Our church recently read through Jeremiah in our 2-year Bible reading plan, and in it we’ve beheld the devastating effects of sin and the wonder of God’s mercy.
We read of the astonishingly wicked trade of God’s people, giving up the Fountain of Living Water for broken cisterns that could never satisfy (Jeremiah 2:12-13).
In reading Jeremiah 38, I was arrested by the idea that Jeremiah was thrown into a muddy cistern for the crime of boldly proclaiming God’s Word to his people. What was once a pool for purification was, by disuse and neglect, now drained of its cleansing power. It had itself become like the broken cisterns Judah looked to for joy and life instead of God.
But even in the midst of the people’s wickedness, God promised to save a remnant. Though his people suffered a figurative death in their captivity, he would raise them from that grave and bring them again into the land of promise.
Like Joseph before him, Jeremiah was drawn from the pit in a way that prefigured the resurrection of the true Prophet of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. God would still send him through the remnant he would bring to life.
Because of his hope in the God who raises the dead, Jeremiah could proclaim God’s Word with boldness, even as he wept over the people’s wickedness and God’s judgment on those who would not repent (Jeremiah 9:1, 10). He could take risks by the order of God, because ultimately there’s no risk if God is “guarding you through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). The suffering in this life – including going to Christ and bearing his reproach or suffering shame for his name – they are for a little while (1 Peter 1:6-7; Hebrews 13:13).
May the Lord use this meditation on this passage to stir your heart to fresh faithfulness to the Word of God, away from the broken cisterns of the world and among those who would seek to quiet your witness to Christ and his gospel.
The Prophet’s Prison
Shattered cisterns the unchaste chase,
Till cleansing waters go to waste.
Purifying pool made a mire,
Now a prison for prophet fire.
Will you into the depths descend?
Go outside the gate to him?
Faith looked in the weeper’s well,
It beckoned up with grace to tell.
From the dark, faith reassurance gave:
God draws his servants from the grave.
