Lessons From The Pit Series

Jeremiah’s not the only person to end up at the bottom of a pit, in the bible we see a couple of other instances. Remember Joseph was thrown into a pit by his brothers and Daniel was tossed into the Lions Den, which was just a big pit. And people end up in pits for various reasons. I believe that Joseph ended up in a pit because he was a jerk. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Joseph was his father’s favourite son and it’s true that God had revealed to Joseph through dreams that he would end up in a position to rule over his brothers. But did he really have to continually rub their noses in that knowledge?

Jeremiah was in a pit for proclaiming the word of God. I’ve known pastors through the years who have been forced to leave their church because people were upset with their preaching. Hasn’t happened to me, but we have had people leave BCC because they didn’t like the message. And with the passing of bill C250 in parliament you can be assured the day will come when a pastor denounces homosexuality from the pulpit and he winds up in court.

And Daniel was in a pit because he was obedient to God, the law said he wasn’t to pray and he responded with “I must pray” and pray he did. And as a result he was thrown in a pit full of lions.

And you know what it’s like to look at the world from the bottom of a pit, maybe it was your fault and maybe it wasn’t but that doesn’t change the fact that the bottom of the pit is not a nice place to be. And so this morning we are going to look at some of the things you can learn from the bottom of the pit. Now I know that today is Father’s Day and Angela said that my message should be a Father’s Day message. And we don’t know if Jeremiah was a father or not, but if he was then these are things that a Father can learn from the bottom of the pit.

1) You Learn to Look Up. When you are in a pit the best view is often up. You can look at the mud at the bottom of the pit, but that’s just plain depressing, you can focus on the stark, barren walls that are devoid of a foothold and that is discouraging And looking up can help you see a lot of things. It helps you to see God. You know too often God is an afterthought in the good life. When everything is going well, you have a great job, healthy kids, a loving spouse, you kind of figure that you deserve it. After all you are a nice person, you’ve worked hard. And God doesn’t really enter the picture. Oh you say grace before your meals, God is great God is good and we thank him for this food, Amen. When the pastor is praying we try to pray as well, I mean that’s only right. Unless of course you’re reading the Penn of Denn or counting the tiles on the floor, or wondering how much longer the pastor will be.

But when things take a turn for the worse, you lose your job. Your kids get sick, your marriage starts to fail. Then it’s a whole new kettle of fish, a horse of a different colour, you know what I mean. Then you have God on speed dial. “Hello God, help, my little boy is sick.” “Hello God, help, I just got fired” “Hello God, help, we’re having problems in our marriage.”