Jeremiah [Part 8] - The Trials of Jeremiah

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. This will be the last lesson from Jeremiah in this series. It will come from Jeremiah chapter 38, from verse 1 and on. In my opinion, this is a very important text, and Jeremiah is the most on-record persecuted prophet in the Bible. First of all, all the classical prophets were persecuted. The popular prophets that actually were working for the king—for David, for Saul, and for Ahab—we have prophets that we know about who worked for Ahab.

They didn't get persecuted. Why? Because they were paid prophets. They didn't leave us books, writings like the book of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets. They prophesied in spite of the fact that nobody wanted to hear them. Why didn't people want to hear them, and why did people hate them? Some people hate them. Why did they persecute them? Because they spoke the word of God. They did not massage the ego of the kings and the officials in the Kingdom of Israel or in the Kingdom of Judah. They spoke the word of God, and the word of God is seldom very popular—seldom very popular—because it has things there that are challenging to us human beings made from flesh and blood, with weaknesses, with aspirations, with temptations, with sin.

And when somebody points out the sin, it is dangerous. We have the best example in the New Testament of John the Baptist, who was invited to a party in Herod's house, a palace on the other side of the Jordan, a place called Machaerus. He exposed Herod's sin and the sin of the women around his life. It ended up that his head was served on a platter to Herod and to the women that he had affairs with—to put it in a mild way.

Jeremiah, was like all the classical prophets—what's a classical prophet? The prophet that wrote a book. We have a book in his name. Jeremiah is the prophet that we know more about the persecution that he received than any other prophet. But this is something that, in the church, is not talked about very much for many reasons. One of them is, today, to be a prophet is to profit, it's not exactly spiritually like it was in the days of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. So, Jeremiah, I'm going to read from chapter 38, verse 1.

That’s from verse 1 to 3 of chapter 38 of Jeremiah.

Now, I want to give you the names of the people that came and complained to the king about what Jeremiah is saying. Shfat'yah means the one who judges by God, or is God’s judge, and he’s the son of Matan. Matan is gift—what a name! Nice name: the Lord’s judge, the son of Matan, the gift. The second guy that came to complain about Jeremiah was G'dalia. G'dalia in Hebrew, it means somebody who is great for God—or God is great with him. The third guy was Yukal, and the son of Shlamiyahu, God’s peace. These three gentlemen, with fantastic names, come to the king and complain about what Jeremiah is speaking.

Jeremiah is speaking that if you remain in the city, you'll die. The Chaldeans, the Babylonians, are going to come and wipe out the city and burn it, and there will be famine and pestilence. You should leave. According to these three gentlemen, Shfat'yah G'dalyah and Malchiah, Jeremiah is inciting the people to leave the town, to leave Jerusalem, because if they stay, they will die. But if they go and join the enemy, they will survive. They will survive the famine, they will survive the pestilence, they will survive the enemy. It says very clearly, at the end of verse 2:

So, here we have a situation. You know, Israel right now is in a mess. We have a small minority in the government that gained their seat there because our Prime Minister had to, you know, for his survival, had to win the election. And the only way that he could create a government is by a coalition. So he gathered some from the barn, and some from the sewage, and some from the agriculture, and some from the army, and made a coalition. That coalition is challenged by a vast majority of the people of Israel.

The elite of the Israeli army challenges the government because they want to pass laws that are less than democratic, put it in a mild way. So, a similar situation was in the days of Jeremiah. The enemy was at the door—a vast enemy: Chaldeans in English, but it’s Babylonians. An empire—a great empire—that ruled a lot of Southern Asia countries, like Azerbaijan and Persia, and all the way to Kazakhstan, was ruled by these northeastern empires, like the Arameans first and then the Babylonians and the Persians.

So, the prophet is demoralizing according to these three gentlemen, demoralizing the people and tells them to go and join the enemy. They are called, you know, honorable names. And these three gentlemen go to the king and say, “Let us put this man to death.” “Let us kill Jeremiah,”

He weakens the hands of the army. He weakens those that remained in the city, and he weakens the hand of the people themselves by what he’s saying.

He’s criticizing the leadership, he’s criticizing the priesthood, he’s criticizing the people, and suggesting that they leave and join the enemy—not to fight against Israel, but just leave the country.

He would have died there without water, without food, sinking in mud or worse than mud, depends how you translate mire.

Now, there was one servant, in English, in verse 7, it says:

The city is under siege by the enemy, and there’s no more bread.

