Jeremiah 50:1–10 opens with a bold prophecy against Babylon, the empire that once seemed unstoppable. God declares that her idols will be exposed, her strongholds shaken, and her pride humbled. At the same time, these verses shine with hope—Israel and Judah will seek the Lord again, and God promises deliverance for His people. This passage reminds us that no nation, however powerful, can stand against God’s judgment. For believers today, Jeremiah 50:1–10 is both a warning against trusting in worldly powers and a call to return to the God who shepherds His people.
Exposed
Turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 50. Jeremiah has been given words of the Lord, prophetic words of the Lord, to share with the nation of Israel concerning those that are their enemies around them. And he’s been, we’ve been looking at the ones that we have looked at, we’ve looked at Ammon, Moab, Edom. We also looked at the Philistines. And we have looked at Arabia this last week, Damascus, which would be Syria, and Elam, which would be Iraq today.
All of these are nations that surround Israel. And as we talked on Wednesday night, all of these nations are still enemies of Israel today. And the last one is Babylon, that God is going to deal with before he deals prophetically with Israel.
Babylon is more than a nation. Babylon is an ideology. Babylon is a philosophy that stands against God. And it has its roots, as we mentioned this morning’s message, it has its roots all the way back to the power of Babel, and even before that, in the Garden of Eden. Because Babylon really represents total rebellion against God, is the spirit of Babylon. Now Babylon had been, at the time that Jeremiah lived, it was the major power in the Middle East.
Nebuchadnezzar was its king. Those of you who have been here Sunday morning and have heard our study, gone through our study on Daniel, we see that Daniel was one of the young men that was carried away when he was a teenager into Babylon from Jerusalem. And he was a witness in the midst of all the darkness of Babylon, and a tremendous witness, even as we saw again this morning. But Babylon desired to come against all that God loves and stands for. And Nebuchadnezzar had come, and he had attacked Judah, and really the Lord had used Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar as a chastising tool against Judah. He used the Assyrian Empire against Israel, the northern kingdom, because they would not repent, they would not turn from their wickedness, and so God chastised them, much like a father would chastise their child when it would not listen and need to be disciplined.
He didn’t send them to destroy Judah and Israel, but to chastise or discipline them, and that they would be punished for that which they did not obey. And as we have studied, as we’ve gone through Jeremiah, we know that they were taken away into captivity in Babylon for 70 years because of their disobedience and not having 70 years of Shabbat years that God had told them they were to have every seventh year. They were to have and let the land rest.
They did not do that, so God has said the land will rest. It’ll rest for 70 years, and he took them away into Babylon. Well, we’re gonna see what the Lord is gonna tell Jeremiah prophetically about Babylon.
Now, remember when we speak about prophecy, there is prophecy for the immediate, and then there are principles and sometimes direct prophecies given for the future that are tied to the immediate prophecy given. Some of this will be the case with Babylon. There is much more prophetically said about Babylon than there were of any of the other nations.
Babylon basically is going to take up two full chapters, chapter, or three full chapters, chapters, or two full, I guess it would be, chapters 50 and 51 of Jeremiah. A lot of prophecy is going to be given with Babylon. We are not going to get through two chapters this afternoon. You don’t have to worry about that.
We’ll just be skimming a little bit of the surface on the first chapter, chapter 50, where Jeremiah begins his prophetic utterance and words of the Lord against Babylon.
The Word Against Babylon
The word that the Lord spake against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans by Jeremiah the prophet. 2 Declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces. Jeremiah 50:1-2
And so the beginning of this, Jeremiah is speaking this, and remember when he’s bringing this prophecy, Babylon is strong. Babylon is forcing its religious system on the rest of the Middle East.
Those of you in Daniel, remember the study of Daniel, remember they took the youngest and the brightest of every country that they conquered, brought them back to Babylon and put them into Chaldean University so they could convert them to Chaldeans or Babylonians. Babylonians in their philosophy, Babylonians in their language, Babylonians in their thinking, and Daniel and his three friends were not converted. They stood true to the Lord.
But that was what Babylon did. Well, as Jeremiah is bringing this prophecy, their gods are viewed by the rest of the Middle East as these must be the strongest gods because Babylon is so strong. Well, Jeremiah is saying these gods are nothing. They’re going to fall. And the chief of the gods is Bel, and Murdoch, and they are going to fall. They’re going to be broken in pieces.
God’s Justice Declared
3 For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.
But that was what Babylon did. Well, as Jeremiah is bringing this prophecy, their gods are viewed by the rest of the Middle East as these must be the strongest gods because Babylon is so strong. Well, Jeremiah is saying these gods are nothing.
They’re going to fall. And the chief of the gods is Bel, and Murdoch, and they are going to fall. They’re going to be broken in pieces. They will not exist.
