So, tonight's text is coming from Jeremiah, chapter 1, verses 1 through 10, and that is on page 796 in the Pew, the Pew Bibles, Jeremiah, chapter 1, verses 1 through 10. Hear the word of the Lord. until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month. Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 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. Then I said, Ah, Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth. But 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. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord. Then 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. See, 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. There ends the reading of God's word tonight. I want us tonight to think about a mighty God-fearing nation that once had the world go to its leaders to hear its wisdom. That it was strong and military and economically prosperous. But over time, through bad foreign policy decisions, and bad choice of leadership, the people in the country fell away from their first love and put their hope in idols and other people to bring about change. All along, these people moved farther and farther away from God, who had blessed them with every gift, believing the lies of the so-called prophets, who would say things like, there's no need to worry. God is for us. Or they would say things like, keep doing what you're doing. God will bring us peace in this land. Yet there was one who said there would be no peace. There was one who said, turn from your idols and repent. But no one listened. The people preferred the voice of the so-called prophets of the day that they knew better to tell them what to do than to turn back to God. And finally, time ran out. God had had enough. And he took the lampstand from their midst. Kind of sounds like I'm talking about today. But I'm not. I'm talking about a time in history of God's people that was 600 years before Christ. I'm talking about the time of Jeremiah. The rabbis called Jeremiah the weeping prophet. God gave Jeremiah a message to tell the people, but no one would listen to him. And Jeremiah knew that if the people didn't listen and turn and repent, God would destroy his beloved city, Jerusalem, and take away the nation. Though Jeremiah lived so long ago, I believe the story of Jeremiah is good for us to hear today. One pastor called Jeremiah a prophet for post-Christian times. And Jeremiah lived in times that weren't too different from our own. Times where men turned their backs from God, ran to idols, and society was reeling from that effect. You see, Jeremiah wasn't all doom and gloom. No, throughout the book of Jeremiah, there was always hope. Though it would be terrible for the people of Judah and for Jeremiah, God's plan and the future of his people were never in doubt. And because we live in times much like that of Jeremiah, we should not get discouraged at what's going on around us because our hope is in Christ and the future of his people is secure. This evening I want us to see that we are called by God to live in the times we live in. It's not just a coincidence that you are all sitting in the pew looking back up at me right now. God ordained this moment, this time, to hear his words. And I doubt Jeremiah would have chosen to be the weeping prophet when God chose him for his time and for him to hear his words. And let me stop right here. I know some of you might be thinking that James is going to say, you guys need to be like a Jeremiah. This new year, go out and be Jeremiah's. I am not going to tell you guys to be Jeremiah's. Jeremiah was a unique prophet in a time during the redemptive history, and that time is over. That time was then, this time is now. And if you hear somebody saying that they have a prophet in their church, or they know a prophet, I want you to read them Hebrews chapter 1. Which says, long ago and many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he spoke to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. So as you can see, the days of the prophets are over and the time of the reign of the king has begun. But these things were written down for our benefit. And that's why it's so important to read your Old Testament. Everything that was written then is for our benefit. So don't just put the Old Testament behind. Read it. There are three points I would like us to look at tonight. Number one, it's always good to know the times you live in. Number two, it's always good to know who made you. And number three, it's always good to know you are never without hope. So number one, it's always good to know the times that you live in. The book of Jeremiah opens up with a brief snapshot of his life when he was a prophet. Jeremiah was a prophet for 40 years. He lived during the reigns of three kings, Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah. We read in verse 1, The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were with him in Athanath, in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, In the thirteenth year of his reign. We've all heard of this first king, Josiah, haven't we? It was in Josiah's reign that they were doing some construction on the temple. And they literally found the word of God. Like it had been missing. Like you're thinking, wait a second, this is the temple of God. Where's the word? They're doing construction and they find the word of God. And Josiah takes this word and reads it. And revival breaks out. Josiah goes and tears down all the high places. He goes and kills all the priests of Baal. And Jeremiah lived through his time. He started being a prophet during Josiah's time. But then we get to Jehiakim. And if you've read the book of Jeremiah, you know that Jehiakim was a thorn in his side. Jehiakim hated Jeremiah. One time they read a scroll of Jeremiah to Jehoiakim. He gets so mad that he rips it up and throws it in the fire. He wants nothing to do with Jeremiah. And then there's Zedekiah. And Zedekiah was actually, would go to Jeremiah and listen