Jeremiah's Commission

Good morning, everyone. I'm going to be reading from chapter 1 of the book of Jeremiah.

The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin,

to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.

It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah,

the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Then he said,

And then I said,

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me,

For I am only a youth.

But the Lord said to me,

Do not say,

I am only a youth, for to all whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me,

Behold, I have put words in your mouth.

See that I set you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms,

to pluck you up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

Jeremiah, what do you see?

And I said,

I see an almond branch.

And then the Lord said to me,

You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.

The word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying,

What do you see?

And I said,

I see a boiling pot facing away from the north.

Then the Lord said to me,

Out of the north, disaster shall be let loose upon the inhabitants of the land.

For behold, I am calling the tribes of the kingdom of the north, declares the Lord,

and they shall come, and everyone shall set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem,

against all its walls, around and against all the cities of Judah.

And I will declare my judgments against them, for all their evil in forsaking me.

They have made offerings to other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands.

But you dress yourself for work.

Arise and say to them everything that I command you.

Do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them.

And I behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls,

against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests, and the people of the land.

They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you.

For I am with you, declares the Lord, to deliver you.

Good morning, everyone.

Well, I'm going to be speaking this week and next week from the opening chapters of the book of Jeremiah.

And let me just say briefly how that came about, and then we'll get into it.

How did it come about?

Well, some of you will have received an email this week, or most of you probably,

to say that I've started work as a pastor here as of this month,

which is we moved the start date forward a month.

And I think maybe...

I think maybe the elders were worried I'd sit around doing nothing, so they asked me to preach.

And so we've pushed our series from Jonah back a couple of weeks.

We'll start that in a couple of weeks, and I'll be speaking from Jeremiah.

These talks have grown out of a series of talks I gave for NCS at Windicon a few years ago.

So the book of Jeremiah had been largely opaque to me.

I really...I knew some bits of it, but I didn't really have a sense of the book as a whole.

And so I was eager to tackle it myself.

It makes up 5.2% of the Bible, Jeremiah.

And yet maybe like me, you're sort of unfamiliar with it.

So that's why I wanted to tackle it with NCS.

And as I prepared that series, I fell in love with the book.

But I was also sort of exhausted by preaching it.

And so after preaching it at a conference a few years ago, I then kind of just...

I don't know, like I kind of hid it away in a cell in my mind and locked the door and threw away the key.

But recently I've been sort of trying to peek in through the keyhole just to try and reabsorb some of the lessons I had from the book.

And so it's something I've been thinking about.

I thought it might be helpful for us to think about together.

I'm not promising a series on the book of Jeremiah, but we are just going to dip our toes in the water in the first couple of chapters over the next...

Oh, this week and next.

But I want to start by asking you a question.

Do you expect it to be easier or harder to be a Christian over the next 40 years?

If you consider the next four decades ahead of us, do you think it'll be easier to be a Christian or harder to be a Christian?

Now, I'm no expert when it comes to predicting the future.

I think there can be a tendency among Christians to be doomsayers and pessimists, and I think we should resist that temptation.

But I think we would be naive if we were to say we expect it to be easy.

Absolutely, in certain parts of the world, it will certainly not be easy.

I'm thinking, for example, of northern and central Africa, countries like Nigeria and neighbouring countries where Islamic extremists run rampant terrorising and murdering Christians.

But even in the West, even in Western countries like Australia, politics and political discourse have become increasingly embittered.

And sometimes Christians are either drawn into that or even fall afoul of it.

You might remember in September last year the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

I think that's an indication that there's an undercurrent of resentment in our society that can turn violent.

And it emerges particularly at the intersection of religion and politics and social issues.

Now, I think outright violence will likely remain rare.

But sadly, violence is not inexplicable, given that there is, in some segments of our society, this undercurrent of hostility.

Of course, hostility is not the whole story.

It's not the full story.

We're also, in our society, seeing a rise in sympathy toward Christianity and interest in Christianity.

So I have a friend who's a university lecturer.

And he's a lecturer in politics and political theory.

As his university started back in the last couple of weeks, he's been teaching 800 first-year students in political theory and politics.

And his interest in free speech and his argument against sort of the encroaching of post-modernism in academia, which has sort of led to an erosion of the concept of truth.

So he's opposing that.

That has led him to greater openness towards Christianity and even to engaging with the Bible.

He's not yet a Christian.

