Jesus Proclaims His Word Through You!

4th Sunday after Epiphany, 1/31/10
Jeremiah 1:4-10


Jesus Proclaims His Word Through You!
I. He chose you.
II. He empowers you.


Do you like it when others talk for you? For instance, let’s say you were part a group that took a tour of a famous building. After the tour a friend of yours asks you, “So, how did you like the tour?” and before you can utter a single word, the person next to you who also took the tour replies, “Oh, it wasn’t at all what we expected. We were quite disappointed.” And all the while your response was entirely different. You were fascinated by the tour. You don’t appreciate their intrusion.

That also happens on the listening end of things. It’s annoying when you ask someone a question because you are deeply interested in their answer and someone else answers for them. You may even respond, “I didn’t ask you. I wasn’t speaking to you. I want to hear from them.”

We appreciate the ability to speak for ourselves. We don’t like it when others speak for us.

And yet few things please Jesus more than when his people speak for him. During thousands of years of this world’s history there have been relatively few years—about three of them, the years when Jesus publicly preached his word—when Jesus spoke for himself. For most of the rest of history Jesus has always relied on his people to speak his word for him.

And that’s still true today. Yes, our Lord Jesus is with us, but not visibly. And yes, he still speaks his word, but not with his own mouth. Instead, he uses your mouth and mine.

He impressed that truth upon the young man Jeremiah. We have the record of the Lord calling Jeremiah to be his prophet, his spokesman, before us this morning. The Lord calls all of us to do the same. That’s because Jesus proclaims his word through you. Do you feel up to the task? Neither did Jeremiah. So let’s see how the Lord responded to him.

Part I.

You receive a notice in the mail that announces, “You’ve been chosen to…” How does that make you feel? Well, that depends on what you’ve been chosen for. If you’ve been chosen to receive a prize or a free meal or a cheap rate on a vacation, you feel good about being chosen. But if the announcement informs you that you’ve been chosen for jury duty or to be audited by the IRS, you’re not so happy. You bemoan the fact that they’ve chosen you. You wish with all your heart that they had chosen someone else.

The Lord spoke to Jeremiah and the first thing he told him was that the Lord had chosen him. He said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” Just as a sidelight, those words have much to say about the way the Lord views the unborn, don’t they? In Jeremiah’s case, the Lord informs him that even before he was born the Lord had chosen him. Think about the implications of that truth. Before Jeremiah could utter a single word, before anyone else knew whether he would have the right qualities or not, before he had the chance to do a single good thing or bad thing, the Lord chose him. That’s so different from our way of doing things. We choose people for things on the basis of past performance and of what we perceive is future potential. But not God. His choosing of sinful humans is always due to his amazing grace. The Bible never says that God chose a single sinner because of how wonderful that sinner would become. It always says that God chose a sinner solely because of who our God is—the God of grace, of undeserved love.

But inquiring minds want to know…chosen for what? You’ll be happy to know it’s to receive the greatest blessing ever—our salvation. Our God leaves nothing to chance regarding our salvation. He not only sent us a Savior from sin he also chose you and me to be the recipients of the blessings of that Savior’s work. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it? He has chosen Jeremiah and you and me to live with him eternally!

But he’s also chosen us for something else while we’re still here on earth. He told Jeremiah, “I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah worked chiefly among the Jews of the nation of Judah during the darkest days of their history—right before and during their destruction by the Babylonians. Jeremiah proclaimed both law and gospel to his fellow Jews. But the Lord also used Jeremiah to proclaim his word to the nations around the Jews. He used Jeremiah to call them to repentance and to faith in the one true God.

And he’s chosen us for the very same thing. Jesus was speaking to every believer on earth when he declared, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” He didn’t limit those words to the 12 apostles. He wasn’t pinpointing the Apostle Paul. He was speaking to all his people. He was speaking to you and me.

Jesus proclaims his word through you! He has chosen you to do so.

