Jeremiah (1-31) 1:4 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 1:4

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‘Before I formed thee in the belly [the womb] I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.’ That doesn't mean to say that Jeremiah was given the gift of prophecy before he came forth out of the womb, but he was set aside from birth by the Lord. It was foreordained that he would be a key prophet of the Lord, and in due course the Lord would train him and prepare him. But this was enacted by God, or determined by him, even from the very beginning, and indeed before the beginning, of his life. God says, I set my mind and my love upon you, and before you came out of the womb you were set aside and ordained, appointed, a prophet to the nations. ‘Unto the nations’ in the plural? Yes, because this prophecy is going to involve the key nations of that time – Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt of course, Persia, Moab – all are going to be mentioned in the course of this prophecy. This is in a prophecy which is going to say that there will be destruction from the north, and all the nations in the Babylonian Empire will be mobilised against you. But you are to minister even to enemies, as well as to Judah. And it's the same with us. We are to minister to everyone: people who are far away, people who show no interest. We have given to everyone to minister. But more; this prophecy is going to be speaking about the church age before long, in two notable passages, one extremely long. They are going to be predictions about all the nations of the world in the last age, the Gospel age, the church age. His word is going to speak not only then but across the centuries into the future.Notice all the ‘I’s of God, four ‘I’s. This is about the sovereignty of God in the calling of Jeremiah. ‘I knew thee’, says the Lord first, and the word translated ‘knew’ means I knew you intimately, and every detail about you. But it also carries another sense: I knew you, and I became committed to you. The Lord was committed to the call of Jeremiah, and committed to protecting him and giving him power and ability and guiding him, even before he was born. Of course; it is the Lord who foreordains our salvation, and determines to work in our rebellious hearts, and brings us to himself, and Jeremiah is told first of all that his call is something that was originated in the heart of God in eternity past. This is going to be a tremendous help to him. He is a going to be a sufferer; he will be attacked; he will be imprisoned; he will be dismissed and scorned and insulted, and one of the tremendous comforts he has is that God called him to this task, and called him before he was even born. None of this is by accident; none of this is outside of God’s plan.‘I sanctified thee’, separated you, ‘and I ordained thee.’ The ‘ordained’ word here is a rather rare one. It means literally, ‘I gave you a prophet to the nations.’ I gave you to the nations; I separated you from the world, and yet I gave you to minister to the world.

Application

That is true with us. We are given in order to save people out of the world, to warn the world, to remonstrate with the world and appealed to the world. We are God's gift to the world, to warn the people and draw people out. Ordained is a perfect translation. It is an ordination, but it's a ‘giving to’. I dedicated you to operate in the world, and to reach people for Christ, your Saviour, and to warn the people and to make my will and my holy standards known.

Does that apply to us? Yes it does. Jeremiah was a prophet, an authentic prophet, in the sense that he was inspired by God. You and I are not inspired by God; we don't need to be, because we have the word of God. Jeremiah had his own prophecy; we have in our hearts and in our heads all the prophets, and the New Testament as well which he didn't have. We are even more equipped than he was in a sense, because though we may look up to him and see he was given the privilege of being an inspired man; well, that is all settled now and published, and we have it all: the completed Bible. We are appointed in a non-inspired sense to be prophets of the inspired Bible and representatives of the Bible, custodians of the truth, proclaimers of the truth. So every word here that applied to Jeremiah applies to us too. Before the foundation of the world, every one of us – if we love Christ and have been brought to him – were appointed to be proclaimers of the inspired word. It never occurred to me to think of it in that elevated way, we may say. But if we do, it bucks us up; it challenges our hearts.

But that is not just true of Jeremiah, it is true of all of us. We are all called of God clearly before we are born. God knows us and knows us in detail and commits himself to us. He brings us under the covenant which the Father has made with the Son, and we enter into that covenant relationship, and God will be faithful to us. He determined even before the foundation of the world that you and I would be in his service in some shape or form. If you just think about that for a few moments, it is overwhelming. My service for the Lord, my acts of witness, my commitment to him, my making his service the greatest priority in my life – whatever he calls me to do: God determined that I should have that office. I never thought of it as an office. I am an ordinary Christian person, but I had the office of a representative of Christ before the foundation of the world. That stiffens my resolve. I must be loyal to this calling; I must take this so much more seriously. I am a called man, a called woman, and God determined this before the foundation of the world. He had my name written in his book – however important or lowly I might be in life – as a member of his church. I am called of God from eternity past. I better start taking my calling and my privileges a lot more seriously than I do. That is the effect it should have upon us. In the case of Jeremiah, it was a call to the prophetic ministry; in our case, it is to the service of the Lord, wherever he places us. We have been not only called, but set aside. In other words, set aside from the world, taken out of the world, separated from all worldly pursuits and interests and priorities. Of course, we have got to earn our living; we have got to study for careers; we have got to do these things, but these are not our priorities. Before the world began, I was separated from the world to live a life of separation and holiness. The world today is so intrusive, so readily available, so at our fingertips. The faithful pastor must therefore emphasise the necessity of Christian people being separate from the world in their pursuits, their interests, their recreations, their entertainments, and their music. Do you not hear the voice of God saying to you, ‘I separated you before you were born.’ But I am not separated, you may be forced to admit. I haven't taken this seriously. God set his love upon me, and determined to send a Saviour for me, and to put my sins upon him and to call me to his service, and I am still dabbling with all kinds of things.

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Jeremiah (1-31) 1:4 Commentary and Bible Study