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Does God speak to you today just as he spoke to Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, John, Jesus, and Paul? Does he speak to you the same way He spoke to them? Maybe that might not be a good question. Let me ask the question. "Does God speak to persons today just as he did those in Bible times?" The answer to that question is, "Yes!" If you say, "Well, He hasn't spoken to me like that," it is simply because you haven't listened, because he still speaks to men and women just as he did then.

H. G. Wells, who was one of the brilliant and sharp writers of his time, had a pen sharper than a two-edged sword. He wrote a short story in "The New Yorker Magazine" about an archbishop who was aging and losing his grip. His Grace no longer had the dynamic kind of decisive personality that he once had. What was worse, everyone around him began to notice that he was losing his grip. And they began to whisper about him, and he could hear their whispers. In fact, he got so concerned that he decided that he would pray to God about it. That was pretty drastic! So he approached his prayer altar and knelt down. He felt naked without his prayer book from which he had prayed for some fifty years. But he was desperate and there at his private altar he prayed, "O, God." Then he heard a voice neither friendly nor hostile but brisk that said, "Yes, what is it?" And Wells writes, "They found His Grace in the morning. He had slipped off the steps on which he had been kneeling and lay sprawling on the crimson carpet. Plainly his death had been instantaneous. Those who found him reported that the arch-bishop's face displayed, not its habitual serenity, but an extremity of terror and dismay." I dare say that some of you who have refused to listen to God's voice, if you did finally hear it, would probably drop dead, too!

You have heard the story of the fellow who fell over a mountainside on a dark night. He grabbed for anything that could break his fall. After he had fallen for some 200 yards, he grabbed a root and there he clung desperately for his life. When his energy was giving way, in desperation he cried up to the top of the mountain, "Is there anyone up there?" A voice said, "Yes." He cried back up, "Tell me what to do." The voice called down, "Turn loose." To which he called again, "Is there anyone else up there?"

Most of the time we don't acknowledge God's call, primarily because He is asking us to do something we are afraid to do. When the ground is only three feet below our feet, we are frightened of turning loose.

Jeremiah was from the little village of Anthoth. It was to this village Solomon banished David's priest Abrathar. It was around 600 B.C. The reforms of Josiah had been abandoned and their religion had deteriorated, having no king or leader who followed God. This first chapter is Jeremiah's personal testimony of how God called him. He prefaces all of this autobiographical account with his strong belief in predestination. Unlike his contemporary Isaiah, he was reluctant to answer the call and do what God was commissioning him to do. Jeremiah's reluctance was not due to the fact that he was young; that was no excuse. His reluctance was to be a prophet to all the nations. Like Jonah, he didn't "cotton to strangers" or regard gentiles of much value. In verse nine God says to Jeremiah that his word will be the divine energy to accomplish the task: "Behold, I will put my words in your mouth." God also assures him in verse eight, "Be not afraid of them for I am with you to deliver you." In summary, God is saying to Jeremiah: what I am calling you to do needs to be done. God promises he won't call us to do something we can't do, and he will never call us to do anything alone.

I. God Won't Ever Call Us To Do Something
That Doesn't Need To Be Done

God won't ever ask us to do something that is not important. Jeremiah thought "Lord, this is a waste of time. Those gentiles are vulgar, Godless, dirty, immoral. Lord, don't you know how they treat us Hebrews? You are wasting your time." Jeremiah was a country boy who didn't like folks in the big city up north. He couldn't see any good in those people.

Everyone has had a call from God. I have had mine. God called me to do something, and I thought it not too important and so I wouldn't do it. Or I would protest, "I don't want to go to that place." Every one of you has had some place or some thing that God called you to do but you didn't want to do, or that you didn't think was important. The first three or four years following Divinity School, I wrestled with a call to do personal evangelism. God kept saying to me, "I want you to witness to people personally, eyeball to eyeball, about Jesus Christ and call them to repentance." That didn't sound too tasteful. Anyway, I rationalized that I would be judgmental if I did that. I was thinking that God wanted me to do the converting and the judging, not Him. All he wanted me to do was to be the messenger. I don't know what spiritual hurdle you have in your life that God has set before you and called you to do that you have refused. But you have your Ninevehs, like Jonah, don't you? We all do. Jeremiah did.

I think sometimes we write off a lot of persons as unimportant because we measure their value by the world's standards. I heard of a woman whose husband was missing, and she was concerned about him because she had never lived without him. So she went down to the police station to report him missing. The captain said, "Well, give me a description of him before I put out an all-points bulletin on him." She began to describe him. She said, "He is short, fat, balding, wears thick glasses, and - oh, just forget it." A lot of times we are that way. When we stop to evaluate things and take a look at them we say, "Oh, they are not too important." But God will not call you to do anything that is not important.

