Scripture is filled with examples of little-known people who made a big difference. Paul’s nephew comes to mind. He heard men plotting to kill Paul…

Now the son of Paul’s sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told Paul. Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the tribune, for he has something to tell him.” So he took him and brought him to the tribune and said, “Paul the prisoner called me and asked me to bring this young man to you, as he has something to say to you.” The tribune took him by the hand, and going aside asked him privately, “What is it that you have to tell me?” And he said, “The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him. But do not be persuaded by them, for more than forty of their men are lying in ambush for him, who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him. And now they are ready, waiting for your consent.” (Acts 23.16 – 21, ESV)

We don’t even know his name! How about Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian? Heard of him? Me neither until I read Jeremiah 38.

King Zedekiah doesn’t seem to be much of a guy. First he listens to his officials and has Jeremiah imprisoned:

Then the officials said to the king, “Let this man be put to death, for he is weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm.” King Zedekiah said, “Behold, he is in your hands, for the king can do nothing against you.” So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud. (Jeremiah 38.4 – 6, ESV)

Then, Zedekiah rescues Jeremiah at the bequest of “Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian.”

When Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, a eunuch who was in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern—the king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate— Ebed-melech went from the king’s house and said to the king, “My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they did to Jeremiah the prophet by casting him into the cistern, and he will die there of hunger, for there is no bread left in the city.” Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, “Take thirty men with you from here, and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.” (Jeremiah 38.7 – 10, ESV)

So Ebed-Melech forms a team…

Then they drew Jeremiah up with ropes and lifted him out of the cistern. And Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard. (Jeremiah 38.13, ESV)

Jeremiah is still confined but not at the bottom of a cistern! And what does Ebed-melech get for his trouble? A blessing!

The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah while he was shut up in the court of the guard: “Go, and say to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will fulfill my words against this city for harm and not for good, and they shall be accomplished before you on that day. But I will deliver you on that day, declares the LORD, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but you shall have your life as a prize of war, because you have put your trust in me, declares the LORD.’ ” (Jeremiah 39.15 – 18, ESV)

“You shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid.” Ebed-melech was afraid, but he trusted God and acted in spite of his fear. Therefore, “I will surely save you…because you have put your trust in me, declares the LORD.”

The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. (Nahum 1.7, ESV)

Returning to Jeremiah, we have the story in chapter 36 about how NOT to listen to God’s Word. It opens with Jeremiah dictating God’s words to Baruch who reads it in several public venues. Well-meaning men recognize that repentance is called for, and they also recognize the danger:

And they said to him, “Sit down and read it.” So Baruch read it to them. When they heard all the words, they turned one to another in fear. And they said to Baruch, “We must report all these words to the king.” Then they asked Baruch, “Tell us, please, how did you write all these words? Was it at his dictation?” Baruch answered them, “He dictated all these words to me, while I wrote them with ink on the scroll.” Then the officials said to Baruch, “Go and hide, you and Jeremiah, and let no one know where you are.” (Jeremiah 36.15 – 19, ESV)

Then they read the scroll to the king:

Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and he took it from the chamber of Elishama the secretary. And Jehudi read it to the king and all the officials who stood beside the king. It was the ninth month, and the king was sitting in the winter house, and there was a fire burning in the fire pot before him. As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a knife and throw them into the fire in the fire pot, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the fire pot. Yet neither the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words was afraid, nor did they tear their garments. Even when Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. (Jeremiah 36.21 – 25, ESV)

Not only no repentance, blatant defiance. The strategy was “Shoot the Messenger” in Jeremiah 18. Here it’s Burn the Scroll. Of course, burning the scroll won’t make the judgment go away:

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 Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned. And concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say, ‘Thus says the LORD, You have burned this scroll…

And I will punish him and his offspring and his servants for their iniquity. I will bring upon them and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem and upon the people of Judah all the disaster that I have pronounced against them, but they would not hear.’ ” (Jeremiah 36.27 – 31, ESV)

And there is more work for Jeremiah and Baruch!

Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire… (Jeremiah 36.32, ESV)

There will always be kings who think they’re in charge and don’t need God. But it’s not just kings. We all need to read the Word with understanding, repentance and transformation.

Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says! (James 1.22, NIV)

PS There’s another way to “burn the scroll.” So-called Progressive Christianity (should be Progressive Non-Christianity) has been burning the scroll for some time. See When Marcuse replaced Moses: How progressive seminaries and denominations radicalized and collapsed by Travis Hearne.

