Jeremiah 39- Zedekiah Falls

Blinded, Bereft, Blessed

This Chapter, this event, is the climax of judgment. The last 38 chapters have been in large part the prediction of this event, the lamenting of the inevitability of this event, the pleading with the Israelites to avoid this event, and also a legal and judicial list of events and practices that are the reason behind this event.

This is God’s Judgment made real. This is not a symbol, this is not a prophetic word, this is not a theological argument. This is judgment with flesh on it. These are soldiers entering a city, houses being burnt, and all the attendant atrocities that go along with such a human event and it is God’s judgment, that most of Israel believed would never come to pass, finally coming to pass.

It is not pleasant to imagine. It was terrible to experience.

Hebrews 10:31 “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

When you fall into the hands of the Living God you are reminded that God is not distant, not uncaring, and also that He is holy and just and that sins do have consequences. That is what it means to be reminded that our God is living.

That said, not all experience this suffering that God pours out the same way. Jeremiah, who has suffered the judgment of his peers, and the discipline of his authorities, the King and the chief priests, for his entire life, is protected and spared on the one day where it matters the most. And we who are followers of Jesus hold daily to this truth that it is better to be judged and mocked and condemned in this world by our peers and secular authorities but be found to be in Him on the one day when it matters the most, the day our soul is weighed in the balance before the throne of God. Not that we stand upon our own righteousness on that Day, but mercifully and gratefully we can claim the merits of the Cross as our own for we know who our Lord is.

Will You Accept the Discipline of the Lord?

One of my guilty pleasures used to be watching Judge Judy. I took a perverse delight in watching people get caught up in their petty squabbles, make stupid choices, and then get scolded by this 5’1” Jewish mother basically.

I no longer am quite so petty, but I do still occasionally enjoy watching videos online of people who get pulled over for relatively minor traffic offenses, speeding or expired registration, and watching the drama unfold.

And I think the most interesting type of individual to watch in this regard are people who are clearly middle or upper middle class, judging from the car and their clothes, etc. People of means. So in other words, people for whom a traffic ticket really can be dealt with fairly easily- you pay the fine or send a lawyer to deal with it in court, etc. It’s an annoyance, but probably not a life threatening issue.

And most people handle it just fine- and the bodycam footage from the officer never sees the light of day because it’s just not that interesting. But come to find out, there is a significant percentage of people for whom a traffic ticket is just not something they are willing to accept. As in, they literally will not take the ticket from the police officer, and they will argue with the police officer- EVEN THOUGH taking the ticket is not an admission of guilt, you can still fight it in court, the officer just needs you to acknowledge that you had an interaction with them, that is all.

And this type of individual, out of sheer pride, often ends up in handcuff and going to jail, for charges of obstruction or assaulting an officer, simply because their pride refuses to allow them to admit they were speeding or they forgot to pay their registration, and their ultimate consequences are far greater than what they originally would have been because they will not concede their sin.

And it is all pride. And in watching those videos I am always reminded of the depth of our pride, of human pride, such that when it goes unchecked, and a child becomes an adult without learning any humility or rarely being told ‘no’ in any regard, they will have to learn the hard way that famous declarationg of Proverbs 16:18

Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Bodycams are interesting to me, the proliferation of cameras in general everywhere is an intriguing development of the last decade or so. Suddenly we human beings are seeing more of a God’s eye view of everything. Cameras plus social media means that we are looking more closely than ever at human behavior and guess what? We usually don’t like what we see. And God help you if your worst moment on your worst day goes viral. You will live in infamy.

But that is exactly what the Lord sees in us every day. We all live in infamy in the eyes of the Lord. We have all gone viral in the eyes of the Lord, we all have bodycams on us every moment of every day and it is all written into the book of life. And only those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, which is Revelation language for those who have accepted the forgiveness and Lordship of Jesus Christ, only those will have their records purged and only their prison doors will open for there is only one judge, one jury, one bondsman, and one redeemer, and that is Jesus.

Yes, you will say to me, but what does any of that have to do with Jeremiah 39? Everything. Everything.

The Israelites had managed to twist their relationship with the Lord into something perverse. The relationship God desired with them was one that took their sin seriously, but called them into constant repentance, with forgiveness and redemption available to them through faith. It was, in other words, a loving relationship, for all loving relationships in this sinful world require the acknowledgment of sin, and then repentance and forgiveness. If you get rid of just one of those elements, the acknowledgment of sin, or of repentance, or of forgiveness, then love cannot flourish, there is just stagnation. This is true of friendships, of family relationships, of marriage, of every significant relationship if it is to grow and deepen and mature over the years, acknowledgment in both parties of sin, repentance and forgiveness. In healthy relationships we do this instinctively, we don’t use those words often but that is what happening. When you wrong someone and that person tells you, you must be humble enough to hear it, to acknowledge it, that you did wrong. Then if things are to proceed you must own it, usually that entails an apology, that is repentance of some kind- and then the other person must accept that repentance, forgiveness. When those 3 boxes are checked, the relationship can move forward again.

