Qualified by God, Not Yourself

Transcript

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[0:00] Our sermon text this morning comes from Jeremiah chapter 1, verses 4 to 10. The Lord gave me this message. I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb. Before you were born, I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.

[0:23] O sovereign Lord, I said, I can't speak for you. I'm too young. The Lord replied, don't say I'm too young, for you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. And don't be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and will protect you. I, the Lord, have spoken. Then the Lord reached out and touched my mouth and said, look, I have put my words in your mouth. Today I appoint you to stand up against the Lord. Against the nations and kingdoms.

[1:00] Some you must uproot and tear down, destroy and overthrow. Others you must build up and plant. Let's pray. Our gracious God, we thank you for your word. We ask now for your blessing over it. Lord, would you speak to our hearts? Would you open? Would you open our minds to listen to you?

[1:30] These things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So I once lived with some girls who attended a Pentecostal church. And they were really wonderful. It was a new experience for me though. Because everyone at that church had such intense understandings of the giftings of God.

[1:56] And I believe that the Lord has given me the strength to do that. I believe that those girls I lived with very truly were gifted by God. And I also believe that there are many people today who have certain gifts from God. Like speaking in tongues or dreaming and interpreting dreams. Or the gift of healing and the gift of prophecy. And I myself have even had dreams that I believe were from God.

[2:22] But there were some girls in that same church who would come over to our apartment from church. And they would come over for prayer meetings every week. And they would tell of these incredible stories of encounters they'd had nearly every week.

[2:37] And though they were incredible, sometimes they were awful. And my soul would just cringe inside of me. Because they believed they had the gift of prophecy. But if they did, then I think they abused it deeply.

[2:57] They believed that they had the gift of prophecy. But if they did, then I think they abused it deeply. They would encounter people on our campus or in the city. And suddenly they would shout out that they had a word from God.

[3:06] But these words were inane at best. And sometimes they were cruel. They told groups of students who had gone out and had a little too much fun drinking that one of them would get alcohol poisoning soon. And it would be a sign of God's displeasure. And they believed in the prosperity gospel. And they boldly told homeless people that they had to repent in order to receive God's blessing of wealth. They were quick each time I was hospitalized for my bipolar disorder to disprove of it.

[3:47] One day they said they had both received a direct word from God over my life. That psychiatric medication would only make Satan's presence in my soul stronger. They often claimed to receive words from God that people on campus They so often claimed to receive these words from God that people on campus started turning away when they saw them coming. Because the words they claimed to receive were always destructive.

[4:20] And I saw what they were doing on many, many occasions. Either I saw them directly or I heard the testimony that they told. And it gutted me, but I never said anything to stop them. And it was partially because at that time in my life, I really was questioning whether my faith was as strong as theirs. Because if it was, maybe I wouldn't have this bipolar disorder. Or maybe I wouldn't be fighting so much with my own mind. And so I thought maybe there's some truth to their words. Maybe I'm not as strong spiritually. And maybe what they're saying is correct and bold.

[5:06] But a bigger part of my life knew what they were doing was wrong. And I just didn't feel like stopping them. They seemed so confident that they knew what they were doing. But also I'm a nine on the Enneagram. And that means that all I really want is for everyone to know that I'm a nine. And I want everyone to always get along. And I don't want to make waves. And I want to just live and let live. But the problem was the way they were living was not letting other people live.

[5:37] We need prophets today. We need people who are brave enough to take a stand and proclaim God's word with both their actions and their voices. But what we do not need are false prophets. Because we have plenty of those. And I'm not just talking about people like those girls that I knew who claim to have the gift of prophecy but abuse it.

[6:05] I'm talking about Christians all over who claim to live and proclaim God's word, but they actually live and proclaim their own words and ideas. You know, it's kind of like the people that Jesus stood against in our earlier scripture. Who said, you cannot heal on the Sabbath, but we can work on the Sabbath for our own desires.

[6:32] They were taking the word of God very literally, except where it applied to their lives. And they were using it to oppress other people. But they said, but it's the word of the Lord, so we are speaking God's truth into the world. Even though they were not. They were speaking hurtful things into the world that God never intended. And it was under the disguise of being God's word.

[6:59] And it seems the voices of these Christians tend to drown out the words of those Christians who are truly faithful to God's word. So we are a church, and I'm not talking about Foothill, but I'm talking about the Big C Church. We are a church that tends to speak what is convenient instead of speaking the words of God.

[7:23] When God says, I am the Lord, I am the Word, I am the Word of God. When God tears down, it is always with the purpose of rebuilding. And rebuilding into something that was even greater and more beautiful than before. But when a false prophet tears down, it's hurtful and hopeless. And so false prophets go into the world and send messages of hatred instead of living out God's compassion. And standing up for justice as God proclaims it. And then the message of the gospel is, the gospel becomes distorted. And people begin to misunderstand Jesus.

