The Call of Jeremiah - Jeremiah 1:4-5
[4th July 2016]
1:4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, 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.”
This morning I have the opportunity to speak to the 10 of you who are graduating from the college about the call of the prophet Jeremiah and about the extraordinarily thin thread of God’s truth which he held in his person as he stood against the tide.
Jeremiah ministered in a time of unbelief. He was only a youth in his late teens or very early 20s when he was called by God. He was brought up in the reign of Manasseh about whom 2 Ki 21:16 says “… who shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another …” Manasseh killed many of the true followers of God. Because of the 55 year length of Manasseh’s reign the line of true prophets of Yahweh might have been literally exterminated. Jeremiah’s family would have been threatened.
After Jeremiah’s call his life was not an easy one. Later King Jehoiakim [ch 36] burnt Jeremiah’s written scriptures soon after he had written them. Jeremiah was clearly depressed. He never married or had a family in an epoch when such things were important and was probably a laughing stock. He was thrown in jail; he was once thrown down a cistern and left to die before being rescued. Continuous threats were made against his life.
He was in his time, possibly the only active prophet in the land of Judah.
Yet he was called by God to be a prophet to the nations – but he was also called to be a prophet to you and to me because we have his prophecies preserved in our Bibles. He laboured for over 40 years, and Israel was in worse a state at the end of his ministry than it was at the beginning. He ended his life in Egypt among Jews who hated him. But Jeremiah’s book is in the Bible for a reason. Because some of us might live through similar difficulties to Jeremiah, and it is good for us to know that God knows, and other great men of God have been there before.
But today, 2,600 years later, we can read Jeremiah’s prophecies and writings which are part of the most widely translated book and read book in the world. He is quoted directly at least 14 times in the New Testament, and alluded to over 150 times.
All the great empires Jeremiah prophesied about are rubble in the desert and have disappeared but the truth Jeremiah proclaimed endures on.
And so it is with you. You in the scheme of this world are very minor as Christian missionaries, you a few in number, you don’t have much money. You are training at this tiny college in an isolated small country. This college ia ao small, many local Christians haven’t even heard of it.
Yet I know you are going to change the world: Why? Because Mark Budenberg taught you? No! Because you’re clever? No! Because you have found a special way of presenting the gospel very powerfully? No! But because you have a great God and missions is at the centre of our great God’s will. Even though Jeremiah’s life and ministry and his written prophecies hung by a thread at various moments, his message survives to this today.
Even though you might feel yourself, like Jeremiah, to be hanging by a very thin thread. You will lack money, you will lack supporters and at times even lack success (whatever that is). But I believe God will use even your lack of success to his glory as he takes hold of your labours and prayer in the heavenly places to change the world.
I often quote the example of Congo where there were probably never more than a few hundred missionaries. Everything the Belgian colonisers left has gone or has been destroyed. But today wherever you go throughout that vast country on a Sunday morning the gospel is preached and the God of Israel is worshipped, even in the smallest villages.
I believe you can do the impossible. As you set out on your missions task you will sometimes feel as daunted as the twelve disciples were when Jesus told them to feed the 5,000. In John ch6 Jesus he told the disciples – “You give them something to eat”. Andrew shows up with the five loaves and two fishes. But he asks the genuine question – “What are they among so many?” You might ask the same question: “Who am I before such a vast task?” But we know that Jesus took those five small loaves and multiplied them. So it will be with you. So it was with Jeremiah.
Who are we in front of such a huge task? We are of course nobodies, but by God’s grace he takes the little things we offer and multiplies it greatly even if we might not live to see all the results – as Jeremiah never did. As those first missionaries to China, to Brazil, to Mexico, to Korea never did. Now the churches are strong there. What once looked like a thin thread is now a mighty rope. Might we dare to add those the first missionaries today to many hard places where the gospel has barely penetrated today?
Why is this? This is the bit you must believe. It’s the power of the gospel. That spoken or printed or electronic message which announces the good news that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, that he died on the cross for our sins, was raised to life on the third day and that believing in him we might have deliverance from everything that separates us from God and eternal life.
This is the message which changes the world and you are its messengers.