Do You Have the Heart of God?

Jeremiah 5/Gen 18 Have you ever felt your heart so sad that you thought it would break? That is why, like Jeremiah, we begin to wonder, is there any good news? Is it all bad news? And there right front and center in chapter five, we see the heart of God. 

God tells Jeremiah, “See if you can find a single person who deals honestly and tries to be truthful. If you can, then I will not punish this city.” [Jer 5:1] Flashback: Return to Gen 18, where we encounter Abraham and the Lord God as they converse about Sodom and Gomorrah. In His mercy, God had quietly shared with Abraham: “I must go down and see if they are as wicked as the outcry suggests. If NOT, I want to know.” [Gen 18:1]

Even though God is omniscient, He still “wants to know.” And that is because God is a personal God, not an arbitrary idol god. One of the marvelous things we can count on is that God always thoroughly investigates a situation before passing judgment. He cannot nor will He arbitrarily destroy because He is a fair and judge. As He did with Sodom, He does with us.

We can count on the fact that the God we serve is “compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and truth.” It is because His “lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.” [Lam 3:22] 

Do we have these same character qualities? Do we judge before we have evidence? God’s heart is clear: He is fair and just and He expects us to be the same.