“1 This is the word the Lord spoke through Jeremiah the prophet concerning Babylon and the land of the Babylonians: 2 ‘Announce and proclaim among the nations, lift up a banner and proclaim it; keep nothing back, but say, “Babylon will be captured; Bel will be put to shame, Marduk filled with terror. Her images will be put to shame and her idols filled with terror.’ 3 A nation from the north will attack her and lay waste her land. No one will live in it; both men and animals will flee away.
4 “In those days, at that time,” declares the Lord, “the people of Israel and the people of Judah together will go in tears to seek the Lord their God. 5 They will ask the way to Zion
and turn their faces toward it. They will come and bind themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten. 6 “My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the mountains. They wandered over mountain and hill and forgot their own resting place. 7 Whoever found them devoured them; their enemies said, ‘We are not guilty, for they sinned against the Lord, their true pasture, the Lord, the hope of their fathers.’ 8 “Flee out of Babylon; leave the land of the Babylonians, and be like the goats that lead the flock. 9 For I will stir up and bring against Babylon an alliance of great nations from the land of the north. They will take up their positions against her, and from the north she will be captured. Their arrows will be like skilled warriors who do not return empty-handed.
10 So Babylonia will be plundered; all who plunder her will have their fill,” declares the Lord. 11 “Because you rejoice and are glad, you who pillage my inheritance, in days to come,”
declares the Lord, “because you frolic like a heifer threshing grain and neigh like stallions, 12 your mother will be greatly ashamed; she who gave you birth will be disgraced. She will be the least of the nations— a wilderness, a dry land, a desert. 13 Because of the Lord’s anger she will not be inhabited but will be completely desolate. All who pass Babylon will be horrified and scoff because of all her wounds. ”
Pleasure doesn’t raise a lot of questions. We rarely ask, “why did God make watermelon so sweet?” or “why would a just God make puppies so cute?”
Pleasure doesn’t raise a lot of questions. Pain does. Pain raises questions about the sovereignty of God. “If God is in charge of everything, how could He use cancer, family strife, financial difficulties, or depression for my good?”
Pain raises questions about how a good God can use what’s not good for good. We see answers in stories like Joseph and his brothers. “You sold me into slavery. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” God uses other people’s sins against us for our good even though these sins are not good. He shows us how he does it in histories like this one. It doesn’t give us any easy statements about how God works through evil. It simply tells us the story of God bringing good out of Babylon’s sin against Israel and then holding Babylon accountable for that sin.
This is human responsibility. God didn’t make Babylon do anything Babylon didn’t want to do to Jerusalem and yet God is in charge of it all. It’s remarkable. God can use others’ sin against us for our good while holding those sins accountable. That’s the claim of this sermon: God can use others’ sins against us for our good while holding those sins accountable.
We will study this in three points. First: Babylon will fall. Second: the exiles will return. Third: Babylon will be held responsible. First, in verses 1-3, Babylon will fall. Second, in verses 4-5, the exiles will return. Third, in verses 6-13, Babylon will be held responsible.
First: Babylon will fall. This is our last study in the book of Jeremiah, and we’ve jumped ahead a number of chapters. We’ve skipped over oracles against the nations. The Philistines, Ammonites, Edomites, Damascus, Kedar, Hazor, and Elam took advantage of what Babylon had done to Judah. Like vultures, they had picked the remains of Judah clean. The Jews who survived the Babylonian attacks had to deal with years of harassment from these nations. In these oracles, Jeremiah has spoken about God’s wrath on this jackal-like behavior.
Now the prophet comes to Babylon, and he writes almost as many words of judgment about Babylon as the rest of the nations combined. This isn’t surprising because in many ways this book is about God’s use of Babylon in punishing the sins of His people.
The message is that Babylon will fall, and the message is emphatic. Notice the piling up in verse 2, “Announce and proclaim among the nations, lift up a banner and proclaim it; keep nothing back…” Jeremiah was to publicize this far and wide.
Such publication was a sign of its certainty. As Calvin put it, “Jeremiah thundered as it were from heaven, knowing [from where he received] this prophecy.” Jeremiah saw himself as a prophet who spoke from God and for God about planting and uprooting nations. God had told him that Babylon would be uprooted. It was in October of 539 BC.
