We're very glad tonight to have one part of the duo that will be preaching at our gospel mission come Sunday and for the next couple of weeks. Brother Mr. Colin Maxwell is away on deputation tonight, so he's in Bambridge, but we're glad to have Noel Shields, and they've been out for the last couple of days around the neighborhood, knocking doors, talking to people, inviting them along, and have had some really good conversations along the way, so we trust those people will come and listen whenever the gospel is proclaimed. But I'm handing over to Noel now, and he will do what he's going to do. and produce himself and bring a word to us. You're very welcome here, and we trust the Lord will bless you, not only tonight, but right through the mission time. Well, we'll thank Mr. Brown for the warm words of welcome. Nice to be with us here in the martyrs. We're certainly praying for God's blessing to be upon us here at this time of visitation. Thank the Lord for the opportunity of going out, outreach. You don't get to talk to everybody on outreach, but we do get to talk to some. And I always find that. I always find you do. A day of visitation, maybe a handful of people, but that'll be five or six people who've heard the gospel and the way of salvation. So, pray for that. Pray that God will bless us in the outreach work, bringing the gospel out to people, and that they'll hear the good news and be saved. So, we're glad. We're going to look together at God's word, Jeremiah. Mr. Brown was saying about Noah could do whatever he wants. Well, you wouldn't want to do that tonight. But we'll just have to bring a wee word together, and we pray that the Lord would really touch our hearts tonight. I want that to touch our hearts. The Lord's word to touch my heart. about the winning of the lost of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jeremiah 38. We're just going to break into reading. Jeremiah delivered a message. Got himself in trouble. People don't like the Word of God. They don't like the truth. And Jeremiah 38, he delivered the soul, delivered the message that God had given him. Well, now there was trouble. There was trouble. And we find him being arrested. I want to break into reading Jeremiah 38 and verse 6. "'Then took they Jeremiah and cast him into the dungeon "'of Micaiah the son of Hamilach, "'that was in the court of the prison. "'And they let down Jeremiah with cords. "'And in the dungeon there was no water but myrrh. "'So Jeremiah sunk in the myrrh. "'Now when Ebed-melak, the Ethiopian, "'one of the eunuchs which was in the king's house, "'heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon, The king then sitting in the gate of Benjamin, he bade Melak went forth out of the king's house, and spake to the king, saying, My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon, and he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is, for there is no more bread in the city. And the king commanded Ebed-Melek, the Ethiopian, saying, Take from thanks thirty men with thee, and take up Jeremiah the prophet out of a dungeon before he die. So Ebed-Milak took the men with him and went into the house of the king under the treasury, took thence old cast clouts and old rotten rags, and led them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah. And Ebed-Milak, the Ethiopian, said unto Jeremiah, Put now these old cast clouts and rotten rags under thine arm-holds under the cords. And Jeremiah did so. So they threw up Jeremiah with cords and took him up out of a dungeon, and Jeremiah remained in the court. of the prison. Amen. A wee word of prayer together. Father in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity of coming together. I pray for your help around the word of God. I bring this little address to the people. We pray our hearts will be touched to rescue the perishing, Lord, and care for the dying. I ask for help around your word in Jesus' name. Amen. We find our verse 13. So, they drew up Jeremiah with cords and took him up out of a dungeon. And here we have this man, Jeremiah, being rescued. At this moment in time, I live in one of the most beautiful parts of Northern Ireland. Maybe you say, well, that's my part where I live. Well, I live actually in the Kingdom of Morne. I'm not from there, but over the last number of years, I have lived in the Kingdom of Morne, an area surrounded with natural beauty. the mountains, and the sea, and the sites all around us. It's estimated about 50,000 people would come around the moorland area to visit and to walk the tracks around the mountains. This being so, there are many times that people end up in trouble. There are people fall, the people get injured, people fall sick, and they need help. So step forward, the Mourne Mountain Rescue Team. This is a team of volunteers, and it was founded about 1962. And when the buzzer goes, or whatever goes at our home, someone is lost, someone has not returned. These men, and maybe women in the team as well, I'm not really sure, they head out even in the very darkness of night, and they're searching and they're looking for that person who needs help, that person who's lost, they search out and look for them. Well, to be in this team, you had to be