We have been continuing our studies on Sunday in Jeremiah. This week we hit Jeremiah 24 & 25. Chapter 24 concerns two baskets of figs, one good and one bad. Jeremiah points out that the good figs are those who have been taken to exile in Babylon while the bad figs are those who have been left behind in Jerusalem. It’s not that the exiles are good and the folks in Jerusalem are bad in themselves; Jeremiah has been clear they’ve all been pretty awful. He’s saying God is going to regard the exiles as good and work for their good despite what they deserve whilst he is going to regard those in Jerusalem as bad and permit their destruction by Babylon entirely in line with what they deserve.
There’s lots we can say about these chapters. It certainly has a lot to tell us about God’s sovereignty and his sovereign choice to save some and not others. But some of the context of what is going on in Jeremiah helps us understand his choice a little here.
For starters, Jeremiah has been telling the kings to surrender to Babylon and they will live, but stay and fight in Jerusalem and they will be destroyed. Jehoiakim is the king who surrendered and managed to save his life and the city of Jerusalem for a time, along with all those who were taken with him. But more significantly, up to this point, the popular belief in Jerusalem is that God will never abandon his holy city and the people will be forever protected because of the temple. They were of the belief they could do pretty much anything and God would not abandon them because of the temple. Jeremiah has been saying, over and over again, this is delusional. The people should have trusted in God not blithely abandoned the covenant and rejected him on the grounds he will work to save a building come what may. On top of this, there were plenty of false prophets saying exactly this and that there would be no war, only peace forever and a day.
In light of all that, it isn’t that hard to see why the Lord chose to regard the exiles for good and those in Jerusalem for bad. In order to show that it is he, and not the temple, that protected his people; in order to show that the false prophets are exactly that and prophesy lies; in order to show that the people’s own disobedience is what broke the covenant; Yahweh committed to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. It is those in exile who will be protected and through whom God will fulfil his promises, those in exile are in for a much rougher ride.
it is categorically not the case that those in exile were somehow better than those in Jerusalem. In fact, it is the leaders and the elite class – along with all the soldiers and anyone else who might possibly mount a rebellion – who have been taken into exile and Jeremiah has been fairly clear, they are the people most responsible for the mess Judah is in right now. But both those in Jerusalem and those in exile have sinned, broken covenant and deserve only God’s wrath. But God, in his grace, chooses to regard some as good despite what they deserve.
Of course, to the people at the time – before Jeremiah had anything to say about it – the assumption was that God is saving those in Jerusalem. Those taken into exile – who are really the cause of Judah’s problems – are the ones who are being judged. Those of us back in Jerusalem (which is still standing) with its temple (which hasn’t been touched) can carry on as before, safe in the knowledge that God will protect us because of his holy city and temple. We have been kept in his holy place to be spared the ignominy of exile. So went the popular belief. Jeremiah 24 is a big bite of a reality sandwich for those in Jerusalem. Despite how they interpreted their circumstances, it was they who would face the worse judgement.
A key lesson we need to take from this is just what a poor judge of God’s pleasure our circumstances really are. On first blush, it’s those in Jerusalem who seem best off. And if God has spared them, one can understand the assumption that – unlike those he allowed to be taken off to pagan Babylon – God’s pleasure must really be with us whilst his wrath is upon them. Jeremiah simply points out that judging God’s pleasure by our circumstances is a particularly poor guide. In this case, apparently better circumstances did not equate to God’s pleasure. Jeremiah knew this first hand, being as he was imprisoned for speaking God’s Word to his people. He did what Yahweh expressly asked him to do and it made his life considerably worse and much the harder (see here). Circumstance is a particularly poor guide to how God views us.
If Judah really wanted to know God’s view of them – both those in Jerusalem and those taken into exile – the answer did not lie in their circumstances. The answer lay in simply listening to what God’s Word said about them. The fact that some seemed better off than others tells them absolutely nothing about how God views them in reality. The fact that Jeremiah told them explicitly what God thought about each group does tell them exactly what God thinks of them. The truth about how God viewed them lay not in reading the signs of the times and judging their circumstances; it lay in listening to God’s Word and judging what it specifically said about God’s view of them.
