Reading:
Jeremiah 1:1-12
Our
meditation is to be on the matter of service and
sovereignty, and I think I can best say what is on my
heart by dividing that in this way - (1) The Service, (2)
The Servant, (3) The Sovereignty.
The
Service
First,
then, the service. When we come to consider any of the
great servants of the Lord in the Bible, it would be very
natural for us to react in this way - that they were
raised up in a very special and outstanding way by God to
fulfil a great historic purpose in the course of
spiritual history, that they stand alone, in a unique
position, and that for us in any way to place ourselves
alongside of them or in the same category would be sheer
presumption. There is a sense, of course, in which that
is a right reaction. It would be quite wrong if we were
to assume that we were anything like these men in their
measure and ministry. At the same time, there are those
things of spiritual meaning which are common to all
service for the Lord. There are spiritual truths and
principles which govern every one, the very least of the
Lord's servants in common with the greatest; and what I
shall have to say will be in connection with that which
is as true of you and of me in principle as it was of
Jeremiah or of any other outstanding servant of the Lord.
But of
course we do have to allow for differences in the
particular aspect of the service of the Lord to which we
may be called. This service for which Jeremiah was chosen
and raised up was perhaps the most difficult form of
service ever given to man to fulfil. It is comparatively
easy to preach the 'good news' of the grace of God to the
unsaved, as compared with ministering the full thoughts
of God to His own people who are away from those thoughts
and are proudly ignorant of what those thoughts are -
proud of their tradition, their past, their history;
proud of the position to which they have come as
something on this earth, fixed in a religious mould,
spiritually blind and ignorant, having a form of
godliness but denying the power thereof, having a name to
live and yet being dead. To come to such a people in the
deadly formality of their religious routine and to seek
to show the fuller thoughts of God is perhaps one of the
most difficult tasks ever committed to man. If there is
one thing which comes out quite clearly in the story
recorded in these prophecies of Jeremiah, it is how
intensely difficult it is to fulfil a ministry like that.
To get
some idea of how strong a situation Jeremiah had to meet
in that formalism and spiritual death, let us remind
ourselves that Isaiah had fulfilled his ministry, and
less than a hundred years before this had been slain by
the very fathers of the people to whom Jeremiah was sent.
If tradition is right and the fragment in Hebrews 11:37
applies to Isaiah, he was "sawn asunder". What
a great prophet he was! What a wonderful ministry he
fulfilled! What a lot the people of God owe to that
ministry! Nevertheless he had suffered thus at the hands
of the people: his ministry had had that effect:
suggesting that it was a fairly strong situation that
Jeremiah had to meet. Then, of course, men like Hosea,
Amos, and Micah had long since finished their ministry,
and when you remember all that they had to say and still
you find this condition which is met in the prophecies of
Jeremiah, you must conclude that if all those men had
failed there must be something present that would make
the stoutest heart faint at the contemplation of having
to deal with it. That is the background of Jeremiah's
ministry, and in such discouraging conditions he stepped
forth to utter among that people the fuller thoughts of
God concerning them.
That was
the service to which this man was called, and whether it
touches us or not will depend upon whether we have any
real concern that the people of God, and all who come to
know the Lord, shall come into the fulness of the Divine
purpose and thought for His own people. The temptation is
not infrequently present to leave the people of God just
where they are, and write them off as either hopeless or
not needing our attention. 'Let us get on with the
business, of getting people saved. The state of the
Lord's people is so confused and so deadly that we had
better leave it and turn aside and start on fresh ground
somewhere else.' There is something behind a temptation
and argument of that kind when you really come up against
a situation like this. But here again the Lord did not
take that course, nor does He ever take it. He could have
fully and finally renounced the whole thing, and started
on altogether virgin soil; but no, if God has committed
Himself, then whatever He may have to do, He will at last
get, even if in a remnant only, an expression of that
which is more fully according to His original mind.
