God's Holy Arson: The Covenant Lawsuit Against Babylon Text: Jeremiah 51:11-14
Introduction: History with a Point
We live in a secular age that wants to read history as though it were a random series of unfortunate events. To the modern mind, empires rise and fall because of economics, or military blunders, or climate change, or some other impersonal force. They see history as a flat, meaningless plain of cause and effect. But the Christian knows that history is not a plain; it is a mountain, and the peak of that mountain is Skull Hill. All of history is a story, and it is hurtling toward a conclusion authored by God Himself. History is not just one thing after another; it is a covenant lawsuit, and God is both the prosecuting attorney and the righteous judge.
The prophets were not fortune tellers, reading the tea leaves of geopolitical trends. They were God's bailiffs, sent to serve a summons on rebellious nations. And in the book of Jeremiah, no nation receives a more detailed and thorough indictment than Babylon. Babylon is more than just a historical empire located in ancient Mesopotamia. In Scripture, Babylon becomes the archetypal city of man, the great symbol of organized, prideful, religious, and commercial rebellion against the living God. It began at Babel, with its tower reaching for the heavens in defiance of God's command to fill the earth, and it culminates in the great harlot of Revelation, drunk on the blood of the saints.
So when we come to a passage like this, which details the mustering of armies and the overthrow of this great city, we must not read it as ancient, dusty history. We are reading the very playbook of God. This is how He deals with proud empires. This is how He vindicates His people. And because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, this is how He is dealing with the proud Babylons of our own day. The weapons may change, but the principles of the war do not. God is still in the business of tearing down strongholds, and He is still using the most unlikely instruments to do it.
This passage is a divine battle plan. It is a declaration that God not only predicts the future but actively orchestrates it down to the sharpening of the arrows. He is not a passive observer; He is the sovereign commander-in-chief of all the armies of history, both those who know His name and those who do not.
The Text
Sharpen the arrows, fill the quivers! Yahweh has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes Because His purpose is against Babylon to destroy it; For it is the vengeance of Yahweh, vengeance for His temple. Lift up a standard against the walls of Babylon; Make strong the watch; Raise up watchmen; Establish men in ambush! For Yahweh has both purposed and performed What He spoke concerning the inhabitants of Babylon. O you who dwell by abundant waters, Abundant in treasures, Your end has come, The measure of your end. Yahweh of hosts has sworn by Himself: “Surely I will fill you with a population like locusts, And they will cry out with shouts of victory over you.”
(Jeremiah 51:11-14 LSB)
The Divine Summons (v. 11)
We begin with the call to arms, a call issued not by a human general, but by God Himself.
"Sharpen the arrows, fill the quivers! Yahweh has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes Because His purpose is against Babylon to destroy it; For it is the vengeance of Yahweh, vengeance for His temple." (Jeremiah 51:11)
Notice the glorious, muscular sovereignty of God on display. Who is sharpening the arrows? The Medes are. Who is filling the quivers? The Median soldiers are. But who is the ultimate cause behind all this military preparation? "Yahweh has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes." These pagan kings likely thought they were acting out of their own geopolitical ambitions, their own desire for conquest and plunder. But behind their machinations, behind their strategy sessions and their weapons manufacturing, the living God was stirring their hearts. He was poking them, prodding them, directing their wills to accomplish His own ultimate purpose.
This is how God governs the world. He does not simply wind it up and let it go. He is intimately involved, working all things according to the counsel of His will. He uses godless nations as a rod of His anger to discipline His own people, as He did with Babylon against Judah. And then, when the instrument has served its purpose, He breaks that same instrument in judgment for its own sins. Assyria was the rod of His anger, and then He judged Assyria. Babylon was His hammer, and now He is about to shatter the hammer.
And what is the stated purpose? It is twofold. First, "His purpose is against Babylon to destroy it." This is a holy demolition project. But the reason for this demolition is profoundly important: "For it is the vengeance of Yahweh, vengeance for His temple." This is not some capricious act of divine rage. This is a righteous, legal verdict. The word "vengeance" here is not about a petty, personal vendetta. It is about justice. It is the settling of a righteous blood debt. Babylon had not just conquered a nation; it had desecrated the holy place, the dwelling place of God's name on earth. They had looted the temple, burned it to the ground, and carried off its sacred vessels to mock them in their pagan feasts, as we see in the book of Daniel.
This was an act of high-handed blasphemy. It was an assault on the glory of God Himself. And God takes attacks on His glory, and on His people, personally. This entire military campaign is God's answer to the sacrilege of Babylon. He is vindicating His own holy name. This is a righteous imprecation being answered in history.
The Futility of the Siege (v. 12)
Next, God issues a series of crisp, military commands to the besieging army, highlighting the certainty of the outcome.
"Lift up a standard against the walls of Babylon; Make strong the watch; Raise up watchmen; Establish men in ambush! For Yahweh has both purposed and performed What He spoke concerning the inhabitants of Babylon." (Jeremiah 51:12 LSB)
These are the standard procedures for a siege. A standard, or banner, is raised to mark a rallying point for the attack. The guard is strengthened to prevent any counter-attack. Watchmen are posted. Ambushes are set. From a human perspective, this is just good military strategy. But in the context of Jeremiah's prophecy, it is all theater. It is God's war game, and the outcome is already decided.
