[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: When I was at Faulkner, we had something that were called social clubs. And social clubs were basically like a Christian version of a fraternity or a sorority. In order to get into one of those, one of the things that you had to go through was something called pledge week.
And I got voluntold to be the pledge master. So that meant that I was in charge of putting our potential pledges and club members through a week of pledge week. And one of the traditions that we had when we would have this was there's this one night called Mud Night. And you can imagine it's exactly as it sounds, that the pledges would go through the mud and you would give them different things to do. But our club in particular had a tradition where, like, the last hour of Mud night, our sister club, like, they would get our guy pledges and then we would get the girl pledges. And so one of the things that I tried to do was I was trying to think of, like, you know, what could I do with these ladies? Because I know it's gonna be a different approach than with the men.
Like, that would be kind of fun, funny. And so I thought it'd be kind of funny to kind of go a little bit back to our Church of Christ roots and to get them to harmonize in the mud. Okay? And so my idea was this. I took a lot of different songs that like common melodies and things that people would know, and I changed the lyrics to get them to sing in the mud. I know it's ridiculous, okay?
But one of the ones that I picked, I thought would be really good is to make sure, like, we can understand and learn some four part harmony if they don't know it already. So the song I thought of the melody was the greatest commands. And so I decided to change the words to that melody and to get us in four different parts, these ladies to sing in the mud. Okay? Just we're going somewhere with this. All right? And so what happened was, is as I divided them up into four groups, I put the sopranos together, the altos and the tenors and even basses. Okay, that was forced a little bit, but we divided them up and I gave each of them the lines. The soprano gave them their lines, the altos gave them their lines. Then get to the tenors and the tenors. If you know this, just three words over and over again, if you remember the song. But I changed the words and I said, ladies, you're going to sing over and over again. Mud is love. Mud is love.
Well, one of the ladies that was in that group, I wasn't dating her or married to her at this time, but her name was loriann.
And as I was telling her to repeat, you know, mud is love, she was doing this.
And then finally she raised her hand and I was like, yes. She goes, excuse me, sir, Mud is not love. God is love.
I like this little sassy Christian. And anyway, we ended up dating a few months after that. But the whole point of why I say that, I got the message that day, and of the most unlikely of places, I learned what real love really was. Not mud, but God is love.
The reason why I share that with you today we're starting a two week, which is very rare for us because we're kind of in an in between period, a two week series called Obscure, Secure and sure.
And Brandon and I are going to highlight two hardly ever, if ever, preached about, talked about, random moments in scripture that actually pack a lot of power.
We're going to look at how there's a message today in the mud, in the most unlikely of place that we hear a powerful message that kind of resonates with all of us because every single one of us to some degree in our lives have been in a pit. And maybe some of you right now are in a pit. And you think, well, maybe the reason why I'm in a pit is because of my health. And I want you to understand, if you are in a pit right now because of something health related, it is a pit.
And while that no doubt is a pit, that's not specifically the pit we're going to talk about today.
Also understand that there's some of you maybe in a, we might call it a relational pit. And if you're in one of those relational pits, those are the pits.
But I also want you to understand that's not the pit we're going to talk about today.
See, the pit that we're going to talk about today is one we kind of skip over, and I think it's one that we don't talk about a lot. And it's this, that sometimes you are in a pit because you're being faithful.
Sometimes you're in a pit because you're serving.
And you might even notice this morning as we were singing some songs, like, some of the songs kind of had some heavy lines to them, but they speak to that reality that even as a strong person, sometimes you find yourself even in the middle of your service, in a pit.
And that's exactly what happened to Jeremiah. He's going to find himself in a mud pit. But I want you to kind of be in his shoes for just a second.
Do you all remember when God first came to this guy and said, hey, listen, you're going to be a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah, right? That's what I'm going to call you to. And notice what he said to him in verse five. Because if this starts out and you're hearing this, you're like, man, this is awesome. He comes to Jeremiah and says, hey, listen, in the womb I formed you. In fact, I formed you and I shaped you to actually be a prophet to the nations. And if you're Jeremiah, you're like, wow, that sounds awesome. Like, you pick. Of all the people you could pick, you pick this guy. Well, thanks.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then verse 17, he says, and what you're going to do is you're going to stand up and say everything I tell you to say. Wait, hold on a second.
What am I going to be saying?
