“A noise will come to the ends of the earth— For the Lord has a controversy with the nations; He will plead His case with all flesh. He will give those who are wicked to the sword,’ says the Lord.” Jeremiah 25 verse 31, NKJV.

The book of Jeremiah is interesting, like many of the other prophet books Jeremiah is called by God to deliver some not so good news to God’s people, the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem.

At the point of writing the book, the city is currently sort of under siege by the King of Babylon, who was big at the time. They’d already been attacked by him once, and the King of Babylon had taken a lot of people back to Babylon with him, leaving a selection of people back in Jerusalem (I think, I’m rusty).

Jeremiah is mostly called to speak God’s word to people left in Jerusalem, but it’s not good news.

A good portion of the book speaks of Jeremiah struggling (and complaining) to get the people to listen to him. The problem is, there are fake prophets in the city who are saying that God will not let the King of Babylon attack them again, but will save them from their current predicament.

Except He didn’t say that, and they’re lying, and God is not happy about it.

He sends Jeremiah to tell them that they’re basically all going to die, and they’re nothing they can do about it (I’m paraphrasing, and my summary is possibly awful. You’re welcome to read it yourself).

Jeremiah has trouble with this and ends up nearly killed a few times, and dropped into a pit. If you think God’s decision was mean, well, it’s God. And the reason they’re in this situation is because they didn’t listen to God in the first place. They kept worshipping other Gods, (and did some pretty awful things in the process) and had a habit or ignoring and occasionally killing off the prophets God sent to tell them to stop. Then God would send an army to invade them for a while, and they’d repent and ask God for help, and he’d help them, then when they weren’t in trouble turn turn around and go back to their other false gods etc etc. This was not a new pattern.

Anyway, it’s hard/impossible to know the mind of God, but seemed to be the last straw. But the book isn’t all bad news. At some point He explains somewhere in a letter to those who got taken back to Babylon that they should settle down, and live there for now. But then he promises that he’s going to come and get them, and bring them back to their homeland after 70 years. Which comes true in a different book. So it’s not all dark. He’s coming back for them.

So, Jeremiah is basically telling the people that the contract they had with God, that he would protect them and they would worship Him, and only Him. They broke it. The warranty is now void.

Now, like many books in the bible it sort of jumps around a bit, or it seems to. It’s sort of a collection of prophecies and things God has said to Jeremiah

At this point, God is using Babylon as his servant to do his will among the nations.

Chapter 25, and this bit is talking about how God will take care of the nations around them. They will drink his cup of fury. etc.

But.. It reminded me of modern times as well. With some of the way modern society is leaning, and has been leaning for a long time (Ergo, the 60’s.) of everything moving towards ‘anti God’, where is used to be the opposite. At least in the West.

You might not remember, but the west were actually CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES. They were founded and run on Christian principles. But we have been moving ever so slowly away from that, bit by bit.

Now things are looking a tad bleak in some places for those of us who follow the faith. Even when I was in school, a nice rural tiny school which I loved, in the early 2000’s I was told as a kid not to share my views, or bring my Bible storybooks to school for show and tell because I might offend someone.

But these days you’ve got people (allegedly, I haven’t done too much research into any of these specific things) tells folks that the world is over populated, which is basically saying that a bunch of us shouldn’t exist, which is nice. And jumping up and down about the climate being the biggest disaster in yadda yadda yadda.

People (Disney) admitting to not considering white males, or Christians for roles, because they’re too focused on DEI rubbish. And if anyone complains about anything they do e.g. the writing sucks and a show is bad. They plaster them as a racist and claim they only hated the show because it featured a black woman, despite a whole bunch of reviews to the contrary.

Meanwhile you’ve got China trying to bribe their way into your government, (and largely succeeding) while stealing your data via TikTok, and committing genocide on the side. Among other things. And everyone is telling us we have to be tolerant toward Henry who now thinks he’s a woman, and wants to be on my local women’s sports team, so he can finally win at something in life. While our media and all the big companies confuse our children in an effort to train them up to be just another cog in the big world system.

Sometimes I like verses like this, because they remind me that God is watching. And He’s got control of things, even if it doesn’t always seem like it.

Live like God is watching you. Because He is.