Many of you remember Peter Marshall. Some of you have read the book his wife wrote about him, A Man Called Peter. Peter used to tell again and again how God called him. As a young teenager, he was out walking on the Scottish moors. It was foggy and he was alone. Suddenly he heard a voice call, "Peter" There was a great urgency in the voice. But he said he stopped and listened and moved on another step, then heard more urgently, "Peter." He paused, stumbled, and fell to his knees and said, "Speak, Lord." As he fell he put out his hands to catch himself and found nothing there. He was on the very edge of a cliff. One more step would have been his certain death. Now Peter Marshall was sure that God called him, that God had a purpose in his life to have intervened so specifically. Obviously God was in his life, and I am sure that he was glad that he heard that call and didn't take another step until he answered it. Listen, listen, my friends. Somewhere, somebody is calling your name. Yes, God never calls us to do anything that doesn't need to be done.

II. God Never Calls Us to Do Something We Can't Do

God never calls us to do something we can't do. So let's not use that excuse any longer. Jeremiah felt that God was putting a responsibility on him that was beyond him. He couldn't go and convert all of the nations. But God wasn't asking him to convert them. God was just saying, "Take the message; I'll convert them." He thought it was an impossible demand of an over-optimistic, naive God who thinks everybody is important. He wouldn't listen.

Surely you have all heard those commercials on television that an office machine company uses to explain the importance of listening. I like the one showing the Titanic. The radio message comes, "There are icebergs; don't go." But they didn't listen. So the Titanic sank. Everyone can listen. God never asks you to do something you can't do, so develop the art of listening!

A woman and I were talking about the importance of her witnessing to her faith and she said to me, "Well, Jim, I can't do that." I said, "Why can't you do that?" She said, "Because all my friends are Christians." And I said, "Well, let us pray that God will enlarge your circle of friends." God is not going to ask you to do something you can't do. So don't use that as an excuse. Faithfulness is not an option or a luxury; it is a requirement.

One of my favorite singers is Roger Whitaker. One of his most haunting songs is entitled, "Oh, No, Not Me." You remember that one? It tells the story about a man who was on his way to catch a train. At the terminal he hears this blind man with a mandolin playing this song, "Oh, No, Not Me." He stops and listens. Nobody else seemed to be paying the blind man any attention. But he listens and listens. And he comes back on several other occasions just to listen to him. He feels as though that song was especially for him. And then one day the old musician dies. No one ever notices he is gone. Now the man is burdened with the fact that he is the only one in the whole world who has really heard this song. So he must respond to it. "Oh, No, Not me" he sings. "There is none so blind as those who will not see. Oh, No, Not me. The only one to hear the song was me."

Jeremiah heard the call of God and responded, "Oh, no, not me, Lord." We may hear the same call and respond the same way. But the call is like the haunting refrain of that song. It will not let go of us. We cannot escape it. "The only one who heard that song was me." You don't have to convert or convince. You just have to carry the message. So God won't ask you to do something that is not important. He won't ask you to do something you can't do.

III. God Will Never Call Us to Do Anything Alone

God will never ask us to do anything alone. He will never send us out alone to do something. He wasn't sending Jeremiah out there all by himself. He was going to prepare the hearts of the people of the nations to hear the message, as He did. You know, every time I fail to remember that whatever I do I don't do alone, I fail at it. Every time I fail to remember that when I preach I don't preach alone, I fail at preaching. It is that way with all of us. God told Moses to go and lead the children out of the land of Egypt. "Just tell the Pharoah; I'll take care of the rest. And I'll be with you even unto the ends of the earth. You won't go alone."

We need to get outside ourselves and to hear God's call. To hear God calling gives you a feeling of security, doesn't it? An identification. It makes you feel like somebody. Have you ever been to a meeting, particularly when you were a teenager or a child, and they called the whole list of people who were supposed to be there or called out the people who made the team and you hoped they would call your name? You sat there nervous and frightened that they might not call your name. The fact that your name was called meant that you were somebody and made you feel you belonged and were not alone.

Descartes, the famous philosopher, said that we prove our existence by thinking. "I think, therefore I am," says Descartes. But the Bible says, "I hear God call and respond; therefore I am." That is how I know I am somebody because God calls my name. That makes me somebody. The Bible says, "I hear God calling my name." In the second chapter of Genesis it speaks of God walking through the garden calling us, and our trying to run away and hide from Him in the Garden of Eden. He cries out, "Adam, Adam where are you?" We don't answer, but he calls. He says, "You will never be asked to do anything alone. I will be with you."

I've been with a lot af families when they went through cardiac surgery. Duke Hospital has one nurse assigned to just one patient. And she comes in the day before the operation and to all patients, adults and child alike, she says, "I want you to hold my hand. I want you to get the feel of my hand. I want you to hold my hand a lot today, because tomorrow after surgery when you wake up in ICU, you will be unable to see a thing and for several hours you will be almost paralyzed. You won't be able to know if anyone else is there except by the touch of my hand. I want you to get the feel of it and recognize it, so that when you awaken tomorrow you won't be frightened. You'll know someone is with you, that I have got your hand in mine." I have talked to patient after patient who has been through cardiac surgery at the great hospitals. They all say that a person being there holding their hand really made a big difference, to know that whatever you are going through, that you are not alone. Yes, God calls you.

My favorite gospel hymn is that old spiritual: "When He calls me I will answer; I'll be somewhere listening for my name." Yes, as God calls each one of you, I pray that you will hear him and go and do what he wants you to do with your life.