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Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Monday, 20 July 2026:
Jeremiah 12:1-3 — Righteous are you, O LORD, when I complain to you; yet I would plead my case before you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive? You plant them, and they take root; they grow and produce fruit; you are near in their mouth and far from their heart. But you, O LORD, know me; you see me, and test my heart toward you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
Jeremiah is not questioning whether evil deserves judgment. Scripture consistently affirms that it does. His struggle is that he has not yet learned to see sinners through the eyes of God. From a human perspective, immediate judgment appears to be the most righteous response. Yet the Lord repeatedly reveals throughout Scripture that His apparent delay is not weakness, indifference, or injustice but mercy. Peter later explains what Jeremiah could not yet fully see: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise… but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). What Jeremiah perceived as delayed justice was actually divine compassion.
This exposes a question that reaches far beyond Jeremiah. Do we truly desire God’s will, or do we desire our own version of justice? Jesus confronted Peter with this very issue after Peter rebuked Him for speaking about the cross: “You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:23). Peter wanted a Messiah who conquered His enemies. God intended to save His enemies. Jeremiah similarly desires judgment upon those who oppose him, while God is patiently pursuing their repentance. The difference is not found in God’s justice but in God’s love.
There is another purpose in God’s patience that Jeremiah cannot yet see. The Lord is not merely delaying judgment for the sake of the wicked; He is also delaying it for the sake of His prophet. God is using the very people Jeremiah longs to see judged as instruments in His own sanctification. We often assume that when God places unbelievers in our lives, His primary purpose is for us to influence them. Certainly that is true. Yet just as often, God places them in our lives to influence us — not toward their sin, but toward Christlikeness. Their hostility exposes our impatience. Their selfishness reveals our pride. Their opposition uncovers how little we naturally share God’s heart for sinners. Like a refiner exposing impurities in precious metal, God uses difficult people to reveal what still remains within us that is unlike Christ. Until those impurities are exposed, they cannot be confessed, surrendered, and transformed.
This is why Jesus repeatedly warned His disciples against focusing first on the failures of others while overlooking the condition of their own hearts. We naturally see the speck in another’s eye while remaining blind to the plank in our own (Matthew 7:3-5). Jeremiah sees the wickedness of his persecutors clearly, but he does not yet recognize that God is addressing something equally important within him. The Lord desires not only to rescue sinners from judgment but also to conform His children to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). His work of redemption is therefore occurring on two fronts simultaneously. He patiently pursues unbelievers with the hope of repentance while patiently shaping believers into people who increasingly share His compassion, His humility, and His sacrificial love.
This perspective transforms the way we understand suffering. Instead of asking merely, “Why has God allowed these people into my life?” we begin asking, “What is God teaching me about His own heart through them?” The answer is often that He is teaching us to love as He loves, to forgive as He forgives, and to remain faithful as Christ remained faithful. Before God entrusts us with greater usefulness in His kingdom, He first forms within us the character of the King Himself.
The cross reveals how God’s justice and mercy meet without compromising either. Every sin will indeed be judged. The only question is whether that judgment falls upon the sinner or upon Christ, who willingly bore God’s wrath in the place of all who repent and believe. God’s patience is therefore not an abandonment of justice but an invitation to receive mercy before justice finally comes.
The more we grow into Christlikeness, the more our prayers begin to resemble Christ’s rather than Jeremiah’s. Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them” for those who nailed Him to the cross (Luke 23:34). Stephen echoed the same prayer while being stoned (Acts 7:60). Such love does not arise naturally. It is formed through years of walking with God as He patiently transforms our hearts into the likeness of His Son (Romans 8:28-29).
Jeremiah 12:5-6 — “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan? For even your brothers and the house of your father, even they have dealt treacherously with you.
God’s response is surprising because He never directly answers Jeremiah’s question. Jeremiah asks why the wicked prosper, but the Lord immediately begins speaking about Jeremiah himself. This is not because Jeremiah’s question is unimportant, but because God is addressing something even deeper than Jeremiah’s circumstances — Jeremiah’s heart. The prophet wants God to remove the wicked; God intends first to transform His prophet. Before Jeremiah can faithfully represent the heart of God to a rebellious people, he must increasingly share the heart of the God he represents.
