Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today on Telling the Truth, Stuart Briscoe starts a new series on how to be a voice of truth in today's politically correct times. As he shows us, regardless of circumstance, God always seeks his people to execute his plans for the world. So when and how will God call you, like he did the prophet Jeremiah? Stuart begins in just a moment.

When life storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning his concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured he cares for you and is in control of all things? We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, Weathering the Storms of Life, as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times.

Weathering the Storms of Life and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now here's Stuart to talk about the reluctant prophet.

Stuart Briscoe: Jeremiah chapter one. If you have a Bible with you, you might like to turn to that and follow it as we work our way through it. If you're not sure where to find Jeremiah, it's on the cleanest pages of your Old Testament. It's probably the longest book in the Bible and probably one of the least read parts of the Bible. One of the reasons for that, of course, is that Jeremiah has a reputation as the weeping prophet. A lot of people think they have enough problems without having to listen to him.

But the prophecy of Jeremiah is a great, sprawling book of about 51 chapters, and it's not chronological so you can't just follow it through like a developing story. Editors have presumably brought different pieces together at different times. Some of it is poetry, some of it is prose. So quite frankly, it's not the easiest book to read, but I think we'll find it beneficial to spend a little time looking into Jeremiah. When Jeremiah discovered that God had decided that he was going to be a prophet, I'm afraid Jeremiah was less than enthusiastic about it, hence the title for my talk: The Reluctant Prophet.

Now let me define terms here. The idea of being a prophet may seem a little strange to some people. What exactly is a prophet? Perhaps the best definition I've come across is from Walter Brueggemann, a theologian, and this is what he said: "The prophet's role is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us." Now I'll give you that quote again because it's foundational to what I want to talk about. The prophet's role is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception that is alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.

We are all creatures of culture. That's a given. We are born in a certain cultural environment, we grow up in a cultural environment, we live in a cultural environment, and we breathe in the atmosphere, the thinking, the philosophies, the priorities of the culture of which we are a part. That does not mean, of course, that the culture is right. And sometimes it is necessary for a voice to be raised that will point out an alternative to the consciousness and perception of that dominant culture. And that is the role, among other things, of the prophet.

I believe that the church of Jesus Christ today is called among other things to have a prophetic ministry. In other words, we are planted in our culture and we're planted in our culture intentionally. And we are representatives of a whole approach to life that is very, very different very often to the dominant themes of our culture. And we are here to demonstrate something prophetically by living it and speaking it that will challenge and correct, hopefully, what is going on in the culture of the day. And so there's a very real relevance as far as Jeremiah's experience is concerned to us individually and collectively in these days.

Jeremiah chapter one talks about what we call Jeremiah’s call. We read, "The word of the Lord came to me saying, '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.'" When it says that the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, that in and of itself doesn't sound like very much. But remember in Old Testament thinking, when you talk about the word of the Lord, you're talking not just about somebody talking and you're not talking just about some vague ideas being generated. What you're talking about is something that in its speaking has inherent dynamic power.

The best example of this, of course, is found in Genesis chapter one where we are told that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And you remember it goes on to say that God said "Let there be," and the result was that things that did not exist came into existence. Hebrews in the New Testament has a commentary on this and it says by faith we believe that the heavens and the earth were created by the word of God. So when it says here that the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, what it means is that God began to reveal something about himself and his purposes to Jeremiah that was dynamic in and of itself.

So dynamic that as Jeremiah embraced what was being said, it would be life-changing. Now that is how we are supposed to think in terms of the word of the Lord coming to people. So, for instance, when we approach our Bibles and read our Bibles, we can just read it with very little interest. But in actual fact, what is supposed to be happening is that we open ourselves up to the word of the Lord. And as we do, it comes to us as a revelation of God's person and his purposes, and it does have inherent power in itself so that if we embrace it and get hold of who God is and what he's doing, it will change our lives.

In fact, when it says the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, the word "came" has the idea of this being a dramatic event in the experience of Jeremiah. By the same token, this may be a surprise to some of you, when you listen to a preacher, you're not just supposed to listen to the preacher and say, "I like him" or "I don't like him," or "She's better than her." That is totally missing the point. The point is, if the preacher is doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is proclaiming the word of the Lord, this is a happening. This is a dynamic event, for the word of the Lord when embraced is intended to be life-changing.