A bit long, but stay with me…

I closed yesterday’s “analytics” blog with the idea that the church needs to do more than just count the bodies in the building. Jesus challenged us to be salt and light in the world. An influence. And we can’t do that if we remain isolated.

My friend Mike Metzger pointed out in a recent essay that Pope Leo XIV’s first “encyclical,” Magnificent Humanity: on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence attempts to do just that – exert an influence.

Mike’s essay: Dense, Overlapping Networks is short and worth the read in its entirety. He argues that in order to minister well to particular groups of people we should be networking with people from those groups. As one of my math professors would say, “An obviosity.”

By contrast, a number of years ago Mike was a guest at a “faith and work” conference about which he observed, “There didn’t appear to be any businesspeople in attendance at the faith and work conference.”

Striking about Pope Leo’s Encyclical’s debut was that on stage with Leo was Anthropic [an artificial intelligence company] co-founder Christopher Olah. Mike writes:

Leo and Olah, a 33-year-old atheist tech leader, might seem to make an unlikely duo in championing a partnership in developing safeguards for the development of AI. They’re not. For the last 10 years, the Vatican has partnered with networks of tech leaders to address the challenges and opportunities that AI presents. Olah is part of this partnership. On Monday, he highlighted the need for tech leaders to be in dialogue with people who are not motivated by the vast sums of money AI tech companies are chasing — some estimates put Anthropic’s value at about $300 billion — while Pope Leo said the “gravity of the moment” meant the church must lend its moral voice. – Mike Metzger, May 27, 2026 

Mike goes on to point that the church used to exert such influence. He quotes from James Hunter’s 2010 book To Change the World:

Hunter asserted that we’re not changing the world as the early and medieval Church did. She had global impact, changing the world by partnering with dense, overlapping networks of elites and the institutions that they lead – be they people of faith, no faith, or differing faiths.

Back to the encyclical, I can’t say I agree with everything Pope Leo said in the encyclical. For starters, it’s about 90 pages long, so I haven’t read all of it! Some that have like parts of it and have a few reservations. Others wholeheartedly endorse Pope Leo’s overall theme. This piece by Russell Moore of Christianity Today is worth the read in its entirety.

I have read the concluding section, and I really like his personal challenges to believers. I offer you snippets without comment (The numbers refer to section numbers in the document, and I have added bullets for clarity):

• 237. Let us remain faithful to the truth! …
• 238. Let us invest in education, beginning with ourselves! …
• 239. Let us cultivate relationships! …
• 240. Let us love justice and peace! …

241. As we look to the future, I would like to recall the image of Nehemiah whom we chose as our companion and guide at the outset. Nehemiah

• heard the cry of a devastated city,
• brought that pain to prayer,
• discerned before God,
• asked for help,
• received permission to return,
• organized the work,
• confronted internal and external resistance and
• rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem with the assistance of the people, brick by brick.

In this era of digital transformation, I see in him a striking parable of our own vocation, which is not to be passive spectators of social and cultural fractures, nor mere commentators on what is crumbling, but men and women prepared

• to enter the construction sites of history — research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions and local communities — in order
• to rebuild what has collapsed and
• protect what is threatened. Like Nehemiah, we too are called
• to unite listening and courage, prayer and responsibility,

so that, even when a technocratic mentality or partisan interests seem to prevail, the human city may become a more fitting place to live.

243. After having considered

• faith, which contemplates the Father’s loving plan;
• love, which unites us …
• hope, which sustains our actions in the world,

the fourth pillar of this program for Christian life is prayer.

Catholic or not (Mike Metzger is, and I am not), this is good stuff. His application of Nehemiah parallels mine in my book Everyone on the Wall.

To return to our original challenge, let’s not be content to win on “analytics.” Let’s be about making a difference through what James Hunter calls “faithful presence.”

You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world. – Jesus (Matthew 5.13, 14)

Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision. – Nehemiah (Nehemiah 2.17, ESV)

A light-hearted sports story with a serious application…

Both Basketball and Hockey are deep into their playoffs, and the Eastern Conference finals in basketball pitted the New York Knicks against the Cleveland Cavaliers. After game 3, this paragraph from ESPN caught my eye:

Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson thinks his team still has a chance against the New York Knicks…In fact, according to the numbers, the Cavs should be winning the series. Atkinson said:

I think analytically, I think we’ve won…we’re two out of three in the expected wins…I don’t know if you guys [the press] follow that – the expected score. We’ve won two out of three.

Really? Cavs have won two out of three…analytically? What does that even mean? When Coach said that, Knicks were leading the Cavaliers 3 games to 0. That’s right, 3 – 0, winning each game by double digits. And despite the Cavs’ coach’s optimism, “We’ve had success against this team before…” you’ll be shocked to learn that the Knicks completed the sweep, winning game 4 by 37 points in Cleveland!

