The Good News of God’s Wrath
August 18, 2024
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Jeremiah 46:1
1 The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations.
Pray with me as we begin, praying—strange as it is—that we would give ears to hear the good news of his wrath. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
As a pastor, I don’t end up in a courtroom all that often, not near as much as a judge or a lawyer, or even an adoption case worker or a police officer who must occasionally testify. For them, navigating the various stately and ornate courtrooms in the Dauphin County Courthouse building might become normal.
Yet for every adoption hearing a pastor attends or trial that requires a testimony from a pastor, it is major event. But in one of those events, specifically a criminal trial, I’ve noticed that the people “with” the prosecution sit on one side of the courtroom, and the people “with” the defense sit on the other side. I know it’s a cliché to say it this way, but you can feel the tension in the room, each side waiting for the verdict.
Once upon a time, I had jury duty and found myself the foreman of the jury. It’s a wild story, which I won’t tell now. But I stood up and read the verdict, having to look at the man on trial and read, “Guilty on account of such and such. Guilty on the account of such and such. And guilty on account of such and such.”
Before I did, everyone in that room had lifted their eyes, leaned forward, and sat perfectly still, waiting for the verdict.
When a speaker has a captive audience, when a speaker must present controversial material, when he or she speaks to people who are mad about a certain situation, when he or she speaks to people who already have significant investment in the outcome of the words, that speaker doesn’t need to start with jokes or pleasantries or clever stories. The speaker simply says, “My first point is…”
Our passage this morning starts, “The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations.” And v. 2 begins with just two words: “About Egypt.” In other words, my first point is Egypt. My second point is “concerning the Philistines” (Jer. 47:1). After additional points about Moab and Edom and others, he says his final point is “concerning Babylon” (Jer. 50:1).
At the very end of the passage, which we didn’t read, it says that everything Jeremiah wrote in these chapters—chapters 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, and 51—was to be written down on scroll, taken to Babylon by Baruch’s brother, read to the God’s people, and then cast “into the midst of the Euphrates” River (Jer. 51:59ff). If we could go back in time and sit among that congregation of believers and hear, “The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations,” we would have seen them lift their eyes, lean forward, and sit perfectly still.
“What about the nations?” “What about the nations?” was a question they had been asking for years. All of us—whether in ancient congregations or our modern congregations—struggle to wait for the just justice of God.
1. What is in these chapters?
As we get into this, it will help as we begin to give an overview and context for these chapters. So far in the book of Jeremiah, the bulk of the first 45 chapters have been about the sins of Judah and Israel, the sins of God’s people. For example, famously in chapter 2, God says his “people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). In other words, they traded the clean, clear provision of God for sludge. That’s what so much of the book has been about so far.
We might describe it like a parent or a teacher talking to a child. And that child keeps saying, “But what about him? What about her? What about those guys?” And the parent or teacher calmly, firmly, lovingly says, “Yes, I know. But right now I’m talking to you.” In most of Jeremiah, God is now talking to his people, not about him or her or them. Here, at the end of the book, that changes. He talks to his people about those guys. And everyone in that room lifted their eyes, leaned forward, and sat perfectly still.
The other week the church staff teased me for just having five verses from one chapter. Well, maybe we should average it with this week. In our Scripture reading, we only read the first verse of our passage, so you probably didn’t catch the flavor of God’s wrath in the passage if that short reading is all you know. This morning we have, as I said, all of 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, and 51. The words in this passage this morning total over 6,500 words. If you set the audiobook speed to “1” (rather than speeding it up to 1.25 or 1.5 or some of us who exceed speeds of 2), I can tell you that just reading the passage at normal speed in the service would take 43:20.
I know some of you might be visiting or you haven’t been here all summer as we’ve been going through the book of Jeremiah, so let me say it another way. Jeremiah is the largest book in the Bible. These chapters about the wrath of God against godless people make up 15.5% of the book. We haven’t touched it yet this summer, but we are now.
You can read it for yourselves, and I hope that you do, but let me give one example of God’s wrath. These are the last words of wrath from the final chapter about Babylon.
54 “A voice! A cry from Babylon!
The noise of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!
55 For the LORD is laying Babylon waste
and stilling her mighty voice.
Their waves roar like many waters;
the noise of their voice is raised,
56 for a destroyer has come upon her,
upon Babylon;
her warriors are taken;
their bows are broken in pieces,
for the LORD is a God of recompense;
he will surely repay.
57 I will make drunk [meaning drunk with wrath] her officials and her wise men,
her governors, her commanders, and her warriors;
they shall sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake,
declares the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts. (Jer. 51:54–57)
And then, God says something about the walls of Babylon. For context, Babylon was a huge metropolis. The famous hanging gardens were one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You can Google images of what it might have looked like.
