Sunday Morning, February 9, 2020 AM

You are a heavenly

Father and You know our needs before we even ask. And You compel us to ask, and so we do.

Father, we need this. We need this fellowship, this worship.

We need this bread. I ask that You would, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, because of the presence of Your Holy Spirit with us, that You would give the text to us, conform us to the truths of Your Word.

That we would, as we get a clear view of Your Son, Jesus Christ, as we look at Him in Your Word, we will look like Him in this world.

This we need. We ask for these graces. For the sake of Jesus Christ, the one with whom

You are well -pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles to Jeremiah 38.

Jeremiah 38. We'll be reading verses 1 through 13 for us in a moment. Special greetings to Apologia Church, those of you who have come.

Thank you for being here, dear brothers. Hope you find some rest and some recuperation today.

I know you've been busy. Well, Jeremiah 38, verses 1 through 13.

To remember where we are at this critical moment in this story, there have been a parade of kings.

We won't go back all the way to David and Saul, but what about Hezekiah?

We remember Hezekiah. He was a good king in many respects. He had a very wicked son named

Manasseh, who reigned for 52 years of incredible wickedness.

His son Ammon was so wicked that he only reigned two years before he was assassinated.

And then came good king Josiah, who took the throne at eight years of age. And he was brought up well by his counselors, and he stood fast.

And he was a great king, a good king, who pursued the Lord with all his heart.

And there was no king just like Josiah. But he died early in battle, and his wicked son

Jehoiakim became king. He was killed in the judgment of God. And then Jeconiah took the throne for three months before the king of Babylon came and took him away in exile because of his wickedness.

And now we have Zed, Zedekiah. He was the son of Josiah.

His real name was Mattaniah, but he was renamed Zedekiah by the king of Babylon. And he did not learn his lessons well from this parade of kings in which

God had vindicated his name time and time again. So we have a parade of kings, and we're now to the point of Zedekiah.

These are the very last days of Jerusalem before they are overrun by the Babylonians and destroyed in horrific ways.

But as terrible as Jerusalem was going to look in just a few weeks, a wasteland, a devastation, bodies everywhere, ashes everywhere, a haunt of the jackals, as terrible as Jerusalem was about to look, it was nothing compared to the wasteland of sin that was among this people even then.

Idolatry was the main sin, and idolatry always leads to immorality and injustice.

They had become like the gods that they worshipped, ears that did not hear, eyes that could not see, necks that were stiff and could not turn.

And there was a wasteland of sin, and God was rightly bringing judgment upon them. There had been many judgments already, precursors to the one to come, warnings, opportunities for the people to consider their ways and turn back to the old paths, to repent that they had not.

Amidst it all, we have Jeremiah, the faithful prophet of God, whom God had said he knew him before he was born, had chosen him and set him apart to be his prophet, called him when he was very young to preach the word.

And for decades, Jeremiah has been preaching the truth of God. And we come to Jeremiah 38, verses 1 -13.

It's important to remember that Jeremiah has already been imprisoned by false charges. He is in prison because he was accused of going over to the

Babylonians, which is ironic because he had told the people the only way to be saved is to go over to the

Babylonians. So if he had been guilty of doing it, he would have been showing them the right way to go, to be preserved.

But nonetheless, he is in prison. And now we come to Jeremiah 38, verses 1 -13.

Now Shephetiah, the son of Mattan, and Gedaliah the son of Pasher, and Jucal the son of Shalamiah, and Pasher the son of Malkijah, heard the words that Jeremiah was speaking to all the people, saying,

Thus says the Lord, he who stays in this city will die by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence.

But he who goes out to the Chaldeans will live, will have his own life as booty, and stay alive.

Thus says the Lord, this city will certainly be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.

Then the official said to the king, Now let this man be put to death, inasmuch as he is discouraging the men of war who are left in the city, and all the people, by speaking such words to them.

For this man is not seeking the well -being of this people, but rather their harm.

So King Zedekiah said, Behold, he is in your hands, for the king can do nothing against you. And they took

Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah to the king's son, which was in the court of the guardhouse, and they let

Jeremiah down with ropes. Now in the cistern there was no water but only mud, and Jeremiah sank into the mud.

