Is Your Place a Small Place?
Today I want to deal with a wonderful passage in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 45.
Introduction
Now I want to give you a word of testimony that comes from a half century of being a pastor. Katrina and I began our ministry in a small church—the building was made of river rock and is the most quaint and evocative church I’ve ever pastored. There were about sixty people there, and we built it up to perhaps seventy or seventy-five.
Then we moved to Nashville, and on our first Sunday at our new church, according to the memory of my friend, Dr. Vernon Whaley, who was there, we had seventy-eight people. It took nearly forty years, but we grew a church of about a thousand people.
Now I’m in a church many times that size, and on Easter Weekend we’ll have 35 to 40,000 people. Here’s what I realized—and it came to me as a surprise but also as a tremendous encouragement. I have been no more or less happy in one place as in another. I was just as happy in my church of sixty as I am in a church of ten thousand. By the mercy of God, somehow—and I didn’t realize this until recently—the size of the church had no bearing on my joy in serving. We find our joy in just serving the Lord wherever He puts us, whether it’s in a large place or a small one.
Even as I say this, I remember Ruth Bell Graham telling me that the global ministry she and Dr. Graham had was simply hard work. She said they would have been just as happy to have been missionaries in an obscure place even if no one knew their name.
John Oxenham published a little book of verses in 1913, entitled Bees in Amber. One of my favorites in this book is a little poem I memorized many years ago and often quote. The title is “Your Place,” and the poem says:
Is your place a small place?
Tend it with care!—
He set you there.
Is your place a large place?
Guard it with care!—
He set you there.
Whate’er your place, it is
Not your alone, but His
Who set you there.
The truth of this verse is that there are no small jobs in the Kingdom and no small places as far as the Lord is concerned. In our society we tend to measure people by the size of their work or the size of their house or the size of their bank account. We live by the rule that bigger is better, and we sometimes long for the limelight. But the smallest, most obscure task, seriously undertaken and faithfully performed for the Master, has a more lasting significance than the greatest headliner without the blessings of God.
When God Speaks To You…
I want to show you how that plays out in one particular man’s life, and our Scripture reading is from Jeremiah 45. Let’s begin with verse 1:
The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he had written these words in a book at the instruction of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, the king of Judah.
Baruch is one of the most interesting characters in the Bible. His name comes from the Hebrew word for Blessed, and he was a devoted friend and amanuensis of the prophet Jeremiah. He pops up here and there in Jeremiah’s book and was a man of deep conviction and courage.
Verse 2 says: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch:
That’s such a wonderful verse. How would you like to have your own verse in the Bible? How would you like it if there was just one particular promise or command that literally had your name attached to it? “This is the special word of the Lord for… you.” The truth is we can put our own name in any and every verse of the Bible. The whole Bible can be personalized for you and for me, and that’s what true spirituality is—when we take each verse of the Bible as being our very own. Verse 3: You say, “Woe is me now! For the Lord has added grief to my sorrow. I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.”
Here was a man who was overcome and overwhelmed with a series of blows in life. I don’t know why it is that problems often come in multiples. In Baruch’s case, everything was complicated by the aforementioned Babylonian invasion. A brutal enemy was invading the nation of Judah, and everywhere there was suffering and destruction and death and defeat. But read on with verse 4:
Thus you shall say to him, “Thus says the Lord: Behold, what I have built I will break down, and what I have planted I will pluck up, that is, the whole land.
This was a message of judgment on the land of Judah for their sins. Things were bad, and they were going to get worse.
“Seek Not Great Things For Yourself”
And then verse 5: And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for behold, I will bring adversity on all flesh, says the Lord. But I will give your life to you as a prize in all the places, wherever you go.
In other words, this nation and all that is around you is collapsing. Don’t seek your own personal aggrandizement. Don’t seek worldly success or fleeting fame; for everything is very temporary and unstable. Just trust me, and I’ll keep you alive and use you, however large or small your place appears to be.
And every generation of believers since that time has found this verse 5 of invaluable help.
Once when Katrina and I were traveling, I read the biography of Oswald J. Smith, the longtime pastor of the People’s Church of Toronto. I remember hearing Dr. Smith speak on one occasion, and it was when I was a teenager or a very young man and had come here to Nashville for something or other; and he was speaking at the missions conference at what is now Welch College. I still remember how effectively he used an illustration about salt being poured out of the saltshaker. He was a great preacher and a great missionary advocate.