Look at this picture of what is called the Ishtar Gate looked. It’s from a Bible dictionary I have (from Halley’s Bible Handbook, Deluxe Edition, 264). It was actually moved to the Berlin Museum, where you can go see it. Here’s a picture made by an artist of what it might have looked like. It’s been said that the outer walls of the city were so thick that they used to have chariot races on top of them (see Jeremy Treat’s sermon on Jeremiah 50:1–10, “Defeat and Deliverance” from July 22, 2019, at Reality LA Church). With this in mind, now look at the last verse, where God says,
58 “Thus says the LORD of hosts:
The broad wall of Babylon
shall be leveled to the ground,
and her high gates
shall be burned with fire.
The peoples labor for nothing,
and the nations weary themselves only for fire.” (Jer. 51:58)
As impressive as the walls of Babylon were, they could not withstand the wrath of God.
2. What is the wrath of God?
With this overview and context of what’s in these chapters, now, we can have our second point: what is the wrath of God? If God’s wrath is what’s in these chapters, let’s talk about what his wrath is. I want to show that the wrath of God comes from his love and goodness, and also that God’s wrath is tinged with his weeping and hope.
God’s wrath comes from his love and goodness. It’s a mistake to pit the love of God against the wrath of God. They are not antithetical to each other. That’s what pastor Tony reminded me as we talked about it this week. Therefore, we can’t rightly say, “I want God to be a good God and a loving God but not a God of wrath.” Now, I totally understand why you might do that. I’m not making fun or looking down on people who feel that way, which is likely some of you. But have you ever considered that this way of thinking comes from a place of safety and privilege? Only if we have not suffered great injustices with no recourse for getting justice can we feel this way. When we have been really wronged, we want God to care. And he does care.
It is because God loves what he made that he has wrath. You are no different. If someone comes to your house in the middle of the night, robs you at gunpoint, and fifteen years later, every time at night you hear your floorboard creak, a wave of panic comes over you, then you know that robber has taken more than material stuff which will have long been replaced. That robber took peace and rest that you might never get back in this life. You’re not wrong to be mad. What happened was wrong. And if God could look at that injustice and not care, he would not be good, and he would not be loving. But he is good and he is loving.
And because wrath comes from God’s overflow of love and goodness, it’s wrong to view God’s wrath as something only in the Old Testament and not the New Testament. It’s wrong to say, “That was God then, but now Jesus is loving.” Jesus is loving, which is why he has wrath at sin. The book of Revelation opens with a vision of Jesus cloaked in fire, with a two-edged sword in his mouth, and eyes with burning holiness. In chapter 6 of Revelation, the author saw a vision of the great men of the earth, kings and generals, running and hiding in the caves of mountains lest they have to face, they say, the wrath of the lamb. Indeed, the New Testament pictures Jesus sitting on a throne next to his Father, as his Father tells him, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool” (Matt 22:44; Act 2:34–35; Heb. 1:13; cf. Ps. 110:1). People who have been abused, which is some of you, want this sort of loving and good God.
I’ll put it like this. In the previous sermons I equated the exile of God’s people to Babylon as God sending his people to a drug and alcohol rehab clinic. God’s people were acting so badly, and so out of control, and so hurting themselves and others and the name of God, that God sent them away. He did this after years and years and years of patient pleading with them to get better in some other way. Rehab is a metaphor for what happens in the book of Jeremiah.
But we can expand upon the metaphor this morning. Imagine, then, in rehab, that the people caring for Israel became exceedingly cruel. In rehab, what if those in charge seized and destroyed property and irreplaceable valuables? What if they became abusive in unspeakable ways toward the women and children? What if they killed the men for nothing more than a wrong look? All of this and more the Babylonians did. In Jeremiah 46–51 we see the loving and good God sees.
But we also see his wrath tinged with weeping and hope. While Babylon may have been gleeful in punishment, which by the way is a mark of wickedness, that is not God’s posture. His wrath is tinged with weeping and hope.
We see the weeping in a place like chapter 48. Look with me starting in v. 31
31 Therefore I wail for Moab;
I cry out for all Moab;
for the men of Kir-hareseth I mourn.
32 More than for Jazer I weep for you,
O vine of Sibmah!
Your branches passed over the sea,
reached to the Sea of Jazer;
on your summer fruits and your grapes
the destroyer has fallen.
33 Gladness and joy have been taken away
from the fruitful land of Moab;
I have made the wine cease from the winepresses;
no one treads them with shouts of joy;
the shouting is not the shout of joy. (Jer. 48:31–33)
Even in his judgment, God feels sadness for those who have lost the joy of wine and celebration, even though they deserve their punishment. Church, this image of God’s compassion even in wrath must shape our anger. Do the people you most disagree with know that you weep over their loss of joy?
We see this same weeping in Jesus. As Jesus begins the final week of conflict before his death on the cross, the week we call Passion Week, a week full of confrontations and wrath toward the religious leaders, we read of Jesus leaving the city of Jerusalem to a lookout point and crying. In Luke 19 we read, “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:41–42).
