“Set Apart by God”
One of my favorite memories from my childhood is listening to Bill Cosby do one of his comedy routines. On a furlough from the mission field, Mom and Dad picked up several of Bill Cosby’s albums. In the evening, after dinner, we would listen to the magical voice of Bill Cosby talking about the ordinary things of life in a way that made us laugh. But I don’t think that any routine he did made us laugh harder than the one about the conversation between God and Noah. It begins with Noah, a carpenter, sawing some wood in his workshop…
“voo-ah, voo-ah, voo-ah, voo-ah”
(ding)
“Noah”
(silence)
“Is someone there?”
“voo-ah, voo-ah, voo-ah, voo-ah”
(ding)
“Noah”
(silence)
“Who is it?”
“It’s the Lord, Noah.”
(silence)
“Right!”
“Who is it really?”
The Lord, of course, goes on to tell Noah to build an ark. Noah has no idea what an ark is. So, God begins to describe an ark, using measurements in cubits. Noah asks what a “cubit” is and God can’t remember. We laughed our way through the entire description of the ark that Noah was to build, the task of bringing the animals to the ark in pairs, and the warning of the coming flood. Through it all, Noah continues to be skeptical of God’s call and the prophecy of the coming flood. At the end of this conversation, when Noah, tired of the constant ridicule of his neighbors and the disruption of his life, dismisses God’s words and returns to his normal routine, we heard the roll of thunder and the heavy rainfall that signaled God’s divine intent… and we would all laugh even harder.
Part of what made this routine so humorous was the realization that… as humorous as it was… much of it reflected what might truly happen if the voice of God actually spoke to us. We, like Noah, would wonder who was speaking to us. We would scoff at the possibility that it might be God. And we would be very skeptical of the message. Our neighbors, too, would not believe the story that we told them. And, it would take something that we could not control… like thunder… and lightning… and rain… to convince us that it was real.
Today, we look at the call of Jeremiah. The call. There is no more mysterious communication that happens between God and one of God’s Creatures than the call. It’s an intimate moment…an intensely personal encounter. Jeremiah says, “Then the word of the Lord came to me”… not to the group of people standing with me… not to all of the sons of the priests of Anathoth… not to anyone else… “The word of the Lord came to me.” You see, the call is only heard by the one being called. Think of some of the other prophets: Samuel was alone in the dark in the middle of the night when God called him. Amos was herding sheep on a hillside. No one else saw the visions of Ezekiel and Isaiah. And Moses was the only one who saw the burning bush. The call from God is to one… one person… chosen… claimed… and set apart for a task.
So, what was it like for Jeremiah… this call? Have you ever wondered? Have you been called? What was it like for you? Did you hear a big booming voice in stereo as Bill Cosby’s Noah heard it? Or did you hear a whisper, like the still, small voice that Elijah heard by Mount Horeb? Maybe, for you, it wasn’t a voice at all, but a vivid dream… or a vision. Perhaps, it was a feeling… something that tugged at your heart…a pull that you could not ignore. Maybe it was like a muse that inspires writers and poets. They say that when the muse is not present, nothing inspires them. They have “writer’s block.” So, they sit and wait for their muse as a sailor waits for the wind to fill the sails of a sailboat. But, when the muse comes… then, they say, the urge to write is unquenchable. The writer or poet may go for days without eating or sleeping in order to capture the passion of that moment. Was it like that… your call? Who can say? Only you and God… for when the call comes, it comes only to you.
It is an intimate thing, this call. As we learn in Jeremiah’s story, the call comes from a God who knows you better than you know yourself. From One who has loved you from before you were formed in the womb. From One who has chosen you… claimed you… and set you apart for a specific task… before you were born. And from you, God demands obedience. God tells Jeremiah in no uncertain terms, “You will go to whomever I send you and you will say whatever I command you to say.” Scary? Oh, quite scary. Watching my parents when I was growing up, I can still remember saying to myself, “I am never going to be a Christian, because I know that the minute I let God into my life, God will send me to some cold and desolate part of the world… like Tibet.” So, for forty years, I resisted allowing God into my life. I had Christian friends who would try to dispel my fears by showing me that verse in Psalm 37 that says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” But I knew that verse was a “Catch 22” verse, for if you truly delight yourself in the Lord, then the desires of your heart will be the will of God… and obedience to God’s will.
There is no question that God demands obedience to the call. We have only to look at the stories of other prophets to see that God commanded them all to go… to go and prophesy. And God did not take “No” for an answer. Look at Moses, who offered six different objections to God’s call… and God answered every one of them, coming close to outright anger with Moses in the process. Jeremiah also protested… because he thought he was too young. But Samuel was just a boy, too, and it didn’t matter. In our text today, God basically tells Jeremiah to be quiet and do what he is told. And we know that, if any prophet ran from their assigned task, as Jonah ran from Nineveh and Elijah ran from Jezebel, God found them and brought them back to do the job.
The task that God requires of you may not be an easy task. Jeremiah was told to preach destruction to a people who believed that they could not be destroyed. What do you think your reception would be if you preached those words in this country today? Do you think it is any easier to be a Christian leader today… and to talk about what it means to be righteous in today’s world? Haven’t we, as a nation, become apathetic to the word of God? Do we think we are exempt from God’s wrath just because centuries ago this nation was founded on Christian principles?
