Your Life as Spoil: A Peculiar Deliverance Text: Jeremiah 39:15-18
Introduction: A Whisper in the Inferno
The scene is one of absolute pandemonium. The great city of Jerusalem, the city of David, the place where God had set His name, is in its death throes. The Babylonian siege has succeeded, the walls are breached, and the city is a screaming chaos of fire, sword, and judgment. King Zedekiah, the feckless and final king of Judah, has been captured. His sons are slaughtered before his eyes, and then his own eyes are gouged out before he is hauled off in chains to Babylon. This is the end. This is the long-prophesied calamity, the wages of generations of covenant rebellion coming due with terrifying finality.
The narrative is sweeping, brutal, and national in its scope. It is the story of a civilization collapsing under the righteous judgment of God. And then, in the middle of this inferno, the Holy Spirit presses the pause button. The camera of Scripture zooms in, past the smoke and the carnage, past the toppled thrones and the weeping masses, and focuses on one man. Not a king, not a priest, not even an Israelite. The focus is on a man named Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch in the king's court.
In the midst of a city-wide conflagration, God speaks a quiet, personal word of deliverance to a foreigner. This is a staggering contrast. It is a miniature portrait of the gospel tucked away in one of the darkest chapters of the Old Testament. It teaches us that God's judgment is thorough, but His grace is particular. He is the God of nations, but He is also the God of individuals. And He makes His promises of salvation to those who trust Him, even when the whole world around them is coming apart at the seams.
This is not just an interesting historical footnote. This is a paradigm for us. We too live in a civilization that is collapsing under the judgment of God for its rebellion. And in the midst of the chaos, God still speaks a personal word of deliverance to those who will trust Him. He offers us our lives as a spoil of war, a prize snatched from the wreckage. This passage shows us the nature of that deliverance, the reason for it, and the character of the God who provides it.
The Text
Now the word of Yahweh had come to Jeremiah while he was confined in the court of the guard, saying, "Go and speak to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, ‘Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am about to bring My words on this city for calamity and not for prosperity; and they will take place before you on that day. But I will deliver you on that day,” declares Yahweh, “and you will not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are terrified. For I will certainly provide you escape, and you will not fall by the sword; but you will have your own life as spoil because you have trusted in Me,” declares Yahweh.’"
(Jeremiah 39:15-18 LSB)
A Word Before the Wreckage (v. 15)
The passage begins with a crucial flashback, setting the timing of this divine word.
"Now the word of Yahweh had come to Jeremiah while he was confined in the court of the guard, saying," (Jeremiah 39:15)
This is not a message delivered after the fact. This word came to Jeremiah before the city fell, while he was still a prisoner. This is foundational. God does not make up His promises on the fly. He speaks His deliverance into the darkness, before the deliverance is visible. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. God gave Ebed-melech a promise to stand on while the ground was still shaking, not a report after the dust had settled.
Notice also that Jeremiah is in jail. He is confined, but as Paul would later say, the Word of God is not chained (2 Tim. 2:9). Man can imprison the prophet, but he cannot imprison the prophetic word. God's purposes are not hindered by walls or guards or the machinations of wicked men. His sovereignty operates just as freely in a prison courtyard as it does from a heavenly throne. This is a comfort to us. Our circumstances, no matter how confining, can never restrict the purposes or the promises of God.
Grace for the Outsider (v. 16)
God's message is specific, addressed to a very particular man.
"Go and speak to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, ‘Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am about to bring My words on this city for calamity and not for prosperity; and they will take place before you on that day." (Jeremiah 39:16 LSB)
The recipient is Ebed-melech the Ethiopian. Think about who this man is. He is a Gentile, a foreigner from Cush. He is a eunuch, a man who, under the ceremonial law, was excluded from the assembly of Israel (Deut. 23:1). He is a servant in the court of a corrupt and doomed king. By all external measures, he is an outsider, a nobody, a man with no standing among the covenant people. And yet, God knows his name. God singles him out for grace. This is a beautiful foreshadowing of the gospel breaking down the dividing walls. It is a preview of Philip and another Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. God's grace has always been aimed at the nations.
