Jeremiah - My Life Purpose Series

Although I’m primarily going to focus on just a few verses in the rest of the chapter, let me go ahead and read it as you follow along.

[Read Jeremiah 1:4-19]

We don’t exactly how old Jeremiah is here. The only clue we really get is the word translated “youth” in verse 6. But that particular word is rather general and could describe anyone from a teenager up through a young man in his early twenties.

In most of your Bibles, this section probably has a heading that reads something like “The Call of Jeremiah”. We often use the term “call” in Christian circles, but my experience has been that most people believe that is something reserved for only a select few like pastors, or elders or others in vocational ministry. And it is certainly used in that sense at times in the Scriptures.

But far more often, it is a term that is applied to every disciple of Jesus. In his letters to the various churches, the apostle Paul frequently refers to all disciples of Jesus as being “called”. Here is one example:

To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

(Romans 1:7 ESV)

Obviously, as the word “all” indicates, Paul is addressing all the believers in the churches in Rome to whom he is writing.

Peter takes this idea that all Christians are called by God even one step further:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

(1 Peter 2:9 ESV)

Again, Peter is writing to the entire church here. And not only is each and every disciple of Jesus called, we have been chosen by God to be priests who have been given the task of proclaiming the excellencies of Jesus, who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

So there is a general sense in which every disciple of Jesus is called. Or in the terms that I’m using this morning, every disciple of Jesus has been given a life purpose by Him.

In the video that I referred to earlier, Patrick Morley pointed out that we all share a universal earthly purpose. Since he does such a great job of summarizing that universal purpose, I’ll let him explain it.

[Show video clip]

In addition to that universal purpose, each person is also unique and God gives to each of us a personal life purpose in which we carry out those universal purposes in a variety of different ways. And that is what we are going to focus on this morning.

I am convinced that this encounter is what enabled Jeremiah to persevere through an impossibly difficult life of ministry. From this point forward, Jeremiah spent the next 40+ years trying to awaken the southern kingdom of Judah to what would happen to them if they did not turn back to God. And in all those years, he never once saw any encouraging sign. Every other prophet got to see at least some kind of impact from their preaching, even if, like Jonah, that result was not what they were hoping for. But not Jeremiah. Never once did he observe that his preaching made any impact whatsoever on the people of Judah or their leaders. As far as we can tell, he had only two “converts” in all those years of ministry – his secretary Baruch, and an Ethiopian eunuch names Ebed-melech who rescued him from a cistern.