"While he was still confined"
"Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the second time, while he was still confined in the court of the guard, saying" (Jeremiah 33:1).
Sometimes I feel like I'm in jail. There are times when I cannot see the solution of the problem even if I look around everywhere. At that time, I don’t know what to do so I just sit down without doing anything.’ The reason is that I feel a lot of my own incompetence and helplessness in a situation where everywhere looks like a wall. What I can do then is to meditate on the Word of God and to ask God for help. Especially I ask God for help in the Morning Prayer meeting when I don’t know what to do with family ministry and church ministry and when I feel helpless and powerless. When I do that, the Holy Spirit who dwells in me makes me to hold onto the promise Words He gave me. At that time I hold onto that Words of God and proclaim to God in prayer. Then the grace of God I enjoy is that I am strengthened a little more by His promise Words and more firmly believe that God will fulfill His promises to me in His time. And in this faith God makes me endure patiently.
In Jeremiah 33:1, prophet Jeremiah, the servant of God, was confined in a royal prison. There, I am sure Jeremiah could ask God like this: 'God, why should I be in prison now?', 'What have I done wrong that I am going through this right now?’, ‘Why should I be subjected to this unfair thing? Didn’t I obey You and proclaimed Your Words that You wanted me to proclaim?’ etc.. And he could have blamed on God. Like the Israelites, who were “hemmed in by the desert” (Exod. 14:3) and were terrified by the Egyptians and thus cried out to the Lord (vv. 8-12), Jeremiah could have been afraid and blamed on God too. But he was not afraid, and he didn’t blame anyone. Rather, he received the word of God when he was imprisoned in the royal court (Jer. 33:1). When we feel like we are hemmed in by surround circumstance in which there seems to be no solution to the problems, it may be a good opportunity to receive the Word of God. The reason is that even though we can be imprisoned by various problems, the Word of God is not imprisoned (2 Tim. 2:9). I have briefly meditated on the Word of God in two ways that came to prophet Jeremiah who was confined in the royal prison:
First, the God who spoke to Jeremiah, who was confined in the royal prison, was "the Lord who formed it to establish it".
Look at Jeremiah 33:2 – “Thus says the LORD who made the earth, the LORD who formed it to establish it, the LORD is His name.” The Lord made the earth. Although prophet Jeremiah couldn’t do the Lord’s work because was imprisoned, God did His work. Not only God made the earth, but He also formed it to establish it.
Our God does the work of God. Although we feel like we are in prison like Jeremiah, the Lord does His work. The Lord may use us or not use us. We are just the Lord’s tools. And we, as the Lord’s tools, are used by the Lord if He wants to but cannot be used unless He uses us. No matter what, we should be thankful to God. And our concern is not that we are used, but the will of the Lord is done on earth. In fulfilling His will, the Lord does His work, even though we are in a difficult situation. And that work of the Lord is salvation. Apostle Paul described this salvation work as "good work": “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:6). We must have this assurance like Paul. We must have conviction that the Lord who has begun to save His people, He will bring it to completion whatever circumstances that we may be in. In particular, we pray that we will accomplish the work of the Lord by faith, even though we feel imprisoned, and we should praise God in the confidence that the Lord will do.
Second, the word of God that came to Jeremiah, who was confined in a royal prison, was, "Call to Me."
Look at Jeremiah 33:3 – “'Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” God said to prophet Jeremiah, who was confined in the royal prison, "Call to Me." This reminds me Prophet Jonah, who disobeyed the God’s command and ran away from God through the ship, was thrown into the sea (Jon. 1:15) because a great storm would rise in the sea so that the ship would almost break (vv. 1-4). Then God prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah (v. 17) and Jonah prayed to God in the belly of the great fish (2:1). He was trapped inside the stomach of the great fish, but there he prayed to God. He looked again at the Lord's temple (v. 4). And the conclusion of his prayer was "Salvation belongs to the LORD" (v. 9). As a result, God commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land (v. 10). Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time and Jonah obeyed and went to Nineveh and proclaimed to the people of Nineveh what God had commanded him (3:1-4). Looking back on our lives, it was very difficult time like feeling imprisoned for us when we cried out to God. The only thing we could do in that situation was to cry out to God. When we looked around, north, south, east and west, there was no solution to the problem. So we had to look up to the Lord and asked God for help. When we think about that time, we can understand why God said to Jeremiah who was confined in the royal prison, "Cry out to Me." Why then did God tell Prophet Jeremiah to cry out to God while he was in the royal prison? The reason was that God promised Jeremiah that He would tell him great and mighty things, which he didn’t know (Jer. 33:3). What was God's "great and mighty things" here? It was about the discipline of God toward the people of Judah and their restoration. When they came to the temple of God, they worshiped God with their lips. But when they were outside of the temple, they worshiped idols and did evil in the sight of God. So God sent his servants diligently to tell the people of Judah to repent and return to God but they didn’t listen. As a result, God promised them that He would use the Babylonians as His instrument of discipline of love to invade Judah, and that Jerusalem would be burned and destroyed and that the remnant would be taken captive to Babylon. But besides this promise of discipline, God promised to restore the people of Judah to Jerusalem after seventy years. In the context of Jeremiah 33:1, one of the words of the restoration that God promised was to heal the city of Jerusalem, and to show them the abundance of peace and truth (v. 6). What is interesting is that God used the Babylonians to discipline the people of Judah, so that their remnants are captive in Babylon so that they might realize their sins and repent. And God promised them that He would make them clean and forgive them from all the sin they have committed against God (v. 8). And God promised them to restore the fortune of Judah and of Israel and would build them as they were at first (v. 7). God promised to bring them to health and healing and God would revel to them the abundance of peace and truth (v. 6). This promise of restoration was received by Prophet Jeremiah as God’s answer of his cry out in the royal prison.