But Ebed -Melech the Ethiopian, a eunuch while he was in the king's palace, heard that they had put

Jeremiah into the cistern. Now the king was sitting in the gate of Benjamin, and Ebed -Melech went out from the king's palace and spoke to the king, saying,

My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah, the prophet whom they have cast into the cistern, and he will die right where he is because of the famine, for there is no more bread in the city.

Then the king commanded Ebed -Melech the Ethiopian, saying, Take thirty men from here under your authority, and bring up Jeremiah the prophet from the cistern before he dies.

So Ebed -Melech took the men under his authority, and went to the king's palace to a place beneath the storeroom, and took from there worn -out clothes and worn -out rags, and let them down by ropes into the cistern to Jeremiah.

Then Ebed -Melech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, Now put these worn -out clothes and rags under your armpits under the ropes.

Jeremiah did. So they pulled Jeremiah up with the ropes, lifted him out of the cistern, and Jeremiah stayed in the court of the guardhouse.

This is the word of the Lord. I had the fun experience last

Sunday of watching a commercial -free, halftime -free Super Bowl. God for DVRs.

One thing I noticed, and it was an okay game, but during the game I noticed the cameraman kept on zooming in on the 49ers coaches, and they had these sweatshirts on, and they all said,

Faithful, faithful. I'm always suspicious when I find biblical words out in the wild.

I don't know if that's the same species or not. Sometimes I feel like people are pointing at coyotes and calling them sheepdogs, and we ought to know the difference.

Here at the pillar and the ground of the truth in the church, we ought to know what faithful means. We ought to know what faithful means.

We have to be careful that we're the ones who are looking into the Scripture, and by the wisdom of God, and by the clarity offered to us in the

Scriptures, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that we're the ones defining the terms. We're the ones defining the terms.

It's hard to think of any wholesome, stock, biblical word that has not been taken over by paganism and change in its essential definitions.

Love, truth, mercy, justice, humility, peace, grace, compassion, all these words have been stolen and bred for paganism, and now faithful.

Why have they had the word faithful on their shirts? What does it mean, faithful? Faithful to a football team, faithful to the fundamentals of the game, or the

Disney version, faithful to oneself. We need to know what faithful means.

We should know it not by personal experience. That's not how we know it. We know faithful, what that means, by the

Word of God. Deuteronomy 7 verse 9, We know, therefore, that the Lord your God, He is

God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and His loving kindness to a thousandth generation with those who love

Him and keep His commandments. Let's just start right there. How much of our knowledge and wisdom is dependent on that very point, the beginning, the very source, the origin of all of our knowledge and wisdom?

Is this the fear of the Lord? And a really big part of fearing the Lord, kind of an odd thing that we would talk about fearing

God, but a big part of fearing the Lord is this, recognizing that who He is and what He does is in no way contingent on us.

That's a big part of fearing God, knowing that who He is and what He does is in no way contingent on us.

2 Timothy 2 verse 13, If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.

We need to know what it means to be faithful because this is how Jesus builds

His church. He raises us up to be faithful. He works through us as we are faithful.

This is how He advances His kingdom through faithfulness. And we've got to know what that is.

We've got to know what that means. In the Trinity, we have the very definition of faithfulness, the endless cohesion of the

Father, the Son, and the Spirit as one Godhead. This is where the definition of faithfulness comes from, the revelation we have in Jesus Christ.

As the Father speaks, so is the Son, the Word incarnate. He speaks all and does all in accordance with the

Father. And in all things required of mankind by the Creator, Jesus Christ fulfills these requirements.

He is faithful to God. He is faithful to His brethren. We know faithfulness when we look at Jesus Christ. We know what faithfulness is when we look at the

Scriptures, when we look at Jesus Christ. And thereby, we know what it means to be faithful, to be a faithful husband, to be a faithful wife, to be a faithful parent, to be faithful children, faithful as church members, faithful to the gospel, faithful in our worship, faithful to work, faithful to rest.

What are we going to hear at the end? Well done, thou good and faithful slave.

What does faithfulness mean? Faithfulness means walking the trail blazed by the captain of our salvation.

