Good morning, everyone. Welcome to God's house. We pray that we may have a blessing as we worship the Lord our God. Special welcome also to visitors. And you're reminded that after the worship service, we do have a time of fellowship in the gym, and all are invited to join us for that. In Psalm 100, verses 4 through 5, we read, enter his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endures to all generations. Will you join me now in singing the pre-service hymn that you can find on page 2 of your bulletin, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. I'll now welcome every blessing till my heart is filled. Please be strong, O Lord, and strong in me, shall my weary times no more. Raise the mountain, lift up the ridge, and from high redeem me, my Lord. Jesus, our King, let us sing to you, of God. He to rescue, he will lead you. Winter holds his precious blood. Blood is ♪ In free from sinning ♪ ♪ I shall see thy loving face ♪ ♪ And in my heart be dreaming ♪ ♪ That I'll see thy suffering face ♪ ♪ And my Lord know how great they are in me ♪ O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, As congregation together, we confess our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. And we hear God's greeting to us, grace to us and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We continue in worship with the singing of a song entitled Redemption and Forgiveness, Psalter 362. And we sing all three verses. ♪ Above the hills I cry aloud to Thee ♪ ♪ I hear Thy word ♪ O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? my soul shall raise and look down to the Lord till night arrives I look for Him to drive away my night Ev'ranging saints and kings, their wealth provide. For mercy and redemption, full and free, with Thee abide. From sin and evil, my people they sing, His arm, almighty, will their saints redeem. We will now listen to the law of God, a law that in many ways reminds us of our sin and our inability to be perfect, and yet it drives us again and again to the Savior whose almighty arm is able to redeem us. We will listen to God's law from Exodus 20 and the summary of God's law from Mark 12, and then we will sing in response, Psalter 326, and we sing again all four verses there. Here the law of God and God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath. or that is in the water under the earth, you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's. And then reading from Mark 12, when a scribe came and asked him, which is the first commandment of all? Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. to thee, where'er it shall be, it shall go, to shine as the roses glow. Take not thy truth from me, there in thy home forevermore my daily walk shall be. Because thy truth I see, That to thee, Lord, our thanks appear, In fulness I will see. Thou art the lens which I have found, We open our Bibles this morning to the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 38 and a little bit of 39. We'll only read part of the story. The context, of course, is wider. If you start back in chapter 36, you'll read the full story. Jeremiah is living in a time of right when Babylon is coming to attack Jerusalem. And the kings at that time were not godly kings. But wicked kings, even like King Ahab, which the pastor is also working through with the series of Elijah, King Ahab is very much similar to the kings in Jeremiah's day. But we begin in chapter 38, we read the first 18 verses there, and then chapter 39, and we read verses 15 to 18. Now Shephatiah the son of Matan, Gadaliah the son of Pasher, Jucal the son of Shalamiah, and Pasher the son of Melchiah, heard the words that Jeremiah had spoken to all the people, saying, Thus says the Lord, he who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. But he who goes over to the Chaldeans shall live. His life shall be as a prize to him, and he shall live. Thus says the Lord, this city shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon's army, which shall take it. Therefore the princes said to the king, please let this man be put to death, for thus he weakens the hands of the men of war who remain in the city and the hands of all the people by speaking such words to them. For this man does not seek the welfare of this people, but their harm. Then Zedekiah the king said, look, he is in your hand, for the king can do nothing against you. So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the dungeon of Melchiah, the king's son, which was in the court of the prison. And they let Jeremiah down with ropes. And in the dungeon, there was no water but mire. So Jeremiah sank in the mire. Now Ebed-Millik, the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs who was in the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in a dungeon. When the king was sitting in the gate of Benjamin, Ebed-Millik went out of the king's house and spoke 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 likely to die from hunger in the place where he is, for there is no more bread in the city. Then the king commanded Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, saying, Take from here thirty men with you, and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon before he dies. So Ebed-Melech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king under the treasury, and took from there old clothes and old rags, and led them down by ropes into the dungeon to Jeremiah. Then Ebed Milik, the Ethiopian, said to Jeremiah, please put these old clothes and rags under your armpits, under the ropes. And Jeremiah did so. So they pulled Jeremiah up with ropes and lifted him out of the dungeon. And Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison. Then Zedekiah the king sent, and had Jeremiah the prophet brought to him at the third entrance of the house of the Lord. And the king said to Jeremiah, I will ask you something. Hide nothing from me. Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, if I declare it to you, will you not surely put me to death? And if I give you advice, you will not listen to me? So Zedekiah the king swore secretly to Jeremiah, saying, as the Lord lives who made our very souls, I will not put you to death, nor will I give you into the hand of these men who seek your life. Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, if you surely surrender to the king of Babylon's princes, then your soul shall live. This city shall not be burned with fire, and you and your house shall live. But if you do not surrender to the king of Babylon's princes, then this city shall be given into the hand of the Chaldeans. They shall burn it with fire, and you shall not escape from their hand. And turning over to chapter 39, beginning at verse 15. Meanwhile, the word of the Lord had come to Jeremiah while he was shut up in the court of the prison, saying, Go and speak to Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I will bring my words upon this city for adversity and not for good. And they shall be performed in that day before you, but I will deliver you in that day, says the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but your life shall be as a prize to you, because you have put your trust in me, says the Lord. So far the reading and the text for the sermon that will be read is based on this passage, this story of Ebed Milik. Before the reading of the sermon, we stand and we sing from Psalter 13, verses 1, 2, and 6. ♪ Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh ♪ All the world's to me I'll save and defend, That day I'm alive, should rather be at wind, While all the world is near me courage'n to send. ♪ Of God's last return ♪ ♪ How can I, my neighbor, now sit and stare? ♪ ♪ My soul and the air that I breathe ♪ I met my owner in an uncertain day. I'm ready for glory, for others we've met. They surely have come to themselves be and stay. Following the reading of the sermon, the song we will sing together is from Psalter 442. 442, and we will sing verses three and four. The sermon that is being read has been prepared by Pastor Cranendonk. Dear congregation, a man was once put in a pit, a pit so deep that he was let down with cords so he would not fall to his death, but die a slow death instead. This pit had likely been used to store water, but water was now scarce, so only mud was left. And he began to sink away in the mud. How terrible. You know who this man was. He was not a criminal receiving his just punishment. He was a prophet of God who had proclaimed the word of God for years to the people of Israel. His name was Jeremiah. Must his ministry end this way? Will God's enemies conquer God's messenger? Will they conquer God's word? And will that word prove to be untrue after all? Was there none to deliver him? Jeremiah heard something. When he looked up, he saw a face, a friendly face. He heard that man say, Jeremiah, we are here to rescue you. And then gave him instructions how they would get him out of the pit. Who is that man who peered over the edge of the pit? He was a man who had been conquered. by the word of God, and had come to trust in that word. His name is Ebed-Melech, and we see in him the grace of God. The theme for the sermon then is God's grace in an Ethiopian servant, and we consider three thoughts. First, singular grace in sinful times. Second, serving grace in needful times. And thirdly, saving grace in fearful times. first and singular grace in sinful times. The wonderfulness of Ebed-Millik wanting to rescue Jeremiah from the pit is made the greater when we contrast him with those who put Jeremiah into the pit. That was not a nice thing to do, right children? The people who threw him into that pit to die must have been very mean. That's right. Why would they do such a thing? They did not like Jeremiah. Why did they not like Jeremiah? They said, he always talks bad about us. He's always so negative, always warning, always declaring our sin, always calling to repentance. He tells us to do the things that we know are foolish, like surrender to the Babylonians. We do not like him. He calls us sinners, abominable, filthy, as if we are that bad. He calls us to repent and sorrow over sin and confess our sin and turn to the Lord for mercy. No, they did not like that. Maybe you find that understandable. You would not like Jeremiah to be your minister. You would not like to hear so much doom and gloom. Tell me something uplifting, practical, and suitable for me. Tell me something much more positive, not this message of Jeremiah. Maybe you understand why they did not like him. But when these thoughts come up, what do they show? Could they show that we have a problem, not so much with Jeremiah, but with the one who sent Jeremiah, God himself? In Jeremiah 1, the Lord says, I ordained you a prophet to the nations. He touched his mouth and said, behold, I have put my words in your mouth. Speak to them all that I command you. That was not easy for Jeremiah. Sometimes he also felt, I cannot do this