The God Who Says When: Sovereignty, Stubbornness, and Seventy Years Text: Jeremiah 25:1-11
Introduction: A Covenant Lawsuit
We live in a therapeutic age, which is to say, a childish one. We want a God who is endlessly affirming and never demanding. We want a gospel that is all comfort and no confrontation. We want a Christianity that has been declawed, defanged, and domesticated into a harmless spiritual pet. But the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not a tame lion. He is the sovereign king of the universe, and He will not be trifled with.
The passage before us in Jeremiah is what we might call a covenant lawsuit. God, through His prophet, is bringing a formal indictment against His people, Judah. He lays out the charges with painstaking clarity: twenty-three years of persistent, faithful preaching on His part, and twenty-three years of persistent, stubborn deafness on theirs. This is not a misunderstanding. This is not a communication breakdown. This is high rebellion, a stiff-necked refusal to listen to the plain words of their covenant Lord.
And because God is a just king, He does not grade on a curve. Covenantal fidelity brings blessing. Covenantal infidelity brings curses. This is the fixed logic of the world He has made. For generations, God had sent His prophets, rising early, pleading with His people to turn back from their self-destructive path of idolatry. But they would not. They loved the work of their own hands more than they loved the God who made their hands. And so, the verdict is rendered, and the sentence is pronounced. Judgment is no longer a distant threat; it is at the door. And God, in His terrifying sovereignty, will use a pagan king, a man who does not know Him, as the instrument of His righteous judgment.
This is a hard word, but it is a necessary one. It is necessary because it teaches us about the gravity of sin, the patience of God, the certainty of His judgment, and the absolute nature of His control over human history. This is not just a story about ancient Judah. It is a story about us. For we are all prone to wander, prone to craft idols with our hands and our hearts, and prone to plug our ears to the clear commands of God.
The Text
The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah (that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, “From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, these twenty-three years the word of Yahweh has come to me, and I have spoken to you, rising up early and speaking, but you have not listened. And Yahweh has sent to you all His slaves the prophets, rising up early and sending, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear, saying, ‘Turn now everyone from his evil way and from the evil of your deeds, and live on the ground which Yahweh has given to you and your fathers forever and ever; and do not walk after other gods to serve them and to worship them, and do not provoke Me to anger with the work of your hands, and I will bring no evil against you.’ Yet you have not listened to Me,” declares Yahweh, “in order that you might provoke Me to anger with the work of your hands to your own evil demise.
Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts, ‘Because you have not listened to My words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these surrounding nations; and I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of horror and of hissing and an everlasting waste place. Moreover, I will make the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp, to perish from them. This whole land will be a waste place and an object of horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
(Jeremiah 25:1-11 LSB)
The Indictment: Twenty-Three Years of Deafness (vv. 1-7)
The scene is set with historical precision. This is not a fairy tale. This is happening in real time, at the pivot point of world power, as Babylon is ascending. And God's charge is simple and damning.
"From the thirteenth year of Josiah... even to this day, these twenty-three years the word of Yahweh has come to me, and I have spoken to you, rising up early and speaking, but you have not listened." (Jeremiah 25:3)
For twenty-three years, the divine Word has been sounding in their ears. The phrase "rising up early and speaking" is a beautiful anthropomorphism. It pictures God as a diligent, earnest father, getting up before dawn to plead with his wayward children. This is not a distant, dispassionate God. This is a God who has patiently, persistently pursued His people. He has not been silent or obscure. The problem is not with the transmitter; the problem is with the receiver.
They "have not listened." And it gets worse. It wasn't just Jeremiah. God sent "all His slaves the prophets." He sent a chorus of voices, all singing the same song of repentance. And Judah did not just fail to listen; they did not "incline your ear to hear." This is active resistance. They are cupping their hands over their ears. They are deliberately tuning God out. This is the nature of sin. It is not an intellectual problem; it is a moral problem. It is a rebellion of the will.
And what was the message they so determinedly ignored? It was the essence of the covenant.
"Turn now everyone from his evil way... and do not walk after other gods to serve them and to worship them, and do not provoke Me to anger with the work of your hands, and I will bring no evil against you." (Jeremiah 25:5-6)
The message is one of grace. It is a call to repent and live. Notice the connection between idolatry and human manufacturing: "the work of your hands." Idolatry is the ultimate act of arrogance. It is man creating a god in his own image, a god he can control, a god who makes no ethical demands. It is taking the gifts of God, our creativity and strength, and using them to fashion a rival to God. And God says this provokes Him to anger, not because He is a petty tyrant, but because He is a loving husband whose bride is committing adultery with a lifeless statue. This is a profound betrayal.