Jeremiah publicized this message in Babylon. This prophecy comes from before the fall of Jerusalem; remember this book isn’t put together chronological order. During the fourth year of Zedekiah’s reign, Jeremiah sent this prophecy to Babylon by way of Baruch’s brother saying, ‘When you get to Babylon, see that you read all these words aloud. Then say, “Lord, You have said You will destroy this place, so that neither people nor animals will live in it; it will be desolate forever.” When you finish reading this scroll, tie a stone to it and throw it into the Euphrates. Then say, “So will Babylon sink to rise no more because of the disaster I will bring on her. And her people will fall.”’
The Lord wanted everyone—the Babylonians, the Jews, the world, and all who would read this for coming generations (such as us)—to know that Babylon’s fall had everything to do with Him, and as we will see, much to do with what Babylon did to His people.
The fall of Babylon was totally unexpected at this point in history. The empire seemed unstoppable. To the Ancient Near East mind, its gods were unstoppable. Their gods were defeating all the other gods. That’s part of how the ancients would have interpreted their military victories. Verse 2 says otherwise, “Babylon will be captured; Bel will be put to shame, Marduk filled with terror. Her images will be put to shame and her idols filled with terror.”
This was the Lord’s vindication of Himself. He knew that people would be saying that Marduk had defeated Yahweh. He knew that’s how the fall of Jerusalem would be wrongly interpreted by some. This sets the record straight. Marduk never defeated Yahweh.
The record will always be set straight. Some people today think that God must be wringing His hands in heaven over the rapid decline of Christianity in this nation. That’s not the case. He’s not worried. He’s got a plan. He and His purposes will be vindicated.
When this message was given through Jeremiah, however, Babylon seemed invincible. There were no enemies on the horizon. They were like Rome after the fall of the Carthaginians. To bring it closer to home, they were like America after the fall of the Soviet Union. If you remember that time, you remember the sense of relief and invulnerability that lasted until 9/11.
Babylon’s sense of security was false. They would be destroyed from the north; verse 3, “A nation from the north will attack her and lay waste her land.” That’s significant. This book started with ominous warnings to Judah about a danger from the north. That power was Babylon. Now there are ominous warnings to Judah about a danger from the north. There is always someone bigger and badder than you if your goal is to secure yourself. That’s a message for us if we ever feel secure by the protection we think our sins can provide. That’s a message for us if we ever feel secure by the protection we think anything other than God can provide. He is our only comfort in life and in death.
Babylon did fall. This ancient city that amazed writers of the day with its size and culture was plundered by the Medes and the Persians and their treasures are now possessed by other powers. You can see the best of them in museums in Berlin, London, and Chicago. Take them as proof that human strength cannot stand against the purposes of God.
God’s plan stands. We see that in our second point: the exiles will return. This prophecy keeps shifting between judgment for Babylon and hope for God’s people. It’s a reminder that God is able to do more than one task at once. He is able to weave everything together in a perfect tapestry.
The shift begins with the words of verse 3, “In those days, at that time…” This is hopeful language in Jeremiah. It points to the time when what’s wrong will be made right. God’s people needed to look forward to that. God’s people always look forward with hope. That’s why we look forward to the return of Jesus. That’s why the Bible ends with the words, ‘He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.’ Remember, God’s going to make everything that’s wrong right. That was a message in Jeremiah’s day. That’s the message today. That’s something we all need to hear and always have.
This promise in Jeremiah had to do, in the words of verse 4, with the day when, “the people of Israel and the people of Judah together will go in tears to seek the Lord their God.” These tears were tears of joy. Psalm 126 talks about that experience, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.” Salvation brings tears of joy.
Part of the joy was that everyone was together again; “the people of Israel and the people of Judah together will go,” as verse 4 puts it. These two were divided—the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom—they would be one again. That’s wonderful. The church is even better. That’s all nations made one. We are everyone together, or at least everyone who is together walking toward the Lord.
Many of the exiles who returned had never been to Jerusalem. They had been born in exile; verse 5, “They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it.” Those people weren’t returning to what they knew. They were, whether they knew it or not, because of a promise. God had made promises to Abraham that He would bless His descendants and the world through His descendants. Despite all the unbelief and evil we’ve seen in this book, God’s people hadn’t sinned away those promises. The Lord was drawing His people back.
