A helpful perspective on pain – 2 Thessalonians 1, Part 4

Is pain always bad? How do you handle pain? I’m not a fan of pain. I’ve been battling a heel spur for the past year. Initially it hurt sharply every step I took. But through treatment, especially stretching, it is at bay. I can still feel it, but it isn’t crippling. I even run 4-5 times per week for a few miles, and it doesn’t seem to have worsened. My heel pain, though, is relatively minor. I know, if it grows, I could get surgery and remove it. There are other pains, hurts, traumas in life that are far more severe. How should we view them? As all bad?

We continue our Advent study of 2 Thessalonians, and in this post we’ll try to give some perspective on those important questions. In this first week of Advent, we are studying chapter 1. In verse 3, after sharing his important greeting, Paul dives into commenting about the Thessalonian Christians’ situation.  We learn that he has heard a good report from Timothy, who has just returned from visiting the Christians in Thessalonica.  As a result of Timothy’s good report, Paul thanking God for the Thessalonian Christians for two specific actions that Timothy observed in his visit: their faith is growing and their love for each other is increasing. 

Certainly Timothy mentioned a lot more to Paul about his visit. Why does Paul focus on those two actions? Turn to Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, the one that Timothy carried with him and delivered to them on his visit. In 1 Thessalonians 3:10 and 12, we read a prayer that Paul prays for the Thessalonian church. First, in verse 10, Paul says he is praying night and day earnestly to be able to see them, and to supply what is lacking in their faith.  Imagine if a Christian you really respected said that to you.  How would you feel?  “I just want you to know that I am praying nonstop for you because your faith is lacking.”  Woah.  That could hurt.  But it is to be expected since these were new believers.  Now Paul has learned that his prayer has been answered! Timothy visits Thessalonica, observes them Christians, returns to Paul and reports how their faith is growing!  Paul is ecstatic and wants to encourage them.

Now look at 1st Thessalonians 3:12, and there we read about the second part of this prayer.  Paul writes a short prayer to God, asking him to help the Thessalonians’ love for one another increase.  In 2 Thessalonians 1:3, he expresses great excitement that this second prayer has also been answered.  Paul is so happy, and he wants the Thessalonians to be encouraged, to keep going in that direction of increasing faith and love. 

Paul doesn’t mention increasing faith and love just because those prayers were answered, he also mentions them because those are two key elements of discipleship.  Could it be said of you that you are increasing in your faith, and in your love for your brothers and sisters in the church family?  We could summarize these two aspects of discipleship this way: the Thessalonian Christians are growing spiritual maturity in their lives. At this point, we don’t know precisely how they grew spiritual maturity. What actions or habits did they practice? I wish we knew more. What is clear is that both their faith and love increased.

In verse 4, Paul is so excited about the increase in spiritual maturity of the Thessalonians Christians, not just because of the growth itself, but also when he considers the context in which they grew.  They grew maturity in Christ while they were being persecuted.  You can see Paul hearing this news from Timothy’s report and thanking God. His prayers have been answered.  When you are so concerned for someone going through a hard time, and you are praying for them, and they get through it, you know how excited you are.  You rejoice with them.  That’s what Paul is doing, and he admits that he brags about them to the other churches.  There he is in Corinth, probably saying, “Guess what I just heard?  Your brothers and sisters in Christ, you know the ones in the town with the crazy people that kicked me out, those Christians in Thessalonica are not only surviving, they are thriving!”  I love that Paul reveals that he boasted about the faith of the Thessalonian Christians to other Christians.  It gives us a little window into the relationships between the churches in those days.  He was intentionally trying to connect them, to bond them, in the family of Jesus.

How much do we know about the stories of the churches around us?  I’m thankful for my local ministerium because I get to know the pastors from the churches that participate in the ministerium, and from those pastors I get a bit of news about how things are going in their churches.  I think we could do a better job of telling those stories, including telling stories within our own congregation.  The primary way we tell each other our stories is through sharing them in small groups, Sunday School classes, personal relationships.  That’s why I encourage you to get involved in a group if you are not in one already.  We need those places where we can tell the stories of our lives and support and pray for one another.

After these very encouraging greetings, Paul, in verse 5, now writes theologically.  He begins with what seems to me a strange comment: “all this is evidence that God’s judgement is right.”  What evidence?  He is referring to the fact that the Thessalonians are persevering and even growing spiritual maturity despite being persecuted.  So their spiritual growth and perseverance in suffering is evidence that God’s judgment is right.  What does Paul mean?  I don’t know about you, but I find that an odd statement. Is Paul saying that the persecution and suffering is from God? 

