“The God Who Judges” – FBC Morning Light (10/12/2023)

Well a good Thursday morning to you. I hope your week has been going well for you, and I also hope you're able to get into God's Word on a regular, consistent basis. Today in our Bible reading we're in Jeremiah 25 and 6.

We're beginning and ending a book today in the New Testament, the little letter of Paul to Philemon, and then also Ecclesiastes chapter 2. So I want to look at the way God reveals some things about himself in Jeremiah 25, and it has to do with his interaction with his people, Judah, and what he's going to bring upon them and so forth.

But it is this interaction between God and his people that we see some very helpful things in understanding what God is like. So first of all we see that God is a God of patience and mercy, and here's how we see this.

In verses 3 and 4, the Lord says through Jeremiah the prophet, he says, from the 13th year of Josiah the son of Ammon, king of Judah, even to this day, this is the 23rd year, this is the 23rd year in which the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you.

So Jeremiah says, I've been preaching for 23 years here, and I have spoken to you rising early and speaking, but you have not listened. And the Lord has sent to you all his servants, the prophets. There were prophets before Jeremiah, even.

They rose up early, and the Lord sent them, but you have not listened or inclined your ear. They said, all these prophets have said, repent now every one of his evil way and his evil doings, and dwell in the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers forever and ever.

So you see the patience of God there. His people, his professing people, have been serving idols, they've been living, you know, in the lives of iniquity for years, and God has very patiently been sending prophets to them, you know, rebuking them and confronting them with their sin and their idolatry, and calling them to come back to the Lord.

And there's patience, but also mercy, because all along they deserved for God to punish them and to bring judgment upon them, but he is long-suffering. He's patient with his people, sending these prophets to them, calling them to repent, to exercise faith, to return to the Lord, and to be obedient to him.

So we see that God is a God of patience and mercy. But we also discover that God is righteous in his sending judgment upon those who refuse to listen. Listen to the words that he writes, that Jeremiah says in verses 7 and following of this chapter.

Now again, Jeremiah says, I've been coming to you, I've been speaking to you, but you have not listened. In verse 7 he says, the Lord says, you have not listened to me, says the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.

Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, because you have not heard my words, behold, I will send and take all of the families of the north and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolation.

Moreover, I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp. Now all of this was not coming upon Judah because God was just a mean, angry ogre.

God explains why this is coming upon his people, his professing people, because he has been trying to warn them, he's been calling them to repentance, and they have refused to listen. They've persisted in their idolatry, they've persisted in their iniquity, and so now, the Lord says, as a consequence, here comes judgment.

So he is righteous in sending that judgment. The third thing we see about God in this passage is his sovereign authority. He is sovereignly controlling and over the nations of this earth to carry out his will, and he even establishes, he shows that sovereign authority by establishing the boundaries of his judgment.

Let me explain. Look at verses 11 and following. The Lord says, this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations, plural, shall serve the king of Babylon. So God is using the king of Babylon, the Babylonians, to bring judgment upon his erring people and other nations as well.

And he says, this whole land shall be a desolation and serve the king of Babylon 70 years. You see how the Lord puts the boundaries, the parameters, on his judgment, his time of judgment? Those who go into this captivity, they can go into it knowing that this is not the end of the story.

There is an end coming to this captivity. They may not live to see it. In fact, they probably won't. The vast majority of them never did live to see it. But they had children in that land of captivity, and they could pass on to their children that this captivity, this exile, will come to an end.

God said 70 years. In fact, we're gonna see this when we get to the book of Daniel, it was this very word of promise that God, with his sovereign authority established, that led Daniel to pray to the Lord and say, hey, this 70 years is about up.

What's happening? What's gonna happen next? And he counted on it. So God is a God of patience and mercy, but he's also a God who is righteous in his judgments, and he is a God whose authority is a sovereign authority over all the nations of the earth, and even over the very parameters of the calamitous events that can take place in this world.

What a God that we serve, no? Our Father and our God, we thank you for showing us a little of yourself today in this passage. May it bless and encourage our hearts, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Thursday, I trust the Lord will bless you in it.

Good day.