“God Has a Purposeful Plan for All His Baptized Priests”
In the name of the Father and of the X Son and of the Holy Spirit.
[Amen.]
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. [Amen.]
“Take my voice and let me sing
Always, only for my King;
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
“Take my will and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine;
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.”
(Lutheran Service Book, © 2006 Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO.
783:3 & 5)
Old Testament Reading........................................ Jeremiah
1:4-10 [17-19] (esp. 4-5)
4Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
5“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.”
Prologue: “He who fails to plan, plans to fail” is a familiar saying
especially among people in leadership positions. Another way of saying it
is “A blank plan is a failure plan” and “No plan, no success.” Well, we
could go on for quite awhile with variations of that saying. But what’s
important for us today is that God has a plan for all His creation, and He
hatched that plan before time began. Inherent to His overall plan is
something very personal for all Christians, namely, that …
“God Has a Purposeful Plan for All His Baptized Priests.”
The good Lutheran question, “What does this mean?” has specific
application here. Today’s sermon text reveals two very significant details
about God. First and foremost is that He has a plan for His servants, that
is, His children … Believers in Jesus Christ. Second is that He has had
that plan from before He created the heavens and the earth and all that
inhabits them.
In the case of Jeremiah, God planned for him to be one of His Old
Testament prophets who would wrap His message to His people in sound waves
that then projected from Jeremiah’s mouth to the ears of God’s people and
from his secretary’s pen to the pages of Holy Scripture. So, as we did last
weekend with Nehemiah, let’s identify Jeremiah and the significance of his
prophetic words—both spoken and written.
Contrary to what the highly acclaimed rock band Three Dog Night,
that began in 1969 and has spanned four decades, sang, this Jeremiah was not
a bullfrog! However, we know that “Nearly a hundred years lie between
Isaiah and [him]. When Jeremiah was still very young,—he called himself a
“child,” chap. 1,6,—God commissioned him to become His prophet. He belonged
to a priestly family and was born … about four miles north of Jerusalem. He
seems to have remained unmarried for prophetic reasons. Most of his
prophetic messages were delivered in Jerusalem. He lived to see the utter
destruction of the Holy City and the Temple by the Babylonians, or
Chaldeans, in 588 B.C., but was not carried away captive to Babylon; on the
contrary, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar showed him special favors.
Tradition tells us that he was stoned by the Jews in Egypt.” (Christopher F.
Drewes in Introduction to the Books of the Bible. Copyright © 1929
Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO. Pages 84f.)
Also, he “is an intensely human personality, a man whom we can
understand and love, and yet a person endowed with such mysterious power
from on high that we at times are overawed by his grandeur. Truly so
remarkable and powerful a personality, at the same time so lovable, that we
cannot fail to recognize in him an instrument especially chosen and prepared
by the God of grace and strength and wisdom.” (Theodore Laetsch in Jeremiah.
Copyright © 1952 Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO. Page 23.)
Now, the special significance of Jeremiah’s prophetic activity is
that he “preached doom against the unrepentant kings and people of Judah.
But though he proclaimed captivity he also proclaimed release (Jer. 29:10).
But he not only proclaimed the return of the captives from Babylon, he also
proclaimed deliverance from sin by the coming Savior. Jeremiah looked
forward to the establishment of a new covenant between the Lord and His
people (Jer. 31:31).” In fact, “The author of the Book of Hebrews
interpreted that covenant in the light of the coming of Jesus, the Messiah
(Heb. 10:15ff.).” (Theodore Huggenvik in Your Key to the Bible: A
Presentation of Your Religious Concern with the Bible. Copyright © 1944
Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, MN. Pages 56f.)
Note well that five specific points provide the purpose of his
book. “1. … preach repentance to an ungodly nation in the hope that all who
heard the message would repent. 2. … proclaim certain judgment if they did
not repent. 3. … leave them without excuse so that in the future the
survivors might repent. 4. … give the believers among them an understanding
of what God was doing. [And] 5. … comfort the believers with the sure
promises of the Lord.” (David M. Gosdeck in People’s Bible Commentary:
Jeremiah/Lamentations. Copyright © 1995 Concordia Publishing House, St.