Faithfulness means walking the trail blazed by the captain of our salvation. And I want us to see this in the life of Jeremiah, the prophet of God in whom the

Spirit of Christ declared the things of Christ. When we think about what happened with Jeremiah at this particular juncture,

I'm reminded of the passage from Romans that says, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Do not be overcome with evil. That's a command. That's an instruction. Do not be overcome with evil.

It is our responsibility to not be overcome by evil. And then to follow up, we have to overcome evil.

And how do we do that? We do it with good. We do it with good. Notice how

Jeremiah was being faithful and doing his very best to do what God called him to do. It was faithful preaching given to us in verses 1 through 3.

Now, verse 1, we have a lot of important people. In the Bible, you know they're important people when they have their names attached to other names.

So -and -so, the son of so -and -so, that's an important person. If it was so -and -so, the son of so -and -so, the son of so -and -so, that is a really important person.

So when you read verse 1 and you have all of these names, the son of other names, just know these are the very important people.

And notice that they hear what Jeremiah was speaking to all the people.

Now, Jeremiah has been put into prison because they don't like what he's preaching. But he's in prison, and like Paul, he's still preaching, and the message is still getting out.

And he's telling people, give up. The judgment of God is inevitable. Earlier in the story,

God told Jeremiah to stop interceding for the people's deliverance from the Chaldeans. It was going to happen no matter what.

Their only avenue of salvation at this point was to surrender to the Chaldeans. And Jeremiah is faithfully preaching that message.

He is saying, here comes the judgment. Here is the way of salvation. Don't delay. Isn't that the way that the preaching goes in Scripture, whether we're in the

Old Testament or the New Testament? Here is the warnings of God. Repent.

Be saved. Don't delay. Isn't this the preaching of Christ and the apostles?

Here is the warning. Here is the hope. Fear God. Do we know this kind of preaching?

Have we read it in the Scriptures? Have we applied it to our lives? Are we listening to the warnings?

The people in Jeremiah's day were not listening to the warnings. They were still grasping for whatever hope they could grasp for.

Broken wreaths that would pierce their hands. They were not listening to the warnings.

The warnings of Scripture are clear. God is the Creator. He has made us in His image.

Meaning that we wear a uniform that because of our sin and our depravity we betray every single day.

What would we do as a society if we saw firemen and police officers wearing their uniforms and not doing their jobs?

Firemen going past the fire. Police officers doing nothing to answer injustice. Wearing their uniforms and not doing what their uniforms say they're supposed to do.

We would pass harsh sentence upon them, wouldn't we? But every single one of us is made in the image of God.

We are all wearing the uniform of what it means to be a human. We're all wearing the uniform of what it means to be made in the image of God and in our sin and in our depravity.

We betray the uniform every day. It's a uniform we can't take off. This is why we need salvation.

We need a mediator for God is holy and God is just. And He has offered us one mediator between God and man and it is the man

Christ Jesus. Today is the day of salvation.

The Spirit says come. The bride says come. What are you waiting on? What are you waiting on?

You need a mediator. You can't stand before God on your own. You betrayed your uniform.

You are a traitor to your uniform. There is no acquittal. There is no mercy at that point.

You need a mediator. Someone to stand in your place and be the one who has satisfied all the requirements on your behalf.

And the same very one who has suffered all the punishment that you deserve. That is Jesus Christ. Look to Him.

Look to the cross. It is a mark of faithfulness that Jeremiah, look, even those in high positions, even the

VIPs, they knew the message, didn't they? They heard it. They knew the details.

They were aware of it. It's a sign of faithfulness that Jeremiah was preaching the same message no matter who was listening.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2, 3, and 4, for our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not as pleasing men, but God who examines the heart.

That's faithfulness. When you want to speak the gospel hope, the hope of Christ to others, if you want to speak the truth of God to others, your main concern is not how they will receive it, though you want to season your words with grace.

Your main concern is, am I being faithful to the message that God has entrusted me with?

Will God be pleased with the way I say this, with the information that I give? Faithful preaching in verses 1 through 3.

Now, Jeremiah encounters resistance, and this is something that we should not be surprised about or discouraged about.

Scripture tells us many times that if we are faithful that we will encounter resistance.