But there is sympathy there because of how he feels, where he feels our culture is heading and his discomfort with that.

But no doubt, hostility is also present in at least some segments of our society.

Now, in that present social climate, there are two risks, I think, for us as Christians.

Here are, or there may be a number of them, but here are two.

One risk is that we might become defensive, you know, develop an us-versus-them mindset.

And so rather than trying gently to persuade those with whom we disagree, we, you know, we put the walls up and just aggressively assert our own rights, us-versus-them.

But there's another risk, and that is that we might, that Christians might become timid, fearful, withdraw, cowed into silence, keep our heads down, try not to be noticed, try to avoid trouble.

That's a danger, too.

Well, the Bible passage today, Jeremiah chapter 1, will encourage us that we don't need to be defensive and we don't need to be timid as we engage with our world around us.

Jeremiah 1 · chapter mention

Will you join with me in prayer?

Then we'll come to the text.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can gather here today and reflect on your word.

And now we ask, Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts may be acceptable in your sight.

Our Lord, our Rock, our Redeemer.

Amen.

We'll have a look again at chapter 1 of Jeremiah, verses 1 to 3.

The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin,

to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.

It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

The first two verses of the introduction to this book capture the dual nature of the text we're reading here and indeed of all the Bible.

But the dual nature of the text here, verse 1, these are the words of Jeremiah.

Verse 2, this is the word of the Lord.

That's the dual nature of Scripture, both a divine and a human word.

The Scriptures, including the book of Jeremiah, is a divine word, infallible, perfect, true, powerful.

God asks in Jeremiah chapter 23, verse 28, what does straw have in common with wheat?

Jeremiah 23:28

And he's talking about his word.

He's comparing his word, which is true and good and which nourishes the soul, with the empty imaginings of false prophets.

What does straw have in common with wheat?

In the next verse, Jeremiah 23, verse 29, God says, is not my word like a fire?

Jeremiah 23:29

Is not my word like fire and like a hammer that breaks rock in pieces?

God's word is powerful.

This is the word of the Lord.

But when we read Jeremiah, we are also reading the words of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah, now there are some books in the Old Testament where the author is unknown and essentially irrelevant, the human author, that is.

Jeremiah is not one of those books.

The man Jeremiah is very much present in this book.

These are his words and they can't be separated from the life he lived and the things he experienced.

Much of the book of Jeremiah, in fact, already existed in written form in his lifetime.

But some ordering and framing took place after his death, like this introduction, verses 1 to 3, and a final chapter, an epilogue in chapter 52.

But who was Jeremiah?

Well, Jeremiah, we're told, he was the son of Hilkiah, which is a common name, so that doesn't tell us much.

He's one of the priests at Anathoth in Benjamin.

Anathoth is near Jerusalem, so near the capital city, about five kilometres to the northeast of Jerusalem.

And so in this book, we'll often find Jeremiah in Jerusalem, at the temple or at other places in the city.

We'll see him speaking with priests and indeed with kings and officials.

His membership in a priestly family may have given him some access, some standing, but it seems he wasn't particularly of high rank himself.

Well, Jeremiah was a young man when the Lord called him and he had a long ministry spanning about 40 years.

And spanning the reigns of five kings, three of those five kings are named here.

The other two only ruled for three months each.

And each of the three named kings, Josiah, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, are significant in the events that unfold, especially the second and third of those.

But the events of the first chapter, his prophetic call, it seems, occurred in the 13th year of King Josiah.

So this is around the year 626 BC.

And yet at the outset, we're told about another event, an event that at that time was future, that would occur 40 years later.

At the end of Jeremiah's ministry, in the year 587, the end of verse 3, the captivity of Jerusalem.

The captivity of Jerusalem was a series of forced deportations by the Babylonians of the people of Judah into exile in Babylon.

The most momentous of those was in 587, where after a horrific siege, King Nebuchadnezzar captured the city.

He burned the city with fire.

He burned the temple to the ground.

And he carried off thousands of people as captives.

And for those who lived through Jeremiah's ministry, that's the captivity of Jerusalem.

That was future.

And so in a sense, it was prospective.

It was perhaps one possible future outcome.

Maybe even a remote outcome in their minds.

But for those of us who read the book of Jeremiah in its final form, that is in the past.

And that terrible event casts its shadow over the whole book.

So that comment at the end of verse 3 is sort of a major spoiler of what was coming in the rest of the book.