Now when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, it had a dramatic impact on this young man. Young man, I say that advisedly, because he was probably either in his late teens or his early twenties at this particular time. Now you'll notice that when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, the emphasis was on the Lord and what the Lord knew and what the Lord was doing. "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." Four things that God says about himself that impact the life of young Jeremiah. First of all, he says, "I formed you."

Let's think about that for a minute. "I formed you." And he's talking now about Jeremiah as a fetus. He's talking about Jeremiah in the womb. Obviously, they wouldn't know very much about what goes on in the womb in Jeremiah's day, but we know an enormous amount about what goes on in the womb at the present time. As a result of the work of Dr. Watson and Dr. Crick who found out so much about DNA, we can now talk quite knowledgeably about chromosomes. We understand something of the mysteries of DNA and the more we look into it, what do we discover? We discover design, we discover intricacy, we discover an encoding, we discover a pattern.

For in minuscule parts, talking in terms of trillionths of a millimeter, that's what we're talking about when we're talking about DNA, and we're talking about a trillion cells in our bodies, every one of which is patterned with this DNA. It's all there. It's all encoded. And we see an enormous, wonderful picture of the design of a person in the mother's womb. And when we think in terms of design, it's a very simple step from design to designer. And Jeremiah, of course, is hearing this from the Lord, not in terms of DNA and chromosomes. He's hearing from the Lord, "Before I formed you in the womb."

Guest (Male): More teaching from Stuart and Jill Briscoe is coming up, so stay with us. Did you know you can find more life-giving content from the Briscoes at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app? There you can sign up for daily devotionals, watch videos, read blogs, and access a variety of other resources to help you experience life. And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. Let's go back now to Stuart Briscoe.

Stuart Briscoe: He's talking about Jeremiah in the womb. God is claiming to be actively involved in the womb in creating a human being who previously did not exist. What a superlative thought that is. I'll tell you why. A lot of people struggle with self-image and self-identity. I hear people talking about this all the time. "I'm trying to come to terms with who I am. I don't know who I am. I don't know how I relate. My family this, my work this, my situation this, my marriage this," and I'm struggling with my self-identity. Well, we empathize with the struggles, or perhaps sympathize with many of them.

But the reality is this: you do not identify your self-identity on a horizontal plane. You start out by doing it on a vertical plane. And if you want to understand yourself, you need to understand yourself in the context of who God is. And what that means is this: that God is the designer of you. That God is the creator of you. That in your mother's womb, God was actively at work molding a unique piece of divine creation. That's you. Jeremiah, you need to understand something: "I formed you." You need to understand something else: "Before I formed you, I knew you."

Now that takes us back even further into the realm of mystery. What in the world goes on before I was formed in my mother's womb? Well, according to God, he was intimately involved in knowing about me before I was brought into existence. Now if you're interested in understanding you, this is where you start. You start off by understanding that God in his infinite wisdom creates a human being, and before he creates that human being, he is intimately conversant with the human being that he is creating. The word "knew" is a special word in the Old Testament.

Often you read about a couple getting married and it says that they went away on their honeymoon. It doesn't talk about the honeymoon, and during the course of the honeymoon, guess what happened? "He knew her." That's what it says. He knew her. That means they had sexual relations and as a result of that, a child was born. So the "knew," when you talk about knew in that sense in the Old Testament, it means to know somebody in the most intimate possible way. And this is what he's saying. Before God created me and formed me wonderfully and fearfully in my mother's womb, he already had in mind the person he was going to create. That's mind-blowing, but that's what it's saying.

Jeremiah, you need to get a picture of yourself. You're only in your late teens. This is a message for our high school kids. This is a message for our college young people. This is addressed specifically to that age group. Do they, do you, understand who you are? But now he goes a step further. He said, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart." I set you apart. Now what that is saying is this: that God, who is an intelligent God, created Jeremiah, formed him in his mother's womb because he'd already was fully conversant with who Jeremiah would be, and he formed him in his mother's womb for an intelligent purpose.

