Jeremiah 21:13 - Homiletics

God against Jerusalem.

In the fact that God was against her, Jerusalem was to see that all resistance to the Chaldeans must fail. This terrible secret of hopeless ruin may be found in others besides the Jews.

I. IT IS POSSIBLE FOR GOD TO BE AGAINST THOSE WHO WERE ONCE HIS MOST FAVORED PEOPLE . It is Jerusalem, of all cities, that finds God to be her opponent. Therefore they who have enjoyed the friendship of God in the past have no right to presume that nothing can break that friendship. Moreover, God may be actively opposed to us. The opposition may not be all on our side. Though God is love, he can be angry, since even love itself will rouse anger when it is abused; and though he desires ultimately nothing but good, he may first send partial and temporary evil as a means for effecting this.

II. THEY WHO OPPOSE THEMSELVES TO GOD WILL ULTIMATELY FIND GOD OPPOSED TO THEM . The original enmity is on our side, so is the offence, the wrong-doing, the evil passion which stirs up contention. God would ever be at peace with his children, and it is they alone who have imported strife into his family. But after they have done so it is impossible for God to be indifferent to their conduct to him. His honor, insulted, must needs be vindicated—not, indeed, in the selfish way of personal pride, but in the righteous regard for the just and orderly government of his kingdom.

III. NO MORE TERRIBLE FATE CAN BEFALL MEN THAN FOE GOD TO BE AGAINST THEM . The horrors of the sieges of Jerusalem are amongst the darkest scenes of history. Yet the moral effects of God's wrath are far more serious than the material.

1. If God is against us, we lose all the help of his favor. It is impossible to measure the grace which, in multiform influences, streams into us and sustains and strengthens us for duty and trial. If all were removed we should perish. If God were wholly against any soul, that soul must at once be driven to outer darkness—be crushed and destroyed, and by negative causes alone; simply through the loss of God's light and life. But no man in this world has been so cursed. Yet even while God withdraws his special favors the loss is so great as to entail certain failure in life. The fruit may not be dashed from the trees, but the summer sun will never come to ripen it.

2. If God is against us, terrible evils will befall us. God is ever active in his presence. If we are not blessed by it, we suffer from it. How fearful to have God for our enemy! All the laws and forces of the universe are then against us. Nature and providence, earth and heaven fulfilling his will, must direct their vast resources against the wretched outlaw. Our opposition to God will be to our own injury, but what much more fearful results must follow his opposition to us! This dreadful fate is illustrated by our Lord's words, in which he compares those who shall fall on the stone with those on whom the stone shall fall ( Matthew 21:44 ).

IV. IF GOD IS AGAINST US , REDEMPTION MUST INVOLVE A CHANGE OF GOD 'S RELATION TO US . The atonement must have an aspect towards Cod as well as one towards man. While man is reconciled to God, God must be propitiated to man. It is true that this language is only possible because we speak of God after the manner of man, and that the atonement does not originate in us or in an independent third party who seeks to reconcile man and Cod, but in God himself, who sent his Son to redeem the world to himself. Yet, though desiring to be only gracious to men, God must have recognized the necessity of that intercession and sacrifice of Christ which won the favor of the Father to his beloved Son, and so to mankind, of whom Christ was the representative Priest. In Christ, therefore, we need not fear that God is against us ( Romans 3:25 ).