Coromandel Baptist Church

Sunday 2 November 2008 Jeremiah 51:34-44; Revelation 18:1-24

The Defeat of the Great City

The book of Hebrews has reached a grand climax in assuring us that we live under the rule of the Great Shepherd of the flock, whose care for us is unstinting and whose covenant faithfulness is without change. Moreover, we have seen that our current place in history, as the Father’s family, is somewhat akin to the place of his Old Testament people Israel in the exodus and in their journey to the land of promise. The theme of the new exodus has undergirded the whole of the letter, so we understand ourselves to be the flock of God, brought out from the slavery of a spiritual Egypt, being led by the Lord as the Shepherd of the flock to an ultimate and eternal resting place. In the latter part of Hebrews, as in other places in the Scriptures, this resting place is identified as Mt Zion, which is equivalent to the City of God. By implication, there is another ‘city’, which is opposed to God and stands in conflict with his people. Its desire for humanity is slavery not rest, and its object is to supplant the City of God with an evil travesty of all that God has planned and purposed.

The theme of the two cities is an important and extensive one in the Bible. What is notable is that the two cities are marked by contrasting attitudes and actions throughout. For example the true worship of the City of God is parodied by a false and idolatrous worship in the City of Man. The hallmarks of those who belong to the City of God are gifts such as repentance, faith, thankfulness, love, joy and contentment. Conversely the City of Man is marked by spiritual stubbornness, unbelief, thanklessness, selfishness, hate, jealousy and covetousness/greed (the opposite of contentment and the root of idolatry). Such contrasts and comparisons could be multiplied and extended.

In Jeremiah 50-51 we read an extended prophetic oracle against Babylon. While it is clear that Babylon had been raised up by God—both to judge the Assyrians for their destruction of Israel and to judge Judah for their stubborn idolatry and refusal to hear the Lord’s voice (Jer. 51:7, 20 cf. Jer. 25:9, 15-27; Hab.1:5-11)—it is also clear that Babylon pursued its policies for its own expansionist reasons. As in the case of Assyria, the arrogance and brutality of the City of Man represented in their actions would be judged (cf. Is. 10). But even more than the ‘crimes against humanity’ approach that we could take to the nature and aims of ancient warfare, the greater weight lies on the spiritual nature of the conflict that Old Testament warfare was. We have become used to evaluating the actions of sovereign nation states along political and economic lines. In the ancient world there was no warfare or conquest which was not the expression of a nation’s worship. At the heart of every ancient civilization lay a system of temples, gods and their associated cultuses. Related to these was a expansive system soothsayers, diviners, priests and counselors. In many instances the kings themselves were regarded as divine beings, or incarnate expressions of spiritual entities and powers. Today systems of worship still underpin all the nations, though in the west in particular we have often become blinded to the spiritual nature of the City in which we live.

This thread of spiritual conflict must not be lost from our understanding of God’s action in history. When he delivers his people from slavery in Egypt, he actually has to defeat the gods of Egypt—of which Pharaoh was the incarnate chief—to do so (e.g. Ex. 12:12; Numb. 33:4 cf. Is. 19:1; Jer. 43:13). When the Philistines make war with Israel, the matter is clearly understood to be a clash between Dagon and Yahweh (e.g. 1 Sam. 5:3ff.). When the Assyrian messengers terrify the inhabitants of Jerusalem the line of argument is that Yahweh is of no consequence and cannot protect his people from the ravages of the gods of Assyria (e.g. Is. 36). And when Babylon defeated Judah, destroyed the Temple and carried God’s people away into captivity, it was understood to be a conflict against the Lord (Jer. 50:24, 29c; 51:11c; cf. Dan. 1:2; 5:2ff.; 2 Chron. 36:7 and, later, Ezra 1:7). Conversely God’s destruction of Babylon is in fact a judgement on her worship (Jer. 50:2; 51:18, 47 cf. Is. 46:1).

In particular, God says that he would judge Bel in Babylon. Bel (the equivalent to the title Baal) means ‘lord’ and so we understand Bel Marduk (or Merodach) to be the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon. “Lord” Marduk can be identified with the Greek Zeus and the Roman Jupiter, both chief gods in their various systems of worship. Babylonian epics describe how Marduk fought his way to the top of the pyramid of the various gods and lesser beings, making himself the lord of the whole earth. From the Babylonian’s point of view, the defeat of Judah and destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem only supported the view that Yahweh was a rather helpless local deity whose power was so weak that he could not protect his flock from Bel Marduk’s hosts. This led the Babylonians (and others in other circumstances) to assume that God had abandoned his people and that he had given up on trying to care for them (Jer. 50:24 cf. 51:5; 33:24-26 and the same principle in other places such as 1 Sam. 12:22; Ezra 9:9; Is. 49:14-15 and especially Is. 54:3-11). In reality, God had ordered all the events in so that he might fulfill his covenant promises to his people, and to bring them back to their land as a humbled, chastened and secured flock (e.g. Jer. 50:4-5, 20). It was (and is) the height of evil arrogance to assume that the sufferings of God’s people are to be equated with their abandonment by God or the rejection of his covenant promises.