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.