Please open your Bibles to Jeremiah 1. I thought a great way to kind of get us going is to just talk about an overview of Jeremiah and the life that God had called him to. So turn to Jeremiah chapter 1, and we're going to be talking about Jeremiah in respect to the exciting but unexpected life that he had. During my freshman year at Bob Jones, I attended a Saturday chapel on missions. Wouldn't it be great if we brought back Saturday, required Saturday chapels? And in that chapel time, Earl Knuths was the speaker. And he was, of course, challenging us about missions. He was the missions guy here. And for the first time in my life, I believed that the Lord wanted me to pursue missions. So I went forward on an invitation. Little did I know that my future wife was going forward on the other side of FMA. And she surrendered to missions as well. So... At the close of that time, you start thinking, well, what next? I went back to my room in my dorm to tell my roommates about it. And they gave me some advice. They didn't always give good advice, you understand. But I thought I received some pretty good advice from one of the guys. He said, there are mission teams that go out on a regular basis. you know, kind of put your toe in the water and go on a mission team. So a couple days later, I went to one of the professors who was leading a mission team. It was Nelson McGue. He was leading a team to Eastern Canada, and he gave me this stirring challenge as I sat there in his office. And I walked away from there thinking, I'm going on that trip. I need what can be learned through this experience. So I did. I went on the trip. There were 26 of us that went, and we crisscrossed all over Nova Scotia doing different kinds of ministry, most of it evangelistically. geared, a number of people came to Christ, not just children, but also adults. And so I thought that this was just a one-off thing for me and that my life was going to go on. But at the end of the summer, he sat me down and a local pastor up there, and they challenged me to come back the next year. They said, we've got this property about 200 miles east of here. It's right on the Atlantic Ocean. And we own it. We've owned it for years. Somebody donated it, but nobody's using it. And we wonder if you would consider going and starting a Christian youth camp. I was 20 years old. So that just really seems like a ridiculous request. And my answer was equally ridiculous. I said, well, I'll think about it. I'll pray about it. And so three weeks later, I said to them, yeah, I believe that the Lord wants me to do that as long as I can get a friend to go with me, because I don't want to try to do this by myself. And so I called a friend from high school. And so, you know, here's this 12th grader and this 20 year old. And now the next year we're heading to Canada to start a camp. We've never been there before. I've never even seen a picture of the property. And what's even more ridiculous is they gave me a Bob Jones bus as my vehicle. It was brand new. I mean, shiny brand new, only had a couple thousand miles on it. And they trusted a 20 year old to drive that bus to Nova Scotia, a 2000 mile trip. So they had low standards, evidently, and CDLs and all that back then. So there we are. Gene is sitting in the front seat. We're driving along. We get within 150 miles of where we need to go. And kaboom, the engine blew up. It absolutely blew up. We threw a rod. for those of you who are mechanical, it went right through the engine casing and smoke covered the Trans Canada so no one could see. Other drivers, us, saw it pulled over. And I thought, man, we are in really big trouble. So we went out there, and we opened the hood. Thankfully, didn't catch on fire. And the smoke eventually cleared, and I saw this big hole in the side of the engine. I said, Gene, I think this is a problem. So we had to call the people here, and they worked it out. It was still under warranty, thankfully. but our lives were turned upside down. What were we gonna do? We didn't have plan B. We only had plan A, the bus. And so we had to go live with a missionary couple who, they were Canadians, so they understood the culture, and we had to go there and live there. We slept in the church, and we just did whatever they wanted us to do, which really kind of bummed me out. to be frank. I mean, I wanted to get going on the work that God had called us to do. And here we were stranded for, it actually was for about a couple of weeks. But I learned so much from that couple during those two weeks. I learned humility. I learned service. I learned how to interact with that culture there, because it's a different culture, as you would expect. So what a life-changing thing to get us started. And we eventually did make it to the camp. We got there in the dark and we had our little flashlights, me and Gene, and we opened the first door to this 100-year-old house. We knew there was a house there. And about 100 bats flew out. We went in the door, and we were in what was the kitchen, and there was garbage that we had to climb over. I mean, higher than my head, with the ceiling only an eight-foot ceiling. There wasn't a lot of room once you got over all the garbage that was there. We crawled in through the room. We made our way. We found a room that didn't have a lot of garbage in it. We laid our sleeping bags down and tried to sleep. That was not very successful. And then, the