Have you ever had the experience in which something was going on that was not right, or something was happening that you disagreed with but you just left it alone and walked away, only to later be bothered by your thoughts, thinking, "I should have said something and spoke up for what was right or for the truth"? Or maybe have you been in a situation in which you were being attacked by others, and people that you thought would speak up and say something on your behalf just remained silent trying to avoid eye contact with you.

This was the experience with the Apostle Paul.  Here was a man that has risked his life time and time again to get the gospel to people who had never heard about Jesus Christ. People were continually telling him how much they loved and appreciated him and what he is doing.  They knew that, without all the sacrifices Paul had personally made to reach them, they may have never come to faith in Christ.
 
Then came that day when Paul is arrested for preaching the gospel. The charge was that Paul was preaching a message that there is a leader - a greater king than Caesar who is worthy to be praised. In an empire in which Caesar was seen as practically a god, this was serious business. This could be seen as treason, and anyone preaching such a message or helping someone preach such a message could be put to death.
 
Paul was put into a dank, dark dungeon. He probably thanked God for the brothers and sisters in Christ that he could count on for their love and support at his trial. He may have wondered who would say what about him and about his love for Christ when either his life or a long imprisonment was on the line.
 
When the trial started, Paul was shocked at what went on in the courtroom. He wrote in 2 Timothy 4:16, "at my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them."  Do you know how encouraging just one person speaking up would have been to Paul?  But, instead, Paul stood alone. Where were the people who could have said, "This man is telling the truth because Jesus changed my life"?
 
The silence and the absence of witnesses were not due to a desire to betray Paul, but rather a fear of what might happen to them if they sided with the truth.  How many of us have been there, where we know if we say something or get involved there’s going to be a price to pay, and we’re not willing to pay that kind of a price?
 
The late Larry Burkett was a man whom God used to help probably millions of Christians and others get their finances in order.  In an interview he had given in the 90’s, he said he made a promise to the Lord. The promise was, "Lord, I will do whatever you want me to do as long as you make it clear."  
 
In the Old Testament we find the prophet Jeremiah.  God made it clear to Jeremiah, that even before he was born, God had chosen him to be somebody who would speak up for the truth.  At first, Jeremiah thought he was too young to be used by God, but God assured him, letting him know that he would be a prophet to the nations.
 
This sounds like a demanding job. In today's setting, Jeremiah would be an internationally known speaker talking to the likes of the Presidents of the United States, France, Russia, and the Prime Minister of Israel. The national news media would be coming to Jeremiah to get the inside scoop of what was going to happen before it happened.
 
But, there was a downside to the job.  The people that Jeremiah would be speaking to had made the decision that it was alright to worship God, so long as it did not keep them from creating other gods and doing whatever they wanted to do.  It is not unlike what we have today in our society. People, then, were heavy into astrology and worshiping the stars.
 
They were also in the middle of a sexual revolution in which adultery was not only running wild, it was encouraged and had found its way into the lives of the prophets and priests.  Some men, in order to get around the rules of adultery, would divorce their wives, marry someone else, divorce the second wife, and then remarry the first one.
 
The rich were getting more and more greedy as they sucked everything they possibly could get out of the poor.  The people created their own truth as to what was right and what was wrong.  The Word of God was thrown out the window of their lives.
 
God called Jeremiah to tell the people, "He’s sick and tired of all this sin and the mess they were making of their world and he was going to send the Babylonian army from the north to destroy the city."  Most of the people never even heard of the Babylonians. They laughed at Jeremiah and made fun of him. They do that to true prophets of God. No sooner had he finished prophesying, but other prophets would get up and proclaim, "The Lord will never allow the Babylonians to come to the city.  For God Himself is the protector of His people whom He loves."
 
Can you imagine how foolish Jeremiah must have looked?  For twenty years, the prophets who preached what the people wanted to hear, were saying, "God is not going to send the Babylonians."  Jeremiah was saying God would send them.  Who do you think had the most credibility with the people?
 
