Picturing God’s Judgment
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Picturing God’s Judgment
Jeremiah 25
Main Idea: God’s punishment is thorough.
- Evil Families: A Picture of God’s Judgment on Judah (25:8-14)
- Cup of Wine: A Picture of God’s Judgment on Other Nations (25:15-29)
- Lion’s Roar: A Picture of God’s Judgment on the World (25:30-38)
While the theme of disobedience to God’s word is carried from Jeremiah 24, Jeremiah 25 represents a shift. Jeremiah 25 represents the halftime for the book of Jeremiah (Wright, Message of Jeremiah, 271). It is, of course, located near the middle of the book. It is twenty-three years since his call, and perhaps the editors want the reader to notice this by inserting that fact here in verse 3. The year is 605 BC, the year Nebuchadnezzar would defeat Egypt and rule over the new Babylonian Empire, and King Jehoiakim would burn Jeremiah’s scroll sealing his country’s fate.
Not only does the time shift, but the message shifts as well. The first half of the book is written to a people who are seemingly doing well. They need to be told that things are not as good as they appear. In the second half of the book, the prophesied judgments come true, and things are awful. Now the people need to be told that not all hope is lost. Jeremiah’s call was,
See, I have appointed you today
over nations and kingdoms
to uproot and tear down,
to destroy and demolish,
to build and plant. (1:10)
In the first half Jeremiah was working out his call to uproot, tear down, destroy, and demolish. In the last half he is building and planting. In the introductory chapter we noted this theme: the warning of judgment implies hope. Now that judgment is upon them.
Jeremiah is filled with word pictures. In chapter 24 he used the metaphor of good and bad figs to explain their situation. Chapter 25 could be organized around three principle metaphors: evil families, a cup of wine, and the lion’s roar. These metaphors drive home the theme of just how thorough God’s judgment is.
Evil Families: A Picture of God’s Judgment on Judah
Jeremiah 25:8-14
This is quite an ironic metaphor. God is summoning the families of the north. This is not the family reunion anyone would want to be part of. Jeremiah is referencing all the families that will mount themselves against Judah on that day.
The judgment on Judah will be so stout that the sound of joy, the wedding songs, and the productive work will be removed from the country (v. 10). The country would serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. The seventy years seems to be related to the same seventy years of 29:10 and later in Daniel 9:2.[6] This was how long they would be in exile and the number of years until Babylon was punished for what it did to the nation.
Notice the irony of verse 9. The nation of Judah would not serve God, so God is summoning his servant Nebuchadnezzar. This wicked king, who could not have known that he was to be a servant of God, will be used by God for God’s purposes. We see this theme running throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Even as the curtain closes on the Old Testament in the dramatic events of Nehemiah, Nehemiah is quick to point out that all of this is happening because of the gracious yet strong hand of God (Neh 2:8, 18).
In the end, the success of Ezra and Nehemiah makes Jeremiah’s life and message so sad. As the curtain closes on the Old Testament, Ezra and Nehemiah experience spiritual awakening, which revives a love for God’s Word. They discover the Word, read it, and respond to it. This means that, before the judgment that was coming in Jeremiah’s day, they had all the access to God’s Word they needed. It was always there. They could have returned. They could have listened. It did not have to be this way, but their willful rejection of God’s word had horrible consequences.
Cup of Wine: A Picture of God’s Judgment on Other Nations
Jeremiah 25:15-29
God has been pictured as many things in Jeremiah, but now God is pictured as a bartender (Ryken, Jeremiah and Lamentations, 367). He is pouring a cup of wine that all the nations must drink. There is no escape. This theme also appears in the Psalms. Psalm 75:8 notes, “For there is a cup in the Lord’s hand, full of wine blended with spices, and he pours from it. All the wicked of the earth will drink, draining it to the dregs.”
Notice the exhaustive nature of the psalm. The cup of God’s wrath will be drunk “to the dregs.” This is a vivid illustration of the inescapable nature of God’s wrath. Not one drop remains when the nations have finished drinking. This means the cup of God’s wrath will be emptied. Everyone who drinks from it will be completely drunk with the wine of God’s wrath. As a result, “they will drink, stagger, and go out of their minds because of the sword I am sending among them” (Jer 25:16).
The problem they will face is not the act of drinking but the effect of drinking. They will be as dignified and presentable as a drunkard.
What follows is a list of all those who will drink of the wrath (vv. 17-26). The final nation is Sheshach. This was a coded way, by substituting the Hebrew letters, of saying Babel, that is, Babylon. The world’s great superpower is not excluded from this judgment.
The reader may have a question about the nature of God’s judgment on both Judah and the pagan nations. How could God use the pagan nations to execute his will and then punish those same nations for accomplishing this? This is a New Testament question as well since God brings judgment on Jerusalem through the pagan nation of Rome.
God is not causing the disobedience of anyone, and God is not punishing them even though they have in some manner been obedient or compliant. These are nations that had opportunities to respond to God but have rejected him. They are being recompensed for malicious acts of injustice toward God’s people. They carried out those acts without regard for God’s opinion about Judah’s disobedience. In other words, had Judah been a nation seeking God, these nations still would have wanted to act against them. They were in no sense compliant to God’s will. God had simply chosen to leverage their sin for his good.
God is not forcing the pagan nations such as Babylon to sin. They were participating of their own free will. God is allowing their evil to be untempered against his people because it was carrying out other purposes.
