The Logical Call

Christopher Barnes

Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

Jeremiah 1:1–5

Calling

Jeremiah (Prophet)

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Finding out why someone like God would call someone like you.

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Introduction

In a particular philosophy class, it was time for the final exam. The professor came, greeted his students, and said to them, "this final exam is essay format. I will write my question on the board, and you have 2 hours to write your response and turn it in." He then proceeds to write a one word question on the board, and walks out. The students begin. Some spend 30 minutes writing, others spend 1 hour, still others write until the final exam is over and turn in what they have. But 3 students, 2 who were registered and 1 who was auditing the class because he liked one of the other 2, took less than 15 minutes to scribble down their answers and walked out.

The next class the professor goes over the essay responses. Visibly frustrated, he scolds and berates the students for writing so many as 9 pages on a one word question - "Why?". He said he only handed out 1 A and 2 Bs, and the A went to the guy who was auditing the class. For the A student, his response to the question "Why?" was "Why Not?" For the 2 B students, one responded "Just Because", and the other Because I'm hungry."

Then he asked the guy who got the A, the guy that's not even a registered student, the guy that's taking the class solely because he liked one of the other students, to share with the failing students why he answered "why not?" on the final exam. He said, "Professor, when you ask 'Why?' without sharing a frame of reference, without providing any additional context to properly answer the question, "Why Not?" is the best, the most logical response."

Now I'm not sure how I would've fared on that final exam, whether I would've been smart enough to answer "Why Not?", or "Just Because", or would’ve been so sleep and food deprived to answer "Because I'm hungry", or would’ve been so over-analytical to answer a one-word question with a 9 page response. I'd probably be more keen to have 9 points and a poem than 9 pages, but I am sure of this one thing: that when God has placed a call on your life, and you ask God, "Why Me?" without sharing the same frame of reference, the same context that only God has access to in order to call you, the best, most logical answer you can get from that exchange, not having the access to His omniscience and sovereignty is "Why Not You?"

There is no adequate explanation an infinite God can give for Himself that a finite mind can fully contain.

We're not working with the same frame of reference. You refer to your life in the frame of the here and now. Your current struggles, your current unworthiness. Your current excuses. And God, Who is eternal, has seen the end from the beginning, not excluding yours.

Two frames of reference.

In the time it would take for Him to try to explain why He called you, you could've answered and lived out your call.

Some people have spent their entire lives asking God why and waiting until they got an answer before they responded to His call.

They didn't understand that they would've been closer to an answer had they responded and not resisted.

They didn't understand that "Life," as a wise preacher once said, "is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."

They didn't understand that the Word of God says that "The just shall live by faith", not answers. Faith.

So Here's my aim today: to get you to trust God more than any answers He could give you.

Because The Word of God says in 1 Corinthians 8:1 that "knowledge puffs up, but Love edifies." Which means that if you knew the answers to the questions you ask in life instead of trusting the God who loves you, you'd get in the way of the Love of God that's trying to edify you, build you in the call He's placed on your life.

And so I label this message "The Logical Call" – not because at the end of this message your call is going to make sense to you, but maybe in this exchange we might can get a glimpse of why calling you made sense to God.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Jeremiah 1-1-5:

And it reads as thus:

The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile.

The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

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

before you were born I set you apart;

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

In this text I just read into your hearing God is calling Jeremiah to the prophetic ministry to declare what “Thus saith the Lord” concerning the incoming judgment on Judah. They have been sinning in a major fashion and God has now taken all he could stand of their wickedness. It’s judgment time. So he calls Jeremiah for this what would turn out to be the most unpopular job at the time – prophesying that his nation would be carried off into exile by the Babylonians, and the Jerusalem temple destroyed.

Let me pause parenthetically and ask Has God ever made you do something unpopular? Especially at a time when there seems to be more peace with just going with the flow, He has you make a stance? Such was in Jeremiah’s case. God calls him to declare an unpopular message, to make one last stand for God in the hopes that God’s chosen people would truly repent and His judgment subside.

But as God calls Jeremiah in particular, I believe there are 3 universal truths, 3 eternal principles that I’d think you’d like to know so you can see where it may make sense to someone like God to call someone like you. Would you mind if I share? Awesome, I was going do it anyway, but figured it’d be nice to ask.

God is the Authority on You

An authority is someone with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject. In other words, an expert. A specialist. A guru. A virtuoso. A Master. Oprah Winfrey is an authority on media. Nikki Giovanni is an authority on poetry. Cory Henry is an authority on the Hammond organ. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an authority on astrophysics. Cornel West is an authority on philosophy. Notable preachers like H.B. Charles, Ralph Douglas West, and others are authorities on preaching.