anymore. At one point he said, I am not going to preach anymore. But he said, that word was in my heart as a fire shut up in my bones and I could not keep it in. God was sending him with this message. The people forgot Jeremiah was only a messenger. In resisting the message of Jeremiah, they were resisting God himself. What a serious thing it is to resist God and say that God must shut his mouth. How dangerous it is to try to stop God from speaking and saying he can speak nice things, but he can't speak things that are painful for me to hear. That is not how you are in church, is it? Don't you want ministers to speak exactly what God says in his word, nothing more and nothing less, whether it hurts or whether it is so comforting? Speak the word. When we fight against the word, when we cut it up and only take part of it, when we fight against God, then we destroy ourselves. Everything God speaks is for our good. Why did God give Jeremiah his message? First, because it was true. God always speaks the truth, and that's a mercy. Sin is a reality. Judgment is a reality. The need of repentance is a reality. Exactly when we push these realities aside as if they were fables or the products of someone who is a little too gloomy, we need to hear them all the more. Well, why do we need to hear them? Why does God send that message? Not only because it is true, but secondly, God is merciful. God called Jeremiah. God put those words in his mouth. God enabled Jeremiah to continue year after year because God's mercy is so great. Mercy moved him to warn those people. Mercy moves a doctor to come to someone who is destroying his body by his addiction and say, if you continue on, you will die. You need help. Mercy makes a man stand in front of a collapsed bridge and say, don't come any farther or else you will crash and die. Mercy sees sinners heading to hell and warns them. It sees sinners living in sin and shows them the sinfulness of their life and calls them to repentance and to turn to the God of grace. Is that negative? Is that depressing? Imagine if the Lord stopped sending his messengers Imagine if Jeremiah preached once and the people set it aside and God said, I told them and I'm not saying it again, and let them live on in their sin and perish. That is a terrifying thought. The most frightful thing is to be left in sin without hearing any warnings or calls to repentance. See how foolish it is to resist the message of sin and judgment, the call to repentance and the promise of mercy, to tell God to stop speaking, The princess did that. That is why they put Jeremiah into the pit. That makes it so amazing that Ebed-Melech ghosts the king and pleads for the king to spare Jeremiah. Why does he do so? The end of chapter 39 tells us he does so because you have put your trust in me, Ebed-Millik. That's why. He has become convinced of the truth of Jeremiah's message as God's word. He knows that message is needed. He wants to rescue Jeremiah so that Jeremiah might still speak that word in Jerusalem. What made Ebed-Millik differ from those princes? We can't point to his upbringing. Four of the six times we read of Ibn Milik, he is called Ibn Milik the Ethiopian. Ethiopians lived to the south of Egypt. That was against them because they did not belong to God's covenant people. The Lord made his covenant with Abraham and his seed. He had set them apart from all the other nations whom he left in the darkness of heathenism. Even the Lord Jesus later would say, salvation is of the Jews and I have not come but for the lost sheep of Israel. What could we expect then from an Ethiopian who was not naturally part of this covenant people who received the revelation of salvation? On top of that, somehow he came into the court of Judah's king. We do not know whether he was captured and made a slave and gradually received more responsibilities or whether his parents were already in Israel. What we know is that he was in the king's court That court was not a godly place. There he may have heard something of Israel's God, but the message he received was very mixed. He would have sensed the hatred and resistance of the people there for Jeremiah. He would have seen ungodliness mixed with the occasional visit to the temple. At best, the royal court gave him a mixed message about the Jewish religion. In the midst of that, he was not allowed to go into the Lord's courts to witness the sacrifices, worship with the people, and receive the Lord's blessing there because he was an Ethiopian heathen. What could we expect from Ibed Milik? Yet despite being from outside the church and having such bad examples in the church, he is the only one we read of seeking to spare Jeremiah out of a reverence for God's Word. He was mastered by that word, learned to bow for that word, and cling to that word. That is why he wanted to see Jeremiah's spirit. Why him? Why not some covenant child who had godly parents that instructed him, who was a Hebrew of the Hebrews? Why Ebert Millich? Sometimes God grips people from the world who have everything going against them to put to shame those who have had so many privileges. He did so in a time of Christ's ministry as well, didn't he? When a centurion believed, the Lord Jesus said, I have not found so great faith. No, not in Israel. Then he continued, and they shall come from the east and the west and they will sit down with Abraham and the children of the kingdom will be cast out. What a warning that is, also maybe for some of