1494 - "The Making and Mission of a Prophet" Jeremiah 1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Chris.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1494. As we read through the pages of Scripture, there are some people that just jump off the page to us. Sometimes it's because they're mentioned so frequently. Other times they may not be mentioned very much at all, but they do some great deed or something happens in their life, and God chooses to highlight that in the sacred pages. But sometimes you run into a prophet that is just an unusual person. Isaiah, if you read the background of Isaiah and read through the entire book of Isaiah, you'll see that he was told to name his children what we would call strange names. He had to behave sometimes in a way that we would say would be strange and would be. And then there's other prophets that they are larger than life. And then there are prophets like I want to speak to you about today, the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet. He said in one of his prophecies, Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the daughter of my people. When at Caesarea Philippi Jesus said, Who do people say that I am? Well some say you're Elijah, some say you're John the Baptist because of the way that Jesus did miracles, the boldness with which he spoke, or as John the Baptist the message that he preached, the message of repentance and the kingdom of God. But some said Jeremiah. Why? Because Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Better translated grief was acquainted with him. Grief knew him. As Jesus walked this life it became a veil of tears. We do not read where Jesus laughed. We read where Jesus wept. And so he was a man of deep peace and joy, yes, inwardly, but outwardly he had a sorrow and a burden for the humanity that he had come to save. I want to pivot to Jeremiah. First of all, Jeremiah was from the city of Anathoth. Now I believe that had a whole lot to do with Jeremiah being spared from taken with the rest of the exiles. As you'll recall, in six hundred five BC, Nebuchadnezzar, after a great victory over the Assyrians, he made his way down to Jerusalem, that is, he dipped down on his way back to Mesopotamia, and he took away all of the royalty and the blue bloods, those that were the elite of Jerusalem and of Israel. It was actually called Judah then because the southern kingdom was all that remained after the decimation by the Assyrians two hundred years earlier, Israel was gone. It was only Judah remaining. And they had been loyal to the tribe of David, and it was the Davidic line that was still serving as king. But Jeremiah came from Anathoth, that's just north of Jerusalem. If any of you have been to Shiloh, what we call Shiloh, you know that about the time you go through the gates of Shaul, the gates of Saul, in the tribe of Benjamin, that as you're going north, if you'll look to your right, you will see in a valley that is known for a winery that is there. You will notice the village of Anathoth. And that's where Abiathar, Abiathar, we call him, was banished by Solomon. You see, Abiathar was a co high priest with Zaduk. They were counselors of King David. And as you'll recall, he was one of the ones that was spared, and the only one that was spared really from the massacre of the priest by Saul at Nob in OB. And so he was very loyal to David. He came to David, brought the Ephid with him when David was in the cave of Abdullum. David loved him, but when Solomon was made to be king by King David, the reason that he sent Zaduk is because of Bathar, Abiathar, was with Adonijah and traitors Joab. And so you'll recall the story when King David died, Zadok was raised as priest, and because of the loyalty of Abiathar to Adonijah and the disloyalty to Solomon that everyone knew David had ordained to be king, and Adonijah was an interloper, that he was banished and was not allowed to be a part of the priesthood anymore as such, certainly from his position. So Zadok and the line of Eliezer became dominant and prominent. But Jeremiah was of the priestly line, we know that because he came from Anathoth, and you can read in his lineage about where he came from. He was of the priest of Anath. And they were the rejects, they were the discards of the priesthood. And so when Nebuchadnezzar took the blue bloods and the priest and so forth, then he left the rival, and Jeremiah was part of that, even though he was a recognized prophet. And then when he came back in 597 and took away Ezekiel, Jeremiah remained behind. So Daniel was in the palace in Babylon. Ezekiel was out by the river Kibar, a man-made canal between the Euphrates and the Tigris River in Mesopotamia. And he prophesied to the common people while Daniel was the court prophet of Nebuchadnezzar, and he and his three friends, Hananiah, Azariah, Meshael, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they were in the royal province. But back in Jerusalem was Jeremiah, and he was prophesying to the kings that had been set up by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It's amazing when Jeremiah has his call recorded that God was not only dealing with the kingdom of Israel, but with Jeremiah. Let's just read what it says. Verse four, after it gives the background and the lineage of Jeremiah, his ancestry, it says then the word the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart, I sanctified you, and I ordained you, I anointed you to be a prophet to the nations. Then said I, Ah Lord, Ah Lord God, Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth, I am a child. But the Lord said to me, Do not say I am a youth, for you shall go to all to whom I send you. And whatever I command you you will speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand and he touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms. Now before we read the last part of verse ten, I want to go back and just go over briefly what I just read to you. Jeremiah said the call of God upon my life started when I was in the womb. Now that ought to tell us something about the importance of the womb. That ought to tell us something about the humanity of what is known as a fetus, as the world and the ungodly would say nothing more than just a bunch of sails