Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Now, after the king had burned the scroll with the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which King Jehoiakim of Judah has burned.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, June 29, 2025
by Rev. Dr. Miles Hopgood, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: We can resist the word of God, but only for so long. It is persistent, both in bringing judgment against sin and in bringing grace to the repentant.
With each new month, parenting brings new challenges. Recently, my daughter gained the last bit of height she needed to reach the light switch which turns on the lights to the exterior of our house. Being a classic “don’t waste energy” dad and believing that our neighbors would be confused by the light show, I insist on keeping them off, and she in turn made a game of turning them on again as soon as I’ve sat back down. In frustration, I finally resorted to removing the physical bulbs from all the lights, which kept her at bay until I remembered that the guests we were having over would need them to see by. Defeated, I replaced them, and she returned to her game with renewed vigor.
At the risk of diminishing the judgment present in this text, I like to imagine that there is something playful about God’s behavior here. Certainly, there must have been laughter in heaven at King Jehoiakim believing that he could really silence God by throwing the scroll into a brazier. Perhaps he was relying on the tediousness and cost of producing written words to buy him a reprieve, if only for a time. Or perhaps—and this is more likely—the king believed he was not up against God, only a man named Jeremiah. People are quite easy to silence, and it is not hard to imagine him staring into the fire of his quarters believing he had seen to the problem of this meddlesome, so-called prophet.
The latter scenario is one we are all too familiar. Whether it is members of Congress censoring a bishop for the audacity of pleading with the president to be merciful on the last and least in our country, or simply our congregations acting as if preaching which discomforts them can be stopped by applying appropriate pressure to the pastor, there is a sense that if we can attack the human, we can get at God. The same logic was certainly operative at the crucifixion, for what it’s worth. And yet here, as in the pulpit, as on the cross, God proves that while we are like grass, which withers and fades, the word of our God endures forever (1 Peter 1:24-5).
The good news is that the ultimate word we receive from God is one of judgment yielding to mercy. If King Jehoiakim had only listened to God’s word instead of trying to overcome it, he might have found something worth preserving rather than burning. But the outcome is not our concern, only the faithfulness to the message and the confidence that the one whose words these truly are will not be put to shame. Our God is willing to rewrite the message of grace and mercy again and again on every human heart and all of creation until at least we grow faint of trying to erase it. This is both a warning to everyone who would try to erase the love of God for others and a blessing to those who suffer waiting for the consummation of the promise. The God who endured the cross for us will endure all else to ensure that God’s word concerning our place with God is etched indelibly in eternity.
