WEEKLY
SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON
An
international Sunday school lesson commentary
For
Sunday July 16, 2017
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JEREMIAH’S
CALL AND COMMISSION
(GOD
challenges us with HIS calling)
(Jeremiah
1)
The
prophet Jeremiah was born in the tiny town of Anathoth, which was located about
three miles northeast of Jerusalem, in the territory belonging to the tribe of
Benjamin. His father was a man named Hilkiah, who was a priest, but is not
believed to be the high priest Hilkiah, who discovered a copy of the Law during
the reign of King Josiah (2 Kings 22:2-14). This Hilkiah was one of the several
Levite priests that were assigned to that area of the southern kingdom of Israel
known as “Judah”.
Jeremiah’s call to ministry begins forty
years before the final destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and his
Babylonian forces in 586 B.C., and so his career covers the last years of Judah’s
existence as a nation. He lived through the entire Babylonian invasion and
conquest, including the shameful destruction of the temple in the end. Throughout
all those years he constantly pleaded with the people of Judah to turn from
their wicked ways ahead of GOD’s judgment, but instead of heeding his warnings,
they mocked, persecuted, and ridiculed him the whole time.
The book of Jeremiah is a collection of
sermons that were preached by him over a twenty-year span of his ministry. These
sermons are a mixture of poems and oracles, and they also contain Jeremiah’s own
personal reactions to the negative responses from his people to his warnings. And
even though the name “Jeremiah” means “Jehovah lifts up”, it seemed that most
of the time, Jeremiah found himself saddened and depressed by the relative
ineffectiveness of his warnings to southern Israel. In fact, Jeremiah found
himself crying so much for his people that he became known around Israel as “the
weeping prophet”.
Here in Jeremiah 1, verse 5, Jeremiah says
that the LORD gave him a message. In that message, GOD starts out by telling
him that “I knew you” (“yada”) before you were formed in your mother’s womb.
GOD tells him that, before he was born, HE had already “set him apart” (“qadas”)
and “appointed him” as HIS spokesman.
Interestingly, the word used here in verse
5 for “I knew you” in the Hebrew is “yada”, and it goes far beyond “intellectual
knowledge” and actually conveys a sense of an experiential, personal,
protective relationship, not unlike the kind of relationship that should be
between a father and a son, or a husband and a wife.
GOD also tells Jeremiah that he had been “set
apart” or “appointed” by HIM. Here the word used for “set apart”, “qadas”,
means that GOD had “sanctified and made him holy” for “a special use” or “special
task” in HIS (in this case) immediate plans. Here Jeremiah is being told that
he had been chosen as GOD’s spokesman to a doomed and unsaved Judah, who had
chosen to go the same route (toward destruction) as their predecessors in northern
Israel in 722 B.C.
Then Jeremiah tells GOD first that, he was
not a good enough speaker to represent him publically, and secondly, he was too
young (meaning he was too young to serve in the Temple at that time). Though Jeremiah
was a priest from birth, he was, at that time, only in his early to
mid-twenties, and wasn’t eligible to actually serve formally in the temple
until he reached the required age of thirty years old (Numbers 4). However, GOD’s
plan for him, for now, was for work that was largely to be done outside the
walls of temple, preaching among the populace of southern Israel, delivering
specific messages directly from HIM.
In verses 9-10 the LORD placed HIS thoughts
in Jeremiah’s mind (put the words in his mouth) and then spoke this
communication aloud to him, saying; “See,
I have put MY words in your mouth! Today I appoint you to stand up against the
nations and kingdoms. You are to uproot some and tear them down, to destroy and
overthrow them (announce judgment to some). You are to build others up and plant them (bless some)” (NLT).
Then the LORD shows Jeremiah two visions
(Vs.11-15), one of “a branch of an almond tree”, and the other of “a pot of
boiling water that was tipping to the north”. In the first vision, the “almond
tree” branch, in the Hebrew “shaqed” (shaw-kade) is actually from the word “shaqad”
(shaw-kad) which means “to watch”, or “to be on the lookout for”. The almond
tree in ancient Palestine was called “the awake tree” because it was the first
tree in the year to bud and bear fruit (in late January). Here it symbolizes
GOD being awake and watching to see that HIS word is fulfilled.
The second vision, the vision of “the
boiling pot tipping toward the north” foretold the coming of Nebuchadnezzar of
Babylon, who, would “boil out on all the peoples of Palestine” who worshipped idols
that were made with their own hands. Nebuchadnezzar would be used by GOD to
exact HIS punishment on Israel, capturing and holding them prisoner, keeping
them out of their homeland from seventy years, or, “until their sins ran its
course”.
GOD, however, based HIS 70-year term of
punishment on the way the Israelites had violated HIS “Sabbath Year Rest”,
which was to be observed once every seven years (Leviticus 25:1-7), the
previous 490 years, exactly 70 times in all. HE thereby was sentencing Israel to
one year in captivity in Babylon for every one of those Sabbath Year Rests that
they violated, or, failed to observe, over that 490-year span.
With that said, GOD instructed Jeremiah to
get up and get dressed, and go out and tell the people of Judah, whatever HE
instructs him to say, and whatever HE instructs him to demonstrate. And GOD
strengthened Jeremiah for task, and also “warned him to not be afraid of the
people”, or else, HE would make him look foolish in front of them.
However, GOD also tells Jeremiah that, if
he would bravely and confidently go forward to the people, HE would make him as
strong as “a fortified city” that cannot be captured. GOD promised Jeremiah
that no king, officials, priests, or anyone else in Judah, would be able to stand
against him, and even though they will try mightily, GOD says, “I will protect
you, and they won’t be successful”.
Unlike most prophets of GOD, both
pre-exilic and post-exilic, Jeremiah actually lived to see his prophesy
regarding Judah’s demise, fulfilled in 586 B.C. Here in this, the twenty-first
century, GOD still calls on men and women to stand up for HIM in difficult
situations. And when we obey HIM, no matter what we become faced with, HE will
protect us, and cause us to prevail against “the antichrist spirit” that we
know, is already in the world.
A Sunday school lesson
by,
Larry D. Alexander
LARRY
D. ALEXANDER- Official Website
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