us here. You have come to church year after year. You are so unspeakably privileged, and yet all the while resist the Word of God. What a fearful thought that you would be cast out. What a call that is to repentance. We look again at Ibn Milik and see everything against him, and yet God shows mercy to him because God's grace is free and sovereign. Is that the story of your life? Is the story of your life God's free and sovereign grace? You ask, what made me to differ from others? I was not better. And then you don't look down on Ebert Millich anymore as someone who had everything against him. You say, that's me. Everything against me. The worst problem was inside me. Yet God showed mercy. What reason for humble adoration and amazement at the grace of God to you? And what an encouragement it is to know that God's grace is free and sovereign towards Ibn Malik and towards you, and therefore maybe towards anyone around you. Will he not magnify his grace toward others, your family, relatives, friends, and coworkers? You can then look at anyone with hope in a God of sovereign grace. And that is a great encouragement then to bring that word to them and to pray for them. When God shows that grace and gives that grace, how does it show? We see, secondly, serving grace in needful times. Ebed-Melech was surrounded with so much hardness, sin, and rejection of God's Word. That sinful context makes the greatness of God's grace in Ebed-Melech shine the clearer, often the darker it is, the clearer the candle shines. And here, in the darkness of hardness and rebellion against God and his word, Ibn Milik shows something when he goes to the king. This Ethiopian eunuch served the king in his house. He had contact with the king in a way that many others in Israel did not have. But he was a servant, nonetheless, and a foreigner and stranger at that. He was certainly much below the princes of Israel, who had such an influence on King Zedekiah. Yet when he hears what the king let those princes do to Jeremiah, he goes to that king. The king is in the gate of Benjamin, maybe to inspect the defenses or encourage the troops defending the city against the Babylonians besieging them. Whatever the case, Ibn Milik does not wait for the king to come home. He goes to the king and speaks to him in verse 9. He says, My Lord, the King, these men have done evil and all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, who they have cast into the dungeon. Fear does not keep him back. He testifies of the evil that the princes have done to Jeremiah. Even though Jeremiah has been given up to death, he stands there to defend him. He does so with wisdom. He does not come rushing into Zedekiah's presence, shaking his fist. He speaks with the respect that a king deserves. Because of his office, he calls him, my lord, the king. He also avoids charging the king directly, but he lays the blame on those who were insistent on having Jeremiah die, the princes. He avoids giving occasion to the king to say, I could not help it. Ibn Milad says, I know the princes are primarily responsible, but you are king. He appeals then to the king's authority to write this again in a fearless and yet a wise way. As we see Ibed-Milek before King Zedekiah, we see that he rightly bears his name, Ibed-Milek, because Ibed means servant, and Milek means king. Servant of the king was his name. Likely, when he became the king's servant, they said, you can't keep that strange Ethiopian name your parents gave you. We will give you another name that is fitting for your position. You are to serve the king, so we will call you Ibed-Milek. to remind you of what you are to be. But here we see He has come to serve a far greater King, not Zedekiah, but the King of Kings. Through the Word of God, He had met a greater King, a King who has all power, a King who has all sovereignty and authority. He had become a servant to this King. The Lord had shown His greatness to Ebed-Melech, that He fears God more than that spineless, unpredictable King Zedekiah. He fears God more than all those cruel princes because the heavenly king has become his king. Sometimes we think that tenderness to God's word is related to weakness, but it is actually the secret of strength. In the way of receiving that word and meeting in it the great king of kings, you learn to fear him and no one else. Maybe if you are honest, you admit that you are afraid of man, afraid of what others say and do, afraid of them smirking or laughing at you, afraid of them slandering you or hurting you. Who of us can say, I am never afraid of man? We have that problem. What is the cure? Well, first, what is the problem? God is small, and people are big to us. And therefore, people mean more to us than God, either because their eyes have never been opened to see the glory of God, or we have lost sight of His greatness again. What reason then we have to meditate on who God is, to open His Word, which He uses to reveal His glory as the King over all. When He meets us through His Word, He becomes great. great in our hearts and lives, in such a way that people will become small. When you see the King in His glory, you can say, the Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Ibn Malik displays a beautiful combination of both God-given boldness and wisdom that makes him a true servant of the King. This grace also enables him to serve the welfare of others Service to God is never at odds with service to others. When you speak to others in