Jeremiah 38:1-13 Sinking Down and Being Lifted Up September 20, 2015

Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jehucal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malkijah heard what Jeremiah was telling all the people when he said, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live. He will escape with his life; he will live.’ And so this is what the LORD says: ‘This city will certainly be handed over to the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it.’” Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death. He is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, as well as all the people, by the things he is saying to them. This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.” “He is in your hands,” King Zedekiah answered. “The king can do nothing to oppose you.” So they took Jeremiah and put him into the cistern of Malkijah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern; it had no water in it, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.

Jeremiah should have known this would happen. Common sense and experience will tell you that when you tell people things they don’t want to hear—and especially when you tell them things they don’t want to hear and admit about themselves—it rarely goes well. Sometimes it goes poorly because people don’t believe that what is being said is true. Sometimes it goes poorly because people deep down know that what is being said is true—and what is being said keeps them from being able to ignore those facts. I would guess that Shephatiah and his friends didn’t believe that what Jeremiah was saying about the fate of Jerusalem was true—or at least that they believed it didn’t have to be true. They probably believed that they were somehow going to be able to survive this siege by the Babylonians—but not if people like Jeremiah kept encouraging treason! If Jeremiah was allowed to keep telling people that they needed to surrender to the Babylonians, morale would continue to sink, people would desert, and eventually Jerusalem would fall. And they, the leaders, had the most to lose if that happened—for not only would they lose their positions of power and prestige, but they might even lose their lives at the hands of the Babylonians! But that didn’t have to happen—if only Jeremiah would be silenced. Jeremiah should have known this would happen. God himself had promised Jeremiah this when he first called Jeremiah to be a prophet, telling him, “I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land. They will fight against you…” Jeremiah should have known this would happen. It had already happened in the past. During the administration of Jehoiakim (the previous king), Jeremiah called in his secretary Baruch, and dictated to him all that Jeremiah had preached in the past. Baruch painstakingly copied the words onto a scroll and then, since Jeremiah was not able to go to the temple himself, Baruch went there and read the words of the scroll. Eventually the scroll was read in the presence of the king. And what was his response to Jeremiah's words? Whenever three or four columns of the scroll had been read, the king cut them off and threw them into the fire. (Cf. Jeremiah 36:1-24)

Not only should Jeremiah have known this would happen, but I believe he did know it would happen. He knew that if he gave people the message from God that they should surrender to the Babylonians, something bad was going to happen to him. He probably didn't know exactly what it would be. It's hard to imagine that he would have guessed he'd end up in the bottom of a muddy pit, sinking down into the mud and dealing with I-don't-even-want-to-think-about-whatever-else-was-alive- in-that-pit. But he knew something unpleasant was going to happen to him. And yet he spoke up anyway. Why? Perhaps it was because he knew what would happen if he didn't. A couple hundred years before this, a prophet refused to say what God had told him to say, and he chose to run away, boarding a ship going in the opposite direction. His stay on the ship was brief. His stay in the belly of a great fish did not seem brief. Jonah was there three days! Perhaps Jeremiah spoke because he knew that if he didn't speak, others would. False prophets would continue to preach their message of certain deliverance. It was a seductive and specific message of the sort that a false prophet named Hananiah had delivered earlier in Zedekiah's reign when he had assured the people that God would "break the yoke of the king of Babylon" and that this would take place "within two years" (Jeremiah 28:2-3). Perhaps Hananiah revised his estimate two years earlier, or perhaps he fell out of favor with people once his prophecy was proven false. Even if that was the case, surely some other false prophet took his place, promising that deliverance was just around the corner. Such a message kept the Israelites from saving their lives by surrendering to the Babylonians. Even worse, because it was a message that called no one to repentance for their sins and pointed no one to God's forgiveness through the promised Messiah, it was a message would keep the Israelites from being saved from their sins. If Jeremiah did not preach his saving message from God, the only message that people would hear would be a false, deadly one. Perhaps Jeremiah spoke because he knew that his message was the only one that could save. There are a few things we need to ask ourselves about this portion of Scripture. One is, "Am I sometimes like the four men in the first verse of the reading?" That is, when we are called to surrender to God, to humble ourselves before him and confess this sin or that sin, do we tell ourselves that the speaker is not "seeking our good" but is instead seeking "our ruin?" It's an almost universally accepted sentiment today that if someone says something that makes me feel bad about myself, they are the ones who have done something bad--and unloving! We are not immune to that sentiment. The Israelites didn't like hearing that they weren't strong enough, that is wasn't possible for them to defeat the Babylonians. We don't like hearing that we aren't good enough, that it isn't possible for us to defeat sin and earn Heaven on our own. But it was only by surrendering that they could survive, and it's only by surrendering, by confessing our sin and our need for a Savior that we can survive. When God uses others to call us through his Word to do so, let us heed that call, humbling ourselves before him in order that he might not only spare our lives, but also give us eternal life through the forgiveness and freedom from sin and death that Jesus has won for us on the cross. Another question that we ought to ask ourselves is if we are ready to be like Jeremiah. We already are like Jeremiah in that we have been called to speak God's Word on his behalf. Are we ready to be like Jeremiah by actually speaking it, come what may? Are we ready to end up in a pit? Perhaps you think that ending up in a pit isn't too likely. Maybe not. But something painful is going to happen to those who speak God's truth, who speak God's law and message of repentance and God's gospel and message of forgiveness. Jesus promised as much in this morning's gospel reading. I doubt that any of the disciples to whom he spoke thought that they would actually end up being thrown into a pit for speaking God's Word--and as far as I know, none of them were. But they were excluded from society practically from the start, eventually exiled like John, and even executed like James. But they did it because they knew what would happen if they didn't. People would not hear about Jesus, and people would not be saved. Not that Jeremiah's preaching was saving anyone...

