耶利米书 1:5

"We must recognize then that God knows us, knows us just as we are, knew us from the very outset, as He says to Jeremiah, 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations' (Jer. 1:5); or as later with the apostle: 'When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace,' etc. (Gal. 1:15.) God knows us from the beginning to the end of our course; His estimate of us is, 'The flesh profiteth nothing;' and it is well if we lay down this estimate as our first axiom."

"But then the same God has spoken to us in the gospel of the remission of sin. But it is remission of sin according to His omniscience, therefore, of all sin; and if God speaks to us of the righteousness of faith, it is, according to His omniscience, 'everlasting righteousness.'"

"He was a prophet sanctified to the nations, the people of God being on the point of losing their sanctification as His people, and all merged in common ruin and obnoxiousness to divine judgment. Serious charge to one of Jeremiah's tender feelings so strongly susceptible of grief and pity!"

"In Jeremiah 1 the prophet is established in his office, to which he had been appointed by Jehovah, even before his birth, that he should carry His word unto the nations."

"'I ordained thee,' it is carefully added, 'a prophet to the nations.' Why to the nations? This special commission brings before us a peculiarity of Jeremiah's service which we shall find abundantly verified in this book. Although he was a Jew himself and even a priest and although the Jews in Jerusalem have an immense place in his prophecy, the nations also are given great prominence."

"Nay, further, we shall find that when the coming judgment of the nations is declared, Jerusalem is put among them as the very first of the nations to be judged. If the Jews did not rise morally above the nations from whom He had separated them, why should God continue to treat them as His own people by a special title? If they surrendered all that was distinctive by lapsing into Gentile idolatry, God would not support them in such false pretensions."

"Jeremiah, accordingly, was ordained a prophet to the nations, because the peculiar feature of his prophecy is that Jerusalem is given a priority of judgment when God takes up the world to deal with its sins. This priority is very strikingly shown in Jeremiah 25, but the same thread of truth runs through the whole of the book from beginning to end."

"In the 15th verse, the apostle seems to allude to Jeremiah 1:5: 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.' Paul was made an apostle of the Gentiles by as distinct an act of God's sovereign power, as Jeremiah was appointed a prophet to the Gentiles. God called both one and the other, without any previous training, to their respective ministries; the one denouncing God's wrath on the Gentiles, the other preaching peace to them through Jesus Christ."

"Two things have here to be distinguished: the original separation of Paul from his mother's womb, and his subsequent calling by the grace of God. Like his prophetic predecessor and fellow-servant, he was in an especial manner born for God (Jer. 1:5), and all his earlier training had been cast providentially in a form which, when the proper season came, should prove to have been the most efficient preparation of God's chosen vessel for the singular and highly honoured destiny to which he had been fore-ordained."

"This unusual commission brings out Jeremiah's timorous spirit. 'Then said Jeremiah, Ah, Lord Jehovah! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.' Jehovah's answer is, 'Say not, I am a child.' This was not at all the question but who was sending him. If royal authority chooses a man according to its own wisdom to be its servant, its ambassador, it is of no importance to others who the ambassador is, but what is the power that sends him."

"I think myself that of all the prophets, greater or smaller, that were employed, there never was one to whom it was a greater trial to pronounce judgment than to Jeremiah. He was a man of an unusually tender spirit. He shrank from the work to which he was called for the very reason he was called to it."

"God has made choice of a naturally feeble heart, easily cast down and discouraged (even while filling it with His own strength), in order that the anguish, the complaints, the distress of soul, the indignation of a weak heart that resents oppression while unable to throw it off or overcome it, being all poured out before Him, should bear testimony against the people whose inveterate wickedness called for His vengeance."

"The call of God to service is absolutely and exclusively a matter between God and His servant. Moses (Ex. 3:10), Samuel (1 Sam. 3:19-20), Isaiah (Isa. 6:8-9), Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5), Ezekiel (Ezek. 2:3-8), and John the Baptist (John 1:6) all bear clear witness to the same fact that Paul expresses concerning himself in Galatians 1:1, that he was 'an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead)'. If one is to be a true servant of God, he must realize this above all else."