The Negligence of Shepherds and the Justice of God Text: Jeremiah 50:6-7
Introduction: The Covenantal Blueprint of Ruin
When a nation or a people comes apart at the seams, the unraveling does not begin at the bottom. It begins at the top. The fish, as they say, rots from the head down. In our therapeutic age, we like to think of ourselves as victims of circumstance, unfortunate souls adrift on a sea of historical forces. But the Bible is a bucket of cold, bracing water to the face. It will not allow us such sentimental evasions. The Scriptures diagnose our ruin with unflinching precision, and the diagnosis always points back to a central failure of leadership and a corresponding failure of followership. It points to a breakdown in covenant.
Jeremiah is a prophet who ministered in the final, sputtering days of Judah. He was a man sent to a people who were spiritually deaf, dumb, and blind, a people who were just a few short steps from being flattened by the Babylonian war machine. And in our text today, in the middle of a prophecy against that very Babylon, God pauses to give a searing indictment of His own people. He explains exactly why they are in this mess. It is not bad luck. It is not geopolitical happenstance. It is a direct result of their sin, a sin that was aided, abetted, and encouraged by the very men who were supposed to protect them from it.
This passage is a divine courtroom summary. It lays out the charge, identifies the culprits, describes the consequences, and justifies the verdict. And we must pay close attention, because the principles laid out here are as timeless as the God who spoke them. The same dynamic of pastoral malpractice, popular apostasy, and punitive justice is at work in our own day. We have our own corrupt shepherds, our own wandering sheep, and our own adversaries who are licking their chops. The names and places have changed, but the spiritual physics of the universe have not. Let us therefore attend to the Word of God.
The Text
"My people have become lost sheep; Their shepherds have led them astray. They have made them turn away on the mountains; They have gone along from mountain to hill And have forgotten their resting place. All who came out against them have devoured them; And their adversaries have said, ‘We are not guilty, Inasmuch as they have sinned against Yahweh, who is the abode of righteousness, Even Yahweh, the hope of their fathers.’"
(Jeremiah 50:6-7 LSB)
Led Astray by the Appointed Guides (v. 6)
God begins His diagnosis with a metaphor that is central to the biblical understanding of His relationship with His people.
"My people have become lost sheep; Their shepherds have led them astray. They have made them turn away on the mountains; They have gone along from mountain to hill And have forgotten their resting place." (Jeremiah 50:6)
First, notice the possessive love in the first two words: "My people." Despite their sin, despite their wandering, God has not disowned them. They are His. This is the bedrock of covenant grace. But their status as His people makes their condition all the more tragic. They "have become lost sheep." This is not their natural state. Sheep are meant to be in a flock, under the care of a shepherd. To be a lost sheep is to be in a position of maximum vulnerability and foolishness. As Isaiah says, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6).
But how did they get lost? The text is explicit: "Their shepherds have led them astray." The primary responsibility for this disaster is laid squarely at the feet of the leadership. The shepherds, the kings, the priests, and the prophets, the very men entrusted with the spiritual and civil well being of the nation, were the ones who pointed them toward the cliff. They were the spiritual travel agents for a trip to perdition. Instead of leading the people to the green pastures of God's law, they led them up to the "mountains" and "hills."
What is this about mountains and hills? This is the topography of idolatry. Throughout the Old Testament, the "high places" were the locations of pagan altars and idolatrous worship. The shepherds, instead of tearing down these idols as Josiah had tried to do, were actively encouraging the people to go up and worship them. They led them in a syncretistic free-for-all, mixing the worship of Yahweh with the worship of Baal, Molech, and Asherah. They told the people that you could have your covenant God and your fashionable idols too. You can have your Bible and your sexual revolution. You can have your baptism and your state-sanctioned theft. This is the ancient and ever-present temptation of compromise.
The result of this mountain-hopping idolatry is that they "have forgotten their resting place." The true resting place for God's people is in Him alone. It is in His provision, His law, His presence. It is the Sabbath rest that points to the ultimate rest we have in Christ. But when you are constantly chasing the thrill of the next idol, the next spiritual fad, the next political messiah, you forget the quiet contentment of dwelling with God. You become spiritually restless, always seeking, never finding, because you are seeking in all the wrong places. The shepherds had traded the deep peace of the fold for the cheap thrills of the high places, and the sheep followed them right into exhaustion and confusion.
The Logic of the Devourers (v. 7)
Verse 7 shows us the direct, brutal consequence of being lost sheep without a true shepherd and a true resting place.
