“God’s judgment is coming!” That’s what Jeremiah had been telling God’s people over and over again up to this point in his book. But beginning in chapter 46, he turns his guns on the other nations in the surrounding area: the Egyptians (chapter 46), the Philistines (chapter 47), the Moabites (chapter 48), the Ammonites, the Edomites, the people of Damascus, the desert-dwelling Arabs, and the Elamites (all in chapter 49). Yes, in spite of the fact all these other nations chose to worship other gods, all of them would nevertheless experience the wrath of the Lord, in large measure at the hands of the same Babylonians who would destroy the kingdom of Judah.

And make no mistake: God’s people would not be spared from the oncoming devastation. After all, as Jeremiah summarizes much of the rest of his book in 50:7, God’s people had “sinned against the Lord,” time and time again for hundreds of years. Yes, they had acted very much like lost sheep, whose shepherds had led them astray from following the Lord (50:6).

But while all the other kingdoms of Jeremiah’s time were eventually swept away by the Babylonians, and then by the Persians, and then by the armies of Alexander the Great, God’s people survive to this day. And that is not least because God’s people eventually have a unique reaction to the consequences of our sin.

For notice that, even though our suffering causes us to weep, those who are God’s people continue to seek the Lord. Yes, instead of running further away from Him in our sin, Jeremiah said God’s people would eventually turn back toward Zion, the place where God chose to be worshipped (50:5), the place where Jesus Christ was crucified.

And why do God’s people always respond to His judgment in such a humble, faithful way? Because of the covenant He has made with us, the covenant He has fulfilled in the Person and Work of Christ. Because we confess Jesus as our Savior, because we know He has received the death penalty all our sins deserve, we are not afraid to confess our sins, and even to weep over them. And because we bow the knee to Him as our Lord, we come to Him in faith, turning from our sin, and seeking only to do His good and perfect will.

So, will we allow the consequences of our sin embitter us and drive us away from God? Or will we humble ourselves and remember God’s covenant, a covenant He promises He will never forget?

Jeremiah 50:1-7 (NASB)

The word which the LORD spoke concerning Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, through Jeremiah the prophet:
2 “Declare and proclaim among the nations. Proclaim it and lift up a standard. Do not conceal it but say, ‘Babylon has been captured, Bel has been put to shame, Marduk has been shattered; Her images have been put to shame, her idols have been shattered.’
3 “For a nation has come up against her out of the north; it will make her land an object of horror, and there will be no inhabitant in it. Both man and beast have wandered off, they have gone away!
4 “In those days and at that time,” declares the LORD, “the sons of Israel will come, both they and the sons of Judah as well; they will go along weeping as they go, and it will be the LORD their God they will seek.
5 “They will ask for the way to Zion, turning their faces in its direction; they will come that they may join themselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten.
6 “My people have become lost sheep; Their shepherds have led them astray. They have made them turn aside on the mountains; They have gone along from mountain to hill And have forgotten their resting place.
7 “All who came upon them have devoured them; And their adversaries have said, ‘We are not guilty, Inasmuch as they have sinned against the LORD who is the habitation of righteousness, Even the LORD, the hope of their fathers.’”