On
the evening of 14th April 1912, radio operators on the RMS Titanic
received a message that they were heading towards a dangerous ice field. But
the operators were busy sending messages from Titanic’s passengers to loved
ones back home, telling them about the great time they were having on the
world’s most luxurious passenger ship. The operators set aside the warning
message so they could get through the long list of messages from their
passengers and didn’t pay enough attention to it.
Later
that same evening, a radio operator from a nearby ship also sent a message to
Titanic warning them about the ice field, and that too was overlooked.
And
you know the rest of the story all too well.
What
is it about us that makes us ignore warnings until it’s too late?
Today’s
chapter in the Story, chapter 17, is about what happened to Judah and Jerusalem
when they continued to ignore the warnings the prophets brought them from God.
This is the point in the story where the ship finally sinks.
And
we’re going to look at three men who all played a part in the story, one King –
Manasseh - and two prophets Jeremiah and
Ezekiel.
Now
by this stage, don’t be too worried if your head’s spinning with names and
places. Working your way through this part of the Old Testament tends to do
that!
To
try and help – couple of slides to help you find your bearings again.
(History
of Israel Slide)
(My
Own Judah – the end game Slide)
Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned
in Jerusalem for fifty-five years. 2He did evil in the
eyes of the Lord, following
the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3He
rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected
altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He
bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshipped them. 4He
built altars in the temple of the Lord,
of which the Lord had said,
“In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5In both
courts of the temple of the Lord,
he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6He
sacrificed his own son in£ the fire, practised sorcery and divination, and consulted
mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger.
10The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people,
but they paid no attention. 11So the Lord brought against them the army
commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in
his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took
him to Babylon.
12 years old when he became King. There should be some kind of law
that you can’t become monarch until you’re out of short trousers!
Fortunately – perhaps should say unfortunately – Manasseh had lots
of time to grow up into his evil ways. And maybe he turned out the way he did
because a twelve year old King needs advisors, and who knows who ended up
becoming an influence on him.
Thing that really struck me as I was reading that litany of
misbehaviour was ‘boy – he was really
going for it!’. Temples here, Asherah poles there, altars everywhere.
Sacrificing even his own son?
And I found myself asking “Why,
Manasseh? Why were you so driven? Why were you pouring out all of that energy
on these idols? What did you think it was going to achieve? Did it get you
where you wanted to go?”
Apparently not, according to the text, because he ends up in
captivity in Babylon with a ring through his nose and chains on his feet.
Though by the end of his days, he gets his act together and makes a genuine
turnaround to God.
But looking at Manasseh’s life, it begs the question – “How much of our lives is driven by
motivations we never really pause to question?”
Brought out into the light of day, some of those drives might be
noble - self-sacrifice; an attitude of service; generosity; kindness.
Others maybe less so. The desire to be
right, to win the argument, to hold the power, to prove that you’re better than
the next person.
When you’re at your most honest with yourself, what are the
motivations that really drive you on? If someone were observing your life;
doing an inventory of your time and money and attention, what deductions would
they make about what motivates you?
Why do
you choose to work so hard?
Why do
you need to be in control?
Why do
you avoid particular people or tasks?
Why do
certain things get under your skin so much?
Why do
you find it hard to say ‘no’?
Why do
you find it hard to say ‘yes’?
Is how
you’re living pleasing to God?
Is it taking
you where you want to go?
Those aren’t questions to gloss over. They’re questions to pray
over, because we need God’s help to make sense of who we are and what we do.
As Solomon once wrote, in the days when he was still wise,
The purposes of one’s heart are deep waters,
But a person of understanding draws them out.
I’ve said it often, here, but prayer is many things. And among
them is the sifting of our hearts to make sure that what we’re doing and how
we’re living is really in tune with God.
So deep down, what really motivates you? Is it love for God, or is
it an idol of some kind that’s become too important for you? Perhaps that’s the
question that Manasseh leaves us with today.
But before we move on to Jeremiah, let me take a tangent just for
a moment.
We’re told that one of the ways that Manasseh sinned was in consulting
mediums and spiritists. Anyone going to the clairvoyant in Balmedie Leisure
Centre in a couple of week’s time? Don’t answer that!
Some folk go to that kind of meeting thinking it’s harmless spooky
fun. Others go out of genuine sadness because they’ve lost someone and they’re
desperate for some comfort. And some dismiss the whole thing out of hand as a
lot of nonsense.