Indeed, all who desire to live godly will suffer persecution. All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

So we should not be surprised or discouraged about resistance, though very often we are surprised and we do get discouraged, but we should not.

Now, what happens to Jeremiah? He is opposed. Verse 4, this is very interesting.

What happens in verse 4, how it comes about. Then the officials, these are the very important people of verse 1, then the officials said to the king,

Now, let this man be put to death. He's already in prison, but now we want him to die. Inasmuch as he is discouraging the men of war who are left in the city and all the people by speaking such words to them.

For this man is not seeking, notice, is not seeking the well -being of this people, but rather their harm.

Do you see their complaint? They are not coming to the king and saying, this man ought to be put to death because he is a liar.

That is not their complaint. Their charge against Jeremiah is not that he is speaking wicked, evil things.

Indeed, it's been proven that what Jeremiah says is true. All the other prophets who told the kings and their officials what they wanted to hear,

Oh, the Chaldeans won't come. Oh, everything will be okay. Oh, you're going to win. All those prophets aren't talking anymore.

Where are they? Jeremiah asked the king Zedekiah last passage. Where are they? Where did they go? But Jeremiah has been saying faithfully what

God has told him to say, and therefore everything is coming true. So they know that what

Jeremiah is saying is true. They can't charge him with lying. They can't bring any complaint against his character.

All they can do is point at the results. And they say he is not, notice, seeking their well -being, but their harm.

When he speaks to the people, the soldiers, the citizens of this city, what he's saying is causing their harm.

So he's not for their well -being. Now, some of you may have the translation for well -being as peace.

Behind it is the Hebrew word shalom. Shalom, that is their key word. That is their principal word.

We've been walking through the story of Jeremiah. What is it that his culture is saying?

What is it that the false prophets have been saying? What is it that the officials crave? Shalom, shalom, but there is no shalom.

They heal the wound of my people superficially, not truly. They just say shalom, shalom over everything.

And shalom is their key word. They have invested heavily in redefining this term from its biblical meaning to what they want it to mean.

And everyone is expected to adhere to that new standard. And so, Jeremiah must die because it's not about truth -telling anymore.

It's about this. If your speech disrupts another's shalom, then you are unjust.

And you deserve to die. Do you see this? Your accusation against him is not whether or not he's telling the truth.

It's what you are saying is disrupting shalom. You are an anti -shalomist.

And therefore, you deserve to die. You are against the one thing we can all agree on.

And I want you to notice that they enforce this nonsense on the eve of their society's destruction.

When the truth value of your speech is no longer the primary consideration, but whether or not it disturbs the shalom of your neighbor, that is paganism.

It should sound familiar to you. What happened in Jeremiah's day is not all that different than what's happening in our day, is it? That's because the devil is a pitcher, diabolos, the through -thrower.

He is a pitcher, and he cycles through all of his pitches. We may forget about them from time to time as the people of God, but he still has all the pitches, and he keeps on throwing them.

And I'm glad that the Scriptures cover a great amount of material and time and different situations, and we get to see how the people of God are to resist all the different temptations and the wiles of the enemy.

And here's one of his pitches. Your speech, notwithstanding any measure of truth, does harm to me and mine, thus you must be silenced.

That's the pitch that's being thrown today, isn't it? It's a new story out of the state of Washington.

According to Lewiston Tribune, the gender -inclusive schools policy was approved unanimously last week with no discussion.

School districts in Washington are required to adopt the policy by the end of the month to be in compliance with state law.

The policy allows students to use restrooms and locker rooms associated with their gender identity instead of the agenda they were assigned at birth.

It also allows students to choose their preferred name and pronoun and allows the student to decide if that information should be shared with their parents or not.

And this is the policy from Washington State School Director's Association. It says, for families who are supportive, using that student's new name and pronoun should be affirming for the student.

For parents who are not supportive or who are not aware of the student's transition at school, referring to their name and pronoun could be very dangerous.

You see, we live in a world where it doesn't matter whether it's the truth or not. The question is, will it cause harm or not?

Will it disrupt someone's shalom or not? Is it good or bad for their understanding of human flourishing?

That's where right and wrong have been relocated. And do not be swept up in that.

