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Ready or Not:  Jeremiah’s Call

Introduction.  We’ve been looking at God’s “urgent call” – the way the living God doesn’t just suggest, hint, or wait for convenient timing.  He summons.  He interrupts.  He lays a hand on a life and say, “The time is now.”  Moses at the bush.  Samuel in the night.  Isaiah in the Temple.  The disciples by the lake.  Paul on the dusty road.  Again and again, the Bible shows us that when God has a word for a generation, He first has a call for a person.

Today we come to the seventh of those summonses:  The call of Jeremiah.

The date is around 627 BC, the 13^th year of King Josiah’s reign over Judah, a small kingdom living in the long shadow of Assyria with Babylon rising like a sandstorm on the horizon.  The people still have their Temple in Jerusalem.  They still celebrate their festivals.  They still have priests.  What they don’t have is a heart.  Godly Josiah will soon lead a great reform, but reform of buildings and books can’t save a people who just won’t repent.  Into that moment, God does not send a committee.  He sends a young man from a priestly family in the little, out-of-the-way village of Anathoth, just a few miles northeast of Jerusalem.  His name is Jeremiah – meaning “the Lord exalts” or “the Lord throws down.”  Both meanings will prove true.

In all, Jeremiah will preach for some 40 years or more.  He will be beaten, stocked, thrown into a well, accused of treason, and called a traitor by the very people he has given his life to save.  He will watch his beloved Jerusalem burn to the ground.  He will eventually earn the nickname “the weeping prophet,” and for good reason.  And all of it begins here, in a private conversation between the sovereign God and a reluctant young man.

The call of Jeremiah isn’t a museum piece.  It’s a window through which we see how God calls people:  By his plan, by His corrective, and by His provision.

God’s plan.

The first thing we must hear is that Jeremiah’s ministry didn’t begin when Jeremiah felt like he was ready.  It didn’t even begin with “the word of the Lord came to me.”  That word only unveiled what had already been settled in the heart of God.

Jeremiah foreknown, Jeremiah 1:4, 5a.

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, [5] “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…  (Jeremiah 1:4, 5a | TNIV)

Before we go any further, let’s pause over those verbs:  Formed.  Knew.

“Formed” is the potter’s word.  It’s the same family of language the Book of Genesis uses when the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground.  Jeremiah, therefore, isn’t an accident of biology.  He is not the random product of Hilkiah and an unnamed mother in Anathoth.  Before the cells divided, before the heart began to beat, God was already at work as the great Craftsman.  The womb is not the beginning of the story.  It’s the workshop in which a prior purpose takes place.

“Knew” as it relates to God, doesn’t mean “knowing” information.  When the Bible says God “knows” a person, it means He has set His covenant regard upon them.  He has chosen, regarded, and claimed.  Another prophet, Amos by name, heard the Lord say of Israel, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.”  The Lord Jesus will later say of His own, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”  This is personal knowledge – intimate, purposeful, and prior.

Some of you live as if your life began with your first memory, or your first failure, or the first time someone labeled you.  Jeremiah 1 will not let you start the story late.  Before your parents named you, God knew you.  Before the world had a category for you, God had a purpose for you.  That’s not sentimental poetry.  That is the doctrine of a personal God who is never late to His own work.

This truth cuts two ways, and both are mercy.  It humbles the proud:  You are not self-made.  And it lifts the crushed:  You are not overlooked.  The young woman who feels invisible and the older saint who feels finished both stand under the exact same sentence:  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”

Jeremiah foreordained, Jeremiah 1:5b.

“…before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. ”  (Jeremiah 1:5b | TNIV)

The text doesn’t stop at knowledge.  “Set apart” is the language of holiness – taken out of ordinary use and marked for God.  Priests were set apart.  Jars, cups, and furniture were set apart for use in the Temple.  Israel itself was set apart.  Jeremiah was set apart – consecrated – before he was even born.  His calling is not a career path he would later select from a list.  It’s an appointment already made.

Then comes the office:  “I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”  Not just to Anathoth.  Just merely to Judah.  “To the nations!”  From the first sentence of his call, Jeremiah’s horizon is larger than his hometown!  God has global purposes even when He starts with a village priest’s son.

Do you hear the weight of that?  God doesn’t wait to see how Jeremiah will turn out and then decide what to do with him.  The appointment precedes the appearance.  Foreknowledge isn’t God looking down the corridor of time to discover what Jeremiah will choose.  Foreordination is God writing Jeremiah into His redemptive work before Jeremiah could write his own name.