But to
that service and ministry can come only such as are going
to know nothing less than a life-long crucifixion to all
interests but that one thing - that God may be satisfied.
So much, then, for the service.
The
Servant
As to the
servant; when the word of the Lord came to him Jeremiah
was evidently not a novice, not just a youth; he was
already of the priestly house and doubtless had some
experience on the practical side of temple service; he
knew something. But when it came to preaching - that is,
to being a prophet to the people and to the nation - he
felt himself altogether unqualified; indeed, he would
have said, disqualified; and his instant reaction to the
call of the Lord was, "Ah, Lord God! behold, I know
not how to speak, for I am a child". The word
'child' there does not necessarily imply what we commonly
take it to mean. It is the same word that the angel
applied to Zechariah - "Speak to this young
man" (Zech. 2:4). Jeremiah said, "I am a
child" - 'I am young: in this realm of things, I
have neither experience nor qualification'. But it was
just there that the Lord found his qualification, not his
disqualification.
Now, we
must be very careful to make a discrimination. We find
the Lord urging to service, calling for labourers; He
wants prophets, He calls for servants, and desires them
to be tremendously eager, earnest, zealous. But at the
same time He wants to find in them a very real hesitancy
- something which would say, 'I cannot'. How are we going
to reconcile these two things? Until we have done that,
we shall make some mistakes and be in a dangerous
position. You see, there is all the difference between a
passion for souls and a passion for preaching. A great
concern for the spiritual life of others is one thing;
but a great concern to be teaching others is quite
another thing. No one would ever say of Jeremiah that he
was not stirred to the very depths of his being with a
great concern and passion over the people of God. He has
come down in history by the name of the weeping prophet.
You cannot read his 'Lamentations' without feeling that
this man, to the last drop of his blood, is impassioned
over the spiritual state of God's people. At the same
time, with it all he is hesitant, he would hold back.
Those two things must be found together in the servant of
the Lord, whatever the service. There must be on the one
hand a deep-rooted passion and fire of spiritual concern
over the situation which exists and which has to be met
and dealt with; at the same time there must be just as
deep a consciousness of the utter unfitness for such work
on the part of the servant or the vessel himself or
herself. Our eagerness to preach may, after all, actually
spring from our own self-sufficiency, our own conceit,
and in the sight of God that is the greatest
disqualification for service. Our disqualification does
not consist in our own inability and insufficiency but in
our own idea that we can. Anything in the nature
of conceit, which simply means, having the resource in
ourselves, disqualifies in the sight of God.
Jeremiah
was a priest by birth, by training, by upbringing, but he
was no ecclesiastic, he was no professional priest; in
the right sense he was a very natural man. Read his
prophecies, keeping him in view with the object of seeing
what kind of a person this is that you are dealing with
in Jeremiah. How human he is! There is nothing put on,
nothing in the nature of professional service. He would
repudiate all titles. If he had been a dignified
ecclesiastic, it would have been an awful thing to be
treated as he was. Just imagine such a person being let
down into the filth of that pit, and, after being left
there for a time pulled up with the aid of filthy rags!
Ecclesiastical dignity would not have stood up to that!
But it was otherwise with Jeremiah. And God is wanting people
- not professionals, not experts; just people. And that
comes out here beautifully, right at the beginning.
"Ah, Lord God... I know not how to speak; for I am a
child." But the Lord knew something more about
Jeremiah than he knew about himself.
The
Sovereignty
Now we
pass on to this which, after all, is the thing that I
feel most constrained to say - a word about the
sovereignty behind all this. Jeremiah was to minister
regarding sovereignty, for it was the sovereignty of God
that was in operation at this time in so many and such
manifest ways. Perhaps the outstanding example of that
comes in chapter 18 of these prophecies - the story of
the potter's house and the vessel. "I went down to
the potter's house, and, behold, he was making a work on
the wheels. And when the vessel that he made of the clay
was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again
another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, O house of
Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the
Lord". 'Have not I sovereign rights to do as I will?