Well, we'll get to that in just a second. Jeremiah, then he says this in verse 18 and 19, you're basically going to be a bronze wall against the whole land. Do you know what he's saying? You're going to be a punching bag.
So he probably goes, yeah. Oh, like, you know, it was one of those kind of moments of he goes from excitement about his call to understanding that with his call also comes some difficulty.
But notice what it says next.
But the people will not prevail against you.
Here's how I want us to read this. Today I will be with you in the mud.
And so as we dig into this today, I kind of want to set the stage for the audience that's hearing this message.
Jeremiah has a very difficult task.
You know, he is preaching to a group of people that are not just comfortable, but they're comfortable in their sin.
And I struggled whether or not to mention this this morning. Because it sounds heavy and it's hard for me to even say, but have you ever met somebody at a time in their life where they were just okay being in sin and were also okay with not just being in sin, but they were okay with the repercussions of the sin.
In fact, there's a guy that I think about that one time I kept trying to invite him to a Bible study. It was just a guy's Bible study that we were doing. I kept trying to invite him, invite him to it. I was like, it'd be a good intro and get you to get to know everybody. And he said, andrew, can I just finally stop? I know you've been trying to. And he said this statement, and I've never been able to forget it.
He said, andrew, I know I'm going to hell and I'm okay with that.
And again, I'm telling y'. All. It's hard for me to say. It's hard for me to hear it, but I don't know if y' all have ever been around somebody that was at a place in their life where they were comfortable being condemned.
Y', all. That's the people he's preaching to.
So that's why I'm trying to set the stage of the reality of what he's having to deal with.
He's trying to call a group of people to a different life that don't want a different life.
Can you imagine being that kind of messenger?
So with that in mind, we get into the text, and you'll notice there's these four guys. Shephathia, Gedaliah, Jekyll, and Purshur. We don't know exactly who these four guys are, but here's what we do know. They were four princes that were living in that kingdom.
We don't know if they're related to the king or not. They were likely somebody in his household. But here's what we do know about these guys. These guys did not like the message Jeremiah was saying from the Lord. And. And keep in mind, Jeremiah is just the messenger.
He's just sharing what he is hearing exactly from God about what God is going to do. And this is what they didn't like.
Thus says the Lord.
They're telling the king that this is what the Lord said. He who stays in this city is going to die by the sword.
They're going to die by famine and by pestilence. And then he goes on to say, he shall have his life as a prize of war and live. Thus says the Lord. The City will surely be given to the hand of the army of the king of Babylon and will be taken. You see what's happening here? He's saying that, guys, you gotta go ahead and just let yourself be captured by the enemy because God's coming.
And when they hear that, they're like, well, we don't wanna hear that.
And this is a few things in this. Number one, what God is doing here, it seems evil, but what he's actually doing is trying to align a group of evil people back with his good heart.
He's trying to align them back with his purpose. And I do think it is a reminder that sometimes. I'm not saying every time, and I'm not saying it's the cause of it every time either, but there are some times where God allows things into our life in order to align us with his will.
And so the officials said to the king, I mean, we need to put this guy to death. He's weakening the hands of the soldiers that are left in the city and the hands of the people by speaking such words to them. This man is not seeking the welfare of the people. Here's a fun fact, by the way. If you look in Jeremiah twice, it says God was seeking their welfare. But they did not see it like that. Which is a very important reminder if you serve that sometimes, even when you serve as a God servant, you are accused of things that are actually the opposite of truth.
If you've ever been there, you're in good company. Think about a few people. Moses, Moses in numbers 13 was accused of having pride when he was actually just showing humility.
You got a guy like Job. Job, Chapter one. It starts out from the very beginning. Job was a blameless and he was a righteous man. Yet what did they say about Job?
I guess it's because you're a great sin man that all of this is coming together in your life. And Jesus, who was the perfect spotless lamb of God, was accused of actually being demon possessed.
And the reason why I mention all of this is that you hear what they are hearing and they hear it as negativity, but Jeremiah is saying it as repentance. I want to say that again.
They are hearing it as negativity, but what Jeremiah is actually saying is something of repentance.
Do you think sometimes that we hear whether it's God's word or God's word being shared and like, well, that was negative. And by the way, sometimes it is. Sometimes some things come from a negative heart that only wants to bring negativity and not repentance. So I do want to be clear about that. There are sometimes those instances.
