I haven’t made much progress in Jeremiah, to be honest, the main reason being I didn’t want to get too far into the book without consulting John Calvin. I have the four volumes of his Banner of Truth commentary on Jeremiah, but vol.1 was in a different location and I was only able to retrieve it last weekend and now I am immersing myself in it. There is something unique and truly gifted about Calvin’s writings and this work is a great example.
The issue I am still meditating on, partly because it plays into other study I am doing for ministry, is this balance between God’s call on a man’s life for ministry and what I call the holy reluctance on the part of the one being called. It’s not disobedience, it’s actually an expression of a healthy self-awareness. It comes in Jeremiah’s response to God in 1:6 – “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”
As usual, Calvin expresses this tension so helpfully:
“…for as we ought to undertake nothing without considering what our strength is, so when God enjoins anything, we ought immediately to obey his word as it were with closed eyes…in all undertakings, this should be the first thing, that every one should weigh well his own strength, and take in hand what comports with the measure of his capacity….But when God calls us we ought to obey, however deficient we may in all things be: and this is what we learn from what God says here, Say not, I am a a child; that is, “though thou, indeed, thinkest thyself destitute of every qualification, though thou art conscious of thine own weakness, yet thou shalt go, thou must go wheresoever I shall send thee.” God, then, requires this honour to be simply conceded to him, that men should obey his commands, though the qualification necessary to execute them be wanting.”
(Jeremiah Vol. 1 Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1989 p40)