people of Israel that they had abused their relationship with God, once again. They would be defeated in battle, once again. The consequences of their sin would be their defeat and their destruction and their captivity—bondage in Babylon.
Jeremiah’s job was to tell them that it was going to happen. The prophets spoke forth- rightly. They spoke forth the word of God rightly. They told the truth that Power, the King, did not want to hear. The prophets spoke God’s truth to the nation and sometimes the nation would do anything to silence this truth.
At various points along the way Jeremiah was jailed and threatened with death and nearly executed. But no matter what the people did to him, what you need to know today is that Jeremiah was beloved of God, Jeremiah was a child of God, and he was created for a purpose, a big purpose, and he didn’t want to do it, so he tried to come up with a good enough excuse, but it didn’t work.
Let’s read the ten verses of our text from Jeremiah again, with brief comments. But before we do I am going to summarize the message. It’s an important message and I want to be sure you hear it so I will declare it up front, in case something happens and you have to leave or stop listening—for some reason like sleepliness.
The summary of Jeremiah 1:1-10 is this:
God gave you a life, and God gave you a purpose, and God accepts no excuses. So be what you were told to be, and do what you were told to do.
That’s it. That’s the message.
God gave you a life, and God gave you a purpose, and God accepts no excuses. So be what you were told to be, and do what you were told to do.
Now we explore the details.
Chapter 1, Verses 1-3: “The words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah of the priest who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin 2 to whom the word of the Lord in the days of King Josiah, son of Amon of Judah in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3 It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim, son of Josiah of Judah and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah, son of Josiah of Judah until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.”
Those first three verses are about context. Jeremiah is setting the stage by recalling what was going on in history when he was told by God what to do. You are never told what to do by God outside of a context. There is a situation in life that you live in. This neighborhood, this city, our history, the times in which the church finds itself, the ongoing changes in culture, the situation of your family and the people you love, the people you are in ministry with and the sin and injustice and violence that surround us and threaten to engulf us. These are our context.
You don’t do anything outside of context. It doesn’t matter so much today that you know about King Jehojakim and the corruption of the rulers of Israel in that time, but I do want you to clearly understand that your life happens in your context. God loves you, creates you, and sends you into the world with a purpose. And all of that makes sense only within a context. If you want to know God’s plan for your life, pay attention to the situation in life that is happening all around you.
Verse 4-5: “Now the word of the Lord came unto me saying, before I loved you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you, and I appointed you a prophet to the nation.”
These verses establish the intimate relationship between God and God’s children and introduce the fact that God has a plan for the life of everyone God loves. Jeremiah is God’s beloved child. Even though some of the developments in Jeremiah’s life make his life and ministry out to be harsh and difficult, God longs for Jeremiah to be the person he was created to be and he can’t be that person unless he fulfills the purpose of God. Jeremiah is God’s child created for a purpose and his life will be fulfilled when he knows that purpose and carries it out.
Verse 6-8: Then I said, “Ah, Lord God, truly I do not know how to speak for I am only a boy.” 6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 7 But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.
I am only a boy. I am only a girl. I am only a young man. I am only an old woman. What could God expect of me? I am not educated. I am not strong. I feel weak in character. The excuses are legion. Among the saddest excuses that I hear are, “You don’t understand my life. You don’t understand the family where I was raised. You don’t understand how people have hurt me along the way—I’m wounded, for heaven’s sake. Stop telling me to do something more with my life!”
I wish I could gather the teenagers together and whisper in their ears, so intensely that it is heard as a scream, what God was telling Jeremiah. Instead often what these kids are often hearing is, “Yeah, I get it. No one has the right to expect much of you. You had bad breaks along the way. You didn’t get the best family. Your dad was an alcoholic. You had some bad friends. Yeah, I understand. We can’t expect much of you.
You know what voice that is, that’s the voice of the evil one. He doesn’t sound bad and evil. He sounds oh so understanding, but he perpetuates the rationale that you are destined to be a failure. Satan accepts your excuses. God does not. Satan thus sounds sympathetic. God sounds harsh. But it is God who believes in you and Satan wants you useless and dead.
Satan doesn’t just speak to young people in our neighborhood. He talks at old people in the church. The voice of the evil one says, “I get it. You’re too old. You can’t go do some great new work in your life. You’re tired. You’ve done your part. You’ve earned this time to drink lemonade by the pool in the shade. That is not God’s voice. Satan tries to make you think that God is done with you. God is never done with you until the day he carries you home.
Verses 9-10: Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Jeremiah has a life purpose as big as the nation, as big as the world. We often in our own eyes will diminish the purpose of our lives and say, “Well, maybe I can make a difference, you know, right across the street or something. And right across the street is good. But it is very likely that God also has something more in mind for your life. And maybe, just as it was for Jeremiah, it is fear that gets in the way. “Do not be afraid,” God calls out to you. ”I am with you do deliver you.” God is with us too. God gives you the gift that God needs you to have to do God’s work wherever God sends you.
I’d like to tell you a story about a woman named Debbie. That actually is her name. I first met Debbie when she was interviewing me for my position at the Mountview Baptist Church in Upper Arlington over by Columbus. Debbie was in the congregation sitting in the front row with her husband and two boys, asking questions of the prospective pastor, and she kind of fulfilled Warren Copeland’s role that particular day. She asked the hard question.