dedicated. To be in such a team, excuse me, I must be talking too much during the day. That's why I had the water beside me. Well, can we delete that wee bit? No. Well, to be in such a team, you had to be dedicated. And you have to be fit. Now, you must say, well, that's a young man's job. That's a young man's job. I would say that. I know a man who's on the team. He's 73 years old. 73 years old. And you have to carry all this equipment on your back up and down those mountains. Well, I want to tell you, I would have bothered enough going up and down those mountains without anything on my back, but to head out to search for rescue. And to help people. The people are brought back to their families. Sad to say there are occasions when they bring nothing back but a dead body. Someone dies on the mountain. But here we have this mountain rescue team. And here's what we find in this passage. It's not a mountain rescue team. It's a pit rescue team. And the leader is a man called Ebed Milak. And he and others, they rescue this man of God, this man of God, Jeremiah, from death. They rescue him from destruction, in a sense, and he's going to die in this pit. And they bring him up out of the pit. Well, I think about ourselves. We think about people around us, as we notice in the Word of God tonight. There are people around this community. There are people in your family. There may be people that belong to this congregation that need rescued. They need rescued. They need rescued, and they need to be brought to the Lord Jesus Christ. That great hymn says, Rescue the perishing, cure for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave. And so I asked every one of us here tonight, as we come to this message, this gospel campaign that's coming to your congregation and to this area, are you interested in this soul-saving business of rescuing the perishing? The great preacher C. H. Spurgeon said, my main business is the saving of souls. This one thing I do. Now, we have a wonderful picture of this in this particular historical passage. about rescuing the parish. And I just want to say a number of things, and I want to go through it quickly, although it's a dangerous thing to say when you're preaching, but I want to do it. I want to think of this man. I want to think about Ebed Milak and this rescue team. And you can see, first of all, about Ebed Milak and his pity. Because it tells us that this news came to his ears. Now, you can see it here in verse 7. This shocking news came to the ears of this man about Jeremiah. It was told him. It doesn't tell us who told him. It doesn't tell us how he got this message. But this message came to this man about Jeremiah. Jeremiah is put into a pit, and it touched his heart. His heart was touched. Oh, he didn't say, that's wonderful news. Oh, I can't wait to tell my friends. I can't wait to publish this about Jeremiah. He didn't say, well, you know something? I've heard about him. He's a troublemaker. He's preaching against this country and everything about it. I don't care about him. Not one bit of it. Not a bit of it. This man had sympathy. He had pity for Jeremiah. way Jeremiah is. You can think where Jeremiah was. He was in captivity. Verse 6, they took Jeremiah, and we find here that they took him. It means a word to come in to carry or to seize. We find these men coming in all their hatred, in all their bitterness against Jeremiah, and they take a hold of Jeremiah, and, you know, they bring him into captivity. Jeremiah's not free anymore. He's not free. He's in captivity. When I do outreach, when you do it, and I'm glad of those who help in outreach of this church, you're dealing with people who's in captivity. There's people held, and they're held. They're held by drugs. They're held by immorality. They're held by sin. They're held by the devil. 2 Timothy 2 verse 20 talks about those that they may cover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will. The devil has people around this whole community, and he has them really in the palm of his hands. And they're not fighting, and they can't fight to get out of His hands. He takes them captive at His will. He does that. There's people today, and they're held captive by the devil, and they're held captive by sin. Remember, the Lord Jesus said in John 8, verse 34, that whosoever committeth sin is a servant of sin. Why don't you meet them? And you do outreach work and street work, and you meet people, and you only have to talk to them a few moments. and you can know that that person is held in captivity with sin. They come out, you can smell the dope, you know what that's like. Smoke's bad enough, I want to tell you, but anyone who, I don't know how anybody would ever smoke that thing, a dope, it's rotten. You can even smell it going up the path. And there are people, there are people, and they're held by sin, they're held by the devil. And I'm asking you tonight, Glenn, do you care? Does it touch your heart tonight? The news is going out all around us, there are people tonight, they're held by the devil, and they're held by sin. Well, do we pity them? Do we feel for them? Remember, that's how we once were. In my life, myself, and you, we were once held by the devil and