The Inescapable Lion, The Unanswerable God Text: Jeremiah 50:44-46
Introduction: The Council of Yahweh
We live in an age that believes God can be summoned into court. Our generation, puffed up on the thin gruel of its own autonomy, imagines that it can place the Almighty in the dock and cross-examine Him. We want to know by what right He governs His own world. We demand that He justify His actions according to our standards of fairness, our sentimentalities, our ever-shifting definitions of justice. The modern mind, when it bothers to think about God at all, pictures Him as a celestial civil servant, accountable to a board of human directors. But the God of Scripture is not running for office. He does not submit His counsel for our approval.
The prophet Jeremiah is tasked with delivering a message that shatters this delusion. For fifty chapters, he has been a conduit for the word of the Lord, a word of judgment against Judah for her covenant infidelity, and a word of judgment against the nations who, in their pride, became instruments of that judgment only to exalt themselves. Here, at the climax of his prophecies against Babylon, the greatest empire of the age, God reveals Himself not as a defendant, but as the plaintiff, the judge, and the sovereign executioner. Babylon was God's hammer to chastise Judah, but proud hammers always think they are the blacksmith. God is about to disabuse them of this notion.
This passage is a declaration of God's absolute and unchallengeable sovereignty. It is a series of rhetorical questions that are designed not to invite an answer, but to silence all opposition. "Who is like Me?" "Who will summon Me?" "Who is the shepherd who can stand before Me?" These are not philosophical queries for a graduate seminar. This is the roar of the lion. This is the God who told Job to gird up his loins and answer Him. This is the potter who asks the clay, "What are you making?" The message to Babylon, and to every proud nation since, is this: God's purposes are not suggestions. His counsel is not a proposal. It is a verdict. And when He decides to act, no power in heaven or on earth can withstand Him.
We must understand this because we are constantly tempted to domesticate God, to trim His mane and blunt His claws, to make Him a safe, manageable deity who fits neatly into our political programs and personal preferences. But the God who judges Babylon is the same God we worship. He is a consuming fire. His sovereignty is not a peripheral doctrine for theologians to quibble over; it is the bedrock of all reality and the only true source of comfort in a world that is shaking.
The Text
"Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thicket of the Jordan to an enduring pasture; for in an instant I will make them run away from it, and whoever is chosen I will appoint over it. For who is like Me, and who will summon Me into court? And who then is the shepherd who can stand before Me?” Therefore hear the counsel of Yahweh which He has counseled against Babylon, and His purposes which He has purposed against the land of the Chaldeans: surely they will drag them off, even the little ones of the flock; surely He will make their pasture desolate because of them. At the sound, “Babylon has been seized!” the earth is shaken, and an outcry is heard among the nations.
(Jeremiah 50:44-46 LSB)
The Lion and the Shepherd King (v. 44)
We begin with the terrifying and majestic imagery of God on the move.
"Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thicket of the Jordan to an enduring pasture; for in an instant I will make them run away from it, and whoever is chosen I will appoint over it. For who is like Me, and who will summon Me into court? And who then is the shepherd who can stand before Me?” (Jeremiah 50:44)
The imagery is potent. A lion, driven from the dense thickets by the flooding of the Jordan River, suddenly appears at the edge of a settled pasture. This is not a tame lion from a zoo; this is a wild, powerful, and unpredictable force of nature. The flock is scattered in terror. This lion is God Himself, or the agent of His choosing. He is not coming to negotiate. He comes to seize and to appoint. Notice the speed: "in an instant I will make them run away." God's judgments are not slow, lumbering things. When the time is ripe, they are sudden and decisive.
But who is this chosen one He will appoint? Historically, it was Cyrus the Persian, God's anointed instrument to overthrow Babylon. Isaiah calls him by name a century and a half before he was born, calling him God's "shepherd" (Isaiah 44:28). This is a staggering display of God's meticulous providence. He does not just vaguely guide history; He writes it, down to the proper names. He raises up kings and he throws them down. Nebuchadnezzar had to learn this the hard way, eating grass like an ox until he acknowledged that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will.
From this act of sovereign power, God issues a three-fold challenge that establishes His absolute authority. First, "For who is like Me?" This is the fundamental question of worldview. Is there any rival power? Is there any other god? Is there any standard of truth, goodness, or beauty outside of God Himself? The answer is a resounding no. To compare anything to God is an act of cosmic foolishness. He is in a category by Himself. He is the Creator; everything else is the creature. This is the Creator/creature distinction upon which all sanity rests.
Second, "who will summon Me into court?" This strikes at the heart of human pride. Man, in his fallen state, constantly wants to be God's judge. We think our finite, corrupted reason is a sufficient perch from which to evaluate the infinite, holy God. But God does not recognize the jurisdiction of our kangaroo courts. He is the judge, not the judged. The only time God stood in a human court was in the person of His Son, and that was the greatest travesty of justice in human history, which God, in His sovereignty, turned into the salvation of the world.