In a sense God still does this today. Perhaps the best modern example of this is the country of Romania. Under the evil hand of Romanian dictator Nicolae CeauSescu, the people of Romania suffered greatly, especially the Christians. Christian pastors were treated as enemies of the state. They were persecuted, abused, and in every way marginalized. Why God allowed this evil to continue is something we will never understand. However, we can see the effects. After CeauSescu was removed from power and the Romanian Revolution occurred in 1989, the church flourished. In fact, the largest evangelical church in Europe and the largest evangelical university in Europe are in, of all places, Romania! Romanian believers are among the strongest on the continent. Few believers in history have faced greater persecution; few have displayed such spiritual prosperity. The evil in this man’s heart God chose to use for his own purposes. God demonstrated his sovereignty by facilitating evil for good—something he still does to this day.
Lion’s Roar: A Picture of God’s Judgment on the World
Jeremiah 25:30-38
The judgment that is coming now extends from Judah to the nations, to the whole world. Note how inclusive the language is: “all the inhabitants of the earth” (v. 30), “to the ends of the earth” (v. 31), “from nation to nation” (v. 32), and “from one end of the earth to the other” (v. 33).
Since God’s judgment is coming on all the nations, the only response is to mourn. Jeremiah speaks with burning poetry (v. 34). Verses 35-38 spell out why they should mourn: escape is impossible. In the end God’s judgment will sweep the entire earth.
Conclusion
One might ask, isn’t judgment an Old Testament theme? This is not in the New Testament and certainly not something we can relate to, right?
The reality is that the judgment of God is a thread woven through all of Scripture. Paul notes in Romans 1:18, “For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” And later, concerning the end of the age, John says of the one that worships the beast and the false prophet, “He will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, which is poured full strength into the cup of his anger” (Rev 14:10).
The wrath of God that was poured on the nations that rose against Judah will be poured out on others. This is because God has not changed. Judgment is an expression of his holiness as it responds to those who reject him. He is still holy, and he is still rejected. Therefore his judgment is still very much alive.
Scripture is clear that not one sin that has been or will ever be committed will not be punished. Daniel Hays offers a simple and clear illustration one could use in preaching and teaching this text (see Jeremiah and Lamentations, 191–92). If you stood before your congregation and held a ball about as high as your head you could ask them what would happen if you dropped it. (In a typical crowd some prompting for response might be necessary.) The livelier crowd will respond immediately that the ball of course will drop, which you demonstrate as you let go. Then you could ask, What if we were to do this a hundred times, how many times of the hundred will it drop? The answer is of course a hundred out of a hundred. After all, it’s a natural law. It will happen. Every time.
God is clear. The wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness, no exceptions. No sin you have committed will be immune to God’s wrath. Jesus is pictured in Revelation as having laser-like eyes (Rev 1:14). He knows everything because he sees everything. Everything. No one, no person, no man, no woman will escape his wrath.
God is bound by his own knowledge to know all things and to punish all expressions of sin against him. This is why there is no way for us to get right, no way for us to reconcile the wrong we have done against God. If we stopped sinning today, we would still need forgiveness for all the things we have done in the past. This is a situation we cannot fix.
Enter Christ. Christ stood before the Father and drank the full cup of God’s wrath. Knowing the power and depth of God’s wrath, he prayed in Luke 22:42, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me.” This was an educated prayer. He knew what he was about to endure. God’s wrath would be in no way tempered. Christ was taking on himself the sins of the world. Yet out of obedience to the Father, and considering our salvation, he drank every last ounce. When Jesus put down the cup of God’s wrath, not a drop was left. He consumed all of it.
The weight, the grief, was all clear to Christ, so he prayed, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
When sinners look at the cross and walk away, they are saying in effect, “I do not fear tasting the wrath of God from which Christ drank. I think I can handle that.” What Christ endured is unspeakable. We only talk of a cross and a whip and thorns and beatings because these physical acts are the best ways we have of explaining this. In reality what Christ experienced is so much worse than we can describe because the anguish was as much emotional as physical. No one has at any time been more troubled than Christ was at that moment.
Sadly, many wink at what made Christ weep. He sweat drops of blood, yet it is ignored as so much religious talk. This is sad. This is real.
There is a word of warning here for the believer. The only way to sin is to ignore the cross. The greatest deterrent against sin is to meditate on his sacrifice for us. To say it another way, he endured horrible agony so we would not have to suffer but also so we would not have to sin.
Philip Graham Ryken (Jeremiah and Lamentations, 367–75) insightfully outlines Jeremiah 25:15-38 this way:
- A Bitter Cup for Every Sinner
- A Bitter Cup for the Nations
- A Bitter Cup for Christ
- A Sweet Cup for the Christian
Since Christ took of the full wrath of God, we can come to the Lord’s Table. We can come to the Lord’s Table and drink. We drink of his blood as a symbol of the reality that he drank of God’s wrath. What was to him the bitter cup is to us the sweet wine of salvation. By this atoning elixir we are healed.
Reflect and Discuss
- Explain the shift that is taking place in Jeremiah starting with Chapter 25.
- How is chapter 25 a working out of Jeremiah’s call in Jeremiah 1:10? What does this have to do with the divisions of the book?
- The sounds of joy were removed (v. 10). What are the sounds of joy for your culture, and what would it be like if they were removed?
- How is God like a bartender (vv. 15-29)?
- What do you think of when you think of God’s wrath?
- Is there a difference between God’s punishment and his judgment?
- Explain the difference between punishment and judgment in the context of a new covenant believer.
- How can God use pagan nations to execute his will?
- Can you name another time in the Old Testament that God used people who did not acknowledge him as God to accomplish his will?
- Explain how the lives of Ezra and Nehemiah complete the promises God made through Jeremiah.