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Don’t skip your homework

To hear this Morning Devotion, please click Don’t skip the homework

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We’ve all had those occasions when we should have checked our facts about someone before jumping to conclusions about him or her.

It’s called doing your homework.

I spent many years as a journalist and it was crucial to do my homework before publishing articles about a person or group.

For if I had printed only hearsay without checking out the verbal stories and document reliability, I would have been shown the exit early on in my career.

Credibility is the fruit of accuracy in most settings.

If only such had been the standard among the religious leaders in Israel during the time of Christ.

An interesting fact was included in today’s One-Year Bible reading from John 7:52. I won’t describe the entire sequence leading up to the verse, but I will observe that the religious leaders clearly had allowed their hatred toward Jesus to cloud their judgment and concern for accuracy.

Nicodemus, a Pharisee who secretly was an admirer of Christ, had disagreed with a plan to have Jesus arrested and dragged before the Sanhedrin ruling council. Nicodemus said the Jewish law prohibited somebody being convicted of an offense unless there were a trial.

The rest of the Pharisees didn’t take well to Nicodemus’ comments.

“They replied, ‘Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee” (verse 52).

Hmmmm…….

So that’s their so-called “smoking gun” of evidence that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah? That Jesus was from Galilee and therefore could not be from the kingly line of David?

Wow. It’s hard to fathom that these big shots wouldn’t do a better job with their homework on this guy who was so thoroughly disrupting their apple carts of religious/political control.

Even if they didn’t want to send out private investigators to check His qualifications, the Pharisees could have simply asked Jesus to explain His genealogical and geographical connection to King David.

That would have quickly and resoundingly checked the box regarding their question above.

But they didn’t.

How sad.

I’m reminded of what I sometimes encountered as a journalist and what you encounter from time to time — that there are a number of people in this world who don’t let facts get in the way of a personal agenda.

Nearly all of the Pharisees saw Jesus as a threat and they hated Him. They wanted Him to lose influence and if it meant “skipping the homework,” then so be it.

I pray that you don’t fall into this same sort of trap regarding people who you perceive as threats to your career agenda or marital status or church influence.

You and I both know how easy Satan can make it to undercut people by means of self-serving mental laziness.

Pledge to treat people at home, at work, at church or at school according to facts that check out rather than suppositions that are cooked up by you or others.

You’ll save a lot of grief from coming into the lives of the people that Satan wanted you to trash.

You’ll also save yourself a bunch of headaches — in this life and the next — that come with later having to admit you were wrong about your information and your motives.

As always, I love you
Martin

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One Response to “Don’t skip your homework”

  1. Helen Dominguez says:

    And now I read this 5 years after you posted it and it’s still helping today. I am truly blessed to have you as my friend Martin, Thank you for your devotion to the Lord and for sharing it with us.

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