This is how the Bible consistently speaks of calling.  Paul will tell the Galatians that God “set me apart from my mother’s womb and called my by his grace.”  The church in Ephesus is told that the Father “chose us in him before the creation of the world.”  The urgency of the call is rooted in the eternity of the Caller.  If God only reacted to us, the call could wait.  Because God has already purposed, the call arrives on time – His time – even when it feels too soon to us.

So the first movement of the text is not “Jeremiah, what would you like to do with your life?”  Rather, it is “Jeremiah, here is what I have decided to do with your life.”  God’s plan is older than our pulse.

God’s corrective.

If all we had were verses 4 and 5, we might imagine Jeremiah falling on his face in eager surrender.  That’s not what happens.  The word out of his mouth is protest.

Human self-doubt, Jeremiah 1:6, 7.

“Ah, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” [7] But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.  (Jeremiah 1:6, 7 | TNIV)

 You have to give Jeremiah some credit.  He doesn’t deny that the voice is the Lord’s.  He addresses Him as “Sovereign Lord” – Adonai Yahweh.  He knows who’s speaking.  His problem isn’t theology.  His problem is himself.

Two objections, stacked together.

First:  “I do not know how to speak.”  This is the prophet’s nightmare.  A prophet is a mouth.  If a mouth can’t work, the office collapses.  Jeremiah felt inarticulate, unready, unequal to the task of standing before kings and crowds with a word from heaven.  You can hear Moses in the background:  “I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and tongue.”  The excuses of the called have a long family tree.

Second:  “I am too young.”  The Hebrew word here can mean a child, a youth, a young man still under someone’s authority.  Jeremiah was likely in his late teens or early 20’s.  In a culture that honored age, a young prophet looked like a contradiction.  Who’s going to listen to this kid?  What resume does he bring?  How can a man who still feels like a boy announce the fall of entire nations?

We shouldn’t rush past this.  Self-doubt is not always unbelief.  Sometimes it’s honesty about our limits.  Jeremiah is absolutely correct about himself.  He IS young.  He DOES lack the seasoned speech of a preacher.  The problem is not that he has taken a true inventory of Jeremiah.  The problem is that he has taken an incomplete inventory of God.

Unfortunately, this is where a lot us live.  “I can’t teach.  I can’t lead.  I can’t speak to my neighbor.  I’m too young, too old, too wounded, too ordinary, too late.”  We baptize our fear in the language of humility.  We call it realism.  God calls it something else.

Divine reassurance, Jeremiah 1:7.

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.”  (Jeremiah 1:7 | TNIV)

Notice what God does not do.  He doesn’t argue Jeremiah into self-confidence.  He doesn’t say, “Actually, you are more gifted than you think.”  He doesn’t hand him a personal inventory and circle his strengths.  God doesn’t pad Jeremiah’s resume.  He corrects Jeremiah’s sentence.

“Do not say, ‘I am too young.’”  In other words, stop narrating your life by your inadequacy.  That sentence is no longer permitted to govern you.

Then come two verbs of commission:  GO and SAY.  “You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.”  This is not a call to “become impressive.”  This is a call to “be obedient.”  The field is defined by God’s sending, not my Jeremiah’s comfort.  The content is defined by God’s command, not by Jeremiah’s creativity.

This is the divine corrective that every called person needs.  God doesn’t deny our weakness; He simply refuses to let weakness have the last word.  Paul will learn the same lesson in another century:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  The call never waits until we have outgrown our excuses.  It silences the excuse and then sends the person.

Some of you have been saying a version of Jeremiah’s sentence for years.  “I’m too young.”  “I’m not ready.”  “I don’t know what to say.”  Hear the Lord:  Stop saying that!  Not because the facts about you have changed, but because the facts about Him have been spoken.  He sends.  He commands.  That’s enough to start with.

God’s provision.

Plan and corrective would still leave Jeremiah exposed if God only pointed him in the right direction and gave him a command.  Verses 8 through 10 show us that the God who calls is the God who equips.  Provision comes in three precious gifts:  His presence, His message, and His mission.

The first gift is found in verse 8:

Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.  (Jeremiah 1:8 | TNIV)

 “Them” is unnamed because “them” will keep changing – priests, princes, kings, false prophets, neighbors who will plot against his life.  Fear of faces is the occupational hazard of God’s prophets.  God doesn’t pretend the faces will be friendly.  He promises something better than friendly faces:  His own presence and His rescue.

