Zedekiah is chained and brought before Nebuchadnezzar, from Petrus Comestor’s “Bible Historiale.”
Traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, Lamentations recounts the author’s reflections on the ruins of Jerusalem in the aftermath of the city’s fall to the Babylonians.
When a city, when a nation, falls, it is natural for people to ask why it happened. Chapter One of Lamentations provides the following succinct summary of the sorry state of Jerusalem.
Her uncleanness is in her skirts;
She did not consider her destiny;
Therefore her collapse was awesome.
Now that’s what I call getting right to the point. Jerusalem, which was really a part standing for the whole of Judah, had become morally unclean. God sent prophets to warn the people, but they did not heed, they, they did not consider their end, therefore judgment befell them.
Now I’ve always been a history buff. And, in particular, I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of civilizational collapse. That sounds pretty depressing, I know. But I don’t say that, because I’m rooting to see a contemporary collapse myself.
God’s Sovereignty In Judgment
One reason I’m drawn to collapse is that, oddly enough, it strikes me as comforting. Why would I say such a thing? For the simple reason that it to know that God is not mocked means to know that he’s in charge. There is justice in the universe. Evil is punished.
And the punishment is not the result of bad Karma, random accident or some other superstition. It is God himself who brings it about. “If there is calamity [evil] in a city, will not the LORD have done it? (Amos 3:6).
This is a hard saying for many folks. When disaster happens, it’s common to hear people speak in terms of God withdrawing his protection or permitting terrible things to take place.
But this is not the language of the Bible at all. Scripture does not beat around the bush as to the ultimate cause of collapse. Rather, it clearly states that God actively brings it about.
“But this is to charge God with sin,” someone may say. But those who talk in this manner have an incorrect idea of God’s relationship to the law.
God is not bound by the law, as if it were something that stands over and above him to which he too must submit. What is right and what is wrong, what is ethical and what is unethical, is defined by God himself. Whatever he does is by definition righteous and holy. God is king, not the law.
Gordon Clark put it this way,
God is neither responsible nor sinful, even though he is the only ultimate cause of everything. He is not sinful because in the first place whatever God does is just and right. It is just and right simply in virtue of the fact that he does it. Justice or righteousness is not a standard external to God to which God is obligated to submit. Righteousness is what God does…God’s causing a man to sin is not sin. There is no law, superior to God, which forbids him to decree sinful acts (God and Evil, The Problem Solved,40).
Interestingly enough, even Nebuzaradan, the Babylonian captain of the guard who was in charge of Jeremiah after the fall of Jerusalem, understood God’s active hand in the fall of the city. When Nebuzaradan set Jeremiah free, he told him, “The LORD your God has pronounced doom on this place. Now the LORD has brought it, and has done just as He said” (Jeremiah 40:2, 3).
As Christians, should not our understanding of God’s sovereignty be at least as sound as that of a Babylonian soldier?
God’s Sovereignty in Mercy
Civilizational collapse, at least of the Biblical sort, has a another attraction to me. For even in the midst of great destruction, God still preserves his people, he still holds out hope for those who heed his Word.
Consider Jeremiah’s faithful scribe Baruch. After Jehoiakim burned the scroll Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s instruction and the mad king had sent his henchmen to seize God’s two witnesses, the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, “I will give your life to you as a prize in all places, wherever you go.”
Ebed-Melech was another example of faithfulness in Jerusalem’s darkest hours. When Jeremiah’s enemies had lowered the prophet into a pit to die, Ebed-Melech, an Ethiopian eunuch, organized a rescue team to pull Jeremiah out.
God recognized Ebed-Melech’s good deed and rewarded him for it. His word to the eunuch though Jeremiah was, “Behold, I will bring My words [n.b. God speaks of himself as active in the judgment of Jerusalem “I will bring my words”] upon this city for adversity and not for good, and they shall be performed in that day before you. But I will deliver you in that day…and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword; but your life shall be as a prize to you, because you have put your trust in Me.”
Ebed-Melech is a model of faith for all those living in fearful and uncertain times. When he saw Jeremiah’s life was in danger, he wasn’t overcome with the fear of men, he didn’t say all is lost, he didn’t pretend not to notice. In faith he took action and saved the life of Jeremiah, and God richly rewarded him.
And this leads me to my final point.
Salt and Light
Western Civilization in general, and the US in particular, are in a sorry state. People with any sense, and this includes even non-Christians, recognize this.
And speaking of the mess we’re in, pastor Jason Hutchinson raised a very good question in this morning’s sermon. When society is falling apart, if all Christians do is stand around and say, “yep, things are pretty bad,” how does that benefit anyone? Is it not obvious that things are pretty bad?
His point was that standing around with our hands in our pockets pointing out the obvious is not what we’re to be about. We must serve as salt and light. We must tell other’s about the salvation found through belief in Christ Jesus alone. And our actions must be consistent with our words.
Conclusion
As this blog has detailed on many occasions in the past, our civilization is in the midst of an ongoing collapse.
The West has been in collapse for more than a century. The Biblical theology that created Western civilization five hundred years ago has all but disappeared in the West. The rejection of Christianity in North America and Europe, and the rise of several false religions – including Arminianism, Romanism, Pentecostalism, atheism, and mysticism – have led to the collapse of the West. That collapse is marked by, or, more accurately, is the dissolution of the Biblical family (husband, wife, and children); the economic and political regimentation of the individual and business enterprises; government ownership and control of most educational institutions; the growth of crime; the waning of civility; the acceptance of public profanity, obscenity, and homosexuality; and the resurgence of brutality (The Religious Wars of the 21st Century).
Looking at the sorry situation we face in 2016, it’s tempting to say that God has nothing to do with it. But from what we’ve seen in the Scriptures about how he dealt with Judah and Jerusalem, it is clear that God has everything to do with our current state of affairs.
As with the people of Jerusalem, so with modern-day Americans: we do not consider our destiny. If God in his sovereign power elects to cause the collapse of our civilization, he would be entirely righteous in doing so. And no one could say to him, “What is this you have done?”
Neither you nor I know what tomorrow, let alone what the coming years and decades, may bring. It is tempting at times to despair. But let us consider the examples of Jeremiah, Baruch and Ebed-Melech. All these men were steadfast in their faith, even as their nation fell apart around them.
The future is in God’s hands. The task of the Christian is to be salt and light in our generation, in whatever way we’re called to serve.
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