I was really encouraged last evening to listen to Grant’s sermon last Sunday; please do listen to it if you were not here.
And this morning we sort of begin where we left. The Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar still has Judah under siege and Jeremiah is still under pressure—persecution.
But a few things have changed. It is now 10 years later. The prophecies Jeremiah made against King Jehoiachin who tore and burnt the scroll—the word of God— has come to pass.
And now Nebuchadnezzar has installed another king—Zedekiah.
And while last week, Jeremiah was just in hiding, he has now been arrested, mercilessly beaten, and kept in prison, and it’s such a bad prison that when he gets a chance to get out, he begs the king not to allow him be returned there.
But it’s not just Jeremiah for whom things are really bad, the whole country is in a pathetic situation. They have been under lockdown for 10 years now.
The end of ch.37 tells us that bread in the city was gone, and in our chapter Jeremiah is thrown into a cistern, a water reservoir, and it is only mud in there—The water wells are dried up!
Lamentations 4 is really graphic on the situation in Judah:
The infant’s tongue sticks
to the roof of its mouth due to thirst;
little children beg for bread,
but no one gives them even a morsel.
5 Those who once feasted on delicacies
are now starving to death in the streets.
Those who grew up wearing expensive clothes
are now dying amid garbage.
6 Their princes were brighter than snow
and whiter than milk,
their bodies more ruddy than rubies,
their appearance like lapis lazuli.
8 But now they are blacker than soot;
they are not recognized in the streets.
Their skin has shriveled on their bones;
it has become as dry as a stick.
9 Those killed by the sword are better off
than those who die of famine;
racked with hunger, they waste away
for lack of food from the field.
10 With their own hands compassionate women
have cooked their own children,
who became their food
when my people were destroyed.
That is the setting of our chapter; it is such a grim situation! but I think our reading today tells us a story that should challenge us and encourage us in our Christian walk.
The story essentially divides into three scenes: the prophet Jeremiah is condemned, then he is rescued, then he is questioned.
But there are also three main characters and each scene tells us something about each character; so we’ll look at Jeremiah’s suffering, Ebed Melech’s courage and Zedekiah’s fear. So those are our three headings this morning
- Jeremiah’s Suffering
Like I have already mentioned, in the previous chapter he is kept in a very ghastly prison that he begs the king to protect him from being returned there lest he die.
Now he is confined in the fairly softer conditions of the courtyard of the guard, but it does seem that though he is still locked up, they have been unable to shut him up. Jeremiah is still able to get his message out.
And he’s basically telling the people to stop resisting the Babylonians. It will not end up well for them:
v.2 Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live.
Their only chance of survival is to surrender and defect to the Babylonians.
10 years ago Jehoiachin had attempted a rebellion against Babylon and it didn’t go well. Now 10 years later, Zedekiah is doing the very same thing, with the hope that Egypt might back them up. It’s a terrible idea, Jeremiah says.
But the officials of the King are angry at Jeremiah: He is inciting the people, and the soldiers. He is a traitor—he is not seeking the good of the people.
And so they raise these accusations with the king and ask that Jeremiah be killed.
And Zedekiah, the king, has his Pilate moment, where he basically washes his hands
v.5 He is in your hands,” King Zedekiah answered. “The king can do nothing to oppose you.”
A complete abdication of his responsibility, this weak pathetic king.
The officials go away and come up with the most painful and agonizing death they could think of: lowering him into a water reservoir and leaving him there to die slowly.
They could have just thrown him in so he dies faster, but they carefully lower him so that he might die a slow death, in the dark, utterly alone without food or water.
You probably have heard this through the series, or noticed it; but we are given quite a significant amount of material on Jeremiah’s personal life in this book. And I don’t think they are just incidental bits given just to add color to the book—they are part and parcel of the message, the theology of book.
So what are we meant to learn from the suffering of Jeremiah; and I think we are meant to see how he points forward to the greater prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Moses had promised that God will raise up a prophet like him, and just like the kings of the Bible, the prophets of the Bible foreshadow something of the Lord Jesus.
And for sure, just like Jeremiah, Jesus was a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering.
Jesus came to his own and his own did not receive him. Jesus was beaten, Jesus was falsely accused, sentenced to a cruel death.
Jeremiah warned of judgment, and somehow he was made to taste his own medicine—the very judgment he had warned of. I think perhaps that also points to something of the lord Jesus. Jesus warned of judgment. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no topic Jesus spoke more frequently of than judgment and hell. He spoke of weeping, gnashing of teeth, eternal fire-whatever that means.
And just like Jeremiah, he tested it, he himself drank from the cup of God’s wrath.
