Bible in a Year Series - Day #236 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible. Click here to learn more. You are most welcome to join along at any time.
Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Jeremiah 51-52.
We have now turned a significant corner in the Biblical narrative. God has brought Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon to destroy Jerusalem. Only 4,600 make it out alive, and here we see them being exiled to Babylon.
This scene is very difficult to consider, but we have seen this day coming for weeks now in our reading. God, over a significant amount of time, and a considerable number of prophets warned Judah to turn from her considerably evil ways.
Interestingly, I recieved a note yesterday from a gentleman who was accusing me of dishing out vinegar, and recommended that I offer my readers the Bible's honey instead. Perhaps he missed that I am simply doing a chronological journey through the Bible. Or, perhaps he would prefer that I was reading the Ben Franklin Bible, where Benjamin Franklin simply cut out the parts he didn't like.
No, as I have testified many times, the Bible is a very difficult book to read. To simply hop, skip, and jump to the fun parts makes for a namby pamby Christian, and brings a completely false understanding of who God is.
God's judgment of sin is a significant part of Biblical theology. We have seen it in the Garden of Eden. We've seen it in the Flood. We've seen it time and time again throughout the course of the Exodus, the Judges, the Kings, and now here with the complete and utter destruction of Jerusalem.
No, it is completely disengenuous to contemplate knowing God without greatly wrestling with the most difficult parts of the Bible.
Jerusalem's page is now turned. Tomorrow we begin the book of Lamentations, and begin our journey to understand what this "new covenant" is that God told us about through the prophet Jeremiah.