Any of these people are worth sitting at their feet and learning what they have to say about their particular craft. But when it comes to you – when it comes to figuring out your life – I wouldn’t recommend you sit at any of their feet to hear anything they have to say. God is the Authority, the Expert, the Specialist, the Guru, the Virtuoso, the Master on you, and when it comes to calling you to a particular work for Him, God is superlatively more than qualified to make the call!

Two ways God lets Jeremiah know that He is the Authority on him. First, let’s look at His Claim.

God’s Claim to His Authority

God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb…”

No one has more right to speak on the invention than the Inventor. No one has more right to answer on the design than the Designer. No one has more right to shed light on the creation than the Creator.

God has exclusive claim to you because He invented, designed, and created you. God says, “Before I formed you in the womb…” God is your Source and Sustainer. Yes, your father provided the seed. Yes, your mother provided the soil. But it was GOD that supplied the spirit!

Eccl 12:7 says the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

You are not a human being having a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being having a human experience. Which means your origin can’t be found on your birth certificate. It can’t be found in your baby photo album. It can’t be found on Ancestry.com. It is only found in God.

And since your origin is only found in God, it also means His prescription, His opinion for the direction of your life is the only one that matters. Now it’s good to seek wise counsel and it’s smart to consider the warnings and encouragements of others, but if it directly conflicts or contradicts with where God is leading you, if it is not providing food for thought so as to add wisdom to walking out His call on your life, toss it aside.

This is why it is of chief importance to develop a solid relationship with God where you’re daily in prayer and in His Word communing and communicating with Him to recognize His voice so you won’t be led astray by what other people think or what you think what you should do with your life. That way, whatever you hear on the outside will be met by the filter you’ve developed on the inside.

What is that filter? The filter of God’s Word. The filter of His fellowship with you. The filter of your sense of His call on your life. That’s the filter. And nobody can do that work for you. And as a result, sometimes following that call will cause you to make some hard and near impossible decisions.

Consider Jeremiah, a Levite, a son of a priest. He was raised up having been taught and embedded in him the importance of the temple of Jerusalem, since his birth. Yet God calls him, this Levite, this son of a priest, to prophesy the destruction of Jerusalem, specifically the temple. Jeremiah had to prophesy the destruction of where his father worked. Now wouldn’t THAT be some interesting dinner conversation? As a matter of fact, his own hometown said “if you don’t shut up prophesying, if you don’t shut up preaching destruction we’ll kill you.”

Following God’s call on your life will not be easy. I wish I could tell you there won’t be some hard days ahead. I wish I could tell you there won’t be some disappointment. I wish I could tell you there won’t be some misunderstandings. I wish I could tell you there won’t be some moments of alienation and isolation. But I can tell you that until you submit to His claim on your life as Creator to call you, there will be no inner peace. No clear sense of order or direction about your life. You will be running from one distraction to another to keep your mind from what you know God wants you to do. Either way you suffer. Whether it’s in God’s will or outside His will. For me I’d rather have God-ordained suffering than self-inflicted. Because I know if I have to suffer in God’s hands, He’s going to work it to where He gets the glory and I get the victory.

God has the Claim, the exclusive undisputed right, to be the Authority on you, because He created you. The Bible says He knows your end from the beginning. But not only does He have the Claim. He has the Capability.

God’s Capability in His Authority

God tells Jeremiah, “…I knew you.”

That word “knew” is the same word used as euphemism to describe a husband and wife enjoying the physical benefits of the marital covenant. But in this sense it’s used to express that God has intimate and intricate knowledge of you, which makes Him capable to be the Authority on you to call you.

God knows you better than you know yourself. Luke 12:7 says that He’s numbered the hairs on your head. Think about that. That’s not just He knows how many hairs are on your head – that would be the standard omniscience of God. That would be what we’d expect God to know. But God didn’t stop there. God is so committed to knowing and loving His creation that He assigned each individual strand of hair on your head a number.

Which means that when you comb or brush your hair, He knows what number strand stayed and which one left. And which ones are not coming back.

Think about that. Your mother doesn’t even know you like that, and it’s said there’s no human love like a mother’s love. Your spouse doesn’t know that, and your hair may be one the things they really love about you.

God really cares about the details of your life (look at your neighbor and say God is in the details).

And if He cares about you to number your hair follicles, do you not think it’s possible for Him to know that when He called you, He called the right person?

The Harvard Business Review states it takes about 10 years of steady practice and study to be considered an expert, an authority in a field. According to Jeremiah, God had at least an eternity past with you. And last I checked, infinity is greater than 10.

