Word of Salvation – Vol. 25 No. 19 – January 1979

 

Jeremiah: A Prophet Called By God

 

Sermon by Rev. D. J. Van Garderen, Th. Grad. on Jeremiah 1:4-5

Scripture reading: Ephesians 2:1-10, Jeremiah 1:1-10

Psalter Hymnal: 187:1, 2, 4, 6; 288:1, 2, 5; 385; 122:1, 2, 5; 208; 493

 

Dear Congregation,

More is known of the life of Jeremiah than of any other of the Old Testament prophets. Not only does the prophecy which bears his name contain God’s message, but time and again we are confronted with Jeremiah’s feelings, his emotions, his thoughts and the way in which Judah and Jerusalem reacted to his message.

Jeremiah’s cries of bitter anguish, the hardness of heart of the citizens of Jerusalem is vividly described in the course of his writings.

Yet, it is at the same time true that for the majority of Christians, Jeremiah is a rather shadowy and unknown figure. Apart from ‘ the fact that we speak of a ‘weeping Jeremiah’, and that we may know that he prophesied about the new covenant in the 31st chapter, he is rather unknown.

Who was Jeremiah? What was his message and why was it proclaimed? Does the revelation he received from the Lord speak meaningfully to ourselves, people who live some 2,600 years later? Does the Lord speak through His servant Jeremiah to our own age and its problems?

THE PROPHET AND HIS TIME

When we meet Jeremiah on the day that the word of the Lord came to him instructing him to become a prophet to the nations, he was a man of about twenty years of age. He was one of the bright, up-and-coming young men of Jerusalem’s upper class. He belonged to a priestly family, was of an impeccable pedigree and, in the traditions laid down by Moses, it would be expected that he himself would become a priest. He, as a so-called, ‘man of the cloth’, could look forward to a secure, perhaps illustrious clerical career.

Yet, in spite of these rosy prospects, the actual time in which Jeremiah lived, was one of uncertainty and depravity. Although Jerusalem had an outer cover, a veneer of respectability, peace and prosperity about it, things were in reality as black as could be.

The temple was a tremendously busy place. Religious ceremonies abounded and there was even to be a revival during the kingship of pious king Josiah. But this was, in fact, only skin deep. In the hearts of these pious worshipers lived greed, covetousness and every wicked imagination that man can create. There was cheating, injustice, oppression and unrighteousness. Religious ceremonies merely cloaked reality. Outwardly, Jerusalem glowed like a rosy apple full of vitality and vigorous health, but inwardly it was worm-eaten and rotten.

There was peace as the priest proclaimed, yet how uncertain and unreal it was. Jeremiah’s age was the time when the world first began to feel the effect of the emergence of empires and emperors who aimed at subduing the world. It was an age which first saw armies that could not be counted on account of their vastness, and men striving to be dictators of every creature dwelling upon the face of the earth.

The north, the direction from which the world empires arose, was like a huge boiling pot. The boiling contents were ready at any moment to be poured over Jerusalem to scald, burn and shrivel up the nation. The pot could boil or be tipped out at any time and Jerusalem lived in daily dread of this possibility. How peace and prosperity, even as thin veneer, was in fact nothing more than an illusion, like an over-filled balloon ready to burst.

Indeed, such were the last decades before the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian hordes. Can you begin to see and sense how things stood in Jeremiah’s day?

In fact, does not our age mirror Jeremiah’s with chilling accuracy?

This parallel is amazing in its detail when you look at current world politics and economies, and when we look at the overall state and plight of the Church on earth today. Maybe Jeremiah’s message, maybe God’s revelation, at that time speaks to ours as well!

I. THE PROPHET IS CALLED

The great question that plagued the rulers, princes and leading clerics of Jeremiah’s day was this: Is God still there to help, to deliver and to save us? Does He care? Most people did not think so and therefore had a sort of policy that could be summarised with the proverb, “God helps those who help themselves.” So they helped themselves. They lived for the moment and tried to satisfy every desire and craving, no matter what the cost.

