Daily Devotion

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.


Unloved Prophet
The judges and the other people told the priests and prophets, "Since Jeremiah only told us what the Loan our God had said, we don't think he deserves to die."
Then some of the leaders from other towns stepped forward. They told the crowd that years ago when Hezekiah was king of Judah, a prophet named Micah from the town of Moresheth had said:
"I, the LORD All-Powerful, say Jerusalem will be plowed under and left in ruins.
Thorns will cover the mountain where the temple now stands." Then the leaders continued:
No one put Micah to death for saying that. Instead, King Hezekiah prayed to the LORD with fear and trembling and asked him to have mercy. Then the LORD decided not to destroy Jerusalem, even though he had already said he would. People of Judah, if Jeremiah is killed, we will bring a terrible disaster on ourselves.
After these leaders finished speaking, an important man named Ahikam son of Shaphan spoke up for me as well. And so, I wasn't handed over to the crowd to be killed. - Jeremiah 26:16-24 CEV

Governments, bureaucrats, and lawyers concern themselves with precedent—what has gone before. When confronted by the uncomfortable, inconvenient, and unpopular words of Jeremiah, their first thought was to get rid of those words by getting rid of the prophet himself. But then someone brought up the precedent of a previous inconvenient prophet named Micah. Since Micah had been left alive and free to go about his business, there was no reason for them to do anything to Jeremiah, either.

Precedent trumped what they had initially planned for Jeremiah, because a bureaucrat likes following the rules more than anything else. For them, the precedent of Micah meant they had fixed the problem of Jeremiah by letting him live.

So they did what was right with Jeremiah. But they did it not because they cared about what was right, not because they loved God, and certainly not because they loved Jeremiah. They did the right thing because the rules said they were supposed to. If the rules had told them to kill him, they'd have done so with no more passion than they had expended in freeing him.

Just because you do the right thing doesn't mean that you are righteous. Just because you did the loving thing, doesn't mean you are loving. It is easy to follow the rules, to follow the steps, to do what you're told. Following the rules is easy, but it never leads to righteousness.