for counsel. But he had the fear of man and he would never take what Jeremiah said. He would never take his advice. So why do you think the book of Jeremiah starts out with this little brief history? I believe that if you know what happens in these three kings during our lifetime, you'll understand Jeremiah better. You'll understand what Jeremiah had to go through when he was a prophet. And it seems like throughout the Bible, God's people forget their history. It's good to know your history. God's people always forgot their history. And God had to send prophets to remind them of what was going on. And that they needed to repent and turn back to God. And I wonder how many times that we could find in the Old Testament or in the Prophets or the Psalms where it says that God brought his people out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, to keep reminding them how this great deliverer of God was their God. But it never seemed to work, did it? They always needed to be reminded. What about in the New Testament? What about the people then? Did they still need to be reminded? Did they forget their history as well? One thing that always breaks my heart when I read the New Testament is both in Matthew and Luke, when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He does it twice. He does it in Matthew in chapter 23, after the seven woes, I think it is. And he puts the Pharisees and the teachers of the law in their place. And then he breaks down and weeps over Jerusalem. He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, How often have I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings? But you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. And again, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem during the triumphal entry in the Gospel of Luke. He's coming down over the Mount of Olives, and he can see the city of Jerusalem, and he just breaks down. He breaks down and weeps and he says, would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another because you did not know the time of your visitation. They had forgotten their history as well. God's people did not know their past. Jesus would tell them, the scriptures were written for me. He would remind them what was going to happen. But they did not see the Messiah in Jesus. He had arrived, but yet again, just as in the time of Jeremiah, Jerusalem would end up a pile of rocks. I wonder if Jesus thought about Jeremiah and all the times that he cried over that same city. But what about us? What about you and me? Do we know our history? You know, Jesus said he would return. Do you believe it? Do you live like it? Do we pray that we would send out workers for the harvest and that the elect would come home? You know, it always bugs me. Bug might not be a word. It kind of makes me angry sometimes. When I would say, man, Jesus could return today. Or man, wouldn't it be great if Jesus would come back right now? And a Christian would tell me, man, people have been saying that for thousands of years. And I'm just like, wait, so? Should we live any differently? I pray that we are not the ones who fall asleep before the coming. I pray that we don't miss our day of visitation. And not only is it always good to know the times we live in, but when it gets really bad in these times, it's always good to know who made you and who's in control. We live in a society that believes that we're just a bunch of animals and that we could just kill our unborn children and not even think about it. But when God speaks to Jeremiah, God tells him not only that he formed Jeremiah in his mother's womb, but that he knew Jeremiah before Jeremiah was Jeremiah. Now, here's God's call to Jeremiah in his own words in verse 4. Now, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. In eternity past, God knew Jeremiah and called him for a specific task. And what's crazy is before the foundation of the world, God knew you. And God knew me. God knew each one of us. In Ephesians 1, it says he chose us before him in the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. We also read in Jeremiah, Before I formed you in the womb, God formed Jeremiah. God formed you and me. And we kind of get a good inside peek, if you will, in Psalm 139. For you formed my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother's womb. And I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Though we are all known by God and made by God, here's what makes Jeremiah different than us. In verse 5 it says, Before you were born, I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah was consecrated. He was, or you could say, he was set apart for a specific task, to be a prophet to the nations. Before Jeremiah was even born, God was getting everything in place for him. And think about us. Think about us. God's given us specific tasks. Just like this morning, God had given tasks for elders and for deacons and for pastors and maybe for future pastors. And, you know, think about if you're not an elder or a deacon, in your vocation, when you're at work, God has put you there specifically to be a light to the world. Or children who are in school, or young adults who are in college. Specifically, God had placed you exactly where he wants you, to be his light to this dark world. And knowing that nothing happens by chance and that God is sovereign over everything, we should have confidence in this, going through this life, that God is in control. No matter how bad it gets, God is always here, and he will never let things get too out of control. And the God who made Jeremiah wanted him to remember that there is always hope. There's always hope. God told Jeremiah that he was set apart for a certain task to be a prophet. and God seems to try to get this into Jeremiah's head. But Jeremiah, he heard that, and he was like, wait a second. Do I really want to be a prophet to the nations? If you remember, Jeremiah's probably in his early teens here. Think of like a 13-year-old, 14-year-old, and God tells