sin. And this man, he pitied him when he heard about his sceptivity and about the condition, because in verse 7, it tells us that Jeremiah was in the dungeon. And the first mention of that word for dungeon in the Bible is Genesis 37, verse 20, when it talked about Joseph. And they cast him into, listen, some pit. So it's just not a little hole in a rock. It's a pithole, as we'll see in a moment or two. And this is where they cast him down, and do you know something? It was deep, because verse 6 tells us, they let him down into it. Now, I do not know, I don't know how deep this hole was that Jeremiah was in, but it certainly was deep. They had to let him down, there had to be ropes put in place, and they put him down into this pit. He was down in the very depths of despair, at the bottom of the pit. You can see there in Lamentations 3, verse 55, the commentator Barnes says that Jeremiah's referring to this time that he was in the dungeon. And he said these words, I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. And if you connect those two, I'm not sure, but that's what the commentator Barnes said. He's at his very lowest. He's in a place of darkness as well. We can throw that into this at the moment. Now, you look around you. You look around the streets here, and there are people. You meet them. Now, perhaps you go into the city here of Belfast, and you see them, and there are people down at the very bottom of the pit. They're lying on the streets. They're held by drugs. They're held by alcohol, whatever the case may be. And there are people tonight, and they're down in the very depths, the very depths of sin. Jeremiah had no ability to get out here. He couldn't get out himself, he couldn't get out. But here he was, stuck at the bottom of a pit. And there are people tonight, excuse me, and they're stuck at the bottom of the pit and in darkness. You walk past them. You work with them. You see them. Look around us today. Lift up our eyes around this whole area. Only walk around the streets. Only knock doors around this area. You'll meet people in a spiritual sense, a bit like Jeremiah. They're in a pit. They're in a deep pit. And there are people in deep trouble tonight around this community. And I think also about this man being in the pit and his condition, that it was dangerous because, verse 6, he sunk in the mire. Jophesa said that he sunk in the mire to the neck. And so we can see this man, Jeremiah, he's down in the pit. He had no water, it tells us. There's no food, there's nothing. Do you know what he was facing? Do you know what Jeremiah was facing down here in the pit? He was facing death. He was gonna die. Could you picture him standing in that pit, the mire, sinking in the darkness? No food, everything. He was in a very serious condition because verse six says he was like to die from hunger. We can look at people today around this whole community, and they have their comforts. They don't seem to be in a pit at all. They have their homes, they have their televisions, remote control. Some of us were talking the other day about how we just have the remote control now. You don't have to get up. But I remember the time when I was growing up, you had to get up. And there was only about three or four stations, and the television used to jump up and down, some of us can remember that, and it used to say, it's your turn to get up, and you had to maybe go over and turn it and stop the picture, and you only sat down five seconds later, and boom, there she went again, those old black and white televisions and so on. But nevertheless, people, there's all these things. But you and I know tonight, because we are people of the book, and people of the Bible here, we know they're in danger. We know they're lost tonight. We know they're in sin. We know they're heading down towards hell. And I'm asking you tonight, are we like Christ, when he looked over that multitude in Matthew chapter 14, and he saw the great multitude, he was moved with compassion on them. He felt for all of these people who were lost. I even think of Luke 19 verse 41, when he saw the multitude, he looked over the city. What did he do? What did the Lord Jesus Christ do? He wept. Oh, I want to ask myself tonight, when's the last time I cried for sinners? And when's the last time that you were broken for the lost? Is your hearts touched? Are our hearts touched tonight? Someone was saying about Noel Stevenson, and Noel's well-known in this congregation. It was Haller we were talking about Noel yesterday. And I remember, as I was saying, I was asked to go to a... Noel was going to a wee talk about children's work, and I was... I don't know why I was in the ministry or in the college, but I was running about. That guy says, I'll go to this, and I was glad I went. And Noel got up, Noel is Noel is Noel, and he talked about talking about the children and preaching to the children. And he says, you know, there's some nights I have an orange juice night. And he says, I get more boys and girls in for that night. Now, we know that, of course. He said, we get more in. And then he said this, I would give those little children the shirt of my back. And he says, because as I look at them, most of them will