The rabbis called him “the Weeping Prophet.” They said he began wailing the moment he was born. When Michelangelo painted him on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he presented him in a posture of despair. He looks like a man who has wept so long he has no tears left to shed. His face is turned to one side, like a man who has been battered by many blows. His shoulders are hunched forward, weighed down by the sins of Judah. His eyes also are cast down, as if he can no longer bear to see God’s people suffer. His hand covers his mouth. Perhaps he has nothing left to say.
I. JEREMIAH’S INTRODUCTION (Jer 1:1-3)
His name was Jeremiah and His story begins like this:
Jer 1:1-3 - "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 Amon, 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."
This introduction is informative on three counts. It gives us personal details about the prophet, it indicates the divine source of his message and tells us something about the period of his ministry.
1. Personal Details:
He was a preacher’s son, for his father Hilkiah was a priest. He was born in the village of Anathoth, close enough to Jerusalem to see the city walls, but at the edge of the wilderness, where the land slopes down to the Dead Sea.
2. Divine Source:
It says the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah
3. His Ministry:
a. Jeremiah lived when little Israel was tossed around by three great superpowers: Assyria to the north, Egypt to the south, and Babylon to the east. He served—and suffered—through the administrations of three kings: Josiah the reformer, Jehoiakim the despot, and Zedekiah the puppet. He was a prophet during the cold November winds of Judah’s life as a nation, right up to the time God’s people were deported to Babylon. Jeremiah himself was exiled to Egypt, where he died.
b. He labored as God’s prophet for forty years or more, from 627 b.c. to some time after 586 b.c. Four decades is a long time to be a weeping prophet.
Sometimes we stop at this information and think this is all that is there in theses verses but looking further into it we see deeper meaning. Though the Jer 1:2-3 are set in chronological order, what they really convey to us is that they are a spiritual overview of the whole book.
The verses say that Jeremiah received his calling in the 13th year of Josiah’s reign, and that has special spiritual significance, which is missed often. On reading 2 Ch 34:1,3, we see that Josiah became king at the age of 8 and he began to seek the God of his father at a very young age. It goes on to say in his 12th year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, Asherah poles, carved images and idols. His reformation began in his 12th year of reign and Jeremiah receives his calling the following year. Thus, when Josiah’s revival is still in its infancy, God calls Jeremiah to challenge the nation to go deeper in their commitment to Him, their God.
God knows the hearts and mind of people. He knew that they were only outwardly compliant with what was required of them from the Law and not compliant with their heart. God wanted them to come to him with a heart and mind that was geared to worshipping Him. But they were only pretending to come back to God while they still committed idolatry.
God warned them and commanded them to repent BUT looking at history, we see the people of Judah refused to do so. They rebelled against their maker.
And from the reign of Josiah to that of Zedekiah, Jeremiah prophesied. He acted as the mouthpiece of God, delivering his destructive message that Judah would be punished for her idolatry and wrongdoing. But, after Josiah's and Jehoiakim's reign, in the 5th month of Zedekiah’s kingship, God’s people were deported. They were exiled. And the mention of it here, in the introduction, holds significance.
This deportation was the climax to Jeremiah’s preaching. Because it was a divine demonstration of his authenticity as a genuine prophet of Yahweh because with the exile, which happened at the end of his 40 year prophetic ministry, the basic thrust of his prophecy was fulfilled. Because he spoke of judgement for years and he spoke specifically of the overthrow of Judah. He talked about the destruction of Jerusalem. And it had come to pass.
II. JEREMIAH’S CALL (Jer 1:4-10)
In Jer 1:4-10, we see the call of Jeremiah in dialogue form and you sense the importance of this call in Yahweh’s speech to Jeremiah.
Jer 1: 4-5 We see Yahweh’s intimate calling of Jeremiah and there is, of course, a special significance attached to the fact that Jeremiah was known and called to be a prophet by God before he was born BUT it is to whom he is a prophet to that throws light on the seriousness of his call. He was a prophet to the nations!
Other prophets spoke about or to a few nations that were within the scope of their concern. Prophets like Amos 1–2, Isaiah 13–23, and Ezekiel 25–32. Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk had only a single nation in focus.
BUT the task that Jeremiah was “appointed” to was delivering Yahweh’s message to the nations, to the world, not just Judah alone.
God’s message through him had a universal scope.
This can be seen in a large section of the book of Jeremiah that is devoted to his oracles to the different nations in chaps. 46-51.
Thus teaches us that there is no limit to God’s sovereignty therefore there are no limits to the scope of Jeremiah’s ministry.
Jer 1:6 When you look at the task Jeremiah was called to do, along with Jeremiah’s young age, any one can understand why Jeremiah was so reluctant to undertake this important office of being God’s messenger. His hesitated reluctance was based on him being inexperienced to converse with authority and because he was a youth. This would make sense in a setting where older people were seen to be wise and whose words were heeded or sought for counsel.
Jer 1: 7-8 But God’s reply was the rejection of Jeremiah’s response and God’s reply to him teaches us a valuable and timeless truth/principal.
When God calls, he equips us with what is needed to carry out the assigned task.
Human wisdom and experience fall into the shadow of the Almighty.
Human inadequacy and inexperience provide the occasion for divine enablement. This was the case for earlier prophets as well. Prophets such as Moses and Isaiah. And now it's true for Jeremiah.
