JEREMIAH 26
How patient the Lord is with us! He keeps speaking to us and pleading with us to listen. “Listen and turn—hear and heed!” is His loving message to us. Will we obey?
How prone human nature is to resist the Word! The leaders should have called for a time of fasting and prayer, but instead they called for the execution of God’s prophet! Are we “swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (James 1:19)? Do we want what is right for us and the nation, or what is popular?
How wise are those who learn from the past! The elders knew the Word of God and the history of the nation, and they were able to guide the mob toward sanity and justice.
How safe are those who are faithful to God when everything seems against them! Jeremiah stood his ground, and God protected him. Urijah ran away and was captured and killed. The safest place in the world is in the will of God, for there you are ready to live or die.
A Special Family
God used Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, to rescue Jeremiah. Shaphan was the man who found the Book of the Law when Josiah was restoring the temple (2 Kings 22:3–13). His son Gemariah begged King Jehoiakim not to destroy the book Jeremiah had written (