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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says:
“Daughter Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it
is trampled; the time to harvest her will soon come.”
“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured us, he has
thrown us into confusion, he has made us an empty jar. Like a serpent he has
swallowed us and filled his stomach with our delicacies, and then has spewed us
out. May the violence done to our flesh be on Babylon,” say the inhabitants of
Zion. “May our blood be on those who live in Babylonia,” says Jerusalem.
Therefore this is what the Lord says:
“See, I will defend your cause and avenge you; I will dry up
her sea and make her springs dry. Babylon will be a heap of ruins, a haunt of
jackals, an object of horror and scorn, a place where no one lives. Her people
all roar like young lions, they growl like lion cubs. But while they are
aroused, I will set out a feast for them and make them drunk, so that they
shout with laughter—then sleep forever and not awake,”
declares the Lord. “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats.”
declares the Lord. “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats.”
“How Sheshak will be captured, the boast of the whole earth
seized! How desolate Babylon will be among the nations! The sea will rise over
Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her. Her towns will be desolate, a dry
and desert land, a land where no one lives, through which no one travels. I
will punish Bel in Babylon and make him spew out what he has swallowed. The
nations will no longer stream to him. And the wall of Babylon will fall.”
Jeremiah 51:33-44
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Live life long enough and you are going to find yourself in
a position where you need someone to stand up and support you, someone who can
help you through a tough time of adversity, someone who can serve as your great
defender, and as will see in today’s devotion, there is no greater defender we
could have on our side than the Lord God Almighty.
Look at today’s scripture passage as we continue our study
of Jeremiah 51:
This is what the Lord
Almighty, the God of Israel, says:
“Daughter Babylon is
like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled; the time to harvest her will
soon come.”
“Nebuchadnezzar king
of Babylon has devoured us, he has thrown us into confusion, he has made us an
empty jar. Like a serpent he has swallowed us and filled his stomach with our
delicacies, and then has spewed us out. May the violence done to our flesh be
on Babylon,” say the inhabitants of Zion. “May our blood be on those who live
in Babylonia,” says Jerusalem.
Therefore this is
what the Lord says:
“See, I will defend
your cause and avenge you; I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry. Babylon
will be a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and scorn, a
place where no one lives. Her people all roar like young lions, they growl like
lion cubs. But while they are aroused, I will set out a feast for them and make
them drunk, so that they shout with laughter—then sleep forever and not awake,”
declares the Lord. “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats.”
declares the Lord. “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats.”
“How Sheshak will be
captured, the boast of the whole earth seized! How desolate Babylon will be among
the nations! The sea will rise over Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her. Her
towns will be desolate, a dry and desert land, a land where no one lives, through
which no one travels. I will punish Bel in Babylon and make him spew out what
he has swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him. And the wall of
Babylon will fall.” Jeremiah 51:33-44
Go back to before this point of God’s pronounced judgment on
Babylon. The Israelites had angered God by violating His commandments and
worshipping false gods, even ignoring the warnings of His prophets. They had
flat out rejected and disrespected God, leaving Him no other option than to
send His judgment upon them. His people needed to understand that He demanded
their obedience and would accept nothing short of it. After the Babylonians were
finished, they would get the message loud and clear.
For the attacking forces of Nebuchadnezzar ran roughshod
over Judah and its holy city of Jerusalem, leaving the once revered nation of
God in ruins and taking away its inhabitants into a seventy year captivity, a
captivity that wouldn’t be easy.
How hard was the Babylonian oppression on God’s people?
They tell us in our passage for today:
“Nebuchadnezzar king
of Babylon has devoured us, he has thrown us into confusion, he has made us an
empty jar. Like a serpent he has swallowed us and filled his stomach with our
delicacies, and then has spewed us out.”
Not a very pleasant imagery, in fact it’s downright ugly but
that’s what adversity looks like. It’s never pretty and it leaves us crying out
for a great defender, someone to take up our cause for us. Here’s what the
people of Zion (aka the Israelites) called out for:
“May the violence
done to our flesh be on Babylon. May our blood be on those who live in
Babylonia.”
That’s quite a wish and, as we see, the Lord answered it
with His promise of judgment on the empire He had used prior to impose
punishment on Judah and Jerusalem. Babylon, once the hammer God used to pound
His consequences into other nations, would now find out what it felt like to be
hammered upon. Look again at what the Lord vowed to do:
“See, I will defend
your cause and avenge you; I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry. Babylon
will be a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and scorn, a
place where no one lives. Her people all roar like young lions, they growl like
lion cubs. But while they are aroused, I will set out a feast for them and make
them drunk, so that they shout with laughter—then sleep forever and not awake,”
declares the Lord. “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like
rams and goats.”
“How Sheshak will be
captured, the boast of the whole earth seized! How desolate Babylon will be among
the nations! The sea will rise over Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her. Her
towns will be desolate, a dry and desert land, a land where no one lives, through
which no one travels. I will punish Bel in Babylon and make him spew out what
he has swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him. And the wall of
Babylon will fall.”
God, the same God who had penalized His people for their
sins would now be their Rescuer and Redeemer, their Avenger and Protector. The
once powerful Babylonian empire would be no match for Him as He brought the
Persian forces to bear against it. When it was all over, Babylon would be
reduced to a heap of ruins, desolate and unoccupied, an object of horror and
scorn.
In other words, they would look like what Judah and
Jerusalem looked like seventy years earlier after experiencing the power of the
Great Defender.
Friends, the same power that avenged and defended the
Israelites is with us today because the God we serve is the same God who we
read about in Jeremiah. More than 2,000 years has passed since the Babylonians
were defeated and destroyed and much has changed but the Lord God Almighty
remains the same.
He is with us.
He is for us.
And with Him as our Great Defender, truly, who can be
against us? (Romans 8:31)
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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