Louis, MO. Pages 2f.)
So, armed with that information let’s charge into the text where
we discover about God that …
I. He Promises His Presence and Deliverance. (6-8)
6Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am
only a youth.” 7But 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.
8Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”
Have you ever noticed how much Scripture speaks against fear,
fright, and trepidation? I reminded you about that a few weekends ago when
we commemorated the Baptism of Our Lord. That occasion gave you the
opportunity to recall that your Baptism gives, among other things, comfort
and reassurance in the face of seemingly overwhelming assaults, challenges,
and attacks by Satan and his evil allies, the world in which you live, and
your own sin-infested flesh.
Jeremiah revealed in the opening verses that he was only a young
boy when God recruited him and gave him his marching orders. Undoubtedly,
he himself shuddered with fear, fright, and trepidation. But what God told
him applies to all of you as well, namely, that “There will not be smooth
sailing at all times. There will be opposition, fiercest antagonism, such
as might cause your heart to tremble with fear. Yet be unafraid. I am with
you, not to preserve you from all trials, but ‘to deliver you,’ liberate
you, saith the Lord, your Covenant God, on whom you can rely, whose word you
may trust.” (Theodore Laetsch. Page 24.)
Consider, please, the frequency that the following phrases appear
in the English Standard Version of the Bible: “fear not” … 33 times, “do not
fear” … 37 times, and “do not be afraid” … 33 times. Although God is
certainly omniscient—He knows everything including the number of hairs on
your head and when a lowly dime-a-dozen sparrow falls dead—He does not
always prevent or remove that which causes fear, fright, and trepidation.
In fact, “God does not want unwilling servants in His kingdom. And yet God
demands unconditional surrender to His will; and works that by His Word, by
removing the fears, the doubts, the objections, and persuading, convincing,
convicting the man called, willingly to go wherever the Lord sends him, to
speak whatever the Lord tells him.” (Ibid. Page 25.)
Now, just what is the impact of God telling Jeremiah … Isaac …
Jacob … the Israelites … Jesus’ disciples … Saint Paul … and all of you as
well, “I am with you”? Number five of Three Dog Night’s 21 Top 40 hits
lamented that “One is the loneliest number.” Being alone … apart from God …
leaves you helpless against Satan’s onslaughts. It leaves you defenseless
against the “roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8 ESV) and
“the schemes of the devil” (Eph 6:11 ESV), vulnerable to “tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.”
(Rom 8:35 ESV) But with God faithfully at your side, having promised to
“never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb 13:5 ESV) and to be “with you always,
even to the end of the age” (St Matt 28:20 NASU), you, like Jeremiah, have
the absolute certain assurance of eternal victory through Him who is your
Victor, Jesus Christ, because He already fought against and defeated Satan …
for you!
Having secured your eternal salvation with His holy life … for
you, innocent suffering … for you, crucifixion death … for you, and
victorious resurrection from the dead in triumph over sin, Satan, and death
itself … for you, the covenant God cares for you so much that …
II. He Gives His Powerful Words to Speak. (9-10)
9Then 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.
10See, I have 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.”
The Lord chose Jeremiah to be a prophet, a choice that was “wholly
rooted in grace. In effect, the Lord said to Jeremiah, ‘Because of my
goodness and for my own purpose I have loved you and called you my very own.
In the face of doubt, uncertainty, and rejection Jeremiah knew without
question that he belonged to the Lord and was about the Lord’s business.”
(David M. Gosdeck. Page 11.) That’s what comforted, consoled, and
reassured him especially when he found himself up against what seemed to be
overwhelming odds!
The same is very true with you as well. “The Lord, too, has
chosen each of [you] to be his own, even before [your] conception or birth.
