Trusting God Knows Me Series

“Trusting God Knows Me”

Jeremiah 1: 4-5

February 6, 2005

Intro: Have any of y’all seen the show “Wife Swap”? Probably some of you are thinking, “The only thing this preacher does is watch reality TV shows all the time!” Actually I take Sundays off. But I promise you the show “Wife Swap” isn’t as bad as it sounds. What happens is 2 wives switch homes and see what it’s like to live the life of someone else.

-My guess is all of us have fantasized @ doing that before. We’ve all dreamed of living someone else’s life. I can’t tell you how many fantasies I had as a kid of being the QB for the Dallas Cowboys and throwing the winning touchdown to win the Super Bowl over the Pittsburgh Steelers!

-Lately my fantasy has been becoming a professional bass fisherman and having my own show on ESPN on Saturday mornings. But we all dream of swapping lives at one time or another. That’s why this month we’re beginning a new series of messages entitled “Life Swap.” But what we’re going to discover @ this life swap is that it’s not fantasy.

-It’s real! I don’t know how you are @ driving but when I go somewhere I pretty much like to be the driver and not the passenger. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that I’m the best driver in the world and I don’t want to put my life in the hands of anyone else.

-But in life if we’re going to see real change occur, we must be willing to get out of the driver’s seat of our lives and let Jesus take the wheel. And when that happens, everything changes. 2 Cor. 5: 17-“Therefore, if any man be in Christ he is a new creation. Old things pass away, behold, new things come.”

-Seems pretty outrageous when you think @ it. But what you’ll discover is that when you become a follower of Jesus, your life changes. And it’s then you’ll find that Jesus is trustworthy. Now it’s pretty overwhelming to think that Jesus can actually change your life. It’s even more overwhelming to think that Jesus actually knows you are!

Sermon Idea: Today in our passage of Scripture we’re going to see that Jesus really does know who we are. And when I say He knows who you are, I mean who knows you specifically. He knows all @ you.

-We’ll see the story of a man named Jeremiah and God shared w/Him how intimately He knew Him. Now you might be thinking, “How well does God know me?” Well, we’re going to see several things God knows @ you and me.

TEXT: JEREMIAH 1: 4-5

Bckgrd: Jeremiah was a prophet in Israel. Now you might say, “What’s a prophet?” Well, a prophet was one who would foretell future events; he was one who’d receive a specific message from God to speak to people; and he was able to do this by the power of God. A person doesn’t just decide one day that they’re going to be a prophet. You had to have a calling from God to do this.

-And it’s in the midst of Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet that Jeremiah discovered something amazing @ God. He discovered that God knew who he was. Now folks, we live in an impersonal world. You can shop, do your banking, go to school and do your work in front of computer screen w/o ever having to speak to another person.

-Living in such an isolated environment makes it difficult to imagine that there’s a God who truly knows who we are; who knows us on an intimate level. How intimate? Well, our text today points out 3 things @ you and your relationship w/God. 1st, before you were born:

DIV. 1: GOD KNEW YOU (v. 5)

Exp: Now I can’t imagine getting any more intimate than that! Think @ that for a second. Before you were ever born, God knew you! Not even your parents can say that! I remember how excited Emily and I were before each of our children were born. We couldn’t wait to see what they looked like.

A. We couldn’t wait to see what they were going to be like and what they’d become. I couldn’t wait to simply meet them. But the Bible says that before we were born that God KNEW us!

1. The word “knew” carries w/it a sense of relationship and approval. In other words God had a stamp on Jeremiah’s life. It means that God specifically knew Jeremiah. Obviously God was speaking to Jeremiah here, so you may think God knew Jeremiah but He doesn’t know you.

a. A recurring theme in the Bible is that God made us. Ps. 139: 13-16 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you b/c I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”