I’m studying Jeremiah and Lamentations in my private study time this year. Occasionally, I’ll come across a text that jumps out at me and when it happens I can’t help but share it. Not long back I read this verse that brought to mind the foolishness of atheists:

Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the LORD. 

(Jeremiah 23:12)

The context of the verse concerns God’s people being led away from the sure footing of the Lord’s path onto the slippery slopes of wicked ways.  The people will stumble and fall headfirst into ruin. Jeremiah calls it “the year of their visitation,” which is a poetic way to say “the time when God’s punishment will be doled out.”

Judgment is coming, in other words.

Note how Jeremiah blends together two different ways of looking at the coming calamity against Judah: On the one hand, it’s a pit that the sinful people will foolishly stumble into after failing to heed the warnings of God. On the other hand, it’s a punishment God will purposefully lay down on them.

Isn’t that odd? How can it be both?

How can Judah’s downfall both be a failure of the people’s own making and a trouble given to them by God? While it might seem contradictory, it’s actually perfectly in keeping with the way God deals with His creation. People today scoff at the idea that God is both Savior and Judge / Helper and Punisher. Atheists today would prefer God to be neither; they would rather He leave them alone. They don’t want to go to Heaven but they don’t believe God has the right to send them to Hell, either. They want to be left alone. They mock the idea that Jesus came to save us from the punishment that Jesus will hand down against the unsaved at the Judgment Day. To them, Jesus should just mind His own business: He should save people who want it while also not condemn people who don’t want anything to do with Him.

It doesn’t work that way.

The reason Jeremiah says Judah’s downfall is both God’s punishment and their failure is because Judah had a covenant with God, and even if they didn’t, Judah was still MADE by God: There is no “leave me alone” here: We are not alone. God made us. God put us here. If you don’t like that fact…too bad. It doesn’t change the reality. There is no convenient third option; there are only two choices: Serve God or be punished by God.

In that sense, Jeremiah’s words make perfect sense: The people chose not to serve God. They chose to go it alone without God and, as a result, they stumbled and fell…right into the punishment God reserves for those who reject Him. Many people today also have chosen not to serve God. They have chosen to go it alone without God and, as a result, they will punished for their disobedience when the troubles of the sinful world overtake them.

God has the right to punish the rebellious. That’s a right inherent to His Divine Nature. If you don’t like that: Too bad. Not liking it doesn’t change it.

~ Matthew