Let’s take the scene that we are reading about. Jeremiah was put there by noblemen, servants of the king, ministers in the king’s court, with the excuse that he’s damaging the kingdom, he’s damaging the people, he’s damaging the king because he’s saying, “Leave Jerusalem. Abandon. Raise a white flag to the Babylonians. Surrender if you want to live and if you want to survive.” The king, the politician—not just, a King, he’s a politician—he tells those of his servants, these three men with wonderful names but horrible people, “Ah, he’s in your hand. Do whatever you want to with him.” So they take Jeremiah, they put him in the dungeon, in the prison, in a place that is like a well full of mud or mire, as its translated in English.

Another servant, notice he's not just a regular servant, is is called 'Kushi' in Hebrew. Its translated 'Ethiopian', but literally it means a person of dark skin, a black brother. That servant of the king goes and says to the king, “Listen, Jeremiah will die. If you leave him there, he’ll die.” The king says, “Okay, go get 30 men and get ropes and pull him out of there.” Now, here is the key of Israel's problem then and the key of Israel's problem now. Not only Israel, many countries—you can’t trust the politicians. They told, “Okay,” the king said to the sons of Pashor. The king said to his noblemen, to Sh'fatiyah, God’s judge, the son of Matan, to G'daliyah the one who makes God great. The son of Shlamiyah, God’s peace, is the family name of this Yukal, and to Pashor, the son of Malchiyah, Lord is my king, family name. What wonderful family names!

He said, “You know what? Jeremiah’s yours. Do whatever you want to do with him." So they take him and they dump him in the dungeon, in a well full of mud, or worse. Then this Ethiopian brother, black brother, comes to the king and says, “Listen, this is what they did to Jeremiah.” What does the king do now? He told those, “Go do whatever you want to with him.” Now he says to this guy, “Go get 30 people. Pull him out of there.” The politician wanted this way and that way; they don’t want it that way straight because most of the politicians are in politics to survive themselves, to make themselves powerful and rich, and to dance according to the music of the people, of the politicians. This servant of the king—he has no name, simply the king’s servant,

The king’s servant with no name, a black brother—tells the king, “You can’t allow this to happen.” He did allow it to happen. “You can’t allow that to happen.” The king said, “Okay, get 30 people. Go, go bring Jeremiah out of the well, out of the place.” And he comes prepared. He got old clothes so that Jeremiah will put them under his armpits. He’s sinking in the mud. It’s not so simple to pull him out. He has, you know, they have to tie the ropes around him, and they did. They didn’t want to damage him physically, so they brought these rags to put under his armpits, and they lifted him up.

And Jeremiah remains in the prison court. Why? Because he knows that if he comes out now to the streets of Jerusalem, these powerful men—princes, translated to English, servants of the king, close ministers, servants of the king—will kill him. So he stays down there in the dungeon, but not in the mud. Zedekiah the king sent and had Jeremiah the prophet brought to him at the third entrance of the house of the Lord. Aha, he doesn’t want to bring him in from the main gate. He doesn’t want him to come from the main gate. He sent for Jeremiah. He wants to talk to Jeremiah. He wants to hear from Jeremiah, but he’s bringing him in from the back gate of the palace.

And, the king Zedekiah—God’s righteousness, that’s what the king’s name is, Zedekiah, God’s righteousness—brings him into his palace and asks him, “Tell me the truth. Don’t hide from me anything.” And Jeremiah says, “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you frankly.” Verse 15: “If I had declared it to you, you will not surely put me to death. You know, if I tell you the truth, are you going to kill me or keep me alive? And if I advise you, will you listen to me? Will you take seriously what I say to you?” And the man, the king, in verse 16, swears. Zedekiah the king swore secretly to Jeremiah, saying, “As the Lord lives, who made our very souls, I will not put you to death, nor will I give you into the hands of these men who seek your life, who want to kill you.”

I’m going to end this lesson with what Jeremiah said because it is apropos, fitting not only for Israel today but in many, many centuries, and not only in Israel. That’s what kings and politicians do. Verse 17:

Verse 19:

It’s interesting, dear brothers and sisters. It’s so interesting. And the reason I chose to end this study of Jeremiah with this text is, first of all, because all the classical prophets suffered. They said things to the public that the public didn’t want to hear. They did massage the public’s consciousness and said things that the public wanted to hear. They spoke the word of the Lord, and they spoke it raw—not only raw, with a little bit of Tabasco sauce on top of it. Yes. But the politicians, the politicians, the one that God didn’t trust, in spite of their wonderful names. The king didn’t trust, and both his princes, his ministers, didn’t trust each other and they only functioned for their own good. But in the end, their good became the disaster for Jerusalem and the disaster for the kingdom that was taken to Babylon, to exile.

So our countries today—in Europe, in the United States, in Israel, in the Middle East in general, and in other parts of the world as well—dear brothers and sisters, we need to know that the only hope we have is to listen to the word of the Lord, to do what God asks us to do, take the advice from God’s word and from the Holy Spirit, and trust no one else. God bless you all.