Third, "who then is the shepherd who can stand before Me?" The "shepherd" here is a king or ruler. Who is the king of Babylon? Who is the president? Who is the prime minister who can resist the will of Yahweh? The answer is no one. Earthly rulers are but shepherds of their flocks, but God is the Lion who can scatter any flock and devour any shepherd who stands against Him. All earthly authority is delegated and temporary. To defy God is to be a shepherd standing in the path of a charging lion.
The Unalterable Counsel (v. 45)
Verse 45 moves from the sovereign actor to His sovereign plan. The judgment is not arbitrary; it is the execution of a pre-determined counsel.
"Therefore hear the counsel of Yahweh which He has counseled against Babylon, and His purposes which He has purposed against the land of the Chaldeans: surely they will drag them off, even the little ones of the flock; surely He will make their pasture desolate because of them." (Jeremiah 50:45 LSB)
The words "counsel" and "purposed" are repeated for emphasis. This is not a whim. This is the eternal, unchangeable, and settled decree of God. What God has purposed, He performs. What He has counseled in eternity, He executes in history. This is what we mean by the sovereignty of God. It is not that God simply reacts to human choices, trying to salvage a plan B. He works all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11). This is not fatalism, because God is a personal, righteous, and good God. It is providence, and it is our only hope.
The execution of this counsel will be total. "Surely they will drag them off, even the little ones of the flock." The Medes and Persians will show no mercy, just as Babylon showed no mercy to Judah. This is the principle of reaping and sowing applied on a geopolitical scale. The judgment is comprehensive. And it is not just the people, but the land itself: "He will make their pasture desolate." Sin has ecological consequences. When a nation rebels against God, the very land groans under the curse. Babylon had become a predator, a wolf among the sheepfolds of the nations. Now, they are treated as a flock themselves, and a more powerful predator will drag them away.
This is a hard teaching for our soft generation. We want a God who is all mercy and no justice. But the God of the Bible is holy. His justice is not a contradiction of His love; it is an expression of it. He loves righteousness, and therefore He must judge wickedness. A god who is indifferent to the pride of Babylon and the shedding of innocent blood would not be a good god. He would be a moral monster. The terror of God's judgment on His enemies is the flip side of the comfort of His covenant faithfulness to His people.
The Global Tremor (v. 46)
The final verse describes the worldwide impact of Babylon's fall. This is not a local event.
"At the sound, 'Babylon has been seized!' the earth is shaken, and an outcry is heard among the nations." (Jeremiah 50:46 LSB)
Babylon was the center of the world. It was the "superpower" of its day. Its fall would be like a global earthquake. The economic and political shockwaves would be felt everywhere. The nations that depended on her, that feared her, that traded with her, would all cry out. This is precisely what the Apostle John describes in Revelation 18, when the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over the fall of the great city Babylon, "for in one hour she has been laid waste."
The fall of a great, godless empire is a world-shaking event. It is a public demonstration that there is a God in heaven who judges the nations. It is a warning to all other nations not to walk in the same pride. The outcry is one of shock, of fear, and of economic ruin. When a system built on pride, idolatry, and oppression collapses, the fallout is immense. It teaches us that there is no security, no stability, and no future in any system that sets itself up against the throne of God.
The Lion Who is a Lamb
This passage is a fearsome declaration of God's sovereign judgment. But if we stop there, we have not yet heard the Gospel. For there is one Shepherd who did stand before the Lion. There is one Man who was summoned into court and yet was without sin. There is one who is exactly like God, because He is God.
The Lion of judgment who comes from the thicket is ultimately the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Jesus Christ (Revelation 5:5). He is the chosen one whom God has appointed over all things. But how did He conquer? He conquered not by devouring, but by being devoured. The great paradox of the Gospel is that the Lion became a Lamb.
Think of the questions. "Who is like Me?" Jesus Christ is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being (Hebrews 1:3). "Who will summon Me into court?" Jesus was summoned before Pilate and Caiaphas. He stood silent before His accusers, the only innocent man in a court of cosmic treason. He allowed Himself to be judged by sinful men so that sinful men could be declared righteous before a holy God.
"Who then is the shepherd who can stand before Me?" The Good Shepherd stood before the wrath of God. He did not run. He laid down His life for the sheep (John 10:11). The full force of God's righteous judgment against sin, the judgment that made Babylon desolate, was poured out upon His own Son at the cross. The counsel of Yahweh was not just against Babylon; the eternal counsel of Yahweh was the plan of redemption, purposed before the foundation of the world.
At the sound of the cross, the earth was shaken. There was darkness over the land, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. An outcry was heard, not among the nations, but in the heart of the Father, who forsook His only Son. The fall of Babylon was a tremor. The cross was the earthquake that shook the foundations of hell itself.
Therefore, we are left with a choice. We can face God as the devouring Lion of judgment, or we can hide ourselves in the wounds of that same Lion who became the sacrificial Lamb. There is no third option. You cannot stand before Him on your own merits. You cannot answer His challenge. Your only hope is to bow the knee and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the chosen One, the Shepherd King, the Lion and the Lamb. In Him, the counsel of God is not a verdict of desolation, but a purpose of everlasting life.