Be A Deviant - A Positive One - Jeremiah 37-41

Jeremiah 37:6-10 (ESV)

Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet: “Thus says the LORD, God of Israel: Thus shall you say to the king of Judah who sent you to me to inquire of me, ‘Behold, Pharaoh’s army that came to help you is about to return to Egypt, to its own land. And the Chaldeans shall come back and fight against this city. They shall capture it and burn it with fire. Thus says the LORD, Do not deceive yourselves, saying, “The Chaldeans will surely go away from us,” for they will not go away. For even if you should defeat the whole army of Chaldeans who are fighting against you, and there remained of them only wounded men, every man in his tent, they would rise up and burn this city with fire.’”

When God brings devastation, He brings total devastation.   Imagine if you were Jeremiah and you had to bring the above message to your leaders.   Jeremiah will eventually be tossed into a well because the leaders thought he was destroying the morale of the troops fighting against the Chaldeans.   You can see their point.   He is telling everyone to surrender.   That was the message God gave him to say.  But that was not a favorable message.  Jeremiah was a deviant to the norms of the day.   The people thought he was a negative deviant.  But Jeremiah was a positive deviant.  He was deviating from the norms of the day because the norms of the day were contrary to God’s word.  If you are going to do something in life it needs to follow God’s word.  But God’s word is really deviant from the world’s philosophy.  Any time we obey God’s word we are positive deviants to the world around us.   We were sent into the world to be positive deviants.