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Text: Jeremiah 1:4-10, 1 Corinthians God’s
Design for You In the name of him who loved us
and gave himself for us, dear friends in Christ: I’m willing to bet that just about everyone
here has or had once upon a time, a parent, grandparent, or other mentor who
taught you the valuable lesson: “Always
use the right tool for the job”. Near as
I can tell, there’re two reasons for this sound bit of wisdom. The first is that it saves a lot work. A fellow might think that a shovel is just a
shovel, but he’d soon change his mind if he tried to use the same one to dig
postholes that he used to scoop snow.
He’d discover that there’s a reason they sell a dozen different kinds of
shovels at the hardware store: it’s efficiency. The other reason to match the right tool to
the job is out of respect for the tool itself.
Some tools are painstakingly engineered by master craftsmen to precisely
controlled specifications. They’re more
than tools; they are works of art … labors of love. I just about come unglued when I see someone
take a high quality chef’s kitchen knife and use it as a screwdriver – or
worse, for prying open a stuck drawer. Such
an abuse makes me want to grab it away from them: “Give me that! This is not a wrecking bar, nor is it the
‘jaws of life’! It’s a knife.
It’s for cutting vegetables and meat
– and if I ever see you do that again, I’ll show you how it works.” One of my
pet peeves … can you tell? Anyway, as I
was saying, we all understand that tools are created for a purpose. They’re designed with the characteristics and
features that will enable them to perform specific tasks, and they work best
when fulfilling the purpose for which they were made. We know that.
And in a similar way, the Scriptures inform us that the Lord God created
each of us for a specific purpose – or it might be safer to say for a number of
purposes since we are all quite a bit more complicated and multidimensional
than simple “one use” tools (… well, most of us are anyway). And I
cannot stress enough just how much individual care and concern went into God’s
design for you personally. Today’s Old
Testament lesson gives us a glimpse into the mind of God in that respect. Though the Lord is speaking there to the prophet
Jeremiah, it’s quite clear that through him, in a more general sense, he is
speaking to all of us when he says, “Before
I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” That is an awesome idea, because when God
says he knows someone before their formation, he doesn’t just mean
“knows about” him, sort of
forecasting what that person will be like in kind of the same sense that you
might know about some historical
figure in the past; no, he means knows,
right now, in a very close, personal, and ongoing sense. Think about that: before you were a gleam in someone’s eye –
no, even before the Lord called Creation into existence – he had a personal
relationship with you. But then, I
suppose you were too young to remember that – the point, however, is that God
wasn’t. And
speaking of this relationship he had with you, he goes on to say that, “Before you were brought forth, I set you
apart.” The idea expressed there
goes well beyond just knowing you. The
word that’s translated there as “set apart” is exactly the same word we usually
translate “sanctify” or “make holy”. It
means that before you existed the Lord determined to make you something special
for himself … that he selected you from the larger
pool of humanity and set you aside for his exclusive use. When I was in college, I worked a couple of
summers for an outfit that placed concrete:
foundations, sidewalks, driveways, that sort of thing. We had three different company vehicles that
were loaded down with tools and all the stuff needed to make forms. And all these tools belonged to the
company. Anyone on the crew could use
them freely to get the job done – except for certain tools. These were marked by the boss as his own
private tools. They were all mixed in
with the rest, but you weren’t allowed to use them. You weren’t even to touch them – unless, as
he often did, the boss hollered at you to bring him a certain kind of tool that
he needed. When that happened, if you
knew what was good for you, you dug around until you found the whatever-it-was
he wanted with his mark. That’s the idea
going on in the text. We are to the Lord
sort like my former boss’s marked tools:
mixed in with all the others, and yet, treasured personal
possessions. And the funny thing was
that for the most part the tools my boss was so attached to were not
necessarily the best or newest ones. In
fact, some of them were down right ratty and worn; but they felt right to him. And because he was very good at what he did,
even with the ones you’d be tempted to throw away he could always get a lot
more done than anyone else on the crew, and he could do it a lot better. And that too is part of what the Lord is
saying to us when he says, “I set you apart.” And then the Lord says (to Jeremiah
anyway), “I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” And here we have the idea of specific
purpose. The Lord had in mind a
particular mission for Jeremiah: to go
and proclaim a definite message to a certain group of people. And we know that he did it – that’s why we
have the book of Jeremiah the prophet today.
Now, using my own limited powers of spiritual discernment, I’m able to
say quite confidently that the Lord is not going to appoint any of us to write
another prophetic book of the Bible.