The people made fun of Jeremiah as he walked the streets.  "Here comes mister terror, terror, terror, who claims the Babylonians are coming."  Jeremiah did not like the ridicule anymore than we do when people laugh at us because we stand for God.  The more Jeremiah preached, the worse the judgment that God was going to do to the city came out of his mouth. "The city will be destroyed. The people will be slaughtered. The people who are left will go into captivity for 70 years", he told them.
 
Then the good king Josiah died, and his successor King Jehoiakim had no desire whatsoever to serve God.  He also did not like the preaching of Jeremiah.  He told him to stop prophesying.  Jeremiah had to decide whether we was going to be willing to speak up, now that he had to face more than just people making fun of him. He may have to face the anger of the king.
 
Jehoiakim and Pashur, the chief officer in the temple, got sick and tired of all this bad news from Jeremiah. Pashur had Jeremiah beaten and thrown into prison.  But locking him up could not keep what he said from happening.  The Babylonians did come, and they took King Jehoiakim and a number of the rulers away as captives and demanded that ransom money be paid regularly.
 
The Babylonians took much of the wealth out of the city with them. The Babylonians made Zedekiah the new king.  Jeremiah was preaching for twenty years before he saw what God had said actually happen.  This account of Jeremiah is an example of why we can’t always think all we have to do is walk into a situation and, bingo, it immediately changes for God.
 
When Zedekiah became king, he decided to break the agreement to send money and taxes to Babylon. The people were still doing all the things they were doing before the Babylonians came.  Jeremiah started preaching again, and before he knew it, he was telling the people that the Babylonians were going to come back and, this time, completely wipe out the city. Those who survived would be slaves for 70 years in Babylon.
 
The other prophets prophesied that the Babylonians would not be back, and as a matter of fact in two years, Babylon would cease as a nation and they would get back everything taken from them.  Just because people are telling you things you want to hear, does not mean it is the truth.  God's word is God's word and never changes.
 
Jeremiah got so frustrated with God, he said, "that’s it God.  Every time I open my mouth, nothing but bad news comes out.  Why can’t I have something good to share with the people?"  Jeremiah wanted somebody to like him at least some of the time.
 
Jeremiah decided, "I will not speak up any longer for the Lord."  But then he said, "Lord why are you treating me like this?  The more I try to keep my mouth shut, the more I feel this pressure building up inside of me.  It’s like a fire shut up in my bones.  I have to let it out."  God said, "Go tell those prophets they are speaking lies in my name and that I will deal with them myself."
 
Sure enough, the Babylonian came back and surrounded the city.  King Zedekiah secretly sent for Jeremiah and asked, "What are the chances of the Lord giving us a miracle to defeat the Babylonians." Jeremiah said, "There is not a chance in the world.  If you surrender yourself to the Babylonians, your lives and the lives of the soldiers will be spared.  If you do not, you and your sons will be killed by the Babylonians."
 
King Zedekiah knew that he had not been serving God, and he preferred the message of those around him who were saying, the Babylonians will not enter this city.  Jeremiah pointed out, "why are you willing to listen to the same people who said the Babylonians would never come back to this city?"
 
Now the king spoke up to save his life and the lives of many others but did not want to pay the price of going against the political and religious leaders around him.  So he chose to believe a lie that there is another way of escape.  We see this kind of thing happening on a spiritual level around us today.
 
Jesus has said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through me."  These words of Jesus rip apart the modern day insistence that every religion is okay and that you will get to God by any of them so long as you are sincere.  How many of us will betray the cause of Christ by remaining silent when we hear this claim being made over and over again.
 
Jeremiah took his message to the streets. He said, "Listen people, the only way you can escape the destruction that is coming on this city, is to go over to the enemy, the Babylonians, and turn yourself in.  I don’t care what you might hear, the only way for you to survive is to give up before the fighting begins otherwise you will die either by the sword, the famine or the plagues that will enter the city."

