August 15 - Jeremiah 37:11-38:28 | Ezekiel 1:1-3:15

Good morning everyone,

Wow! What a great day of reading. We began with Jeremiah and if ever there was an opportunity for someone to cry, “life’s just not fair …” it would be here for this prophet, Jeremiah. He was just going through life, being obedient to God by delivering His message, preaching the word the Lord had given him to share with Judah. Then, when the Babylonian withdraw for the second time, he returns to Benjamin to get his share of the property and is met at the gate with hostility. They believed he had joined forces with the Babylonians and would not hear Jeremiah’s protests to the misunderstanding, rather they beat him and imprisoned him in a vaulted cell in a dungeon where, we’re told, he remained for a long time. 

At some point the king sent for him to find out what God was thinking. Jeremiah petitioned the king to allow him to remain outside of the dungeon. The king agreed to Jeremiah being placed in the courtyard of the guards where they stuffed him in a cistern to starve and rot in the mud. However, we’re told, Ebed-Melek, a Cushite went to the king to plead on behalf of Jeremiah and was granted permission to pull him out of the well. When he is out the king sends for him again and he asks Jeremiah to tell him what God says the future holds for him. Jeremiah lays the truth on the king, but is told to keep the information to himself, he would rather not recognize it as the truth.

There are so many life applications that can be taken from the scripture we read in Jeremiah today but the one thing I think we need to see today is, Jeremiah got beat and imprisoned for preaching God’s Words, God’s truth. The heart’s of the people were hardened, their actions hateful. Friends we are living in a time that is not so unlike that of Jeremiah’s, and with each day that goes by it will subtly get worse. There are already several arrests on record in the United States of America for someone, laymen as well as pastors, teaching God’s Word in a public place, or even preaching the Truth from a pulpit or handing out tracks on a street corner that flies in the face of “society”, or praying where prayer is deemed not acceptable behavior. People are going to jail in this great nation for doing God’s work. Then there are those who dare to take the Word to a third world country, now we’re talking the treatment Jeremiah got, if not worse. 

I personally know many who would go to prison and/or take a beating before compromising the truth of God’s Word in their teachings. God bless them! Friends, more than ever before we need to be praying for those who boldly stand before others and bring us the truth of what God’s Word says. Right?! These pastors and teachers all all have this big red target on their backs that the enemy is constantly firing arrows at in hopes of bringing them down, of crippling them discrediting them, doing anything possible to keep God’s truth from being shared by them. So pray! Pray for their health, wisdom, direction, strength. Pray for their minds, that they remain positive and focused. Pray for spiritual protection, pray for a boldness and confidence that they be empowered and continue to move forward with blind faith. Pray they have a great team of  deacons and/or support system who can lovingly keep them accountable and recognize when they may need a rest, then see that they get it. Pray for their families because if Satan can distract them with domestic problems or illnesses, then their message will not be as effective. Make sense?

I would encourage you, encourage us all, to be like Ebed-Melek, a Cushite, who pleaded on Jeremiah’s his behalf, and fall to our knees to lift up in prayer, as often as we possibly can, those who teach and preach God’s Holy Word. Amen!

Have a great day and to God be the glory!!

God bless you all ….