Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 29, 2020 | Stand Strong - Stand By Me

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March 29, 2020 | Stand Strong - Stand By Me · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_01: This is the last weekend in March.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: And wow, what is April gonna be like, right?
0:10
SPEAKER_01: We're in a quarantine right now, which is why we're using a skeleton crew.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: And for most of us, uh this quarantine is a hardship.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: We miss being with our friends during the week.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: We miss uh being with our brothers and sisters on Sunday.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh, some of the people I hang around are huggers.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Imagine how hard it is for them.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Telling them they can no longer hug is like telling a dog he can no longer wag his tail.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, some of us are loners.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Our heroes are the Lone Ranger, uh, Rambo, uh, Wolverine.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh people like me would like to become Clint Eastwood in any of his westerns, or Denzel in the Book of Eli.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: Our normal daily lifestyle could be described as social distancing.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: So we're kind of liking this.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: A single guy tweeted to Melody and me, I feel like I've been practicing my whole life for this moment.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Another wrote, I had no idea that self-quarantine was even an option.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: This changes everything.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Still another said, Wow, clubs, gyms, and bars all closed.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: My life is about to seriously be exactly the same.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: So instead of calling it social distancing for the sake of the loners who are listening today, we'll call it taking an oath of solitude.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: This message from Jeremiah is especially for all of us private people.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Sam, do you have a uh do you have a clicker for me that I could use?
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Jeremiah.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: So uh we're in a series called Stand Strong uh series in Jeremiah.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: And uh at the start of 2020, when none of us had any idea that there was going to be a virus loose in China that was going to infect the whole world, we began this Stand Strong series from the book of Jeremiah.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: We knew Jeremiah was a book about uh standing strong in the midst of crisis.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: We just had no idea how fitting that would be.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: And a message in this book that often gets overlooked is a lesson that the prophet Jeremiah himself learned in the midst of crisis.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's a message that we're going to learn this week.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: We're in the Jeremiah Challenge, we're only two weeks from it being over.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: We're reading Jeremiah and Lamentations.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Hope you'll join us by April 12th, Easter Sunday, this week's chapters 49 through 52.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: But the lesson that we're going to learn this week is a lesson that Jeremiah had to learn from experience through a difficult crisis in his life.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: And that message is this that when plague sends us into hiding, one is the loneliest number.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: If I'm going to stand strong, I need someone to stand by me.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: And I am, of course, referring to uh the words of Bin E.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: King's immortal 1961 song.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: When the night has come and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light, we'll see.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: No, I won't be afraid, I won't be afraid, so so long as you stand, stand by me.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: If the sky that we look on should tumble and fall, or the mountain should crumble to the sea.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: No, I won't be afraid, oh, I won't be afraid, so so long as you stand, stand by me.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: You and I will have many companions over the years who you might say audition to be our friend.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are classmates, some of them are workmates, some of them are churchmates, some we were on a team with, some we traveled with, some we served with.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Many people audition for the part of friend in your life.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Only a few get that part.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: Most of them don't.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: What makes the difference between a companion and a friend?
4:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, you see the difference when you step backstage in the book of Jeremiah and look at the two men in this book who stood by him and became friends that he could lean on.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And I want to tell you about those two people this morning.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: The first of them was called Baruch.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: He was a businessman.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: He was a scribe.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: He took dictation from Jeremiah the prophet.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Baruch was a very special guy.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: His name is still a common name in the Mideast today.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: It means blessing.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: And Baruch was even better known than Jeremiah in the best circles in Jerusalem because his father and his family were a prominent father and family in Jerusalem.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: In fact, his grandfather had been a former governor of the city.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: And he himself was an educated man.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: He had gone to a scribe school, the best school in town, and he was a professional scribe who earned a nice living taking dictation and writing letters and official documents for royalty and nobles.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: They would speak, he would commit it to papyrus.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: And it's clear that he knew everybody, everybody knew him.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Some of the king's top advisors had been classmates of Baruch's back at scribe school, and we find that he could walk freely in and out of the palace.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Scribes carried sort of ID cards with them.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: Clay seals.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: By the way, he's going to tell us this morning.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: His friendship lesson is that a friend sticks closer and longer than a brother.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: But let me tell you about the ID card that Baruch carried with him because we found two of them.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: They were clay seals, sort of like a notary public seal.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: They had their names on them.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: And when they finished an official document of sale, they would dip that seal, clay seal, in ink, and they would stamp the document.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And two of Baruch's personal seals, I said, have been found.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: One of them is unique because it seems to have Baruch's own thumbprint on it, making him the only fingerprinted Bible character.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: The seal actually reads, belonging to Baruch, the son of Nariah, a scribe.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, Jeremiah and Baruch met in six over the year 605 when God ordered Jeremiah, who was just 38, 39 years old at the time, to make a written record of all of the prophecies that he God had ever revealed to him.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: Take a scroll, God said to Jeremiah, and write on it all the words I've spoken to you from the time I first spoke to you to today.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of time.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: That's 22 years.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: So the prophet went out and he hired the best.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: He hired Baruch to record on a scroll while he dictated those prophecies.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: It was a straightforward business relationship at first, it seems, but as the days turned into weeks, and as the prophet and the scribe spent every day together, the professional relationship became personal.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: For as the intellectual scribe got to know Jeremiah, he began to see Jeremiah for what he really was: a great man, a man with a direct line to God.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And Baruch believed in Jeremiah's God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: Baruch came to faith and then he gave up his career to become Jeremiah's personal secretary and inseparable friend for the rest of his life.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: 30 years, 25, 30 years.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: But this friendship came at a cost for Baruch.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: A financial cost, certainly, Jeremiah couldn't give Baruch the income that he was receiving beforehand.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: No insurance, no benefits, no pension, no possibility for advancement.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: But I think the greatest cost to Baruch was the emotional cost.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Because they were an odd couple, this intellectual businessman who everybody knew, and the emotional prophet, whom everyone disliked.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: But Baruch, like a good friend, began to bear Jeremiah's burdens.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: So that as Jeremiah in anguish dictated prophecies about Jeremiah's approaching disaster, Baruch felt the anguish.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: And when even Jeremiah's friends and family ostracized him and turned against him, Baruch shared that isolation.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: No doubt Baruch himself was ostracized by his former schoolmates and fellow scribes who could not understand why he would give up his shingle to hang with this crazy crank of a prophet.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: So Baruch became a true friend who shared everything.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: And then one day he got the shock of his life because he was asked to share Jeremiah's public prophetic ministry.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: For when the years of dictation came to an end, and God had a great motive for this, God said, Listen, when Judah maybe hears about all the disaster I'm planning to bring on them, each one of them will turn from his way and I can forgive their iniquity and their sin.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: That was the reason for the scroll.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: So finally it gets finished.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah summons Baruch, and in his dictation, he wrote on a scroll all the words that the Lord had spoken.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: And then they come to an end of the dictation.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: And Baruch, I imagine, rolled up the scroll, he tied it neatly, handed to Jeremiah, and then to his absolute shock, Jeremiah hands the scroll back to Baruch and says to him, You know they're not going to let me near the temple, right?
9:55
SPEAKER_01: I can't preach anymore.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: And Baruch understood.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: He says, Jeremiah, I can't enter the temple of the Lord.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: And then Jeremiah says, So you must go and read from the scroll the words of the Lord and the hearing of all the people who are coming on this day of feasting.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: And Jeremiah says, You got to take my place.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: You got to go to the temple.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: You have to open the scroll there, and you have to read these words.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: The temple's packed today because it's an emergency fast day.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: The priest has called it, so go.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: No doubt, Baruch gulped.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: No doubt, he thought I'm a writer.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a speaker.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: This is in my job description, in my spiritual gift, and my old friends will be there, my peers.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: This will ruin my life.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: And we know he responded to Jeremiah, for this is our text for today, the short five-verse chapter, Jeremiah 45.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: We know he responded to Jeremiah.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: Please know.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: What we read is that the prophet Jeremiah gave a message to Baruch, son of Nariah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, after Baruch had written down everything Jeremiah had dictated him.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord the God of Israel says to you, Baruch.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: You have said, here's what Baruch said to Jeremiah when Jeremiah says you need to go to the temple.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: You said, I'm overwhelmed with trouble.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: Haven't I had enough pain already?