be in hell. And that touched my heart that night. Because I thought about my mates. I thought about my friends I brought up in the village. The football mates. I played football for different teams. I run about with, where are they? I was saved. Oh yes, there were certain ones of my friends were saved. But he said, the majority of them, he says, they'll be in hell. And what a great burden for the lost. I'm asking you, do we feel this? Do we feel this in our heart tonight, as we look around us? There are people tonight, and they're in a pit, and they don't believe it. I talk to people even today, and they look at me as if I'm stupid, and all the rest of it, and what am I trying to tell them about the Bible, about God, and the way of salvation? But we know, we know the Bible's true tonight, and we know they're lost, and we know they're heading down towards hell. We can see it, and we're trying to warn them. We're trying to warn them about the way of salvation, and come to Jesus Christ. Well, I'm glad there's one man in the kingdom at that time was worried about Ebed Milak. And there may be people not worried tonight about the condition of the unsaved around this community, but I'm glad you are. I'm glad you have a burden, a concern to send the light, to send the blessed gospel light to people. So we find this here, I'm just running through it, Ebed Milak and his pitting in, he bent me like an hesitation." Because we find here what he did. When he heard this came to him, the news about Jeremiah in a pit, and you know, he sets out to get him out of the pit. And what's the first thing? What's the first thing he did? He went to see the king. That's what he did. He went to see the king. Zedekiah, verse 8, it tells us, he bet Melek went forth to the king's house, and he spake to the king, saying, so here's what we have. We find him praying or petitioning here wisely. He went to the king. He went to the king. He went to the one who had all power at this particular time, one who had the authority. And so he went to the king. He went to see him about getting Jeremiah here out of the pit. And it is then responsible for all of us here tonight to pray. We need to pray for this mission. We need to first of all pray. That's what 1 Timothy 2 verse 1 tells us. First of all, not last of all. Not last of all. Sometimes we put prayer at the last, maybe. Maybe it's in the middle, but listen. We need to go to see the King first. We need to pray. And it's going to take time to do that. It's going to mean, hold on a minute, we need to stop some things. Sometimes we're too busy, too busy to pray. Not an awful thing if you're a Christian here tonight and you're too busy, too busy to pray, too busy to come to prayer meetings, too busy to have your prayer time with God in the morning before you go to work or get home at night, you're bailed out and you have no time to pray. First of all, If we're going to see people saved in the mission, I think we need to pray. We need to pray to God. Remember, it says, Psalm 2, the lowest of reference to Christ, where we take the words, verse, He had asked of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance. We need to pray. I need to pray he did it privately, because notice verse 8, it says he went forth to the king's house, so it just seemed to be a private meeting, a private meeting with this particular king. But remember, child of God, we can meet with King Jesus privately. It's great to go to a prayer meeting, and we should come together to the prayer meeting, and we need to pray together, and we need to pray for this mission. We need to seek the face of God to save souls at this mission, and we certainly should do it, and we will do it during the mission. But privately, privately, you can go to see the king. When there's no one watching you, there's no one with you, and you're home. in your home. Have you a little place in your home? And that's where you meet with God. That's where you're on your knees. That's where you're crying unto the Lord with all of your heart. Remember the Lord Jesus tells us even that in Matthew 6, verse 6. And when thy prayers enter into thy closet, and when they shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret. We need to get alone with God for this mission. You need to get alone. with God for this mission. Maybe if loved one's not saved, get along with God. Get along with God. You may have to order your day differently. You may have to put some things to the one side, but we need to go to see the King. We need to pray. We need to pray. And he prayed sincerely as well. We find there verse 6 and all, or verse 9, sorry. He tells the king about the men who had done evil and all they had done to Jeremiah the prophet when they cast him in the dungeon. And he's like the dying hunger. He's praying with all of his heart. He's telling the king. He's pleading with the king. He's pleading for Jeremiah. He's going to die. He's going to die in this pit. There's no water in this pit. There's no food in this pit. There's no food in this city. And this man's sinking down in the mire, and we've got to get him out. We've got to get him out. Do you hear him? He means business. He means business with the king. He's