But do you also think sometimes we hear God's word kind of like James says? I like that mirror. Oh, I don't. I don't like how it pointed that out about me. That was negative.
When in reality, it's not negativity that he's calling us to. It's not a negative thing. He's actually calling us to repent. He sees what the repercussion of what we're doing is leading to. That's what Jeremiah is letting them know.
And so the king said, well, he's in your hands now. The king can do nothing against you.
So they took Jeremiah, they cast him down into the cistern, the king's son, which was in the cord of the guard. They let Jeremiah down by ropes.
There was no water that was in the cistern, only mud.
And Jeremiah sank in the mud.
I'll say that again. Jeremiah, God's prophet, God's spokesman, the guy that was just called to do what God told him to do.
This leader is sinking.
You know, there's a few details I want you to notice is that when it says that they let him down by ropes, that could mean two different things.
It could be, number one, that if they wanted him dead, they would just chunked him down there, right?
But by slowly letting him down, it could be that they were wanting him to just have to deal with a very slow, long, painful death.
The other thought is that is actually not a good picture of a cistern.
This is a picture of a cistern in this region and actually really close by where this would have likely happened.
That is what he was let down in.
So maybe it's because they had to have ropes to let somebody down. Something like that.
And I don't know if you guys are like me. I don't do well in small spaces at all.
And like, even my dad, I guess, inherited from him. Like, he has had to have these different scans and things. They'd have to do the same thing with me. They gotta knock him out. They'd have to knock me out because I don't do well in like, those kinds of small spaces.
And in that place, keep in mind, he's standing on what, mud.
And so being trapped in this very small area, you know, he's probably trying to push to the side, we don't know, but he's constantly sinking.
And one of the slides I had up here, I think on Monday that I deleted because I thought that's not true. Because I had in there. I thought this would be a good point to say, you know, when you're in the pit, sometimes the only place to look is up.
Well, that's not true, because sometimes you can look down when you are in a pit, you do have a choice.
You can look up.
But I don't know about y'. All. Like, sometimes if I'm in that pit, I'm like, oh. Like, I'm looking down constantly at what I'm standing in.
The reason why I say that is, keep in mind, while he was a prophet of God, he was not a perfect prophet of God. There's only one of those, and his name is Jesus Christ.
That this very imperfect prophet of God, he had his own muddy thoughts. If you go back in Scripture, remember what he said in Jeremiah 12:1, talking about the lack of justice. He's seeing, hey, God, like, why are the wicked prospering?
When he was beaten up by his enemies, it says this, oh, Lord, you've deceived me. I mean, I'm like, he said that to God, and I was deceived. You overpowered me and prevailed. And then this one in chapter 20, cursed be the day I was born.
But we don't highlight that a lot with Jeremiah. You know what we do highlight?
I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.
Yes, yes, God has a plan for you. Satan also has a plan for you. Right. There's two different plans.
But God is even going to use this pit moment in his muddy thoughts to actually lead him to somebody.
And in this reminder, too, that even strong people sink.
You know, I think about, if you are in a role of leadership in your family, you're in a role of leadership in your home, you're a role of leadership in the church, there's a heavy weight on you. And with that, I feel like there's two things. One of those things, there's a target on your back.
Satan hates that you're leading in the church. He hates that you're leading your family.
But the other thing that I think about is, you know, sometimes, oftentimes the.
The more gifts and talents that a person has, it's kind of like the weightier the object, the quicker and the deeper it sinks.
That's a reminder of what happens with strong people.
Yes, I understand you're strong, and I understand they're strong. But strong people still sink. Go through scripture, like, notice people that had incredible callings from God. What do you notice about those people that had incredible callings and anointings? And assignments. They also had strong persecution and strong attacks. Strong people still sink.
But here's what I want to encourage you with. It says this in Proverbs 24:16.
Here's some realness for just a second, though. The righteous fall seven times.
It doesn't say the righteous just fall once.
The righteous sometimes will fall seven times, but they rise again.