11:14
SPEAKER_01: Now the Lord's added more.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm worn out from sighing and can find no rest.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: Baruch must have just exploded and said, You're asking too much.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: You're adding insult to injury.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm already overwhelmed.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm already hurting.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm already exhausted.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: I need some rest, not a special assignment that will destroy any last shred of respect and affection that people have for me or for my family.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: I'll be ridiculed, maybe arrested.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: And Jeremiah sympathized with Baruch and told the Lord, this is what Baruch's saying.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord responds, and the Lord's answer to Baruch is in verses four and five.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: The first thing he says back to Baruch is imagine the pain I feel.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: Because the sad message you're about to give is true.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm about to destroy this very nation that I built.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm about to uproot these very people I've planted, I feel your pain so much deeper than you do.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: And his other answer is, forget your personal ambition.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: What I'm doing is so much bigger than you.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: I'll take care of you, but stop feeling sorry for yourself.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: He says, Do you seek great things for yourself?
12:27
SPEAKER_01: Seek them not, for behold, I'll bring disaster on all people, but wherever you go, I'll let you escape with your life.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: What a statement this is.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: I chose this as my life's motto back when I was in my 20s, and I've never been disappointed with it.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: I can't help briefly sharing with you the story that back in 1801, a brilliant mathematics student at Cambridge University was paralyzed and shuddered as he went in to take his final math examination, which ranked the students in order and determined their place for the rest of their life.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Even though Henry loved mathematics and was brilliant at it, test taking overwhelmed him.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: Pressure paralyzed him.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: He'd failed two tests recently.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: And now the competition was at its most intense.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: It was the final exam.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: He hadn't slept.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: Now Henry was a new believer.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: He was a Christian.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: And a few weeks before, he told the Lord he would serve him anywhere and everywhere, and in any way God chose.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: And now, going in to take the test, he recalled a message, a sermon that he had heard just a couple of weeks before, on nine words out of Jeremiah 45.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: And Henry Martin at that point took a deep breath, let out his personal ambition, and sat for the exam.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: And hours later, when he got up, he had won the single top ranking in Cambridge mathematics.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And frankly, the top ranking in the entire world.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: He now could become a Cambridge math professor, but instead of doing that, he became a missionary who opened up the mission fields of Persia, we call it Iran today, and India.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: And in the biography I own, later in life, Henry's asked what it felt like to win the top math award at Cambridge University.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: And he says, quote, I grasped my highest goal and then was surprised to find I had reached for a shadow.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: That is, something without substance, something that didn't matter.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: Now I don't know what great things Baruch was grasping for.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: Maybe fame, maybe popularity, maybe becoming a governor of Jerusalem like his grandpa, but had he attained them, they would have been no more than shadows in comparison to what he did attain by giving them up and sticking with Jeremiah.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: For God knew what Baruch didn't.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: That if he would make the decision to stick with Jeremiah and submit to God's will and go to the temple to read the scroll and share Jeremiah's shame, that decision that he had made would turn around and make him make him more famous than any person he had ever dreamed of.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Because the name Baruch and his story would be recorded in the best-selling book of all time and would be known and read and admired by millions of people for the rest of time and eternity.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: For on that December day in 604, Baruch did carry the scroll into the temple, packed with people.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: Baruch knew somebody who had an apartment in the upper courtyard, of course, which was the perfect place to overlook everybody.