If you are joining us in reading through Isaiah and Jeremiah today’s reading is Jeremiah chapter 18 and the devotion is taken from Jeremiah 18:18. Then some people said, “Come on! Let us consider how to deal with Jeremiah! There will still be priests to instruct us, wise men to give us advice, and prophets to declare God’s word. Come on! Let’s bring charges against him and get rid of him! Then we will not need to pay attention to anything he says. (NET Bible) It’s interesting how people who don’t want to hear God’s truth will fight against it. They figure that if they get rid of the messenger that the message will go away as well. That’s exactly what the people of Judah were saying about Jeremiah. If he just will go away then all the things that he was saying would also go away and the religious leaders could go back to doing what they’re supposed to do. People don’t like to hear bad news. In a movie called The Freshman, Matthew Broderick plays a young man who gets caught up with a man who has a godfather personality. Who, interestingly enough is played by Marlon Brando. In one scene Marlon Brando is on the phone speaking with his stockbroker and he says “tell me only good news, I don’t want to hear bad news. Make sure you only tell me good news.” The general population is like that. They don’t want to hear bad news about themselves. They don’t want to hear that they have a spiritual problem. They don’t want to know that they have no relationship with God. They want to feel good about themselves. So, they think, if they just get rid of the messenger than the message will go away. This is borne out in our current political situation. If anyone in politics, Democrat or Republican, is facing some bad news they will go into attack mode. If they cannot attack the message itself then they will attack the messenger. They will delay answering questions by saying they are irrelevant. They will delay providing information by saying it is privileged. And then when they’ve gone on long enough they will attack the message and the messenger by saying things like “that is old news.” Or “we have already answered those questions.” We must never become involved in attempting to justify what we say. We should approach spreading the message that God has given us by simply telling the truth. And eventually as a truth is told some will believe it. There always be a group of people who will not believe no matter what you say. While they need to hear the message we need to concentrate on those who will respond positively.
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 10:00:00 +0000
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