GOD’S PROMISE OF POWER

“Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” (1:9-10)

This is a significant scene. It is reminiscent of the scene in Isaiah 6, where God commissions the prophet Isaiah to be His spokesman. Isaiah experiences a vision of God in all His glory and majesty, surrounded by angels of heaven. And Isaiah responds, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then and angel flies to him with a hot coal in his hand and touches the burning coal to Isaiah’s mouth, saying, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Similarly, the Lord Himself reaches out and touches Jeremiah’s mouth and says, “I have put my words in your mouth” (Jeremiah 1:9)). The Lord’s own words are the key to Jeremiah’s power. He now has on his lips the burning, mighty power of the Word of God.

By giving Jeremiah this power, God gave the prophet authority over nations and kingdoms. Please understand, this is not mere poetry. The message of the book of Jeremiah is addressed to all the great nations of Jeremiah’s day-to Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and many others, as well as the kingdom of Judah. And while the message was not addressed to us today, the principles and teachings can be applied to America, Great Britain, France, Russia, China, and all other nations, great and small, around the globe.

Imagine all the nations of the world, with their power and pomp, their rattling sabers, thinking themselves so powerful and behaving so arrogantly. But God has chosen an obscure young man, about 30 years of age, from a village no one has ever heard of, to confront the nations. God tells him, “Today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10).

There is also our heritage as believers in Jesus Christ. The apostle James wrote that the prayer of a righteous person releases great power. When you and I pray about the affairs of life, we can affect the fate of nations. It doesn’t matter that we are obscure and that no one knows who we are. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).

God strategically placed Jeremiah amid the death and destruction that was coming upon Judah. He gave Jeremiah authority, through His message of judgment, “to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow” (Jeremiah 1:10). In a sinful nation, much like our own, there are many things that must be torn down. It may well be that the destruction and partitioning of Germany after World War II was an uprooting, a tearing down, due to the awful national sin of the Holocaust. And it may well be that the American Civil War was an uprooting, a tearing down, due to the shameful national sin of human slavery. There are other examples we could point to as well.

Judgment, destruction, and being overthrown are always the work of God, whether it is a nation that must be torn down or an individual human heart. When there is disobedience, when there is defection from God, when there is heart of rebellion against God’s moral law, there are things that need to be uprooted.

God never destroys simply to be destructive. He never tears down merely to be mean or cruel. He destroys only to build up again. He uproots only to plant again. He allows hurt only to heal again. This was God’s Word to Jeremiah.

Daily Questions

1. Is there something in your life that God is calling you to uproot?
2. Is there someone in your life that God wants you to wake up to the truth of His Word?