service to God, you are serving their true good. The way for our words and actions to be means of good for our family, friends, acquaintances, and neighbors is by bringing them God's word in service to God. God's word is what will do them good. What lessons in serving grace we are given when we see Ebed-Millet go to the king with a boldness and wisdom in submission to God and His word. We see also this serving grace when he goes to Jeremiah. King Zedekiah comes across as a weak and indecisive man. He lets the princes throw Jeremiah into the pit to die, but when Ebed-Millet comes, he says to him, go ahead and rescue Jeremiah. In verse 10 of chapter 38, he says, take from here 30 men with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon before he dies. How amazing are God's ways to rescue this prophet. Ibn Milad takes these 30 men, whether to help with the rescue effort or to keep others from hindering the effort. And before he goes to the pit, he goes to a room in the house of the king because he knows that old rags and worn-out clothes are stored there. He takes some worn-out rags and some pieces of rope and heads for the pit. When he comes there, he calls out and gives Jeremiah instructions. And his men let down two long ropes, holding on either end of each rope so that the two loops dangle down to either side of Jeremiah. He also lowers the two bundles of rags and calls out, Jeremiah, put that rope underneath your arm. Put those rags between your arm and the rope on both sides. Once it is all in place, they begin to pull slowly, slowly, more, more, until he is out of the mud. And then they pull him up out of the pit. There is Jeremiah, rescued. And what does this show again? Serving grace. Serving grace, which is both compassionate and wise. Serving grace made him want to rescue Jeremiah because Jeremiah was a prophet of God. It also made him want to rescue him in a way that would inflict the least pain possible. Sometimes we wonder, why does the scriptures record such details in an account? Why does it give such attention to some old rotting rags? That little detail shows Ibn Milik's compassion. He wants to spare Jeremiah from suffering. Does serving grace make you compassionate as well? Do you no longer think, what is the possible cost and potential hardship? If there is any risk or sacrifice, then I will stay where I am and not stretch out my hands to help. Or do you ask, How can I best serve, best show help and compassion? Serving grace fills our hearts with compassion. It moves our hands toward those in need and asks, how can I help in the best way possible to them? Has God's grace made you one who has compassion for those in need? One who weeps with those who weep? One who suffers with those who suffer? One who desires to help those in need? One who has a special love for the people of God in their distress and a special concern for the unconverted in their troubles? Does God not call each of us to live not for ourselves but for others in service to God? Is the effect of God's word mastering a person not that she realizes she is no longer queen but servant? Servant of who? The king. Which king? Is it not King Jesus, the one who is both king and servant, and as such is the source of all that grace? We are hearing about Ebed-Melech, servant of the king, but we are pointed to Ebed-Yahweh, the servant of Jehovah. He came as such a servant and no fear of man could keep him from serving his God. He testified before the Jewish leaders and always said the truth. He was always faithful, even when it made them so angry and upset and want to plot against him and kill him. He feared God and not man, and no fear of suffering could keep him from serving. He went forward in the task that his father had given him as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and no fear of suffering could keep him back. Why did he come as a servant of Jehovah? Because he was filled with compassion for those in misery. He came, he says, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, to serve, to help, to give grace, to give mercy. All grace flows from Him. All serving grace flows from this great servant of the Lord. It flows from union with Him, belonging to Him, having that bond with Him by the Holy Spirit. Then what is in Christ also begins to fill you. His fear of God begins to fill you and His compassion begins to fill you. You can only live as a servant of God by being ministered to by this servant of the Lord. He breaks that self-centered fear of man that is more concerned about my own reputation than God's honor. He breaks that self-centered desire for my own ease. He warms hearts with his compassion in the midst of a cold world of misery. He does so by exposing who I really am and showing his great compassion to me, a wretched sinner. In Ibed Milik, we see something of that singular serving grace so that we will be stirred up to go to the one who gave it to him, God himself, Christ himself. If you are not yet united to him, do you hesitate now? Do you think being a servant of the king comes at too great a cost? A cost maybe of our desires, or our ease, our reputation, our honor, our possessions, our time? Do you hesitate? We see in our final point, then, saving grace in an Ethiopian servant. Dear congregation, in rescuing Jeremiah, Ebed Melech put himself in a greater danger. He was already an endangered man because outside the city of Jerusalem were the hostile Babylonians. They were frustrated with Jerusalem's