Don't be caught up in that. But it will be in resistance.

That whole mindset will resist what we are saying if we are teaching and believing and following the

Word of God. There will be resistance. Notice further how this resistance affects

Jeremiah, verse 5. So King Zedekiah said, Behold, he is in your hands, for the king can do nothing against you.

So he says, well, you know, obviously, do what you want. I can't do anything. But it's interesting.

It's more than him just being passive and lazy and a coward. He says,

I can do nothing. The king can do nothing against you. It's the Hebrew concoction of two words.

One of them means to overcome, and the other means a word. And it's all set in the negative. So he's saying, I cannot overcome your words with mine.

Why not? Why can't he say anything against them? Why is it that their words trump his?

Because they have invoked the trump card, shalom. And for them, once someone has been accused of being against shalom, well, then there's no beating that, right?

There's no beating that. We have a current fashion in our day of canceling someone because you don't like what they say.

The best way to cancel them is to call them an ist. You should call them an ist. Root words and prefixes are negotiable.

The point is to brand them as an ist. And then because they're an ist, you say, well, then obviously you support an ism.

And so once you have labeled them with the ist and the ism, you make sure that everyone knows you have done so from your insurmountable high ground of several itties.

I'll give you an example whether you agree or not. Here it is. Here's an example. One of many in the last few years.

Donald Trump won the election, so he must be a racist. Racist. There's the ist. In support of patriarchalism, ism.

As everyone knows, who supports diversity, inclusivity, and equity. Right, so he's an ist.

He supports an ism. And we say that from our vantage point of itty, itty, itty. Right?

I mean, it happens over and over again. Just change the names and dates and places and people, and he just applies it.

And every side of an argument is throwing that back and forth. In this case,

Jeremiah was an anti -Shalomist, and so he had to be canceled. How did they cancel him? They disappeared him down an empty cistern.

Or he would sink in the mud and die of malnourishment. Why do people do that?

Now, this is nothing new. This is nothing new. But why do people? Because, again, if it's not about truth and lie, if it's not about an objective standard that was rooted in God, if it's only about the outcome, then people begin to believe that words are nothing more than mere tools to secure power.

Words are not mere tools to secure power. And we should not become like the enemies of God in order to oppose them.

We should not become like the enemies of God in order to oppose them. What did

Jesus say to us? He didn't want us to be surprised that resistance came, but he wanted us to know how to think about that resistance and then how to respond.

And it's not to become the echo chamber of the enemy and say something to the degree of,

I know I am, but what are you? What did he say? What did Christ tell us?

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

What? Blessed are you. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

What did he say? He said, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. And that's hard.

That's hard to do. We should not merely resort to calling people names because we don't like their opposition.

How do we bless those who persecute us and yet show we're not in agreement with them?

That we're not simply signing off on what they say and say, oh, you got a good point there. How do we actually bless those who are attacking

Christ while still opposing their agenda?

And this requires a great deal of wisdom, doesn't it? And you've heard of the wisdom of Solomon.

Well, the one who gave him his wisdom is Christ. And he has told us that we are to overcome evil with good.

He said, bless those who persecute you, bless, do not curse. What does this mean? Well, first of all, we need to know who they are.

They are made in the image of God. They are created in the image of God. And whatever sense of justice they have, whatever sense of offense that they have, whatever reason that they oppose

Christ, they're going to be doing so with all sorts of twisted variants of what God had put in them as his creatures.

They care about people who oppose Christ, at least in our culture today. They care about justice. They care about what they would call as truth.

They would care about humans. They would care about human flourishing. They would care about a good society. They care about all of these things.

Why? Because they're made in the image of God. Well, why is it so twisted? Because they're in sin. So how do you bless them?

Okay? Address them as those who are made in the image of God. Address them as those who are made in the image of God.

That means that they have responsibilities that they cannot ignore, that there is a true standard that they cannot hide, and that being made in the image of God, I'm going to speak with you as someone who is seeking the salvation of your soul, who is seeking the good for you.

Okay? That's why we bless and do not curse. Proclaiming the need for repentance and faith in Christ does require that we name sinners and we name sin.

Absolutely. But why? For the purpose of calling those made in God's image to humble themselves and return to their creator through Christ.

