“Moab has been at rest from youth,
    like wine left on its dregs,
not poured from one jar to another—
    she has not gone into exile.
So she tastes as she did,
    and her aroma is unchanged.”
Jeremiah 48:11 (NIV)

It is summer. For Wendy and me, summer is a time of hospitality. We host family and friends at the lake. We have friends over for dinner on the grill and evenings on the patio. We love a good meal and good conversation with good friends. And, we enjoy good wine with the meal and the conversations.

Just yesterday, Wendy and I took delivery of a case of wine for the summer season. It always gives me joy to unpack the case into our humble little Harry Potter wine cellar in the cupboard beneath the basement stairs. For me, the wine is associated with the friends, food, and fellowship with which it will be enjoyed.

Today’s chapter is the message that God gave the ancient prophet Jeremiah concerning the nation of Moab. Moab was a small nation directly to the east of the Dead Sea, and they had been an established people for centuries. The Moabites were known for their vineyards and orchards. The wine they produced was well known in the region. During the time of Jeremiah, the Moabites had, thus far, escaped the captivity and exile that other nations had suffered at the hands of regional Empires (e.g. Assyria, Babylon). God’s message through Jeremiah to the Moabites was that they would escape this fate no longer.

True to form, Jeremiah’s prophetic message uses metaphors that would have resonated with the people of Moab. In ancient wine-making, the wine would be poured from one storage jar to another during fermentation in order to filter out the “dregs” or the sediment that lay at the bottom of the vessel. The Moabites, who had thus far escaped judgment being “poured out” on them were compared to a wine left in its original fermentation vessel, sitting on the dregs while other idolatrous nations, like the northern kingdom of Israel, had been conquered.

In his prophetic message of doom, Jeremiah mentions Chemosh, the national deity of the Moabite people. Chemosh was Canaanite deity worshipped with child and human sacrifice. In critical situations, humans were sacrificed to Chemosh to obtain favour. After a military victory, captured enemies were immediately sacrificed to Chemosh as a thanksgiving offering.

Jeremiah goes on to proclaim the defeat and exile of Moabites with a metaphorical end to the flow of their wine:

Joy and gladness are gone
    from the orchards and fields of Moab.
I have stopped the flow of wine from the presses;
    no one treads them with shouts of joy.
Although there are shouts,
    they are not shouts of joy.

The ancient historian Josephus states that Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in the “twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.”

In the quiet this morning, the prophetic word to Moab has me thinking about judgment and justice. It’s one of the overarching themes of the Great Story. Jesus spoke frequently about judgment. He even said, Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” He also said that He would be the ultimate judge on Judgment Day, a final reckoning before the end and anew beginning.

Judgment is not a comfortable subject, precisely because I have a boatload of willful and selfish choices along with painful mistakes along my life journey that have caused hurt to others. Not only that, but as a follower of Jesus I know that He raised the standard to impossible levels. In the Sermon on the Mount He said that calling another person an “idiot” is equal to murder, having a lustful thought is equal to adultery, and loving my own people isn’t enough. I have to love my enemies, those on the opposites sides of my political beliefs, those who don’t look like me or talk like me or believe like me. I have to love those who hate me for being who I am.

The bottom line is this: I’m guilty, and I know it.

And, this is when I remember what Jesus said to Nicodemus during Nick’s clandestine visit in the middle of the night:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned…“

Judgment was not the motivation. Salvation was the motivation.

That’s why Jesus went to the cross. He suffered the condemnation and death that I deserve so that I no longer stand condemned but graciously forgiven if I simply, by faith, believe it.

Let me pour you a glass of wine. I’ll drink to that.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.