In these words we have set forth the Divine commission given to the prophet Jeremiah. Never before, or since, was such a commission given to mortal man. It is not that Jeremiah is constituted a prophet for his own people, or over his own nation, and country, but he was Divinely appointed and set over the nations and kingdoms of the earth, with an authority “to root out, pull down, destroy, and throw down.” Surely he was rightly named, for the word Jeremiah means the exalted, or appointed one of the Lord. By common consent, the Jews gave him the first place and name among the prophets. Up to the time of the Babylonian captivity he was second, Isaiah being first. But after the captivity, on the re-arrangement of the holy canon, his name was put first, and ever after he was regarded and accepted as the patron saint of Judea. He was born of a priestly family, about 641 B.C., in the priestly town of Anathoth, which was situated a few miles North of Jerusalem, in the territory of Benjamin. His work and commission awaited him, because they antedated his birth, for he says (chap. i. 4), “Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 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_.” Jeremiah’s life-work, extent, and devotion, can only find a parallel in the majesty and compass of his commission. It is the extent of this commission that I wish you would specially notice, for it is neither tribal nor national in its limitations. He was ordained a prophet unto the nations. Hear the voice of his wailing (chapter xv. 10), “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the _whole earth_.”