The North Wind of God
Introduction: A World Allergic to Warnings
We live in a soft age, an age that demands trigger warnings before reading old books and safe spaces to protect our ears from disagreeable thoughts. Our therapeutic culture has convinced us that the greatest evil is to feel bad, and the greatest good is to feel affirmed. And so, we have constructed for ourselves a god to match our preferences, a deity who is all celestial back-rub and no backbone, a god who would never, ever raise his voice. He is a god of perpetual peace, a god of unconditional affirmation, a god who would never dream of sending evil from the north.
Into this padded room of modern sensibilities, the prophet Jeremiah walks, not with a pillow, but with a trumpet. He does not offer calming platitudes; he sounds a shrill, terrifying alarm. The message God gives him is not designed to affirm Judah in their lifestyle choices. It is designed to scare them out of their wits, to drive them to their knees, to make them see that the covenantal lawsuit they have been ignoring is about to be executed with extreme prejudice. The God of the Bible is a God of love, yes, but His love is a holy love. His peace is a conquered peace. And His warnings are terrifyingly real. When a loving father sees his toddler running toward a busy street, he does not whisper affirmations. He screams.
This passage is God screaming. It is a detailed, graphic description of what happens when a people who have been blessed beyond measure decide that they know better than their God. It is a portrait of covenantal judgment. And we must not make the mistake of thinking this is just for ancient Judah. The principles are immutable. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And He still demands that His people listen to the trumpet.
The Text
Declare in Judah and make it heard in Jerusalem and say, "Blow the trumpet in the land; Call out, make your voice full, and say, ‘Gather yourselves, and let us go Into the fortified cities.’ Lift up a standard toward Zion! Seek safety, do not stand still, For I am bringing evil from the north, And great destruction. A lion has gone up from his thicket, And a destroyer of nations has set out; He has gone out from his place To make your land a desolation. Your cities will be turned into ruins Without inhabitant. For this, I gird myself with sackcloth, Lament and wail; For the burning anger of Yahweh Has not turned back from us.” “It will be in that day,” declares Yahweh, “that the heart of the king and the heart of the princes will perish; and the priests will be appalled, and the prophets will be astonished.” Then I said, “Ah, Lord Yahweh! Surely You have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘You will have peace’; whereas a sword touches the throat.” In that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A scorching wind from the bare heights in the wilderness along the way of the daughter of My people, not to winnow and not to cleanse, a wind too full for these things, will come for My purpose; now I will also speak judgments against them. Behold, he goes up like clouds, And his chariots like the whirlwind; His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are devastated!” Wash your heart from evil, O Jerusalem, That you may be saved. How long will your wicked thoughts Lodge within you? For a voice declares from Dan, And makes wickedness heard from Mount Ephraim. “Make mention of it to the nations, saying, ‘Behold!’ Make it heard over Jerusalem, ‘Besiegers come from a far country, And give forth their voices against the cities of Judah. Like watchmen of a field they are against her round about Because she has rebelled against Me,’ declares Yahweh. Your ways and your deeds Have done these things to you. This is your evil. How bitter! How it has touched your heart!”
(Jeremiah 4:5-18 LSB)
The Alarm of Judgment (vv. 5-9)
The scene opens with a series of frantic, urgent commands. This is a national emergency.
"Blow the trumpet in the land; Call out, make your voice full, and say, ‘Gather yourselves, and let us go Into the fortified cities.’ Lift up a standard toward Zion! Seek safety, do not stand still, For I am bringing evil from the north, And great destruction." (Jeremiah 4:5-6)
The trumpet was the ancient alarm system. It signaled war. The standard was a rallying point. The command is clear: the enemy is here. Flee to the walled cities for safety. But notice who is orchestrating this invasion. "I am bringing evil from the north." God takes full responsibility. The Babylonians are coming, but they are God's battle-axe. He is the one bringing this "great destruction." This is not an unfortunate geopolitical event. This is divine judgment. God is sovereign over Nebuchadnezzar. He is sovereign over the "destroyer of nations" who is coming like a lion from his thicket (v. 7). This lion is on a leash, and the hand of God holds that leash.
The result will be total desolation. The land will be ruined, the cities uninhabited. The only sane, righteous response to this news is not political maneuvering or military strategy, but sackcloth and wailing (v. 8). Why? "For the burning anger of Yahweh has not turned back from us." Their problem was not fundamentally military; it was theological. They had broken covenant, and the sanctions were now coming due.
And when this judgment falls, the leadership will be the first to break (v. 9). The king and princes, who trusted in their political savvy, will lose their courage. Their hearts will "perish." The priests, who should have taught the law, will be appalled. And the prophets, the ones who had been promising "peace, peace," will be utterly astonished that their soothing lies did not stop the Babylonian army. A crisis reveals the quality of a nation's leadership, and Judah's was rotten to the core.
The Prophet's Crisis (v. 10)
In the midst of this, Jeremiah voices a raw and startling complaint to God.