together. No, God says before before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. You see, God makes every cell in our body. He knows everything about us. He is the one that ordains whether we're a boy or a girl, he's the one that sets it all up. You see, he's God, and he can do that all over the world to everyone who has ever been born. God sets everything in motion, yes, but he watches over it. King David, I was fearfully and wonderfully made. Even when I was in my mother's womb, you knew every part of me. You know everything about me. It's amazing how much God knows about us and when he knows it. But after all, he's God. And so he said, Jeremiah, I made your mouth. Just like he told Moses, I will put my words in your mouth. And don't worry about those to whom I'm going to send you, because I will deal with them. You are ordained to be my messenger and you carry my message. Men of God, those of us who are teachers, those of us who are before people, teaching them, leading them, we need to remember that God is the one who has called us, and if He's not called you to do what you're doing, then you need to do something else. Because if God's called you, you can do nothing else and ever be happy. And I have taught God only know to scores and scores and scores of pastors and preachers and young men over the decades that have said to me, you know, I don't know, God may be calling me to preach. I said, Well, there maybe has to be certainty if you're going to be used by God. And I usually, somewhere in the conversation, say to them, You continue to pray and seek the face of God because if it's the call of God, then there's nothing else you can ever do that will satisfy the longing and the calling and the urging in your heart. It will not fade, it will get stronger and deeper, more intense, because the call of God is irrevocable. God doesn't take it back. You might not fulfill the call of God and answer the call of God on your life, but if God is calling you to preach, you cannot get away from that call. And some of you that are listening to me right now, you may have sensed God calling you at a time back and you have sought to do something else, but you have come to realize there's not going to be any peace, there's not going to be any fulfillment in this life until you answer the call of God. Not because it's convenient, not because you were moved emotionally. Oh, all those things may be true. But the reality is if the call of God is upon your life, it doesn't matter if you never have anything in your life, no one ever knows who you are, no one ever knows your name. If the call of God is upon your life, God has a people that he wants you to speak to, persons he wants you to speak to, but you must teach and preach the word of God. And preaching is teaching, and all good preaching is teaching, and all good teaching is preaching. Because there has to be a passion that goes with it. It's not passionless. The pathos is there. Yes, the logos is there. And the ethos, yes, we have to have credibility, and we have to have all of those things. But great preaching and great preachers have logosh, yes. Ethos, yes. But pathos a must. There must be passion, there must be emotion with it, but that cannot be all that it is, or it's not the true call of God upon your life. Now I'm saying all that to say that for Jeremiah the call was different than most, but not different than any. Because he said I've put my words in your mouth, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms. And then he told him six things he was gonna do to root out, to pull down, to destroy, and throw down, to build and to plant. Sixty six percent, four out of six of the things that God said I've called you to do were negative. Had to do with destruction. To root out, that means to destroy by uprooting. To pull down, that means really to beat down, to tear down. It's like a house or a wall, you break it down. To destroy. That's the word which means nowhere to flee. You're lost, you're you're undone, you you lose yourself it's destroy to throw down. It means to shatter. To shatter as in breaking in pieces. Wow, what a ministry. But many times we have to tell the bad news before people will understand the good news. And then he said to build. And that's the idea not of just building from scratch, it's the idea many times we're repairing this particular word, and it sometimes means to fortify what is already built. But sometimes it's to build from scratch, and to plant that really means to fix, to establish, to plant something in that regard. And you see, God did call Jeremiah to do that. Jeremiah's ministry is one of rooting out, pulling down, destroying, and throwing down, and then building and planning. But you see, God had to do that in Jeremiah as well. And that's true of all of us. Many times God has to tear down everything that we build up before he'll ever get our attention. Because you see, He wants to build us, He wants to plan us, He wants to set our course. But many times we've already set our course, we've already made up our mind. We know where we're going to go to school, who's going to train us, how we're going to be trained, what we're going to do, how much we're going to ask for, all of those kinds of things. Which in many ways has nothing to do with the call of God upon your life. When someone said, Lord, I'll follow you, Jesus said, What are you doing? Follow me. Well, we'll follow you anywhere. He said, Well, if you follow me, the foxes have whole, the birds of the air have nests, but if you follow me, you may not have anywhere to lay down your head. You see, we're not promised a retirement package, we're not promised a certain salary, we're not promised workers' comp or unemployment benefits. We're not promised anything except a life that will be meaningful, that will make a difference, that God alone will set our course, and He will give us a sense of fulfillment and peace that the world knows nothing of. Because God can give us a peace and a contentment that passes all human comprehension. God had a mission for Jeremiah, but God's mission was Jeremiah. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

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Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.