Today, you don’t have these specific gods referred to in cultures in the Middle East or in the news. But the philosophy that these gods stood for is still prevalent in the world today. But there is going to come a day where ultimately they will be completely destroyed because these are satanically inspired gods that the people would worship. They are really worshiping demons when they are worshiping these gods. And these gods represented wicked, and vile, and evil things, especially in light of the truth of God’s word. He says they’re going to be broken.
3 For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast. 4 In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God. 5 They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.Jeremiah 50:1-5
Now I just want to pause here. This is a powerful prophecy given by Jeremiah because right now the people are enslaved and they’re captured in Babylon. They’re really the servants of Nimrod, not Nimrod, of Nebuchadnezzar, and they are really, they can’t leave. Even if they wanted to go back to Zion, they couldn’t go. And so they’re probably saying, Jeremiah, how can you say these things because it’s not happening? Babylon’s still strong and we’re still here. Well, we can look back in history and see that this prophecy was fulfilled and that it was fulfilled completely during the time that these men and women that had been taken into captivity, some of them that were younger and their children and grandchildren ended up coming back to Zion and to Jerusalem just as Jeremiah had prophesied. And the power of Babylon was broken and it was broken, and it’s interesting, they go by a nation from the north.
Oftentimes, if you look at Israel, their conquerors, it seems like, come from the north. You had Babylon from the north, you had the Assyrians from the north. The Egyptians came from the south, but during the time of Ezekiel, he gives a prophecy, and again, the enemy that is spoken of in the war against Israel during our time, which is yet to come, but it’s appearing like it’s all coming together that it could happen at any time, that enemy is coming from the north, and the chief inspiration of that is Russia, which is straight north of Israel, and then you also have Iran, which is to the northeast of Israel, and you have Turkey, which is to the northwest of Israel.
Those are the three main enemies that are going to come against Israel during our time during the Ezekiel War. Two others that are allies with them will be Sudan and Libya, which will be from the south and northern portion of Africa, but the ones that are coming against the north that Jeremiah is speaking of specifically here, dealing with at the time that are going to allow the nation of Israel to be liberated from Babylon and to return to Zion, is going to come from the north, and it will be the Medes and the Persians. If I had the map up here, I could put you the Medes currently live, they’re the, today, they are the Kurds, referred to as the Kurds, that is the Mede people, and the Medes, or the Kurds, live in northeastern Turkey, northern Syria, and northwestern Iraq is where the Medes and the Kurds live today, and that would have been their territory during this time.
They united with the Persians, which today would be Iran, and so we see that the Medes and the Persians were the ones that were going to come against Babylon, and with the map up here, if I had it up, you would have those countries would be coming from the north against Babylon, or Ur of the Chaldees, is in the south, most southeastern portion of Babylon, that’s where Abraham came from, and Babylon itself would be located in what is today a portion of Iraq, and so those countries would be coming from the north, and they would be the ones that would come to destroy Babylon. This morning, when we’re studying Daniel this morning, we’re in Daniel chapter five, and it’s when Belshazzar is judged by God and found wanting, and that his kingdom is going to be destroyed, and Daniel makes that pronunciation. Remember the hand wrote on the wall that he had been weighed and found wanting, and he would be destroyed, and we see that that kingdom that destroyed him was the Medes and the Persians, and they were the ones that Jeremiah is speaking of here.
However, at this particular time, they were not a power, and they weren’t a threat to Babylon when he brought this prophecy. He goes on and he says,
4 In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God. 5 They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.
And you can look at in Psalms, there’s a Psalm, and I believe it’s 113. In any way, it says that they hung their harps on the trees in Babylon because they were asked by the Babylonians to sing one of the Jewish songs. The Jews were known for their singing and known for their music. And so the Babylonians wanted to hear it, but they hung their harps on the trees while they were in captivity in Babylon and wept. Why? Because they remembered Judah, they remembered Zion, and they remembered what they had before. Well, God is breaking this people.
He’s causing them to desire to once again experience fellowship in a relationship with him. And we know that at the time that the Medes and the Persians overtook the Babylonians, one of the first things that they did under Cyrus the Great is he gave permission to the Jewish people to go back and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. And then it was just a short time later that Nehemiah was given permission to go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
And he rebuilt the walls and oversaw Jerusalem being rebuilt so that the walls and the temple were once again rebuilt. And these people were looking back to Zion and desired to go there and put their face that direction and wanted to go. Now, if you jump forward to the second dispersion that occurred in 70 AD after Jesus had been crucified in 33 AD and had been buried and risen from the dead, and then we see that in 70 AD, the Romans came in and they dispersed the Jews amongst the nations.
