Tues.’s Devo - Babylon’s Fate

Read: Isaiah 12:1-14:32; 2 Corinthians 13:1-14; Psalm 57:1-11; Proverbs 23:9-11 We begin reading what will happen in the end of the ages when God’s people will come to salvation through Jesus. In Chapter 13, Isaiah received a message concerning the destruction of Babylon. It was talking about literal Babylon and spiritual Babylon. Babylon captured Judah and took many captive for 70 years. This prophecy was about their doom. It is also talking about “the day of the Lord” which is the end of days. Every nation will meet and to fight. The Lord will come with his army from heaven. The world will be punished for her sins. In their day, God will use the Medes and it will be a picture of the end. The Medes will attack Babylon and have no mercy just as Babylon had had no mercy on other nations during their reign. This happened during the reign of Belshazzar. Isaiah sees the wild animals taking over the world just as it will be in the end. Chapter 14 gives the hope for the remnant of the earth. God will have mercy on them and they will return to their inheritance, the land of their ancestors. The nations of the world will help them to return to their land. This happened when Cyrus became the king in Persia. He sent Ezra with as many exiles as wanted to go home to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. The leader of Babylon was Satan himself moving through a king. When he was defeated, the ones who went before him to the grave stood to see him arrive in hell. They were amazed at how weak he looked. We should see Satan in that state because when Jesus rose from the dead, he was exposed as a weak loser. When he is taken down in the end, all hell will see how weak he really is. Isaiah says that that king of Babylon will be thrown out of his own grave and dumped into a mass grave where he will ascend to the pit. He will not be given a proper burial because of all the evil he did on the earth. This is a picture of Satan’s fate. Uzziah had placed the Philistines under a heavy yoke of payment. When he died, they saw this as their chance to break out from that bondage under the new king, Ahaz. That never happened so when Ahaz died, the Philistines thought that they would now be delivered but God wanted them to know that Hezekiah would be even more powerful over them. He would be the more poisonous snake. This is a picture of the rising power of the Church. In Corinthians, Paul encourages them to repent before he comes. It reminds me of how Jesus wants us to repent before He comes. He wants to come back and find his children living in righteousness so he doesn’t have to discipline them. He wants to find them repented and walking in truth and obeying God’s Word. This was Paul’s prayer for them. May we be joyful, grow in maturity and encourage each other to live in harmony and peace. May we walk in the grace of Jesus, the love of the Lord and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.