This is about God’s promises. This is about Him acting and us trusting. As J. Gresham Machen lay dying, he dictated a telegram to one of his colleagues saying, “I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.” That’s about Jesus acting and Machen trusting. That’s faith. That’s why wonders happens in God’s economy—promises and faith.
There is a promise of new relationship in this passage; verse 5, “They will come and bind themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten.” This “everlasting covenant” is the “new covenant” we studied in Jeremiah 31. If your faith is in Christ, you are part of this covenant relationship, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” It doesn’t get better than that. You belong to God. He belongs to You. He can’t think of Himself without thinking of You. You are to mature to the point that you can’t think about yourself without thinking about Him. You two are one. Christ is the perfect picture of that.
The exiles would return home, but that lay in the distant future; they had questions about the present. That’s our final point: holding Babylon responsible. The people were in exile and it was because of their sin; verse 6, “My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the mountains. They wandered over mountain and hill and forgot their own resting place.”
God’s people are the sheep. Their kings are the shepherds. Their roaming through mountains most likely alludes to the idol worship that took place in the mountains. Their forgetting their own resting place refers to all the ways in which they forgot the Lord.
Now the people bore responsibility for their sin but notice that the blame here is assigned to the shepherds. The people needed better shepherds. That’s what Jesus thought too. “I am the good shepherd,” he said. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So, when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.” Abandoning the sheep and running away when the wolf comes—sounds like Zedekiah, doesn’t it? “Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
We are more sheeplike than we would like to believe. Jeremiah saw that. Jesus saw that. They saw that we are all followers. It’s just a question of who we are following. Jesus called himself the good shepherd because people who follow him won’t suffer what Judah suffered in their sin. They won’t become lost sheep. They won’t be caused to roam. They won’t forget their resting place. Stay close to Jesus. Stay close to the shepherd.
Lost sheep die; verse 7, “Whoever found them devoured them.” That was true for Judah with Babylon. That’s true for anyone who won’t return to the good shepherd.
Now the Babylonians thought that the fact that Judah had wandered from God meant that they were right to destroy them; verse 7, ‘their enemies said, “We are not guilty, for they sinned against the Lord, their true pasture, the Lord, the hope of their fathers.”’ They thought that Israel’s national deity had completely abandoned them. That’s part of the way the ancients interpreted their victories. The Babylonians thought that the Lord wouldn’t care about what they did to His people because they thought they weren’t His people anymore.
The Lord’s response to this deserves attention because we tend to think like Babylon. When disciplined by the Lord we tend to think that He is against us. When corrected by the Lord we tend to think that He is against us. When someone else is punished by the Lord, we assume that the Lord must be against them.
We are very much like little children in this way. Little children tend to interpret discipline as a lack of love. That’s what Babylon did. That’s what the Jews did. Now as an adult, you know that’s not how discipline operates. The Lord wants us to know that’s not how His discipline operates. His people were still His people. The destruction of Babylon makes that clear; verse 8, “Flee out of Babylon; leave the land of the Babylonians, and be like the goats that lead the flock.”
God was calling His people out of Babylon because He was about to do to Babylon what Babylon had done to Jerusalem. Babylon had left Jerusalem desolate. Babylon would become desolate; verse 13, “Because of the Lord’s anger she will not be inhabited but will be completely desolate.” Everyone was horrified and scoffed over Jerusalem because of what Babylon had done. Everyone would be horrified and scoff over Babylon because of what was done to it; verse 13, “All who pass Babylon will be horrified and scoff because of all her wounds.” The words of Jesus applied to Babylon’s treatment of Jerusalem, “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
The Lord’s use of Babylon in disciplining Judah did not mean that He approved of Babylon’s behavior. Just because the Lord brought salvation to the world through the cross doesn’t mean he approved of the behavior of Judas, Pilate, and the Sanhedrin which led to the cross. Just because the Lord used someone’s sin against you for good doesn’t mean that He approves of that sin. He will hold it accountable.
He is able to use it all for good while being responsible for none of its evil. He is that good at what He does. It seems that everything does work together for the good of those who love God. It seems that all history does work together for the good of God’s people.
The goal of this series was to see parallels between Jeremiah’s day and our day—ages of delusion, ages given over by God. The Lord is able to use even the evil we suffer in His plan for our good. Babylon doesn’t get the last word in the book of Jeremiah. The Lord does. The Lord will get the last word in whatever lays ahead for us as well. Amen.