Some of the king's powerful officials got together to go to King Zedekiah and demand that Jeremiah be put to death. They said he was discouraging the soldiers and the people left in the city.  The king was not willing to speak up for Jeremiah, and he told the men, "I can't do anything to oppose you; Jeremiah is in your hands." 

They went out and grabbed Jeremiah and put him in a cistern.  They put some ropes around him and lowered him into this well that no longer had any water in it.  It had nothing but mud at the bottom.  So there sat the servant of God, in this dark stinking mud, with who knows how many insects and bugs also with him.  The mud was going up his legs.  If he sat down it would cover his waist.  There was no way to lie down and go to sleep.  Most likely Jeremiah had not envisioned this to be part of God's call when He said; "I have called you to be a prophet to the nations."
 
So many people think, when you walk with the Lord, everything automatically goes perfect. Our walk with the Lord is not about how well everything is going, but rather about how well we are walking with the Lord in the things that enter our lives.
 
Jeremiah's crime was that when God made it plain to him what he was to do, he did it.  He had been willing to speak up for the Lord.  It’s amazing how we all want to be used by God, but we want to reserve the right to object to certain parts of God’s plan for us.  At what point do we have the right to complain about how God is using our lives?
 
It is possible that, as they lowered Jeremiah into the pit, he was preparing to either die of starvation or of some disease he might get from a bite from something that was down there with him.  At this point, he had no friends who would speak up on his behalf.  Like Paul, he could say, "no one spoke up on my behalf before they threw me into this pit."
 
We should never forget that we don't know who God has placed in the right place to make a difference on our behalf.  We don't know how he got there, but there was a black man, a Cushite from Africa, who was an official in the royal palace.  This black man was named Ebed-Melech. He was a man of integrity and obviously one who loved the Lord.
 
When he heard about Jeremiah being put in the cistern, he knew that he would be putting his life on the line if he tried to get involved to get Jeremiah out.  But he was willing to speak up, when everybody else kept their mouths closed. He went and told King Zedekiah, "These men have acted wickedly in what they have done to Jeremiah. They have thrown him into the pit where he will surely starve to death."
 
Because Ebed-Melech was willing to speak up, he gave the king enough courage to stand up to the other leaders.  This brother didn't care who they were.  He called them wicked men because their actions were wicked.  Previously, the King had told those wicked men, "I can do nothing to oppose you."  But now that Ebed-Melech was willing to speak up, the king spoke up and said, "Take 30 men from here with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out before he dies."  Sometimes we need to speak up in order to give somebody courage to speak and do the right thing.
 
Ebed-Melech found some old rags and let them down with ropes to where Jeremiah was. He told Jeremiah to put the clothes around him under his arms so that they could pull him up out of the cistern.  They finally got him to the top and held him in the courtyard.  He looked an absolute mess and smelled even worse. But he still was willing to speak up for the Lord.  He was held as a prisoner in the courtyard until the Babylonians entered the city.
 
Jeremiah kept on speaking up for the Lord.  God looked with favor on Ebed-Melech for his willingness to speak up.  He told Jeremiah, "say to Ebed-Melech, I am about to bring disaster on this city and you will see it before your eyes, but I will rescue you on that day and you will not be handed over to those you fear.  I will save you and you will escape with your life, because you trust in me."

If Ebed-Melech had not been willing to risk paying the price of speaking up, he would have been slaughtered by the Babylonians when they captured the city.  But God intervened on his behalf.  Every God-called leader needs to determine what position God has placed him in and where we need to speak up, rather than continuing to be silent.
 
Some leaders are afraid of losing a friendship, a position or even their job if they speak up.  Are we afraid of ridicule and rejection?  Ultimately whether or not we speak up, will be dependent on just how much we trust God to handle our lives after we are faithful to Him.  Jeremiah's life lets us know, it's not going to be easy, but Jesus assures us it will be worth it all.

May we be as obedient and faithful as Jeremiah!