next day, we woke up. You know, the sun comes up like 4 in the morning in the summer. And we started to work. It was the most awesome thing you can even imagine. We had $600 between us, and that had to include all our food, all our gasoline, and building supplies. We had to re-roof the whole building and do all kinds of other things with those $600. But the Lord really helped us. Our typical meal was to open a big can of beans with a loaf of bread and we'd split it all between us. We didn't cook a thing. We just ate it right out of the can. We didn't have electricity. We didn't have a refrigerator. So when we bought milk, we would put it in a garbage bag, tie a rope around it, and put it down in the rock well. Unfortunately, rabbits kept on falling in the well and rotting out the well. So if you've ever had to clean a well out before, man, when you got to do it like four times in a summer, it's not a lot of fun. Our goal was to hold camp by the end of the summer. We wanted to hold two kinds of camp. One, a day camp, where the kids come, we pick them up in our bus, and so we went around, we canvassed everywhere, and we're aiming to get kids for this one particular week. We had 70 kids from the fishing villages. who never heard the gospel before, didn't have any kind of gospel witness, a number of those children got saved. And then the next week we wanted to have an overnight camp for boys. So Gene and I were the directors, were the cooks, then we had to start cooking. And we are the counselors. We are everything there. So Monday morning is when camp starts. We had canvassed everywhere. We were charging $15 for a week of camp. You know, we didn't know how much it was going to cost to feed these kids. and do camp, but $15 seemed reasonable, and not one kid showed up. Not one single kid. So we're just, you know, kinda sitting around going, what are we gonna do about this? And I turned to Gene, I said, Gene, this is unacceptable. We have to have kids. We can't have camp without kids. Get in the bus. So we got in the bus at noon, and we drove around to all these fishing villages. And we went door to door and we said, you know, I noticed that you have kids and bikes out here. And so you got our notice and maybe, you know, maybe it costs too much. So you can come for free. That's fine. And maybe you forgot about it. You know, we'll take care of it. By the end of the day, by the time it was dark, we had 15 boys. They actually came, even Smelly Billy came. So, the Lord worked in amazing ways. I mean, it was, every day was exciting. It was exhilarating. And this season, that camp has been in existence for 45 years. And the director of the camp was, a fellow RA from Brokenshire that I got to know, and he's been running it ever since way better than I ever did. So it's exciting, and you don't expect things like that to happen, and it's exciting to see how God works along the way. Now, when we think about Jeremiah, I want to ask the big question today, what does Jeremiah teach us about his life and what God had called him to do? And if you think about this, when the Lord called him in 627, he was probably about 17 years old. And at that age, you can't imagine what God is going to do with your life. You just can't imagine it. but God chooses you to serve Him. He equips you in every way that you need, and He does things that you can't even imagine. If you could, you probably wouldn't do it. So, why would you object on the front end? Why would you fear? on the front end, and just about all of us do. According to Barna, nearly 40% of pastors are seriously considering quitting the ministry in 2022. That's two out of five pastors, right? Is that the math? Almost 40%. So we do face difficulties along the way, and I think that Jeremiah's message is quite encouraging for us because with Jeremiah, and I think it's a picture of what happens with all of us, the Lord works in different ways, but the basics are there, that God had appointed him to ministering. He was opposed to it. And yet God equipped him for that ministry, of course. And then we want to look at the extent of that ministry because it's pretty phenomenal what the Lord used him to do. So we're going to wade through these things. In Jeremiah 1, if you have your Bible open there, you can see this text that I have in front of us. First of all, his appointment to ministry, 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. And so it's really that last clause is, I made you a prophet. I made you into a prophet to the nations. So you think about some of those things there, before I formed you in the womb. So even before conception, God had knowledge of you. And he knows about you. He knows who you are. He knows the characteristics of your personality and what you like and what you don't like and how you're going to develop through life and so forth. You know, we see numbers of other scriptures that give us that truth, but I just want us to think about that in terms of being here in seminary. He knows you and he has known you. for a long, long time. And before you were born, he says here, I consecrated you, I set you apart to do something, to be something for him, to accomplish his will, to glorify his name. And then with Jeremiah, he made him into a prophet for the nations. So, you know, he shouldn't have objected, but we so often do. He shouldn't have objected, but right, you know, right on the front