Cultural Exile

Daniel 1:1-2

30^th August 2019

Daniel 1:1-2
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.

British Christians, especially those of us who are getting older, can sense that our country has developed an alien culture, in which we no longer feel comfortable. Contemporary British values are becoming very different from our own, and our beliefs are increasingly unwelcome.

Some Christians see no problem in compromising with ungodly aspects of today's society. And some Christians do so unwittingly, because they don't know or understand their Bibles. Younger Christians, who perhaps have never experienced a more Christianized culture, may not see this so clearly. And that represents a real problem for the church. What if we fail to teach younger Christians Biblical values, and they adopt present-day secular values as if they were acceptable to God?

Britain today needs Christians who are determined to believe and obey the Bible, in a culture where some of us have been arrested, sacked or thrown out of university just for quoting it.

The prophet Daniel lived in the period of history known as the Exile, when the people of Judah had been transported to Babylon. So he and his generation also lived in an alien culture, and we can learn some valuable lessons from them about how to live in a land that doesn't fear the true God. So I intend to write a series of articles on the first 6 chapters of the book of Daniel. Firstly, we need to set the scene: why did the Exile happen?

From the time of Solomon in the ninth century BC, the kings of Israel and their people had turned away from God, worshipping idols and ignoring God's law. God sent them prophets and, from time to time, they repented and turned back to God, but it never lasted long. In 722 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel was captured by Assyria and taken into an exile from which they never returned. The southern kingdom of Judah remained, but they didn't learn.

In 628 BC, in the reign of King Josiah, the last good King of Judah and the last successful one, God sent the prophet Jeremiah, who lived in Jerusalem and confronted the kings and the people of Judah with a terrible truth. Their sins had become so grave, and had gone on so long, that judgement day was coming. Jeremiah prophesied that, because of their sin, the nation whom the NIV calls Babylonians but who are more correctly known as Chaldeans, would invade Judah, destroy Jerusalem and the temple, and carry the people away to be captives in a foreign land. He prophesied in Jerusalem for 40 years, but they never accepted his message.

Josiah died fighting the king of Egypt in 609 BC, and Judah began to fall apart. Josiah was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz. After just three months, Jehoahaz was deposed by the king of Egypt, who put his brother Jehoiakim on the throne and made him pay tribute to Egypt. In 605 BC, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah and made Jehoiakim submit to him, making Judah a vassal state ruled by Babylon (2 Kings 23-24).

Three years later Jehoiakim rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:1) so in 598 BC Nebuchadnezzar returned to Judah (2 Chronicles 36v6). During this campaign, Nebuchadnezzar bound Jehoiakim with bronze shackles to take him to captivity in Babylon. It seems Jehoiakim was dragged outside the gate of Jerusalem but died on the way and his body was left unburied (Jeremiah 22:19, 36:30) – a fitting end to a terrible king.

Jehoiakim was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin. But only 3 months later, Nebuchadnezzar took him captive also, along with the remaining 7,000 soldiers in the Judean army, and 1,000 craftsmen, (2 Kings 24:8-17) and transported them to Babylon. At this time, Nebuchadnezzar also transported much of the Judean aristocracy to Babylon (Jeremiah 27:20). I think Daniel and his friends were in that group (although some people think they were transported earlier).

Nebuchadnezzar made Jehoiachin's uncle Zedekiah king of Judah but, 11 years later, in 587 BC, Zedekiah also rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem for the third and last time, destroyed the temple, pulled down the walls of Jerusalem, and took the rest of the nation of Judah into captivity, except for a few of the very poorest inhabitants of the land.

Jeremiah's prophecies had come true. But there was hope. In Jeremiah 25:11, God had promised that they would only serve Babylon for 70 years. And in Jeremiah 29:4-23, we can read a fascinating letter written by Jeremiah to the exiles, sometime between Nebuchadnezzar's second and third invasions of Judah. That is, when Jehoiakim was dead, Jehoiachin and the nobles had been transported to Babylon, Zedekiah was king and Jeremiah was still in Jerusalem. The letter included these words: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my gracious promise to bring you back to this place". God would restore the Jews to their own land, and their way of life. That prophecy was fulfilled in 539 BC.

This promise is immediately followed by perhaps the best-known sentence in the book of Jeremiah, "For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future". God takes a long-term view of what's good for His people. That promise was made to a people who were in the process of losing everything they had, except God's love. They lost their money, their homes, their property, their professions and their country. They lost the temple. But when their time in exile was over, they would return, rebuild their lives, their country and their way of life.

God always offer hope to His people. All trials come to an end. He will not be angry with us for ever. Even when God disciplines His people, His plans for us are good. He intends to prosper us. God's plans for us are more wonderful that we can understand. Who knows what He will do among us on earth? And who can imagine what He will do among us in heaven? May we have faith to continue to believe that, when the trials come.

The people of Judah – the Jews – would have the most glorious future possible; the Messiah, the Son of God would be born to them, and would live among them. There can be no greater honour accorded to a nation.