And that's the starting point of overcoming evil with good. Faithfulness in this means walking the trail blazed by the captain of our salvation.

1 Peter 2, 21 -24 says what? For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example to follow in his steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth.

Now listen, and while being reviled, he did not revile in return. You hear it?

While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously, and he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

For by his wounds you have been healed. It's persecution in verse 6.

They took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Melchizedek the king's son, which was in the court of the guardhouse. They let

Jeremiah down with ropes. Now in the cistern there was no water but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud. This fierce persecution in verse 6.

Why did they even have to do this? He was already in jail. He was already in prison inside the king's house.

And all they did was move him from wherever he was to this other place, still within the royal complex, and put him down a hole.

Why? The bread had already run out in the city, we find out. But they put him down there. Why? Because they hate him.

And they hate what he's saying. And they put him down in the mud. Josephus says, up to his neck.

But they put him down in the mud so that he would be down there and die of malnourishment and exposure as he looks up at this hole that he got put down through.

They're silencing him. They're canceling him. They just disappeared him. Because they don't want him preaching anymore.

They don't want him saying the truth, that there is inevitable destruction coming from the Babylonians, that the only way to escape is to surrender to them.

They don't want that message said anymore. And so they put him into the pit.

Now this, this is where it matters. Isn't it?

Do not be overcome by evil. This is overwhelming.

But do not be overcome by evil. How did Jeremiah feel at this moment?

What was he thinking? He says so in Lamentations 3, 52 through 57. Listen to what he says.

And this is very important for us if we do not want to be overcome by evil. Listen to what Jeremiah says when he's in the pit.

My enemies without cause hunted me down like a bird. They have silenced me in the pit and have placed a stone on me.

Waters float over my head. I said, I am cut off. I called on your name, O Lord.

Out of the lowest pit you have heard my voice. Do not hide your ear from my prayer for relief, from my cry for help.

You drew near when I called on you. You said, do not fear. I like seeing the end game of what it may mean and what it may cost if we stay faithful to Christ.

If we say what he says, if we are true to his word, if we are faithful.

I believe he wins. I believe the church wins. That doesn't mean necessarily that we're going to have an easy time, as many of our martyred brothers and sisters before us have shown.

But I like going to the end game. What might it cost? And what will I do then?

We must not be surprised at the opposition. If we're not making waves of any sort, it probably means that we're just going with the flow in consequential debris.

Someone just relayed a story that I saw. Anyway, Doug Wilson was rendering something, and he said something about an

Anglican priest once observed, everywhere Paul went, they either had a riot or a revival.

Everywhere I go, they serve tea. That's not necessarily a good thing.

Why should we expect conflict? Why should we expect conflict?

Because God picked the fight. God picked the fight.

All of humanity was united with the devil in the garden, and God picked the fight. I will have placed enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.

That's why there's conflict. That's why there's opposition. That's why when we are faithful to God, there's going to be resistance.

And look, we're not better than Christ. Matthew 10, 24 through 25. A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master.

It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house

Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household? Let us not be surprised, and let us not do everything we can according to the new modern golden rule of do not offend.

That's not in the Scriptures. That's not Scripture. Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.

I want us to see this. This servant of the king, whose name means servant of the king.

Ebed -Melech means servant of the king. He's an Ethiopian. He was a eunuch, and so he had several strikes against him.

But what does he do? He does what he can to overcome evil with good.

He is a servant of the king. He's in the king's palace, and so he discovers that Jeremiah has been put down in the cistern.

Now, the VIPs, the officials, put him in the cistern within the king's area so that the people wouldn't know what they did.

But Ebed -Melech found out, and he went and made it public. The king was at the gate of Benjamin.

Now, this servant doesn't have much claim to anything. Things are bad. He is not a

Jew. In fact, he is a eunuch, which means he is technically unclean and can't even worship in the temple courts.

He has really no station at all, and it must be nice to be able to serve within the king's palace, especially when things are so bad at the moment.

At least he has some protection. But no, he leaves the king's palace to go out to the gate of Benjamin to interrupt what the king is doing there and say, hey, look, we've got a problem.