I waited for the Lord. He turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on a rock, gave me a firm place to stand. He put in me a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
And even when I think about that, I love that a new song. Because I was thinking about the guests this morning. Like, if you are new to church or new to a worship service like this, and you come in and you hear us singing, you know, yeah, we had some heavy songs this morning that was on purpose, but we also had some songs that were, you know, a little lighter about, you know, the goodness of our God and how great he is and the joy we have. Don't mistake the fact that we sing about joy and the goodness of God, that everything's perfect, that sometimes we are singing those songs from a place of mud, because that's what happens to God's servants sometimes. You sing and you sing, but here's another reminder that you can do everything right. You can do everything what you think is according to your plan.
And things still not go well.
And I know we don't have any engineers in this room that love Excel spreadsheets and to plan everything out. But this one, I think, speaks to a lot of us that we have this idea of how everything's going to go, but the reality is, sometimes it doesn't.
What if we started viewing those pits as just a pit stop?
I don't know if your family's like me, but on trips, I like to purposefully plan out a pit stop.
And I'm one of those kind of people. I don't want to, like, stop here for gas and next exit, stop for food.
I want to do all the things in one stop, okay? I want to find a Love's gas station, because we can go to the bathroom, we can get some beef sticks and some water, and we can go to the restroom.
But the other thing that we do is we also pass around, like, a Walmart bag or a whataburger bag, whatever we just ate. And I'm trying to get everybody to put their trash in It. Because y' all know what I'm talking about. There's, like a fry that's in the back seat. If you don't get it soon, it's gonna turn into an artifact. And you gotta get that thing and get it quick. And so what we do is we use that as a time, that pit stop, to refresh ourselves, to refuel ourselves, and to get rid of stuff.
The reason I say that, what if we started viewing our pits as just a pit stop, as an opportunity? Maybe it's an opportunity to refuel, to refresh ourselves.
Because here's what I want us to find comfort in. If you are a child of God, those pit stops are just that.
They're stops. They're not destinations.
They're stopping points.
I shared this a few years ago when we did our study on the Book of Hebrews.
But I found this really interesting article that it asks Christians that when you're in a time of the pit, when you're going through a time of difficulty, what do you usually do?
The first three that are listed there from Christians were the top three responses.
Panic was like, I don't know what we're going to do. It's all. It's all done. It's all out of control.
Number two, pride.
Well, I'm just gonna fix it myself.
Number three, I'm gonna fix it now before I wait on God to do something preemptive strike, which is, hey, I'm gonna go ahead and get my hands in it and try to fix it, because it's not happening on my timetable.
You know what the least mentioned thing was that we do is pray in the pit.
I don't know about y'. All. I pray really good outside of the pit, but sometimes it takes the deepest pit to also get me to pray.
But look who showed up in the middle of the pit. It said, Ebed Melech, an Ethiopian. He was a eunuch. He was living in the king's house. He heard what had happened to Jeremiah in the cistern.
And it says, the king was sitting there in the Benjamin gate. Ebed Melek went from the king's house and said to the king, my Lord, the king, these men have done evil in all that they did to Jeremiah by casting him down to the pit, and he's going to die there of hunger. There is no bread left in the city. Notice that detail. There is no bread left in the city. Remember what Jeremiah already told him, that there's going to be what?
No bread left in the city. And so what? The Ebed Melech is like, hey, you know, the very thing that he talked about, I overheard that it's happening and he's in the pit.
And it's kind of like the king was like, oh my, we got to do something here.
Now here's what I want you to notice because it seems like a random detail that this guy that's an Ethiopian eunuch just shows up out of nowhere.
But here's what's really neat. And this just shows you the unique, purposeful way God's word is put together. You know what Ebed Melech's name means?
Ebed means servant. Melek means king.
Hold on to that. And so the king commanded Ebeg Melek, the Ethiopian. Here's what I want you. I want to take 30 men with you. And by the way, it's not going. Y' all saw that pit, you saw the cistern. It's not going to take 30 people. But isn't that kind of a picture of what Nehemiah experienced? Even the evil king gave Nehemiah more than enough to have that passport.
He's like, I'm going to give you more than enough to get you out. And it says, lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies. So Eben Melech took with him men, they went to the house of the Lord. They went to the wardrobe in the storehouse and got old rags and worn out clothes. Here's why that's an important detail. In those palaces they would have the treasury where the well to do people had access, where the wealthy people had access. But like the servants that didn't have the same, they could go to the storehouse. So he's going to the place that he has access to to help this guy. He gets some old rags, he gets some old ropes.
