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I take great comfort in the goodness of God—in his kindness, his compassion. Being able to rely on God's mercy means more than we could possibly say. But there are moments when I read the Bible that I feel a kind of chill, because there are two sides to this question. I've mentioned it before to you, and I know you understand this: God is not only a God of mercy; he is also a God of justice. And while there is a good side to these things, there is also a more sober side; and today I want to share a couple of passages with you which need to give us pause and make us think from time to time, rather than just going merrily on our way and assuming that everything is going to be alright.
Born to Win's Daily Radio Broadcast and Weekly Sermon. A production of Christian Educational Ministries.
I take great comfort in the goodness of God—in his kindness, his compassion. Being able to rely on God's mercy means more than we could possibly say. But there are moments when I read the Bible that I feel a kind of chill, because there are two sides to this question. I've mentioned it before to you, and I know you understand this: God is not only a God of mercy; he is also a God of justice. And while there is a good side to these things, there is also a more sober side; and today I want to share a couple of passages with you which need to give us pause and make us think from time to time, rather than just going merrily on our way and assuming that everything is going to be alright.
Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
There is no idea more central to the Christian faith than the resurrection of the dead. And yet, in these early days of Christianity, it had been called into question. It is in the great 15th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that Paul wrestles with a group that claimed there was no resurrection from the dead.
I presume they still held a doctrine of the Kingdom of God, but for them, it was a physical kingdom—something a lot of Jews believed and expected. But Paul made it plain that they had it wrong.
Even if you are not Jewish, you are probably aware of the two main Jewish holidays in the autumn of every year: the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur. But you may not be aware that these are also Christian holidays. Around the end of the first century, there was a lot of persecution of the Jews in and around Rome, and the church began to differentiate themselves from the Jews in every way they could. A lot of practices that were very common in the early church disappeared in the smoke of an oppression of the Jews. But why would the early church have paid any attention to what we know as Jewish holidays?
For one thing, Christians and Jews shared the same God. In its earliest years, Christianity was viewed by the world, not as a separate religion, but as a sect of Judaism. The earliest Christians were Jewish, and they had no consciousness of starting a new religion. Rather they saw what they were doing as a restoration of a purer faith. Judaism, in the Christian view, had gone astray and they were going to put it right. There is nothing strange about that; nearly every new sect of religion sees itself as a restorer of lost paths.
And so the first Christians, who were Jewish, continued to observe the holidays they had observed all their lives, and they taught the Gentile converts to do the same. But it was inevitable that they should begin to see new significance in these days that transcended the Jewish/historical meaning of the days. To put it simply, the early Christians saw Christ in the Jewish holidays. And now, 2,000 years later, you and I come along and wonder, What did they see?
One would presume that Christian people would like to know more about God. And yet there is a treasure trove in the Bible of which most Christian folk are blissfully unaware. In the first place, we don’t read our Bibles enough, and in the second place we dismiss parts of the Bible for one reason or another. Now I submit that, on the face of it, dismissing any part of the Bible is not a smart thing to do—for the Bible is the true record of the revelation of God to man. And if you want to know and understand God, the Bible is where you would expect to begin, right?
And in the Bible there is a thread that has been all but dismissed by most Christian people and it has been so for a very long time. That thread is a set of days that the Bible calls the appointed times of Jehovah
. You may know these as the Jewish holidays
but the premise of this series of programs is that they are much more than that. They are the holidays of God and therefore are Christian holidays, because they speak of Christ and his work, and they have just as much meaning for Christians as they ever had for Jews.
Of all these days, the one with the least obvious connection is the day the Jews call Rosh Hoshana and the public calls, The Jewish New Year
. There is a complete list of all these days in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus and this holiday is summarized:
And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work on it: but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord.
Like any religious holiday, you take a day off from work and you go to church, that is you assemble before God—that is what a holy convocation is. That part is simple enough, but after that it becomes a little more difficult. For example, the day is a memorial, but a memorial of what? And you may have noticed that this is the first day of the seventh month, not the first month. How then can it be the new year?
I have been fascinated for some years now by the efforts of many Christians to sort out who they are, politically. For the longest time, they were nobody. Then came Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority; and politics hasn’t recovered from that yet.
Now we have a Christian right and a Christian left in this country, and that is somehow disquieting. Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, has made a very strong case that Christians should not allow themselves to be marginalized. And that disturbs some people who would rather keep Christianity separated into the private sphere of life and out of the public eye.
