Year 9, Day 91: Jeremiah 38

Theological Commentary: Click Here

This chapter gives more information on Jeremiah’s rescue from prison.  Like a Hollywood movie, Jeremiah is lifted up out of the cistern by putting rope and rage under his arms.  He’s spared because food was running low and likely would have starved.

The reason that he is in the cistern is because he spoke the truth that nobody wanted to hear.  He stood up and gave an unpopular true message.  He gave a message that would have gotten him called subversive, a defeatist, a non-believer, and a traitor.  Jeremiah is telling the king to surrender to the Babylonians (Chaldeans).

Human beings don’t like to surrender.  Human beings don’t enjoy defeat.  We find it more ethical to stand up and fight than to surrender.  There is a huge lessen in this.  God cares more about truth and surrender to it than what we think is right.  We like the fight; God likes truth.

Sometimes it is good to stand up and fight.  God wants us to stand up and fight.  However, we should fight for the truth.  When God’s truth is that we need to submit, standing up and fighting is actually the most contrary thing that we can do to God!

Christians are often the guiltiest of this error.  We like to fight. We want to stand up and engage in the struggle, too.  We don’t like defeat.  After all, Christ was the great winner in His struggle against death and sin!

I can only imagine how easy it would have been to stand up against Jeremiah.  I can imagine how surrender to the Babylonians would have felt inherently wrong.  I can imagine how easy it would have been to call Jeremiah a traitor.

Then I remember one important fact.  Christ won by surrender.  Christ won by defeat.  Jesus died, so in doing so He could defeat death.

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