And it places Jeremiah in that biblical history for us.

Well, this is where the book's heading.

But it begins with God calling young Jeremiah, this young priest, in the 13th year of Josiah's reign.

Verse 4.

Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

And before you were born, I consecrated you.

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

I mean, we see here in verse 5 the breadth of the Lord's authority.

That God is sovereign over time, past and future.

Before I formed you, God says, I knew you.

And we see that God's power is active at the macro and the micro level.

God forms the unborn child in the womb of his or her mother.

And God rules over nations.

The same Lord who determines the fate of nations also assigns the place and the calling of each individual.

He says to Jeremiah, I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

But Jeremiah himself is not so sure.

Now at times, God calls people who are eager for appointment.

So when God calls Isaiah, Isaiah says, or when God calls for someone, Isaiah says, here I am, send me.

But often God calls those who have their own self-doubts.

So King Saul, on the day that Samuel presented him to Israel, had to be fetched from where he was hiding among the supplies.

Jeremiah had his doubts.

Verse 6.

Then I said, ah, Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.

You know, I do not know how to speak.

That objection had been tried by Moses before, as Lachlan mentioned in the kids talk.

They've been tried by Moses, but God wasn't buying it.

And maybe Jeremiah knew that that objection wasn't good enough on its own.

So he adds, I'm only a youth.

You know, Moses, he was a mature man when you call it, but I'm just a, I'm a youngster.

But God will have none of that objection either.

Verse 7.

But the Lord said to me, do not say I am only a youth, for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

Now, I don't know if, Lachlan, I don't know if you're reading the script of my talk, but I also had an illustration about a balance bike in here.

So I'm going to press on with that.

When one of my kids is scared to try something new, I'll try to convince them that it's within their ability.

That they're able to do it.

You can do it, I'll say.

I'll try and encourage them.

And so, when they're making that transition from, you know, discarding the training wheels from their bike, I'll say, well, remember, when you rode a balance bike, you could balance on the balance bike.

You don't need training wheels on your pedal bike.

You can do it.

I'll try to reassure them to bolster their self-esteem, their self-confidence.

Is that God's approach here?

Well, not exactly.

God doesn't say, well, Jeremiah, remember, like, you won a prize in school for public speaking?

You're the best man for the job.

He doesn't say that.

In fact, he doesn't really engage with Jeremiah's objection at all.

He just dismisses it.

He just restates the call.

Don't say, I'm only a youth, for to all whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

Just restates the call in the form of, this time, of a command.

You must go.

You must speak.

So don't be surprised if God calls you to a task that seems beyond your ability.

God doesn't need our self-confidence, and God's not hindered by our self-doubts.

God doesn't call the gifted.

God gifts the called.

God's not hindered by our self-doubts.

God's not hindered by our self-doubts.

And sometimes the Lord sends us where we would not choose to go.

But he never sends us on our own.

Look at verse 8.

Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.

God reassures Jeremiah, promising his presence and his protection.

I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.

Now, and I guess it is reassuring.

But you might also realise it's reassuring in a foreboding kind of way.

Like someone lending you a car for a long trip and saying,

just make sure you have NRMA roadside assistance on speed dial.

You know, it doesn't really inspire confidence.

Or someone telling you as you head out for an ocean swim,

don't worry about the sharks, they prefer surfers.

Do not be afraid of them, says the Lord.

Hang on, hang on.

Why do I need to be afraid?

Just slow down a bit.

I will deliver you, says the Lord.

Hold on up a moment, God.

Why will I need deliverance?

See, not only is God calling Jeremiah to something he doesn't think he can do,

but already Jeremiah will sense that there will be opposition

and there will be danger.

But God will give Jeremiah what he most needs.

Verse 9.

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth,

and the Lord said to me,

Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.

It's a symbolic action that illustrates Jeremiah's call to be a prophet.

Henceforth, Jeremiah's words would not be his own.

He would speak as the mouthpiece of God.

But every word he needed, the Lord God would give him.

And finally, God again reiterates Jeremiah's call,

filling out what his ministry would be about.

Verse 10.

See, I've set you this day over nations and over kingdoms

to pluck up and to break down,

to destroy and to overthrow,

to build and to plant.

God repeats what he's already said in verse 5,

that Jeremiah's a prophet to the nations, plural.

There are times throughout the book where we might be tempted to forget that

and think that Jeremiah's just a prophet to Judah,

just a prophet to the people of Israel.

