Title: God Knows You
Text: Jeremiah 1:4-10
Today, I am going to attempt to show you that Jesus really does know who we are. When I say He knows who we are, I mean He knows us specifically. He knows all about us.
In our text we see a story of a man named Jeremiah and how God shares with Him how intimately He knows him. Jeremiah was a prophet in Israel. You may wonder what a prophet is? A prophet was one who would foretell future events; he was one who would receive a specific message from God to speak to people; and he was able to do this by the power of God. A person never just decides one day that they are going to be a prophet. You had to have a calling from God to do this. And it is actually in the midst of Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet that Jeremiah discovers something amazing about God. He discovered that God knew who he was.
We live in an impersonal world. When you think about it, you can shop, get your groceries, do your banking, go to school and do your work all in front of a computer screen without ever having to speak to another person. Living in such an isolated environment makes it difficult to imagine that there is a God who truly knows who we are; who knows us on an intimate level. A God that knows you better than any spouse can know you, better than any parent can know. God really knows everything that there is to know about you. That is truly an amazing thought! The God of the Universe knows everything about you, He knows you intimately. How intimately? Well, our text points out some things concerning you and your relationship with God.
I. BEFORE YOU WERE BORN, GOD KNEW YOU
That is a truly amazing statement and a true statement. I cannot imagine getting to know anyone any better than that. Think about that for just a second. Before you were ever born, God knew you! Not even your parents can say that. I remember how excited my wife and I were before each of our children were born. We couldn’t wait to see what they looked like, to see who they were. For nine months they are inside that belly and you get so excited about them coming out to meet you. For the first time in that delivery room you introduce yourself to your new child. We couldn’t wait to see what they would be like. We just couldn’t wait to meet them. But the Bible says that before we were born, God knew us! That means before the doctors laid hands on us in the hospital, God knew us!
The word “know” carries with it a sense of relationship and approval. In other words God had a stamp of approval on Jeremiah’s life. It means that God specifically knew Jeremiah and what he would become. Obviously God was speaking to Jeremiah here, so you may think that God knew Jeremiah before he was born, but there is no way that he would know you because you are just an average Joe. However, God tells us over and over again in His word that He made us and formed us.
Psalm 139:13-16 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because 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.”
There is no arguing with this Scripture. He specifically says that God knit me together in my mother’s womb. David goes on to say; “your eyes saw my unformed body.” You can’t argue the fact that God knew you before you were even born. Another Scripture puts it quite clear for us as well.
Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We were created to do good works and the Bible says that God has prepared us in advance to do those works.
There is no doubt that the Bible teaches God knew us before we were born. He didn’t just know Jeremiah but He knew each and every one of us before we ever took our first breath on our own.
You may be wondering why it is such a big deal that God knows us. The big deal is if God knows you then that means He knows what you are going through in life. If God knows us, that means we are not all alone, that means you haven’t been forgotten. God knows the very trial that you are dealing with. God knows the struggles that you are facing in life. God knows the temptations that you come up against. God knows your family situation and He has promised us that He will never leave us nor forsake us. God knows all about your financial dilemmas. He is concerned about you and He knows you. He hasn’t forgotten all about you, He knows your street address. He knows the number of hairs on your head. Before we accept Him as our Saviour, there is a God that knows who you are and knows what you have need of and wants to meet those needs. He knows us so well that He knows what is best for us even better than we do. God sees the life that you have come out of, but He also sees the life that you are going into.
Knowing that God knows us should give us confidence. God told Jeremiah this at the beginning of His calling to be a prophet in order to give him confidence. He was commissioned by God to spread a message of judgment to the people of Israel. This isn’t exactly what you would call a fun message to preach. It was as though God was telling Jeremiah, “I know you have got a tough message to deliver, but let me tell you something. I know you! I am not going to leave you alone. I am going to be by your side as you deliver this message.” God is giving this same message to some that are here today. He wants you to know before you leave this place that He will not leave you; He is by your side every step that you take. The first thing to know with our relationship with God is that before you were born, God knew you:
II. BEFORE YOU WERE BORN, GOD SET YOU APART
Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I SET YOU APART;”
God set Jeremiah apart. That means God had a specific purpose in mind for Jeremiah before he was ever born. In Jeremiah’s case, he was set apart for the purpose of being a prophet. Jeremiah was born with a certain task he was created to perform.
