October 19 2025
Jeremiah 1:4-10, 2:1-3
Today we are starting a new set of messages, and what I want you to consider as we begin is this: Am I a person who is, “in the know”, ? What I mean by this is this, do others consider you a person who has the scoop on what’s happening? You know, are you the person others say is, “in the know”, that you are the one with the answers if someone is looking for them. Is this how others know you? Now, whether you realized it or not, we are to be people that others say are people, “in the know”. Here’s why I believe this is true. You see, its probably no secret to all of your family, friends and neighbors, that most Sunday mornings, the place where you will be found is sitting here in church. So it is fairly easy to assume that those watching you will perhaps come to the conclusion that you know something that they do not know. Well, actually what you are supposed to know is not a something, like, say, church doctrines or creeds. No, what I believe makes us people in, “the know”, you know, is that we are people in the know about God, specifically, the God whose name is Jesus. You see, we are to know not just something about God, like say, that he is a God of love; no, we are to be people who know God, himself. If we keep coming to church week after week then its fairly easy to assume that we are going to be the people who know God intimately. You see, why others should consider us people who are in the know, is that we have what might be called, “ insider information”, meaning that we have a knowledge that can only be found within this relationship we have with God. So, knowing all of this, can I consider you to be a person, who is, you know, “in the know”?
This theme of us knowing ourselves as being people, “in the know”, is the underlying current in this book found in the Old Testament called Jeremiah.Now if you have read your way through the Bible, you will know that the books about the prophets are some of the weirdest reading of the Bible. Yet these odd messengers of God should not surprise us for even before the people of God had set foot in the Promised Land, they were told that the prophets would be coming somewhere in their future. In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, beginning at the fifteenth verse, Moses instructs the people, ‘The Lord your God will rise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers- it is to him you shall listen-….” Moses continues,”The Lord has spoken that he will raise up a prophet like Moses …and God, will put his words in their mouth, and they shall speak all that God commands them to speak.” God says further that even if someone refuses to listen to the prophet he has raised up he nonetheless will require of them what the prophet has spoken of. In other words, selective hearing is ruled out as a reason for not doing what God calls his people to do.
So Jeremiah is one of these people, a prophet, who has been raised up from among the people of God. This is perhaps understandable as Jeremiah came from a family of priests.Jeremiahs family’s had served God in the Temple for centuries. Many of those raised up to be prophets by God were from the families of priests because they would have been those who stood between the ideal of the Temple and the people who failed to be less than ideal in the way that they acted. With all this in mind, we are told that Jeremiah heard a word from God, telling him this, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart for holy work. I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Kind of amazing, isn’t it, that God tells Jeremiah that he has been known by God before Jeremiah was even born. So we could say that God is the one who is in the know about each of us. Perhaps it is no wonder that when Jeremiah objects to his calling on the grounds that he is just a kid, God understands Jeremiahs concern, yet nonetheless, he still expects Jeremiah to speak all that God has given to him to say. What Jeremiah will have to rely upon is the faithfulness of God who promises to rescue him and deliver Jeremiah when trouble overwhelmed him. This meant that Jeremiah would have to come to know God through his experiences with God.
Jeremiah, then, has been called to be one whom God will speak through so that what comes forth from Jeremiah can be considered to be the very words of God. These words, we are told, will tell of some pretty bad consequences that await those who hear them. Yet even so, there is also the hope that beyond the plucking up, the breaking down, beyond the destruction and the overthrow, their will be a time of building and planting. Beyond the destruction, there is the promise of new life for this is the expectation of every seed that is planted. Even so, the people that God called Jeremiah to speak to would have not taken kindly to being told that this life they had built was now going to meet the fate of the wrecking ball. As Jeremiah understood so well, the anger the people felt towards God would certainly end with a call to kill the messenger. Yet, once again, we hear God tell Jeremiah that this is to be of no concern for as God tells Jeremiah, he will fight for Jeremiah and he will deliver him.
As we think about Jeremiah and what God has called him to do, perhaps what will help make Jeremiahs work more understandable is that we simply consider Jeremiah to be like an attorney or lawyer representing God. You see, God is bringing a lawsuit against his people claiming that they have defamed his character and therefore they are no longer able to live as his renters on his property. Now this should have come as no surprise to God’s people because God had told them in advance what would happen if they failed to hold up their end of the bargain. Before the people of God even entered into the Promised Land, God tells them, as recorded at the beginning of the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy, that, “…these things will come upon you, the blessings and the curse, and you are to remember them when you find yourself among the nations where God will drive you…” It was apparent, at least to God, that at some point in their relationship, things were going to go south, and the people who once lived in the Promised Land would need to be evicted. Unfortunately for Jeremiah, he was the one who had been selected by God to deliver this tragic news that the time had come.
