The Story Chapter 19

I'm very excited about this week's chapter. Not only does it play a major part in God's big plan for mankind and show his ability to direct human history, it also has some very deep and very practical lessons for our spiritual lives.

Overview: The Israelites have been in Babylon for about 70 years now. Cyrus the Great defeats the Babylonian king Belshazzar and now runs Babylon. Cyrus releases the Jews and tells them they can go home and build the temple again. Roughly 50,000 Hebrews go home. They start strong and begin rebuilding the temple while they lived in temporary shelters. The people who had moved into the area after the Israelites were taken obviously don't like that the Israelites have come home and start making things very difficult for them. Raids, bandits, insults, etc.  The Israelites become discouraged and stop working on the temple and start to focus on building nice homes and other parts of town.  God gets their attention by sending some prophets who remind them of God's promises and they get back on track building the temple. This time when there is opposition they keep trucking through it and eventually the temple is finished. 

You know, if the temple was built in Des Moines by the Callahan family.

 I want to focus on a few themes in this part of the narrative. The first is this idea of returning home. For the last 70 years they have been in Babylon thinking about how great things were when they were home. Then the day comes when they actually get to go home. How many of you have ever been to some type of reunion or gone back to something after a long time and it's not nearly as great as you remember? I remember thinking my grandparents' yard was the biggest place in the world, but when I visited as an adult it seemed so small. I was sad at how small it was because it ruined all these feelings and memories I had attached to it. A few months ago Merry and I went to visit our college and went to our favorite restaurant. It was really good, but it wasn’t as good as we remembered it. Sometimes things aren’t as good as you expect them to be.

That’s exactly what happened to the Israelites, but on a much larger scale. They had all these memories of Judah, farms, fields, crops, Jerusalem noisy and busy with city life, favorite places to go, etc, but when they got there it was all decimated. Returning to Jerusalem must have been an exciting idea that was crushed when they actually saw the state Jerusalem was in. Like ordering something online then getting a piece of junk. Or like the menu picture always looks better than the real thing. 

Not only that, but the temple they begin to build is a fraction of the size of the old temple and not anywhere near as extravagant. Some of the older people who remembered wept and said, "This temple is a shame. It's nothing compared to the old one. This one isn't like the old one."

This happens to us a lot, and even in our spiritual lives. How many of you have had some really phenomenal experience in God's presence that kind of becomes the standard against which you measure every spiritual experience for a while? You read some scripture and all of a sudden you are very aware of his presence and he is speaking through the scriptures very clearly directly to you. Or you are praying and something similar happens. Or you are in a worshipful frame of mind and you feel such an intimate connection with God. Events like camps and retreats are notorious for really powerful experiences. The problem with this is that like the Jews returning to Jerusalem, this time is not supposed to look like the last time. It is dangerous to our growth when we put "God's presence" in this box and think "because it looked like this last time, and because that was great, that's what it should look like every time." Then we begin to force the replication of what happened last time.  Adjust your expectations. Let God decide what blessing looks like. Maybe the last time you had a really phenomenal time in God's presence it was at a service where music was playing and the preacher said all the right words that pierced your heart and everything was intended to be very spiritual. But maybe God wants you to have an equally life changing and powerful time in his presence alone, with no music and no preacher. Maybe what God wants you to experience right now has nothing at all to do with a goose bumpy teary-eyed moment. Maybe what God wants to do in you right now is more about gaining discipline, or having more compassion on the down trodden, or recognizing his presence in non-mystical and seemingly mundane settings like sharing a dinner with friends.

The point is this, do not think that because your faith doesn't feel like it did that last time you had a big emotional high there is something wrong or that it’s somehow less quality. Adjust your expectations. Do not remember the past events, pay no attention to the things of old. Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Isaiah 43:18-19.

