Speaker 1: Friends, like I said, I didn't realize how long things went, so I'm going to talk faster than I normally talk with these graduations, but I definitely want to have a message for our young people that are out there, and there are two passages that we folks often, we pastors often go to when we're talking about being young people and encouraging young people.
Speaker 1: One is in Timothy, but the second is this one here this morning, jeremiah 1, where he talks about I'm only a boy and can I be a prophet.
Speaker 1: So interesting story of Jeremiah the prophet.
Speaker 1: So Jeremiah is offering his prophecy at a unique time in the history of the Jewish people.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Jewish community, the nations are falling, they're getting overtaken by the Babylonians, and so Jeremiah's got a couple of things that make his preaching, make his message right now a little more difficult.
Speaker 1: One is he is young, as indicated obviously by the passage itself.
Speaker 1: He's only a boy, I am only a boy.
Speaker 1: But second, this is significant time and the message that he's been given to share with this community is a tough message to swallow, because the community is falling apart.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be a positive message hey, israelites, way to go.
Speaker 1: No, it's going to be something else.
Speaker 1: It's going to be talking about how they've made mistakes, how they have failed.
Speaker 1: But not only that when you're talking about this failure, you're not just talking about how you got overtaken.
Speaker 1: But in the minds of these people of early faith, the question isn't always centered around did we fail?
Speaker 1: Did we not do the right things?
Speaker 1: Or maybe more significantly, maybe even more frightfully, did God leave us?
Speaker 1: Did God decide that we weren't worthy of being supported anymore and that's why we've been overtaken?
Speaker 1: How bad must we have been that God quit supporting us?
Speaker 1: So the early mindset, the early faith wouldn't necessarily easily be able to distinguish between those two things Our actions actually leading to this place that we're at, versus God deciding we deserve some punishment.
Speaker 1: God deciding we needed to be taught a lesson of some measure.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine a young boy given this message to share with this community.
Speaker 1: It might feel a little bit tenuous, right, he might feel like that environmentalist out of Sweden.
Speaker 1: That's what is she?
Speaker 1: 17, 18 now Greta Thunberg.
Speaker 1: Now, she doesn't lack for courage, obviously, this young woman speaking out about environmental concerns, but you can see how it might feel.
Speaker 1: Overwhelming's a message that we need to understand.
Speaker 1: That comes from the Jeremiah passage.
Speaker 1: It's in that first chapter, verse 1, when he's talking.
Speaker 1: God's talking to Jeremiah and saying you're only a boy, but I gave you the words you are to say I am with you, I have equipped you to do the things that you need to do to deliver this message to this world.
Speaker 1: You have what you need.
Speaker 1: This is Jeremiah, chapter 1, and God's affirmation to Jeremiah to preach that message.
Speaker 1: And I feel like it's a particularly important message for young people.
Speaker 1: We as adults don't often feel like we are in control of that much that's going on around us in this world and we wrestle with some of that.
Speaker 1: Younger people might feel even more so, even more like they're being tossed to and fro, wondering exactly what they have been given to speak in to this, what they had been given to speak into this, so that challenge can be even more difficult for young people.
Speaker 1: But I want you to hear the follow-up that comes in the passage in Jeremiah just a little bit later here, chapter 33, where he says but this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.
Speaker 1: After those days, says the Lord, I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
Speaker 1: For us today, it's a good message, it's an important message, it's a comforting message, but it's not one we're too unfamiliar with.
Speaker 1: But for those people back 500, 600 BCE, that was an even more important message, because the temple got destroyed in that overtaking and the temple was thought of as the house of God.
Speaker 1: That's where God lived right.
Speaker 1: And if you were going to go visit God, if you were going to go give sacrifice to God, if you were going to do anything with God, you went to the temple.
Speaker 1: And so the concern would be when the temple goes down, what does that say about God?
Speaker 1: Did God leave, not really trusting the Israelites anymore?
Speaker 1: Did God get beaten?
Speaker 1: Was some other force stronger than our God?
Speaker 1: You can imagine how that might be floating through in their minds.
Speaker 1: And maybe even a third concern where do we go to find God now?
Speaker 1: Where is God, if indeed God is still here?
Speaker 1: So when Jeremiah preaches this message of saying you know what, we're not going to need a building anymore, because God's coming to us on our hearts.
Speaker 1: God's going to be with each and every one of us in this really, really intimate way, all the time, everywhere.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you're seeing a little bit of why I chose this passage for today.
Speaker 1: As we are cheering on these graduates, cheering on these scholarship recipients, we want you to know those that I can still see out here floating around that, wherever you go, whatever the new adventures that are ahead of you, in new places or in old places that are becoming new, as you start to wonder exactly who you're supposed to be and what you've been equipped to do to offer to the world, I hope that you can remember this passage in Jeremiah, which was occurring at an even more difficult time than maybe we live in, that was saying I'm with you.
Speaker 1: Our God walks with us and always stays as close as our heart.
Speaker 1: Amen, amen.