When I was meditating about Prophet Jeremiah being in the royal prison, I remembered the story of Joseph in Genesis 39. The reason was that Joseph was also imprisoned. Although Joseph didn’t do anything wrong, he was falsely accused and was imprisoned in the place where the king’s prisoners were confined (Gen. 39:14-20). He could have grumbled in dissatisfaction with God's guidance and lead since he couldn’t understand what God’s will was and what He was doing in his life. But Joseph didn’t do that. How was this possible? Joseph also had two years in the prison (41:1). Think about it. If we didn’t do anything wrong but we have been falsely accused of being imprisoned for two years. Then I am sure we will have a lot of thought in our minds. In particular, if I were in Joseph's situation, I would think probably that I am wasting my life in prison for two years. But as we know, God never wastes His time. Joseph, who had been loved by his father Jacob more than any other brothers (37:3), had two dreams when he was seventeen (vv. 1, 5, 9). So his older brothers hated him (v. 5) and eventually they sold him into slavery in Egypt (vv. 25-28), and he was put to jail and spent two years in prison (39:7-23, 41: 1). And thirteen years later, when Joseph was thirty years old, God made Joseph to interpret King Pharaoh’s dream, so Pharaoh established Joseph as the prime minister of Egypt (ch. 41). Thus Joseph's ages from 17 to 30 years, 2 out of 13 years, he was in prison. It seems like Joseph wasted his two precious years at his young age. But when we think about it in faith, God didn’t waste those two years of his imprisonment. During that time, Joseph met the King Pharaoh's cupbearer and the baker (40:1-4). And Joseph interpreted their dreams (vv. 5-15). As a result, two years later, after the restoration of the Pharaoh’s cupbearer’s former position (v. 21), Joseph interprets the King Pharaoh’s dream as well (41:9-36). As a result, Joseph became prime minister of Egypt (v. 41). Why did God work right this? What was God's purpose or God's will? Listen to what Joseph told his brothers who came down to Egypt: “Please come closer to me." And they came closer. And he said, "I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life” (45:4-5). In the plan of God's great salvation, Joseph was in prison for 2 years in the process of being prepared to be used by God. When I think about this, I get encouraged and have hope. Although I sometimes feel like I am trapped in prison and I don’t know why God allows me to go through this kind of trial in my life in which I feel incompetent and helpless, God is giving me faith to believe and to have confidence in Him that He has perfect plan for me. So by faith, He encourages me and strengthens me to endure the trials with patience and hope. In doing so, my prayer is that, like Paul and Silas who were imprisoned unfairly, I want to pray and praise God (Acts 16:25). It is understandable that they prayed to God in prison, but I don’t understand how they praised God in such circumstance. But when I think of the Psalmist, Paul, and Silas based on the book “the Book of Psalms”(written by Mark D. Futato), I believe in God's grace that when He gave them faith, they could not only pray but also to praise God even though they were in the difficult situation of confinement in prison. To do so, like the psalmist David and Paul and Silas, we should pray to God by faith in Almighty God who can deliver them out of the prison. We need to stand firm in faith, completely trusting in God of salvation when we pray to Him. I think Paul and Silas were able to praise God in the prison not because their situation had changed, that is they were freed from the prison, but because their hearts were changed or I should said their hearts were strengthened by God. As a result, not only did Paul and Silas enjoy freedom from the prison, but also the prison guard and his whole family came to believe in Jesus Christ and enjoyed the freedom from sin (Acts 16:26-34). What amazing providence of God and His work of salvation?