REMEMBERING THE AWESOME BEFORE OF YOUR LIFE

"The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, 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."
Jeremiah 1:1-5 ESV


How has your life turned out so far? Are you becoming the person Christ chose and redeemed you to be? Are you growing old or are you growing up? Are becoming better or bitter? Some people as they grow up become less. Other people as they grow up become more. I meet people who just get softer, wiser, more loving, gentle, more effective, happier, full of life, and at are peace. Oh how I long to become like them. Sadly, I meet others who as time goes by just get hard, bitter, cynical, bored, grumpy, angry, and died long ago in spirit. Is your life on the decline or on the ascent? Life does not have to be an inevitable decline into dullness; for some it is an ascent into excellence. It was for Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived about sixty years.

How did he do it? How do I do it? One of the supreme tasks for me as a pastor is constantly speak and reaffirm of the kind of life into which we can grow, to help us set our sights on what it means grow into the fullness of Jesus Christ, to mature, whole, and complete. Not one of us, at this moment, is complete. In another hour, another day, we will have changed. We are in process of becoming either less or more. What are we becoming? Less or more?

John said, "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). We are children; we will be adults. We can see what we are now; we in Paul's words, to arrive at "mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). We are not meant to deteriorate. We are meant to become.

The name Jeremiah means either "the LORD exalts"; or it may mean "the LORD hurls." On the day that their son was born, Hilkiah and his wife named him in anticipation of the way that God would act in his life. In hope they saw the years unfolding and their son as one in whom the Lord would be lifted up: Jeremiah—the Lord is exalted. Or, in hope they saw into the future and anticipated their son as a person whom God would hurl into the community as a javelin-representative of God, penetrating the defenses of selfishness with divine judgment and mercy: Jeremiah—the Lord hurls. Jeremiah's life was radically influenced and governed by God's action. Jeremiah lived for sixty years. For sixty years and more he continued to live into the meaning of his name.

How did Jeremiah do it? How can we live a full, fruitful, glorious, meaningful, and ever progressing life? It is found in the first words that God spoke to Jeremiah that become God's word to each one of us:

"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" (Jeremiah 1:5).

YOU ARE KNOWN BY GOD!
Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." The reality of our lives begins with God's knowledge of us. Long before we knew or had any interest in God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know. This realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself. There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me. That means that everything I think and feel is by nature a response, and the one to whom I respond is God. I never speak the first word. I never make the first move. God is always previous. Jeremiah's life didn't start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah's salvation didn't start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah's truth didn't start with Jeremiah. He entered the world in which the essential parts of his existence were already ancient history. So do we.

YOU ARE SET APART BY GOD
The second item of background information provided on Jeremiah is this: "Before you were born I consecrated you." Consecrated means set apart for God's side. It means we are chosen out of this fallen world for something important that God is doing. What is God doing? He is saving; He is rescuing; He is blessing; He is providing; He is judging; He is healing; He is revealing. There is a spiritual war in progress (Ephesians 6:10-20; 1 Timothy 6:11), and
Jeremiah, before he was born, was enlisted on God's side in this war. He wasn't given a few years in which to look around and make up his mind which side he would be on, or even whether he would join a side at all. He was already chosen as a combatant on God's side. And so are we all. No one enters life as a spectator. We either take up the life to which we have been consecrated or we traitorously defect from it.

The bible calls Christians "saints." It is the same word in Greek, hagios, which means set apart or separated from for God and His use. Christians are all saints regardless of how well or badly they live. The word saint does not refer to the quality or virtue of their acts, but to the kind of life to which they had been chosen, life on a battlefield. It is not a title given after a spectacular performance, but a mark of whose side they were on.

YOU ARE GIVEN BY GOD FOR OTHERS
The third thing that God did to Jeremiah before Jeremiah did anything on his own was this "I appointed you a prophet to the nations." The word appointed is, literally, gave". God gives. He is generous. He is lavishly generous. Before Jeremiah ever got his act together he was given away by God. That is God's way. He did it with his own son, Jesus. He gave him away. He gave him to the nations. He did not keep him on display. He did not preserve him in a museum. He did not show him off as a trophy. "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (3:16).

God also gave Jeremiah away. I can hear Jeremiah objecting, "Wait a minute. Don't be so quick to give me away. I've got something to say about this. I've got my inalienable rights. I have a few decisions about life that I am going to make myself." Imagine God's response: "Sorry, but I did it before you were even born. It's already done; you are given away."

Giving is what we are meant to do best. it is the secret of the blessed life (Acts 20:35), says our Lord. It is the action that was designed into us by God before we were ever born. God gives Himself. He gives away everything that is His. He makes no exceptions for any of us. We are given away by God to our families, to our church, to our neighbors, to our friends, to our enemies, and to the nations. The very nature of a God known, God chosen, God consecrated life, is a life for others. That is the way His Kingdom works.

Jeremiah sets the pattern. He lived for sixty years from a foundation of remembering and reflecting upon the awesome before of his life, and he lived out of this background. It is not easy to live this way if we have short memories, if we consider everything through the prism of our current feelings and circumstances. It takes a radical change to consider the vast before of our lives. But oh dear reader, if we would live well, it is absolutely necessary. Otherwise we will live feebly and tentatively, blind to the stupendously liberating glory that we are known, chosen and given away by God.

May you begin living as KNOWN by God, CONSECRATED by God, and GIVEN by God for others.
May you remeber and have hope that the best days of your soul and your life lay ahead because of your BEFORE!

Pastor Bill