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: And he asked for permission to stand there, and he got, the son was there and said yes.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: So Baruch began loudly to read the scroll, and his voice carried over the courtyard, and thousands of people walking by stopped to listen.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: And they were moved.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: And the son who had let him in, the son of the famous apartment owner, ran to get his father, who was in the king's palace in a cabinet meeting at that moment.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: Bursting in, the son reported what he had heard.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: The cabinet adjourned its meeting and sent a messenger to get Baruch, whom they knew personally.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: And when they arrived, they they asked him, they asked him to read the scroll, and he read the scroll.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: Micaiah went and told them.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: And they were sitting there and he reported it to them.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: And they said, Bring the scroll and read it.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: And so Baruch read it, and when they had heard, they turned to each other and they said, We've surely got to tell the king.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: We know he won't like it, but this is too important.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: But they knew the king, whose name was Jehoiakim, and they knew that he hated Jeremiah already, and he would hate these words.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And so they told Baruch, Baruch, We king needs to hear these, but you and Jeremiah need to run and hide.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: We'll take care of it.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And then they came to the king.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: And the king was sitting in his winter quarters with a fire burning, and as they read the words to him, he reached down and cut them with a penknife and threw them into the fire and consumed the whole scroll that had taken months to write.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: And then he commanded a posse to go out and seize Baruch and Jeremiah, but we read in verse 26 that the Lord had hid them, so they couldn't find them.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: Baruch had, you see, thrown in his lot to stick with Jeremiah, and he would stick closer than a brother, certainly than Jeremiah's brothers, who had left him long since.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: For the rest of his life he stuck with Jeremiah.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: Together they went into hiding.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: Together at the end they went down into Egypt.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: The wise man is brutally honest when he says that a friend sticks closer than a brother.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: That's in the book of Proverbs, chapter 18, 24.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: And some of you have found that to be true.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: Book of Proverbs is clearly saying that the ideal would be for your brother or sister to be a close friend.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are blessed that way.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: But some of you know that the friends that you have in life are closer friends than even your brother or sister.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: And Baruch was that kind of a friend who stuck closer than a brother.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: The other kind of a friend, so if Baruch is the friend who sticks, the other kind of a friend that Jeremiah had was named Ebed Melech.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: That wasn't his real name, that's what he's called, but it means servant of the king, because he was a nobody that took away his name and gave him the name of his job.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: And he's the friend who rescues.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, some of our friends who audition, at least for friendship, end up as what you might call shadow friends.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: They walk with us in the sunshine, but they disappear when darkness comes.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: We all love what George Burns said in his scratchy voice about his best friend Jack Benny after Jack Benny died.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: And George Byrne said at the service: Jack and I had a wonderful friendship for nearly 55 years because Jack never walked out on me when I sang a song, and I never walked out on Jack when he played the violin.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: That's friendship.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Friendship never walks out.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: It comes in when others walk out.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: It's loyal in crisis.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: There's a famous story about a Vietnam point man.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: They get ambushed and he gets shot.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: He's lying mortally wounded.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: And the enemy sniper is still out there, but his friend risks his life to go out and crawl to this point man dying friend anyway.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: And he gets shot and wounded, but now drags his now dead friend back to the unit before he collapses, and the sergeant yells at him, You fool, why did you go get yourself shot for a dead man?
