Deadly Defiance

Jeremiah is imprisoned based on false accusations. After a series of events and a long period of time, he petitions to get out of the dungeon and is sent to the court of the guard where he stays.

So now the king is positioned in the best way possible. He has the greatest intelligence anyone could provide from the most intelligent source. This is shocking. He asked for prayer and he gets the prayer, plus he gets military intelligence! Yet he did not want it.

This short story is a metaphor for what is going on in the whole book. God is offering wisdom and counsel, and they are, each time, summarily rejected. The price that will be paid for this attitude is high. Right now it appears that only Jeremiah is paying a high price, but this is about to change.

Jeremiah 38

Jeremiah is still prophesying that the city will be destroyed and that all those who stay in the city will be doomed. His message is no more popular than when he first proclaimed it. Jeremiah has not changed. He has heard a call from God, and he keeps preaching until God tells him to stop. Nothing has changed with Jeremiah, but the people—well, that is a different story. The constant message has changed something in their hearts, namely, their tolerance for the message. It’s gone. They are fed up. Throughout the book you see a general rejection of Jeremiah’s message, but in this passage the officials have had enough. They appeal to the king who, in a tone similar to Pilate’s at the trial of Jesus, gives them the green light to do what they wish.

They take Jeremiah and throw him down a well. They have found a cistern that is dried up, and they place him down in it. The cistern has no water, just mud. As the prophet is lowered to the bottom of this cistern, his feet sink down into the thick mud. We can imagine it was deep and narrow. No way down, up, around, or out. He is stuck. I’ve felt stuck before in life but just metaphorically. Jeremiah is stuck literally.

Perhaps it is not an accident in the text, but in reading this we can’t help but think of the initial criticism God had against Israel in 2:12-13 when God said,

Be appalled at this, heavens;

be shocked and utterly desolated!

This is the Lord’s declaration.

For my people have committed a double evil:

They have abandoned me,

the fountain of living water,

and dug cisterns for themselves—

cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.

The people reached up and cut off the source of eternal, never-ceasing, living water. They reached down and dug wells that could not hold water. So it’s a little more than interesting that they find an empty well so quickly. It’s a perfect place to stick a prophet. They do not want to hear from God, so they cut off the supply of God’s living word by sticking him into an empty well.

And then silence. The prophet cannot be heard. He is muted. Their desire for their broken word is stronger than their desire for the living word.

The deliverance of Jeremiah is significant. The story will surface again when his deliverer, Ebed-melech, is rewarded by God for putting his trust in God. When Jerusalem falls, God will say to Ebed-melech,

But I will rescue you on that day—this is the Lord’s declaration—and you will not be handed over to the men you dread. Indeed, I will certainly deliver you so that you do not fall by the sword. Because you have trusted in me, you will retain your life like the spoils of war. This is the Lord’s declaration. (39:17-18)

Ebed-melech will be rescued because he rescued the man of God. We all need people to lift us out of a pit, but the reading of 38:7-9 hints that something more is going on. Ebed-melech is not just trying to make friends. He is not trying to help someone out. He is exercising faith in God. It is the other side of 1 Samuel 16:7. Man could only see the Cushite servant; God, however, was looking on his heart.

Then, oddly perhaps, in a breath Jeremiah goes from down in a pit into the king’s palace. This was the nature of the prophet’s life. The king wanted a private consultation with Jeremiah. So, as a counselor to the king, Jeremiah has an opportunity to shape the future of the kingdom. In that moment he does not equivocate. He tells the same truth that he has always being saying. However, in the presence of the king, he does not miss the opportunity to press the king to respond. He tells him specifically to surrender and obey (vv. 17-18, 20). Surrender to God, surrender to his will, which means surrender to the king of Babylon.

This appeal given in the private quarters of the king is in shocking contrast to what is coming. In chapter 39 the king will be caught trying to escape. He will be subjected to gruesome torture, his officials and sons killed, and his palace burned. It seems that the king thought escape was an option. It was not. Surrender was the only means of keeping his life, though it would mean losing the kingdom. The refusal to surrender still meant he would lose his kingdom, and he would lose so much more.

This is the question we face: How much do we want to lose? If we surrender to God, we lose. We give up. We die. Yet, if we don’t surrender to Christ, we give up so much more. The different price tags on these surrenders are what bring these stories together.

While these stories may seem different, they really are much more alike. In the first narrative King Jehoiakim is so defiant against the word that he cannot weep when the destruction is foretold. In the second story the replacement king will not listen to Jeremiah either, and Jeremiah is persecuted. In the final story the new king is given an opportunity to change, an opportunity to humble himself. Will he do so? That question will be answered in the next chapter. For now it’s enough to gather this simple truth: defiance against God’s word is deadly.

Defiance cost King Jehoiakim an opportunity to repent, an opportunity to live. In the second story defiance cost Zedekiah a chance to repent, and in the final story defiance against the word appears as if it is going to cost Zedekiah everything.

We began by discussing the nature of the call to ministry. It is in fact a costly call. If you choose to follow Christ, it will take a certain toll on your self-perception. We ask, Who am I in a world that does not know what to do with Christ? It will cost financially, as you will not be living for the kingdom of this world. It might cost you the love of family and the respect of peers. It will cost you the toll of being misunderstood. All of these things we can of course bring on ourselves; that is never justified. Yet all of these things we have to willingly embrace; that is to be expected. There is a high cost to obedience. Jeremiah had his book rejected, was lied about, and then was tortured in a pit. Obedience has its price. But so does disobedience.

As the curtain closes on their narratives, the high cost of defiance against the word is clearly much greater than submitting gladly to the word.

This reminds us of one of the strangest stories Jesus ever told, that of the rich man and Lazarus, in Luke 16:19-31. The rich man is apparently blessed; he has everything in life. He has everything but respect for God’s Word and love for others. Lazarus is apparently cursed; he has nothing. He has no money; he has no health. The two could not be more different. Yet Jesus throws a massive twist in the story when in the first scene the two die, and the rich man goes to hell and the poor man goes to heaven. The listening audience would have been shocked! Wealth, for the audience to whom Jesus was speaking, was a sign of blessing, and poverty a sign of cursing. How could that be their destiny?

It’s the most extreme role reversal they could imagine:

In the end of the story, the rich man needs Lazarus’s help, which is ironic: Lazarus was the rich man’s only problem; now the rich man sees Lazarus as his only solution.

This story helps illustrate suffering. The suffering the poor man endured on earth was horrible, excruciating, real, and temporary. The pain the rich man felt after death was eternal. If you can pan out far enough, you can see that the high price for following Christ is much less than the higher price of defying him.

Life is hard and ministry is harder, but it comes with a reward. The story in Jeremiah gives the sense that the prophet could not imagine disobeying God, and the kings could not imagine obeying him.

Obedience costs, but defiance toward God’s Word is deadly.