I suspect Paul, first and foremost, wants the Thessalonian Christians to avoid discouragement.  They could easily think, “What am I doing?  I’m following Jesus, and all it has gotten me is persecution.  How could God allow this?”  We say that kind of thing when life doesn’t go our way, right?  Imagine if we were being persecuted for our faith!  We could pray, “God, I am in physical bodily pain because of you.  I am losing my friends because of you.  How can you allow this?  How is this right?  Do you love me?  Are you even real?”  In fact, we do pray those kinds of prayers, even when we aren’t being persecuted. Our thinking can spiral downward real fast when things are tough.  Paul knows that.  So while he has now raised the specter of their persecutions, he wants to quickly cut off any negative thinking that might spark.  He reminds the Thessalonian Christians that God’s judgement is right.  What he means is this: God has allowed the Thessalonians to go through this difficult time, but they have grown tremendously through it, so look on the difficulty as right.  Have a positive view of the pain, because it grew spiritual maturity within you.

I will admit, being positive about pain is not easy to do. But Paul reminds us that we can see it from God’s perspective, that he can redeem pain, that we can even grow through pain.

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

Why “Lord Jesus Christ” is subversive, and “grace and peace” is more than a greeting – 2 Thessalonians 1, Part 3

Have you ever heard someone talk about Jesus Christ, as if “Christ” is his last name, or surname? The name “Jesus Christ” has become so culturally familiar, perhaps most often used as an expletive. What does his name mean? Continue reading, as our study through 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 during this first week of Advent will seek to understand the name of Jesus.

After confirming to the Thessalonian Christians that they are the church, connected to the larger Christian family, Paul continues encouraging them in verse 1 by declaring that they are “in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  In other words, they should see themselves as a distinctly Christian church.  There were plenty of other religions in the Roman Empire, and we have already seen evidence of that by the presence of aggressive Jews in Thessalonica.  Paul emphasizes here the fact that the Christian Church is different.  The Christian church is uniquely rooted in both God as Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Jews would agree with the first part, not the second.  Romans would struggle with all of it.  Calling Jesus “Lord” and “Christ” is very intentional on Paul’s part, then. 

First, what does Paul mean when he says that Jesus is “Lord”? Paul is saying that Jesus is Lord, not the Roman emperor, the Caesar, who thought of himself as deity and required people to say, “Caesar is Lord.”  Paul, calling Jesus “Lord,” as he also does in verse 2, as if to really drive the point home, is directly confronting the empire in this letter.  Just the greeting of the letter is a subversive act.   Paul is saying, “Christians, Jesus is your Lord, no matter what the emperor says.” 

Second, not only would Romans bristle at the suggestion, Jews would be upset at the Messiah part.  Paul is saying that Jesus is the Messiah.  That word “Christ” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word “Messiah.”   The Messiah shows up in Old Testament prophecies as a coming king, of the line of the great King David, whom God would send as the fulfillment of the prophets’ message, which said that he would rescue Israel and restore her to prominence, just like in the days of King Solomon.  Reading those prophecies, the Jews in the first century believed that the Messiah would free their land from their Roman overlords.  So when Jesus came along saying he was the Messiah, but he did not rise to become a military leader, the Jewish leaders deemed him a fraud and blasphemer, and they crucified him.  The earliest Christians, however, taught something different.  They said that Jesus actually was the Messiah, and that the Jewish leaders had a faulty understanding of the prophecies about the Messiah.  The Messiah was not going to be a government leader of an earthly kingdom, but was instead he was king of the Kingdom of heaven, a Kingdom that Jesus prayed, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  It was a surprising kingdom that was among us and in us, and could be advanced through us.  So Paul, attributing that title “Messiah” to Jesus is also directly confronting the Jews. 

Third, the name “Jesus” is his given name. In Aramaic, it would be Yeshua, or transliterated to English, Joshua, which means “God is salvation.” Fitting, isn’t it?

You and I are so used to the name “Lord Jesus Christ.”   But in Paul’s day, especially there in Thessalonica with pressures from both the Romans and the Jews, that name was nothing short of revolutionary.  They were the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.  If they would have put that name out on their church sign, they would have gotten all kinds of abuse.  It would be like my church putting the name “Communist Church of Atheism” on our sign.  Imagine how that would go over here in the conservative Lancaster County Bible Belt?