crying with all of his heart, you see. And you and I, we need to praise and say, Lord, we want people rescued. We want them brought out of the pit. We want them brought to you. We want them brought to Christ. We must pray with all our heart, you see. Remember it says with Hannah, and I think of that dear woman in 1 Samuel 1 verse 15. Remember, she was accused of being drunk. She says, I've poured out my soul before the Lord. When's the last time? When's the last time that was you? When's the last time that was me? I poured out my soul before the Lord. Oh, when something happens, when difficulties come in your family, you're definitely pouring out your soul. That's one thing about afflictions and troubles and trials. They get us that we will pour out our soul. But when did we ever pour out our soul for sinners stuck and held in captivity in sin? And you notice here, I'm running through it, he prayed swiftly, because as soon as he heard, we find he set himself a prayer. He set himself a prayer. He heard in verse 7 and verse 8 then. He went immediately. He went immediately. And he was solace here in the place of prayer. And everybody had made reference to that particular verse. In 1 Timothy 2 verse 1, first of all, first of all, we are to pray. So let's not be idle or drag our heels about this. Let's pray. I notice he prayed successfully because the king heard him, and he gave him permission in verse 10 to get 30 men and to take up Jeremiah out of the pit. We have the authority to preach the gospel. We have the authority. Do you remember the Lord Jesus said in Mark 16, verse 15, go in all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We have the authority. The king says, go and get them out. Go and bring them out. Praise the Lord. The Lord has sent us out around this community and you around this community at this time with the gospel of Jesus Christ to get people out of the pit. get them out and to bring them to Christ. I know we can't do it, but the Lord uses us, as we'll see in a moment here. So we pray. We pray with all our heart. I want you to pray for this mission. I want you to pray for myself and for Mr. Brown and his work as well, and Colin's work, and the singers becoming along to sing. I want you to pray that God would use us to rescue the parishioners at this time, and that God would hear us. and we'll see people brought out of the pit. I want you to think lastly here about the performance of Ebel Bilak. We find here, in fact, his name means servant of the king. Servant of the king. And you, lad, tonight, you're a servant of the king. Years ago, it was not my case and not yours. We were servants of the devil. We were servants of sin. And you, lad, you're a servant of the king. The King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. You wouldn't change it. I certainly wouldn't change it in any shape or form. But let me think to him about his performance, he of this man. Think about his men. Because you'll find there that he took with him the men. He was told to take 30 men. So he took the men with him. He needed help to get them out. This was not a one-man show. No, not a bit of it. Not even two men, no, no. No, 30 men. 30 men is what, and there he is, the leader. He bent me like, he's 30 men behind him, and he's going to get Jeremiah out of the pit. He realized he couldn't do it himself. He couldn't do it. And he realized he needed help to do it. And this mission is not a two-man show, not calling on me. We need you. It's all of us. And I'm glad there are people out here already that's been doing outreach work and giving out invitations, just dropping them in. We can mop up some areas, knock on whatever the case may be. But we're all in this together. I need you. And Mr. Brown needs you in this congregation. And calmly, we need you. Remember, in 1 Corinthians 3 verse 9, for we are laborers together with God. And he's writing there to the church, he's not writing to ministers. He's writing to the ordinary five-eighths in the congregation, and he says, we're laborers together with God. Every one of us has a part to play. Not having time to look at all that, the sowing and the watering the seed. 1 Corinthians 3, verse 6, then some to pray. Remember, Apostle Paul said, Romans 14, verse 30, and that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. Then the woman, the little witty woman, casting in her might. Remember, there's financial needs as well. We're all in this together. You say, what can I do? Well, pray. Come, but here's something you can do. Invite people to come. Invite people to come. You'll be speaking to people that I'll not be speaking to or can't be speaking to. It may be workmates, it may be family. You say, no, I've asked, I'm fed up, I've asked them many times. Ask them again. Ask them again and again. Say, listen, you'll definitely, you'll come some night with a mission. You'll come some night with me to the mission. And if it means taking them for a feast supper or so afterwards, well, that's so be it. Wouldn't it be great to get them in on to the side of the gospel for a price of a feast supper and get one for yourself as well? But there's little work you can do. I did a mission in Porto Fogo with Mr. Morey. It