The second theme I want to hit is the idea of prioritizing parts of life. The text tells us that because the locals did not like that the Jews had come back they set out to discourage the Jews and keep them from rebuilding the temple. It worked. They thought, "Man, this isn't as easy as we hoped. Look at all this resistance I'm facing. Maybe this isn't the best time to be working on the temple. Ooooo, maybe this is God’s way of telling me to focus on something else."  The people shifted focus from working on the house of God and began taking care of themselves. They began to make sure they had nice houses and nice things. 

Work on the temple was slowed for 6 years and completely stopped for 10 years.

Who here can say they have never incorrectly arranged the priorities of life? The Israelites' purpose and mission was to build God's house and make the name of Yahweh great in all the earth. That was to be their number 1 priority. The question now is, what is our number one priority? It’s the exact same thing as the Israelites! The only difference is "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells within you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16). Our number one priority should be to build the temple, but we are the temple. I don't mean that we should all become body builders. What I mean is that the kingdom of God is not a political or geographical kingdom with a building for a temple. The Kingdom of God exists in our hearts and in our relationship with Him. For us building the temple means developing this relationship, developing greater intimacy with Jesus and making His name great by demonstrating his reign in our lives.

Here is a sad indicator that the church has largely stopped working on the temple.

Someone calculated how the typical lifespan of 70 years breaks down into categories. This is on average:

Sleep....................23 years-32.9%

Work.....................16 years-22.8%

TV.........................8 years-11.4%

Eating...................6 years-8.6%

Travel...................6 years-8.6%

Leisure.................4.5 years-6.5%

Illness...................4 years-5.7%

Dressing...............2 years-2.8%

Religious activity...0.5 years-0.7%

The sad thing is this; when you mess up priorities you end up missing out on everything and the very things you put in front of God lose their value. Read the bottom two paragraphs of page 266 in the story. They placed houses and crops and day to day life in front of God and they harvested little, never had enough to drink and so on.

Give careful thought to your ways. When you remove God from the rightful spot of number 1, relationships are emptier and more selfish, success is dull and prideful, and pleasure is brief and shallow.

But when you keep God, and building his temple, as the number one priority in life then you get God, and you get to enjoy the rest of life as well (Go read Matthew 6:33, DO IT!).

The Story Chapter 18

A few weeks ago we talked about Israel's destruction by Assyria. Judah lasted another few generations, but ultimately did not learn their lesson and God allowed them to be taken into captivity by Babylon. Babylon's strategy was different than Assyria's and was even smarter. They indoctrinated the best and smartest people from these conquered nations and made them loyal to Babylon. 

As we read this week’s chapter we see this on the very first page.  What is actually happening here is clash of worldviews; a cultural war.  This is important to see because in so many ways we are engaged in the same war. The secular worldview and the Christian worldview are in many ways at odds with each other. Clearly, the surface details are different, but the goals and tactics are eerily similar.

It says on page 249 that Babylonian officials took the Jewish captives and taught them the language and literature of Babylon and that they were given Babylonian food to eat. They basically give the best of the best a free ride to Babylon University and in the course of time hope to win their hearts over as well. 

Hi, I'm cool.

The strategy here may not jump out at you, but realize what they are actually doing is waging this war of worldviews on three different battlefronts.

1.  Mental front. They knew if they could get them to stop thinking and talking like Israelites then they would more likely be loyal to Babylon.  So they re-taught them to speak. Renamed things and changed the way they thought and spoke about things. There is an identical strategy in the culture war we face. There has been a mass effort to change language and thinking towards most of life, especially things that are unacceptable in the Christian worldview. Sins are not sins, they are character flaws, conditions, identify quarks or something else that lessons the negative feel of the particular thing.  Or, in some cases where there is no way to rename a thing to make it sound better, culture just says there is nothing wrong with that thing at all. Disobedience to God's word becomes a matter of free choice and saying anything negative towards that "thing" is hateful, closed minded, intolerant, old fashioned, archaic, stifling, etc.

