Jeremiah 38
COMMENTARY:
: 6 Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammeliech, that was in the court of the prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire. (2916 “mire” [tiyt] means mud, clay, loam, damp dirt, or bog.)
DEVOTION: The word is used to represent instability, loneliness, and helplessness of one in distress in one’s current condition.
Here we find Jeremiah preaching the message the LORD had given him and yet the people wanted to kill him. They thought that he was causing the people of Jerusalem to lose hope.
The problem was that their disobedience was causing the people to lose hope. They didn’t want to listen to the message of the LORD and do what HE commanded. HE told the people of Jerusalem that their only hope to live was to surrender to the Babylonian army and go out of the city.
The prince’s solution was to go to the king and ask to kill Jeremiah. The king granted their request.
Jeremiah was put in a cistern without water. All that was in the cistern was mud. He was sinking in the mud with no food or water. They wanted him to suffer before he died.
We sometimes find ourselves in a position where the people around us would rather we just go away instead of them having to listen what the LORD was telling us to preach.
If we continue preaching against sin we will be judged of the LORD but if we continue the people around us might want to get rid of us. We have to remember that our security is in the LORD.
HE is the one who provides all our needs. HE will not fail us if we continue to be faithful to HIM. Jeremiah was faithful to HIM and the LORD sent a servant to King Zedekiah to plead for his life.
Our situation is never hopeless when we remain faithful to the LORD. HE will deliver us out of every situation by HIS grace. Even if we have failed in the past HE will forgive us if we repent. HE can then use us for HIS service.
Jonah is an example of HIS forgiveness. There are many other people throughout the Old Testament that give us an example of the LORD’S care for HIS people. Faithfulness can bring deliverance.
CHALLENGE: When everyone seems to be against you always turn to the LORD for help. HE is truly the only one who can get us out of bad circumstances.
: 20 But Jeremiah said, They shall not deliver you. Obey, I beseech you, the voice of the LORD, which I speak unto you: so it shall be well unto you, and your soul shall live. (8085 “Obey” [shama] means to hear, listen to, receive news, to understand, give heed, agree, consent, or to yield to.)
DEVOTION: The leaders around Zedekiah wanted to kill Jeremiah because of his message from the LORD. They were afraid his message would cause the people to surrender to the king of Babylon. The king let them do what they wanted with Jeremiah. They took him and put him in a dungeon by lowing him down into a cistern that had no water but only mire. He would die in this dungeon without food and water.
One of the servants named Ebed-melech the Ethiopian went to the king and asked for Jeremiah to be released. He was a eunuch in the service of king Zedekiah. He was a nobody that the LORD used to spare Jeremiah’s life. The king allowed him to go and with thirty of his men to release Jeremiah. He had to take rags and tie them together to get Jeremiah out of the cistern.
Once Jeremiah was released the king sent for him to give him a message from the LORD. Jeremiah told him that he would not like the message. The message told Zedekiah to surrender to the king of Babylon. The king told him he was afraid.
Now this verse comes into play. Jeremiah reminds the king to trust the LORD. If the king will listen to the LORD things would go well with him. If he didn’t listen there would be tragic consequences. He was more afraid of the people then the LORD.
Today we have choices to make every day regarding to whom we will listen. We can listen to man or we can listen to the LORD. Too often men want to run the LORD’S church the way they think it should be run.
They run off people who don’t agree with them. They think they are doing a good job. However, the LORD tells HIS shepherd to feed the flock NOT allow them to be run off.
As shepherds are we listening to the people or the LORD? God’s word is plain regarding a shepherd’s responsibility. We are not to look at people but to the LORD for direction.
Our paychecks come from the LORD not the people. Zedekiah was afraid of the princes and afraid of the people in captivity. Of whom are we afraid to state what the LORD gives us? We are to preach or teach without fear of the faces of the people we are teaching.
God want us to be faithful to HIS Word rather than please men. Jeremiah said things the king didn’t want to hear. We need to do the same today. There are a few people that are willing to listen.
God used a servant to spare the life of Jeremiah. Who will HE use to help us in our faithfulness to HIM?
CHALLENGE: Obedience is hard. Applying the Word of God to our daily life is work. We need to fight the laziness and selfishness that is part of our human nature each day.
: 27 Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him: and he told them according to all these words that the king had commanded. So they left off speaking with him; for the matter was not perceived. (8085 “perceived” [shama] means to understand things heard, discerned, to be regarded, be heeded, or reported.)
DEVOTION: In a court of law in the United States the witness is “to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help them God.” Once they are on the stand they should tell the truth. This is something that is important to the LORD. HE wants us to tell the truth at all times.
Now we have Jeremiah before the princes again asking him what he said to the king and what the king send to him. It is thought that he might have had two conversations with the king one about what was going to happen in the future and one where Jeremiah asked not to go back into prison.
We don’t have all that was said in the conversation but we have the first conversation and what the king told Jeremiah to say to the princes because he didn’t want to have them against him.
So we find that commentaries disagree as to whether Jeremiah lied to the princes or not. We know that the princes didn’t understand the conversation that Jeremiah gave them because of the word that we have picked from the verse. So it is hard for us to judge Jeremiah. He didn’t want to hurt the king or himself.
When we read this passage we have to make sure that we don’t just Jeremiah as a hypocrite. We have to watch what we say to people on a regular basis. We have to speak the truth in love. We have to make sure that we are saying things that will help people and not hurt people. If something is told to us in confidence we have to make sure that we keep the confidence.
There is a fine line between not sharing the whole truth to an individual and lying. We have to ask the LORD for discernment in every conversation we have with people. If we say too much we can hurt them or too little we cannot help them.
CHALLENGE: Are we praying for discernment in our every conversation with people? Is what we say pleasing to the LORD? Our prayer life before every conversation makes a difference because the LORD has promised to give us just the right words.
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