II Kings 24:18-19; Jeremiah 52:1-2; 27:1-11; 48-49
The LORD declares through Jeremiah:
It is I Who by My great power and My outstretched arm have made the earth, with the men and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomever it seems right to Me.
Jeremiah 27:5
We all smile and nod our heads in intellectual assent to the sovereignty of God. And it is all just fine, so long as we are thinking in the abstract and it is all “out there”.
Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him. All the nations shall serve him…
Jeremiah 27:6-7a
Ah, here we move from the abstract to the concrete, and we begin to fidget.
But if any nation or kingdom will not serve this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, declares the LORD, until I have consumed it by his hand.
Jeremiah 27:8
Now we go from fidgeting to fear (or worse), because our nice abstract idea about God’s sovereignty suddenly demands something quite concrete of us, something we do not want to do: surrender to our perceived enemy.
So long as God’s will lines up with our own desires, we’re happy to say He is sovereign, but when His will and our desires diverge, we have a problem. Then we start trying to punch holes in this idea of an all-sovereign God, or we assert that His will is different from what we know it to be, all so that we can cling to our own way, our sin. But trying to outflank or outwit or overpower an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God is a losing proposition.
Stay tuned.
One more thing…
It is our sins that make the barbarians strong. It is our vices that vanquish Rome’s soldiers. As if there were here too little material for carnage, civil wars have made almost greater havoc among us than the swords of foreign foes. Miserable must those Israelites have been compared with whom Nebuchadnezzar was called God’s servant. Unhappy too are we who are so displeasing to God that he uses the fury of the barbarians to execute his wrath against us. Still, when Hezekiah repented, 185,000 Assyrians were destroyed in one night by a single angel. When Jeshosaphat sang the praises of the Lord, the Lord gave his worshiper the victory. Again, when Moses fought against Amalek, it was not with the sword but with prayer that he prevailed. Therefore, if we wish to be lifted up, we must first prostrate ourselves.
Saint Jerome on Jeremiah 27, from Letter 60.17
Try rereading the above substituting “terrorists” for “barbarians” and “U.S.A.” for “Rome”.