God knows all of you. The good. The bad. What you consider about yourself to be bad that He deems useful. What you consider great about you that He doesn’t deem to be all that great. He knows it all. Your past failures. Your present struggles. Your pure heart. Your lack of knowledge. What you did last week. What you did last night. Your age. Your generation. He knows all of that about you and more, yet He’s still placed on you this burden to do something great for Him.

That’s no accident.

Our God is an intentional God, and He intentionally interrupted your life to use it for His cause, because He is the Authority on you.

And to further exercise His claim and capability to be an Authority on you, God has also Anointed you.

God Has Anointed You

God says to Jeremiah “…Before you were born I set you apart…”

In the shower I have one soap. And I use that one soap from head to toe. Pretty simple. My wife, on the other hand, has two soaps – one for the body, and one for the face. The body soap can be used anywhere, including the face. But not the facial soap. The facial soap is reserved to clean one area: the face.

Can it be used on other parts of the body? Sure. it’s a soap; it’ll get the job done. But I wouldn’t recommend it.

There is something special about this soap’s composition from its conception and creation that sets it apart from being used just like any other soap. It has been designed from the beginning for it to get the best results for its work when only applied to the face.

You have been reserved for the purposes of One: God Himself. Could you pursue your dreams or other people’s dreams for you? Sure. But I wouldn’t recommend it. You have been designed from the beginning to get the best results for your pursuit when you pursue the purpose and plan of God for your life.

Just like the facial soap is not for everywhere, you are not for everybody, not even yourself.

God has anointed you. He has consecrated you for His service. God has, as the verse suggests, pronounced you clean, holy, and devoted you to Him.

Think about that – God has declared you clean before you ever got yourself dirty.

He has pronounced you holy before you ever got in mess. So in those moments when He finds you in the muds and ditches of life, He can pick you up and restore you to your original state. God knows what you’re supposed to look like because you were declared clean before you ever entered this Earth.

Charles Spurgeon, affectionately known as “The Prince of Preachers”, states that “If God hadn't chosen me before the foundation of the world, He wouldn't choose me now!” Thank God He chose me and cleaned me before I ever got a chance to show Him why He shouldn’t!

God Has Anointed you, He has consecrated you, He has set you apart for His use. Which means you stick out like a sore thumb around people in your generation, in your job, at your school. You view and experience the world differently.

When everyone else around you succumbed to the trappings of life, somehow in that same environment you survived. You were able to escape.

Life continuously dealt you a bad hand, but right now somehow you’re winning.

At birth you weren’t supposed to make it, but somehow 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years later you’re here in this sanctuary today.

You know you weren’t supposed to be where you were that night, but somehow when trouble came it overlooked you.

Why? Because God has Anointed you. He has chosen you, and as a consequence He is protecting His investment.

I never really understood the magnitude of God’s investment in me, but I got a glimpse of it on a Spring day in San Antonio March 2004, and it forever changed my life. It had been 3 months after I had preached my first sermon, and during those three months I had a lot on my mind everyday. Doubts about my adequacy for ministry, anxiety and overwhelm over my overall unworthiness for God’s service, and the constant pressure I put on myself for being the perfect Christian teenager, let alone a preacher. I would be so deep in thought, that you could call my name 7-8 times and I wouldn’t answer till about the 9th time.

But on this particular day in March 2004, I was in San Antonio for a state competition for Business Professionals of America and while waiting on my turn, the thoughts got to be too much. And at that moment I heard a voice say, “kill yourself.”

At that moment, I dropped whatever I had in my hands, got up, and walked directly to the nearest smiling person (a white lady) and said, “I’m sorry, don’t mean to disturb you. But I don’t know what’s going on, and if I don’t get any help, I just might kill myself.” And I closed my eyes, lifted my face toward heaven, and with tears streaming down my face, called on the name of Jesus. Over and over again. I called Him, because He’s all I knew to call on.

I didn’t know at the time if this woman’s saved or not. I didn’t know at the time if she knew the Lord for herself, but somehow I heard a voice say, “you’re calling on the right name, honey.” I opened my eyes and through my tears I see other women, Christian women, that came and gathered around me, praying and encouraging me. It was that moment I felt hope. After I calmed down I was taken to talk with a lady who just lost her son to suicide while he was in college. Her story encouraged me to stay on this Earth.

It’s 2018 now. And every now and then when I find myself wondering and worrying too much about life, when I find myself going in a spiral thinking that I’m not ever going to be used extraordinarily by God, I think back to that day that He moved Heaven and Earth to tell me that He’s chosen me for something special. That He has great plans for me.