end. Ah, Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak for I am only a youth. And that's true. You know, if he was 17, I think we would all agree that's fairly young. And it sounds a little bit like some others, other individuals in scripture, right? But maybe you've said this in your heart of hearts. And I'm just too young. I can't do that. I can't step out and do that. And besides, I just can't stand up in front of people. I can't speak. Um, you know, and I'm, I'm not going to be claimed to be the greatest speaker in the world, but I was the shyest person on the planet. Um, and I said this frequently, I only talked to one girl and then I married her. So, you know, that's the Lord gives strength and he gives you the ability to do what he wants you to do. So look at Yahweh's answer to this. Do not say, I am only a youth. You're not allowed to say that. Why? Because I made you. I formed you. And then he gives this really interesting follow up. For to all to whom I send you, you shall go and whatever I command you, you shall speak. That's a really interesting follow-up because essentially he's saying, there's really only two things that matter. I'm sending you somewhere and you got to speak. All you have to do is show up and speak. And that's what ministry really is, right? You got to be willing to show up and speak. Speak my word, of course. You think about the challenges that you have. In chapel last night for the evangelistic meeting, the preacher talked about how he's spent a lot of time with dying people recently. And the blessing really of that, of watching a believer pass into eternity, it is amazing. Saw that happen with my sister earlier in 2021. It's amazing to experience that, to hold her hand and watch her meet the Lord, so to speak, as the next step in her experience as a person. But, you know, you gotta show up. You gotta be willing to be there. That's like the first thing. That's really an important thing. And then to be willing to give the words that God would have you to do. That's what ministry is all about. So, we see here also in verse nine, or verse eight, pardon me, that fear is a big part of what we face. This is why we object in the beginning, because we're afraid of what's going to happen. And in verse 17, God says to Jeremiah, don't be dismayed at them, lest I dismay you before them. So your fear is going to backfire on you. It's going to backfire. What he's saying here is if you respond, if you're fearful and you're not willing to take the next step that God wants you to do, then you're going to get more fear. And you're going to be afraid in the context of the people that you're supposed to be serving, or that you're supposed to be delivering the message to. So don't be afraid. God says, I will deliver you. He repeats that in verse 19 as well. So just, you know, think about these things. We are all so worried about how things are going to work out. Am I going to have a normal life? Will I get married to the woman of my dreams? Will I have children? Will I live in a nice house? What about retirement? I thought about kind of tricking you here about showing you how Jeremiah had a comfortable retirement by looking at the last two verses of the book. And then I would say, actually, Jeremiah kind of disappears in a previous chapter. We don't know what happened to him. He got hauled away to Egypt as a captive, and we don't know what happens after that. And what that's really talking about at the end there is about Jehoiachin, who is hauled out of prison and allowed to eat at the king's table every day. So not exactly a comfortable retirement. We worry about how things are gonna work out. My youngest son was on a mission trip to a Muslim country, to Morocco. He was involved in many different evangelistic efforts. You have to be really careful in a country like that. He was sharing Christ with a young man in a Moroccan cafe. And they agreed to meet again a couple hours later, and the young lad set my son up and had police waiting, plainclothes police, and they arrested Peter, along with his Moroccan buddy, and they took them away and interrogated them for the whole night. They had sometimes 10 or 12 people in the room. They slapped them. They couldn't believe that there was such a thing as an Arabic Bible. They could not believe that. And so Peter had with him about 15 copies of scripture on an MP3 that he was gonna be giving to various people. And they divided them up, you know, and interrogated, they're trying to get information out of them and so forth. But my son said, for the first time in his life, he saw the face of evil. And it was, apart from his salvation, the best thing that ever happened to him. There was a lot of darkness and Peter wondered those questions there. If God has called me to this, will I ever have a normal life? Will I be able to get married? Will I ever have children? I can't imagine going through this and being able to have those things that I always dreamed about having. He survived that and the Lord is using him. So, you know, you think about Jeremiah and the way things ended, 40 years of ministry, going through three deportations and watching the city of Jerusalem dismantled and watching the temple burn. And then being asked the question, of the Babylonian captors because Jeremiah was actually on the good side, you know, as the book explains. Do you want to stay here? You can stay here if you want, or you can come