Well, here at the beginning of the second chapter of Jeremiah then, we have God making his case to his people. He begins by asking his people to remember their honeymoon days, you know when God and his people were madly in love. Jeremiah went throughout Jerusalem calling his people to remember how things were in their early days of their relationship with God. They were to, “…remember the devotion of their youth, their love as a bride, how they followed God throughout the wilderness, in that land that was wild and untamed. Israel was set apart as holy unto the Lord, the very first fruits of his harvest. Anyone who attempted to devour them incurred guilt as disaster came upon them; do you remember this, asks the Lord?”. Now what is interesting, here in this recalling of their beginning, God portrays Israel, as being a bride. To our modern ways, it may not be apparent that here God is speaking about his people knowing him in a deeply, intimate way. Yet this is what we find in the first verse of the fourth chapter of Genesis, where we are told, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived, and bore Cain…” So, when God speaks of his relationship with Israel in terms of being his wife, he is saying that at one time, his people knew him in a very, deep and personal way. As is said about being married, in the end you end up knowing the good, the bad and the ugly about each other. I mean no one knows me as well as my wife does. Jennifer has had forty years of knowing all about me, so if anyone could be said to be in the know about me, it has to be her. Well, this is the very same way it was for the people of God as they tagged along with God out there in the wilderness. As they traveled the wilderness, packing up and moving every time God told them to, the people of God learned to trust God, and when they trusted God they came to know God. The people of God came to realize that God had a good reason for leading them to every new location. Yet, even when they failed to trust God as in that very ugly time in their relationship when they put God to the test, God was still faithful to provide for his bride. So throughout their travels together, God’s people came to know God in a way few may have ever known him.
What the people of Israel came to know about God in the forty years of their wilderness wanderings were many things but they can be perhaps boiled down to three basic ideas. The first thing they knew about God is that his love for them was a constant in their life together. When they swore at God, and they questioned his very character, God nonetheless, never ceased to love them, desiring only the very best for them. Every morning God provided manna without fail, no matter if his people woke up with a heart full of love for God or if they could have cared less. The also came to know that their God came whenever they called for him.They did not need some special set of words or a spell to say in order to have God’s full attention brought to bear on the trouble they found themselves in. So, knowing God like this, then it just follows that they also came to know their God as always being faithful to provide all they needed. You see, they could witness that the shoes on their feet never wore out even after forty years. Their clothes were still in good shape, they had water to drink and food on their tables. There was no need for them to ever wake up and wonder where they would find what they needed for life. No, God was always faithful to provide all that his bride needed..
So the God who makes it his business to know all about us, desires that in our relationship to him we know him, and that we keep on growing in what we know about him. Just like people of God in the wilderness, we are to know that even when we fail God, God nonetheless remains faithful in his love for us. Through this faithful love shown to us we are to realize that God cares more about who we are than he cares about ability to return our love to him to him.That is an amazing thing to know about God. We are to also know that God is never, ever far from us. Whenever we cry out in God in our distress, God is found to be with us in our troubles. Just as God never required his bride to have all the right words to speak to him, we can know that even a sigh grabs God’s attention. So as the people of God we can know God in an up close and personal way. And as the people of God we also know that all we required for life is going to be given to us by the God who loves us. We can thus know God as being a servant who takes care of seeing to it that all that we need will be ready for us.
You see, when we know what it is like to know God then it is no surprise that the people of God know themselves as being God’s holy people. These ones who once had been slaves became transformed by knowing God. They found themselves hopelessly devoted to the One who had set them free. This willingness to serve God was a natural response for the people of God who came to know this God who loved them unconditionally. You see, serving God was just a natural reaction for those who know the God who is always close by, listening for our voice. I mean, how could those who know that God served them by setting a table in the wilderness not desire to turn and serve him with a heart of gratitude. The people of God who know God of course, respond to God by serving God as God expected them to be, his royal priests. These former slaves had heard God tell them they were to be a nation of royal priests, those who served and worshipped God alone, and when they had come to know God, this is when they knew themselves to be what God desired. As God’s royal priests, they knew that they were to serve in the same way God has first served them. So, they turned and loved God as God had first loved them. They were quick to hear the voice of God and act on his desires. They served God by providing for others as God had first served them and provided for them. This was the hope God revealed to Abraham, the founding father of the nation of Israel, that when God would bless his family, then they, in turn, would serve God by blessing every family on earth.
When we remember the hope God had for his people, then what God has told Jeremiah when he called him to be his prophet is very telling. You see, when God first put his words in Jeremiah’s mouth, we hear God tell Jeremiah that he was being appointed to be a prophet to the nations, not to the people of Israel, as one might expect. So, here is a clue to the reason for God raising up Jeremiah to be his prophet. Perhaps, Israel, who once was holy to the Lord, who once was set apart from the nations so that through her all the nations might be blessed, has now become sadly, just one of the nations, a nation waiting to be blessed like all the rest. You see, God seems to know something about Israel, his bride, something that she has not realized, that she has in fact, lost that loving feeling. God, through Jeremiah, calls his people to remember how long ago in the honeymoon days of her wilderness wanderings with God, they used to know God. Oh, yes, she may remember those days but now she her relationship with God is no longer defined as a time to know each other in ever an deeper intimacy. No, now the bride of God who should know God nonetheless has no desire to make God known to anyone else. You see, when Israel wandered about in the wilderness, following after her God like a love sick girl chasing after the love of her heart, this was seen by the watching eyes of the nations who may have wondered what it must be like to know this God like in this way. You see, when people want to know God, it makes sense that they will go to those in the know about God. Yet what happens when the people of God no longer act as if they even know God? I mean, just where are those who do not know God supposed to go in order to know God? This has to make us wonder. I mean, if we say that we are the people of God who are in the know about God, then are we acting as if we are the people of God who are in the know about God? If we know God, then we know we have to love God as he first loved us. If we know God then we must act as if, yes, our God is close by, he is listening to us, he is hanging on our every word. If we know God then we show we know God by serving God, providing what others need just as God first served us and provided all we needed. The God who knows us calls us to make him known so let us do so, always to his glory! Amen!
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