Is there anybody here that can testify you have at least one moment in your life where God has preserved you and shown you that you’re valuable to Him? That he has invested a lot into you? That He has great plans for you? Take the opportunity to thank God right now!

God is the Authority on You. He has the Claim and Capability to be so. He has Anointed you, consecrated you, set you apart for His service and shown you He has invested a lot into you. But that’s not all. Finally, He has an Assignment for You.

God Has an Assignment for You

God didn’t anoint you for nothing. You were not set apart to be on a shelf. You are more valuable to Him than a trophy. More important to Him than a couch you can’t sit on. If He hand-picked you, if He has gone through all the trouble of choosing you and setting you apart before you had a say in the matter, He wants to use you. He has something for you to do. An assignment, a task, an appointment, a vocation, a calling.

And more often than not, that assignment is bigger than whatever you think you can do in your current capacity.

God tells you what He wants you to do, and all the while you’re thinking “That all sounds wonderful, but How?”

How will I be a philanthropist and give money to build schools in developing countries when I’m saddled with my own student loan debt?

How can I be a master communicator when I have a speech impediment?

How can I be a published author when every time I try to read a book, the book ends up reading me?

How can I be a teacher, when I graduated not Summa Cum Laude, not Magna Cum Laude, not a Cum Laude, but Thank Ya Laude?

It’s hard seeing the road from where you are to where He says you’re going to be.

And even though it’s hard to see the road, even though it’s difficult to perceive the path, God gives us 3 assurances when He gives Jeremiah his assignment. First, God assures His Provision because He gave us a Divine Assignment.

We Have His Provision Because It Is a Divine Assignment

He says, “…I appointed you…”

God divinely and directly assigned Jeremiah the burden of the prophetic. Be careful of accepting or putting your hand to assignments God has not given you, be it out of ambition, or of obligation. Because the further you are away from His purpose, the further away you are from His provision.

So many of us have been burned out on church, our jobs, and possibly our lives because not all of our activities were God’s assignments. They may have been good deeds, but they were not God indeed. You have made mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial investments and saw little return. Because the task you undertook was without the assurance of God’s provision. We depleted our resources simply because we did not adequately discern where God was.

At my aviation job, we have to create and prepare flight plans for pilots. And when it comes to planning a flight for fuel, you have to plan for the amount of fuel it takes to get to your destination, the amount it takes to get to an alternate destination in case you can’t land at your intended destination, and at least 45 minutes in reserves in case anything happens that you deplete the first two. The reserves are pretty much never touched, because if you follow the flight plan, you’ll get there with enough fuel left over and not have the plane in jeopardy – if you follow the carefully crafted and prepared flight plan.

God has carefully crafted and prepared a plan for you. And He knows how much He’s provided for you to do the job, how much you need for any deviation from the plan, and how much in reserve, which is your soul, which is never touched.

Why is your reserve, your soul never touched? Because God said to Satan concerning Job, “you can take Job’s family. You can take Job’s wealth. You can take Job’s relationships. You can even take his health, but whatever you do I give you no permission to touch his soul.”

There are times when you’ll get to where God wants you in life with no problems. And there are times where you may have to take a detour and use up the alternate. But at no point in God’s assignment for your life will He ever allow your soul (your mind, will, emotions, imagination, and intellect) to be lost.

That’s good news! But it’s only good news if you follow the carefully crafted and prepared flight plan, the God-plan for your life.

So no matter how over the top, how fearful, how impossible the assignment is, if God gave it to you, you can be sure He has already provided.

If He provided a ram in the bush so Abraham would not have to sacrifice his promised son Isaac,

if He provided a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night for the Israelites on their exodus from Egypt,

if He provided food for Elijah through ravens (birds known for taking food) on the Kerith Ravine,

if He provided an angel for Jesus to strengthen Him in the garden before He went on Calvary’s hill,

if He provided Jesus Christ as a substitutionary sacrifice on the cross for our sin, so we can have access to Him in spite of our messed up selves,

I’m just crazy enough to believe that He will provide whatever you need to accomplish the Divine Assignment He has for you.

I am assured of God’s provision because it is a divine assignment. But listen, I am also assured of His Presence because it is a Distinct Assignment.

We Have His Presence Because it is a Distinct Assignment

God tells Jeremiah “I appointed you as a prophet…” God assigns Jeremiah the prophetic mantle.

Jeremiah, the Levite.

Jeremiah, the son of a priest in a town with nothing but priests.

Jeremiah who’s in line to be a priest like his father.

