The Fire Still Burns

The Fire Still Burns – Jeremiah 20:7-12

Prophet Jeremiah

Called – Means I have been summoned by God for a specific service/ purpose

God has made a decision about the direction for my life.

Problem: He is not supposed to be a prophet he is supposed to be a priest because his father was a priest, his granddaddy was a priest and now he is breaking the tradition.

What do you do when everyone expects you be something else than what God has called you to be.

Some call Jeremiah the Reluctant Prophet because serving a prophet was much more demanding than serving as a priest.

The Priests’ job was predictable:

You had the job description written out for you. The instructions were the same everyday:
sacrifices to offer
unclean people and animals to exclude from the camp
cleansed people to reinstate in the church,
official ceremonies to observe,
a sanctuary to care for
a law to teach.

The Prophet’s Job

You never knew from one day to the next what God call you to do

The priest were concerned about conserving the past traditions, the prophet goal was to change the present so the nation would have a future. When the prophet the nation headed in the wrong direction his job was to call them back to God.

Priests dealt with the externals of dealing with outward appearances of thing clean and unclean while never touching the hearts, the prophet wanted to change the hearts.

Priests didn’t minister to crowds often but to individuals, but the prophet is being sent to the nations and usually the people didn’t want to hear their message.

Priests’ belonged to a special tribe and had authority and respect, but the Prophet came from any tribe and had to prove their call.

Priests were supported from the sacrifices and offerings of the people, but the prophet had no guaranteed income. Jeremiah would have a much easier way to just be priest. Offerings were one thing but preaching the word to hardhearted people was another story.

The time that he preached was a time of rebellion

Jeremiah had to tear down before he could build up. He had to root up before he could plant. Too many ministries are organizational structures that really don’t belong and should be torn down. Some plants are taking up space and bearing no fruit. Jesus said Matthew 15:13 “Every plant which my Father has not planted will be uprooted.”

Any servant of God who finds himself or herself too weak to serve needs to consider these questions: 1) Has God called? The he will equip you. 2) Are you obeying the

commandments by faith? He God will protect you. 3) Are you sharing the Word? Then God will accomplish his purposes no matter what the people say.

The Message that Jeremiah had to Preached was Dangerous

Jeremiah did not always preach a feel good message. The people called Jeremiah a traitor. Jeremiah would be beaten, persecuted, arrested and more than one occasion his life was in danger. We live and go to churches where we want to have entertainment

And preaching has been the best way to get good advice rather to get what thus saith the Lord.

God is will raise up some young Jeremiahs who will do what God tells them do.

Jeremiah was Consecrated/Anointed

God sanctified him – God set him apart, made him completely devoted to God

God touches his lips- He puts the words of God on him. In other words when I speak I am only to speak what thus saith Lord. If it is not of God I need to shut up, If it is of God I am suppose to speak it. Prophets only spoke when God gave them something to say.

You are an ambassador of Christ, you are the official sent forth to announce the message of the one who sent you. You belong to God
You exist only for the purpose for which you were called
You possess all the authority and power of the One who sent you
You are sent with the message of the Sender. The message is not your own.

Jeremiah was Appointed

Means to be fixed, securely placed, established, stable, set, concentrated, prepared.

Young people if you are going to work for God will set you up. Present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service. God want to use you to reach the nation.

Don’t be afraid.

Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord for ye know that your labor is not in fine.

Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

You can do all things through Christ that strengthens you.

Typically, fire comes from a chemical reaction between oxygen in the atmosphere and some sort of fuel (wood or gasoline, for example). Of course, wood and gasoline don't spontaneously catch on fire just because they're surrounded by oxygen. For the combustion reaction to happen, you have to heat the fuel to its ignition temperature.

Here's the sequence of events in a typical wood fire:

Something heats the wood to a very high temperature. The heat can come from lots of different things -- a match, focused light, friction, lightning, something else that is already burning...
When the wood reaches about 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius), the heat decomposes some of the cellulose material that makes up the wood.
Some of the decomposed material is released as volatile gases. We know these gases as smoke. Smoke is compounds of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. The rest of the material forms char, which is nearly pure carbon, and ash, which is all of the unburnable minerals in the wood (calcium, potassium, and so on). The char is what you buy when you buy charcoal. Charcoal is wood that has been heated to remove nearly all of the volatile gases and leave behind the carbon. That is why a charcoal fire burns with no smoke.

The dangerous thing about the chemical reactions in fire is the fact that they are self-perpetuating. The heat of the flame itself keeps the fuel at the ignition temperature, so it continues to burn as long as there is fuel and oxygen around it. The flame heats any surrounding fuel so it releases gases as well. When the flame ignites the gases, the fire spreads.

On Earth, gravity determines how the flame burns. All the hot gases in the flame are much hotter (and less dense) than the surrounding air, so they move upward toward lower pressure. This is why fire typically spreads upward, and it's also why flames are always "pointed" at the top. If you were to light a fire in a microgravity environment, say onboard the space shuttle, it would form a sphere!

Self-Perpetual – Automatically continuous, unrelenting

Extinguishing Your Fire

In the last section, we saw that there are three essential elements involved in producing fire -- heat, oxygen and fuel. To put a fire out, you need to effectively remove one of these elements.

The best way to remove heat is to dump water on the fire. This cools the fuel to below the ignition point, interrupting the combustion cycle.
To remove oxygen, you can smother the fire so it is not exposed to air. One way to smother a small fire is to cover it with a heavy blanket. Another way is to dump nonflammable material, such as sand or baking soda on top of it.
Removing the fuel is the most difficult approach for most fires. In a house fire, for example, the house itself is potential fuel. The fuel will only be removed once the fire has burned all of it up.

Fire extinguishers are sturdy metal cylinders filled with water or a smothering material. When you depress a lever at the top of the cylinder, the material is expelled by high pressure, similar to the way material is forced out of an aerosol can. The diagram below shows a typical design.