Interestingly, Dr. Smith had a hard time getting established as a pastor. He had some struggles early in his career; but finally it appeared that his big break had come. He attracted the attention of a great church in the state of New York, and it was the church where the famous Dr. A. B. Simpson had pastored. It was one of the great churches of the Northeast, and at the very hub of the Christian Missionary and Alliance movement. The church voted unanimously to call Dr. Smith, and he very practically decided to go. His mind was 99 percent made up. But one night after he had gone to bed, this verse came to his mind with sudden urgency: Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not.
He reversed his decision, declined the offer, and his life’s ministry went in a totally different way. Evidently, the prestige of the offer had almost convinced him to go; but that didn’t represent God’s will for him at all; and the Lord used this verse to change the direction of his life. His name was in this verse just as surely as Baruch’s.
He’s not the only person whose name is in this verse. The most powerful preacher I’ve ever read about is Charles Haddon Spurgeon; I wish all of us could have heard him preach a hundred years ago in London. He was known as the Prince of Preachers, and there is no one to equal him in Christian history. His sermons, delivered practically extemporaneously, are the most eloquent and powerful messages I’ve ever read; and the collected compilations of his sermons represents the single largest volume of books in the history of Christianity.
But let me tell you what happened to him when he was a young man. He badly felt the need to attend Bible college, for he wanted to preach and to pastor, but he had never had any formal training. So he applied to a Bible training institution, and the director of the school agreed to meet with him. The meeting was to take place at the home of Mr. Macmillan, the publisher. Spurgeon rose early for prayer on the day of the meeting, then he proceeded to the publisher’s house. He rang the bell, and a servant led him into a private meeting room; and there he sat for two hours. Finally he went looking for someone and found out that the servant had completely forgotten about him and hadn’t announced his arrival.
Meanwhile, the director of the school, Dr. J Angus, was waiting elsewhere in the house, and he finally grew disgusted at having been apparently stood up; and he left and returned to London. When he left the house, he was confused and upset; but as he walked along this verse came to him with remarkable force: Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. He took it as the word of God and faithfully went about pastoring a small church in the country; and the rest is history. This verse had his name on it, and God used it to establish the course of his life.
One more story illustrates the same thing. There was a New Zealand lawyer whose name was J. Oswald Sanders who entered the ministry and became one of the most powerful Christian leaders of his generation. I have tried to read everything that came from the pen of this great man. One of his final pieces of writing was an article he wrote based on a talk he gave late in life, entitled simply “Lessons I’ve Learned.”
He said:
I don’t think I ever was very ambitious. But on one occasion there was a job in Christian work I would have liked—it just seemed to be up my street, something that would fit in with my gifts. I knew I had friends who had influence, and if I asked them I was sure they would pull a string and turn the job in my direction. I was only an immature Christian in those days, and I was toying with this idea of doing a little lobbying.
I was going down the main street in Auckland one day, turning this over in my mind as I was just outside His Majesty’s Theatre—I still know the spot, and every time I pass it my mind recalls what happened. As I was thinking, Will I or won’t I? these words of Scripture came with tremendous authority and conviction: “Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not!” The words came just as though it was God speaking. There were crowds all around me, and no one else heard the voice, but I heard it all right!
I believe that was a real turning point in my service to the Lord. He gave me the grace to accept the admonition, and I didn’t ask anybody to pull any strings. Actually the job came to me automatically later on without my doing anything. It wasn’t God’s time for it earlier. (J. Oswald Sanders, Lessons I’ve Learned in “Discipleship Journal,” Issue 15 1983, p. 16).
We know that if we’re faithful to Him, the Lord will use us in great ways—greater than we know. But our usefulness in the kingdom is disconnected from the fame and fortune of our work. Sometimes the greatest workers for the kingdom are those unknown by the world, who do their work faithfully in obscurity and humility. But God sees and knows and uses and blesses and rewards in His own time and way. As an old song says, “Little is much when God is in it.”
What About Your Place?
What about your place? I began this episode with a poem by John Oxenham; let me finish by another of my favorite poets, Annie Johnson Flint, who wrote:
Fret not because thy place is small,
Thy service need not be,
For thou canst make it all there is
Of joy and ministry.
The dewdrop, as the boundless sea,
In God’s great place has part;
And this is all He asks of thee;
Be faithful where thou art.
In thee His mighty hand can show
The wonders of His grace,
And He can make the humblest room
A high and holy place.
Thy life can know the blessedness
Of resting in His will;
His fullness flows unceasingly
Thy cup of need to fill.
His strength upon thy weakness waits,
His power for thy task.
What more, O child of all His care,
Could any great one ask?
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