God told Jeremiah to prophesy… that he was appointed to pluck up and to pull down, and to destroy, and to tear down, to build and to plant. That’s a strange combination of verbs, isn’t it? Four verbs dealing with destruction and only two dealing with new life. And the four verbs dealing with destruction are not, shall we say, “gentle” verbs. God did not say twist a little… turn it slightly… nudge it… move over. No… God basically said eradicate… exterminate… eliminate… and utterly extinguish from the earth. Why the emphasis on destruction? Why more verbs of destruction than verbs dealing with new life?
How many of you have driven by a farmer’s field and seen isolated stalks of previous plantings sticking up? How many of you have ever cleared the ground for a vegetable garden, planted your vegetables, and then found remnants of the previous ground cover coming up among your vegetables? How many of you have tried to get dandelions out of your lawn… or ivy… or clover… and had it come back over and over again? Did you know that the taproot for a dandelion can grow to two, three, or even four feet deep into the ground and, if it is not completely removed, that dandelion will grow back again?
God knew that, if the evil that was present in the lives of the Judeans was not completely eliminated… completely eradicated… it would return to re-infest the population. God knew that it was necessary to knock down every single thing that served to support the existing lifestyle of the Jewish people… forcing them to become totally reliant upon their God again, as they had been in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt… to prevent them from thinking that they could, in any manner, continue on their current path, relying upon their own resources to survive. Only by focusing totally upon God again could the Judeans begin to develop a new life of faith and righteousness.
They are tearing up Interstate 20 between here and Weatherford right now. Because of their work, we have all been able to observe, in excruciating detail, the methodology for digging up an old road and putting in a completely new one. And I am not talking about simply skimming off the top layer and putting fresh asphalt down. I am talking about digging down to bedrock and putting in new layers of dirt, rock, and, finally, concrete. I have learned so much about this process over the past three years, that I could supervise the process at this point. And those of you who travel that road know that they have just completed half of the task… and are now beginning to work on the other half!
Do you understand that this is what God was doing with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah? Taking them down to bedrock… because that was the only way… that is the only way… to guarantee the integrity of what is built above it. Think back to the Exodus. God kept the children of Israel in the wilderness until the entire generation that had left Egypt had died, so that there would be no memory of an earlier life… only a life of total dependence upon God. With the destruction of the two kingdoms and the exile to Babylon, God would bring the children of Israel, once again, to total dependence upon God. Only when that was achieved would God allow a remnant to return to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and the Temple that once stood there.
How do you tell a people that the journey ahead is a difficult one? The trite answer is that you speak the truth with love. Oh, how often have we heard that sentence misused? And yet, Jeremiah had to speak the truth, for God commanded him to do so. Does God require any less of you? Or of me? No. You go to the people to whom God sends you and you speak the words that God gives you to speak. Sometimes, those words are not easy words to speak. And sometimes, the pain of speaking those words is more than you can bear. For, as often as Jeremiah spoke the prophetic oracles that God gave to him, Jeremiah also lamented the necessity of the coming destruction. Jeremiah loved the people of Judah and loved the city he had lived in for years. But, in the end, Jeremiah did the only thing he could do: he spoke the words that God gave him to speak… and he stayed with his people to the bitter end… loving them… counseling them… sharing their pain… and weeping over them, even as Jesus wept over Jerusalem in his final days.
You, too, have been set apart for a task by God. What is the task that God has given to you? Does that task challenge you… stretch you… cause you some sleepless nights… and, at times, bring you to tears? Does the future sometimes seem dark and full of despair? Many of us learned this week that even Mother Theresa questioned her own faith. And yet, do you continue to walk the path that God has set before you… as she did… because it is what God has called you to do?
Think for a moment: Was the future that Jeremiah painted totally devoid of hope? No. For at the end of the phrase with the four verbs of destruction come two verbs of new life: to build and to plant. Something new would be built… something new would be planted. In the words of Amos, who prophesied to the people in the Northern Kingdom of Israel before it was destroyed: “They shall (re)build the desolated cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them.” (Amos 9:14b-15) And, even Jeremiah, in the middle of his prophecies of doom, prophesied the restoration: “For the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the Lord, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors and they shall take possession of it… And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 30:3; 31:28) Jeremiah never saw that day, for he died in Egypt before the restoration. But, even as the captives went to Babylon and the refugees fled to Egypt, he urged them to cling to God for their hope.
As arduous as the path is that God lays before us… as challenging as that assignment may be… there is always hope for a new and different future. But to see it, we sometimes have to leave the past behind. As the prophet Isaiah said, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:18-19). God has set you apart for a purpose… as God set each of us apart for a purpose… just as God set Jeremiah apart for a purpose. God has called you for a purpose… and that purpose holds both challenge and opportunity.
That task also holds the promise of God’s presence with us. You see, we are never alone in our effort to do God’s will. God is always present… from the beginning… to the end. This same promise of God’s presence is ours today. For, from the beginning of our lives to the end, God is with us. That was the promise that God gave to Abraham… to Isaac… to Jacob… and to Jeremiah. And it is the promise that God gives to us. He who is “God with us”… the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of our lives… is with us in all that we do in God’s name. So, go and do as God has commanded. Amen. Jeremiah 1:4-10