Find One

Daily Reading: Jeremiah 5

Scripture Focus: Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note!  Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her. (Jeremiah 5.1)

Devotional Thought: When confronted by God about the demise of Sodom, Abraham pled with God to spare the city if there could be found fifty righteous people within the city.  God agreed to spare the city for the sake of the fifty righteous.  Step by step, Abraham kept asking God to spare the city... "for the sake of forty-five... for the sake of forty... thirty... twenty... ten?"  Each time God agreed to spare the city (Genesis 18).  In the end, however, only four were found:  Lot, his wife and his daughters.  Sodom was destroyed. 

I have often wondered, "What would have happened had Abraham pressed the issue?"  The words of God through Jeremiah seem to indicate that Abraham might have made a difference if he had continued to intercede: "See if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her" [Emphasis mine].

God longs to show mercy, and he does so through the agency of his children:

·       Moses interceded for the people of Israel when God was about to pour out judgment for their idolatry.

·       Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, stopped the plague that had struck Israel for adultery.

·       David and the elders saved Jerusalem when the death angel stood ready to destroy the city.

·       God saved not only Paul from shipwreck, but also "all those who sailed with [him]."

·       Paul would later write how "the unbelieving husband is made holy [set apart to God] because of his wife...  Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy" (1 Corinthians 7.14).

God wants to use each of us to bring people to salvation.  Are we doing our part?  Will you be the one?

Prayer: "Who will be the first to lead the way?  I will be the one.  Who will stand in the gap?  Who will watch and pray?

I will be the one...  Who will say to the Lord, 'Here am I send me'?  I will be the one."  Amen.  (Babbie Mason)

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 106.19-23

19 They made a calf in Horeb and worshiped a metal image.

20 They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.

21 They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt,

22 wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.

23 Therefore he said he would destroy them—had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.