Jeremiah 13:12-14 - Homilies By S. Conway

Vessels of wrath.

This is another similitude having the same general purpose as the former one. "Every earthen flagon (cf. Jeremiah 48:12 )—the inhabitants of Jerusalem, her king, her priests, and prophets—will be filled with the wine of the intoxicating beverage of God's wrath (cf. Jeremiah 25:15 ; Isaiah 28:7 ; Isaiah 51:17 ; Ezekiel 23:31 ; Psalms 60:3 ; Psalms 75:8 ) given them as a punishment for the pride and cruelty and impiety which they drank greedily as wine; cf. Revelation 14:8 ; Revelation 18:3 , where the harlot drinks the wine of her own fornication and gives it to others, and intoxicates herself and them with it ( Revelation 17:2 ; Revelation 18:6 ), and therefore God gives her the cup of his wrath, and she reels under it" (Wordsworth). The awful threatenings of these verses teach us much concerning the characteristics of those whom the Lord " will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy" ( Revelation 18:14 ).

I. THEY GRADUALLY BECOME VESSELS OF WRATH . Not till they are filled with their intoxicating sin are they certainly to be so called. But this goes on day by day.

II. THEY COME TO JEER AND MOCK AT BOTH THE MESSAGE AND THE MESSENGERS GOD SENDS TO WARN THEM . Revelation 18:12 , "Do we not certainly know," etc; as if they would say, "Tell us something we do not know." It is an utterance of unbelieving and mocking contempt.

III. THEY ARE AS DRUNKEN MEN : bereft of reason, unable to help themselves or their brethren, the sport of fools, and at the mercy of the most contemptible foe. Either torpid and insensible to all that concerns them, or else filled with fury and lost to all natural affection, hurting and destroying those nearest and dearest to them ( Revelation 18:14 ).

IV. ALL VESSELS , LARGE AND SMALL , ARE FILLED ALIKE . ( Revelation 18:13 .) Not alone the common people were to be thus filled, but the magnates of the land—king, priests, etc.

V. THEY ARE MUTUALLY DESTRUCTIVE . ( Revelation 18:14 .) Such is the doom of sin. CONCLUSION . We all are vessels. We all shall be filled. But what with? Pray that it may not be with the wine of the wrath of God, but "with the fullness of God" ( Ephesians 3:1-21 .).—C.