If the house of Israel fail me, then out of that clay I
will make another vessel'. This is the operation of
sovereignty. Jeremiah all the way through was to be a
minister concerning the sovereignty; therefore he had to
be the personal embodiment of that sovereignty, and this
first chapter brings that into view.
"Before
I formed thee... I knew thee, and before thou camest
forth I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet
unto the nations." Here was Jeremiah's place in
God's foreknowledge. It was only at this much later time
that Jeremiah was made aware that sovereignty had
governed his very birth and his life right up to this
time. He would have regarded himself as merely one in the
millions of people born into this world, with nothing
special about his birth, or of special Divine intention
in his life up to this time. He has come to manhood, with
so far nothing very conspicuous of God's hand in his
history. But here at length God breaks in and says,
'Jeremiah, before you ever had a physical being you were
in my knowledge; before you came into this world, I had
already set you apart; I had designed you as a prophet
for the nations'. And that would certainly carry with it
this, that however Jeremiah was constituted naturally,
and whatever had been his experience in the years of his
life up to that time, there was something behind it not
recognised by him which was all related to the purpose
which God had foreseen, foreknown and fore-intended as to
Jeremiah.
My point
is that Jeremiah did not know anything about that until
the day that God came to him and gave him his commission.
And then, from that time, he began to realise (and
perhaps, then, only in an imperfect way) that there was
something more bound up with his being in this world and
with the way in which he had been brought up than ever he
had imagined - that there was a Divine sovereignty there
which was being exercised according to Divine
foreknowledge. I have said that that Divine sovereignty
had something to do with his very constituting, and yet
it is just there that we may find some difficulty.
Jeremiah himself did. 'I cannot speak! Thou callest me to
be a prophet, and a prophet must be able above all things
to speak, but I cannot. Lord, Thou hast made a mistake,
Thou hast picked the wrong one; I am not constituted for
this thing to which Thou hast called me; Thou dost need a
different kind of person'. The Lord most definitely
repudiated Jeremiah's suggestion that He had not had a
hand in his constituting.
How is it
explained? There is only one way of explaining it. There
is one all-governing consideration with God, and that
consideration governs all His activities. If there is any
truth at all that Jeremiah after all was born as God
intended him to be born, and made as God intended him to
be made, and was the kind of person that God wanted for
this work, there is only one explanation, and it is
everywhere in the Bible. It was and is that all should be
of God and not of man, that there should never be any
room or ground whatever for glory to go to the servant,
the instrument, the vessel. All the glory is to come to
God. God is governed by that always. He, then, will
deliberately choose the weak things, the foolish, the
things which are not. That is Divine sovereignty -
"that no flesh should glory in his presence" (1
Cor. 1:29). That is the most hopeful ground for us all.
If that is true, then there is hope for us, there are
possibilities for the Lord where we are concerned; and if
we have not come there, we may as well understand from
this moment that we shall never bring very much glory to
God until we have become thoroughly broken vessels.
So much
has been made of the natural gifts and qualifications of
certain servants of the Lord - of Paul in particular; but
the Lord's handling of Paul was such as to make him very
hesitant to say anything about himself. He was broken;
yes, he was shattered. Paul would say more than anyone
that, if anything was done, it was the Lord Who did it,
not Paul. Whatever of gift there may be in the
background, remember that it is the Lord who will account
for anything at all of good that is done.
So we find
that Jeremiah in his very self, in his very origin, and
in the whole course of his life, was compelled to rest
for himself upon the God of resurrection. That is what it
meant. If there is to be anything at all in this service,
it has to be like something that is brought out from the
dead. 'I cannot!' 'Cannot' is the word that lies always
over a grave, over death. Ask anybody who is dead to do
something! What is the word that lies over resurrection?
'Can!' But God is the God of resurrection. Jeremiah was
constituted on that basis. His very being was because of
the God of resurrection; his very ministry also. Follow
him through his story; again and again it was as though
the end had come; but no, it had not. By Divine,
sovereign intervention he went on and on. When royalty
and leaders had been carried away from Judah, when
thousands of inhabitants were away there in captivity,
Jeremiah is still carrying on his work with the poor of
the flock in the land.