with us and we'll really take care of you back in Babylon. And he said, I'm going to stay here with these people. Not too long after that, Gedaliah is assassinated, and Jeremiah, against his will, is hauled away to Egypt, where he knows doom awaits to most of the people that did this. So, it's a difficult life that God called him to. But God equipped him for ministry. And, you know, there's so much here that we could talk about, but I want to just think about these three things, and that's in the latter section there, 16b through 19, where God says to him, I'm making you a fortified city, an iron pillar, bronze walls. And let me tell you what this means. you are going to win, win, win. Everything that you do, you're going to win, win, win. There's no way because I'm behind what's taking place, there's no way that you can lose. But Jeremiah didn't know about being placed in stocks and being publicly mocked. He didn't know about being cast into a miry pit where, you know, the end is not very far off unless you're rescued. He was rescued. He didn't know about being hauled away to Egypt. All those things he didn't know about. It doesn't seem like you're winning, winning, winning. But in light of eternity, he was. He certainly was. God had equipped him to do what he was calling him to do. Now, the extent of his ministry is just really amazing to think about. Notice it says, see, I've set you this day over what? Over nations, over kingdoms. And then there are six infinitives that follow, to pluck up, to break down, to destroy, to overthrow, to build, and to plant. You say, well, how did that happen? I mean, he didn't have weapons. You know what he had? He had the invincible word. The invincible word. And so if you look at chapters 46 through 51, which one of our speakers will do this semester, Everything that Jeremiah said about these nations, about Egypt, which was, you know, there are several, you know, superpowers here and Egypt always kind of rose up to be that in some respect. Everything he said about Egypt, happened. Everything he said about the Philistines happened, and Moab, and Amnon, and Edom, and so forth, and even Babylon. Two chapters devoted to what's going to happen to Babylon. Every little detail was fulfilled that he spoke. That's how Jeremiah was plucking up and breaking down and destroying and overthrowing and building and planting. Now, this time of history was a chaotic time, a crazy time, a time of confusion and dislocation. There was, you know, when Jeremiah started off, the Assyrian empire was in place and it was operating and receiving tribute from various nations, including Judah. And then it started to crumble and we see the fall of Nineveh in 612. And then we see that Assyria ultimately surrenders, There's a coalition of nations that joined up with Babylon and Josiah unwisely went to battle there to defend the final Assyrian stronghold in the region against the Egyptian armies. And that's the context where Josiah was killed. He was slain. And so now Egypt has got some influence over Judah. They appoint a new king, Jehoias. And then three months later, Egypt deposes him and anoints another relative, Jehoiakim, And he lasts a little while longer. So now you've got Egypt and Assyria is waning, but then Babylon is starting to rise in power. So in 605, we see the Battle of Carchemish. And in that battle, Babylon won. So now a lot of the nations that were loyal to Egypt had to shift their loyalty over to Babylon or be destroyed. And we see the first deportation. This is where Daniel and his friends were taken away to Babylon. But then Jehoiachin in 598, was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar because he got the idea, because now Egypt is starting to rise up again, and he was starting to think maybe they could help him, because he didn't want to pay tribute anymore to Babylon. So he goes in and deposes him, and they take away another slew of people to Babylon. That was the second deportation. And then we had the third one, because Zedekiah did exactly the same thing and Nebuchadnezzar was fed up. He's like, you know, these Judeans can't be trusted. And so he completely destroys the city and puts a governor in his place by the name of Gedoliah, as I already said. So my point is this, right now, you know, Russia's on the rise. There are different things that are kind of scary that are happening. Of course, we've got COVID, the world around, we live in a very confusing time. But so did Jeremiah. He served in a dark world of political intrigue and turmoil. His people were spiritually blind and rebellious against God, although God pursued them to repent. Jeremiah's ministry extended from Egypt to Babylon with Judah in between. It's not much different from what we face. So what does Jeremiah teach us? Well, you can't imagine what God's gonna do with your life. He's brought you here for training, to prepare, to equip you so you can serve him. in the way that you need, and the Lord's gonna give you strength and help as you're faithful to Him to do things that you can't even imagine. So why would we object on the front end? Father, thank you for the opportunity to study your word this semester, for all of these students who are in classes and beginning this new semester. I pray, Lord, for them, for grace and strength and encouragement every day to be able to serve you faithfully. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.