Truth For Life

Guest (Male): Some people believe that when you serve God, you are automatically protected from any kind of danger, but that's not what the Bible teaches. Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg shares the story of a prophet who was thrown into a cistern and left to die simply for delivering God's message. We'll find out how God often intervenes through unlikely individuals and unexpected means.

Alistair Begg: We’re going to read this evening from the Old Testament and from Jeremiah and chapter 38. 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 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.

But Ebed-Melek, 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-Melek 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-Melek the Cushite, "Take thirty men from here with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies." So Ebed-Melek 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-Melek 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. Thanks be to God for His Word.

Harry O. White, who was a Baptist minister in Scotland—actually the principal of the Baptist College in Glasgow for a time—describes this scene here, which we have just read, as one of the shining cameos of the Old Testament. And it is surely that. I recognize that for us to dip into the central part of a book, an Old Testament book like this, is fairly challenging, but I do so purposefully, and I hope that our study will stand sufficiently on its own so as not to be inhibited by our unawareness of what is going on in the preceding chapters.

Suffice it to say that the events that are before us here were occurring probably these chapters 36, 37, and 38, right around 588 BC. And what we have discovered from our reading as we focus on Jeremiah the prophet of God is that Jeremiah has been doing what God has called him to do, namely delivering the message of the Lord. And he has said in verse 2, "This is what the Lord says: 'Whoever stays in this city will die either by the sword, by famine or by plague.'"

Jerusalem had actually been overrun, and for these inhabitants of Jerusalem now to try and stand against the forces which had overwhelmed them was really simply to prolong the agony of their circumstances and would prove to be nothing other than the height of obstinate stupidity. Verse 3 makes it clear that the Lord Himself had declared through the prophet Jeremiah that this city was certainly being handed over to the army of the king of Babylon. And therefore, Jeremiah is saying to the people in the city, "It is important for you to make at this point a strategic decision." And in doing so, he delivers the message of the Lord.

We then discover in verse 4 that this same prophet, in fulfilling the task he’s been given, is then accused of being a traitor. "Then the officials said to the king, 'This man should be put to death.'" Now, the only way that we can conclude that this man is a traitor is if we are of the opinion that a soldier or a fortress or an army should never ever surrender, even when all is lost. If we believe that in military engagement there comes a strategic moment when the wisest thing to do is to capitulate to the overwhelming force, then we would understand, especially in light of the fact that Jeremiah was speaking the word of the Lord, that for these officials to describe him as a traitor was hopelessly inaccurate.

And yet these four particular nobles, whose names are mentioned here at the opening of the chapter—I’m not going to try and pronounce them again; once was enough—these four nobles demand the prophet’s death, and you will notice that the king acquiesces. I tried to read it in a kind of pathetic way because I think verse 5 on the part of the king is a pathetic response. Here come these officials who report to the king, whose lives are in the king’s hands, whose duty it is to obey the king, and for them to come and bring this report and for the king then to respond, "He is in your hands; the king can do nothing to oppose you," is really too bad.

And the king frankly is, in common parlance, a wimp. And what you have here in this little section is a perfect monument to total weakness when it comes to the matter of leadership. And indeed, in all that I know of the Old Testament, there is no more abject declension in the Old Testament than what we find here in this simple incident. You have to, I think, go all the way forward to Pilate washing his hands before you come across such a dreadful and hopeless case of somebody simply throwing in the towel. "The king can do nothing to oppose you."

So Jeremiah brings the word of the Lord, Jeremiah is accused of being a traitor, and then you’ll notice that Jeremiah is deposited in this cistern. Verse 6: "So they took Jeremiah and they put him into the cistern of Malkijah the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard." Now, the little that I have read of these cisterns has yielded this much information: that normally, while these cisterns—and there were many of them that were used for a variety of purposes, not least of all for the retaining of rainwater and the storing of other forms of liquid—these cisterns tended to be on average about three feet wide at their opening.

They then had a neck that went down about another three or four feet, which maintained the diameter of the opening. It then opened out in a bulbous form to create this large container, which of course would be large enough to contain a man or perhaps even more than one man. And it is into this kind of pit that this individual, Jeremiah the prophet, is placed. And they consign him to this cistern, and in doing so, really pronounce the sentence of death upon him. They do it in a way that is fairly skillful. His death is going to be, if it follows, as rather gradual and also quite revolting.

