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Devotional thoughts (Monday through Thursday mornings) from the pastor of Exeter Presbyterian Church in Exeter, NH // Sunday Worship 10:30am // 73 Winter Street

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Jeremiah 51

God is the only ultimate superpower. He has shown His incomparable might in His words of creation speech. This is recorded in the opening chapter of the Bible for our benefit. We are told that God is the first cause from which everything moves forward. Yet He very often uses secondary causes, and among these are great nations that are very impressive to men. They cannot be casually denied without facing their swords. If one well-armed man cannot be ignored without consequences, how much more serious a thing is it to treat a mighty nation as unimportant. Notwithstanding how impressive a ruthless force can be, the Lord is able to stop any army in a moment.

In the case of powerful Babylon, God will use the Medes to end one regime and to bring in another. He says through Jeremiah that He will stir up a destroyer. The Medes will attack on more than one front. They will come from every side. What must it be like to receive word that You have been surrounded by an overwhelming enemy? If we would insist on rejecting God’s friendship through Christ, how will we face Him as an enemy against us on every side?

Babylon will face God as an enemy because God loves Israel. Even though He chastised them for their disobedience, He will vindicate His elect. What exactly is this vindication of God for His people? We know that we deserve every penalty against us that can be imagined. Yet we will be openly acknowledged and acquitted on the Day of Judgment because of our representative Jesus Christ. When we are vindicated by God, it is really His electing love being vindicated, rather than any defense of our merit. We are His temple, and He will defend the place of His presence. Any powerful Babylon that will harass the temple of the Lord will have to answer to the Lord of the temple.

In this case, God will use the Medes against the Babylonian rulers, their armies, and their idols. He could visit them directly, as the risen Christ visited the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. He said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me.” To fight God’s people is to make an attack against His body. The day for Babylon will be over before long. The Lord is announcing that through Jeremiah even before Judah was fully taken away from the land. What is happening to them is just the next scene in a much longer play, and God is the Author of the entire drama. God’s plan is not only for Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church. He is the God who has planned out the details for Babylon, for the Medes, and for every nation that has been or will be. If they imagine that their many treasures and their geographic advantages will put off their destruction, they are very mistaken. God has a plan for them.

Who is this God? How does He compare with the idols of Babylon? He is the God of creation and providence. He makes things through His Word, and He keeps them going through that same Word. Men make idols, and idols make nothing. Objects that can make nothing and can keep no one alive are not gods at all. The true God is the maker of men, and we are His images. He will judge men and their foolish idols. He will smash their objects of false worship, and He will break in pieces whole nations and all that is in them. It was His plan that Babylon would be a destroying mountain for a time, and that they would bring great trouble upon Mount Zion. Yet out of Babylon there would come no stone that would be a lasting cornerstone. Out of the people of Zion would come a Stone that would be the God and King of a living temple made up of people, created in the image of God. This Cornerstone will never leave us.

In this chapter, a future runner is told to bring the message of desolation to the king of Babylon. He is to tell the king that the city has been taken on every side. However, when God first gives that message to Jeremiah, that day would seem most unlikely. It would be many years away. What were the people of God to do now as they faced the undeniable power of the Babylonian Empire? They were to hear words of faith given through God’s prophet, to believe those words, and to live in the certainty of the fulfillment of those words. In this case, they were to know for certain that the destroyer would be destroyed.

We also know that those who persecute God’s people today will face the wrath of Almighty God in the Day of Judgment. We flee to Christ as our only refuge, and we trust that the challenges we face today from the hands of men will not last forever. The people of Judah who were taken in chains to Babylon were facing that discipline according to God’s command, but there was a day coming when anyone who would want to live would have to flee from Babylon, because that nation’s destruction would be so imminent. The destruction of this one superpower among men is only one small part of a larger destruction that is coming upon the world. Where will we flee in that day? It is important for us to hear the prophetic Word today, while there is yet time, and to take refuge in the Cornerstone of an everlasting kingdom. In the fortress of Jesus Christ we find the only security that will stand the coming judgment, for Christ has already faced the overwhelming flood of God’s anger for sin for all who are in Him.

It is a comforting fact for the righteous today to know that the Babylon of this world will be leveled to the ground. The world will never threaten us again. As Jeremiah instructed Zedekiah at the end of this chapter, the word of God’s judgment against Babylon should be read, believed, and acted out. Babylon would sink one day, and would rise no more. Let us who have taken refuge in Christ believe the Word of God’s judgment against the nations of the world seeking our destruction. They will one day be destroyed. They will not harass God’s people any more. Even today, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

posted by Pastor Magee @ 7:00 AM

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