But from the moment of his call,

God says his ministry has a wider scope.

It's to the nations.

But you'll see here, it's not just as in verse 5,

to the nations,

but here in verse 10,

I've set you this day over nations

and over kingdoms.

In Jeremiah's day,

it would seem like the little kingdom of Judah

was utterly at the mercy of greater forces,

of world powers,

of conquering invaders.

And humanly speaking,

it was.

But the deeper reality is that

all the nations

and all the kingdoms of the world

and all their cities

and all their armies

are subject to the word of God.

Nigeria, Yemen, Afghanistan, China,

the United States, Australia,

all subject

to the word of God.

The word of the Lord stands

over all nations and all kingdoms.

And what was the word of God

regarding the nations and kingdoms

of the world in Jeremiah's day?

Well, it's summarised in those six verbs

in the second half of verse 10,

to pluck up and to break down,

to destroy and to overthrow,

to build and to plant.

Now, those six verbs are weighty ones

in the book of Jeremiah.

When they pop up later in the book,

it's worth taking notice.

But three things are evident

just from Jeremiah's commissioning here.

First, we see that Jeremiah's message

would be mixed.

It would involve both negative and positive.

There's plucking up,

but there's planting.

There's destroying,

there's breaking down,

but there's building.

There's a mix.

There's negative and positive.

But secondly,

the balance would lean decidedly

in one direction.

There would be more that is negative

than positive,

more demolition than recreation.

And yet thirdly,

the negative precedes the positive.

First comes the destroying

and overthrowing,

then the building.

First comes the plucking up

and breaking down,

then the planting.

To borrow an expression

from one commentator,

the message of Jeremiah

is that there would be

terrible trouble,

but then wondrous renewal.

And we hear some of that

same message again

in the teaching of Jesus,

don't we?

That there will be terrible trouble,

but there is wondrous renewal.

Now, in one sense,

the call of Jeremiah the prophet

ends at verse 10.

And in the rest of chapter 1,

we hear the first two messages

the Lord gave to his newly

appointed prophet.

But they are messages

which clarify,

further clarify,

Jeremiah's call.

Now, I've divided them

into three points

on your outlines,

just to make it a bit easier

to follow.

But technically,

there are just two messages here.

You see the first one

in verse 11 introduced,

and the word of the Lord

came to me.

And that one's brief,

verses 11 to 12.

But then in verse 13,

we have the word of the Lord

came to me a second time.

And that seems to encompass

all of verse 13 to 19.

Now, if verse 13 is the second time,

then verse 11 must be the first time,

which means that when it says

the word of the Lord

came to me in verse 4,

well, that's not counted

in these two messages

in the second half.

It's kind of in a category

of its own.

So it's the verses

4 to 10,

like the commissioning,

and then these two words,

which help explain

the commissioning.

So what are Jeremiah's

first messages?

They involve an almond tree,

a boiling pot,

a fortified city,

an iron pillar,

and a bronze wall.

So first,

an almond branch.

Look at verse 11.

And the word of the Lord

came to me saying,

Jeremiah,

what do you see?

And I said,

I see an almond branch.

Then the Lord said to me,

you have seen well,

for I am watching over my word

to perform it.

Now,

how many of you like puns?

Gareth,

Gareth likes puns.

Yep.

Simon likes,

yes.

Yep.

Joel,

yep.

Okay.

I can see,

yep.

Some people like puns,

some people don't like puns.

Well,

God obviously likes puns.

So if you like puns,

you're in divine company.

Because what we have here

is a word play.

Almond branch is the word

shakade.

And watching is the word

shakade.

And in fact,

shakade,

shakade.

In fact,

if you write them out in Hebrew,

the consonants are identical.

It's only when you sort of

vocalize them out in vowels

that you have a different

expression of those

consonants.

So the same three

Hebrew consonants.

So God's using a word play here.

He's using a pun.

And the whole point of this

visual pun,

the almond branch,

is I am watching,

shakade,

over my word

to perform it.

I am watching over my word

to perform it.

Now there are two reasons

we need to know this,

that God is watching

over his word

to perform it.

First reason we need to know this

is that if God is watching

over his word

to perform it,

then his word

will be performed.

It will be fulfilled.

Everything God has said

will happen.

Every promise God has given

his people

will be fulfilled.

Every purpose God has

will be accomplished.