20:06
SPEAKER_01: And the soldier replies, I needed to hear him say, I knew you'd come.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: And that was Ebed Melech.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: His story begins at he's an Ethiopian, an African, and the story begins in chapter 38, where he comes in when everyone else goes out.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah had four mortal enemies who were officials, and they found out that they could hear Jeremiah, who was in minimum security and still yelling out at passers-by.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: The Lord says, whoever stays in the city will die by the sword, famine, or plague, but whoever goes to the Babylonians will live.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: This city will certainly be given into the hands of the king of Babylon.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: And they're irate.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: They go to the king and say, This man should be put to death.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: He's discouraging, he's ruining the morale of the soldiers as well of all of the people.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, we need to get him killed.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: This is a gang of four who do this.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: King Zedekiah, who's a marshmallow and a wimp, and the pontious pilot of his day who cannot resist.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: This coward looks at them and says, Well, I can't resist you.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Do whatever you want.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: And so as a result, what happens is they take Jeremiah and we see them there in the corner of the courtyard.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: They've lifted up the lid, the stone lid, to this huge cistern.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: Cisterns were sort of, you know, like bottles underground.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: They were carved out of the limestone.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And this cistern's right there still in Jerusalem, of a small hole.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: And then it was about 20 feet deep.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: And all the water was gone.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: They were dying of thirst in Jerusalem, but it was deep mud still.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is that they lowered him down and then dropped him, and Jeremiah sank.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: Scrawny Jeremiah sank down in the mud and was stuck.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: And they slid the lid back over, and Jeremiah was left in the Absolute darkness to starve to death.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: His yells could not be heard.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And the gang of four wiped their hands, smiled at each other, and walked away.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: And nobody knew what was about to happen underground, except for, I am sure, Baruch.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: What happened is that Baruch, I'm guessing, went and told somebody who might be able to do something about it.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: He told a servant in the palace.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: He told a man named who had been called Ebedmelech, a black man, an African, a slave, a foreigner, a Gentile among Jews.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: Basically, in a Hebrew culture, this man counted for nothing.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: He had no real identity, no personal name.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: But the king had purchased this Ethiopian slave and had found that he was reliable and had advanced him to head servant status and trusted him.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: And because Abn Malek had kept his eyes and ears open and maybe he had talked to Baruch, he knew there was murder going on underground.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: Abed was a man of honor who didn't hesitate to risk his life for a good cause.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: But he was also clever, and he knew that going straight to the king privately would do no good.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: He knew that the king couldn't handle bad publicity, and so even with war going on, since the king was trying to win friends and influence people, the king would go out every week and sit in the gate and listen to the complaints of people.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: And on a morning when Ebon Melech knew that the king had gone to the gate to sit in his special throne to listen to people's complaints and make decisions, Ebed simply walked off work, left the palace, and went to the gate where the king was surrounded by a group of people.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: And the crowd separated for this strange man.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: No doubt the king was surprised to see his own servant approach him with a request.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: What a strange confrontation that must have been.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: The king sitting at the gate on his throne with a canopy over his head.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: This black Ethiopian coming and standing right in front of him.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: One of those men was very weak.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: The other was very strong.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: It was the king who was weak.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: It was the slave who was strong.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: My lord the king Ebon Melech said in front of everyone, these men have done evil to the prophet Jeremiah.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: They put him into the cistern in the court of the guards and left him to die without anyone knowing.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: He's going to starve to death unless we get him out.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: It was a brilliant move because it was a clear case of injustice, and the king was sitting in the seat of justice in the front of everyone, so he had no choice.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: The king pretended as though he had no idea about Jeremiah going there.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: And he spoke and he said, Well, then, of course, get him out.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: Take 30 men from here with you and lift him out before he dies.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Nebnelech started pointing at men until he got third.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: He said, Follow me.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: He stopped in the palace on the way and grabbed some old rags and worn-out clothes.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Somebody said, Why are you getting those?
25:19
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, if we're going to lift him out, the ropes will tear his arms off unless he puts these under his armpits.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Now they all huddled over the hole.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: They'd taken off the cover.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: They called down to find out if he was still living, and Ebon Melech called in and put these old rags and clothes under your arms to pad the ropes.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: At last Jeremiah croaked up that he was ready, and they pulled him up with the ropes and lifted him out of the cistern, and he lay there panting and starving.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: He was alive.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: The only man in Jerusalem alive who was God's voice and spokesman.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: They'd almost lost him.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: And we would have lost him if it hadn't been for a true friend who came in when everyone else went out, an Ethiopian, a Gentile, who God said, I'm going to rescue you on that day, because you've trusted in me.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: What a lesson.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: If Baruch was the friend who stayed, Abed Melech is the friend who rescues, who comes in when others go out.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And there's a verse, Proverbs 18.24, or Proverbs 17, 17 about this, that a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for the day of adversity.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: My goodness.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: Her name is Miriam, and she grew up in a Christian home because her Muslim father had left the home in Sudan when she was six years old.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: She had a Christian mother who raised her, and she got married to a Christian man.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: But her brother reported her, and Sudan court decided that this was illegal and that therefore she should be hanged.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: They had a quick trial, that first she should get a hundred lashes for adultery, for marrying someone that she shouldn't marry.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: They threw her in jail and they put chains around her ankles.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: She was eight months pregnant at age 27 at the time.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: And there she lay in jail, and there they didn't even take the shackles off her ankles when she had that little baby girl joining her.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: She had a little baby girl that she also had a one-year-old boy.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: And there she lay, and there she would have been hung if it wasn't that someone found out and told the world, and many of us, over a million of us, sent messages to the United Nations calling for her to be freed.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And so one day, May 2000 or late 2014, she was freed.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: And she was released and she came to America and she could join her husband and she was free with her children.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: And this is what she said on nationwide television to all of us who helped her get free.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: She said, Thank you for standing by me.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: We were Abed Melech to marry him in that day.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: So let me just conclude this by reminding you of the two friendship lessons that we've got today.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Friendship lesson from Baruch is that a friend sticks, stays over time, sticks closer and longer than a brother.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: The friendship lesson from Ebed Melech is that a friend comes in when everyone else goes out.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: How are you doing right now?