God calls Jeremiah and gives him a distinct assignment that’s unlike anything He’s ever seen modeled before him. Jeremiah may have had an idea of what it takes to be a priest looking at his father. It can be safely assumed he was being raised from birth with this expectation of taking on this responsibility.

So being a priest Jeremiah knows, but a prophet? That’s uncharted territory. He didn’t go to the school of the prophets. He wasn’t the son of a prophet. This whole prophet thing is totally out of left field. It’s not even on His radar.

Have you ever felt that God was calling you to something out that was completely not on your radar? It’s not even something people know you for. God called you to be a worship leader, and you’re a baritone. God called you to be a teacher of God’s Word, and you’ve had no access to any kind of higher education. You have an app idea, and can’t even successfully logoff from the computer at your job everyday.

You’re thinking, “How am I supposed to lead your people into worship and all of these songs on the radio are all out of my range?” “How am I supposed to teach your people and I’m still putting Daniel in the Red Sea and Moses in the Lion’s Den? How am I going to design this app?”

You even start questioning God’s sovereignty, with questions like, “You could’ve given me a greater vocal range.” “You could’ve put me in a family where I could’ve at least gone to Vacation Bible School.” “I wish you would’ve given me this app idea when I was deciding on a liberal arts degree. I could’ve changed my major.”

But there you go again, reasoning God’s will for your life from your frame of reference. Instead you must rest in God’s assurance when He spoke to Joshua these five words when he succeeded Moses. He said, “I will be with you.” And then He adds, “As I have been with Moses, so I will be with you.”

God has not changed. Whatever uncharted territory you feel God is calling you, He will be with you. Jesus Christ said, “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20 NIV).

These are some Blessed Assurances, are they not? We have God’s Provision because it’s a Divine Assignment. We Also have God’s Presence because it is a Distinct Assignment, but lastly, we have God’s Power because it is a Demanding Assignment.

We Have His Power Because it is a Demanding Assignment

Not only does God call Jeremiah to be a prophet. He calls him to be a prophet “…to the nations.” It’s one thing to preach in Jerusalem. It’s one thing to preach to your family. It’s one thing to be a local preacher on the street corner. But God gave Jeremiah the nations as his target audience. No wonder Jeremiah hesitated. Not only are you calling me to prophesy, you’re calling me to prophesy to people I have never seen? When all I know are the fields of Anathoth?

What God has assigned you to can be overwhelming. It’ll cause you to look at it and say “I don’t have what it takes.” “I’m not ready.” “There’s people better qualified.” Because anyone who’s truly called to do anything for God knows the assignment God gives you will demand your all. There is no half-stepping. And to excuse yourself from the assignment seems like a better option than to put your hand to the plow and fail.

And that would be a legitimate concern. It would be an honest assessment. It would be an honorable gesture to bow out from the assignment If you were only factoring in your strength, your power to do what God is calling you to do.

I’ve heard the saying “God won’t put on you more than you can bear.” While I can possibly understand the sentiment, if God puts no more on me than I can bear, then at what point do I experience His power? If I’m confident in the load I have, why would I cry out to Him? What need do I have of God if the assignment He’s given me to carry out, I can do it in my own strength?

Sometimes God will give you something impossible not for you to figure out how to get it done, but for you to realize that all you need to do is turn around and say, “Lord, you do it.”

And that’s all I came to share with you today. That when you realize the demand on your life from God that you would not turn away from the call. That you would not try figure out how to get it done. But that you would make yourself available to the Lord and watch Him do “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” (Eph. 3:20 NKJV)

There will be some full days. There will be some sleepless nights. There will be times where your patience is tested to the absolute limit. There will be times where you feel awkward and inadequate. But if you face God’s demanding assignment with an attitude of surrender you will see Him work miracles where there are just no explanation. You will see Him make “ways in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” If you but accept that He is the Authority on you. If you believe He has Anointed you. If you but do the Assignment He has for you, for God “created you in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do.” (Ephesians 2:10 NIV).

In 1947, there was a woman that claimed to have visions of Jesus calling her to live with and help the poor for the rest of her life. She almost didn’t respond, but He kept asking her “Will you refuse to do this for me?” “Will you refuse to do this for me?” Mother Theresa accepted the call in 1948, and the world has never been the same since.

For someone here today, God is saying “Will you refuse to do this for Me?” Now that you know He is the Authority on You – He has the claim and capability to call you. Now that that you know that He has anointed you and set you apart for His service. Now that you know in His assignment for you, you have been assured of His provision, His presence, and His power, “Will you refuse?” Do not run any longer. Answer the call today.

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