Her hard question was a real winner, and it revealed her place in the church and how she felt about herself and actually, in fact, how other people felt about her. Her question was, “This congregation is filled with successful people, most of them upper middle class, doctors, attorneys and professors at Ohio State University. My life is broken. My family’s not doing very well. Will you be my pastor? I went over and gave her a hug, and then I picked up one of her two boys and swung him around a little bit and put him back down in the pew--and that was about all I said about that.
A couple of years later, early on a Sunday morning, before 7:00 o’clock, I was in the office working on my sermon. The phone rang and it was Debbie and she was desperate. The bottom of her world had fallen out, her grandfather had died. Her grandfather was the one person in her life that supported her and upheld and provided help for her in difficult times.
And now he was dead. But more than being physically dead, she couldn’t find him. She’d always been able to feel his support but now emotionally, spiritually he was also gone and she was desperate and she wept on the phone. There was not a lot I could do at that moment, but I told Debbie that I would take her to the funeral service the next morning and that I would pick her and her sons up and we would go to the service together and then we would talk.
So I picked her up and we went to the church and we sat in the front row and the preacher was right up there kind of looking down at us. And a couple minutes into the service, he said something and it felt like I had just received a message, downloaded from God. I knew, even though I had seldom had any experiences like this, that God had given to me a message for Debbie.
God has not spoken to me that way since that day. But it happened then. It was a one of a kind experience for me, although it could happen again, I believe. So there I am. I have this message, but I am certain it would overwhelm Debbie and that I did not dare share it with her. So I started to tell God, “No. I am not that kind of messenger.” But I thought better than to give God an outright, “no.” So I told God that I needed a confirmation. “I want to hear the message again.” A few minutes later I got the message again.
And the service ended. There wasn’t any time to talk to Debbie, thank goodness. The committal service at the cemetery ended, not enough time to talk. The reception at a family member’s home ended. Not enough time to talk there. Knowing that I had to take the kids home along with their mother, it started to look like I was going to be able to dodge this bullet, until an interfering relative offered to take the kids home with her.
So there I was taking Debbie home and realizing that the moment had come and I had to tell her. I stopped the car and we sat at the side of the road and I asked her a question, trying to get a feel for---I still wasn’t ready to tell her--get a feel for whether she would be open to hearing this message and her answer sounded like, well maybe, she would be. I said, Debbie, you may remember a couple of Sunday’s ago, I talked about spiritual gifts and I told you that sometimes God gave a person a gift just for a while to accomplish a purpose? I think that’s what’s happened to me today.
I think I have a message that I’m supposed to share with you, and I need to know from you is it okay if I tell you this message that God told me to tell you during the service. And she like looks up and said, “of course.” So, with fear and trembling I told her.
“Debbie, God told me to tell you that the purpose of your life is to carry out the healing work of your grandfather.” Well, I was worried that Debbie might not be able to handle the message. Was I ever right! She started bawling and she wept for five or six minutes. And I realized I had really overdone it. I had really stepped out-of-bounds, I’d hurt her and I wasn’t going to be able to pull this back together.
But five or six minutes later she stopped crying and got out the Kleenex and wiped her eyes and then she looked at me and she said, “Last night I had a dream, and God told me exactly that message, but I would not believe it”.
And she said, “Then later on at last night, I had the same dream again, and God told me again that exact same message”. At this point I’m just kind of freaking out and then she said, “Now I believe. Now believe God”.
Well, Debbie had no resources. Debbie, in fact, had more good reasons for saying “no” to God than I can imagine any of us could come up with if God told us something new and bold to do with our lives. Debbie had a list, a long and understandable list of reasons why she could not be the person God called her to be. She was now divorced, she was a recovering alcoholic, her husband had gone off the wagon and was now an active alcoholic again and was threatening the family, he was abusing the kids, and she had no money, and her job was terrible, and now she had this vision from God that she was to fulfill the healing ministry of her grandfather.
So that’s what she did. She enrolled in a 5-year pharmacology program at Ohio State University. She found a way to get the scholarships and the economic resources to support her kids. When things got really bad, she remembered the purpose, “The purpose of your life is to carry out the healing work of your grandfather,” and the promise, “I will be with you,” and she graduated Suma Cum Lade.
At graduation, Debbie received a special award form President McGee of Ohio State University for founding the University’s first drug rehabilitation program for faculty and staff. She was given a fellowship for a Master’s program and the last I knew of Debbie, and I’ve really got to track her down, was when she called me and asked me to do her marriage a few years later.
And she told me when I went to her graduation, when ever things got bad, she had remembered the words of the Lord. “The purpose of your life is to carry out the healing work of your grandfather.”
Conclusion:
There’s another Biblical character that nails down this process of being loved by and called of God. We will bring this sermon to a conclusion just by briefly describing him. You may recall that Moses, like Jeremiah, was loved and called by God but protested that he could not do it. Then there was Gideon. God told Gideon to do a great work but Gideon claimed to have no stature among the tribes of Israel. He was a nothing man who could do nothing for himself or for God. But God would allow no excuses and promised to be with Gideon, just as he had promised Moses and Jeremiah. But Gideon was not easily convinced and decided he must put God to the test. God passed the test, but the best Gideon could muster was another test. God passed again. Finally Gideon had enough evidence to go forward.
Prophets of God go by many names, Gideon, Jeremiah, Moses, and, I believe, Marvin, Amy, Jim, Joyce, and everybody else who God loves and calls to serve God. It begins with great love and includes great purpose. So don’t you count on getting out of your call, because God is not interested in your excuses.
May it be so in all of our lives.
So be it.
Amen.