There are two ways we may fall into this trap. First, Christians are wont to lay claim – with frequency and not a little certainty – about nations who are “under judgement”. Usually, this is based on some sin or other someone perceives to have occurred nationally. It can also come in the form of events that befall different nations, whether natural disasters or other serious problems. Christians will often start asserting – based on little more than circumstance – that God is bringing judgement. It is said both of our own nation at times as well as frequently cited against no end of others. If Jeremiah 24 tells us anything, it is that we should stop pronouncing such things. We almost never have credible grounds.
Similarly, we may fall into this when it comes to the church. When money, people and platforms are rolling in and rolling on we quickly assume God’s pleasure must be upon us. When our church is shrinking, our bank account depleting and nobody recognises that we exist, we start to think God is displeased with us. We may even start claiming we are under his judgement in some way. But this is as foolish as claiming nations are under judgement based on little more than circumstance. We all know mega-churches that are huge, outwardly successful, financially well off and have huge platforms that are utterly unfaithful, unworthy of the name “church” and with whom we cannot believe God is remotely pleased. We can no doubt think of some very small affairs, with few people and barely any money that are absolutely faithful with whom we cannot imagine God is displeased. All of which tells us, good or bad circumstances are a particularly terrible guide to God’s pleasure. We don’t judge it by circumstance; we judge it by his Word.
And God’s Word does tell us what he thinks of nations. Interestingly, if we read on to Jeremiah 25, we read that all the nations of the earth – including Judah – are under his judgement. All are told to drink the cup of wrath, including Babylon. The point of Jeremiah 25 is that God’s judgement is universal. His wrath is upon all. If we want to talk about judgement, we need to stop being so selective about when and where we say it applies and simply affirm what God’s Word actually says: the world is under God’s righteous judgement. If the entire world is under God’s judgement, it puts us all in the same boat and therefore means we are all in need of God’s grace equally. Apart from God’s grace, we are all condemned regardless of what nations we are from because the entire world is under judgement.
We also see from the New Testament that the people of God are not a nation. We are a non-people drawn from every tribe, tongue and nation. If every nation is under judgement, the entire world is under God’s judgement (and it is), God must move in grace towards us if we are to avoid the judgement. Happily, here is what his Word says about that:
16 For God loved the world in this way:[a] He gave[b] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it,[c] so that his deeds may not be exposed. 21 But anyone who lives by[d] the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.” – John 3:16-21
These verses tell us the world – all nations of the earth – are condemned by nature. They do not live up to God’s righteous standards and prefer their sin to the light of Christ and faithfulness to his commands. They stand condemned already John says because of their own deeds. But God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world so that the world (that is, people from all nations of the earth) might be saved through him. We are condemned and under judgement already by nature, but if we believe in the Lord Jesus and trust in his death on our behalf, then we will not be condemned. He will have taken the judgement we deserve on our behalf and we will receive his righteousness. God does this for people from every nation – all the nations of the earth – so that the world condemned by its own sin and under God’s judgement might be saved through Christ and receive eternal life.
Nationally, all nations are under judgment. The world is under judgement and stands to face God’s righteous wrath. We know this because it is what God’s Word tells us. But those in Christ are no longer condemned and are not under judgement. If we have the righteousness of Christ applied to our account, then God looks at us as though he were looking at his own Son. His Son with whom he said he is “well pleased”. He is well pleased with people drawn out of every nation under the sun and makes a people out of a non-people and a nation out of a non-nation. We equally know this because God’s Word tells us too.
We may find nations who seem to experience great blessings and people who do not love Christ who experience great blessing. God’s common grace falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Such blessings and good circumstances tell us absolutely nothing about God’s ultimate view of a nation or a person. Likewise, we may find godly people who seem to experience heinous circumstances. Such awful circumstances tell us absolutely nothing about God’s view of a person. Rather, all nations are under God’s judgement – the whole world is under judgement – but those who are in Christ no longer face condemnation and judgement but God is well pleased with them because they have been adopted into the sonship of the Son with whom he is well pleased.
If we want to know what God thinks about us or our nation, we do best to look at what his Word actually says. God may judge any of us in history in the sense that there are empires that are no longer here and there are churches that are similarly no longer here. But the world that is under judgement may equally experience God’s grace in Christ. The world that is under God’s condemnation had Jesus sent into it so that God need not condemn the whole world. Those who receive his grace and respond in faith to him, regardless of how things may look circumstantially, are in full receipt of God’s pleasure and favour. We know because the Bible tells us so.