He’s already completed that job.
But with absolutely the same confidence I can also say that the Lord has appointed you for any number of
other missions. And what’s more, there
is no one else in the whole wide world whom he created
who is as uniquely qualified, equipped, and positioned as you are to do the
mission the Lord has appointed for you.
You have a crucial role to play in the unfolding of God’s great plan –
just like Jeremiah did. The only
difference is the specific role you’ve been designed to perform. Now for his
part, Jeremiah was more than just a little intimidated when he discovered that
his life had cosmic significance in the Lord’s grand plan for all things. After all, he was just a kid; now he was
being told that he was going to be a key player, following in the line of the
really great men of God – men like Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah. To Jeremiah these others seemed superhuman –
they were holy people, extraordinary people – not at all like
him. Why, he was just a “normal”
guy. It was so much easier for him when
he thought of his life as having no particular importance. Then it didn’t matter so much what he did or
didn’t do. But (and it’s vital that we
understand this) there is no such thing as someone whom the Lord knows, sets
apart, and appoints for a task whose life has no particular importance. Besides, Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah were just
“normal” people too. What made them holy
and extraordinary was the Lord’s doing; it was his setting apart and appointing
them for his mission. And it was the
Lord’s powerful presence in their lives that gave them the faith and abilities
to fulfill his purposes. Jeremiah was
afraid and intimidated with the mission God gave him because he was thinking
only of his own frail and sin tainted abilities. “I can’t be a prophet; I wouldn’t know what
to say.” He knew he couldn’t do on his
own what the Lord asked. And because of
it, he tried to push the assignment away. But the
Lord told him to stop arguing. “You have
nothing to fear because I am going to be with you in this all the way.” Jeremiah didn’t yet understand that he was
the tool that would be operating in the Lord’s hand. So, to ensure him of it, the Lord did
something truly remarkable: he reached
out his hand and touched Jeremiah on the lips – the part of him that the Lord
needed to do the job. Then he said,
“See, now I have put my words in your mouth.”
And there are a couple of very important things going on here. First, as I’ve already indicated, we see the
Lord giving his own empowering strength to the very part of Jeremiah the Lord
intends to use. He’s telling Jeremiah,
“I’ll be using your mouth now.” But
secondly, whenever the holy God comes into contact with sinful man, if the man
is going to survive the experience anyway, there must be forgiveness. And a consistent biblical theme is that the
Lord heals and forgives with a touch.
You have only to think of the ministry of Jesus: how often he cured people by the touch of his
hand. Similarly, the Lord removes sin
with a touch – because in that touch, he ensures the person that he has taken
the guilt of the sin upon himself.
(Really, this is truth that lies behind the whole Old Testament
sacrificial system and our understanding of the Sacraments; but hang on, I’m
still getting there. First I have to
finish with Jeremiah.) The Lord
intended to use him as his prophet. He
prepared him, set him apart, and appointed him for that purpose. And when the time came, he took him in his
hands, ensured him of his presence, forgiveness, and love, and he set him to
work to speak his word. And the Lord
told Jeremiah that the words he placed in his mouth had power. They had the power to uproot and destroy
kingdoms, and also to plant and build them.
And so they have. God’s judgments
upon the nations that Jeremiah prophesied against have all been fulfilled. Even today, the prophet’s inspired words of
God’s law and judgment against the wicked continue to wage war on Satan’s
dominion by attacking and tearing down the sin nature in all of us – just as
his words of God’s grace and love are still planting and building up the And part of
its impact is on you, this morning, right now.
As you consider the story of the call and commissioning of Jeremiah –
where we discover how it was all a part of the Lord’s great design – how the
Lord knew him from before his formation, set him apart in his love and care,
and then appointed him to carry out a specific mission – you cannot help but
think of the Lord’s design for your own life.
You too were known, set apart, and appointed by the Lord. So surely you’ve asked yourself by now,
“What’s my part? Where do I fit into
God’s great plan? What does he want me
to do?” Well, let
me ask you this: how would you
know? People bring the question to me
sometimes, “Pastor, I’m trying to figure out what the Lord wants me to do. Can you help me?” I fear that very often when people ask such
things that they’re waiting for some kind of burning bush experience like when
the Word of the Lord came to Moses saying, “Moses, here’s what I want you to
do.” Or again, as we heard this morning,
when the Lord called Jeremiah to be a prophet.