But the Israelites had left that process behind came to believe that God was either so loving of them that He would not care about their sin, or so uncaring for them that He would not notice their sin. They were worshiping another god. They might have used the name of YHWH. They might have sacrificed to Him in the Temple and prayed to Him for blessing, but they weren’t worshiping Him, they were worshiping a caricature of Him that they had created in their imagination and they had become their own gods.

To quote Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. So many people, and literally dozens of churches here in CU will say this- God loves you unconditionally. He loves you just as you are. God loves you no matter what you do. God made you perfect you just need to discover that perfect you- other people have made you FEEL imperfect by judging you, and so on.

And that, friends, cannot be found anywhere in the Bible. It is not a Biblical truth.

You absolutely are loved by God, from your conception you are loved by God, but you are born into sin and into selfishness and you absolutely can destroy your relationship with the Lord and you can reject Him and follow your own Kingdom and be, ultimately, separated from Him and find yourself in an eternity of weeping and gnashing your teeth. You can.

But they had stopped believing that. They just wanted to believe that they would be protected by God no matter what they did. They could oppress the poor, sleep with who they wanted to sleep with, pursue power from demons by literally burning their children alive on altars to Molech. They had created and followed their own created gods.

Jeremiah 7:9–10: "Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, 'We are safe'—safe to do all these detestable things?"

Jeremiah 2:35: "You say, 'I am innocent; he is not angry with me.' But I will pass judgment on you because you say, 'I have not sinned.'"

Jeremiah 5:12: The people are described as lying about the Lord, saying, "'He will do nothing! No harm will come to us; we will never see sword or famine.'"

Jeremiah 23:23–24: "Am I only a God nearby," declares the Lord, "and not a God far away? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?" declares the Lord. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?"

The people acted as if the Temple were a "den of robbers"—a place where they could retreat to hide from the consequences of their crimes, a den of robbers is a secret place, a place that the authorities cannot find and secret plans can be made there, evil deeds can be done there and no one will find out about them. The Temple was where they went to justify their sin, not be forgiven them.

(Jeremiah 16)

Jeremiah 16:10: "When you tell these people all this and they ask you, 'Why has the Lord decreed such a great disaster against us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?'"

So in other words, people either thought that God loved them so much that they could do no wrong, or that God was so distant and uncaring that He wouldn’t care, or they were so deceived within their souls that they literally could not see the evil that they were doing.

Let me go back now to the bodycam videos of the police officers. I can find the Israelites easily in these videos. Some people when they are pulled over, particularly if they are younger and spoiled, simply believe that they are too precious, too important, too incredibly amazing as people, to get a ticket. It can’t be. These people start listing their amazing traits when the officer tries to ticket them. I go to this ivy league school. I have never been in trouble before. My parents are lawyers/professors/doctors/pastors, etc. And so on, and these are all just different ways of saying, see how much the world loves me, see how much God loves me, I don’t deserve this kind of treatment.

And then there are those who take a different tack. It’s not how amazing they are that makes the ticket offensive, it’s how unimportant or meaningless the whole affair is. Don’t you have something better to do? Aren’t there murderers out there? I was only going so many mph over the speed limit, who cares? Really, you’re going to give me a ticket for my registration being only a month expired? How is this a big deal? And my favorite is when they turn into Richard Nixon when they begin to realize it’s happening- “I am not a criminal”. I am not going to take this ticket I am not a criminal you can’t treat me like a criminal. And so on.

This line of thinking is that the officer shouldn’t care about their sin- it’s not that bad, they’re not that important- other people besides them are doing worse things right now so why isn’t the officer dealing with those people, and so on.

And then there is the worst offenders, and these people are the hardest to watch. They are so lost in their sin they can’t even see it right in front of their face. They have done something egregious, something truly terrible, and even when the officer tells them what they have done, they don’t see why it’s wrong, they are so lost in sin they don’t even see it. I remember watching one video where a woman had left her baby in the car to go into the casino and gamble and when someone called the police and they confronted her with it she did not understand why it was wrong. They baby was fine, it wasn’t too hot out…no crime has been committed it’s fine. And she meant it. And she wasn’t drunk or high, just so lost she couldn’t see how callous and sinful she was being.

People take these attitudes with the Lord every day today. You and I do as well. If something bad happens to me, especially if I perceive it as being really bad, my thoughts can easily slide into, why me GOD? I am a good guy, I am a good man and don’t you love me enough to keep this thing from happening to me, why aren’t you protecting your servant? Etc. I am too lovable to hurt!

