Beyond Conception - Neil Ryan

Last week we introduced you to Jeremiah.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

The interesting thing about the introduction to this book is that it begins with 8 names.

Everyone of them are a study in themselves.

 

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

 

I’m not so much worried about meaning of names.

Jeremiah seems to have different meanings.

“The Lord exalts” or “The Lord hurls”

Think I’d prefer the first!!

 

Same as my name

It means Cloud or Chief

I prefer the second!!

 

Read poem written just after I was born!

Hail! Neil Lindsay Ryan

          Rev D J Morris

 

 

 

‘Tis buster Ryan thy name should be

You busted into life you see;

And of this we all agree

You tried to save a doctor’s fee,

As if you had Scottish ancestry.

But please remember it isn’t done,

Not even a senator’s big grand son

Can come into life and think it fun

To burst on the world with a “Mum I’ve come’.

So with ecstasy my little boy

And all good things of life enjoy;

Though Neil does mean a swarthy chief

Just mark my words you will come to grief

If you persist in buster ways

For bustle and buster never pays.

 

NB

The ‘ecstacy’ he was referring to had nothing to do with drugs!!!

 

But it is a stark reminder this morning that there is a history being written with our name on it.

What will it reveal?

What will it say?

 

When your name is mentioned, what springs to mind?

Reading about Nelson Mandela

Bill Clinton once said,

Let’s see where it all began for Jeremiah.

In fact that is at the heart of this book.

Where did it all begin?

 

In a day of the quick fix, the short span and the next best thing, have you got a heart to stop for a while and take this in?

 

In a day when we are obsessed with WHO we are, how much do you really want to know about yourself?

 

Jane Sanders was having morning tea with us on Thursday and suddenly she declared that her baby had the hiccups!

This little baby that has not seen the light of day is now the subject of a sermon.

He or she is touching our lives just because he or she got the hiccups!!

 

God says, I’ll tell you something even more amazing.

I have been thinking about you before you were even conceived!!

 

One of the things we need to restate is that REALITY doesn’t begin with us, it begins with God!

 

Long before we got interested in God, He was interested in us.

Long before it ever crossed our minds that God might exist, God planned our existence.

Long before we wondered where God might fit into our thoughts, God knew where we fitted into His thoughts.

 

We think God is the object of our inquisitive minds.

In fact we are the object of God’s indescribable grace!

 

We fight with this sort of thing!

It contradicts my sovereignty.

It upsets my theology.

It messes with my reality.

 

WE can’t help thinking everything starts with US.

Every now and then God just blows away all the dust and says something that seems so outrageous and incomprehensible to us.

 

Jeremiah’s story didn’t begin at birth!

My story was not just shaped by my parents, or by those euphoric days in Wallaroo, or by my school teachers…. They are all part of a much bigger, richer history!!

 

I love all this.

We spend so much time trying to prove how God doesn’t violate our free will.

We seem to be paranoid that God would never ask us to do something we really didn’t want to do.

We love to protect ourselves from fear, danger, embarrassment, failure as though that were the most important thing in life. Then this reality hits us…..

 

I’ve already decided some things for you?

I am the potter and you are the clay!

Since when did the clay determine what it would and wouldn’t be?

 

We need a God revelation of how this changes our lives.

I know that when people find out I am a minister it can change things. I don’t make a lot of noise about it!

 

Other day I went into Baker’s Delight.

Crowd in there.

Young lad said,

“How are you today?”

I said, “Splendid. No complaints!”

“Wow! No complaints” he said, ‘What do you do for a living?”

 

“I am a Baptist Minister!”

Right there and then I felt all these people in the shop just slightly look in my direction!

For the first time in my life I wanted to say something more.

I wanted to say,

“Before I was in my mother’s womb, God called me to be a preacher!!!”

 

However, I decided against it!

 

But I have been challenged by this all week.

God is not just a spectator to this world.

God sees the evil, the cruelty, the unhappiness and illness.

He knows the superstition, and ignorance, brutality and pain.

God has not been idle in this great battle for the hearts of men and women.

 

Jeremiah was set apart for this contest.

So are we.

The whole notion that being a Christian is just a ticket into heaven is foreign to the Bible.

 

We have been set aside for God.

We have been set aside for the gospel.

We have been set aside to follow Jesus

We have been set aside to be people of the Spirit.

We have been set aside for battle.

 

Remember those days at school when a group of kids had to chose two teams. One by one they would be chosen till there was only a few left.

 

They knew that nobody wanted them.

They knew they were the liability.

They knew they were the token picks!!

 

I think some of us feel like that about being a Christian.

It’s like we think God just put us on the team to make up the numbers.

 

Not true.

I have a place that no one else can fill.

God is not just looking for sporting heroes, university graduates and high achievers to carry the gospel into a cynical world.

Before I was good for ANYTHING, God decided I was good for what HE was DOING.

 

Secularization is giving too many Christians a huge inferiority complex!

 

Literally I gave you to the nations

How do you like that?

Before Jeremiah was born, God has given him away!

 

While we argue about how that fits into our systematic theology of free will and election – we miss the glorious truth that God is such a GENEROUS God.

 

Here’s the truth this morning –

God has already given you away!

We can fight it.

 

We can hang on to our independence.

We can go along with attitudes of our culture.

We can huddle in the safety of obscurity.

We can long for old safety and warmth of the womb.

 

Or we can grasp that God has given us away to the nations!!