In these cases there was a visible appearance of the Lord who spoke
directly to the individual. Some people
are waiting for something similar to happen to them. But something to remember is that prior to
his audience with the Lord, Moses did not have God’s Word. A personal audience was necessary for God to
communicate with him. Even Jeremiah had
only a partial disclosure of God’s Word – that’s why the Lord called him and
others like him to speak for him and write down his Words. And now, because they did what God designed,
we no longer need a special appearance of the Lord or an angel to reveal his
plan for us. No, we find God’s mission
for us already written in the Scriptures.
In fact, a
great place to look is today’s Epistle lesson.
In the passage that comes immediately before it, St. Paul is telling the
Christians at Corinth that the Lord has designed each of us to be a functioning
part of the kingdom of God, which he calls the body of Christ; and each one is
to play his or her own interdependent, divinely designed role just like the
individual parts of a human body do. He
emphasizes that a body needs all of it parts, and all of them doing their own
jobs and working together in harmony for the body to be healthy. Now, the trouble at the Corinthian
congregation was that those who were eager to serve were competing for what
they thought of as the glitzy, high profile positions. They wanted to be the prophets, apostles,
miracle workers, and healers – even though throughout the history of the church
the Lord has actually appointed very few to do those tasks. What they didn’t want to do were the less
glamorous tasks of support and administration.
And though they are not mentioned, I’ll bet it’s safe to say that there
were also, like in most congregations, folks who were not at all eager to
serve. Like Jeremiah before his call,
they would prefer to sit things out and say, “Who, me? Oh no, I could never do that.” Paul
addresses both ends of the spectrum when he gives the solution. The Christian person, he says, has been
designed by God to love. Every Christian
has been set apart by God’s love in Christ and appointed to show forth God’s
love in Christ. So no matter what gifts
or talents he or she has, if they are applied without love, they are
nothing. Whatever apparent wonders the
person does – if it’s without love, it’s meaningless. Love is the
key to fulfilling God’s design for you.
And Paul goes on to explain just what love is: patient, kind, not boastful, rude, or
self-seeking. It keeps no record of
wrongs. It always protects, hopes,
trusts, and perseveres. We’re all
familiar with the passage and its description of love. The point is that if you do that, truly love,
you will be doing what God designed you to do.
That’s because a person who loves gives himself in service to others,
utilizing all the talents and abilities God equipped him with as a matter of
course. Love means maximum efficiency
because you give yourself totally. What
gets in the way of us doing what we were designed to do is our old sinful
natures. That’s the part that holds back
because it’s afraid to love. It tells us
you have to look out for number one, you have to climb to the top, you have to
protect yourself. Other times it says,
hold back because they want too much from you, don’t volunteer, don’t show your
abilities, don’t ask what needs to be done, pretend that you don’t see or that
you’re too busy. It’s fear
that stops us from loving; but perfect love casts out fear – and God’s love for
us is perfect. When Jeremiah was afraid
to do what the Lord asked, God touched him, forgiving his sin and giving him
divine strength to do what he asked. And
the Lord has done the same for us.
That’s what happened to you in Baptism.
Through the medium of water, God touched you, thereby ensuring you that
Christ’s sacrifice for sin applied to you.
There he showed you that he had set you apart for his purposes. He marked you as one of the boss’s tools, as
it were. And ever since, by his Word and
Spirit, he’s placed you in his hands and directed your course, instructing you
in the way of his love. But of course
the analogy of tools in the master craftsman’s hands breaks down because tools
do not have minds of their own like we do.
We are not merely pawns waiting to be moved on a cosmic chessboard. We can be willing participants in God’s great
design, or we can set ourselves at odds with his purposes – and the fearful sin
nature is us is always pulling us in that direction: to take these wonderful tools designed for
the noble purpose of love, and use them for unworthy, degrading purposes. Fear still gets in the way. Which is why it’s an ongoing struggle to keep
loving as were designed to, and it’s why we always fall short of the master’s
specifications. But that’s
also why the Lord provided you a way to keep touching you. He does it in Holy Communion. There he shows you his love in the sacrifice
of his Son for you – and there too he touches you on that part he wants to
employ for his purposes. No, not just
your mouth: by ingesting the Lord’s
touch, it becomes a part of your whole body.
You take in the body and blood of the Lord sacrificed to death for you
so that you can present your whole self a living sacrifice of love to God and
his design for your life. Love is God’s design for you. That’s with what he set you
apart. That’s what he appointed you to
do. May we then always place ourselves
in his hands, that by his forgiving touch, his Word, and his Spirit, we can
fulfill the work he designed us to do.
In Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria! |