was a remarkable mission. And for one particular reason, the only saved that was at those meetings, some nights there's over 20 and more. And do you know what brought them in? People in the congregation asked them to come. And that's how it used to be. I know years ago, when I first got saved, I was at a mission. Come to a mission, my friends, your family, you're coming to a mission. And that's how it used to be years ago. Let's do it again. Let's get back to this old-fashioned way of bringing people to the mission. Invite your people. Ask your friend. Ask your family to come to hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, it's not a one-man show. Say, well, Noel and Colin, oh, they're right there, and they're knocking on doors. They can ask them. Oh, yes, they can do it. That's fair enough. We have no problem. No problem playing our part, but what about your part? So you get home in the night, get a pen and paper out, and get a list down, and write down, write, I'm asking this one. I'm going to write this one. Now, we have a great way of doing it, haven't we? You don't even have the phone now. You can write a text and just write, I just wonder what night would suit you to come to the mission. All right. Bang, right into the address book. Just wondering. And pray, say, Lord, now I want this phone to go back. I have asked people to come. Ding. Hope it'll all go on. and they'll give you a night to come back. So let's work, I want to say, let us all work together. And here's what's his men, and then his methods, old clots and old rags and cords, to bring them out. And so we find here the old way. I just want to put that into that, old clots, old rags, the old way. Do you know something? I've been preaching the gospel for many years, like Mr. Brown here. We never want to go away from the old way. We never want to go. And I'm glad I'm still preaching the old way. They're preaching at the cross. They're preaching at the cross of Christ. For it says, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. We don't want any fancy methods. One time there was a particular town in that neighborhood, they're going to have a gospel mission. All right, they're going to have a mission. But do you know one of the first things they did? They held a barn dance. All right? And then here's something else, they're going to have a pub quiz. And then they had that old program, some of you ladies probably watched it, can't cook, won't cook. And they were going to do that. And then they were going to have a musician come into the service. And he was going to do, well, he was going to cut the head of somebody, I don't know, and put it back on, I don't know. But some people objected to that. And rightly so, they should have objected to the whole lot. We don't need the new methods. I don't like them. And I don't like when people say, we're going to change this and that and the other to get people in. We'll be changing nothing at all. Christ is the attraction. He's the attraction. He's the one we want to lift up the old way. We want to keep to the preaching of Jesus Christ. And the message was given to him here, too. He put down—he says, put these under your armpits. Put them under. And what's our cry to the people? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I shall up and see him. That's the message. Repent and believe the gospel. That's the message we shout down the pit to people. Repent and believe the gospel. I don't preach the gospel, and I just call, say, oh, you're okay, just make a few wee alterations here in your life, and you'll be all right. They'll still be stuck in the bottom of the pit. We need to get them out. There's power in the blood, aren't you glad of that? And there's power in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so we preach, and we tell the people to turn to Jesus Christ. We find him at his might. He threw him up, he threw up Jeremiah with cords, listen, and he took him out of the dungeon. Took him out. And I know I can't take anybody out, and I know you can't take anybody out, but God uses us to bring this great message to people, that they'll hear that Jesus saves and his blood washes whiter than the snow. And I hope, I hope we'll see people being taken out of the horrible pit. He took me out of a horrible pit, the psalmist said, and out of the murray clay, and he set my feet upon a rock, and he established my goings. That's what we want to see at this mission. But there's a little work that all of us can do. So let's put our hand to the plow, every one of us together. Let's pray together, work together, invite people together, come to the meetings. And when we have old-fashioned singing, we love singing the old-fashioned hymns, we love it. and to trust the old-fashioned preaching, the old-fashioned conversions, and see the Lord come at this particular time. So, I thank you very, very much, Mr. Browde, this session, for inviting Colin and I along to hold this gospel campaign, and I trust the Lord will bless it abundantly. And to be nice, around this district, there's things happening, these meetings, and people come in. But we need to pray for that, and we need to work for that. So, may the Lord bless us. Mr. Browde, thank you.