They also sought their salvation by means of the formation of alliances. Judah, the small nation, turned to its larger neighbours seeking promises of military help in case of invasion. They helped themselves and turned to pacts, treaties, agreements and ‘detente’. That, they thought, is the way God helps us!

Direct, heavenly intervention? A miraculous deliverance? An act of God? No, not in this modern day and age!

The words of Jeremiah, set against this background, therefore thunder forth in a most stunning way. Against the background of a belief in a dormant God we hear the prophet saying: “Now the word of the Lord came to me….!” How did it come? Was it a vision, a dream, was it through the instrumentality of another prophet? We do not know. What we DO know is that God, Who seemed so impersonal to Jerusalem, spoke to Jeremiah.

Hear what He said:

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,
And before you were born, I consecrated you;
I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

II. THE CALL

Against the background of an age which claimed little tangible evidence of God’s nearness and involvement with the affairs of the nation, this call must have come as quite a shock!

Consider the call Jeremiah received. He was informed by the Lord God that even before he was conceived God already knew, fully and totally understood Jeremiah in every conceivable sense. Even before he was, God had already predetermined that Jeremiah would be consecrated, set apart from the rest of mankind for a special task and ministry. God had chosen and appointed Jeremiah to be a prophet of the nations from the very beginning!

Now, this kind of revelation form the Lord is not even unusual within the testimony as found in Scripture. Consider, for example, Samson. His father, Manoah and his wife, heard of God’s plan for their, as yet unconceived son, from the angel of the Lord. He was to be a Nazarite (Judges 13:3ff). Isaiah, too, speaks of the fact that the Lord called him from the womb, “from the body of my mother the Lord called me” (Isa.49:1).

David, in Psalm 139, speaks in a similar vein when he records:

“Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance;
 And in Thy book they were all written,
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.” (Psalm 139:16)

In the New Testament we need only recall the visit of the angel to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist.

There is, therefore, a consistent Biblical testimony to the fact that God knows each of His servants fully and personally, from the beginning. HE knows His servants’ every thought, word and deed from eternity. God has a plan, a purpose for His servants for which He not only calls or chooses them, but for which He also consecrates, sets them apart and equips them with the necessary gracious gifts.

III. IMPLICATIONS FOR JEREMIAH’S CONTEMPORARIES

Without, at this point proceeding to look at Jeremiah’s reactions to this call and God’s subsequent assurances, we do well to consider the implications of this call to Jeremiah’s contemporaries, the people of his day.

Jeremiah was to stand before the citizens of Judah and Jerusalem and address the entire nation ranging from the king and his advisors down to the lowliest pauper.

He was to stand before them speaking in the Name of the Lord and t with all the authority, power and presence of the Lord justifying every prophetic utterance he made.

In an age which believed God to be very remote, impersonal and even far removed from the worries that beset the world, this comes as something of a shock. God speaking personally to the inhabitants of the land? God giving on-the-spot directions and instructions on political, economic and spiritual issues was an idea that the people found extremely difficult to swallow. They could believe that He had done this in Abraham’s day, and in Moses’ time, but NOW? Jeremiah’s announcement of his call to be a prophet was scarcely believed because of their unbelief – that God does not act in that way any more.

Congregation, can you appreciate what the issue was? The people could not, and simply would not, accept God’s nearness and total involvement with their lives and current anxieties. They saw God as being remote, impersonal and not really concerned with the day to day events of their lives. Jeremiah’s call was a direct challenge to this belief! Jeremiah announced with his call that God knew him, and by implication, knows each and every creature fully.

We, who live in the age after the coming of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, have before us our Lord’s words when He, too, stressed God’s relationship to each individual creature:

“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” (Matt.6:26)

“Even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Matt.10:30).

It was the idea that God is personal, is in a relationship to His people like that of a loving father to his own children, that Jeremiah’s contemporaries found so difficult to accept. The call and the very thoughts of God revealed in the call to Jeremiah announce to the people just how God knows and is involved with His people.

