Amazing Reversals

Introduction
They are haunting words from the English poet Shelley as he described the sad remains of a once great empire:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelly mocks the pride of man as he speaks of the fleeting glory of earthly kingdoms.  Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharoh of Egypt, his statue boasting of the greatness of his kingdom now buried in the desert sands.  So it is with all earthly kingdoms.  They come and go.  They rise and fall.  They are like the mist that appears today and is gone tomorrow.  The closing chapters of Jeremiah’s prophecy speak of God’s judgment on the nations.

Jeremiah thunders God’s judgment on Judah, Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Damascus, Kedar and Elam.  He warned that Babylon was coming as Yahweh’s chosen instrument.  When reading these pronouncements you get the impression that it would be foolish to resist the coming destruction for Babylon was unstoppable.  But what becomes clear in this evening’s text is that Babylon was not a law unto herself.  Yes she was God’s instrument but she too would answer for her sins.  Our text is found in Jeremiah chapter 50.

Text: Jeremiah 50:1-46
This text is the climax of Jeremiah’s prophecy.?It’s message is clear, comforting and sobering.

Thesis: The destruction of Babylon signals Judah’s redemption.

The fall of one accompanies the rise of the other.  With the destruction of Babylon comes the restoration of Judah.  I want to point out two things from our text.

1. A surprising reversal in which the conqueror becomes the conquered.
2. A glorious transformation as the oppressed becomes the redeemed.
   1. First, note the presence of genuine repentance.  It is there in Jeremiah 50:4.
   2. Also note the means of a new relationship in 50:5.
   3. They were assured the presence of the Great Shepherd (50:6-7, 17-19).
   4. All this is made possible by our kinsmen redeemer (50:8, 44-46).
   5. Then comes the greatest promise of all the promise of full atonement (50:20).

This is what Christ has accomplished for us on the cross.

• He died for your sin.
• Those sins before you were a Christian.
• Those now and those in the future.
• All forgiven.
• All of them gone.
• The small and the great.
• The known and the unknown.

In the words of Philip P. Bliss:

Guilty, vile and helpless, we;
Spotless Lamb of God was he;
Full atonement!  Can it be?
Hallelujah!  What a Savior.