But Ebed-Melech, a Cushite, an official in the royal palace, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern. While the king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate, Ebed-Melech went out of the palace and said to him, “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have thrown him into a cistern, where he will starve to death when there is no longer any bread in the city.” Then the king commanded Ebed-Melech the Cushite, “Take thirty men from here with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.” So Ebed-Melech took the men with him and went to a room under the treasury in the palace. He took some old rags and worn-out clothes from there and let them down with ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern. Ebed-Melech the Cushite said to Jeremiah, “Put these old rags and worn-out clothes under your arms to pad the ropes.” Jeremiah did so, and they pulled him up with the ropes and lifted him out of the cistern. And Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard. (NIV84)

I wonder if Ebed-Melech's actions came as something of a shock to Jeremiah. A pleasant shock, the sort of shock that was a jolt of life to a man whose hopes and spirits were probably sinking into the mud of despair even faster than his body was sinking into the actual mud. But a shock nonetheless. I would imagine that Jeremiah was aware of how alone the prophet Elijah had felt when he tried to tell God that he was the only one left. Although God had told Elijah that there were still 7000 believers in Israel at that time, Jeremiah might well have wondered if there were even 7 believers left in Israel at this time! And then Ebed-Melech speaks up. And he's a Cushite! A foreigner! I admit that this is speculation, but I wonder if Ebed-Melech had done much in the past that would have indicated to Jeremiah that his actions here were a possibility. Perhaps he had. Perhaps Jeremiah had even prayed while in the pit that Ebed-Melech would do something to deliver him. But maybe Jeremiah never dreamed that this would happen. Maybe he knew Ebed-Melech as nothing more than as he's described in the text--"an official in the royal palace"--the sort of guy who would likely have been only interested in protecting his own position. Either way, his actions, born out of concern for Jeremiah and faith in the God whom Jeremiah preached (so someone was being saved through Jeremiah's preaching!), must have lifted Jeremiah's spirits faster than those ropes lifted him out of the pit. We get a sense of what it meant to Jeremiah from one of the seemingly minor details that he thought to include. When Ebed-Melech had the ropes lowered into the pit so that Jeremiah could be lifted out, he gave Jeremiah some old rags and worn-out clothes to put under his arms to pad the ropes. Clearly this "small" kindness meant a lot to Jeremiah. Ebed-Melech was indeed a godsend--only not the type that is spelled with a small "g" that indicates nothing more than that someone was really a help. No, Ebed-Melech was a God-send-- someone sent by God to restore the spirit of Jeremiah. Our Lord knows when we need such people, and he knows just how and just when to get them to us. When we are feeling that no one cares, that we are the only ones willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus, when we are wondering if it's really worth it, when we are sinking into the muck of despair, God sends someone. The fact that anyone shows up at all is unexpected--and sometimes the person that he chooses to send is as unexpected to us as a Cushite may have been to Jeremiah. Quite a while back I was having, let's say, "a challenging time." It was a little after 6 PM, and I was just packing up my things to leave the office and go home. And I see headlights turning into the parking lot. I figured that it was just someone turning around. But a few moments later I heard a knock on the office door. Leave me alone! I just want this day to be over, and I just want to go home. (Actually, I don't even want to go home. I'd like to solitarily sink further into my pit of despair, and whoever you are on the other side of the door, you're keeping me from it!) It was someone who wanted to come in and sit down. Argh. They said they had something they wanted to share with me. (I hoped it was misery.) It wasn't. It was Psalm 13. They sat there with their Bible open and read Psalm 13 to me. They read: "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, 'I have overcome him,' and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me." And then, having done what they came to do, they got up and left. What had they come to do? They’d come to show me kindness, and they’d come to remind me of God’s promises of salvation and unfailing love—salvation that was already mine through Jesus, and unfailing love that was with me even in the midst of trouble, even when it didn’t seem that I could see the face of God. I still remember that kindness to this day, just as Jeremiah remembered even the dirty rags and old clothes detail of Ebed-Melech's kindness. I don't know exactly how you can be an Ebed-Melech to someone--but I know that you can. When you do so, you will lift them up. And the best way to lift them up is with God's Word. When you do, it's something that they'll probably remember for quite a while. What's even better is that God remembers it. In the next chapter Jeremiah announces to Ebed- Melech that when the Babylonians take the city of Jerusalem and kill its inhabitants, God would spare his life because Ebed-Melech trusted in him--a faith that was shown in his actions on Jeremiah's behalf. So do as Jesus urges in this morning's Gospel reading. Take up your cross and follow him. The cross will come, and it will hurt. But he will give you the strength to bear it--and he may even send you an Ebed-Melech to keep it from digging in quite so much. And finally there will come a day when he lifts you up as he did to Jeremiah. But while Jeremiah was lifted up to the "courtyard of the guard", you will be lifted up to God's courts in Heaven. Amen.