But the promise of deliverance begins with an unvarnished declaration of judgment. "Behold, I am about to bring My words on this city for calamity and not for prosperity." God does not offer cheap grace. He does not sugarcoat reality. The rescue boat is only good news if you understand that the ship is sinking. The gospel of salvation only makes sense against the backdrop of the law and certain judgment. Ebed-melech is not promised an escape from seeing the calamity; he is promised preservation through it. "They will take place before you on that day." He will witness the horror. We too are not promised a secret rapture out of tribulation; we are promised that He will keep us in the midst of it.
The Great Gospel Reversal (v. 17)
In the middle of the pronouncement of doom, God inserts a glorious, personal exception.
"But I will deliver you on that day,” declares Yahweh, “and you will not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are terrified." (Genesis 39:17 LSB)
Here is the great "but" of the gospel. The city will fall, but I will deliver you. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life. This is the hinge upon which all of salvation turns. It is the sovereign intrusion of grace into a situation of deserved judgment.
And the promise is intensely personal. "I will deliver you." And God knows our specific fears. He promises Ebed-melech that he will not be handed over to "the men of whom you are terrified." Who were these men? They were the powerful princes of Judah whom Ebed-melech had defied. Back in chapter 38, these officials had thrown Jeremiah into a muddy cistern to die. Ebed-melech, risking everything, went to the king and pleaded for the prophet's life. He made powerful, ruthless enemies that day. In the chaos of a city's fall, scores are settled. Ebed-melech had every reason to believe these men would hunt him down. God knows this. He knows the specific shape of our anxieties, and He speaks His promise directly to them. He doesn't just promise generic safety; He promises deliverance from the very thing that haunts our waking moments.
The Reason and the Reward (v. 18)
The final verse gives the certainty of the promise, the nature of the reward, and the ultimate reason for it all.
"For I will certainly provide you escape, and you will not fall by the sword; but you will have your own life as spoil because you have trusted in Me,” declares Yahweh.’" (Jeremiah 39:18 LSB)
God's promise is emphatic: "I will certainly provide you escape." This is not a possibility, but a divine guarantee. But look at the nature of the deliverance. "You will have your own life as spoil." A spoil is plunder taken in battle. In a city where everything of value is being looted and carried off, the one treasure Ebed-melech will escape with is his life. And God frames this not as a meager consolation prize, but as a glorious trophy, a spoil of war that God Himself has won for him. In the total shipwreck of a culture, to be saved with only the shirt on your back and the breath in your lungs is to be made fantastically rich. This is the nature of our salvation. We are not saved with our dignity intact, or with our list of accomplishments, or with our worldly treasures. We are pulled from the fire with nothing but the life that Christ has won for us, and that is everything.
And why? What is the basis for this remarkable, particular grace? The text is explicit. It is not because he was an Ethiopian, or a eunuch, or a nice person. God declares the reason plainly: "because you have trusted in Me." Faith is the sole instrument of our justification and our deliverance. Ebed-melech was saved by faith alone.
But what did his faith look like? It was not a private, abstract belief. It was a trust that acted. His trust in Yahweh caused him to fear God more than he feared the wrath of powerful men. His faith had hands and feet. He saw God's prophet perishing and he did something. He put his career, his reputation, and his very life on the line because he trusted in the God of Israel. This is the nature of true, saving faith. It is a confident trust in God that results in courageous, costly obedience.
Conclusion: Your Life as a Spoil of Grace
The story of Ebed-melech is our story. We live in a world that, like Jerusalem, lies under the just sentence of calamity for its rebellion against the living God. The judgment is not a vague possibility; it is a certainty. The whole creation groans, and the civilizations of men are crumbling.
But into this world of certain judgment, God has spoken a word of deliverance. He has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our rescue. The message of the gospel is the great "but" of history. The world is perishing, but God so loved the world that He sent His only Son. We were dead in our sins, but God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ.
And like Ebed-melech, we are outsiders. We are Gentiles, spiritually barren, with no claim on God. But He has called us by name. He knows our specific fears, the fear of death, the fear of man, the fear of failure, and He has promised to deliver us from them.
The reward He offers is our life as spoil. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ plundered the kingdom of darkness and won our eternal life as a spoil of His victory. We escape the sword of final judgment not with anything we have earned, but only with the life He gives.
And the condition is the same as it has always been: "because you have trusted in Me." The call of the gospel is a call to trust. To abandon all trust in yourself, in your righteousness, in your plans, and to place all your confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ. And when that trust is real, it will act. It will lead you to stand for Christ and His people, even when it is costly. Ebed-melech was saved because he trusted God. You will be saved on no other basis.