Why? The reason is given in the second half of the verse, and it is the foundation of all Christian confidence in the face of long odds. "For Yahweh has both purposed and performed What He spoke..." There is no gap between God's decree and its fulfillment. What God purposes in eternity, He performs in history. His Word does not return to Him void. The Babylonians, looking out from their famously impregnable walls, would have seen the mustering armies and perhaps felt a surge of arrogant confidence. But their fate was already sealed, not by the strength of the Median army, but by the spoken Word of the living God.
This is a direct assault on all human autonomy and pride. Man proposes, but God disposes. The inhabitants of Babylon had their own plans, their own purposes. They intended to be a global empire forever. But their purposes crashed against the immovable rock of God's purpose. This is why we can have such confidence. Our hope is not in the strength of our own watchmen or the cleverness of our own ambushes, but in the sure and certain Word of a God who cannot lie and whose purposes cannot be thwarted.
The Arrogance of Empire (v. 13)
Now the prophet turns to address Babylon directly, identifying the source of her pride and the certainty of her doom.
"O you who dwell by abundant waters, Abundant in treasures, Your end has come, The measure of your end." (Jeremiah 51:13 LSB)
Babylon was situated on the Euphrates River, and a complex system of canals made the city a lush, well-watered fortress. This strategic location also made it a center of global commerce. So she was defined by two things: "abundant waters" and "abundant treasures." She was secure and she was rich. And in her security and her riches, she grew proud and forgot the God who gives both water and wealth.
This is the perennial temptation of all prosperous civilizations. We begin to trust in our resources, in our technology, in our economy, in our military might. We trust in our "abundant waters" and our "abundant treasures." And this self-reliance is the very essence of idolatry. Babylon's trust was in the creature, not the Creator. And so the sentence is passed: "Your end has come."
But notice the peculiar phrase that follows: "The measure of your end." This isn't a chaotic, random collapse. God has a measuring tape. He has measured out the precise length of Babylon's rebellion. He has measured the exact extent of her sin, and now He is measuring out the exact dimensions of her judgment. This is the work of a meticulous, just, and sovereign God. He is not flying off the handle. This is a calculated, measured, and perfectly righteous demolition. The end of every godless enterprise is measured and decreed by God.
The Oath of Overthrow (v. 14)
To underscore the absolute certainty of this judgment, God puts Himself under oath. This is the final nail in Babylon's coffin.
"Yahweh of hosts has sworn by Himself: 'Surely I will fill you with a population like locusts, And they will cry out with shouts of victory over you.'" (Jeremiah 51:14 LSB)
When men make a solemn promise, they swear by something or someone greater than themselves. But as the author of Hebrews tells us, when God wanted to make a promise, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself. This is the highest level of certainty possible in the universe. God stakes His own divine nature on the fulfillment of this word. Babylon's destruction is as certain as the fact that God is God.
The imagery used is terrifying and total. The invading Medes will not be a small, containable force. They will be like a swarm of locusts, a biblical symbol for a devastating, overwhelming, and divinely sent plague. They will cover the land, consuming everything. There will be no escape. The city will be filled with them.
And the final sound will not be the lament of the Babylonians, but the victory shouts of the invaders. "They will cry out with shouts of victory over you." This is the sound of vindication. This is the sound of God's justice being publicly displayed for all the world to see. The pride of Babylon will be silenced, and the triumphant shout of God's righteous judgment will echo over her ruins.
The Gospel Overthrow
So what does a prophecy about the Medes conquering Babylon have to do with us? Everything. As we've said, Babylon is the archetype of the city of man. And the fall of historical Babylon is a type, a foreshadowing, of the fall of the ultimate Babylon described in the book of Revelation.
That great spiritual Babylon, the world system of godless humanism, commerce, and religion, also dwells by "abundant waters" and is "abundant in treasures." It is proud, blasphemous, and persecutes the people of God. And God has issued a summons against it. He is arousing a spirit of conquest, not in the kings of the Medes, but in the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The "vengeance for His temple" finds its ultimate fulfillment in the vindication of the Church. For we are now the temple of the living God (1 Cor. 3:16). Every act of persecution against the Church, every law that seeks to silence her witness, every sneer from the halls of academia, is an attack on the temple of God. And God will have vengeance for His temple. He will vindicate His bride.
But how does this overthrow happen? From a postmillennial perspective, we understand that Christ is not waiting to bring in His kingdom with a final, cataclysmic battle at the end of time. He is overthrowing Babylon now. He is filling the earth, not with Median soldiers, but with a population of His redeemed people, a swarm of gospel locusts. The Great Commission is our divine mandate to fill the rebellious cities of man with the good news of a conquering King.
Our weapons are not sharpened arrows of iron, but the sharp arrow of the Word of God, which pierces the heart. We are to lift up a standard, the banner of the cross, against the walls of every modern Babylon. We are to sing shouts of victory, not over the bodies of our enemies, but over their converted souls. The gospel is God's holy arson. It is a consuming fire that burns away the dross of rebellion and refines sinners into saints. Christ is currently taking the nations for His inheritance, and the gates of hell will not prevail against this advance. The end of every secular empire has been measured. God has sworn by Himself that every knee will bow. Our task is to joyfully participate in this inevitable, global, gospel overthrow.