resistance and knew that the center of opposition would be the king's palace. So when they would break into the city, the king, his princes, and the whole household would be the special object of their fury. That made Ibn Malik already endangered. But now he was endangered the more because he no longer only had enemies outside the city, but inside the city as well. When he sided with Jeremiah, a man whom the princes hated, he would bring on himself the anger of all the princes. Danger surrounded him. But if you remember some moments ago, we said that He did not fear man, you might think. Then He must not have been afraid. But He was. You say, if you are a servant of the Lord, the Lord is your King. He will protect you. You never need to be afraid. That is true and easy to say. But when God's servants are surrounded by dangers, feel the power of God's enemies, and feel their own weakness, and sense their own unworthiness, is it any wonder that they fear at times? True, God's people have no reason to fear, but our faith isn't always in strong exercise. And the Lord knows the fears of His servants. That is why at the end of Jeremiah 39, God gave a message to Jeremiah to pass on to Ebed-Melech, go and speak to Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian, saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. That already is a powerful message. So often we just see God's names as names and nothing more, but the names of the Lord reveal who God is. Here he specifically says, tell Ebed-Melech, thus says the Lord of hosts. He reminds Ebed-Melech that he is indeed the Lord over all the hosts of heaven and earth. Even hostile princes and enemy troops are under his control. He is over all the hosts and all the powers that exist, all the devils and all the angels, and every single power. He is the Lord of hosts. What a message in the midst of all the fears that there can be. Listen again to what he says, I will bring my words upon this city for evil and not for good. I will do what Jeremiah said I will do because he is my prophet and the words that he spoke are true. They are my words, which I will fulfill. Those princes, those princes said, if we stop the mouth of Jeremiah and kill him, maybe those words of Jeremiah won't happen. But no, God is faithful. No matter how people may try to twist the message or set it aside or ignore it as untrue, he says, I will bring my words to pass. And what will that mean? It'll mean destruction on those who refuse to bow for his word and turn to him in repentance. What a sight for Ibn Milik the accomplishment of God's words will be. The enemies will come and destroy. Ibn Milik will see it happen and hear those screams of terror from those who boasted that they would keep the city safe. He will see those princes who now boast themselves of what they will do. He will see their terror as they are destroyed. He will see when they realize that Jeremiah spoke the truth. We cannot imagine, congregation, what a sight that must have been for Ibn Milik to see the destruction of Jerusalem and all the killing and death. But this event, in turn, pales in comparison to that great day that is coming, the great day of destruction, the final day of judgment. We read in 2 Peter 3, verse 10, the heavens will pass away with a great noise and the elements will melt with a fervent heat. It speaks of how the Lord Jesus will come, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his presence. That day is coming. And if this morning you dare to set aside that message, if you refuse to bow for that message, know that your unbelief is the very thing he will condemn. He will punish those that obey not the gospel, God is faithful to his word. But who will be safe in that final day? We see a picture of that in Jerusalem's destruction. The servant of the King, Ebed-Melech, who belonged to God, is delivered. In Jeremiah 39, verse 17, God says, I will deliver you in that day, says the Lord. You shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. Here we see saving grace. He will be spared in the midst of all those judgments that come on the city. That word for deliver has the sense of snatching someone away. God will be there with his hand to snatch him as a firebrand out of the fire and keep him safe when the fires of his judgments rage through the city. God will be his refuge. There you see how merciful God is. God says this morning to a believer here, you will surely be delivered. Hesitation can still come up, but is it really true? Will He really deliver? And the Lord knows the doubts and the fears of His people. And that is why He says it not only once, but again at the end of chapter 39 in verse 18. For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but your life shall be as a prize to you, He says. He says, I will surely deliver you. Your life will be as a treasure that I preserve. It will not be cut off. What saving grace? Why did God promise to deliver? Was it because Ebed-Melech served him so well? In the final day of judgment, will it depend on how well we have served the Lord? Listen to the last words of chapter 39. Because you have put your trust in me, says the Lord. Those who trust in him will be saved. Do you see then again the great servant of the Lord, the one who came as a priest moved with compassion? Do you not see him this morning as the one who did not just peer over the edge of the pit of misery and give some instructions for how we can get out of that pit? Do you not