I Am Not An Accident

I AM NOT AN ACCIDENT

Jer. 1:4-10

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR

1. WEIGHT-LOSS TIP. An elderly woman was the winner of her weight-loss club for losing the most weight in the six weeks. All the rest of the weight-watchers gathered around her to ask how she had done it. “Simple!” she said, “I just pull out my teeth at six o’clock every night!”

2. THE GOOD NEWS. Dr. Smith asks his patient, "Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?" The patient replies, "Give me the good news." Dr. Smith says, "You're about to have a disease named after you."

B. TEXT

4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying, 5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew [chose] you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." 6 "Ah, Sovereign LORD," I said, "I do not know how to speak; I am only a child." 7 But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.

8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.

9 Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, "Now, I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant."

C. THESIS

1. Do you beat yourself up because you are not pretty enough – tall enough – smart enough? Do you cut yourself down because you feel you are lacking abilities? Jeremiah, the prophet, faced those kind of “self-doubt” issues too, but he overcame them because of something God said to him. Title: “I Am Not An Accident.”

2. We’re going to look tonight at Jeremiah’s call and its meaning to us on our call, our purpose, and the unfinished task.

I. CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

A. THE TWO CHOICES

1. Over a century and a half ago, an academic controversy swept the world, as a liberal, materialistic philosophy collected data to give Man a new view of his origins. What are the options? Really only TWO. It all

depends on your premises and presuppositions. Everything comes down to ONE OF TWO ALTERNATIVES, which sum it up like this:

a. "In the beginning, GOD CREATED the heavens and the earth..." (Genesis 1:1) and "By FAITH we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God... so that what is seen does not owe its existence to that which is visible" (Hebrews 11:3 Weymouth Translation).

b. "Once upon a time... perhaps two and a half billion years ago, under a deadly sun, in an ammoniated ocean topped by a poisonous atmosphere in the midst of a soup of organic molecules, a nucleic acid molecule came ACCIDENTALLY INTO BEING that could SOMEHOW BRING ABOUT the existence of another like itself" (Isaac Asimov, The Well-Springs of Life).

2. Two choices. Take the FIRST, and you see all natural history as divinely guided toward Man's coming; with it the conviction that man has special destiny and moral responsibility (with a probable judgment on the horizon as well). Take the SECOND, and you are left with no God, heaven, hell, or for that matter, any confidence in humanity and its future. The choice is really quite narrow. Of course both sides have their creeds, authorities, and prophets, and both in the final analysis are religions -- are matters of faith.

3. WE’RE CREATED BY GOD!

a. Here at this moment Jeremiah hears the voice of God – the Creator of the Universe – He who put the stars in place – He who formed the world and all that we know – from the telescopic to the microscopic – and God speaks to Jeremiah and says: “Jeremiah – you are special. You have been on my mind a long, long, long time.”

b. David wrote: “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works.” Psalms 139:14 (NKJV). God prescribed every single detail of my creation. He deliberately chose my race, my gender, the color of my hair, the color of my skin, the color of my eyes – but guess what – He has done the same for you. You see – I am not an accident – and neither are you.

c. I think that I would echo the words of Psalm eight: “What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?” Psalms 8:4 (NKJV). In other words – how important are we – that God should even pay attention to us? Yet He does! He says we are very important.