Jeremiah 5 Devotional

Mercy Looking for a Reason

““Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem. Look now and take note; search her squares. If you can find a single person, anyone who acts justly, anyone who seeks the truth, then I will forgive the city.”Jeremiah 5:1 (BSB)

God sends Jeremiah through the streets of Jerusalem on a search. If he can find one person who acts justly and seeks the truth, God will forgive the whole city (5:1). Jeremiah looks among the poor, then among the powerful, and finds the same refusal everywhere (5:3-5). The rich ignore the orphan and the needy (5:28), prophets lie, and the people are happy to have it that way (5:31).

Yet the search also shows the heart of God. The one who set the sea its boundary and sends the rain in its seasons (5:22-24) was looking for a reason to pardon. Even as he announces judgment, he says he will not destroy them completely (5:10, 18). No one in Jerusalem met the test. The gospel announces the one who did: Christ, who was righteous, suffered once for those who were not, to bring them to God (1 Peter 3:18). Your hope rests on his righteousness, not on being that one just person yourself.

To think about: How does knowing that God looks for reasons to pardon, and found one in Christ, change the way you come to him?