Someone who is a single person with no army to back him, who is young, inexperienced, coupled with the fact of going up against superpowers of the world, will cause that person to absolutely reject the responsibility that he/she was called to take up. A single man going against 3 powerful nations, who form the majority, is something that is unthinkable.
But what we learn from the Bible is that one man with God, becomes a majority!
Jeremiah’s deep conviction that God was with him and that he didn’t have to fear the people God was sending him to, encouraged him to persevere through his difficult calling.
Another life lesson we can learn from Jeremiah is found in v.8. “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you”. God never promises Jeremiah that he wouldn’t face any difficulties, opposition or persecution. v.8 meant that he was going to face trouble but God promises to deliver him because God was going to be with him.
Jer 1: 9-10 With a symbolic gesture of touching Jeremiah’s mouth, God commissioned him as his spokesman indicating he had a twofold ministry. One was to declare messages of judgement and the other was to deliver messages of encouragement and hope.
III. JEREMIAH’S VISIONS (Jer 1:11-19)
In these verses, Jeremiah sees 2 visions that may not have come to him at the same time but some period of time may have passed between them. And many scholars believe that these visions were used by God to confirm Jeremiah’s call.
Jer 1:11-12 His first vision was that of an almond branch and it this vision that bears the whole thrust of today’s message.
What is peculiar of the almond tree is that it is the first tree to blossom when all the other trees are dormant during the winter months. Spring usually starts towards the end of March but the Almond tree blossoms around January. The almond tree was used as a forerunner or a symbol that Spring was just around the corner. It was as though the almond tree, “watched over” the beginning of the season.
In a similar way, God was “watching over” His word, ready to bring judgement on Israel. Just as the blossom of the almond tree pointed to the arrival of spring so too Jeremiah’s vision pointed to a swift fulfillment of God’s word.
What is also interesting is the word play in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for “almond tree” is spelt and sounds almost the same as the hebrew word for “watching”.
Jer 1:13-19 The second vision was more sinister than the first. Jeremiah saw a boiling pot from the north facing the south. And to simply interpret this vision, the message it conveys is just as boiling liquid boiled over in a southerly direction, so too disaster would be let loose from the north to Judah that lies in the south, because of her covenant infidelity.
CONCLUSION:
Jer 1:11-12 summarize the theme of the inevitable fulfilment of Yahweh’s purposes of judgement for Judah and for the nations and it serves as the central theme of the whole book.
Looking in retrospect, we see that God’s word did come to pass during and after Jeremiah’s ministry. God’s word was faithful. He was watching over it. The message of Jeremiah 1 is clear. GOD IS SOVEREIGN.
To learn this fundamental doctrine we only needed to look at the book’s opening verses, because in those 3 verses we read the entire story before it even begins.
1. Though the unthinkable happened:
a. Judah had a humiliating and degrading end
b. God’s people became subject to pagan rulers
c. The Royal descendants of David, who who were to be God’s right hand men, were captured, brutalized, exiled, and even slaughtered by idol worshipers.
2. Though Jeremiah faced:
a. opposition from his own people,
b. distress from the constant negative overtone of his message,
c. fear of delivering destructive messages to the people he cared about
d. And though people may not have accepted him nor his message,
in the end Jeremiah was right. His prophecies all came true. He was right because of v.4. He was right because it was the Word of the Lord that came to speak to Him. It was God who was watching over his own word to perform it. God is watching his word which is another way to say that it is only His word that will come to pass. It is only His plans that will come to fruition.
He looks like a man who has wept so long, he has no tears left to shed. His face is turned to one side, like a man who has been battered by many blows. He endured this for 40 years. In those 40 years he may have had his doubts that could have driven Jeremiah to just quit what he was doing. He may have had doubts in himself. Doubts about his people. Doubts about his ministry. Doubts in his own abilities.
But we never see these doubts becoming a reality. We never see anything short of Jeremiah doing what he was called to do. We never see him disobey God’s word. And this is all because of the fact of Jeremiah’s deep conviction in God’s sovereignty. Because of the deep confidence he had in God’s words, Jer 1:12 - “I am watching over my word to perform it”
In a similar way, what we can learn from Jeremiah is that like him, we have a call from God too. We all have a calling from God.
If you are a Christian, it is a call to serve Him in the task that He has set for you. Regardless of what we are able to do, there is some way that He has called us to serve Him. We are all called to His messengers, to declare the good news of His Son to the lost.
EXAMPLES: Elder, Deacon, Providing encouragement to someone, In charge of snacks, Tea
If you are a non-Christian, I believe the call God has for you is the call to Himself. An invitation to know Him, not just to learn the idea of Him but to know Him personally, through His Son Jesus Christ. Because Jesus’ death and resurrection made it possible for sinners like us to communicate and have a relationship with a perfect and holy God.
When we answer His call, we are in obedience to Him. God’s call is for those who obey Him and when we obey Him, we find that though circumstances are difficult, though the task at hand seems impossible, just like in Jeremiah’s story, we will see that the strength, guidance and direction comes from God, to help us complete the task that God has set in front of us. He will guide us in what to do, where to go and what to say.
And if we follow His direction and instruction, we cannot fail because He is sovereign and He is watching over His WORD TO PERFORM IT. He is watching over His word to ensure it comes to pass.
So are we living a life that reflects the fact that we believe this timeless truth. Are we living in a way that shows that our GOD IS SOVEREIGN.