And so they did, they put the rags and the clothes down to him. And they said this to him, put the rags and the clothes between your armpits and the ropes.
Jeremiah did. So they began to draw Jeremiah with the ropes, lifted him out of the cistern, and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.
I want you to think about for just a second. Who in your life recently have you lifted out of the mud?
Because I know we've all been in the pit, we've all been in the mud.
But sometimes one of the quickest ways to get your mind out of the mud is to help someone else get them out of the mud.
It's a two sided thing.
And I think we could learn a lot from this. Ebed Melek, you Know, one of the things he did, he was just alert to the needs that were around him.
There's a direct connection between, you know, our ability to be alert and being around, you know, the ability to see what's actually going on with people. Number two, think about this for just a second.
What he did was very risky. He was in the comfort of the palace living. And if you went to the king at this time unannounced, guess what it would be oftentimes off with your head.
So he leaves the comfort of the palace to help some dude that a lot of people would have forgot about. That was in a pit.
This guy took a risk, but the other place, he used what he had, notice what he had access to. Not the treasury, but the storehouse.
It was the poor people place.
But here's why I want to point that out to you.
I love the fact it says he didn't just get ropes, but he got extra rags so he could put them under his arm to more carefully and comfortably lift him out of the pit.
If we know people are in a pit, one of the greatest things that we can do for them is to help in a very caring way lift them out of the pit, not get out of there.
This probably got you in there. Well, that they don't care about that. They just know they're in a pit.
I love the fact that he shows this extra level of compassion to this person that's in a pit and begins to lift them out.
You know, it made me think about what our shepherd shared with us last week about being a church that is constantly connecting.
And in order to do that, it's kind of what Keith mentioned.
It's being alert to the needs of other people, but also making yourself available.
Maybe you're here this morning, you're like, listen, I have no help and maybe like situationally in your life. Yes, that's true. But I also want you to understand spiritually, you have an Ebed Melek, you have a servant king and his name is Jesus Christ.
And what's really interesting about this king, he's not like kings of old and he's not like kings today.
He's the king that takes on the form of a servant.
Everything you've experienced in the pit, he's been through, every challenge he's faced. That's the kind of king that we serve. And one of the things the Bible talks about, about Jesus as the king, you know, he was, when you looked at him, there was not like, well, that's an impressive guy. He said, people didn't even notice that that was him.
Like, there's nothing physically great about him.
But think about this. The guy that wore rags, the guy that was constantly going around to all these different places, did not have a place to lay his head, is the one that's bringing us that rope to bring us out.
And so if you're here today, and maybe you are in a pit, maybe, as it was mentioned today, sometimes you're in a pit because of your own doing. Sometimes you're in a pit because you're just being faithful. I don't care what got you in the pit.
We serve a king, a servant king, that drops that rope and provides a way out.
I also think about this morning, something that came across one of my devotionals that I thought was really neat timing. You might remember in Matthew 14, when another guy was sinking, his name was Peter.
He started to sink. But I want you to notice what he said next to Jesus when he sunk.
It wasn't, help me.
He didn't say, teacher, help me. He didn't say, jesus, help me. Do you know what he said?
Lord, help me.
Lord, save me.
And here's why that matters, is how you see him in the pit matters because there's another guy that was in a pit named Judas.
And one of the things that happened, if you remember Jesus in Matthew 26, says to him, hey, one of you guys is going to deny me? You remember what he said? He didn't say, lord, is it I?
Savior, is it I? Do you know what he said, Rabbi? Teacher, is it I?
The reason why I say that it's very dangerous to only see Jesus as a teacher and not your Lord.
Is he a Lord to you? Someone that can save you, that can rescue you, that can lift you out of a pit?
Or is he just a guy that shares some really good information?
Information never changed people. You can walk away from information. It's hard to walk away from a person.
And so maybe you're here today and you've never given your life to him, never made him Lord. I pray that you'll do so today. Maybe you're here today because you're in a pit, because you're serving and you're a strong person. But let me remind you, strong people sink.
Maybe you need to give your life to Christ today to go in the watery grave of baptism, to come out brand new.
We're going to have shepherds at every single one of the exits. You can go to them if you like, or we hope you come up forward and let us pray. For you. Whatever you're sinking in, whatever mud you're dealing with, I want you to remember this. God is in the mud. Whatever you have a need of today, Come while we stand and while we sing.