"Then I said, 'Ah, Lord Yahweh! Surely You have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘You will have peace’; whereas a sword touches the throat.'" (Jeremiah 4:10)
This is a hard verse, but it is an honest one. From Jeremiah's perspective, it looked like God had played a cruel trick. The land was filled with prophets running around, all claiming to speak for Yahweh, and all of them were promising peace and prosperity. The people listened to them, they believed them, and now a sword was at their throat. How could this be?
God does not deceive in the sense of telling a lie. He is not the author of sin. But God is sovereign over deception. When a people reject the truth of God, spoken plainly by prophets like Jeremiah, one of the judgments God sends is to give them what they want. He gives them over to a strong delusion, so that they believe the lie (2 Thess. 2:11). He let the false prophets flourish. He let their ear-tickling messages become popular. The deception they experienced was the direct consequence of their love for lies. They wanted a god who would grade on a curve, and God, in His wrath, gave them an echo chamber of false prophets to tell them they were right. The sword at their throat was the price of their preferred reality.
The Hurricane of Wrath (vv. 11-13, 15-17)
The judgment is then described with another powerful metaphor.
"A scorching wind from the bare heights in the wilderness... not to winnow and not to cleanse, a wind too full for these things, will come for My purpose; now I will also speak judgments against them." (Jeremiah 4:11-12)
A farmer uses the wind to winnow his grain, to separate the wheat from the worthless chaff. It is a gentle, productive breeze. But this wind, God says, is not for that. This is a sirocco, a hot, destructive desert wind. This is a hurricane. It is a "wind too full," meaning it is too violent for any constructive purpose. Its purpose is demolition. This is the unmediated wrath of God against sin, and it is coming swiftly. The enemy comes up like clouds, his chariots like a whirlwind, his horses faster than eagles (v. 13). The alarm that was sounded in verse 5 is now a reality. The news travels from the northern border of Dan, down through Mount Ephraim, and the besiegers surround the cities of Judah (vv. 15-17).
And God makes the reason explicit, lest they blame their misfortune on bad luck or a failure of foreign policy. "Because she has rebelled against Me, declares Yahweh" (v. 17). This is the central charge. This is the heart of the matter. All their troubles flow from this one, simple fact: rebellion.
The Bitter Harvest (v. 14, 18)
In the middle of this terrifying description of unstoppable judgment, God inserts a gracious, and pointed, invitation.
"Wash your heart from evil, O Jerusalem, That you may be saved. How long will your wicked thoughts Lodge within you?" (Jeremiah 4:14)
Here is the diagnosis. The problem is not the Babylonians. The problem is the evil in the heart of Jerusalem. The external enemy is merely the symptom of the internal disease. The real battle is not on the city walls; it is in the hearts and minds of the people. Notice the question: "How long will your wicked thoughts lodge within you?" Sin begins as a thought, an idea you entertain. But if you give it lodging, if you let it stay the night, it soon becomes a resident, and then it becomes the landlord. They had allowed idolatrous, rebellious, wicked thoughts to take up residence in their hearts, and the result was a polluted nation ripe for judgment.
The call is to "wash your heart." This is a call to repentance. But who can do this? Who can wash a heart? This is an impossible command, and that is the point. It is meant to drive them to despair of their own righteousness and to cry out to the only one who can cleanse them.
The chapter concludes by bringing the responsibility right back to their doorstep.
"Your ways and your deeds Have done these things to you. This is your evil. How bitter! How it has touched your heart!" (Jeremiah 4:18)
This is the law of the harvest. You reap what you sow. God is simply letting their choices bear their natural, bitter fruit. The evil they are experiencing is their own evil coming home to roost. It is bitter because sin is always bitter in the end. And it has "touched your heart" because that is where it all began.
Conclusion: The Only Fortified City
This is a terrifying chapter. It describes the deconstruction of a nation under the righteous judgment of God. And we are fools if we do not see ourselves in it. Our nation, and much of the Western church, has been listening to the false prophets of "peace and prosperity" for decades, all while wickedness lodges in our hearts and rebellion defines our ways.
The north wind of God's judgment is not a relic of the past. The same God who judged Judah judges the nations today. The call to "seek safety" and run to the "fortified cities" is still the call of the gospel. But the only fortified city that will stand in the day of judgment is not made of stone and mortar. The only true refuge is the Lord Jesus Christ.
On the cross, Jesus Christ stood exposed on the bare heights of Golgotha and took the full, scorching, destructive wind of God's wrath for us. The sword that was at Judah's throat was plunged into His side. He became the destroyer of our great enemy, the lion of the tribe of Judah who defeated the roaring lion who seeks to devour. He did this so that the burning anger of God would be turned back from us.
The command to "wash your heart" is still the command. But the good news of the gospel is that God has provided the water. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Repentance is not trying to scrub our own hearts clean so that we are presentable to God. Repentance is abandoning our self-built, indefensible cities of pride and rebellion, and running for refuge to the only fortified city that can save. It is running to Christ and pleading with Him to do the washing that we could never do ourselves. Do not wait for the trumpet to sound and the sword to be at your throat. Flee to Christ now.