September 16, 2020: Day 25 – Jeremiah 25

We get a bit of biographical data in regards to when Jeremiah was ministering.  We read, which we already knew from the beginning of this book of the Bible, that Jeremiah began in the 13th year of King Josiah and has served for 23 years since then all the way to the fourth year of King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son.  So he had 19 years with Josiah and 4 years with Jehoiakim, which is when things started to go poorly.   Josiah was an awesome king.  Jehoiakim, not so much.

Today, this is the 4th year that he was with Jehoiakim, and he is giving a bit of a recap of why we find ourselves in this situation of deportation and exile.  God said that if you would repent and turn away from the other gods then he would save you.  Just like he saved Nineveh, do you not think that he would save you?  (I added the whole Nineveh thing in there.  But there is a stark parallel where we can see that God’s word is true.  If he says that He will save you if you repent, we have proof that he will save you even to a people who were so far removed from being “His” people in the Ninevites.

But since the people of God refused to turn away from their foreign gods then God was going to rain down destruction on them.  “I will utterly destroy them.”  God always follows through.  The object lesson that he uses is that of a cup of the wine of wrath.  Jeremiah makes God’s people drink from that cup because they were not faithful to God.  As a result, what they thought would bring mirth actually brought destruction.  Not a great image and not a great vision for us as we recognize that we also fall very short of the glory of God.  But the difference for us is that we have one who even while we were yet sinners, died for us so that we would be saved in spite of our sin.  Glory be to God for Jesus!