When we were kids in country, we used to play games that are not allowed today.

Ferocious battles where we would throw rocks at each other!

We were somewhere between Roy Rogers and Mad Max!

 

Sounds dangerous, but it wasn’t quite like that.

We would get these big old tins and gouge a couple of eye holes in – that would be our helmet.

Rubbish bins in those days were made of iron, so we would use the lids as our shield.

 

We would launch into those battles full of confidence.

There was never any thought of injury or pain.

We knew it was more about persistence to overcome the others!

 

Jeremiah is right.

He was not able to do what God called him to do.

But God says,

“I’ll turn you into a iron pillar, a bronze wall….”

 

This is a message for this hour when so many Christians backing away from the fight!

So many today are no longer willing to line up behind the Word of God because of fear.

So many are believing the fallacy that the gospel of a crucified, resurrected Saviour is redundant in a self assured, self taught, self made world like the 21^st Century!

 

 

How did God make Jeremiah into iron pillar, bronze wall?

Bit of a word play here.

Word for almond = shaqed

          Word for watching = shoqed

 

God says to Jeremiah.

Wherever you see the shaqed remember that I am shoqed

I am watching over my word.

I will be true to my word.

 

Just a sure as the almond branch will bring forth almonds I am watching and ready to honour my word, to judge sin, to change lives, to comfort hurting, to inspire the hopeless….

 

There is no life of faith without a sustaining vision like this!!

 

Do we still feel pain? - yes

Do they still have questions? - yes

Do they still grow tired? - yes

Do they still look fragile at times? – yes

Do they ever feel like quitting? - yes

 

Do we have all the answers? – no

Does everything work out nicely? – no

Do we always know what will happen next? – no

 

What is the hallmark of an iron pillar or a bronze wall?

You will take a battering but will not be beaten!

 

"How Great Thou Art" is a beautiful hymn written in 1886 by Carl Boberg. Boberg, a Swedish pastor, "was caught in a sudden thunderstorm while visiting a beautiful country estate. As the storm passed, giving way to the songs of birds and a green countryside glistening in the sunlight, Boberg composed the nine original stanzas of this hymn" as a poem. Years later, he was surprised to hear his poem being sung by a congregation we has visiting, the words having been set to a traditional Swedish tune.

"In time," according to one website, "the hymn was translated into German and Russian and was noticed by a British missionary who was serving in Ukraine. That missionary, Reverend Stuart Hine, was visiting a home in the Carpathian Mountains" where he was inspired by the conversion of several new Christians. After witnessing their faith, he wrote the last verse that we sing in today's hymnal: "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; that on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee, how great Thou art! How great Thou art!"

 

 

1.       The interesting thing about the introduction to the book of Jeremiah is that it begins with 8 names.

Everyone of them is a study in themselves.

……Jeremiah, Hilkiah, Bejamin,Josiah, Amon, Judah, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah.

There is a history being written with your name on it.

Just go round the group and share a couple of things that come to mind when your name is mentioned! Do it for each person.

 

2.       Read Jeremiah 1:4-5

Long before we got interested in God, He was interested in us.

Long before it ever crossed our minds that God might exist, God planned our existence.

Long before we wondered where God might fit into our thoughts, God knew where we fitted into His thoughts.

How does this impact our view of free will?

How important is it in understanding who we really are?

Does it encourage us or unsettle us?

 

 

3.       ….. set you apart

Do you think God would ask us to do something we don’t want to do?

Give examples – either from your own life or from the Bible.

 

I think some of us feel like that about being a Christian.

It’s like we think God just put us on the team to make up the numbers…..Not true.

I have a place that no one else can fill.

 

God gives some Christians huge influence or responsibility, while others very little.

How do we measure our worth in the Kingdom of God?

 

4.       …. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations

Literally I gave you to the nations

How do you like that?

Before Jeremiah was born, God has given him away!

 

If there is one last thing we fight for, it is our independence. We love to think that, in the end, we decide what we will do and when we will do it.

How does it feel to know that before we were born, God gave us away?

 

What difference does it make to our lives when Paul says, ⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. [1 Corinthians 6:19-20]

 

5.       Read Jeremiah 1:6-8; 17-18

Does that sound like you?

Does that sound like the 21^st Century Church?

Why do we find it so hard to share our faith?

Is it possible to stand up strongly for Jesus and not be obnoxious?

How do we find a way through the problem of being faithful to Jesus and causing conflict with others because of what we believe?

 

6.         "How Great Thou Art" is a beautiful hymn written in 1886 by Carl Boberg. Boberg, a Swedish pastor, "was caught in a sudden thunderstorm while visiting a beautiful country estate. As the storm passed, giving way to the songs of birds and a green countryside glistening in the sunlight, Boberg composed the nine original stanzas of this hymn" as a poem. Years later, he was surprised to hear his poem being sung by a congregation we has visiting, the words having been set to a traditional Swedish tune.

"In time," according to one website, "the hymn was translated into German and Russian and was noticed by a British missionary who was serving in Ukraine. That missionary, Reverend Stuart Hine, was visiting a home in the Carpathian Mountains" where he was inspired by the conversion of several new Christians. After witnessing their faith, he wrote the last verse that we sing in today's hymnal: "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; that on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee, how great Thou art! How great Thou art!"

This is such a great hymn and certainly has inspired generations of believers.

Discuss how much it really changes us.

How have you seen ‘How Great God is’ this week, last week?