And for just about 2,000 years, the land of Israel sat barren and desolate, just as God said it would. But the Lord said, I will once again hiss and call my people back and they shall come back. And those that had gone away into captivity as two sticks shall be come back and joined into one.
Now, how were they sent into captivity? Well, they were sent into captivity in the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians at one point in history, the southern kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians at a second point in history. But all the Jews of the world would be called back to the nation of Israel and they come back as one nation, and that would be Israel. And that’s exactly what happened in 1948.
The nation had been starting to come back in the late 1800s and in the early 1900s, and in 1948, they began to have a mass migration into the land of Israel because of what had happened in World War II in Germany, and many people were returning to Israel because they felt safe there, and it was their land, and they called themselves Israel. And at that time began a new covenant that God was going to make with the nation of Israel. It was not gonna be based upon the law, but it ultimately would be based upon the relationship with him through his son, Jesus, their Messiah, and that the people would turn to the Messiah and he would place his law in their hearts and he would give them the life that they could find as a believer in Jesus, the Messiah.
And we see that that is beginning to happen in Israel today, but it will culminate again after some other prophetic events that we’re gonna be taking a look at a little later on begin to happen in the last days, and the nation of Israel has to turn to him because the whole world will turn against them. But let’s continue on here.
6 My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace. The shepherds were the priests and the prophets and the political leaders, the kings who gave them no direction. They didn’t point them to the Lord. Josiah was the last king that called for repentance and saw much done in repentance during his lifetime, but the minute he died, everything changed very quickly.
What is he speaking of here? My people hath been lost sheep. Well, during the time of Jeremiah, that’s what they were, and they became a lost sheep mainly because of their shepherds who were their shepherds.
The shepherds were the priests and the prophets and the political leaders, the kings who gave them no direction. They didn’t point them to the Lord. Josiah was the last king that called for repentance and saw much done in repentance during his lifetime, but the minute he died, everything changed very quickly.
We were, my wife and I were talking, and we were mentioning, and she mentioned to me, she said, isn’t it interesting that you have a movement of God, and then the person that started, was instrumental in starting this movement passes away. The Lord calls him home, and we were talking a little bit about the Calvary Chapel movement, and Calvary Chapel was started by Chuck Smith and a couple other men as a movement of God kind of amongst hippie-type people back in the early 70s, late 60s, early 70s, and they became a strong movement. You saw a lot of people come to Christ.
Chuck Smith died, I believe it’s about three or four years ago now. It was right at COVID or right before COVID, but anyway, he died, and when he died, it’s as if the stern or keel of the ship was broken, and it began to lose its course and direction. There are still Calvary Chapels that are Bible-teaching, Bible-believing, and strong in God’s word, but there are a whole bunch of Calvary Chapels that have gone off course, and Chuck Smith’s daughter and son-in-law were two of the main instruments used by the adversary to take a whole bunch of the Calvary Chapels a different direction than Chuck Smith had taken them in following Christ, and that’s exactly what happened during the time of Josiah.
During the time of Josiah, everybody was following. Their keels were set straight. The ships were embarking after God, but Josiah died, and it’s like everybody’s ship went off course, and all the people began to get involved in following deception, and the pastors, the shepherds, the priests, they did not keep the flock together.
They didn’t encourage them to follow God. Instead, they just let them go, and one of the things that you see is that one of the jobs of a shepherd is to lead the sheep and keep them in a flock. If they get, if the shepherd leaves and the sheep are left to themselves, they are some of the dumbest animals in the world, and they will get themselves in trouble just about right away, and they’ll go where they shouldn’t go, they’ll do what they shouldn’t do, and they’ll get overtaken by those that they should have never even been involved with.
That’s the history of sheep, and so the shepherd is critical. Well, during the time of Israel, I mean Judah at this time, the shepherds, the prophets, had prophesied falsely. Remember every time Jeremiah would bring a prophecy and say, repent, for God is bringing judgment from the north, Babylon’s gonna judge you.
Repent, and then Jeremiah, don’t go down into Egypt. God says, stay in Jerusalem. Every time he’d say something, there’d be false prophets and false priests and false pastors that would rise up and say, don’t listen to him.
He’s teaching what is false. This is what we need to do, and everybody listened to the false teachers. Well, what you’re seeing happen even in the church today is that many people are listening to false teachers, and the pastors are allowing the sheep to be led astray and to go and to quit following the good shepherd, Jesus, and to wander off and get in trouble, and you can see that even in our current situation in America, just looking at many of the individuals that claim they’re Christians but are teaching heretical doctrine that are being embraced by people that truly are Christians but not giving warning to the sheep of the false doctrines that they’re embracing simply because these people are right on a political issue, right on a moral issue, but they’re wrong when it comes to the gospel and wrong when it comes to Jesus.
