Sunday Sermon

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Sermon # 1004
Dr. Ed Pettus

“Tearing Down and Building Up!”

One of my favorite discoveries, one of the most exciting things to find is a theme that moves from the Old Testament, through the New Testament, and then into our lives. I guess I love it so much because it confirms the great work of God and the beauty of how God’s order is created and blessed. One of these themes is found in Jeremiah, particularly in verse ten of today's passage: "See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant." I want us to focus today on the theme of tearing down and building up.

These are powerful images, disturbing images for nations and kingdoms. How might Jeremiah receive the news that he is the one to deliver this message? Before we go there we see that Jeremiah is, at first, reluctant. God lays a lot at Jeremiah’s feet in the first speech God gives: “I formed you in the womb, I knew you even before that!” “I consecrated you and I appointed you.” Jeremiah does not receive the information of God’s initial speech very well, at least, not in a way we might think appropriate. Should he not be amazed like we are…God formed him, knew him, consecrated him, appointed him? When we read that we are amazed. Should not Jeremiah also be amazed and awed by what God has said? He instead rejects God’s speech: now wait a minute, Lord, I cannot speak for you, I am just a boy.

Teach Sunday School? Now wait a minute Lord, I don’t have the knowledge. Serve as an elder? Lord, I don’t have time for that? Give of my time and resources? Lord, I work hard for what I have! We all find reasons to reject God’s call. We might not even affirm that God calls us, it sounds so large “GOD’S CALL!” Maybe we see the enormity of God’s call to Jeremiah and it strikes fear in us that God might call us to something so large in our eyes that we cannot imagine heeding that call.

Jeremiah actually represents the agenda of God. The prophet's life reflects the divine life of God. As Terence Fretheim puts it: "to hear and see the prophet was to hear and see God." For instance, just look at the words…the reason God can say to Jeremiah and to Israel that he has appointed Jeremiah over nations and kingdoms is because God is the one over nations and kingdoms. God says: "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." The words are God’s words; the appointment is from the only one who has the authority to appoint such a role.

The theme of the book of Jeremiah is found in the six verbs: to pluck up, to pull (or tear) down, to destroy, to overthrow, to build and to plant. The sin of Israel will bring an uprooting of their vineyards, a tearing down of their buildings and homes, a destruction of their cities, an overthrow of their government. The sin: the people of God were running from God, they even went so far as to forget God and the worst, the worst thing they could do – forgetting that they had forgotten. Now that is a long way from the loving obedient people God had intended.

So the prophet is sent, to speak the words of God, to be appointed over the nations of the world to call them back home, to warn them of their amnesia, to ask them to repent of their sin. But they did not listen.

Jeremiah, who is known as the weeping prophet because Jerusalem is destroyed by the Babylonian Empire, Jeremiah is reluctant because he is young and unable to speak. Imagine yourself as a prophet appointed over the nations, over the United States, to bring words of warning – to pluck up, to tear down, to uproot, to destroy, to overthrow. Those are words of treason, words of threat, “them's fightin' words”. But that was Jeremiah's task, and nobody was listening.

Sounds like the church in some ways, well at least the part of the church that is saying something. We have the gospel to tell, we have the truth to speak, but nobody is listening, at least not nations and kingdoms. Instead the church seems to be listening to the world more than to the gospel. Words like tolerance have become the gospel of the world and the church has adopted that word over the gospel of Christ, in my opinion.

Jeremiah lived at a time when God's people bore the penalty for their sin. They were exiled and a powerful empire ruled over them. This is difficult for us to understand, we have never had such an experience of displacement. Or maybe we have: perhaps we have felt displaced when forces outside our control change our lives. Perhaps we have been displaced when our world is thrown into chaos by a job loss or a death or a broken relationship. Perhaps we know something of displacement when an experience causes us to ask: will I ever see the light at the end of the tunnel?

Jeremiah’s charge was to bring words of calamity: pluck up…I think of pulling a plant up by its roots, pull down or tear down…like tearing down a building, destroy…like totaling your car, overthrown…a system, a nation, a governments get overthrown. Imagine a young boy, Jeremiah, given these kinds of words for the world! Yikes!



The good news: Jeremiah was not just full of destruction words. He also spoke of building and planting. Israel will have a future despite their transgressions. The book of Jeremiah restates these words of God in chapter 31:28, "And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD." There will be a new covenant and God's people will know the Lord and sins will be forgiven and remembered no more.

I spoke earlier of this theme reverberating in the New Testament, the theme of tearing down and building up is repeated in the person of Jesus Christ. The people of God do not bear their sins, Jesus does. In his suffering and death, he is torn down. You may recall the claim the Pharisees made against Jesus when they said: "This fellow said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days'" (Mat 26:61). Words of destruction and words of rebuilding! Jeremiah echoes through the words of the Jesus.

He was of course talking about his body, destroyed and resurrected. And we might even carry that further when we talk about the church…not the physical building or the temple, but the practices, methods, laws, rules, and the function of the people of God. All of that would be torn down with Jesus and be built up again in his resurrection. We may even reflect that all the great reformations and revivals of the church involve a tearing down and a building up.

This theme is found in Jesus teaching for discipleship: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Mat 16:25). You have to lose your life to find it. You have to tear down the old to build the new. You have to uproot in order to plant. You have to die in order to live! “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

This is the theme carried from the days of Jeremiah, to the life of Jesus Christ, into the life of the church, and into our very lives - to pluck up, to tear down, to destroy to overthrow, to build and to plant. Death and resurrection, exile and homecoming, dying with Christ to live, baptized into his death and raised to new life in the resurrection.

The wisdom literature knows this: there is "a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted" (Eccl.3.2). Perhaps there have been times in your life when everything seemed to be uprooted, now is the time to replant. There have been times when our lives were crumbled, the promise is for a time to build!

A major theme in the New Testament for the church is to build up and to plant. Jesus has taken the tearing down and the uprooting upon himself. Paul echoes this in his letters: “Now, even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it” (2 Cor. 10:8).

“Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves before you? We are speaking in Christ before God. Everything we do, beloved, is for the sake of building you up” (2 Cor 12:19).

“from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (Eph 4:16).

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4:29).

The task of the church is build up. There is no need for us to be tearing each other down. If such a tearing down is necessary, God will take care of that. For those of us who believe, the tearing down was accomplished at our baptism: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-4).
We have been buried, torn down, destroyed, and raised up, built up, replanted so that we might walk in the newness of life, the newness of life, what a great phrase and image!

It is amazing to me that this theme, tearing down and building up, has been a part of God's interaction with people even from the beginning, ever since Adam and Eve were tossed out of the garden. We can see this theme working its way through the tradition, perhaps most emphatically in the days of Jeremiah, but also working its way through our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. There are times when we may be dying to something in order to be raised to new life. There may be times when we are being plucked up so that we can be planted again. There may be times when we are even called by God to some form of service, some use of our gifts, some sacrifice of resources. The good news in all this is that God also knows us, has consecrated us as his own, and has indeed called us to do his will. The good news is that just as God told Jeremiah he also tells us: “Do not be afraid…for I am with you to deliver you” (Jer. 1:8). Give thanks to God for his call, his presence, and his deliverance. Give thanks to God that he continues to tear us down so that we can be built back up, dying and rising with Christ, dying to the old self that we might become the new creation. There are many ways to interpret this theme for our context: as a word to us as individuals (to lose our life in order to save it), as a word to the church (that may be torn down in order to build it back up), as a word to our nation, to society, culture, government (that could be destroyed in order to be replanted).

This is a great theme of the Bible, for life, for hope, for our consideration this day. Amen.