Fri.’s Devo - The Judgment of the Nations

Read: Jeremiah 23:21-25:38; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17; Psalm 84:1-12; Proverbs 25:15 God rebuked the false prophets who had dreams and told the people the Lord had given them. God hadn’t spoken to them and he heard their lies. Instead of their prophecies bringing people to the Lord, they led them to worship Baal. God told Jeremiah to let them keep making up their prophecies but he had true prophets that told the truth about what he was saying. God’s word burns like fire and is like a hammer that smashes a rock to pieces. Jeremiah was instructed to tell these false prophets to stop saying that they got their words from the Lord. If they continued to claim they had heard from God, then God would expel them from his presence along with the city of Jerusalem. He would make them an object of ridicule and their name would be infamous throughout the ages. King Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin to Babylon along with all the artisans who made the false gods. God gave Jeremiah a vision of two baskets of figs. They were placed in front of the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem. One was filled with fresh, ripe figs and the other with rotten figs. The good figs represented the exiles sent to Babylon. They would one day return to the Lord and he would bring them back to their land. The bad figs represented King Zedekiah and his officials and those sent to Egypt. They would become more evil and horrible. They will experience war, famine and disease until they have all died. Chapter 25 happened before the time when King Jehoiakim was taken captive. It happened when Babylon began its siege on Jerusalem. Jeremiah reminded them that he had been warning them for 23 years. He began speaking to them when Josiah was in his 13th year as king. Jeremiah had been faithful to pass on God’s word to them but they had refused to listen. God had other prophets who said the same thing but they refused to listen to them also. The people continued to worship their idols bringing on themselves the disaster they were now facing. The land would be taken from them and they would be killed or taken to Babylon. They would stay there for 70 years until they had learned their lesson, then the Lord would bring them home. The Babylonians would then be judged in proportion to how they treated God’s people. God gave Jeremiah a cup of God’s anger and told him to make all the nations he sent him to drink from it. He took it to Egypt, the kings of the Philistine cities, the nations of Edom. Moab and Ammon and the kings of Tyre and Son. He gave it to Dedan, Tema, and Buz and the kings of Arabia and the nomadic tribes of the desert and the kings of Zimri, Elam, and Media. All the kingdoms of the world drank from this cup of God’s anger. It would bring great war against them. He began his punishment with his people and it would spread to the whole world. Judgement always begins in the house of the Lord. The wicked would be slaughtered in war. This was a picture of the end of days. In Thessalonians we are given a roadmap to the end. The end will not come until the man of lawlessness is revealed. He will defy everything the people call god and every object of worship. He will even sit in the temple of God claiming that he himself is God. His kingdom will be working in secret long before he is revealed but he will not be revealed until Jesus says it is time. He will be slayed and destroyed by Jesus’ return. The anti-christ will come with counterfeit power and signs and miracles. He will use every kind of deception to fool those on their way to destruction - those who loved evil. They were thinking this was happening in their day just like many think this is happening now. Every generation has a wake-up call and things look ripe for the coming of Christ. We are closer than ever before and see many people who could be the anti-christ but my gut tells me this is only a type. I see great things in store for God’s people who stay faithful to him and wait for his deliverance. We are in a time of great shaking and a judgment on the nations of the world. But instead of the end, I see a new beginning coming. Lord, may we persevere with great faith through the days to come. Give your body of believers hope and strength to shine as lights in the dark world.