The next part of Jeremiah's letter says "Then you will call upon me, and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart".

Can we see a parallel between God's judgement on Judah and what has happened to the British church?

God requires and deserves a whole-hearted people. But most of the people of Judah then, and most British Christians today, are lukewarm, not whole-hearted. Their half-hearted commitment to God grew into toleration and then worship of idols – false gods. They grew in sexual and financial iniquity and injustice. And God judged them. Will he not also judge us? Does not the British church – as a whole – tolerate and even justify sexual sin and other sins? Do we not – as a whole – worship the false God of human reasoning - what some people would call "Enlightenment thinking"?

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries, in which European philosophers promoted human reasoning above divine revelation. It resulted in the idea that humans can work out what is right and wrong for themselves, without any help from God, and the elevation of science over scripture. Thus any idea that could not be scientifically demonstrated must be false. Miracles were impossible by definition. God – if He exists at all – does not involve Himself in human affairs (the doctrine known as "deism").

Have we not accepted some of this philosophy? When science and scripture seem to disagree, do we not tend to trust science over the Bible? When atheistic thinkers redefine morality in terms of "do anything you like as long as it doesn't hurt other people" do we not ignore the fact that scripture forbids certain practices because they displease God? Are we not sceptical of miracle stories? Do we not think things through for ourselves, rather than pray for guidance, sometimes even about church matters? If so, we worship the human mind more that we worship God.

Some say that Enlightenment thinking is dead, replaced by what is usually called "postmodernism", which is fundamentally the idea that there is no absolute truth, that what is true for you and what is true for me can be different but equally valid. But it seems to me that postmodernism barely exists outside the more pretentious universities. The average person's faith in science and reasoning are largely unaffected by it. It might, however, go some way towards explaining why some people now accept, for example, the idea that I am whatever gender I want to be.

So I hope we can see parallels between the Exile and our current situation as the church in Britain. Just as the people of Judah were exiled in Babylon, so the British church is exiled in Britain.

Over time, the people of Judah (expect a few of the very poor) were transported 1,000 miles east, from the shore of the Mediterranean Sea to what we now call Iraq. British Christians have not been moved geographically, but we have been moved 1,000 miles culturally. A generation ago, we lived in a land where church leaders were considered experts on ethics, consulted by the media, and respected. British culture then had many faults, but it reflected Biblical values much more than it does now, for example in such areas as abortion, marriage, sexuality, speaking honestly, and keeping one's word. It had – or at least pretended to have – respect for the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ. The Name of Jesus Christ was not blasphemed on television then.

Then, Christians were considered boring. Now we're considered by many to be wrong, dangerous and bad. Attitudes to Christians in Britain are becoming like those of the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Trudeau has barred Christians from federal funding unless they support abortion. He's been quoted as saying that evangelical Christians are the worst part of Canadian society. That seems strange to us, because we think of ourselves as harmless enough, and as a force for good in the world. But modern secular thinking says we're positively evil.

In the words of the past President of the Baptist Missionary Society, David Kerrigan, Christians "no longer have a seat at the top table" in UK society.

Even Christian ethics which are still also held by many non-Christians, such as freedom of speech, the use of clean and moderate language, and respect for those with whom we disagree, are under threat, and despised by many. Channel 4 Television recently showed a comedy programme which included the murder of a politician. BBC showed a comedy panel show in which it was suggested "as a joke" that we should throw battery acid at politicians we don't like.

The Guardian reported that, in June this year, four East London churches were subjected to arson attacks, apparently committed by Satanists, and two of them almost destroyed. The Barnabas fund reported that 15 UK churches received letters between November 2018 and January 2019, threatening that they would be bombed if they continued to worship God. Street preachers have been arrested and detained in police cells. Asher's Bakery and others have been prosecuted for refusing to deny Christian values.

We live as Christians in the UK as if we were aliens, because our values are so far removed from the values of most of the government and the media. We are exiles in our own land.

You and I might want to claim that we're more faithful to God than the rest of the British church, and therefore should be spared punishment. But when God sends a national church into exile, He doesn't spare individuals. As Jeremiah told his scribe Baruch:

Jeremiah 45:4-5a
But the Lord has told me to say to you, 'This is what the Lord says: I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted, throughout the earth [or land]. Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord'.

We can say, "Well, I believe the Bible" or "My church believes the Bible" and that, of course, is good. But if majority of the national church turns away from the Bible, then the national church as a whole will go into societal and cultural exile. And we have. And as a whole, the British church is continuing to turn away from the Bible. Things will get worse before they get better.

So, now that we live in a strange land, not strange in the sense of being in a different part of the world, but strange in the sense of being led by people whose attitudes to God and to morality are 1,000 miles from our own, and who are teaching our children, in state-run schools with a state-prescribed curriculum, that their secular values are correct and ours are nor merely wrong but immoral, how should we live?

We'll think about that next time.