August 24, 2022 Bible Study — The Nation’s Interests Are Not Synonymous With God’s Will

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 51-52.

I had previously stated that we did not know when Jeremiah made the prophecy concerning Babylon.  I was mistaken, in today’s passage we are told that Jeremiah made this prophecy during the reign of King Zedekiah just before Zedekiah visited Babylon.  I struggle with what lesson to take from Jeremiah’s prophecy against Babylon.  As I have thought about it it seems that Jeremiah was speaking to those Exiles who had “gone native” in Babylon, who had decided that Babylon was “the future”.  There were those who thought that Babylon’s success proved that they need not obey God’s law.  Jeremiah’s prophesied that for all of Babylon’s might, it too would fall…and that God would restore the people of Israel.  We must never make the mistake of thinking that the interests if the nation in which we live are synonymous with God’s will.  While it is true that if the people of a nation do God’s will that nation’s interests will be served, we cannot assume that because something is in a nation’s interest it is in God’s will.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.