"All who came out against them have devoured them; And their adversaries have said, ‘We are not guilty, Inasmuch as they have sinned against Yahweh, who is the abode of righteousness, Even Yahweh, the hope of their fathers.’" (Jeremiah 50:7)
Lost sheep are easy prey. When the people of God abandon their fortress, which is God Himself, they become fair game for every predator in the wilderness. "All who came out against them have devoured them." The Babylonians, and before them the Assyrians, and the surrounding nations, did not succeed because of their own righteousness or superior military genius. They succeeded because God took the hedge of protection down. God handed His people over to be devoured. This is covenantal judgment. God had warned them for centuries, from the pages of Deuteronomy, that if they broke covenant, He would send foreign armies to discipline them. This is not God losing control; this is God keeping His promises.
But the most striking part of this verse is the theological justification offered by the adversaries. The Babylonians, these pagan idolaters, looked at the ruin of Jerusalem and said, "We are not guilty." On what basis could they make such a claim? They were not claiming innocence in some absolute sense. They were brutal and wicked men. Their claim was relative. They were saying, "We are not guilty before Yahweh for what we have done to His people." Why? "Inasmuch as they have sinned against Yahweh."
This is a staggering thought. The pagans had a clearer theological understanding of the situation than the people of God did. The Babylonians knew that Judah's God was a just God, and they correctly interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem as a divine judgment for Judah's sin. They saw themselves, rightly, as the rod of God's anger. They were not innocent, but they were not guilty of acting unjustly in this specific instance, because they were the instrument of a just sentence. When God's people sin so flagrantly, even the pagans can see the logic of the judgment.
And look at the titles they use for God. They identify Him as "Yahweh, who is the abode of righteousness." The Hebrew is beautiful; He is the naveh tzedek, the habitation or pasture of righteousness. This is the very resting place the sheep had forgotten. Their enemies knew who their true home was, even as they wandered in the mountains of idolatry. The pagans understood that Israel had sinned against the very source of all justice and order. To sin against the "abode of righteousness" is to invite chaos and deconstruction into your life and nation. You cannot mock the standard of weights and measures and then be surprised when the economy collapses.
Then they add another title: "Even Yahweh, the hope of their fathers." The Babylonians knew something of Israel's history. They knew that this was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This was the God who had made covenant promises to their ancestors. This makes the sin of Judah even more heinous. They were not just sinning against an abstract principle of justice; they were sinning against their covenant Lord, the God who had been the hope of their fathers for generations. They were squandering a glorious inheritance. They were despising their birthright. And their enemies could see it plainly.
The Good Shepherd and the True Pasture
This is a grim picture. Corrupt shepherds, lost sheep, and clear-eyed predators. It is the story of Israel, and it is the story of much of the Western church. We have had shepherds who have led the people astray, telling them that the high places of sexual autonomy, materialism, and cultural compromise are perfectly fine places for Christian sheep to graze. And the people, loving to have it so, have gone along from the mountain of feminism to the hill of egalitarianism, from the mountain of Marxism to the hill of therapeutic deism. And in the process, they have forgotten their resting place.
The result is that we are being devoured. Our cultural adversaries are tearing down our institutions, mocking our faith, and rewriting our laws, and as they do so, they are saying, "We are not guilty." And in a real sense, they are right. They see the hypocrisy, the cowardice, and the blatant sin within the church, and they conclude, rightly, that our God is a God of justice. They see Christians who have abandoned the abode of righteousness, and they are simply carrying out the sentence.
But this is not where the story ends. The reason God diagnoses the problem of the bad shepherds so clearly is to prepare us for the coming of the Good Shepherd. Jesus looked out at the crowds in Israel and had compassion on them, "because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). He came to be the shepherd Israel needed.
Jesus Christ is the true Shepherd who does not lead His sheep astray. He leads them to the green pastures of His Word and the still waters of His Spirit. He is the one who says, "I am the door of the sheep... if anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture" (John 10:7, 9). He does not lead us to the high places of idolatry; He leads us to the cross, and from there to the heavenly places where we are seated with Him.
He is the true "abode of righteousness." In Him, we find our true resting place. "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). The restless wandering from mountain to hill ends at the feet of Jesus. He is the satisfaction of all our desires.
And He is the "hope of their fathers" fulfilled. He is the seed of Abraham, the son of David, the one to whom all the covenant promises pointed. The hope of the fathers was not in a political system or a piece of land, but in the coming Messiah who would deal with their sin once and for all. When we sin, we are not just breaking an abstract rule; we are sinning against Him, the hope of all the ages.
The call to us, then, is to reject the false shepherds of our age. We must repent of our mountain-hopping idolatry and our spiritual restlessness. We must return to the Good Shepherd, hear His voice, and follow Him. He is our only protection from the devourers. He is our only resting place. He is our only righteousness and our only hope. Let us, therefore, return to our fold.