Jeremiah 38:14-28

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're going to find out, is that Akai got anything else to do with Jeremiah? I mean, let him be thrown down in the well, listen to the Ethiopian, let him get up out of the well. Is he done with him? No, he's not. Let's find out what else he's got for him today. Let's have some coffee. Well, I don't have some coffee. I'm all up.
Let's pray and we'll get into God's word. Father, we thank you so much for this day and we thank you for your word. We pray that as we read your word this morning, that you would please help us. Help us, Lord, to understand. Help us to believe what we hear, that we might live. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Here we go.
Jeremiah chapter 38, beginning at verse 14. Then Zedekiah the king sent and had Jeremiah the prophet brought to him at the third entrance of the house of the Lord. And the king said to Jeremiah, I will ask you something, hide nothing from me. Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, if I declare it to you, will you not surely put me to death? And if I give you advice, you will not listen to me. So Zedekiah the king swore secretly to Jeremiah, saying, As Jehovah lives, who made our very souls, I will not put you to death, nor will I give you into the hand of these men who seek your life.
Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, if you surely surrender to the king of Babylon's princes, then your soul shall live. This city shall not be burned with fire and you and your house shall live. But if you do not surrender to the king of Babylon's princes, then this city shall be given into the hand of the Chaldeans. They shall burn it with fire and you shall not escape from their hand. And Zedekiah the king said to Jeremiah, I am afraid because of the Jews who have defected to the Chaldeans, lest they deliver me into their hand, and they abuse me. But Jeremiah said, they shall not deliver you. Please obey the voice of the Lord, which I speak to you. So it shall be well with you. and your soul shall live. But if you refuse to surrender, this is the word that the Lord has shown me.
Now behold, all the women who are left in the kings of Judah's house shall be surrendered to the king of Babylon's princes. And those women shall say, your close friends have set upon you and prevailed against you. Your feet have sunk in the mire and have turned away again. So they shall surrender all your wives and children to the Chaldeans. You shall not escape from their land, but you shall be taken by the hand of the king of Babylon, and you shall cause this city to be burned with fire.
Then Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, let no one know these words, and you shall not die. But if the princes hear that I have talked to you, and they come to you and say to you, declare to us now what you have said to the king, and also what the king said to you, do not hide it from us, and we will not put you to death. Then you shall say to them, I presented my request before the king, that he should not make me return to Jonathan's house to die there. Then all the princes came to Jeremiah and asked him, and he told them according to all these words that the king had commanded. So they stopped speaking with him, for the conversation had not been heard. Now Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison until the day that Jerusalem was taken. And he was there when Jerusalem was taken. Well, we have our three questions we need to ask ourselves. A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do in response to these words? So A, what's this about?
Well, God has brought him out of Jonathan's house, out of the cistern, the muck, the mire, where they were just gonna let him starve to death in the cold mud. They bring him out. The Ethiopian, Ebed Melech, brings him out and even makes sure that he's cared for where there's old rags underneath the ropes so his skin doesn't get all ripped up. And Zedekiah calls him, has a secret conversation with him. Tell me what the Lord wants. And Jeremiah tells him, surrender. If you surrender, the city won't be burned and they won't murder you. They won't kill you. But if you don't, It's gonna go horrible. He's gonna be burned. You're gonna die. Children. Women. Taken. Abused. But he even starts us off when he called him.
If I declare it to you, will you not surely put me to death? And if I give you advice, you will not listen to me. There's no track record to make him think that Zedekiah is actually going to listen to him. And Zedekiah has shown himself to be fickle, lets him go rot in prison, or even the princes come and they're, hey, why don't we throw him in prison and let him die? And Zedekiah's like, whatever, let him go, right? And so they have, Zedekiah's like, okay. That's what he's told him. But it's interesting also that Jeremiah is like, well, they're going to kill me. And Zedekiah has already foreseen that, right?
No, no, no. If the princes come to you, don't tell anybody what you've told me. If they've come to you, you don't want to go back to Jonathan's house and die there. So he gives them some type of plausible deniability, which I am sure Jeremiah does not want to go back.
Right. That's hearkening back to his words. If I declare it to you, will you not surely put me to death? And so the point is, the king here, Zedekiah, is trying to spare Jeremiah's life. So he gives him some type of plausible deniability. The prince has come. They ask him. He says, I don't want to die in Jonathan's prison again.
And they leave him alone because nobody's heard this private conversation between the two of them. And that's where we're left. That's where we're left. And so, what's this about? This is Jeremiah telling Zedekiah what to do with the king of Babylon. Just surrender. This covenant curse has come. You're fighting against God. Surrender and it will go better. So, what's the best verse to summarize this? Well, in my Bible, I have verse 17 and 18. So, that's what I have in my Bible. Maybe you would underline something else to be the best verse to summarize this portion of God's Word.
So, let's talk about C. What are we called to do? Do we follow God's covenant? Do we understand that when we are violators of the covenant that we are cursed? The punishment of Jerusalem, the siege and the atrocities of war that Jeremiah is going to describe and lamentations.
I mean, it's horrible, horrible, horrible things. And it was all foretold way back in Deuteronomy. Way back when God said if they didn't keep his covenant, there would be these judgments that would come. And no matter how much scheming and politicizing and trying to pick king against king and trying to do all this stuff, look, you can't outwit and outsmart God. And so there's a real thing here that we need to wrestle with with God, right? He is a covenant-keeping God. And he had made a covenant with the nation of Israel as that peculiar nation. and the covenant for them as a peculiar nation was supposed to point them, even then, that they couldn't perfectly keep all these things. They needed a perfect sacrifice, a perfect king, better princes. They needed Jesus. That's our king, one way better than Zedekiah. Zedekiah was worried about saving his own tail. Jesus was worried about saving us.
So I don't want to give you some type of moralistic story here. I want to point you to the king. The king who didn't have to have private conversations about what he should do. But he did his father's will perfectly. I want to point you to the king who offered up himself. Surrendered himself unto death. Not worried about his own skin. but willingly died. He subjected himself to Pontius Pilate. He subjected himself to the cruelty of the Roman torture and scourging, and of the cross, offering himself up in love for us.
This is the God we follow. This is the Christ we love. This is our King. who has given us the promise of a kingdom that knows no end. Let's pray. Father, we pray that we would rejoice that you have sent us one way better than Zedekiah. Where he failed, Jesus ruled. Where the covenant was broken, Jesus kept it perfectly. Lord, though he had a crown of thorns laid on his head, you have given him a crown that is eternal, and given him a name that is above every name.
So, Father, we pray that we would trust you, that we would hold firm to your son, and that you would care for us. Please, Father, help us. Please fix our eyes upon Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen. May the Lord God Almighty bless and care for you. May you walk in the name of Jesus. May he watch over you always. He's a great king, a high priest, and the best prophet. I'll see you next time.