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Getting by with a little help from your friends, I hope.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: And I hope your friends are getting by with a little help from you.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: Listen, when the word friend comes to mind, I think of my wife.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: I think of Melody, and I've asked her to come today and give us some advice.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: Melody is like C.S.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: Lewis in that she agrees with him that of the four loves, friendship is the greatest.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: And I've asked Melody if she'll come up and if she'll share with us some ideas of how we can be friends during this time of crisis.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: Melody, I didn't ask your permission, but I think you'll forgive me.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: I was looking in my friendship file this week, and uh I came across a card that someone wrote you, a woman wrote you some years back.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to hear what this what this woman wrote to Melody.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: She wrote, anyone can be a friend when it's easy.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: But you've shown yourself to be a friend no matter how difficult the going gets.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: And that's what makes you different from most people.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I consider it a privilege to call you my friend.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: So I've talked about friendship, you know, with these two characters in Jeremiah, one of them who just stood, stuck, you know, just stayed there over the years, brook.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: And the other one, this this Ethiopian slave, how he was sort of a special friend and that he came in when everyone else went out and saved his life.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: So I ask you, could you give us some thoughts about maybe how people who are quarantined or in isolation could be friends during this time?
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, you and I have been talking about um, you know, you can look on Facebook and the news, and uh they have lots and lots of suggestions for how to keep yourself healthy physically.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, the things that you're talking about here with both Ebed and uh Baruch are emotional and psychological things.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna play social worker a minute.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: I knew you you knew I would do that, but very little has been said about the obvious, and that's what people are going through right now, um, emotionally and psychologically.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: And it would be things like um, gee, just a few weeks ago we were on spring break.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: We came back from spring break, and a few days later, our world gets turned upside down.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: I know that's the way it was for me.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, coming back from Colorado with the TBC youth and getting lots of texts and seeing what was going on in the world, and then all of a sudden getting back to home and knowing that the governor had said, oh, two weeks off of school.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: So it turns our world upside down, and then about the time you get a change of uh routine and a plan, then it's school's gone the rest of the the, you know, for the rest of the school year.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: And people are finding themselves in situations that they've never experienced before.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying anything profound, just um bringing to light the things that are happening.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Um new routines, trying to figure out how to do school technologically from home, um dads at home, moms at home.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're confined to really, really small spaces, and we're not used to being together 24-7.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, and a loss of personal space, and then the unknown, the unknown that continues to happen.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: Every day something new comes up, or there's more death, and the death toll rises, and that of even the stay-at-home to be safe order that's gonna say, oh, it's gonna wait until April 26th.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, now we keep hearing things, oh, it's gonna spike by April 24th.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Are we really gonna see each other anytime before summer?
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, the loss is uh the loss of graduations, of celebrations, of weddings, of being able to have closure for funerals right now, all of those things that are going on that, you know, like I said, most of us understand that, but we keep saying things like, This is crazy, this is insane, um, this is surreal, um, I don't get it.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, even my introverted friends are like, there's just something wrong here.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's um you feel out of control, you have no say-so.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure Jeremiah has to have felt a lot of those things too, right?
