Jeremiah's Call: Known, Chosen, and Given By God as a Gift

The first four chapters of Eugene Peterson’s book about Jeremiah (Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at its Best) focus on a small number of verses in chapter one.  What might this tell us about the first chapter of Jeremiah?  Perhaps that these few verses are heavy with meaning for our lives, engaged in relationship with the God who calls us.

Jeremiah’s call story is one of the most captivating in all of scripture, primarily because of the depth of the conversation between God and Jeremiah.  It's a story of a person being personally called, appointed by God to a sacred purpose in the midst of troubling times.

The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin… 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.”  “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”  But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 1:1, 4-8)

Studying Jeremiah along with Eugene Peterson's book Run with the Horses

Chapters 1-4

1. What Makes You Think You Can Race Against Horses?

2. Jeremiah

3. Before

4. I’m Only a Boy!

Summary of Discussion Questions:

Chapter 1

1. Share an experience of God teaching you through trial or preparing you through challenging circumstances.
2. Why is it so difficult to remain humble and selfless as we strive to be our best?
3. On page 21, Peterson writes “Life is difficult, Jeremiah.  Are you going to quit at the first wave of opposition?”  What difficulties do you face?  What causes you to want to throw in the towel?  Whose opposition is particularly frustrating?  What kind of encouragement could you use?

Chapters 2-4

1. What’s the story of your name?  What is one childhood experience or characteristic that helped reveal who you are as a person?
2. What are your regular encounters with the impersonal in our culture?
3. “We are practiced in pleading inadequacy in order to avoid living at the best that God calls us to” (p. 50).  What are your “I’m only” statements?
4. How have you been used by God in a “gift-to-others” way?

Jeremiah: Themes & Highlights

Chapter 1 – What makes you think you can race against horses?

We are Formed by God for Future Faithfulness

Peterson shapes his study of Jeremiah the Prophet with the help of some words from God found in Jeremiah 12:5 “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?  If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”  Jeremiah is one who was formed by God for future faithfulness.  God does the same with us: each challenge we face prepares us for the challenges we’ll face in the future – like Jeremiah, we don’t know what the future holds, but God does.  In the midst of the crisis, we might ask “What is God teaching me in this?” or “How might God use this to prepare me for what is to come?”  Better yet, put these questions directly to God in prayerful conversation – “God, what are you up to here?”

In Our Culture, It’s Hard to Find Good Examples for Living Mature, Authentic Lives

It’s unsettling to consider what or who gets the headlines in our society.  Peterson puts it this way: “No other culture has been as eager to reward nonsense or wickedness.”  We look around for what it means to be a “mature, whole, blessed person,” and we don’t find much to go on.  It’s not that those people do not exist, it’s that they’re difficult to identify because no one interviews them or celebrates them.  “No Oscars are given for integrity.  At year’s end no one compiles a list of the best-lived lives.”  We thirst for wholeness, and so we look to scripture for someone to look up to.  The Bible provides not heroes but “elements of a unique and original adventure, the life of faith.” (p. 16) Like these characters, we find wholeness “by plunging into a life of faith, participating in what God initiates in each life, exploring what God is doing in each event.” (p. 17)

Jeremiah as a biblical character is a mentor, an example of a person who lived with a quest for the best without making it all about himself.  In Jeremiah, Peterson has found a person who

·         Lives at his best without an inflamed ego

·         Grows in excellence but lives selflessly

·         Is a fully developed person while being thoroughly selfless

Jeremiah arouses passion for full life, but at the same time he shuts the door on attempts to achieve it through self-promotion, self-gratification or self-improvement.  How does a quest for excellence, for life at its best combine with wise humility?  It comes from “a life of faith, from being more interested in God than self, and has almost nothing to do with comfort or esteem or achievement.”  Jeremiah lives with God-connected intensity through thick and thin, including “crushing storms of hostility and furies of bitter doubt.” 

Jeremiah will help us to be mature and live by faith, to live our best life in radical faith in God.  Learning from his example we'll be stretched to live at our best.  Considering his call, we'll be awakened out of dull moral habits and shaken out of petty and trivial busywork.  On page 21, Peterson writes “Life is difficult, Jeremiah.  Are you going to quit at the first wave of opposition?”  In light of God's call and encouragement of Jeremiah during tough times, we consider these personal questions:

• What difficulties do you face?   
• What causes you to want to throw in the towel?   
• Whose opposition is particularly frustrating?   
• What kind of encouragement could you use?

