Year 9, Day 103: Jeremiah 51

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Jeremiah continues the prophecy against Babylon.  Babylon will be destroyed.  In fact, this is one of the longest chapters in Jeremiah (yesterday was also against Babylon and another long one).  God ahs much to say when it comes to Babylon.

I always find it interesting that God takes so much vengeance against Babylon, whom He raised up to do His will.  God empowered Babylon against the Assyrians.  God empowered Babylon against His own people.  Now, God rails against Babylon and promises their own destruction.

It’s important that we get this theology right.  It isn’t that God has changed.  It isn’t that God has tricked the Babylonians.  God lifted them up and empowered them.  However, once the Babylonians are lifted up the don’t acknowledge the God who lifted them up!  They take what God gave to them and run with it by doing what is good in their own eyes.  It is their arrogance and their brutality, not their conquest of Assyria and Babylon, that has God riled up against them.

We nee to be careful when we go about our life.  God has blessed us in many ways.  Are we humble or arrogant in the areas in which we excel?  Are we repentant or ignorant in our sinfulness?  Do we take what God has given to us and bring it to enhance our relationship with Him or do we use it as a reason to no longer need Him?

Before finishing for the day, there is a section of the scripture that is worth bringing out.  In the middle of this chapter God talks about the people that He is going to raise up to defeat Babylon.  The chapter calls them the Medes, but we know them as the Persians.  These are the people who will defeat Babylon.  In humble leadership, these are the people who will allow God’s people to go home.  These are a contrasting agent to Babylon.  They come and execute judgment, but do it according to God’s ways instead of in antithesis to them.  This is why Cyrus is the first in the Bible to officially be called God’s Messiah.  Cyrus will execute God’s will appropriately, unlike Nebuchadnezzar, who led contrary to the one who empowered him.

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