My constant companion as I get into Jeremiah is Chris Wright’s excellent commentary The Message of Jeremiah: Grace in the end, part of the equally excellent The Bible Speaks Today series, published by IVP.
In this jotting let me simply post two quotes from Wright’s comments on the opening verses of chapter 1
“Jeremiah’s mission, therefore, was not his own freely chosen path of service, but a participation in a divine purpose that was being shaped in the mind of God before Jeremiah was being shaped in his mother’s womb. Even that first verb, I formed you, speaks of God’s personal involvement, for it is the word regularly used of a potter shaping a vessel according to his own intentions. Jeremiah would later turn this word into a powerful metaphor of God’s sovereign governance of international history (18:1–12).”
(p49)
“Literally, ‘prophet to the nations I have given you [to be]’. In other words, it is not so much that God gives a job to Jeremiah as that God gives Jeremiah to the job. ‘The message requires the messenger.’ Jeremiah is not a driven man, but a given man. This accounts for the sense of inescapable compulsion that we will find throughout Jeremiah’s ministry and book. He was not forced into this role, but simply being aware that his very existence was for the sake of carrying out this job produced its own inner pressure—which he felt free to resist but could never evade. This was not a task that he had chosen, but a task for which God had chosen him.”
(p50)
How I love that phrase in the first of of those quotes: “a participation in a divine purpose”. Brothers and sisters, doesn’t that clothe whatever role God has given you and me in the work of the kingdom with immense dignity and worth? As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 3:9 – “…we are God’s fellow workers.” I can’t speak for you but I know for sure that I wouldn’t employ me, but God does!