 

Chapters 2-4: Jeremiah / Before / I’m Only a Boy

Like Jeremiah, we are known, chosen, and given as gifts by God.

“But the most important things are what God did before I was conceived, before I was born.  He knew me, therefore I am no accident; he chose me, therefore I cannot be a zero; he gave me, therefore I must not be a consumer.” (p. 45)

These three chapters focus on Jeremiah’s call.  Because it happened when Jeremiah was young and refers to God’s involvement with Jeremiah when he was still in his mother’s womb, our consideration of Jeremiah takes us back to our childhood and basic questions of our identity.  Speaking of childhood and growing up, Peterson states that “some people when they grow up become less…other people as they grow up become more. Life is not an inevitable decline into dullness; for some it is an ascent into excellence. It was for Jeremiah” (p. 25).

It’s significant that the book of Jeremiah begins with a personal name.  When we use a name (as opposed to a number, for instance), we are not only speaking of people but speaking to people.  Names are important; by our name we are recognized as a person.  What we are named is not as significant as that we are named.

• What’s the story of your name?
• What is one childhood experience or characteristic that helped reveal who you are as a person?

We live in an impersonal culture that reduces people to abstract labels, graphs, & statistics.   

• How does this impact us?   
• How are we tempted or invited by the culture to do this? 
• What are your regular encounters with the impersonal?

Peterson highlights the danger of giving into this cultural force of the impersonal: “Every time we that we go along with this movement from the personal to the impersonal, from the immediate to the remote, from the concrete to the abstract, we are diminished, we are less.  Resistance is required if we will retain our humanity.” (p. 27)

With the Lord’s personal involvement in our lives, we become more.  Jeremiah could mean either “the Lord exalts” or “the Lord hurls.”  Peterson claims that either way, there’s no doubt that the Lord is in his name.  The Lord is with each of us who is born and named: “No child is just a child.  Each is a creature in whom God intends to do something glorious and great...who we are and will be is compounded by who God is and what he does.” (p. 32)

We Are Known by God from Before the Beginning

In Jeremiah 1:5 we read some existentially powerful words: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”  Peterson summarizes: “Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah.” (p. 38) This order of relationship has the potential to turn around everything we think about God.  God isn’t an object about which we have questions; long before we came on the scene, God has been questioning us.  The implications are profound:“Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out.  Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives...There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me” (p. 39).

We Are Chosen by God for God's Side

Jeremiah was chosen and consecrated – set apart for God’s side.  Like Jeremiah, we are chosen for something important that God is doing.  Which leads to the obvious question: What is God doing?

We Are Given by God as Gifts to the World

What God is doing is giving Jeremiah to the world as a prophet to the nations, much like God gave his son to the world as savior, much like Ephesians 4 speaks of Jesus giving the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the building up of his body.  We are given by God as gifts to the world he created and loved.

From Jeremiah We Learn about Living in Relationship with God

Jeremiah’s call as a prophet was to let people know who God is and what he is like, what he says and what he is doing.  To call people to live well, to live rightly…to be truly human.  “We cannot be human if we are not in relation to God…A relationship with God is not something added on after we complete our basic growth, it is the essential core of that growth."

"But I'm Only a Child"

Jeremiah responded to God's call in predictable and logical fashion - he told God he wasn't up to the task.  It's tempting to respond to God's call by giving all the reasons why we can't possibly do what we're asked to do.  Peterson puts it this way: “We are practiced in pleading inadequacy in order to avoid living at the best that god calls us to” (p. 50).

• What are your “I’m only” statements?

The truth is we are always inadequate, but God makes us adequate for what he calls us to do.  Consider the wisdom of the well-worn phrase “God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.”

God used two visions to take Jeremiah from excuse-making to faithful living, from inadequacy to obedience:

A Rod of Almond (1:11-12)

A play on words in the original Hebrew connects the word for almond with the word “watching.”  God is watching every word He gives Jeremiah, ensuring that it will come to completion.  For us, like Jeremiah, God’s words are not mere words.  They are promises that lead to fulfilments. God does what he says.

• What images function for you to remind you of God’s presence or promises?

A Boiling Pot (1:13-16)

The subject of this image is negative – it’s about the nearby threat of evil in the form of enemy armies poised for an invasion.  But its message is positive, in that the pot contains evil, it serves to limit evil’s extent and power.  

These visions served to instruct Jeremiah, to equip him to be what God called him to be.  

Biblical vision does the same for us.