And though Jeremiah could only suffer alongside his people, though in a particularly intense way, Jesus suffered in the place of his people. Facing God’s judgment for us; that those who put their trust in him would never face it.
And so as we read of Jeremiah in the cistern, facing a cruel death, alone, in the dark, we are to remember Jesus’ agony on the cross, in the dark, alone—my God my God why have you forsaken me;
and that should cause us worship and give thanks.
But if Jeremiah the man of God, who brings the word of God points to Jesus, then the other two characters help us learn how to respond to Jesus, the son of God.
- Ebed Melech’s Courage
He is only mentioned here and in the next chapter, not much is known of him. But he is introduced to us as a Cushite, a civilization that existed just South of Egypt in modern day Sudan.
I’ve just written an article arguing that he was a Black African and the best evidence comes from Jeremiah actually. In Jer. 13, Jeremiah speaks about their skin colour and it seems his audience know exactly what he is saying: “Can an Ethiopian change the color of his skin? Can a leopard remove its spots?”
We are also told he is an official in the royal palace; and the word official can also be translated eunuch, which I think has misled most people to say that Ebed Melech was a slave, but I just don’t think there’s evidence for that.
Of course it is possible that he came to Judah as a slave, absolutely no indication, but what is clear is that he is a very senior civil servant. How he operates here shows that he is a key official in the royal palace.
For those interested, the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8 really parallels this man, and Ethiopian is simply the Greek translation of Cushite, which is another evidence that they were people of colour. The Greeks called all Black people Ethiopians.
And so Ebed Melech hears of Jeremiah’s fate, and he wastes no time. He acts.
3 things about Ebed Melech
- His boldness
He goes and confronts the king public: the Benjamin Gate. The Benjamin Gate was where the king undertook his public role, and he doesn’t wait for him to return to the palace and talk to him in private. No, he goes to the Benjamin gate. And of course, he knows very well that the King had given a nod to the whole plan. What boldness!
You would also imagine that there were many other people who heard about what happened to Jeremiah. It is very possible that many of them even sympathized with him. But what makes Ebed Melech stand out is that he combined his compassion with the courage to act.
- His moral rectitude
v.9 “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all they have done to Jeremiah the prophet.”
This is a man who has a sense of right and wrong. He knows when something is wicked or not. And that’s something that people had lost in Judah, the Bible says they knew neither their right nor left.
But it is also something our society has lost. We increasingly call wrong right, and right wrong. Not so with Ebed Melech. He could boldly stand before the highest power in the land and say, this is wicked. It is not acceptable!
- His thoughtfulness
The king allows him to go and lift out Jeremiah. The thirty men he is to take might be because it is dangerous—those who put him in there might try to stop the operation.
But he doesn’t go to lift him military style. He is very thoughtful: he takes old rags and used clothes along with the rope so Jeremiah is not hurt in the process.
Indeed the way it is narrated shows a carefulness in this operation. The point is not just that Jeremiah is lifted up, even if he lives the rest of his life with a broken shoulder, no—he is a thoughtful careful man.
The question then is, why does he do this? Why does he, a foreigner, bother to save Jeremiah when it appears Jeremiah’s own people don’t care?
And the answer we are given is from God’s point of view.
In the next chapter, Nebuchadnezzar comes to destroy the city and for some reason, Jeremiah is pardoned. But alongside Jeremiah, Ebed Melech too is saved.
Which is where our gospel reading is relevant—he receives a prophet’s reward. He is rewarded.
And then God says, it is because he trusted in me.
And this is where the parallel with the Ethiopian Eunuch is sharpest. Both of them are Ethiopians, both are high-ranking government officials. Both are foreigners in Jerusalem; and they appear at precisely the times that the people off Jerusalem have rejected the Lord and his messengers. Indeed in both instances, the messengers of God are being persecuted. Then these black African people, trust in the Lord and are included among the people of God.
Do you see that God’s family extends beyond racial lines. The outsiders who trust in God are included, while the “insiders” who rebel against him face judgement.
And lastly just a couple of sentences on Zedekiah
- Zedekiah’s fear
If Ebed Melech is how to respond to God’s word and God’s prophet, Zedekiah is how not to.
Because the problem is not just those who openly reject the prophet and want to kill him, the problem is also those who remain neutral. Those who go with the flow.
And Zedekiah represents the cowards. They want to play safe, they want to remain neutral.
The problem of course is that to remain neutral with Jesus, to play safe with his word, is to join the enemies.
There is no room, as Revelation puts it, for being lukewarm. We must be hot or cold! So how will you respond to Jesus? How do you respond to his prophets, to his word? The call is to act like that black man Ebed Melech—in courage, in moral rectitude and in grace filled thoughtfulness.