It's inconvenient for him to do this, is it not? It is an interruption to his personal safety in a very tragic time, in a very dangerous time.

He interrupts his own priorities, whatever they are, and he goes immediately, when he finds out, to the king to try to rescue

Jeremiah. He knows he's not going to last long down there in the pit. And he makes an appeal to this authority,

Zedekiah. I think Zedekiah in the original Chaldean means flip -flopper. Every time anybody asks him to do something, no matter what he's already decided, he just goes ahead and says yes to everybody.

And so he gives the authority to Ebed -Melech to go rescue Jeremiah from the pit.

This is amazing that this man, who says, I can do nothing against you, yet he's at the gate of Benjamin, a place of sentencing and giving judgments.

He's in court, basically. And you know the very important people are there. And you know that Ebed -Melech's request is going to make the rounds.

But Ebed -Melech risks it all, comes to the king and says, look, we've got to get Jeremiah out of there.

Wickedness has been done to him. If we don't get him out, he's going to die. Zedekiah says, take 30 men from this place.

I put them under your authority. Take 30 men and go get Jeremiah out of the pit.

I like what Matthew Henry says at this point. He has two things to say, one about the king earlier when he capitulated to the very important people.

He said, those who will have a great deal to answer for, who, though they have a secret kindness for good people, dare not own it in a time of need, nor will do what they might to prevent mischief design them.

The second thing he notes was that we should not be so despairing about making appeals to authority.

For look what happened. Look what happened. There was a change of heart. And when a king's heart changes, what do we know?

The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it whichever way he wishes.

You do not have because you do not ask. So with careful courage,

Abed -Melek goes and takes care of Jeremiah. Notice what happens. He goes and gets the rags, the throwaway clothes, and he uses them to help lift

Jeremiah up out of the cistern. Why is he being so careful with him?

Because he's old. I mean, he's been preaching for decades, and he's been through a lot.

And so the servant is thinking, how can I get him out of there safely? And he takes all the advantages he can to rescue

Jeremiah. But why is he going with 30 men? Why is he going with 30 men?

As my old pastor said, when you show up to a gang fight, you better bring a gang. There was a lot of men who wanted

Jeremiah dead, and so Abed -Melek needed 30 men to go. Otherwise, it wouldn't have worked.

He needed a force to oppose the evil. The famous quote, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, has been attributed to Edmund Burke.

What he actually said was, when bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

And that wisdom is very practical, and it's in play here.

Thirty men go to rescue Jeremiah. Careful courage. Now, if we're going to overcome evil with good, the evil that we must overcome often is not in a form that is institutionalized and focused and in opposition to Christianity.

Sometimes it is. When it is, we're going to have to interrupt our lives to take care of some things, aren't we?

We may have to find out the name of our representatives and the council people who represent our wards, and we may have to write them a letter.

At least, right? Or show up and say something. The amount of stories that I've heard of people in places of governance who have no idea what

Christians believe or think and have no guidance whatsoever is astounding. Why are we silent?

Why are we silent? Are we living by the pagan golden rule, do not offend? We shouldn't be. We should overcome evil with good.

Right? Overcome evil with good, not sit there and say, oh, the evil. Overcome evil with good.

We have to interrupt ourselves, find out the names of our representatives, write some letters, sign some things, do some things.

We should also make appeals to authority. Appeals to authority. We need to appeal to the authority to do the right thing and trust in God's sovereignty for the results.

And use careful courage. Jesus told us in the context of persecution, he sends us out as sheep among wolves, and we are to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.

So we've got to be courageous if you're sheep among wolves. That takes courage. But then how we're among them, wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

When we do that, we're going to be walking the trail blazed by the captain of our salvation. What is it that Christ came to do?

He was not overcome by evil, was he? He overcame evil with good.

He overcame evil with good. The good we see not just in his death upon the cross, but in his resurrection from the dead, his ascension to the right hand of God where he reigns.

What did Christ come to do? 1 John 3 .8, the one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning.

The son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. So when we say,

I'm not going to be overcome by evil, but I will overcome evil with good. What are we doing except simply walking the trail that had been blazed by the captain of our salvation?

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us this morning. I pray that it will stir us up to love and good deeds.