Jeremiah 25:13-14 – The General and the Specific
13 So I will bring on that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah has prophesied concerning all the nations. 14 (For many nations and great kings shall be served by them also; and I will repay them according to their deeds and according to the works of their own hands.)’ ”Jeremiah 25:13-14, New King James Version
"Every sin," discerned Spurgeon in "The Loved Ones Chastened" has one twig in God's rod appropriated to itself."
We see this in Jeremiah 25:13-14. The Babylonians have sinned as a culture. Pride has so intoxicated their collective consciousness that God foretells to Jeremiah that He will bring judgment on the land itself. Beyond Babylon's borders, inspired Paul says in Romans 8 that Creation GROANS to be free of the general judgment on man's hubris.
Yet, to Spurgeon's point, there is individual accountability. It's not just that our race deserves the rod, and has since Adam's sin intertwined with our heritage. Individual Babylonians, God says to Jeremiah, will be repaid according to the work of their own hands.
Likewise in Adam's purported empire, the work of our hands as proving of the wickedness of our hearts stands to be judged. God's wrath, white-hot toward the general challenge of His image-bearers in undermining His glory, is nevertheless under fearful control. There is accountability for each person, each word uttered, indeed each field plowed that we would count toward our own glory rather than His.
But by the same individualization through which we would eat and drink to our own destruction, thereby He brings redemption to His elect. Even here we see it, brothers and sisters. How fearsome must have been his gaze toward the grandeur of Babylon, soon to be ground down, and yet there is in the same countenance favor by grace for Jeremiah! God's hand is big enough and strong enough to bring judgment on empires, yet He pauses to credit Jeremiah's handwriting as part of that work.
I'm doing a great and fearsome thing before which cultures will quake, He says, but I simultaneously shed favor on an individual scale. When the whole Earth grieved God, He nevertheless saw a reflection of His Son's righteousness in Noah. When Sodom and Gomorrah came up for judgment, the faith of Lot, extolled in Hebrews, was nevertheless close enough to the forefront of His mind that He allowed Himself to be argued into sparing Lot by Abraham's contending. And here, brothers and sisters, He is still handing out commendations even as he announces deserved condemnation.
How different this is from our ways, brothers and sisters! Indeed, He warns the wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. Aristotle says anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy. Our anger, in fact, is often delayed by our passivity and culpability in the face of sin.
Once we finally are angry, we overreact. We lose sight of individual, ongoing works of God amid the general stench of which we finally take note, failing to commend God and a modern-day Noah, commend God and His electing, redemptive work in a modern-day Rahab, or His capacity to testify to Himself by the pen of a modern-day Jeremiah.
Both are concurrent. His wrath, deserved, simmers and sometimes wipes out that which would set itself up against Him. Simultaneously, He preserves His own like brand snatched from a fire, rescuing us so deftly that we can even thrive where it seems that none can thrive anymore, where we can speak when even the most hardened of heart are rendered speechless. We do not, then, look with one superficial glance at God's work around us, looking to assign one word as a label. We, instead, asks to see with His eyes, to sit with the multifaceted subtlety of His Word the fullness of His glory in every age.
"Every sin," discerned Spurgeon in "The Loved Ones Chastened" has one twig in God's rod appropriated to itself."
We see this in Jeremiah 25:13-14. The Babylonians have sinned as a culture. Pride has so intoxicated their collective consciousness that God foretells to Jeremiah that He will bring judgment on the land itself. Beyond Babylon's borders, inspired Paul says in Romans 8 that Creation GROANS to be free of the general judgment on man's hubris.
Yet, to Spurgeon's point, there is individual accountability. It's not just that our race deserves the rod, and has since Adam's sin intertwined with our heritage. Individual Babylonians, God says to Jeremiah, will be repaid according to the work of their own hands.
Likewise in Adam's purported empire, the work of our hands as proving of the wickedness of our hearts stands to be judged. God's wrath, white-hot toward the general challenge of His image-bearers in undermining His glory, is nevertheless under fearful control. There is accountability for each person, each word uttered, indeed each field plowed that we would count toward our own glory rather than His.
But by the same individualization through which we would eat and drink to our own destruction, thereby He brings redemption to His elect. Even here we see it, brothers and sisters. How fearsome must have been his gaze toward the grandeur of Babylon, soon to be ground down, and yet there is in the same countenance favor by grace for Jeremiah! God's hand is big enough and strong enough to bring judgment on empires, yet He pauses to credit Jeremiah's handwriting as part of that work.
I'm doing a great and fearsome thing before which cultures will quake, He says, but I simultaneously shed favor on an individual scale. When the whole Earth grieved God, He nevertheless saw a reflection of His Son's righteousness in Noah. When Sodom and Gomorrah came up for judgment, the faith of Lot, extolled in Hebrews, was nevertheless close enough to the forefront of His mind that He allowed Himself to be argued into sparing Lot by Abraham's contending. And here, brothers and sisters, He is still handing out commendations even as he announces deserved condemnation.
How different this is from our ways, brothers and sisters! Indeed, He warns the wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. Aristotle says anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy. Our anger, in fact, is often delayed by our passivity and culpability in the face of sin.
Once we finally are angry, we overreact. We lose sight of individual, ongoing works of God amid the general stench of which we finally take note, failing to commend God and a modern-day Noah, commend God and His electing, redemptive work in a modern-day Rahab, or His capacity to testify to Himself by the pen of a modern-day Jeremiah.
Both are concurrent. His wrath, deserved, simmers and sometimes wipes out that which would set itself up against Him. Simultaneously, He preserves His own like brand snatched from a fire, rescuing us so deftly that we can even thrive where it seems that none can thrive anymore, where we can speak when even the most hardened of heart are rendered speechless. We do not, then, look with one superficial glance at God's work around us, looking to assign one word as a label. We, instead, asks to see with His eyes, to sit with the multifaceted subtlety of His Word the fullness of His glory in every age.
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