First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
August 25, 2013
WHEN ALL IS SAID, IT’S DONE
Isaac Butterworth
Jeremiah 1:4-10 (NRSV)
4 Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
5 “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.”
6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 7 But the LORD said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.
8 Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
9 Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,
“Now I have put my words in your mouth.
10 See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
The great Lou Holtz remains one of college football’s finest coaches. And so, people listen when he speaks. There’s one of his remarks that I hear a lot. Maybe you do, too. It seems that, on one occasion, Mr. Holtz said, “When all is said and done, more is said than done.” It’s clever, isn’t it? And it’s more than that. It’s an unmistakable jab at words. It betrays the broad consensus shared by most Americans: that words are cheap. We walk around with the unquestioned assumption that words are at best powerless and at worst meaningless.
Now, I’m certainly not in any position to contradict someone so celebrated as Lou Holtz or even to dispute the way the majority thinks when it comes to words. But I would remind us that the way we look at things is not always the way God looks at them. And there’s no better evidence for that than what God says about the power of words, especially his words.
For example, in Isaiah, chapter 55, God speaks about the “word…that goes out from [his] mouth.” And what he says about it is: “It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11).
Do you see the power of God’s word? Do you see how it brings to pass whatever it declares? Start with Genesis, chapter 1, and you will see how God created the whole universe by speaking it into existence. We read, “Then God said…and there was…” (Gen. 1:3). That’s the power of the Word of God. Look ahead to John’s Gospel and see how John introduces us to Jesus. He calls him…what? “the Word.” “In the beginning,” he says, “was the Word,” and he’s talking about Jesus (John 1:1). Our God is a God who speaks, and when he speaks, things happen. So, I would alter Lou Holtz’s aphorism to say something like this: When all is said, all is done, especially when God is the one speaking.
Today, we are looking at Jeremiah, chapter 1. It’s about the call of Jeremiah to be a prophet. And who was it that called him? It was God. And how did he call him? Through his Word. The Word of God, powerful to effect what it declares, came to the prophet, and, as a result, it would come through the prophet. In verse 4, Jeremiah said, “The word of the LORD came to me.” But it didn’t just come to him; it overtook him. It entered him. So that, in verse 9, Jeremiah said, “Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.’” The Word of God addressed him first; then, afterward, it would be addressed by him.
I am hard pressed to think of any greater need than this. You name the time and the place. Is there any greater need than to be addressed by the Word of God? Not in Jeremiah’s day. The Word that sounded forth from the prophet’s mouth met with a whole society gone bad: systemic evil, on the one hand, and individual complicity, on the other. Times were dark. In Jeremiah, chapter 7, the LORD summarizes the headlines of the day. Injustice was rampant. The powerless were oppressed. The orphan was abandoned. The widow was shamed. And the “stranger…within [the] gates” was betrayed. Life was expendable. The innocent had no one to protect them. And the people were going “after other gods to [their] own hurt” (Jer. 7:6).
That’s the way it always is when people go “after other gods.” Idolatry always brings with it “hurt,” because it deceives us into believing that we can live for self, indulge every whim, seek only pleasure, and still be happy. Pure and simple, that’s a lie – and worse, it is a lie we tell ourselves.
Even Jeremiah was self-deceived, at least at the beginning. When the LORD called him to declare the Word of God, he wavered. Look at his reply to God in verse 6. He said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” In short, he said No! to God. His excuse? Well, he had two. He pled incompetency: “I do not know how to speak.” And inadequacy: “I am only a boy.”
But in verse 8, the LORD unmasked the real issue: It was fear. “Do not be afraid,” God said. It’s no wonder that Jeremiah was afraid. He lived in fearful times, all the more fearful, however, because – well, what is the famous line from Edmund Burke? “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Jeremiah himself might have done nothing, had God not spoken, had God not called him. But, when God speaks, all that is said is done.
And what God said to Jeremiah was this: “See, today, I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:10). Jeremiah would not have the luxury of doing nothing. He had the Word of God “like a burning fire shut up in [his] bones” (Jer. 20:9). He could no more hold it in than he could hold fire in his bosom. And so, he spoke, and, when he did, God spoke through him. And what he said came to pass. Because when all is said, all is done – that is, when God is the one speaking.
I want to look again at those verbs used here to describe what God’s Word would do through Jeremiah. There are six in all. The first four point to destruction: to “pluck up,” as you would a plant; to “pull down,” as you would a building; to “destroy” and to “overthrow,” as you would a nation. There can be no doubt that the Word of God brings judgment. But the final two verbs point to something else entirely: to “build” – or to rebuild – a structure once torn down, and to “plant” – or to reseed – a garden once destroyed. And what do you notice in that? What do you see? Is it not the power of God’s Word to effect judgment? Yes – but also to bring about restoration. This is the way it is with God. Plucking up and planting, tearing down and building.
I cannot help but think of Jesus, who, according to Scripture, was from the moment of his birth “destined for the falling and the rising of many” (Luke 2:34). Plucking up and planting, falling and rising: do you see it? Some are condemned; some are saved. What makes the difference? It is the verdict of the Word! The Word of God either condemns or saves. It either declares one guilty or not guilty. Jesus himself said, “I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge…” (John 12:47f.).
The word of our Lord, you see, is effective to accomplish what it says. “I have not spoken on my own,” Jesus said, “but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak” (John 12:49). If God’s Word has such power, and if what he speaks is both judgment and mercy, we need to hear what he condemns – that is, what he plucks up or tears down or destroys or overthrows – and we need to hear what he provides in the way of mercy – that is, what he builds and plants. He condemns sin, yes – no surprises there! – but he also provides a Savior to rescue us from condemnation.
To live another moment without this provision is foolhardy. In fact, it is downright dangerous. It is said that Constantine would not be baptized until he was on his death bed because he believed the waters of baptism washed away sins – and he wouldn’t be through sinning until he no longer had the strength to sin.
Jeremiah ran into this phenomenon with the people of ancient Judah. We read in chapter 18 that the Lord said through him, “At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it.” Do you hear echoes of what God said to Jeremiah in chapter 1? “But,” the Lord goes on to say, “if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it” (Jer. 18:7f.). These words were meant, of course, to turn the people of ancient Judah from their sin to the God who could save as well as condemn them. He said to them, “Turn now, all of you, from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings” (v. 11). But what happened? We read in verse 12: “But they say, ‘It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will.”
Why would anyone say that? Why would you say it – or even think it? You may think, like Constantine, “I have more wild oats to sow. I’m not ready for the restraints of a life lived in repentance.” My friend, are your sins so dear? Do they actually bring you that much pleasure, that you would turn a deaf ear to the Word of God that calls you to repentance?
God is compelled to pluck up your life as though it were a weed in a garden, or to tear it down like a condemned building. In order to remain holy and just, he must condemn sin. But listen: He has designed a way to execute judgment by taking upon himself the sin that you have committed. He did this in Jesus. Jesus, though he was the “rose of Sharon,” though he was the “lily of the valley,” was plucked up for your sake (Song of Songs 2:1). Though he himself was the “chief cornerstone,” he was torn down, so that the structure that is your life wouldn’t be (Eph. 2:20, NIV).
Place your confidence in Christ. Trust in his Word alone. Put you faith in him and in nothing and no one else. He is the very Word of God. In him you see the condemnation of sin, and in him you see also your deliverance from it. He was from birth “destined to be the falling and rising of many” – the plucking up of some, the planting of others. Which will it be with you? It’s important that you know because, with God, when all is said, all is done. When it comes to your life, what will the verdict be?
