Jeremiah 47 Devotional
by Pastor Mark Hudson
This section of Jeremiah is where God’s judgment comes not just to Judah or Babylon or even Egypt. But in chapters 46 (Egypt) 47 (Philistia) 48 (Moab) 49 (Ammon) 50 (Babylon) are all the subject of God’s judgment. You can see the same thing in Amos 1-2, Obadiah directed to Edom, Jonah going to Nineveh, Nahum directing his message to Nineveh, and so many verses in the O.T. that show God’s concern for the surrounding nations.
Why is God concerned with the nations around Israel? First God created the world and all the people in it. He owns the world. But he loves the world as well. We cannot say he loves the world savingly but he does love the world.
D.A. Carson is a most helpful small paperback called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God wrote, There are Various ways the Bible speaks about the love of God: “
(1) God’s intra- Trinitarian love,
(2) God’s love displayed in his providential care,
(3) God’s salvific stance toward his fallen world.
(4) God’s special love toward the elect, and
(5) God’s conditional love toward his covenant people as he speaks in the language of discipline.
I indicated that if you absolutize any one of these ways in which the Bible speaks of the love of God, you will generate a false system that squeezes out other important things the Bible says, thus finally distorting your vision of God.”
Under point three Carson clarifies a bit more by writing, “God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16). I know that some try to take kosmos (“world”) here to refer to the elect. But that really will not do. All the evidence on the usage of the word in John’s Gospel is against that suggestion. True, world in John does not so much refer to bigness as to badness. In John’s vocabulary, world is primarily the moral order in willful and culpable rebellion against God. “. . . However much God stands in judgment over the world, he also presents himself as the God who invites and commands all human beings to repent.” Pp. 16-18.
In the Bible, and in Jeremiah specifically, God commands sinners from countries other than Israel to repent, and believe in Him. He judges these nations justly and calls them to himself. Some nations like Nineveh in Jonah’s days repent. Some pagan nations show themselves more willing to repent than God’s people as we see in Jeremiah.
But every human being is accountable to God. Another way to say that is that all our lives `count’ for something. And we will all stand before God. For the unbeliever the worst news they can hear is that God exists. Because if He exists, He speaks, commands and judges. How horrible if you have lived your entire life in rebellion. How terrible if your life counts for nothing; if you think you are unaccountable to God.
Notice the last verse in this short chapter, “7 How can it (the sword of the Lord v. 6)) be quiet when the LORD has given it a charge? Against Ashkelon and against the seashore he has appointed it.” God’s judgment is not willy-nilly or random. God in his holiness and justice is behind all judgment. This is important to understand. God does not back away from taking responsibility for judgment.
We can only escape His wrath by His appointed substitute: our Lord Jesus Christ. We escape God’s just, terrible, appointed wrath by His just, loving, appointed substitute Jesus. This makes our salvation all of grace. The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary (Jonathan Edwards and William Temple). What debtors we will always be.