At [your] baptism, he made that choice known to [you]. As [you] look at
[your] baptism, [you] will find the same kind of promise, assurance, and
anchor in the Lord as Jeremiah did by looking back to the promise given to
him at his call.” (Ibid.) After all, He gives you His words in His Holy
Word that contains both damning Law that dooms and gracious Gospel that
rescues, words to be applied to yourselves and for you to proclaim to others
as well.
But He doesn’t stop there. With His powerful Word He makes
ordinary water a sacramental washing of spiritual rebirth and renewal. And,
with that same powerful Word He makes ordinary bread and wine a sacramental
meal in which you partake of Christ’s real body and blood which, when done
properly by humbly and honestly confessing your sins and unwaveringly
believing that for Jesus’ sake God forgives all your sins, gives unlimited
assurance of sins washed away, healing of soul and, eventually, body, and
eternal life in heaven’s glorious mansions.
As with Jeremiah, so also with you, God’s Word was then and still
is today the all-encompassing and essential ingredient. “The means by which
Jeremiah would accomplish the Lord’s mission was the Word. With the Word he
would uproot and tear down, destroy and overthrow. With the same Word he
would build and plant. This Word was all he had. This Word was all he
needed, for it was living and powerful, accomplishing all of God’s purposes.
The Lord would never abandon him or fail him. His heart put at rest by the
might of the Lord’s promise, the prophet accepted his calling. He was
ready.” (Ibid. Page12.) That rock-solid truth is for all of you also,
brothers and sisters of Jesus and fellow children of the heavenly Father,
whose joyful hope and confident expectation stand on the eternal Rock of
Ages—Immanuel Himself. So, even as God placed His Word in Jeremiah’s mouth
through his ears then, God places His Word in your hearts through your ears
and your mouth today.
It’s what was emphasized in today’s Gospel Reading, “[Jesus] went
down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the
Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed
authority. And they were all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is this
word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and
they come out!’ And the people sought him and came to him, and would have
kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, ‘I must preach the good
news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for
this purpose.’ And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.” (St Luke
4:31-32, 36, 42b-44 ESV)
In conclusion, therefore, “Jeremiah protested the Lord’s call. He
felt he was far too young and inexperienced in public speaking. But the
Lord had shaped him for this very purpose. The Lord Himself had made him
and equipped him. To spur him on to the task ahead, the Lord in a vision
reached out his hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth. In this fashion the Lord
empowered him for his work. The prophet would not go alone or in his own
name. He was the Lord’s spokesman.” (David M. Gosdeck. Page 11.) Through
this encounter that God communicated with words recorded in His Holy Word,
He reminds and reassures you that …
“God Has a Purposeful Plan for All His Baptized Priests.”
In the face of that reality, do what Jeremiah certainly did … talk
with God. If you’re at loss about what to say, use today’s Collect,
“Almighty God, You know we live in the midst of so many dangers that in our
frailty we cannot stand upright. Grant strength and protection to support
us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations.” Then faithfully
read God’s Holy Word to hear him declare that …
I. He Promises His Presence and Deliverance. (6-8)
How does He demonstrate the reliability of His promises? To
borrow a popular slogan from a familiar office supplies store, “That’s
easy!” Just read His Word, where in today’s Introit you heard the psalmist
say, “O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen
their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and
the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.”
(Ps 10:17-18 ESV) As you hear and read His Holy Word, become even more
convinced by the Holy Spirit’s power alone that …
II. He Gives His Powerful Words to Speak. (9-10)
Those powerful words are ultimately the compassionate heavenly
Father’s words of love, love that was bound up in Him who “so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be
saved.” (John 3:16-17 NKJV)
Saint Paul further described that love in today’s Epistle Reading,
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or
resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things. Love never ends.” (1 Cor 13:4- 8 ESV)
Then let your Spirit-driven response to God’s self-denying
self-sacrificial love be what today’s Gradual proclaimed, “Praise the Lord,
all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his steadfast love
toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” (Ps 117:1-2a
ESV)
God grant it all for the sake of Jesus Christ, His humble Son, our
holy Savior. [Amen.]
In the name of the Father and of the X Son and of the Holy Spirit.
[Amen.]
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