Last time I checked, games are not won on “analytics,” they’re won on points. As legendary and feisty University of Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight explained once to a reporter: “The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.”

It’s laughable…until it’s not. Sometimes churches insist they’re winning “on analytics.” So many in worship services on Sunday, for example. Meanwhile we don’t seem to be making much headway in our cities. Who’s winning right now?

Maybe we’re not counting the right thing. Jesus told us to make disciples… and make a difference in the world.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28.18 – 20, ESV)

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. (Matthew 5.13 – 15, ESV)

The Church used to be better at making a difference. Stay tuned.

Sunday’s blog about the Eric Church Commencement Address at the University of North Carolina contained this promise:

The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in the extraordinary ones. They still hurt. They will still sit in hospital waiting rooms asking unanswerable questions at 3 in the morning, but they have a foundation to return to. – Eric Church

Bob Edelstein, who served in the Marines during the Viet Nam era, was my across-the-street neighbor in Monument, CO, from when we moved there in 2006 until Bob and his wife, Theresa, moved to Idaho in late 2018. He was my go-to guy from the first day when he helped me get my natural gas working. Once, he did an emergency install on a new microwave when I had out-of-town guests coming and couldn’t wait for the contract installers. It was a 4-5-hour project over two days. He was also adept at trapping pocket gophers in my yard. Part of his work included professional writing, and he was kind enough to proofread my books. Along the way I took him to several Navigator men’s conferences, and he developed the habit of Daily Time with God.

Out of the clear blue, he got shocking news, which he immediately shared with me:

Hi Bob,  while visiting here in CA, Theresa’s daughter, who is an ER trauma nurse, noticed Theresa’s slurred  speech and whisked her off to the ER.  She was admitted immediately.  After 4 days of testing they found suspect nodules in her lungs plus ALS.  She has been given a great gift – time to get things in order.  But a tough time ahead.  Thank you, brother.

They live in rural Idaho about an hour north of Boise, so when I stupidly asked when they were going back to Idaho from their California vacation, he wrote:

We will not be returning to Idaho (except perhaps for a short vacation visit or two).  She wants to spend her few remaining good months with family.  Plus her care will soon be more than I can handle alone.

We will relocate immediately to the Sacramento area to continue her healthcare here.  UC Davis Teaching Hospital – where we spent last week – is exceptional, and her neurologist and team are outstanding.

Wow. Life turns on a dime, doesn’t it? From a routine family visit to “get your affairs in order.” We were exchanging emails the day the Eric Church blog was scheduled to come out. I told him about the quote above and added:

You’ve been doing that: investing in your faith in your daily time with God. Now it’s time to collect the dividends.

I don’t know where those sentences came from. I’ll chalk it up as a God thing. Bob is a savvy investor, so the concept will resonate with him…and with us, I hope. To paraphrase Eric Church, we must invest in our faith in the ordinary times so that it (and our awareness of Jesus’ presence) will be with us in the extraordinary times. That is, we can collect the dividends on our investment.

The first evidence of Bob’s dividend of faith and resilience is his assessment of their situation: She has been given a great gift – time to get things in order.

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” (Luke 22.31, ESV, emphasis mine)

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11.6, ESV, emphasis mine)

Yesterday, we remembered those who have died in service to their country. Today I want to honor a veteran who wasn’t killed in battle, but who gave her life…

I wrote on May 17 about the Nobel Laureate who spoke at the University of Texas graduation ceremony for Natural Sciences. Why was I there? Way back in 2018, Quinton Williams, a young student, competed in the Soifer Mathematical Olympiad, which I have helped judge since 1989. Quinton got second honorable mention his first year, and I met his mother at the Awards Ceremony. Ruth Williams was an active duty colonel in the Air Force, serving in the medical field.

I began to have near weekly conversations with Quinton about mathematics, including after his mother was transferred, and they moved to Sacramento. Time flies, and Quinton graduated from the University of Texas on May 9 with a BS in Chemistry.

As Ruth and I were sitting in the arena, waiting for the ceremony to start, I asked her how long she had served in the Air Force. I was shocked:

43 years

43 years?! How is that possible? “I enlisted when I was 17. I wasn’t commissioned as an officer until my early 30s.” Wow. 43 years, from age 17 until she was 60. She’s 63 now. By contrast, I served from age 23 to age 43. I don’t know about the marriage that produced Quinton, her only child. When I asked Quinton once about his father he said, “I don’t have one.”