But even here, the offer stands: "Turn... and I will bring no evil against you." God's default position is blessing. The curses of the covenant are the strange work of God. He brings judgment only when all offers of mercy have been spat upon. And that is precisely what happened. Verse 7 is the sad conclusion: "Yet you have not listened to Me... to your own evil demise." Their rebellion was not just an offense to God; it was spiritual suicide. They were forging the instruments of their own destruction.
The Sentence: The Servant from Babylon (vv. 8-11)
Because they would not listen, God now speaks a word they cannot ignore. The tone shifts from pleading to sentencing.
"Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts, ‘Because you have not listened to My words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north... and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant..." (Jeremiah 25:8-9)
This is one of the most staggering declarations of divine sovereignty in all of Scripture. Yahweh, the God of Israel, is the commander-in-chief of all the armies of the world. The Babylonians think they are marching for their own glory, for plunder and power. But they are merely errand boys. God says "I will send and take." Their movements are orchestrated from the throne room of heaven.
And then comes the truly shocking title. God calls this pagan, brutal, idolatrous king, Nebuchadnezzar, "My servant." This demolishes any notion of a limited God who is in a cosmic arm-wrestling match with other deities or forces. God uses whomever He pleases to accomplish His purposes. He used the wicked Assyrians as the "rod of His anger" against the northern kingdom (Isaiah 10:5). He used the Persian king Cyrus, calling him "His anointed" (Isaiah 45:1), to restore His people. God is not the tribal deity of Israel; He is the king of all kings, and the hearts of all kings are in His hand. Nebuchadnezzar is a tool, a hammer, a scalpel in the hand of the divine surgeon, wielded to cut the cancer of idolatry out of Judah.
The judgment will be total. God will "devote them to destruction." The land will become "an object of horror and of hissing." All the sounds of normal, joyful life will cease: the voice of the bride and groom, the sound of the millstones grinding grain, the light of the lamp in the home. This is a picture of complete societal collapse. The covenant blessings of life, joy, and prosperity are revoked. When a nation turns its back on the source of life, all that is left is death and silence.
And then, the specific duration of the sentence is given.
"This whole land will be a waste place and an object of horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years." (Jeremiah 25:11)
Why seventy years? This is not an arbitrary number. It is a number rooted in covenantal justice. According to the law of Moses, the land was to be given a sabbath rest every seventh year (Leviticus 25:4). For centuries, Israel had ignored this command, greedily working the land without pause. In 2 Chronicles 36:21, the Bible gives us the divine rationale: the exile would last "until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years." For 490 years of disobedience, the land had been denied 70 sabbath years. So God, in perfect justice, would give the land its rest by force. He will not be mocked. His laws are not suggestions. If we will not obey Him willingly, He will ensure that His purposes are accomplished anyway.
Conclusion: The God Who Is Not Ignored
This passage confronts us with a God who is patient, but whose patience has a limit. For twenty-three years, He spoke through His prophets. For centuries, He endured their idolatry. But the day of reckoning came. The refusal to listen to the word of grace resulted in the imposition of a word of judgment that could not be ignored. The Babylonians were a sermon that Judah could not tune out.
The application for us should be starkly clear. We have been given a far greater word than Jeremiah's. We have been given the very Word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ. For two thousand years, the gospel has gone forth, the call to repent and believe. God has been rising early and speaking to our world through His Scriptures, through His Church, through the preaching of the Word. And our world, by and large, has cupped its hands over its ears.
We craft our own idols, the work of our hands, whether they are made of silicon or ideologies of self-worship. We provoke God to anger with our rebellion, imagining that His patience is indifference. But this passage warns us that there is a limit. There is a day when the accounts are settled. The God who called Nebuchadnezzar His servant is the same God who rules today, and He will use whatever means necessary to bring about His purposes.
But the story does not end in judgment. The seventy-year exile was not the end for Judah. It was a severe, painful, but ultimately remedial judgment. It was designed to purge them of their idolatry, to discipline them as a father disciplines a son. And at the end of the seventy years, God raised up another pagan king, Cyrus, to send them back. This points us to the ultimate exile and the ultimate exodus.
We were all in exile, slaves to sin and death. We were under the just sentence of God. But God sent His Son, Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus endured the ultimate exile, separation from the Father. He absorbed the full measure of God's wrath against our idolatry and our stiff-necked rebellion. He took our seventy years, and an eternity more, upon Himself. And because He did, God now offers us not judgment, but a full and free pardon. He calls us to turn from the evil of our deeds, from the worthless idols we have made, and to listen to Him. The choice is the same as it was for Judah: listen and live, or refuse and perish. May God give us ears to hear.