Understanding The Call: Powered For Service

Theme: Understanding the Call: Powered for Service

Text: Jeremiah 1:4-12; Acts 1:8; 2 Timothy 1:7

Introduction

When reference is made to the call of God it is in simple definition, “an identifiable Spiritual purpose or objective for your life. It is to demand or request one’s presence; to name; to appoint to a specific duty; to invite response.

God’s call on an individual normally goes beyond a person’s background or present state of achievement. It doesn’t matter who you are and where you are from. There is no boundary to the call of God. What God looks for is an available heart.

God calls men and women to places of honor. He called David the Shepherd; Matthew the tax collector; Amos from the herdsmen of Tecoah; Gideon from the threshing floor; Elisha from the plows. D.L. Moody says God never called a lazy man. God never encourages idleness and will not despise persons in the lowest employment. God is looking for an available heart.

The text we are focusing on presents to us a conversation between Jeremiah and God. The passage emphasizes the call of God on Jeremiah and shows the clearness and certainness of God’s call.

Observation

In understanding the call we must:

 Understand our context

Every person that has been called by God has been called from one context into another. God was calling Jeremiah from his place of comfort to engage his surrounding by pointing out to them their folly and disregard for the things of God. This is a similar context that you and I have been called into to minister. If you don’t understand your context how can you minister to the people of that context? This is the context we are in:

 Our context is highly humanistic (of or pertaining to a

philosophy asserting human dignity and man’s capacity for

fulfillment through reason and scientific method and often

rejecting religion)

 Our context has become highly sensual

 Our context is one where there is growing disregard for that

which is sacred

 Our context is one where young people are searching for a real

God. They want to know that they can touch God and he them.

 Our context is one where the church is becoming cold, sterile

and an impersonal corporation

1. The call and God’s sovereignty (v.4-5b)

 Seek to know by whom we have been called

There are those of us who hear God speak and think its bishop. There are those who hear bishop and think its God. You must understand the call and where God is leading you before you run out into service.

The calling that we have received is a divinely inspired call. Jeremiah’s story presents to us the idea that God did not arbitrarily pick you. But from the beginning of time he had a plan for your life.

God did not choose you the day you got save, you were chosen before the foundations of this world were laid. He said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;” God is saying to you tonight like he did the prophet, your parents may have had intercourse and you came about, but look it is I who formed you in the womb. When he speaks of knowing the prophet he is saying I chose you.

So before I created you I chose you. When he talks about before you were born I set you apart- he means I consecrated you before your birth. There is no perfect person for this ministry like you. This context needs you.

This because God designed you for it. Your steps are ordered by God. The writer of the proverbs in chapter 20 and verse 24 tells us that a man’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way.

You never got here because of your pretty looks, good voice or intelligent mind. You got here because he who is the creator of all things had holy plans for you

2. The call is specific (v.5c)

The call is clear and to the point. God does not call an individual and leave them with many unanswered question. When he called Moses, he called him to go deliver the Israelites from bondage; he called Matthew the tax collector to become a fisher of men; he called Abraham to leave Ur and travel to a land he would give him. The call is always clear and to the point.

When he called Jeremiah he told him he had appointed him a prophet to the nations. All this, God seems to have done before the prophet was born. God told him exactly what he had appointed him a prophet to do in verse 10 of the text. He is to uproot and tear down, destroy and overthrow but he is also to build and plant. This is what we are called into as well. There are things that need to be uprooted in our context; things that need to be destroyed. But God also called you to build up. Is that what you are doing? Do you understand what God has called you into? Do you know your role or responsibility within God’s call?