A Mouthful of God’s Words

Taking another look at Jeremiah’s call and the words that build us up.

Michelangelo, “Jeremiah,” Sistine Chapel

A version of this article originally appeared on 1517.

A while back, I considered the moment when Jeremiah was called into prophetic ministry. Before he was even born, God had appointed him to bring God’s words to God’s people (Jer. 1:4–5).¹ That is, he was called to be a preacher — to proclaim the words of the Lord that “pluck up and break down, that destroy and overthrow” (Jer. 1:10). Of course, Jeremiah didn’t hide how reluctant he was to take up this assignment, citing his inexperience and ineloquence as sufficient reasons why God should look for someone else (Jer. 1:6). However, both “reasons” are brushed aside and deemed irrelevant, as far as God’s purposes are concerned.

But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
(Jer. 1:7–10)

As consoling as this moment was, there was surely a residue of trepidation stemming from the words that had been put into Jeremiah’s mouth. The time had come for God’s people to reap what they had long sown through decades upon decades of iniquity, idolatry, and vice. Disaster was on its way (Jer. 1:13–15), which, as you can imagine, didn’t earn Jeremiah any popularity contests. Exacerbating his misgivings concerning his new God-given assignment was the very message he was appointed to proclaim, which wasn’t going to be well received.

Anthony van Dyck, “The Prophet Jeremiah”

1. The Word That Wrecks Us

In fact, as the Lord informs him, his own people will end up fighting against him and his message, even as he preaches the most urgent, necessary words they could ever hear (Jer. 1:19). Jeremiah’s undertaking would be like going to war for people who are throwing rocks at you the whole time. That his task was difficult is an understatement, leaving little to the imagination as to why he is often referred to as “The Weeping Prophet.” Part of me wonders if this young prophet knew what he was in for. I really doubt that he did.

God tells him that he has put him in a position to speak authoritatively to some of the most powerful people on the world scene (Jer. 1:10). And he wasn’t called to dote upon them, entertain them, or merely enlighten them — he was tasked with breaking them down and bringing them to their knees by announcing God’s words to them, words that “pluck up and break down, destroy and overthrow.” The image of something being plucked up paints a violent scene. When a tree stump is unearthed, it leaves the surrounding ground in shambles, with roots and twigs covering the scene like a messy crime scene.

With similar brutality, God’s inflexible word of law leaves sinners in shambles, with nary a smidgen of hope left that they might be able to save themselves. That notion is swiftly overthrown as soon as we come face to face with God’s uncompromisingly holy law, which, as Stephen H. Tyng once said, is “a description of himself.”² Far from functioning as a ladder to ascend into the heights of the Father’s love and favor, the law is a mirror,³ revealing to every onlooker the blistering truth of their sin and sedition. For preachers and prophets, the law is an albatross, ringing in the ears and souls of those who hear, leaving them exposed and wanting. Christopher J. H. Wright puts it like this:

Jeremiah’s heaviest task would be delivering words of searing rebuke and judgment, tearing down strongholds of political and religious arrogance and prejudice, dismantling traditional certainties of faith, and announcing the uprooting of a whole nation and the destruction of its most precious assets. But out of the dug soil new planting could begin.⁴

2. The Word That Raises Us

Jeremiah’s commission, of course, didn’t stop at announcing words that “pluck up” and “break down.” Integral to his errand are words that build and plant, and lead to new life (Jer. 1:10). “The final two verbs of Jeremiah’s call, ‘to build and to plant,’” Philip E. Thompson comments, “bespeak an assurance that God can work newness ex nihilo and create historical possibilities out of unmitigated chaos.”⁵ Out of the crater of his people’s failure and faithlessness, God speaks — through measly mouthpieces — that which refreshes and restores. “God speaks,” writes Jonathan A. Linebaugh, “to the ungodly and the dead; and this word, this gift, impossibly, creates righteousness and makes alive.”⁶

When the words of God go forth, an oasis springs up in the desert and gardens flourish in the wasteland. In the echo of “Thus saith the Lord,” sinful corpses are given new sinews and skin, and new life, a feat that has nothing to do with the messenger and everything to do with the Lord himself.⁷ “God’s words are impregnated with his power,” J. Kent Edwards insightfully says. “And when God speaks, things happen. They are an effectual cause. When God speaks, results must occur.”⁸ The words that have been put into the mouths of God’s mouthpieces are teeming with creative and restorative resonance. It’s his words that never return void (Isa. 55:11), not those of the preacher.

Richard Parkes Bonington, “Christ preaching”

3. The Only Words Worth Saying

This, to be sure, is enormously relieving. If the hope of building and planting something new, pristine, and Edenic was up to the eloquence of God’s prophets, his people would surely be subjected to ruin and oblivion. But the words that fashion beauty from ashes and life from corpses are words of promise that never fail (Jer. 31:31–34). They are words of gospel — of good news — the refrain of which isn’t “Do this and live,” but “Here is the one who makes you alive.” This is the word that has been put into the mouths of the Lord’s preachers. Edwards says it well:

It seems that our job, the job of the preacher, is not to speak one’s own words, but to speak the words of God to the world. It is God’s words that make the difference. It is God’s words that make a preacher powerful . . . When God asks us to speak he doesn’t ask us to speak our words, he asks us to speak his words. And when we speak his words, our words have a supernatural power and authority that they never could have otherwise. We don’t speak on our authority and our power, we speak with God’s authority and God’s power.⁹

This is why the Lord puts a premium on his words as he invites Jeremiah to give voice to them among his people (Jer. 1:2, 4, 7, 11, 13, 17). The point is, he wasn’t commissioned to scratch all the itching ears of God’s people by telling them only what they wanted to hear. Rather, he was sent by God to preach God’s words to them — words that both destroy and build up; that pluck up and plant. And the only words that can accomplish both of those things belong to the one who brought everything that exists into existence with a mere word.

Twentieth-century American Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson once said that “a text is understood as biblical text only when it casts us down and raises us up, and when we grasp that it is doing this. A sermon is a real sermon only when it casts down and raises up.”¹⁰ Jeremiah’s prophetic call, therefore, isn’t a one-off moment. Unique though it was, it wasn’t wholly exclusive. Rather, it is indicative of the ongoing means by which and through which the light pushes back the darkness, love is poured out on the ruined, mercy finds the rebels, and life is given to the dead.

1. “God had identified Jeremiah and marked him out for this purpose before his birth.” Christopher J. H. Wright, The Message of Jeremiah: Against Wind and Tide, The Bible Speaks Today, edited by J. A. Motyer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 49.

2. Stephen H. Tyng, Lectures on the Law and the Gospel (New York: Robert Carter & Bros., 1849), 12.

3. James 1:22–25.

4. Wright, 56.

5. Philip E. Thompson, “Jeremiah 1:1–10,” Interpretation 62.1 (2008): 68.

6. Jonathan A. Linebaugh, The Word of the Cross: Reading Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022), 27.

7. Ezek. 37:1ff.

8. J. Kent Edwards, “The Place of the Preacher: Jeremiah 1,” The Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society 5.1 (2005): 68.

9. Edwards, 67, 69.

10. I’m indebted to Jason Micheli for introducing me to this and to Jenson’s homiletical theology, which I’m eager to dive into myself.