Well I don’t think it is a lot of nonsense. The Bible has a lot to
say about the spiritual realm and it consistently warns us not to dabble in
that kind of practice.
I don’t doubt that sometimes remarkable insights are given at
these meetings. But I do wonder if their origin is as innocent as it seems. You
may get some kind of accurate message from the other side. My question is –
what’s its origin? The Scriptures tell us that dark forces can masquerade as angels
of light and even the Father of lies can speak the truth when it suits his
purposes.
The prophet Isaiah says: 19When
men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should
not a people enquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the
living? 20To the law and to the testimony! If
they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.
There
is comfort to be found in grief and loss, but you have to look in the right
place to find it.
“I came to Jesus as
I was “ says
the hymnwriter – “weary and worn and sad.
I found in him a resting place, and he has made me glad”.
Tangent
over. Point – hopefully – made.
And
so to Jeremiah:
4The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
5 “Before
I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set
you apart;
I
appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
7But
the Lord said to me, “Do not
say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say
whatever I command you. 8Do not be afraid of
them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.
Hear
the word of the Lord, you descendants of Jacob, all you clans of Israel.
11 Has
a nation ever changed its gods?
(Yet they are not gods at
all.)
But my people have
exchanged their Glory
for worthless idols.
and shudder with great
horror,”
declares the Lord.
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own
cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot
hold water.
27 They
say to wood, ‘You are my father,’
and to
stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
They have
turned their backs to me
and not
their faces;
yet when
they are in trouble, they say,
‘Come and
save us!’
28 Where
then are the gods you made for yourselves?
Let them
come if they can save you
when you
are in trouble!
For you
have as many gods
as you
have towns, O Judah.
18 Say to
the king and to the queen mother,
“Come
down from your thrones,
for your
glorious crowns
will fall
from your heads.”
19 The
cities in the Negev will be shut up,
and there
will be no-one to open them.
All Judah
will be carried into exile,
carried
completely away.
5 “Before
I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set
you apart;
I
appointed you as……
As
what?
For
Jeremiah, the answer was ‘prophet to the nations’ – a task for which he felt
singularly unprepared. Which was probably a good thing. Sometimes the worst
people to enlist for a project are the ones who are absolutely sure they know
what they’re doing.
But that
sentence hangs in the air for you and me this morning too.
Before
you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as….
As
what?
That’s
another way of asking what your calling is. Because everyone has a calling of
one kind or another.
In
the olden days, the teacher, the lawyer, the doctor and the minister were the
folk who were thought to have vocations, but that’s drawing the circle far too
tightly.
Farming’s
a vocation – the longer I’m here the more I’m realising that. Parenting is a
vocation. Caring, whether for children, for those with special needs, or for
the sick or the elderly, is a vocation. Working with creativity, in art, music
and words is a vocation.
For
life to be meaningful, we need to find out what it is that we’re called to do,
what we’re gifted for, and then to get on and do it.
When
you’re working at your calling, you feel like you’re in your element. Like
you’re doing what you were made for. You can lose yourself for hours in what
you’re doing. You know, in a modest way, that you’re good at it. You take
pleasure in a job well done, even if the work itself isn’t earth shattering in
importance or prolific in results.
One
of my favourite films of recent times is a French film called Etre et Avoir,
and it’s a documentary following a year in the life of a tiny rural primary
school in the middle of France. The fifteen children in the class range from
4-12, but the focus of the piece is their teacher who’s been in the same school
for twenty years and is now on the verge of retirement.
And
it’s inspirational to see how he goes about his work. How well he knows the
children; how he deals with them as individuals; how patient and caring he is
with them; how wise in sorting out disputes; how dedicated to them and to his
vocation. You have a sense that here is a man who’s found exactly what he was
meant to do in life. He’s not upwardly mobile; he’s not trying to make a name
for himself; he’s just faithfully doing what he’s been called to do.
And
that’s a key thing to take from Jeremiah’s experience too. His vocation was a
terribly difficult one. He was called to bring a tough message to the people in
times of incredible hardship, knowing full well that they wouldn’t listen. In a
sense, he was called to failure! But he was doing exactly what he was meant to
do, in God’s economy. And in God’s economy, success is measured by our
faithfulness to him, and by nothing else. Jeremiah’s words didn’t stop the Titanic
from sinking. They were never going to. But here we are today, reading them,
learning from them, because he was faithful to the calling God had given him.
