Unwelcome News

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Jeremiah 38:1-6

TO CHEW ON: "This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes out to the Babylonians will live. They will escape with their lives: they will live.’" Jeremiah 38: 2

None of us likes to bring unwelcome news. Yet when God told Jeremiah to say things that were opposite of what everyone wanted to hear, he said them even though it got him into big trouble.

It was now about sixteen years after Jehoiachim had burned Jeremiah’s scroll. Jehoiakim had died. Babylon was getting stronger every day. Its king Nebuchadnezzar had made Zedekiah king of Judah. But Nebuchadnezzar really wanted Judah for himself. When he came with his army and surrounded Jerusalem, King Zedekiah asked Jeremiah if God had any message for him.

“Yes,” Jeremiah told him, “the Babylonian army will capture the city and burn it down.”

Zedekiah and his officials didn’t like the sound of that, so they put Jeremiah in prison. But he had more to say. “Give yourselves up to the Babylonian army,” he told everyone who came to see him. “If you stay in this city, you’ll die.”

Jeremiah’s words enraged Zedekiah’s officials. “He’s discouraging our soldiers!” they told Zedekiah.

“Do whatever you want with him,” Zedekiah said.

So they took Jeremiah from his prison cell and lowered him into a cistern.

It held no water but the bottom of it was soft with cold, sticky mud. As Jeremiah sank deep into the mud he wondered, would this be the place he would die.

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Tags: research prophecy prayer persecution peer pressure Judah Jeremiah courage