His wrath is tinged with weeping. And his wrath is also tinged with hope. I’ll mention a few places. In chapter 46, in the judgment on Egypt, God says that after judgment, “Egypt shall be inhabited as in the days of old” (Jer. 46:26b). At the end of the section concerning Moab, we read, “Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab in the latter days” (Jer. 48:47). We read that he will restore the Ammonites and the Elamites (49:6, 39).
Church, this should chasten us too. How many of us, when we are wronged, can hope for redemption and forgiveness and restoration of the person who did us wrong? Here, buried in these ancient words from the prophet Jeremiah, God was showing his people that they can’t fully hate and indefinitely hate those who have wronged them. Even in whatever part of their anger was justified at the cruelness they received, they needed to be opening up their heart toward the hope of blessing.
Some of us think all anger is bad, which isn’t true. And others of us know a lot about anger but not as much about redemption and reconciliation and hope. We need to know both goodness in just anger and mercy in wrath. We see both in God.
Let’s go to the last point and close the sermon to see how these truths encourage us.
3. Why is the wrath of God good news?
We’ve talked about what is God’s wrath, about how it comes from his love and goodness. And we’ve talked about how his wrath has within it weeping and hope. Now let me share why God’s wrath is good news. I suspect some of the reasons have already been leaking out. I just want to highlight two reasons explicitly: God’s wrath is good news because it offers us rest, and it’s good news because it offers us salvation.
Considering rest, so many of us are so angry about so many things. If you think back to the sermon on Jeremiah 29 and our seeking the good of the world as far as the curse is found, you should understand me and understand our church to be a place that believes you should seek the good of those around us. We believe in action. God believes in action. But alongside that action, if you don’t have a robust view of God’s sovereignty and justice, if you don’t believe that at the end of time, God will come again and settle all wrongs, then you’ll never be restful but instead, in perpetual rage. This is one reason God’s wrath is good news. Writing to the church in Rome, a city full of wickedness, Paul gives the church a number of ways for them to serve one another. But then he says,
19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom. 12:19–21)
Our world needs a hundred sermons on this one passage, but I’ll keep going.
The good news of God’s wrath not only gives us rest in this life, but God’s wrath is at the heart of the good news of the gospel, the story of our salvation. The greatest display of God’s wrath is not against Egypt, the Philistines, Moab, the Ammonites, Edom Damascus, Kedar and the kingdoms of Hazor, Elam, or, finally, Babylon. The greatest display of God’s wrath is against his own Son, Jesus. When Jesus hung on the cross and bore all the sin of his people, God the Father crushed him (see Isa. 53).
A few times in this passage in Jeremiah, God speaks of his wrath as in a cup that he pours out (49:12; 51:7). That’s consistent with other places in the Bible (Isa. 51:22; Jer. 25:15; Obad. 16; Rev. 14:10). And this helps us understand the prayer of Jesus before he was arrested. “Father,” Jesus prays, “if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). He prayed for the removal of the cup of God’s wrath but submitted to his Father’s will, drinking it to the last drop.
These are heavy truths to consider. But they lead us to rest and salvation and should be seen as good news. Because either Jesus paid for your sin on the cross, or you will pay for it in hell. There is no in-between.
Conclusion
Speaking of the wrath tinged with hope, there is something wonderful we should highlight as we close the sermon. This passage began, “The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations” (Jer. 46:1). Judgment is not the end of the story. After the death and resurrection of Jesus and his ascension to the throne of the universe, Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2 we read a wonderful and wild story. The nations hear the cross of Christ preached in their own language.
5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:5–12)
They ask, “What does it mean?” It means many things, including that God loves his enemies and that the glimmers of future hope promised in Jeremiah came true when on that morning in Acts 2, God saved 3,000 of them from his wrath (Acts 2:41). That’s good news because, from the Bible’s perspective, we’re not Jerusalem; we are those nations. In the final chapters of the Bible we read of more hope for the nations—for us. After detailing the beauty of the new heavens and the new earth displayed in the new Jerusalem, the author John records what he sees.
22 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, 25 and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. (Rev. 21:22–26)
That will be a wonderful day. And on that day, if you are in Christ, you will experience the beginning of unending joy. Next week Pastor Ron will be preaching our final sermon in the series. It will touch on chapter 52 and the book of Lamentations, which is a poem in the Bible about the fall of Jerusalem. Let’s pray and invite the music team to lead us in a closing song. Dear Heavenly Father...”
Sermon Discussion Questions
What situations cause you to question whether God cares about justice?
Where do you see examples in the world of perpetual rage and not rest in God’s judgment? Where do you see this in your own life?
How are both mercy and compassion displayed on the cross of Christ?
How can our church encourage those who have experienced severe injustice?
What do you find more difficult, to be righteously angry about injustice (because you think all anger is bad), or do you find it more difficult to work toward full reconciliation in the way that God does with us?