God is watching over his word

to perform it.

In the pages of Jeremiah,

there are people who say,

no,

God will not

pluck up and break down.

God will not

destroy and overthrow.

But God is watching

over his word

to perform it.

He will do

what he says he will do.

On the other hand,

when God's plucking up

and breaking down

is underway,

when he's destroying

and overthrowing

is complete

in the

captivity of Jerusalem,

mentioned in verse 3,

at that time,

one could scarcely

dare to believe

so terrible

would the times be.

One would scarcely

dare to believe

that God will build

and plant.

But God is watching

over his word

to perform it.

And when you read

in the word of God

that our saviour

will return,

that we'll see him

face to face,

that we'll be

raised like him,

that he'll transform

our lowly bodies

to be like

his glorious bodies,

that as we saw

at the church camp

last weekend

in 2 Peter 3,

there is a new heavens

and a new earth,

the home of righteousness.

And moreover,

when we read

that God is guarding

his people,

guarding us

until that day,

that God is

carrying on

the good work

he began in us

until it's complete,

when we read

all these things

we can know

that God is watching

over his word

to perform it.

His purposes,

his word,

his promises

will not fail.

There's a second reason

it's good for us

to know that God

is watching over

his word to perform it

and that is

if God is watching

over his word

to perform it,

then it is not

up to us

to watch over

his word

to perform it.

Now let me explain

what I mean there.

Of course we do

watch over his word

as we wait

for its fulfillment

and we listen

to his word

as we seek

to obey it,

but we don't

watch over God's word

as God watches

over God's word.

That is,

we don't

arrogate to

ourselves

the responsibility

to ensure

God's word

is fulfilled.

That is God's

doing,

not ours.

In the past

several decades

there has been

much emphasis

on church growth.

Church growth

manuals,

church growth

conferences,

church growth

workshops

and we expect,

can expect

leaders of church,

pastors,

elders and so on

to grow the church,

to have a vision

for growth

and so on

with measurable

goals and strategies

to achieve

those goals.

But we must remember

it's Jesus Christ

who said,

I will build

my church

and it's God

who places

the parts of the body,

every one of them

just as he

wants to.

Now of course

we,

church leaders

but all of us,

all believers,

we need to give

ourselves

to the means

that God has,

that Christ uses

to build his church.

We must give

ourselves to those

means,

to the word of God,

to prayer,

to deeds of love.

But remember

it's God

who's watching

over his word

to see

that it's fulfilled.

It's God

who will do it.

And that's the first

message Jeremiah

received,

the almond tree,

the almond branch,

God is watching.

What about the second

message?

The disturbing

news for Jeremiah

is that before

the building

and planting

must come

the plucking up

and breaking down,

the destroying

and overthrowing.

Verse 13,

the word of the Lord

came to me

a second time

saying,

what do you see?

And I said,

I see a boiling pot

facing away

from the north.

Then the Lord

said to me,

out of the north

disaster

shall be let loose

upon all the

inhabitants

of the land.

For behold,

I am calling

all the tribes

of the kingdoms

of the north,

declares the Lord,

and they shall come

and everyone

shall set his throne

at the entrance

of the gates

of Jerusalem

and against

all its walls

all around

and against

all the cities

of Judah

and I will

declare my

judgments against

them for all

their evil

in forsaking me.

They have made

offerings to other

gods and worshipped

the works of

their own hands.

Christians.

Now this is what

lay ahead for

Jerusalem.

This is what

lay ahead for

Jeremiah,

for the Lord's

prophet.

The boiling pot

tilting towards

Jerusalem from

the north,

pouring out

disaster.

Actually pouring

out the worst

kind of disaster.

A disaster that

was completely

justified and

thoroughly deserved.

You know it's

bad enough when

we suffer and

we don't

deserve it

because if we

suffer and we

don't deserve

it, then we

might at least

hope for some

sympathy.

But to suffer

only the just

desserts of our

own wicked

deeds, as God

says he is

doing there,

here in verse

16, I will

declare my

judgments against

them for all

their evil, to

suffer the just

desserts of our

own wicked

deeds as

Jerusalem was

about to do,

what hope

is there?

What sympathy

can there be?

All of this

would have been

very unwelcome

news for

Jeremiah.

Had he remained

a priest in

Anathoth, his

life would have

been much more

serene.

I mean, yeah,

there would have

been that trouble

at the end of it,

but he could have

avoided 40 years

of trouble.