Single mother, nurse practitioner, squadron commander, command nurse, caregiver to her mother who lived with them and just passed away last November, it’s been tough as you might imagine. Although she owns houses in Montgomery, Alabama (Quinton was born in Montgomery while June and I were there 2001 – 2006), and Colorado Springs, she’s temporarily living in Portugal. Why Portugal? I asked. “I went there to find peace.” Did you? “Yes.”

I’ve told you all I know, but suffice it to say I found Nobel Laureate James Allison inspiring, AND I find Ruth Williams inspiring. If she decides to move back to Colorado Springs, her house won’t be far from where we live. I will see her again.

She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household… She considers a field and buys it… She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong…Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come…Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all. (Proverbs 31.15 – 17, 25, 29, ESV)

It’s Memorial Day, and some of you have come to look forward to remarks by our former pastor John Ed Mathison. Why try to reinvent the wheel?

I have a friend, well into his 80s, who will have done what this soldier is doing – putting flags at the graves of veterans.

Now, on to John Ed…

We can casually sit back and enjoy backyard barbecues, boat rides, and beach bashes, but the meaning of Memorial Day is that almost 1.5 million men and women have died so that you and I might enjoy our freedoms. We look to Thanksgiving as a day when we pause to give thanks for the things that we have. Memorial Day is a day when we pause to give thanks to the people who fought and died for the things we have. – Dr. John Ed Mathison, May 25, 2022

And let’s add a paragraph from Elliot Eisenberg, the “Bow-tie Economist” who writes a daily 70-word blog:

While Memorial Day is now all about cookouts and travel, it’s the national holiday honoring military personnel who died defending our freedom; Veterans Day honors all who’ve served. Memorial Day was first recognized as “Decoration Day” in 1868, shortly after the Civil War. In 1971, it was formally made the last Monday in May. Spend at least a moment giving thanks to those who gave their lives. – Elliot Eisenberg, May 22, 2026

…and Jesus:

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15.13, ESV)

I’ve already written about the commencement speech I attended at the University of Texas by a Nobel laureate. It was about changing the world, and if you missed it, I encourage you to check out that blog. Good lessons. But I’m not sure it matches a commencement speech by country singer Eric Church at the University of North Carolina (UNC). Kudos to my son Mark for posting this on our family’s chat.

If you click the picture, you can listen to the entire speech, worth the 18 minutes. He likened one’s life to the strings on a guitar. Here’s the overview:

• Low E: your faith
• A: your family
• D: your spouse (choose carefully!)
• G: ambition balanced by resilience
• B: your community (e.g., for these kids, their UNC community)
• High E: your uniqueness

Don’t let any of your strings get out of tune. I want to focus only what he said about the Low E, the foundation string, your faith:

Your faith is the low E of your life. The thing that sits at the very bottom of you. Your belief in what this life is for. What you owe. What holds the universe together when science reaches the edge of its own explanations and shrugs.

Eric’s faith is in Jesus although he didn’t mention Jesus in the speech. He was raised in a Christian home.

Faith’s a big part of my life and it’s always been a part of my life. – Eric Church

Here’s what I want you to take away from this blog. It’s what he said about faith:

The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in the extraordinary ones. They still hurt. They will still sit in hospital waiting rooms asking unanswerable questions at 3 in the morning, but they have a foundation to return to. – Eric Church

This is remarkably close to what our long-time pastor Dr. John Stevens used to say:

When you’re sitting in the waiting room of the ER or the OR, it’s too late to work out your theology.

In Eric Church’s words, we need to “tend to our faith in ordinary seasons” so it will be there “in the extraordinary ones.” We recently attended the memorial service for a 3-year-old who was murdered by his father before the father committed suicide. The mother discovered them when she returned from a business trip. Unimaginable.

I don’t know the family well, but it’s not clear to me that their foundation was solid…or solid enough. All the uncle talked about was his anger. I get it. I’d be furious myself, and there’s a whole set of “Psalms of Lament,” e.g., Psalm 35, where the psalmists were angry. But the uncle’s eulogy was never tempered with “But Jesus…”

Folks, our faith in Jesus is our foundation, and the foundation of that faith is our daily time with him, which I write about frequently. You never know when the unimaginable will happen.

The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in the extraordinary ones. – Eric Church

Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. – Jesus (Matthew 26.41, ESV)

I’m late posting this, but we should not ignore the passing of John Perkins, strong believer, who, having escaped Mississippi, went back to preach the gospel and fight for the rights of others.