see him as the one who descended right into that pit of the misery of this world, into the mud, He had no sin of His own, and yet took on Himself the sin of others, and sunk lower than any of us have ever sunk. He sunk into the depths of hellish suffering. There he had all the waves and billows of God's wrath go over him. Christ Jesus went into the deepest pit to be able to deliver from that pit those who deserve to go into that pit and remain there forever. Christ descended solo to secure deliverance from the pit of misery, from the pit of hell. And this Savior lives today And he is still moved with compassion to come with the cords of the gospel. He lets down the cords of his gospel right to where we are. And by those cords, he pulls sinners out of the pit of misery and sets their feet upon a rock of safety and salvation. This Savior is proclaimed to you, whoever you are, wherever you are. However worthy you are of being destroyed on that final day when He comes to judge the living and the dead, there is no compassion like His compassion. There is no faithfulness like His faithfulness. He is a trustworthy Savior, and those who put their trust in Him will be saved. And when that final judgment comes, they will be saved. Everyone here who cries out to Him in the midst of that pit of misery receives those ropes. and is pulled up, they will be saved. And here we come full circle. The princes who set aside that word of God as too negative and harsh and did not want to hear about sin and misery were left in the pit of misery because of unbelief. Ibn Malik was convinced of his truth and bowed under it, received it, and trusted it. And he was told, I will surely deliver you. This Ethiopian was recorded in the word of God to show the grace of God and give a glimpse of what God would do among the nations. Here is a heathen Ethiopian already in the Old Testament to show what God would do throughout the ages among all nations. Now God is at work gathering people from Ethiopia and from Philistia and from all the other places of this world, pulling them out of this pit of misery in order to serve him and one day to praise his unspeakable grace forever. We end, not with Ebert Millich, but with him whose words will be fulfilled, whose threatenings are real, whose grace is unspeakable, and whose service is incomparable. Blessed are all those who trust in the God of singular serving and saving grace. Amen. Psalter 442. ♪ O come all ye faithful ♪ ♪ Joyful and triumphant ♪ ♪ O come all ye faithful ♪ ♪ Great in the house of Zion ♪ ♪ Come, let us adore him ♪ ♪ In his majesty ♪ ♪ In the world of nations he will reign ♪ Let's give thanks. O God of grace and mercy, what a wonder that we could again hear of the gospel, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Also through the story of Ebed Melech. And we may know that from the testimony of scripture, Ebed Melech was one who followed you and he is among those who now is praising you. And you will draw your people from all nations, every tongue and every tribe, so that one day a whole host of people will lift their voices in song and will lift their hearts in worship to you. And we pray that as the call has gone out to each one of us also this morning, As that call has gone out, that we would respond in faith, if not for the first time, then also by renewal. Each one of us heard this separately, and yet together we may stand at the foot of the cross and be reminded again of the Lord Jesus and His suffering and how He did go down into that pit And the gospel call that is today, that each one of us may trust in Him, and in so trusting in Him, He will draw us out of that pit of misery, and we may live in praise to Him. May that also be the fruit, then, of this message. We pray that we will be responsive to the word preached, whether it is preached this morning or this afternoon, or whether we open it in our homes, that we look at the word of God as food for our souls, even as we eat food for our bodies. May that word be a source of strength for each one of us. We pray for the Sunday school children who will, after the service, also attend the classes and again hear stories from your word, stories that again teach us of God and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that there too the children may hear these stories and be impressed by them, be impressed by your work and your gospel. Bless the teachers as well as they are called to teach and instruct and impart the knowledge to the children. We pray too for a blessing on the offering. We will give of our gifts cheerfully and willingly for the cause of the church and for the cause of missions. Thank you again for all that you have given to us. May we also then give freely to you. Bless us in the remainder of this service and this day. Bring us together again in the afternoon for a second service. Hear our prayer, we ask and pray. In Jesus' name, amen. StSq3 3.30 (-0.99)" ♪ Glory to God, the Lord, most high ♪ ♪ Heav'nly King, to Him I cry ♪ Thou wondrous words which I behold, And all Thy loving gracious love. We go to our homes with the following prayer, after which we sing from Psalter 306, the last two verses. May the grace of Christ, the Savior, and the Father's boundless love with the Holy Spirit's favor rest upon us from above. Amen. Amen. When God descends to see and know The kings of heaven and earth below. The kings of heaven and earth below. He lifts the poor and makes them free, When joy infills the dead. is