IV. JEREMIAH’S CALL, A MESSAGE TO OUR AGE

Jeremiah’s call, and particularly what God reveals concerning His relationship and knowledge of the prophet, is of significance and importance to our age, too.

What, according to the testimony of Scripture, is the nature of God’s relationship to each Christian, even today? When we consider our salvation in Jesus Christ, does this not confirm in a most vivid way that God is as personal in His relationship to each one of us as He was to Jeremiah? God, says the Bible, chose us in Christ from before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless (consecrated) in His sight. Even while we were dead in trespasses and sin, while there was not the tiniest spark of spiritual worth or goodness in us, God prepared the way of salvation by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die as our substitute on Calvary’s cross.

God further worked the miracle of new life or regeneration in us through the indwelling Holy Spirit. This was not our will, for we could not and would not desire new life by nature. God acted personally to work our salvation.

“It was not I that found, O Saviour true,
 No, I was found of Thee.”

God is also with us as personally as ever in the course of our new lives in Christ. As Paul explained to the Christians at Ephesus: “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Eph.2:10).

Do not these words of Scripture show that for each and every born-again believer, the truth of God’s personal word to Jeremiah is equally true? Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us and appointed and consecrated us and beforehand prepared the works that we should do. God has, in and through Christ, become as personal and involved with all true believers as He revealed Himself to be involved with Jeremiah when He called him. Do you realise and live by this? Is this a comfort and assurance to you?

It seems that we so easily fail to appreciate this as believers. Ours is an age beset by all kinds of anxiety producing tensions. Within many Christians there is the tension created by the uncertainty of God’s personal nearness, His day-to-day guidance. God so often seems to be remote from our family life and its problems, and He seems so far away from helping or being vitally involved in our jobs, our society with all its economic, social and emotional difficulties. To Christians it often seems that God has separated Himself from all that goes on in their hearts, homes and countries.

Jeremiah, too, as a further study of his prophecy shows, was often to be caught up in the web of these moods and feelings.

But Jeremiah, brother, sister, remember your call! Remember the circumstances and work and planning of God for you from even before the foundation of the world. Know of a certainty HE knew you, HE consecrated you, and HE called you in Christ to be His very own.

And finally, in considering this call, Jeremiah was to remember that, come what may (and many sufferings certainly did!), GOD had appointed him to be a prophet to the nations. He would know that God created him for a purpose no matter what frustrations and barriers the world sets up. The call of a personal God to us as believers is no different either. As Paul said, we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works.” Ours, too, is a commission as definite and detailed as Jeremiah’s was. To work, each in accordance with the measure of grace given us, as image-bearers of Christ, prophets, priests and kings.

Do we? So often there is a feeling urging us to give up, to leave it to someone else, or to view the ministry of the Gospel within the context of our individual lives and experiences as being hopeless. On the basis of Jeremiah’s call, could he ever stop? Can we?

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Brothers and sisters, it so often seems that the powers of evil against which we contend are out to destroy the assurance of faith and the outworking of salvation in our lives. Satan and the world so often seem to get the upper hand.

Jeremiah would know this and experience it to such a degree that his constant weeping over Jerusalem would earn him the name of “weeping Jeremiah”. Indeed, when we call someone a “Jeremiah”, we use it to refer to the fact that that person weeps and wails a lot. But Jeremiah, God’s servant and prophet to the nations, through his tears and sufferings, continued to stand and to speak forth as a prophet. Why? Because of his call.

God, Who is personal and personally involved with the totality of the prophet’s life KNEW Jeremiah, consecrated Jeremiah, and appointed Jeremiah.

Likewise, as you, through the grace and love of our electing God were called to be Christ’s, remember, believe and be wondrously assured of the fact that in all circumstances God knows you, has sanctified you, and has called you to His service.

Go THEREFORE AND DO WHAT YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER HAS CALLED YOU TO BE DOING.

AMEN.