them, I want you to be a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah says, I don't know. And he says a line that we've heard before. I can't speak, God. And we're thinking, that's kind of like, for us, knowing the Old Testament, that kind of puts a giggle on us. We've heard who said that before, right? Moses said that. Moses said that very thing. Lord, I can't speak. How are you going to send me? And Jeremiah could even one-up him, I guess. He could say, I'm just a kid. Moses was like 80 when you sent him. But scholars think, yeah, no, Jeremiah is a young kid here. But God tells him, he says this, I have set you apart to be a prophet to the nations. Why would God want someone so young for this task? Jeremiah replies, Oh, Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth. And the line did not work this time, did it? As we read, But the Lord said to him, Do not say I am only a youth, for to all whom I send you, you shall go. And whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them. I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord. God says to Jeremiah, you will go where I send you, and you will say what I tell you to say. But these next words are probably what comforted Jeremiah's heart that he could do it. God said, do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you. Remember, Jeremiah is the son of a priest. And he probably knew the whole Old Testament like the back of his hand. He knew God was the great deliverer. He knew if God sent him, there was nothing to be afraid of. And God says this, behold, I have put my words in your mouth. That line right there, let me read that for you. It's amazing. Then the Lord put out his hand, verse 9, and touched my mouth and said to me, behold, I have put my words in your mouth. that should bring our minds to Isaiah, right, in the throne room. God himself put words in Jeremiah's mouth. Jeremiah didn't have to worry about what he would say or if he had to backtrack. Because every time Jeremiah opened his mouth and said, Thus says the Lord, it were the very words of God. And what were these words supposed to do? If we read in verse 10, See, 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 plan. Was being a prophet going to be easy? Of course not. He's called the weeping prophet. Remember, Jeremiah, he would say all these things that the Lord would tell his people and no one would listen. One time it got so bad that Jeremiah was telling them what the Lord was going to do, and they just rejected it. They threw him in a cistern and waited for him to die. And cistern is a nice word to use where they threw Jeremiah. It wasn't nice. They did not like Jeremiah or anything he had to say. But when God overthrows nations, usually there's nothing left. Listen to these words he told Jeremiah to tell them. To pluck up. To break down. to destroy, to overthrow. And he said this to many nations. He prophesies against Egypt, to the Philistines, to Moab, Edom, Assyria, Babylon. But here's the sad part. He had to tell his own people the same thing. He had to tell his own people to repent. The book of Jeremiah is a very sad book. But remember what I told you guys in the beginning. It's always good to remember that you're never without hope. Though Jeremiah told them that God would judge them and that they would be brought into exile, he gave them hope that they would return. He also used the words, did you catch it? To build up and to plant. They would return to the land and God would leave a remnant and the people would return. And they would come back and rebuild the walls and rebuild the temple and the city. But best of all, out of that remnant would come the true prophet of Israel. Would come the true prophet to the nations. The one who would bring a new covenant by his own blood that God promised through Jeremiah. I want to read to you guys Jeremiah 31, the idea of the new covenant. Because I think when Jeremiah spoke it and he heard it for the first time, it brought Jeremiah so much hope. Because it was so different than the old covenant. In Jeremiah 31 it says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them out by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law in them. I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God. And they will be my people. No more law on stone. No more law they couldn't keep. Law on their hearts. Inside them, that the Holy Spirit would help them keep. Jesus is the true prophet, the one who would come to bring salvation to both houses of Israel, to the house of Israel, to the house of Judah. He would bring it to you and me. Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the righteous branch that Jeremiah prophesied would come out of David. But this Jesus came with the same message that Jeremiah had. He said, repent, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Are we going to listen? Or are we going to be like the people of Israel and listen for somebody else? No, now is the time. Now is the time. Don't wait. If you don't know Jesus, call on him now. Run to him. We have no idea when he's going to return. And you do not want to be the ones that are asleep when he comes. Jesus is the hope that Jeremiah continued to talk about throughout his book. Today, we live in a world much like that of Jeremiah. Nation against nation, turning to idols by the so-called religious. But as with Jeremiah, we need to know the times we live in. We need to remember who made us when it gets really bad. And most of all, we need to always know that in Christ, there is always hope. Let's pray. Father God in heaven, thank you so much for sending your son Jesus, the true prophet of Israel, the true prophet to the nations, the ones that if we hear, he will take us and take us to the real Jerusalem. Thank you so much for your word. Thank you so much that we can dive into it week by week. We just pray, Lord, that it sticks with us, that it helps us to be more like you every day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.