If we are going to help others understand who Jesus is, our own lives must reflect his character and love. – John Perkins, June 16, 1930 – March 13, 2026

Russell Moore, executive editor of Christianity Today, wrote Why John Perkins Stood (Almost) Alone, March 18, 2026. The article is worth the read in its entirety. Here are some snippets:

He was no martyr the way the word’s been reduced and degraded. The psychological category of martyr complex did not fit him at all. He was a Black Mississippian of one generation, and I am a white Mississippian of another, and I could see what he was up to. He had left our home state, after all, and come back with a burden—to preach the gospel, to see lives changed, to stand up to white supremacy and the oppression of the poor, and to empower people to escape from poverty.

And he did that in the Mississippi of the 1960s—a race-nationalist police state that sought to make examples of everyone who, like Perkins, did not “know their place.” He was beaten, jailed, and hounded in every way possible, but he never yielded. Neither did he give up on what drove him to act in the first place. He never gave up on reconciliation. [Sit with that paragraph for awhile!]

…

To those who wanted to honor civil rights and care for the poor but couch their concerns in vague generalities about “the divine,” Perkins thundered, “Jesus!”

And to those who wanted to keep the Jim Crow mentality, just substituting modern complaints for the language their grandparents would use, Perkins stood with the Bible: “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (James 5:4).

Let me interrupt. Shortly before his death, Marvin Olasky told this story in his article In Life, Facing Death, also worth the read in its entirety.

Perkins’s grandma and other relatives, who worked as sharecroppers, raised him. He dropped out of school in the third grade and gained his first lesson in economic exploitation at age 12. He worked all day hauling hay, expecting to be paid $1.50 or $2, a typical day’s pay in 1942. Instead, a white man paid him 15 cents.

Russell Moore continues:

Perkins combined preaching the gospel, registering people to vote, advocating for justice and civil rights, and starting neighborhood initiatives to give the poor hope—not only for the life to come but also for escaping poverty now. Yet he never gave up on reconciliation, even with those who hated him.

…

Perkins stood with ideas and action and the kind of moral authority that can come only from testing those ideas with his life—standing for something true and loving something real. That’s the kind of witness Perkins was. And that’s what made him seem so strange in this juvenile, demoralized time.

Life has not always been kind to black people or Jesus followers. John Perkins tried to make a difference.

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy… (Hebrews 11.35 – 38, ESV)

Have you ever been to revival service or a big event where a lot of people were making serious life-change commitments? Have you made such a commitment yourself? “I promise to read my Bible at least an hour daily.” Or, “That’s it. No more [fill in the blank].” Did it stick?

One fun thing about reading Jeremiah (or the rest of the Old Testament) at the rate of a chapter a day is that we can slow down and see things we might have glossed over in the past. I had such an experience in Jeremiah 34.

King Zedekiah had a big ceremony, “made a covenant,” that the people should free their Hebrew slaves:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to make a proclamation of liberty to them, that everyone should set free his Hebrew slaves, male and female, so that no one should enslave a Jew, his brother. And they obeyed, all the officials and all the people who had entered into the covenant that everyone would set free his slave, male or female, so that they would not be enslaved again. They obeyed and set them free. (Jeremiah 34.8 – 10, ESV)

Wow! How cool is that? But…they re-enslaved them.

But afterward they turned around and took back the male and female slaves they had set free, and brought them into subjection as slaves. (Jeremiah 34.11, ESV)

Bad choice!

And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts— the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf. And I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives. Their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. Jeremiah 34.18 – 20, ESV)

What’s this about a calf cut in two? They made a covenant! Meaning, they had said, “cross my heart and hope to die” – a covenant, which in those days meant cutting an animal in two and walking between the pieces. It’s in Genesis 15.

But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other... (Genesis 15.8 – 10, ESV)

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land… (Genesis 15.17, 18, ESV)

As a pastor from my youth thundered in a sermon, “GOD walked between the pieces!” That is, God pledged himself in that covenant. In Jeremiah, the people pledged themselves and “walked between the pieces,” meaning, “If I don’t hold up my end, cut me up.”

Covenants mean something, but the ceremony apparently didn’t change the hearts of the people. They had a high point:

• They released the slaves
• They pledged to honor the slaves’ freedom by walking through the pieces.
• No doubt, the slaves were throwing themselves a party.

A revival service! I don’t know how long the promises lasted. Maybe until the wealthy had to cut their own grass, cook their own meals, and wash their own dishes. They went back on their promises, and God judged them for it.

Big meetings and emotional commitments don’t get the job done without daily follow-through. Accountability, for example. Discipline.

When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear. (Ecclesiastes 5.4 – 7, ESV)