“I am with you” is the covenant promise that runs from Isaac to Jacob to Moses to Joshua to the exiles and finally into the mouth of our Lord:  “And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  Presence isn’t a feeling or a mood.  Presence is God Himself committed to the one He sends.  And “I will rescue you” doen’t mean Jeremiah will never suffer.  He will suffer almost without a break.  It means the mission will not end until God says sit ends.  Enemies can bruise the servant but they can’t abort the assignment.

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth.  (Jeremiah 1:9 | TNIV)

This is one of the most intimate scenes in all the prophetic literature. God does not drop a scroll from the sky. He reaches out His hand. He touches the very place Jeremiah had named as his weakness. The mouth that said, “I do not know how to speak,” is the mouth God claims.

“I have put my words in your mouth.” Not “I have given you talking points.” Not “I have inspired your best thoughts.” My words. Jeremiah will not be a commentator on the news. He will be a carrier of the speech of God.

This is why preaching and witness still matter. We are not asked to invent a message that will fit the age. We are asked to receive a message that judges and saves the age. The church does not need more original voices. It needs more borrowed mouths—men and women who have been so handled by the Word that what comes out of them is not brand but Bible.

And here the line runs straight toward Christ. Jeremiah receives the word in his mouth. Jesus is the Word made flesh. The prophet says what God says. The Son is what God says. Every true call to speak for God is a small echo of that greater mystery: God still puts His Word among us, now fully and finally in His Son, and then by the Spirit into the mouths of His people.

If you feel you have nothing to say, you may be closer to usefulness than you think. God is not looking for a reservoir. He is looking for a vessel. He supplies the water.

See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”  (Jeremiah 1:10 | TNIV)

Four verbs of demolition. Two verbs of construction. That is the shape of Jeremiah’s work, and it is the shape of much of God’s work in a fallen world.

Uproot. Tear down. Destroy. Overthrow. Before there can be a garden, there must be an end to the weeds and the ruined walls. Jeremiah will spend long years announcing the end of a false peace, the end of idolatry, the end of a temple religion that had lost the Lord of the temple. That word will feel harsh. It is harsh. Judgment is not the opposite of love. In a world of lies, judgment is love telling the truth.

But the sentence does not end in rubble. “To build and to plant.” After exile there will be a remnant. After tearing down there will be a new covenant, written not on stone but on hearts—the promise that shines in Jeremiah 31 and is fulfilled in the blood of Christ. God never wrecks for the joy of wreckage. He clears ground for a future only He can grow.

That is still the mission of the church, though our tools are the gospel and not the sword. We uproot pride. We tear down the arguments that set themselves against the knowledge of God. We tell the truth about sin because a false comfort is a cruel comfort. And then we build. We plant the Word. We baptize. We disciple. We hold out the hope of the new creation. A ministry that only tears down is not prophetic; it is merely angry. A ministry that only plants without uprooting falsehood is not pastoral; it is merely nice. Jeremiah is appointed to both.

“Today I appoint you.” The mission is not pending. The young man who thought he was too young is placed, that very day, over nations and kingdoms. Authority in the kingdom of God does not come from age, platform, or self-esteem. It comes from appointment.

Conclusion.  Put the three movements together and you have the anatomy of a call.

God’s plan: He knew you and set you apart before you had a résumé or a protest.
God’s corrective: He will not let your self-doubt become the official story of your life.
God’s provision: He goes with you, He puts His Word in you, and He gives you work that both breaks and heals.

Jeremiah said yes—not a cheerful, uncomplicated yes, but a real one. He went. He spoke. He wept. He remained. And through that stubborn, tear-stained obedience God kept a witness alive in the darkest generation Judah had known, until the greater Prophet came—the One who was also appointed before His birth, who also said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,” who also tore down and built up, who also was rejected by His own, and who also was not abandoned in the end.

The call has not expired.

Some of you need to hear the plan: your life is not random. Before the womb, He knew.

Some of you need the corrective: stop saying the sentence God has forbidden. Your youth, your age, your slow tongue, your thin résumé—none of it vetoes His sending.

Some of you need the provision: you do not have to manufacture courage or invent a message. He is with you. His Word is enough. The mission is already defined—uproot what is false, plant what is true.

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. The same Lord still speaks by that Word. The question is not whether the call is urgent. The question is whether we will answer before the excuses harden into a life.