33:23
SPEAKER_00: So, as you and I were talking about how do we be Baruch, right?
33:28
SPEAKER_00: And how are we um ebbs to uh our our world?
33:35
SPEAKER_00: And so it's easy when you're or it's easy to look at Facebook and man, there are so many great ideas.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh I could spend hours on Facebook just seeing all the cool things that people are doing.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure that any of my ideas are great, but what I think our challenge that you and I talked about this morning was that the challenge is to take your world, just your little tiny world, and figure out how to be a Baruch.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, um the Baruch that sticks or the friend that sticks.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: And I would challenge us to look at the people that we normally hang with and uh and do something significant for them.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: It can be little, but something that actually goes beyond just saying, um, oh, what do you need?
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Because most people are gonna say, Oh, I don't need anything, I'm fine.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't need anything, I am I can fend for myself.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: But um, and so little things that I thought of was even walking our neighborhood yesterday, walking by, and I know that we cannot pay visits up close, but if you especially if you have children, it's gonna be a lot easier.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: But taking a piece of sidewalk chalk and writing them a message on the end of their driveway, saying, Um, I'm praying for you, or leaving some flowers at the end of the driveway, or something that obviously keeps our social distance.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, but to go that not just leave that you know little token, but to also write something of an encouragement.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: This is we know this is the time where people um are open to the gospel and to hearing about about the Lord and just saying, I'm praying for you.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think of the stores that I frequent.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: I frequent the little um Walmart market on sixth and uh over there at 6th and McVicar.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: And I know those people, I don't always know them by name, but to write a note ahead of time, maybe a little$5 sonic card.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being on the front lines um for always bagging my groceries.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: If you have kids again, have them write some cards of of the people checking them out or things like that that just says thank you.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Um be the be the ones that stick to those establishments.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: We uh frequent a Mexican place here that we really like, our family loves, and I know that those people are out of work right now.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: And and though they're doing drive-throughs and takeouts and things like that, too, even to just say write a note when you're doing your your uh pickup and say, here's 25 bucks.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh I hope it puts gas in your car this week.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: And again, know that I'm praying for you specifically.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, those are the type things that I thought of as far as being being a baroque.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: Um and then um the thing that I thought about uh as far as rescuing, I thought this is a great challenge, and I'm taking it on for myself this week, and that is there are lots and lots of times in my life that I can think of people who were rest who rescued me at times in my life when I needed it.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: And I think about have I actually ever told them that?
36:45
SPEAKER_00: And so this week my challenge is uh one a day, and uh to figure out how to let those people know that I'm grateful for them being the rescuer who lowered down that rope, who lowered down those rags and pulled me out at a time that I needed it.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's lots of ways we can do that technologically right now.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: You can do it by Marco, and you could do it by Skype if you wanted to do it in person or FaceTime, um, or even a good old-fashioned handwritten letter.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Mail's still going.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: And um, so those are the things that I would I would challenge us to look directly at who we relate to in our normal everyday lives.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: We know life is not normal, but to remember that people are emotional and they're anxious and they're depressed and they're feeling isolated, but there are things that you can do to be a baroque and um Ebon Malik.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: So you know that you go.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: Last story you mentioned about feeling grateful for the friends that have rescued us reminds me of a famous story, which isn't you know perfectly plain.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: But it's when Socrates Socrates visited an old man, very old and dying, asked him what he was thankful for, and the old man said something like this.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: He said, That being such as I am, I've had the friends that I have had.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: And you and I have had friends, we've had Baruch.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: So the point of this message has been simple, and it's simply been this that when plague forces us into isolation behind closed doors, one can be the loneliest number.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: If I'm gonna make it through, if I'm gonna stand strong, then I need to have someone stand by me.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: So the question is who's your Baruch and whose Baruch are you?
38:28
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, thank you so much for uh this morning, and thank you for Jeremiah, and thank you for these uh men who never thought they would become famous, Baruch, Eb and Melik, but who you used in the life of a great man, Jeremiah.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: Lord help us to be friends, real friends, friends who stick, friends who rescue in Jesus' name.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Amen.