Jeremiah chapter

one is not a

very encouraging

job description.

If I were

Jeremiah, I'd

probably be going

back to seek.com.au

and, you know,

trying to find

another time and

place that needed

a profit.

But of course,

that wasn't up

to Jeremiah.

You may well

remember Lord of

the Rings, the

words of Frodo

to Gandalf.

I wish it

need not have

happened in my

time, said

Frodo.

So do I, said

Gandalf, and so

do all who live

to see such times,

but that is not

for them to decide.

All we have to

decide is what

to do with the

time that is

given to us.

And what must

Jeremiah do with

the time that was

given to him?

Verse 17.

But you,

dress yourself

for work,

gird up your

loins, dress

yourself for work,

arise, and say

to them everything

that I command

you.

Do not be

dismayed by

them, lest I

dismay you

before them.

And I, behold,

I make you

this day a

fortified city,

an iron

pillar, and

bronze walls

against the

whole land,

against the

kings of

Judah, its

officials, its

priests, and

the people of

the land.

They will

fight against

you, but

they shall not

prevail against

you, for I

am with you,

declares the

Lord, to

deliver you.

The Lord says

that the whole

land would be

against Jeremiah.

The kings,

Jehoiakim and

Zedekiah, would

be against him.

Officials,

priests, people,

would be against

him.

But as he

spoke God's

word, this

young son of

Hilkiah, this

reluctant prophet,

would prove to

be as unbreakable

as the message

he proclaimed.

I make you

this day a

fortified city,

an iron pillar,

and bronze

walls.

There may even

be some deliberate

irony here,

you know, that

they're featuring

in this book,

two fortified

cities, Jerusalem

and Jeremiah,

and one would

outlast the

other.

At the entrance

to the temple

of the Lord in

Jerusalem were

two great bronze

pillars, each

eight metres tall,

you can read about

them in 1 Kings

1 Kings 7 · chapter mention

chapter 7, two

great bronze

pillars, symbols

of the Lord's

strength.

death.

In Jeremiah

Jeremiah 52:17

chapter 52

verse 17, when

the Babylonians

captured Jerusalem

and burned the

temple, they

took those

pillars, they

broke them in

pieces, and

they carried the

bronze off to

Babylon.

But though

Jerusalem and

the temple would

fall, and though

Jeremiah the

prophet would

suffer and be

mistreated, he

would nevertheless

remain unbreakable

because of God's

protective presence

and God's power

to deliver.

Julio Rubel

was an evangelist

in Colombia

in the 1980s

and 1990s,

and God

worked through

him to save

many, to

bring many

to know

Jesus and

to bring

renewal in

the church.

And yet

his ministry,

his evangelism

and his

ministry, he

was constantly

facing threats

from drug

cartels who

opposed his

work.

After years

of preaching,

he was

eventually gunned

down by

assassins

and died

for the work

of the Lord.

But shortly

before he

died, he

said this,

he said,

in the face

of these

threats he

was receiving

from the

drug cartels,

he said,

I know

that I

am absolutely

immortal

until I

have finished

the work

that God

intends for

me to do.

And the

same is

true for

each one

of us,

isn't

it?

Each of

us who

have the

gospel on

our lips,

who have

a commission

to the

nations,

who have

the promise

of God's

presence with

us.

God has

prepared works

in advance

for you to

do, he

promises you

that in

Ephesians

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2.

Some of

those works

may seem

to be beyond

your ability.

some will

be things

you wouldn't

have chosen

for yourself.

Sometimes

people may

even fight

against you.

But we

are absolutely

immortal until

we have

finished the

work God

intends us

to do.

For

Jeremiah,

that meant

40 plus

years of,

40 plus

hard and

painful years

as he

outlived

kings,

outlasted

cities,

and kept

proclaiming

the word

of God.

I wonder

what it

might mean

for each

of you.

Will you

join with

me in

prayer?

Amen.

Heavenly

Father,

you are

the Lord

of nations

and you

are watching

over your

word to

fulfil it.

No word

and no

promise of

yours will

fail.

We thank

you that

you are

with us

by your

spirit to

deliver us.

Thank you

that we do

not need to

fear

whatever

sufferings or

threats we

may face.

Lord God,

please give

us hearts

that are

willing to

obey you.

Wherever you

send,

Lord,

may we

go.

Whatever you

command,

Lord.

Thank you.