But now that Christians have awakened from their long sleep and considered that perhaps their faith ought to inform the way they vote, there are counter voices being raised. For one thing, most churches and ministries are recognized as non-profit organizations. Therefore, churches are not supposed to support this or that candidate, nor any ballot issue, for that matter. And that raises the interesting question: Well, is it okay to preach that abortion is wrong?
These are the rules we run into, and we have to play by them, but we also have every right to discuss principles—in church, in print, or on the air. It remains to be seen how long it will be allowed for churches to condemn immoral behavior. Nevertheless, where do Christians fit in the political spectrum? Are they more conservative than liberal? Are they more socialist than nationalist? Are Christians, politically, working toward a just society or a compassionate one; and what difference (if any) lies between the two?
I have said so many times that if you don’t understand the history contained in the Bible, you can’t hope to understand the prophecy. One reason is that without a grasp of history, you don’t know what part of the prophecy has been fulfilled in the past and what part has not. And then there is this statement from the prophet Isaiah; it is a challenge to all prophets.
Produce your case, says the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come.
In these last chapters of Jeremiah, there is not a lot to learn about the latter days. They are addressed in only the most general terms, if at all. We do learn some things, though, about God’s overall intent regarding these people–and, since history tends to repeat itself, there may be future prophecies buried in the pattern of the fulfilled prophecies of the time. We’ll find God’s pronouncements against the nations which had been players in the history of Israel, beginning in chapter 46.
When the king of Babylon besieged Jerusalem and took the city, what on earth was he after? What did he want? If you have ever visited the old city of Jerusalem, you have to wonder why on earth that city has been the subject of so many wars. My first impression of the city, as I wandered around its old streets, was what in the world is here that is worth fighting over?
The odd thing about it is that the people of Judea who were left behind after that war with Babylon were probably better off under Babylonian administration than they had been under their own. Babylon wanted their taxes paid, peace on their western borders, and very little else that we can discern. They looted the city and the temple, but they probably considered that recovering back taxes and siege expenses.
Before the Babylonians came, there was widespread corruption and violence in the land. The administration, the king, and his princes were part of that corrupt system. The Babylonians put an end to all that. There is a drive to power in man, and in some people it is pathological. They can’t be content to go about their own business and to leave others to do the same. There are some surprising and revealing things that arise in the days following the fall of Jerusalem. One very surprising thing is the kindness the Babylonians showed to a man named Jeremiah. You’ll find the story in Jeremiah, chapter 40.
It must be a truly awful thing when a city falls. What happened to Baghdad when the Americans took it was nothing compared to what happened at the end of a siege in the ancient world. The armies of old fought hand to hand, and when they finally breached the wall of a city—often after years of fighting—there was no holding them back until the bloodlust had finally been satisfied.
Surrendering men should not be killed—but there is a time to surrender, and when it has past, you might as well fight to the end. In a way, this was a message Jeremiah had tried to give to Israel for a very long time. His warning? If you surrender now you will live. If you defend the city you will die and the Chaldeans will burn it and you with fire. That’s a very straightforward message.
There isn’t very much in the Book of Jeremiah about the actual fall of the city, but there is a book about the aftermath. It’s called Lamentations. It is a kind of poetry, a song of lamentation—perhaps it could be done as an oratorio. And for all that, it is much more powerful than a simple factual account could ever have been. Jeremiah doesn’t just give us statistics. He means to evoke in our minds a sensitivity, a feeling, an emotional response to what has happened. As we begin, listen, not just to the words, but to the feelings of Jeremiah as he laments what has happened to Jerusalem, the golden city.
I have to wonder how a prophet ever rises to prominence. We look back on these men as giants, but in their own generation, they were just ordinary men with an extraordinary message. One of them was a sheep herder and part-time fruit picker. Most of them were very young when first called of God and commissioned–one of them, just a child. Think about it, some kid shows up claiming to have a message from God. Would you take him seriously? But by the time these men reach old age, they start posing a real threat to men in power. How do they get from obscurity to prominence?
For one thing, they speak the truth. And even when we don’t like it, we have a way of recognizing that it is the truth. And God has his own ways of establishing a prophet and making his voice heard. Sometimes, it is his enemies that give him prominence and make his message significant. For if he was not telling the truth about them, they would leave him alone.
But it is also important to realize that real prophets are political dynamite. We believe in separation of church and state in this country, and that is a good thing. It is too bad that some have interpreted that to mean a separation of God and state, because that is not a good thing. And anyone who thinks that a prophet should not address political issues hasn’t read the prophets very carefully.