Each person in this room was created for a specific reason. Each person in this room was created on purpose for a purpose. This indicates to me that there is no one on the face of the planet who is a mistake. No one accidentally came into this world. Some parents may not have expected you, but no one was an accident because God had you in mind before you were ever born. Not only did He have you in mind, but He also had a purpose in mind for you when you came into this world. That is a message that people need to hear! We hear too much that we are no good; we hear that we were a mistake; we hear that we have no purpose in life, but that is not what God says. God says that you were created for a God-given purpose. There is a reason you are here. God made it very clear in Jeremiah’s life that he was here for a purpose. He even said in Jeremiah 29:11; “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
God wants to encourage someone and let you know that He has plans for your life. He doesn’t want you to throw in the towel, He doesn’t want you to give up and not serve Him any longer, He wants you to know today that He has plans to prosper you and not harm you. God wants to be a part of your life. It is not God that harms us: He wants us to prosper. It is not God who gives us pictures of a dim future; He wants to give you hope and a wonderful future filled with the fulfillment of His promises. God knows you and He has set you apart for His purposes.
So many times we don’t realize that God has a plan for our lives and so we try to fill up our lives with our own plans, which in turn leaves us empty.
I read a story on the CBS website about an African plant called “Hoodia.” It looks like a cactus and it grows wild in the desert. The plant is getting a lot of attention because it seems to be a good food suppressant. Scientists have discovered that when you eat small amounts of the plant, it leaves you with a sense of being full; when in fact your not.
Some of us are filling up our lives with things that we think are making us full and satisfied. We are filling our lives up with work and material things. We are filling our lives up with things that physically make us feel good. It may make us feel good and full right now, but as time goes on we are going to discover that those things don’t actually make us full; they don’t actually give us a well-balanced and full life. They, in fact, leave us empty.
Jesus came to fill us up. He said in John 10:10; “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” The word abundant is in reference to being overfilled. There is no way a person can have an abundant life if they feel as though there is no real purpose or meaning in their life. They will never feel stuffed until they know their purpose.
God told Jeremiah He had set him apart. The phrase, “set you apart” means to separate. In other words, God separated Jeremiah from the rest of creation for a special task. His calling was on Jeremiah’s life to perform a specific task.
God has a calling on your life for a specific task. God has specific directions for your life. Before you were born, God knew you, also, before you were born, He set you apart:
III. BEFORE YOU WERE BORN, GOD APPOINTED YOU
Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I APPOINTED you as a prophet to the nations." According to Webster’s the word “appoint” means: “to assign officially; equip or furnish.” We could read this Scripture like this: “I assigned you as a prophet to the nations.” “I will equip or furnish you to be a prophet to the nations.” God didn’t hardly give Jeremiah a say in the matter. God appointed Jeremiah to be a prophet before he was even born; He equipped him to be a prophet before he was born. What an amazing thought! Jeremiah could have thought, “Wait a minute. Don’t be so quick as to tell me what I am going to do. I’ve got my rights! You can’t just tell me what to do, I have some decisions I want to make on my own.”
That kind of thinking is backwards. That type of thinking is where we say, “God was created for me. He was created for me to call out to for help; He was created for me to grant me my wishes.” The Bible makes it very clear that we were created for God to do with as He chooses.
Jeremiah 18:6; “Oh house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” Declares the Lord. “Like the clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.”
Think about that for a moment. Does a ceramic bowl get that way because it chose to be a bowl? Absolutely not! It becomes a bowl because that is what the potter wanted it to be.
Now you might say, “what if I don’t want to become what God wants me to become?” You have that choice. He will never make you do something that you don’t want to do. You don’t have to conform. If a potter gets a piece of clay that doesn’t conform to the image that he wants it to conform to, he takes the clay and throws it out. The problem is that the clay will miss out on being a productive vessel. I think this is one of the reasons why so many people are miserable in life; why so many people feel a void in their lives, it is because they are not doing what they were created to do. The end result of that is always frustration. Before you were born, God appointed you to a certain task. Now the question is are you willing to fulfill the calling that He has on your life?