Or, I might think, I didn’t do anything too bad. It was just a little white lie, it was no big deal. God isn’t going to care if I just fudge the truth a little bit and then I am rationalizing sin by downplaying its importance or even my own importance.

Whatever it takes to rationalize our sins, to justify ourselves, that is what we will do, naturally, without effort, without forethought.

Or I may not even recognize at first that something I did was sinful because I am just too broken or sinful myself to realize what I have done is wrong- I am like the woman who left her baby in the car. Have you ever been walking down the street just minding your own business and you remember something you did 20 years ago and suddenly it dawns on you that YOU were in the wrong?

The Israelites did terrible, terrible things. And it is good to remember that the Lord was patient with them to the tune of centuries of patience and gave them prophets like Jeremiah who spent lifetimes warning them of the consequences of their idolatry. But they continued to do terrible things like enslave their neighbor and kill their children but I want to warn you- don’t make the mistake that you are at heart any different. You carry within you those same sinful tendencies. You are evil.

God loves you, and you are evil.

Matthew 7:7–11 ““Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

The sin of Israel was not that they were evil. It is not that they did bad things or made poor choices. That is presumed. It was that they refused to acknowledge that they had done evil, or if they had, that God cared about it. And that is not something God can forgive. In order for the Lord to forgive you need to have a repentant heart. A heart that knows its own sin. Not a perfect heart. A repentant one.

Here in Jeremiah 39 we see the final judgment come down upon Israel, the final blow that destroys the last of that once great nation that David and Solomon ruled over. The final city is burned, and the heart of the city that was the heart of the nation, the Temple of God, built by Solomon, is fully destroyed, burnt to the ground. It is the end of Israel, the end of the Jewish people, any objective observer would have told you so. One of Israel’s many ends over the course of history.

And I began this sermon by saying that Jeremiah 39 is the climax of judgment in the book of Jeremiah, really the climax of God’s judgment for Israel in the whole Bible in many ways.

But it is not the center of the book, not by theme nor by word count. The heart of the book of Jeremiah comes, mercifully, before this chapter and we have already discussed it:

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.””

The Lord has already declared, through Jeremiah, His love for His people that will be manifested in Jesus, centuries later. Not only will Israel continue to exist, against all odds, and even under the authority of other empires, but the promise to Abraham, that Israel will be a light to the nations, shall yet come true. One day, in place of the fearful and ineffectual kings like King Zedekiah, or even a faithful but deeply flawed King like David, one day there will come a King who is our Lord, able to bring peace to the troubled human soul, and those who accept His judgment and His Kingship will know a love that spans eternity.

Which brings me to Ebed-Melech. His story in Jeremiah only spans 2 chapters- the previous one, chapter 38, and this one.

Who is Ebed-Melech? He is an African an Ethiopian servant of the court. Probably educated, helping with administrative tasks. He has been, as many slaves of royalty were, castrated. We know nothing about him except this. When the nobles, the royal officials of the city decided to kill Jeremiah by throwing him into a cistern, Ebed-Melech saw that this was wrong. He called it evil. Consider the situation. The whole city is under siege. People are starving. Chaos is threatening everything. And Ebed-Melech chooses to paint a target on his back by saying no to these men whom Zedekiah, the King himself, is afraid of, and he saves Jeremiah, lifting him up out of the cistern, trying to do it in the least painful way possible for him, showing concern for his wellbeing.

Why? Why would he do this? Were he and Jeremiah best buddies? He’s never been even mentioned before.

Jeremiah 39:15–18 “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah while he was shut up in the court of the guard: “Go, and say to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will fulfill my words against this city for harm and not for good, and they shall be accomplished before you on that day. But I will deliver you on that day, declares the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but you shall have your life as a prize of war, because you have put your trust in me, declares the Lord.’ ””

We learn a lot in this passage. We learn that Ebed Melech was afraid. We learn that the reason Ebed-Melech saved Jeremiah is because he “put his trust in the Lord”. He did it for the Lord. He believed the word of the Lord that Jeremiah was saying. He was defending the word of God for in that instance the prophet Jeremiah, before the book of Jeremiah, was the word of God in that sense. Jeremiah was the Bible. Ebed-Melech is the church. And what does his name mean...ebed melech? It means, servant of the King.

We are the servant of the King. That means we lift up the word of God even though we do it with our filthy rags because we are imperfect and sinful, yet nevertheless we lift up the Word of God, and in the end the servant of the King is saved from the destruction, saved and redeemed out from the world because we put our trust in THE KING, Jesus Christ.

Revelation 5:9–10 “And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.””