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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Jeremiah (1-31) 1:17
Comments
The passage returns back to the commands to Jeremiah, his calling as a prophet. ‘Thou therefore gird up thy loins.’ You have a ministry of judgment, but also you are going to have a ministry of soul winning. It has got to run alongside it. As you speak these great judgments, you are going to be appealing to people to repent and trust in the Lord. Jeremiah's book is amazing for the amount of gospel arguments and appeals in it. ‘Gird up thy loins’ – it is a figure that refers to preparing for vigorous action. Gather up your robes. It means to say, summon yourself, pull yourself together and get down to the work with every ounce of energy you can muster. ‘And arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee.’ A prophet had to be careful to obey the Lord. That was part of his ministry. Without obedience he would have no power, but also he himself would be subject to judgment. For the second time the Lord says, ‘Be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them.’
Application
If you are frightened of scorn, and of the world, and of unbelief, and you compromise, and you silence your voice or you take your foot off the accelerator and slacken in the work of adults and Sunday schooling and other things. Be careful lest I make you ashamed in the eyes of the unbelievers, lest I abandon you and you become a weak and stuttering and stumbling church, viewed with derision by the atheists and unbelievers around you. Hasn’t that happened to a large degree to evangelicalism in our day? The world views Christians as pathetic, powerless, insipid. That is the warning of God. You either go all out or there is the warning that God may have to reduce you.
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