FALSELY ACCUSED AND ACCOSTED

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Pharaoh’s army had marched out of Egypt, and when the Babylonians who were besieging Jerusalem heard the report about them, they withdrew from Jerusalem.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of me, ‘Pharaoh’s army, which has marched out to support you, will go back to its own land, to Egypt. Then the Babylonians will return and attack this city; they will capture it and burn it down.’”

“This is what the Lord says: Do not deceive yourselves, thinking, ‘The Babylonians will surely leave us.’ They will not! Even if you were to defeat the entire Babylonian army that is attacking you and only wounded men were left in their tents, they would come out and burn this city down.”

After the Babylonian army had withdrawn from Jerusalem because of Pharaoh’s army, Jeremiah started to leave the city to go to the territory of Benjamin to get his share of the property among the people there. But when he reached the Benjamin Gate, the captain of the guard, whose name was Irijah son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah, arrested him and said, “You are deserting to the Babylonians!”

“That’s not true!” Jeremiah said. “I am not deserting to the Babylonians.” But Irijah would not listen to him; instead, he arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the officials. They were angry with Jeremiah and had him beaten and imprisoned in the house of Jonathan the secretary, which they had made into a prison. Jeremiah was put into a vaulted cell in a dungeon, where he remained a long time.

Jeremiah 37:5-16

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

The southern kingdom of Judah and its beloved, holy city of Jerusalem were besieged and under attack by the Babylonian forces under the leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar who intended to plunder the territory before leveling everything and leaving nothing but smoldering ruins behind. As for the Israelites, they would be hauled off and held in Babylon for seventy years, God’s imposed penalty on them for their blatant disrespect and disregard for Him as they worshiped pagan gods and idols. The people of God had abandoned Him and they would find out what it felt like to be abandoned themselves.

But as we look at today’s passage from Jeremiah 37, we see that an event occurred that changed the scene, at least temporarily. For as the Babylonians were assaulting Judah and Jerusalem, Pharaoh’s Egyptian forces advanced on Judah to support the Israelites. It was an unlikely marriage given that generations earlier, the Egyptians had oppressed and held the Israelites captive. It took the power of God Himself to free His people and send them on a course to the land He had promised for them to settle in, the very land that was now being assailed by the Babylonians.

Well, the Egyptians definitely captured the attention of the Babylonians because we read that Nebuchadnezzar had his forces withdraw from Jerusalem “because of Pharaoh’s army”. The withdrawal presented the prophet Jeremiah with a window of opportunity to leave the city and claim his share of the property in the territory of Benjamin. It was the field that he purchased back in Jeremiah 32 and before I move on, we need to recap what happened.

If you recall, the Lord had Jeremiah buy a share of land from the son of his uncle. The field Jeremiah purchased for seventeen shekels of silver was in Anathoth, located in the territory of Benjamin and with deed in hand, Jeremiah was the owner of the parcel. He gave the deed to Baruch with the order to place it in a clay jar so they would be preserved (verses 6 through 15).

And so with this, Jeremiah tried to get out of Jerusalem to attend to the property that was rightfully his but as we see in our scripture passage, he never made it out of the city. This is because scripture tells us he was stopped by the captain of the guard at (ironically) the Benjamin Gate and arrested, accused of trying to desert from the Israelite city to join forces with the Babylonians, an assertion which was of course completely false.

Jeremiah tried to state his case, exclaiming “That’s not true! I am not deserting to the Babylonians.”

But the captain of the guard would have none of it. He refused to listen to anything Jeremiah was saying and brought him before the Israelite officials who were “angry with Jeremiah”, so much so that they had him “beaten and imprisoned in the house of Jonathan the secretary, which they had made into a prison.” Scripture tells us that “Jeremiah was put into a vaulted cell in a dungeon, where he remained a long time.”

And thus, God’s faithful and trusted messenger found his liberty taken away, falsely accused and accosted.  

Fast forward some five to six hundred years and you will find another man who was falsely accused and accosted. His name was Jesus. In His instance, the Jewish religious authorities were not willing to accept His teachings as they deviated from the religious norm, something the Pharisees and Sadducees refused to budge from. They saw Jesus as a threat to their religious authority and so they decided to hatch a plot to eliminate him for good. Like Jeremiah, He was arrested while he was doing something that was far from illegal.

You remember the scene, right?

Jesus was praying to His Father God at the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46) when a band of Roman soldiers appeared along with Judas, one of Jesus’ disciples. A simple kiss from Judas was enough to identify Jesus who was abruptly taken into custody, hauled before the Jewish high court, the Sanhedrin, where witnesses brought false accusations against Jesus. The Sanhedrin convicted Jesus but because they could not impose death on him, they sent him to the Romans and Governor Pontius Pilate to be tried for blasphemy. While in custody of the Romans, Jesus, like Jeremiah, was severely beaten but unlike Jeremiah, Jesus would not live on after His captivity. Instead, He would be sentenced to be crucified and would die nailed to a cross on Calvary’s hill.

Two scenes. Two instances of false accusation and accosting.

But in the case of Jesus, who suffered through the greatest instance of injustice ever carried out, an injustice that saw a perfectly right and righteous man murdered for an offense He didn’t commit, there was an eternally positive outcome

For three days after His death, Jesus rose through God’s resurrection power, vanquishing death and the grave so that all who place their belief and trust in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. As horrific as the events that led up to Jesus’ death were, they were all part of God’s greater plan to save His people out of love, His Son bearing the penalty for sin instead of them.  

As the hymn so properly conveys:

Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe

Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow.

Won’t you take time today and every day to give thanks to Him for that.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
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