[8:01] And people begin to misunderstand God's kingdom and the goodness of it. In fact, they begin to think God's kingdom is hurtful. So Jesus' death then becomes seemingly trivial as humans decide what is important in the grand scheme of things and who is and is not worthy of being saved.

[8:24] The big C church is largely missing from things like the Black Lives Matter movement. When we ought to be doing more to stand up or to stand between the police and our brothers and sisters who march in protest. And the church has been eerily silent. While Christian nationalists worship the Constitution on the same level as or even more than the Bible. So this is true. Just a couple of weeks ago, I received a mass email from a very well-known Christian bookstore where I had ordered our Confirmation Bibles. And they seemed like a good place. And they are. They do good things. But this mass email was advertising a class to understand our rights better and to be able to understand and interpret the Constitution.

[9:20] And what it said was, this is to study the quote, greatest document ever written. But that wasn't the Bible or a book of the Bible or even a book written about the Bible. The greatest document ever written was the Constitution.

[9:40] And the church is quiet when people proclaim the heresy that certain politicians are even the second coming of Christ himself or that they've been sent by God as a savior. And the church is also quiet when people are abused by others claiming to carry out the will of God.

[9:59] The church has too often turned a blind eye to sexual violence, especially when it happens in the church itself. So it seems lately that the church at large is the loudest when it's time to scream messages of hatred. But when it comes to walking alongside the poor, and the outcasts of society, we remain painfully absent. And when it comes to living out the gospel as God intended it through love, we are timid.

[10:34] Now Jeremiah lived at a time when Israel and Judah were very much in crisis, like our world is in crisis today. Israeli nationalism was a big deal and God was not having it. There was plenty of time to think about the future. There were plenty of false prophets around claiming that Judah would be just fine.

[10:57] And that God was completely on their side and nothing bad was going to happen to them and it was their enemies who would suffer and they would receive no punishment. Preaching anything else that was different wasn't well received. So Jeremiah had every right to be scared out of his mind when God called him to speak on his behalf. And Jeremiah tried to get out of it. I can't speak for you. I'm too young, he cried. And actually this sounds familiar. Moses felt unprepared to talk for God. Isaiah felt inadequate to speak on God's behalf. I honestly think it's a positive sign. Because if you feel like you are good enough to speak on God's behalf, without first being prepared by God, then there's a problem.

[11:55] In the case of all of these examples, it was God who prepared the person. God who had formed them, God who had known them since before they were born, God who had prepared a path for them, and most importantly, God who gave them exactly the words they needed for their task.

[12:15] Jeremiah thinks he's limited by his skills and by his age and by who he is and what he can do. Jeremiah is convinced he's not qualified to be a prophet to the nations, and he's certain of it. I'm not very old. I'm not much of a speaker. God, you should be looking for someone else.

[12:37] And maybe he's right. Because on his own, who is he? But God isn't buying it. Because God knows that Jeremiah is qualified. Jeremiah is qualified for this task. Jeremiah is absolutely able to do this work. Not because of who Jeremiah is. And not on the basis of what Jeremiah can do. Not because Jeremiah knows all the answers and has all the right words. None of that matters.

[13:10] Instead, Jeremiah is qualified simply because of who God is. Jeremiah is qualified because God qualifies him. He's able because God is able. And God's faithfulness empowers and equips us to respond to God's call. So all on his own, Jeremiah could never do this work. He is too young. And he is too poor a speaker to handle God's will. Left on his own, behind his shield of familiarity within his comfort zone, Jeremiah could never respond to God's call. But God's point in speaking this word is that Jeremiah will not be left on his own.

[13:57] I will show you where to go, God says. I will tell you what to say, and I will be with you. God does not call people and then just abandon them. God does not call you and then abandon you. God's faithfulness empowers and equips us all to respond to God's call.

[14:21] When God calls you to preach a prophetic word, it doesn't matter if you know what you're doing, because God is the one speaking through you. You are not the one speaking. You have to put yourself aside. And you have to put your desires aside then, too.

[14:40] You have to put your thoughts and your ideas aside. You have to prepare yourself to love so desperately it hurts. Because you're not speaking your words, you're speaking God's words. And Jeremiah knew that. Jeremiah knew that better than anyone else. Jeremiah lived the pain of loving his people and of loving God so desperately that it hurt. Jeremiah lived the prophetic word, and it was not easy.

[15:15] The words he would be commanded to speak would have an impact not just on the people who surrounded him, but directly on him. When God said, your people are going to be destroyed and sent into exile, God was saying, you, Jeremiah, are, along with your people, going to be sent into exile. So more than an impact, actually, Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.