Well, ultimately, what’s more important, being right on a political issue or being right on the gospel? You can be right on a political issue and go to hell if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and the false shepherds allow this and encourage this to happen, to follow these false prophets and false shepherds, and the flock gets scattered. That’s what Jeremiah said had happened to Israel. They’d come in and hadn’t led the sheep.
My people have been lost, sheep. Their shepherds have caused them to go astray, and they’ve been the main impetus that caused the sheep to go astray. They have turned them away on their mountains.
They have gone from mountain to hill. They have forgotten their resting place, and where was their resting place? Their resting place was really Zion, which was the symbolized God or the Lord. Their resting place was the Lord, but they kept going from place to place to try and find this resting place.
What was symbolized in going from place to place, they went from God, from false God to false God. They went from following person to following person.
Remember a number of years ago, we met a couple, and they, I think, went to every prophecy conference that has ever been known to man, because they were always going to prophecy conferences.
They were taking cruises and going to prophecy conferences. They were going to prophecy conferences all over the country, but did it make a difference in their life? They were just going from place to place to place to place, but they never followed the good shepherd and did what he said. If they were learning what was being taught at the prophecy conferences, they would have known the danger that our nation was in, the danger that their churches were in, and they would have made sure that they said something, but instead, they found another prophecy conference to go.
That’s kind of what happened with Israel. Instead of going to the Lord, seeing the danger that they were in, and turning to him and seeking his direction, they go from place to place, from false god to false god, from belief to belief, and trust in this and trust in that and trust in this, but never trust in that which was right God.
So Jeremiah tells them that was the problem. That’s what caused them to be in this mess.
7 All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the Lord, the habitation of justice, even the Lord, the hope of their fathers.
Well, it’s interesting what he said is they had these false prophets that would find them, and they said, well, they really haven’t sinned. They still, and if you remember these people that were taken away into Babylon, what did they trust in? Well, the temple is still standing.
Babylon’s Fall Foretold
8 Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he goats before the flocks.
That means we’re not gonna be taken away. Remember, that was their philosophy, and what they did is they looked back to the time of Hezekiah, when the Assyrians came, when they had devoured the northern kingdom of Israel. They came against Jerusalem.
They came against Hezekiah, and the temple was standing, and they equated the temple standing with the deliverance of Hezekiah and the nation of Judah, but it wasn’t the temple standing. It was Hezekiah putting on sackcloth and ashes, weeping to the Lord that he and Judah were nothing but sinners that needed to be saved by the grace of God, and that they were worthy of being taken away into captivity, but would God redeem and save them, and he called on the people to do the same thing, and the people did. It was their heart attitude that had turned to call on the name of the Lord and repent from their sin that resulted in a deliverance, not the temple standing.
What happened is it resulted in the temple remaining standing, but it also resulted in proper temple worship, where the priests actually offered the sacrifices properly on behalf of the people, and the meat and things were dispersed properly the way God had said they should be, and things were brought back as the people came back for the Lord, and that’s what Jeremiah is saying here, but these false prophets are going, well, why are you saying that there’s something wrong with these people? They still trust in God. Look it, they’re looking for the temple. They’re looking to worship, but what kind of worship is it, and what God are they worshiping, and what temple are they worshiping at? Because remember, they had brought false teaching into the temple before, and they would do it again if not instructed properly, and not if their heart attitudes weren’t right.
So Jeremiah says that the hope, they didn’t have the hope of their fathers. They really, in many ways, were like their fathers that were in the wilderness, that saw all the miracles of God, but still rebelled against him. Verse eight, remove out of the midst of Babylon and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the goats before the flocks.
9 For, lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country: and they shall set themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of a mighty expert man; none shall return in vain. 10 And Chaldea shall be a spoil: all that spoil her shall be satisfied, saith the Lord.
None shall return in vain. And so he’s saying, I’m going to deliver you from the Babylonians, and I’m gonna judge the Babylonians. That’s the word of God.
Lessons for Us Today
And it’s not because you’re such a wonderful people, but it’s because of my promises that I’ve made. Well, we’re gonna take a look, and we’re gonna stop here, and we’re gonna pick it up on Wednesday, where it talks again about some of the things that are gonna happen to the Babylonians in the judgment that God’s gonna bring against them. And we can look back in history and see that these prophecies came true during the time of, shortly after Jeremiah, and there’s also prophecies for the future dealing with the Babylonian spirit that will be fulfilled as well.
Let’s just close in prayer. Lord, I pray that you would just speak to us through your word, help us to understand these things, help us to apply these truths to our life, and Lord, I pray that you would just help us to realize that.
Jeremiah 8:1-3 – Jeremiah 9:1,3,4,15,17-22
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