Then we
read Ezra 1:1 - "That the word of the Lord by the
mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred
up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia". Years
afterward, Jeremiah still lived, though he was dead; he
was still influential, though he had passed from the
earth. It is the God of resurrection in action. That is
the sovereignty of God.
And what
was the fruit of Jeremiah's ministry? Well, Daniel says,
"I... understood by the books the number of the
years whereof the word of the Lord came to
Jeremiah..." (Daniel 9:2). Daniel had been reading
Isaiah and Jeremiah, and because of this he started to
pray. The great ministry of Daniel was produced by the
understanding which he got from Isaiah and Jeremiah, and
the result was the remnant returning - the sovereign
action of God in relation to Jeremiah's ministry.
"I
have made thee a prophet unto the nations"; not only
to the nation but to the nations. Now here is Babylon,
and Cyrus, king of Persia; Babylon, Persia, all coming
under the sovereign power of God through the word of
Jeremiah. Tremendous, from a child!
I have
said that Jeremiah may stand in a special historic
relation to the great purposes of God, but the principles
hold good. We may not be Jeremiahs, Isaiahs, or Pauls,
but we are called to serve the Lord's interests, and
there may be very much more sovereignty behind our lives
than we are aware of. It may be only as we go on that we
shall become conscious that the Lord evidently brought us
into being for something - that there is something
stirring in us that gravitates in a certain direction
which is prophetic of how we are to serve the Lord. We
find things taking shape in a certain way, with a
corresponding deep exercise of our hearts about that. We
come up against our own lack of qualification, our own
unsuitability, and we are thrown right back upon the God
of resurrection. We find that the very fact of our being
thrown upon the Lord for everything is a sovereign act,
with a view to safeguarding everything for the Lord. It
is the safest thing, and perhaps one of the greatest
evidences that things are of the Lord, when we feel, on
the one hand, that we must, out of an inward compulsion,
serve the Lord, and yet, on the other hand, that if there
is to be anything at all for the Lord it must all be of
His doing. You may take it that if there is anything
about us of confidence in ourselves that we can do it,
that we are sufficient, God in His sovereignty stands off
and leaves us alone till we come to our senses. It is a
safe place, to know that everything must be of the Lord.
It is a part of His own sovereign work of grace in us.
But it is a very comforting thing to know that when the
Lord has purposes He wants to fulfil, He sovereignly
acts, even in secret, in relation to these purposes, so
that even a birth which looks simply like one of the
millions of births is a singled-out thing in the
sovereignty of God, with an object; that the upbringing,
the training, which has nothing so very distinctive about
it as making important the person concerned, is
nevertheless all a part of design; and perhaps in later
years we shall see that there was more design than we
imagined in what looked like a life without very much
design. Faith must turn to God in that way and believe
that He knows from the beginning all about us, that He
knows what He wants where we are concerned; and if we are
really crucified men and women, the purposes of God will
take their course. But let us note well that there is the
vital turning point. Whatever we may have sensed before,
until that day comes when the self-element gets right out
of the way, until all the sense that we can do it and
want to do it is thoroughly smitten and we are in the
place where we really know that if there is going to be
anything at all it must be of the Lord, nothing can
really arise. But when that day comes, then all that
purpose which has been waiting stored up will begin to
break out and take charge of our lives in a new way, we
shall know that we are girded by God for something - not
perhaps what we would have chosen. It may perhaps be for
the most difficult thing ever given to anyone to do.
Jeremiah would have escaped it a thousand times if he
could have done so, but he could not; and in this very
holding on his way we see but one more expression of the
fact that once the Lord has set His hand to do a work, He
will sovereignly carry the vessel of that service to full
accomplishment so long as the vessel remains suitably
yielded in His hand.