2.  Cultural front. They replaced Israel's history and Israel's story with Babylon's history and stories. This is part of reshaping identify and worldview. A culture's story is one of the most unifying things and results in loyalty. So Babylon said, "Here, instead of reading those old fables and fairy tales why don't you read what really happened in history. Noah? No, it was Gilgamesh. Yahweh created the world? No. Apsu and Mummu-Tiamet merged and begot all that is." and so on.  The same strategy is in play today where secular culture seeks to replace the biblical history and the story of God's people with its own history. It is common to pick up on a condescending tone as this happens; “You believe in those Bible stories? Awww, that’s cute…but dumb. Let me tell you what really is the case.”

3.  Lastly this was a moral battle. Giving them food from the king's table doesn't sound horrible. In fact it seems nice. Giving captives food from the king's table sounds very generous. That's a way of saying they were given distinctly Babylonian foods. As Jews they had the Law of Moses that forbid eating certain things. The issue there wasn't that certain foods are somehow evil or wrong. That was just one of the ways God told Israel to set themselves apart. Having these dietary requirements was simply one of the things that set Israel apart as God's covenant people. Nonetheless, at this time that was what God wanted from them. Now the Babylonians set these foods in front of them and say, "come on, these foods are better. If you eat then you will be better and stronger and accepted." The choice in front of them was do I keep basing my view of what's right and wrong on God's word, or on what everyone around me is doing? Do I really need to explain how that mentality is till active today?

That is the way Babylon replaced other worldviews with their own, and it is the way the world tries to replace the biblical worldview with its own. The typical Christian approach to this worldview war is to build a safe bubble of Christianity to live in. Some people want to remove themselves from the big bad scary world so that there is no risk of my worldview being challenged or being tainted by the world. However, this is not the story of how some Hebrews built a bubble around themselves. This is the story of how some Hebrews learned to live in culture in a way that was faithful to God and drew people to him.

4 Hebrews: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah are taken to Babylon because they were exceptional people.

I think Jesus followers should be experts in various fields. Why is it such a rarity and such a huge story when someone who rises to the top of a particular group happens to be a devoted Christian (*cough* Tebow *cough*)? Jon Jones is a great example. He is literally the best of the best in a very unexpected field, cage fighting, and he is a genuine follower of Jesus. That’s wonderful, but why is it so rare and shocking? Shouldn’t followers of Jesus be among the best of the best in every field? After all, we are representing Jesus to the world and we often make Jesus look lazy.

One of the edge of your seat/white knuckle/don’t get up to go to the bathroom until this scene is over parts of this when Nebuchadnezzar starts thinking he’s better than Bieber and has a giant statue of himself made. After ordering everyone to worship the statue he finds out Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are not singing along. One of the most amazing parts of this story in my opinion is the response the 3 Hebrews gave to King Neby when he says, “sing to my statue or die in my furnace.” They say “O King Nebuchadnezzar, we not need to give an answer for ourselves. We know that our God can rescue us from the fire. But even if he doesn’t, you should know we won’t serve your gods or worship your statue.” AMAZING! Here’s my version of that response: “Silly King. Our God can do anything, even the seemingly impossible. He can keep us alive in your fire. But even if he chooses not to, he is still God you are still not.”

How does that great statement of faith affect our lives? How do we apply this? This is made real in our world as we stay faithful in the face of pain, suffering, doubt and confusing situations. Do we have the kind of faith that does not remove God from his throne when things hurt? The 3 Hebrews did not know for sure God was going to rescue them. For all they knew God could’ve chosen not to rescue them, and yet they retained faith that God is good and powerful and worthy of worship. How often does our faith depend on whether or not the genie in the sky has been coming through lately or not? When things are great God is awesome. When things are rough God has forgotten. I want their kind of faith. I want my prayer to be, “God, I know you are able to heal me/rescue me/provide for me/fix this situation, but even if you choose not to you are still a wonderful God worthy of worship.” May we all have this kind of faith that acknowledges that God is caring enough to be aware of every situation we face, that he is powerful enough to change any situation, and that he is also sovereign enough to decide which prayers he answers.