The Lord therefore tells Jeremiah that greater opposition is still ahead. If running with men has exhausted him, how will he run with horses? If he struggles in peaceful circumstances, how will he endure the thickets of the Jordan? God is not threatening Jeremiah but preparing him. Yet this preparation is far more than building endurance for ministry. It is forming within Jeremiah the character necessary to love, persevere, and remain faithful among people who continually reject him. Such love cannot be learned in comfort. It is forged through patient obedience in the presence of difficult people.
Jesus repeatedly taught His disciples that spiritual maturity begins not by fixing our attention on the sins of others but by allowing God to expose what remains within ourselves. Jeremiah clearly sees Judah’s rebellion, but the Lord is revealing something equally significant within His prophet. Before Jeremiah can faithfully call others to repentance, God is cultivating in him the humility, compassion, and longsuffering that reflect His own heart.
This is the painful school of Christlikeness. We often wonder why God allows prolonged opposition, betrayal, misunderstanding, and persecution to remain in our lives. Yet virtues such as patience, gentleness, forgiveness, steadfastness, mercy, and sacrificial love cannot mature in isolation. They must be exercised before they become part of our character. Just as muscles grow only under resistance, so the fruit of the Spirit develops through circumstances that continually invite us to respond according to the flesh while the Holy Spirit teaches us to respond according to Christ (Galatians 5:22-23).
Jeremiah still desires justice more than reconciliation, but the Lord is preparing him to become the kind of shepherd who continues calling people to repentance even when they reject him. This is the very path Jesus would later walk. He did not simply preach forgiveness; He demonstrated it while enduring rejection, betrayal, injustice, and the cross. His obedience flowed from perfect union with the Father (John 17:21-23), whose will had become His delight. Likewise, God is not satisfied with producing outward conformity in His children. He is transforming their desires until they increasingly love righteousness, hate sin, and seek the redemption of sinners because they genuinely share His heart.
This explains why God does not immediately remove Jeremiah from hardship. His goal is not merely that Jeremiah survive suffering but that he be changed by it. Romans 8:28-29 promises that God works every circumstance for the good of those who love Him, and that good is conformity to the image of His Son. The trials themselves are not the goal; Christlikeness is. Every disappointment, every opposition, every delay, and every painful relationship becomes another opportunity for the Father to shape within us the character of Jesus until obedience is no longer merely our duty but our delight.
This is the pattern by which God conforms every believer to Christ. Jeremiah will eventually understand that God’s delay is not simply mercy toward the wicked; it is mercy toward him as well. The Lord is giving His prophet time to grow into the likeness of Christ before entrusting him with greater burdens. The question therefore shifts from, “Lord, why haven’t You judged them?” to “Lord, what are You accomplishing in me through them?” When our minds are increasingly set on the things of God rather than the things of man (Matthew 16:23), even suffering becomes an instrument of grace. We discover that God’s delays are never wasted. While He patiently calls sinners to repentance, He is patiently transforming His children until they increasingly love what He loves, desire what He desires, and faithfully represent His kingdom in a world that desperately needs both His truth and His grace.
Jeremiah 12:7-13 — “I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my heritage; I have given the beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies… Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard; they have trampled down my portion; they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness… The whole land is made desolate, but no man lays it to heart.
These verses reveal the sorrow of God over the judgment His holiness requires. The Lord speaks of Judah as “the beloved of my soul,” even while announcing her coming discipline. Divine judgment is never detached, vindictive, or contrary to God’s love. Rather, it is the painful necessity of a holy God whose people have persistently rejected His covenant. Sin always destroys what God loves, and His grief over that destruction anticipates Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem even as He foretold its coming judgment (Luke 19:41-44). At the cross, God’s justice and His love meet perfectly. There, His righteous wrath against sin is fully satisfied, while His immeasurable compassion is extended to sinners through the sacrifice of His Son.
“Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard….” The Lord also exposes the devastating influence of ungodly shepherds who were entrusted with caring for His vineyard yet instead ruined it. Throughout Scripture, leadership is measured not by authority but by faithful stewardship of those entrusted to one’s care. Jesus stands in complete contrast as the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep (John 10:11). Yet this warning extends beyond leaders alone. Every believer represents Christ before the world. The Father is not merely preparing His people to proclaim truth but to display His character. Our words carry weight only when our lives increasingly reflect the patience, humility, mercy, and sacrificial love of the Shepherd we follow.