And
the words of his prophesy will sound very familiar to our ears by now. For
centuries Israel has made the same mistakes, and God has accused them of the
same sins. As someone remarked on the way to Early Birds this week – it makes
you wonder why God bothered bringing them out of Egypt in the first place.
You’ve exchanged my glory for idols, he
says.
You’ve forsaken living springs to drink
the last two inches of brackish water in a dirty cistern.
You make idols out of wood and stone,
and then you devote yourselves to them, as though your life depended on them.
You ignore me most of the time, until
things go wrong; and then you come looking for me as though we were close
friends.
Enough
is enough – God says.
In
the last days of Jerusalem. King Zedekiah summoned Jeremiah and asked him to
intercede with God to stop Nebuchadnezzar’s attack. “Perhaps the Lord will
perform wonders for us as in times past, so that he will withdraw from us.”
And
God’s word in response through Jeremiah is chilling. “No. I myself will fight
against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm. Whoever stays in this
city will die by sword, famine or plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders
to the Babylonians will escape with their lives.”
Like
it or not, the ship’s going down and exile’s the only lifeboat on offer. The
choice is yours.
So
finally, after all the warnings, the city walls are broken down, the palace and
temple looted and burned, and the people who’d survived two years of starvation
and disease, were rounded up and marched off to Babylon as captives.
One
stark sentence ends this section in the story – but it carries a weight of
meaning.
“So
Judah went into captivity away from her land”.
No
words of mine can do justice to the desolation of that experience.
Israel’s
children have gone full circle. They started out in captivity in Egypt; now
they’re back in captivity in Babylon.
And
all the signs of God’s presence with them – the city, the land, the temple, the
ark of the covenant. All gone. And it looked for all the world like God had
abandoned them too.
And Jeremiah,
who we believe remained behind in Jerusalem after it was destroyed, brings us
these words from among the rubble of Israel’s dreams.
1
How deserted lies the city,
once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
who once was great among
the nations!
She who was queen among the
provinces
has now become a slave.
2 Bitterly
she weeps at night,
tears are upon her cheeks.
Among all her lovers
there is none to comfort
her.
All her friends have
betrayed her;
they have become her
enemies.
17 The Lord has done what he planned;
he has fulfilled his word,
which he decreed long ago.
He has overthrown you
without pity.
And
yet, standing amid that smoking ruin of a city, with the dead and dying strewn
around him, Jeremiah discerns with a prophet’s insight, that this is not the
end.
God
always has the first and the last word. And God is always faithful to his
promises, even when his people are undeserving of them.
God
has promise to bless the world through Israel. So this cannot be the end.
19 I
remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the
gall.
and my soul is downcast
within me.
21
Yet this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
22 Because
of the Lord’s great love we
are not consumed,
for his compassions never
fail.
great is your faithfulness.
therefore I will wait for
him.”
to the one who seeks him;
for the salvation of
the Lord.
God’s
people in exile are stripped of everything that marked them as God’s people,
save God himself. If, in that time, they can humble themselves and wait quietly
and faithfully for his salvation, then this will not be the end for them.
500
miles away in Babylon, another prophet, Ezekiel, is coming to the very same
conclusion as he lives and works among the exiles by the Kebar river. He too
has prophesied Jerusalem’s fall and warned against it. But now that the worst
has happened, his words take on a different tone. Ezekiel becomes a messenger
of hope.
(Ezekiel Reading – Marion)
‘This
is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel,
that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you
have profaned among the nations where you have gone.
‘For I will
take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring
you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will
be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you
your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in
you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will
live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be
your God.
A
word of hope for the exiles. But a word whose meaning goes beyond anything
Ezekiel might have imagined because it seems to point forward to the fulfilment
of God’s plan in Christ. People gathered from all nations, sprinkled with water
for cleansing in baptism, cleansed from sin, having a change of heart,
receiving God’s spirit, taking care to live God’s ways.
There
is indeed a future for Israel, but it’s one that even her finest haven’t yet
dared to imagine. They are slowly learning that their God is the God of the
whole earth, and his plans take everyone into account.
So
much to think about this morning – what will you take away from this time?
Do you need to think about what
motivates you? Why you do what you do?
Do you need to reflect on your
vocation? What it is you’re called to do in this life?
Do you need to remember that what
counts is not success, in the world’s eyes, but faithfulness in God’s eyes?
Do you need to know that God is with
those who seek him, even when they find themselves feeling like they’re living
in exile?
Whatever
word is for you, this morning, may God give you the grace to receive it and act
upon it, for his glory and your growth. Amen
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