They are taking care to make sure that if ever anybody unearths him, they will never be able to find on his body any marks of violence. There will be nothing about him that will make it possible for someone to come after these nobles and charge them with an indictable capital offense. In fact, they’re operating in much the same way as did Joseph’s brothers, first of all thinking that they would kill him, then saying, "No, don’t let’s do that," as a result of the intervention of one—I think it was Reuben—and so they put him in the place, but in point of fact, they’re actually consigning him to death. That’s what these folks do.

The mention of mud would seem to be significant because, after all, presumably there would always be mud at the bottom of these things. If not when they were pristine in their initial creation, certainly within a matter of time there would be a residue and a deposit that would form at the bottom. The commentators say that the very mention of mud, the fact that it would be recorded at this point in history, was on account of the fact that the mud would have been waist-deep.

That if it had just been the normal natural deposit of mud, there would be no reason for them to say there was mud at the bottom of it, because everybody would have said, "Well, what surprise is there in that? There’s always mud at the bottom of it." But for them to mention it in this way was to point out the gravity of the circumstances, that when they let this individual down by these ropes and deposited him in this cistern, he was immediately being absorbed and faced the potential for suffocation even before he faced the possibility of starvation.

The king again, seeking to be removed from any knowledge of it, allows these princes to do the business on their own, lowering him by way of ropes in order that his death might appear to have come about by natural causes. Well, that’s what we’re told, and it’s fairly straightforward, is it not? The final phrase of verse 6 depicts the predicament in which Jeremiah finds himself: "And Jeremiah sank down into the mud."

So there you have it. Jeremiah comes into the city and he proclaims the word of the Lord. The officials say this man is a traitor; he should be put to death. The king acquiesces to those who are under his directives, and before we know it, Jeremiah has now sunk down deep into the mud with no prospect whatsoever of liberation. Then you come to verse 7: "But Ebed-Melek, a Cushite, an official in the royal palace, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern."

Now, I’m not going to assume that you immediately think of another vaguely correlative passage when you read this, but I would hope that at least one or two of you might. You remember how, as the young girl goes about the cleaning duties of her day in the stately and ornate surroundings of the home of Naaman, this servant girl hears that the lady for whom she cleans—her husband has leprosy.

And it is on account of the fact that God stirs in the heart of a most unlikely young lady, transplanted from all that represented security and family to her, it is going to be by means of the intervention of this servant girl that God brings about the transformation in Naaman. And when you come here and you read the predicament of the prophet and you get to verse 7 and it says, "But Ebed-Melek, a Cushite, someone as a traitor, someone as an official in the home of the king," and you say to yourself, "Oh, I wonder if this is going to be one of those occasions." And to the extent that your intrigue may have been provoked, then you’re about to find it fulfilled.

Look at what we’re told. He was a Cushite. That word "Cush" is regularly translated "Ethiopian." Those who know linguistics best say that it is more than likely that this man came from the region of Nubia and from the northern Sudan. He was a black man living in this Eastern context, transplanted, presumably as a result of the direct marauding intervention of the powerful forces of war. He was himself a foreigner and an alien. He is described here as an official in a word which in the Hebrew is also translated "eunuch."

Sometimes it is translated official, sometimes it is translated eunuch, because it isn’t always possible to say that the man met the requirements that a eunuch would fulfill, but the chances are that this individual had been taken out of his circumstances, had been brought in bondage to this environment, had been emasculated in order that he might fulfill the responsibility of the keeper of the king’s harem.

Now, if you think about that at all, if anyone might have been expected to have what teenagers say today is attitude, if anybody might have been expected to have, as they say, issues, then it would presumably have been Ebed-Melek, right? After all, he was in a place that he didn’t want to be. He was in subjugation to a people for whom he had, presumably by nature, very little regard. He had been given a responsibility for which he had been ill-suited by nature of his manhood.

And yet here it is, that this captured, kidnapped, purchased slave who by virtue of his condition was socially unacceptable, unable to become ever a member of the people of Judah, barred from ever worshiping in the temple—if you like, a complete outcast. Somebody who had really no social status at all, somebody who would not be able to go to the parties of the day. He certainly is completely removed from all of the benefits and blessings that would attend the people for whom he was in whose service he found himself.

And yet, in a deliverance that was to come for Jeremiah wholly from above, God reaches down into the heart of this gentle black man. It’s a wonderful story, and I want just to take you through it to the end. You may still be wondering just why, but I think the point will become clear. I hope so. But Ebed-Melek, a Cushite, an official in the royal palace, heard. I don’t think that’s unique. Probably wasn’t the only person who had heard.