[15:43] For one thing, just as they were facing the tearing down and being sent into exile, so was he. So every word he spoke from God was a word against himself and the community that he loved deeply. I don't think Jeremiah was really worried for himself because he knew God was with him. But the community he loved deeply, was hurting. And he was the one shouting those words to them.

[16:16] He couldn't have wanted to speak such a message, but he still spoke those words faithfully. And it's not like he was gaining any exemption by being God's prophet. In fact, he probably suffered more deeply than the rest of them. Because after several years of preaching, Jeremiah's family turned against him and even plotted to kill him. That's in chapters 11 and 12. And then over the years, he was whipped and put into stocks. That's in chapter 20. He was attacked by a mob. That's in chapter 26. Threatened by the king, chapter 36. Ridiculed, chapter 28. Some of Zedekiah's princes had Jeremiah arrested, beaten, accused of treason, and thrown in jail. That's in Jeremiah 37.

[17:06] From that point, he was then thrown into a deep, empty well. That's in chapter 38. He suffered. He didn't have it easy. All because he spoke words that God gave him. But he spoke them. 2 Peter 1.21 says, For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

[17:42] Prophecy isn't just about speaking words that you think sound nice. It isn't even about speaking words that you feel deep in your soul are right, like the Pharisees telling Jesus not to heal on the Sabbath.

[17:58] They thought that was right, deep in their soul. It sounded good, but it wasn't God's will. So it is about speaking the words that God has given you. Words that are right, not just because they align with your opinion, but because they have first been spoken by a righteous and just God. And it's also about a whole lifestyle of compassion for God's people. It's not about condemnation, which a lot of false prophets think it is.

[18:35] Yes, it is true. That our scripture this morning said there are times when there needs to be a tearing down and a destroying. Jeremiah knew destruction was coming, and he spoke that destruction just as God commanded him. But he also knew of God's incredible mercy.

[19:02] He knew that God would not tear down without offering ultimate and eternal hope. Maybe it wouldn't come for a while, but it was there. If you're prophesying without offering hope, or without spreading the gospel of salvation that is offered to absolutely every single person by Jesus, then you're not prophesying correctly.

[19:28] Prophecy is about living out a life that reflects God's kingdom and the promise of eternal life to every single person through Jesus' death and resurrection. And that means loving radically the very people that false prophets tend to condemn or overlook. And sometimes it means standing up and speaking out against false prophets or the hypocrisy that sometimes stains the church. And that's hard, because we don't want to speak against a fellow Christian. Sometimes we don't want to speak up against a Christian at all. And that's very hard. So it means that sometimes it will be inconvenient for us to speak the words that God gives us. And it means that sometimes it will be difficult. And sometimes we will have to put away our own understanding, our own opinions, our own discriminations, and we will have to live as Christ called us to live.

[20:32] Where is our courage to stand for what is right? Or our courage to proclaim the word of God and boldly live it out? Where is our courage to not only be God's voice, but also a voice for his people? In our society and our religious climate, it's not always easy to speak against injustice, and it's not always easy to defend the word of God. And it's terribly difficult to correct other Christians who are living into lies because we want to live in peace and we want everyone to get along.

[21:08] Now one thing to note about Jeremiah was that this book was written around the time that the people were coming back from captivity. It was not written while Jeremiah was telling them, you're going to go into exile. It was written when they were coming back. So the audience was a people who had already been torn down and they were looking to rebuild. They needed to know where God was moving and what had already happened, and they needed to know what direction God was pointing them toward in this recovery.

[21:48] And maybe that's our message today, that there will be times when there needs to be a prophetic word about uprooting and tearing down and destroying and overthrowing. But maybe we've had enough of that for right now. We are in a world that has been torn down for a long time. So maybe it's time to rebuild and plant with God's guidance and let God's compassion, justice, and wisdom show us how to build up, resulting in movement toward the beloved community where those who have been most bowled down are given the space to grow and flourish.

[22:29] But then again, God did call Jeremiah to uproot, tear down, destroy, and overthrow. And so it really could be that God is calling you to do the same, to uproot a structure that doesn't work very well, pluck up and pull down an old or broken way of doing things. Sometimes something old must come down before something new can go up.

[22:55] So as we close today, I'd like us to take time to reflect on where God is calling you to take a stand for him. Where are your opinions and actions being challenged by God? How is God calling you to live out your faith according to his gospel?

[23:14] Where is God calling you to uproot and destroy? And where is God calling you to build up and plant? And most importantly, how will you answer that call? Let's pray. Our God, we thank you that you speak through us, that it is not our words but your own that we need to preach. God, we thank you for your protection.

[23:47] And God, we ask for strength to do your will and to prophesy your kingdom in a broken world. These things we pray in Jesus' name.