Perhaps the most sobering statement is that “no man lays it to heart.” The people witnessed the consequences of their rebellion yet refused to consider what God was revealing through them. Their greatest tragedy was not merely their suffering but their hardened hearts. Jeremiah began this chapter struggling to understand God’s apparent delay, but God has steadily redirected his attention from the sins of others to His own heart and purposes. The Lord is not only exposing Judah’s rebellion; He is revealing His own compassionate character and inviting His prophet to share it. Centuries later, Jesus would weep over Jerusalem for the very same reason (Luke 19:41-44). The people saw His miracles, heard His teaching, and witnessed the fulfillment of God’s promises, yet “did not know the time of your visitation.” They failed to recognize the Father’s heart standing before them in the person of His Son. Their blindness was not merely intellectual but spiritual; they could see God’s works while remaining blind to God’s purposes. Every trial presents believers with the same choice. We can become consumed with changing our circumstances, or we can ask what God is revealing about Himself and what He desires to produce within us through them. Only those who truly lay God’s dealings to heart are transformed by them, increasingly sharing the compassionate heart of Christ, who wept over sinners even while announcing the judgment their unbelief would bring.
- Luke 19:41-44 — And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
Jeremiah 12:14-17 — Thus says the LORD concerning all my evil neighbors… After I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them… And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people… then they shall be built up in the midst of my people. But if any nation will not listen, then I will utterly pluck it up and destroy it, declares the LORD.
The chapter concludes by revealing the very truth Jeremiah struggled to understand. The surrounding nations deserved God’s judgment for their hostility toward His people, yet the Lord’s ultimate purpose was not simply their destruction but their redemption. Even those once counted among Israel’s enemies are invited to learn His ways and become part of His covenant people. God’s delay was never weakness, indecision, or injustice. It was the patient love of a Father who desires repentance before judgment. The same mercy He extended to Judah, despite her repeated rebellion, He now offers to the nations as well.
This promise finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The Messiah many expected to destroy Israel’s enemies instead died for them. At the cross, God accomplished the mystery Jeremiah could not yet fully see. Justice was not ignored; it was satisfied. Mercy was not diminished; it was magnified. Christ bore the judgment sinners deserved so that both Jew and Gentile might be reconciled to God and united into one new people through faith (Ephesians 2:11-22). The invitation first hinted at here reaches its glorious fulfillment in the Gospel, where people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation are gathered into one redeemed family through the blood of Christ (Revelation 7:9-10).
Jeremiah began this chapter asking why God delayed judging the wicked. By its conclusion, the Lord has revealed that His apparent delay serves two gracious purposes simultaneously. He patiently calls sinners to repentance while patiently conforming His children to the image of His Son. The same circumstances that provide opportunity for unbelievers to receive mercy become the Father’s workshop for producing Christlike character within His people. As we increasingly abide in Christ (John 15:4-5) and share the Father’s heart through our union with Him (John 17:3, 22-23), we begin to see the world differently. We no longer measure God’s faithfulness by the immediate removal of suffering or the swift punishment of evil, but by His unwavering commitment to accomplish His perfect will in every life He touches.
The question therefore is no longer merely, “Why do the wicked prosper?” but, “Am I learning to love what God loves?” Do we desire God’s justice more than His mercy, or have we begun to rejoice that the same patience which once pursued us now extends to others? When hardship comes, do we simply ask God to remove it, or do we ask Him to redeem every moment of it by producing within us the character of Christ? Nothing the Father allows into the lives of His children is wasted. He is always working for His glory and our good, conforming us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28-29), so that we increasingly become faithful ambassadors of the Gospel to a world He still longs to save.
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 20 July 2026: Identify one person whom you find difficult to love, forgive, or patiently endure. Spend fifteen uninterrupted minutes praying first for that person’s salvation, repentance, spiritual growth, and blessing, and then ask God to reveal one specific way He is using that relationship to make you more like Christ. Before the day ends, intentionally demonstrate Christlike love through one tangible act of kindness, encouragement, forgiveness, or service.
Pray: “Father, thank You for Your astonishing patience toward me. Forgive me for the times I have desired swift justice for others while forgetting the mercy You first showed to me. Transform my heart until I increasingly love what You love, grieve over what grieves You, and rejoice in Your work of redemption. Use every trial, every difficult relationship, and every delay to conform me to the likeness of Christ. Teach me to trust that You are always working for Your glory, the salvation of the lost, and my growth into the image of Your Son. May my life display both Your truth and Your grace, so that others may see Christ in me and be drawn to Him. Amen.”
Defenders Bible Reading Plan 