The word would have got around the palace, and as a result, he along with others would have had occasion over coffee in the morning, as it were, to say, "You know that they took Jeremiah and they put him in a cistern down there in the courtyard of the guard?" So I don’t think he’s the only one who heard, but we’re told that he heard. He probably is not the only one who cared. Doubtless there were others who cared. It would be hard to imagine a circumstance where there was only one person who, on hearing the news of what had happened to Jeremiah, actually cared about it at all. That would be a unique circumstance.

But presumably he is the only one who was prepared to combine compassion with courage. When he heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern, and while the king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate—now, for the king to be sitting in the Benjamin Gate was for him to take himself into the place where kings heard the cases of the populace. It was for him to put himself, if you like, in the place of the judge in a court. It was an official position, it was a public position, and it was one to which men and women routinely came.

And it is out of the palace to that Benjamin Gate that this individual Ebed-Melek goes in order to declare the fact that his compassionate heart is matched by his courageous spirit. And his intervention is a disgrace to the king’s princes. Those who presumably, upon hearing and caring, should have done something, did nothing. And I couldn’t read this without finding that my mind again was fast-forwarding into the story Jesus told, which began: "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves which stripped him of his raiment and departed, leaving him half dead."

And then as he tells the story to the crowd, he says, "And there was a priest, and there was a Levite." And then he watches the listening group as their eyes widen, and he says, "But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was and had compassion on him and put him on his own donkey and brought him to an inn." And the people listening to that story understood the punch in it. Those whom we may have expected to have combined compassion with courage did nothing, and the most unlikely individual steps from the wings and fulfills the plan and purpose of God.

But these individuals withstood Jeremiah, and the reason for their opposition was simply because he spoke to them the word of the Lord. Now, having described then the condition of Jeremiah, let me just encourage you to think for a moment about the way in which we see these characteristics of this lovely Ebed-Melek man being given to us. First and straightforwardly, witness his boldness. His boldness. It would have been one thing for him to hold a conviction to himself, perhaps even to have tried to send a note somehow to the king, to do it in a discreet way, to wait until the king returned to his palace.

But no, he takes himself out of the palace, he goes to the place of judgment, he goes directly to the king, he goes publicly to the king. Witness his boldness. Witness secondly his sense of moral outrage. He went out of the palace and he said to him, "My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly." In other words, this man possessed a sense of moral rectitude. Witness his boldness, witness his sense of moral outrage, witness thirdly his resourcefulness.

Notice how easily the king is won over again in verse 10. What a vacillating character this man is. And yet in the providence of God, in order that His purposes may be fulfilled, and he speaks to the king, and so the king says, "Well, in that case, take thirty men from here with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies." There’s something of Nehemiah about this next move, you know? Isn’t there?

That Nehemiah, when the king gave him the go-ahead, he was ready, you know? He wasn’t just wandering around in a dwam, he wasn’t just going around in a fog waiting for something to hit him on the head and inspire him to activity. As soon as the signal was given, as soon as the light went to green, Nehemiah revealed his leadership capacities and his purposefulness and his resourcefulness, and so does this man, at least to some extent. And into the basement he goes, and out of the basement he comes, and he’s carrying with him a bunch of old rags and old clothes that he has gathered from underneath the temple treasury. And along with the old rags and the old clothes, he brings with him the rope that is going to be necessary for the liberation of the prophet.

Guest (Male): You’re listening to Truth For Life. That is Alistair Begg with a message titled "Ropes and Rags." We’ll hear the conclusion tomorrow. Our mission here at Truth For Life is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance. As you listen, we trust that God is affirming your confidence in the reliability of Scripture. In addition to the daily teaching you hear on this program, we carefully select books to help you with that. And today we want to recommend to you a set of two books written by 17th-century Puritan minister and author John Flavel.

The books are titled Christ and His Threefold Office and Christ Humbled Yet Exalted. These books make up Part 1 and 2 of a revised edition of Flavel’s classic work The Fountain of Life. He investigates who Christ is and the roles He plays in every Christian’s life, from the mediator between God and humanity to the source of all spiritual life and salvation. Both volumes have been edited to make the language more accessible without compromising the translation.

You’ll find these books compelling and biblically sound as they help you gain a deeper appreciation of the gift of salvation and the glory of Christ. Ask for your copy of the John Flavel book bundle today when you donate to Truth For Life at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And if you’d rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to us at Truth For Life, P.O. Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio, the zip code is 44139.

Thanks for joining us today. When you see someone in need, are you inclined to intervene, or maybe cast judgment, or maybe leave it to those you deem better equipped to help? We’ll hear about the Ebed-Melek challenge tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.