Again, I’ll refer to the notice you receive in the mail informing you that you’ve been chosen. After reading it, the very next thing to occur is your response. What do you do? You can reject it right away, you can ignore it or you can embrace it and act accordingly.

In a way, God’s announcement that he has chosen you is a little different. As I mentioned his choosing us had nothing to do with us. We can’t even accept it. That’s all God’s work in us through the Holy Spirit. God brings us to faith and keeps us in the faith. And now, as his people he has a holy purpose for us. He wants us to declare his word to others. But that’s the last thing our sinful nature wants to do and so we can come up with more excuses than Jeremiah did. What’s more, our godless world wants nothing to do with the words of Jesus. It rejects and opposes them. But no matter—he has chosen us to speak his word all the same. When facing reluctance to that task, consider what a change that word has made in you. Recall the peace of forgiveness that word has brought you. And with appreciation for that forgiveness comes the desire to accept the privilege our God has given us when he chose us. Let Jesus proclaim his word through you!

Part II.

The Lord was asking the young man Jeremiah to sail in uncharted waters. He had never been a prophet before. We don’t know how accustomed he was to speaking God’s word to others. What’s more, he knew his audience would be less than receptive. In fact, they would be hostile. And so the call speak God’s word filled Jeremiah with fear and the fear produced a likely result—reluctance. He told the Lord, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”

Reluctance produced by fear. We know what that’s like. We see it in some small children entering a classroom for the first time. The classroom is full of the unknown—unknown teacher, children, expectations. So what does the loving parent do? They take their child by the hand and they lead them into the classroom and ease them into the situation. They might even hang around for a while until they see that their child has all but forgotten some of the uneasiness over their new situation.

The Lord did the same thing for Jeremiah. First, he told Jeremiah that he would go with him. He said, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.” The almighty Lord who created all things here binds himself to one of his creatures and promises to go with him. He takes Jeremiah by the hand and leads him into the world of a prophet.

But he does more. He tells him, “I will rescue you.” Being a prophet wasn’t going to be easy for Jeremiah. Many wanted to take his life. At one point his enemies threw him into a cistern and left him for dead. His life likely ended in Egypt after he was forcibly taken there by his enemies. And yet the Lord rescued him from every evil attack. He ultimately rescued him from this life to eternal life.

And along with his presence the Lord also gave Jeremiah his word. You see, the Lord didn’t expect Jeremiah to come up with his own message. He never asked Jeremiah to get creative. The burden of what to tell the people was not one that the Lord placed on Jeremiah.

No, the Lord told him what to say and he did so in a very demonstrative way. “Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘Now, I have put my words in your mouth.’” Imagine being touched by God in such a way! God had created Jeremiah’s mouth to speak. Now he wanted Jeremiah to use that mouth to speak the words he would give him. Reluctance caused by fear melted away for Jeremiah. Now he would go in the power of the Lord.

Listen to the power was behind his words. The Lord declared, “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” That’s the Lord’s way of saying that he was giving Jeremiah the two great teachings of his word—his law and his gospel. Those two teachings are exact opposites. The law condemns the sinner for his sin. Jeremiah was to preach that law in all its harshness. But the gospel saves the sinner through faith in the Savior. To those who repented, Jeremiah was to assure them of their forgiveness and eternal life. In that gospel was God’s power to save, a power that he placed into the mouth of Jeremiah.

Jesus proclaims his word through you. He empowers you to do just that.

2,500 years later and the message is still the same. God has given you and me his law which exposes sin in the hearts and lives of sinners. And he’s given us his gospel which announces God’s forgiveness for sinners. That’s the word he has given you and me to proclaim. None of us proclaims that word as we should. We deal with reluctance and fear every day. Jesus was the only perfect prophet. And by his death on the cross he forgives you and me of all our failures so that he can use us to proclaim his word to others. He empowers us with his presence and his word.

May Jesus proclaim his word through us! Amen.