I formed you for an intelligent purpose. God is an intelligent God. It should not be too difficult for us then to believe that an intelligent God, when he does something, does it intentionally. And in creating intentionally, an intelligent God creates a human being for an intelligent purpose. In Jeremiah's case, he was set apart in the economy of God to be something special. And so is every other human being on the face of God's green earth. We're not accidents. We're here according to a divine purpose. What was the purpose? As far as Jeremiah was concerned, he was appointed to be a prophet to the nations.

Now we've already seen that to be a prophet was a challenging occupation in those days. As far as Jeremiah was concerned, he was living in Judah. Let me just sketch very quickly for you the situation. Now he's been told that before he was formed in his mother's womb, God already had in mind that Jeremiah would address the situation that obtained when he was born. Well, what was the situation? At the end of the great reign of David and Solomon, when the nation of Israel was at its greatest, there were all kinds of problems, there was a kind of civil war broke out, and Judah and Israel broke away from each other.

Israel in the north, Judah in the south centered around Jerusalem. Israel in the north lapsed into all kinds of spiritual decline. The technical word is apostasy. They turned away from that which they professed to believe. It was a slow decline. It was a slow erosion, but it was inexorable. And all the time that Israel was going into decline, God was sending his prophets and saying, "You must turn from your wickedness, you must repent of your sin because if you don't, the God who made a covenant with you and promised to bless you will do what he also promised, that if you do not live in trusting obedience, he will bring judgment upon you." And it fell on deaf ears as far as Israel was concerned. And eventually, the Assyrians came and they totally decimated Israel, destroyed the towns, took the people away into exile, and that was the end of Israel. But Judah survived.

Guest (Male): Stuart, what can a believer do to prepare him or herself to receive the word of the Lord?

Stuart Briscoe: I think to try to answer the question, how do we prepare ourselves to receive the word of the Lord, we need to recognize, first of all, that not everybody who received the word of the Lord was feeling particularly prepared to do so. Sometimes it's like a storm that suddenly bursts into your life totally unexpected, takes you completely by surprise, rivets your attention, and you're never quite the same again. And I could give instances of people who have testified to that. They didn't have a thought of God in their heads and suddenly something happened to them, somebody said something to them, they read something, and it was as if the Spirit of God just cut right through whatever was going on in their lives.

Then, of course, there are people who are desperately seeking the Lord. They are looking for God to say something to them. And I would say to those people that Scripture says, "He that comes to know the Lord must believe that he is," first of all, and that he is willing to reward those who diligently seek him. So you prepare yourself by deciding if you believe that God exists, that he has something to say to you, and then you diligently go about putting yourself in a place where you're most likely to hear what he has to say, reading things that are most likely to record what he is telling you to do.

Guest (Male): Stuart, how should the knowledge that God carefully put each of us together in our mother's womb impact how we think about ourselves and him?

Stuart Briscoe: This remarkable statement that God carefully put us together in our mother's womb is a quotation from Psalm 139 and verse 13. And in this psalm, the psalmist is just talking really about God. He's talking about the fact that it doesn't matter where he goes, God is there. It doesn't matter how much he knows, God knows far more about him than he knows. It doesn't matter what man can do, God is much more powerful. And it is really a contemplation on the vastness of God's wisdom and power and grace.

In this mix, he is saying God knows so much about me, and God is so powerful, and God is so involved in all that I am as a human being, it is pointless of me to ignore him, it is pointless of me to run away from him, it is pointless for me to think I can manage without him. In fact, he is so much God and I am so much his creature that I just say he actually put me together right from the very beginning. And therefore, I'm going to stop running away, I'm going to start listening, and I'm going to start trusting him.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today here on Telling the Truth. We pray today's message has helped you to experience life in all its fullness through Jesus Christ. When life storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning his concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured he cares for you and is in control of all things? We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, Weathering the Storms of Life, as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times.

In Weathering the Storms of Life, Jill teaches from the Gospel of Mark, examining the disciples' experience in a sudden storm to address the issues of suffering and faith, challenging you to examine your belief in God in the midst of trouble. Her teaching and the scripture cards will encourage you as you discover how you can be sure of God's love for you and his control over every circumstance, no matter how sudden, severe, or unexpected.

Weathering the Storms of Life and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Next time on Telling the Truth, it's more from the Briscoes about how you can experience abundant life in Christ when you open your life to be changed by God. We hope you'll listen then.