So Paul has begun his letter to these new Christians by grounding them in what is true.  They were a church of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  They were believing a new way, a different reality, that put them in conflict with the culture around them.  Paul knew that those Thessalonian Christians’ choice to be disciples of Jesus was neither an easy choice nor one that would result in an easy life.  He himself had experienced the painful result of following Jesus. Jews and Greeks breathing down his neck, stoning him, rioting because of him and his message.  He was well aware of how difficult it could be to be a Christian, let a brand new one, in their town.  He knows he needs to help them.  What will he say next to help them keep the faith?

In verse 2 he gives them his standard greeting of grace and peace, which he uses in nearly all of his letters.   But he isn’t just using a throwaway greeting.  Grace and peace are two theologically-rich words for Christians.  Our entire relationship with God is based on grace.  As Paul would later write in Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, not by works, it is the gift of God.”  Grace points us to God’s amazing love, mercy and forgiveness to us in Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection.  Therefore, we not only receive his grace, but we also share grace with one another, and with those outside the church.  We are a grace-soaked people. 

Second, peace is so important for Christians.  Especially for Christians who are living in the middle of unrest, such as the Thessalonians were.  Jesus came to bring peace.  In his birth, the angels announce “Peace on earth, good will to all humanity.”  This word, too, is a direct confrontation to the empire.  In the Roman Empire, it was declared that the Caesar would bring peace.  But just like the angels, Paul says that peace is available to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.  No human can really bring lasting peace.  But Jesus can. 

So how about you? Do you know Jesus as Lord and Christ? Have you received his grace and peace? Please comment below if you want to talk about that!

Then we continue in the next post, taking a look at what Paul will say after his greeting.

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When does a church become a church? – 2 Thessalonians 1, Part 2

My church rents space to four other groups of Christians, and those groups describe themselves with a variety labels that indicate their relative age. First Baptist Church, as you can see in its name, is an established local church, older, I believe, than my church. The Orthodox group, however, calls themselves a fellowship. An established Orthodox church in a neighboring county started this group, seeking to plant a new congregation in Lancaster County. They meet twice per month for a mini-liturgy and Bible study. The Burmese Church is a group of Christians from Myanmar, connected to churches in their home country, so they see themselves as an extension of an established church. Finally, the Hispanic Church is brand new, renting space to start a church plant. Are they all churches? When does a church become a church?

In the previous post, we learned that Paul and his ministry friends traveled to the Greek city of Thessalonica, and there they started a church, as people responded to the story of good news in Jesus. But just as soon as the church got off the ground, Paul was forced to leave the city under cover of night, when anti-Christian Jews in town came after him. Paul and his friends travel the 45 miles to nearby Berea, where they continue ministry. But the Thessalonican Jews track them down and incite the Bereans against them too. Paul must flee again, and this time he decides to travel far enough to be safe from the Thessalonian Jews. He instructs his friends, Silas and Timothy, to stay in Berea and help the new Christians there, while he travels 200 miles south to Athens, and then eventually a bit west to Corinth. You can read this story in Acts 17 and 18. Finally safe and stable, Paul settles down. His ministry in Corinth will last at least 18 months, likely longer. But as Paul’s stay in Corinth gets longer and longer, he wishes he could visit the church in Thessalonica.  He really seems to have a close relationship with them (based on what he will write in 1st Thessalonians), and he wants to help them grow deeper in their faith in Christ, teaching them how to live as Jesus’ disciples.

You can almost read Paul’s mind.  “Are the new Christians in Thessalonica going to make it?  Or will the pressures of life lead them to turn away from the faith?  Those Jews in Thessalonica are intense.  Are they trying to get the Christians to deny their newfound faith?”  Should he try to go back to a town where he almost got killed?  But that would mean he would have to leave the believers in Corinth.  They, too, need to be taught.  And what we know of the Corinthian Christians is that they were very rough around the edges, to put it lightly.  So Paul decides that he needs to stay in Corinth, and he decides to reach out to the Thessalonians the next best way; he writes them a letter, the letter we know as 1st Thessalonians.  Of all his letters that we have in the Bible, it is highly likely that 1st Thessalonians is the first letter Paul writes.  Written around 51 CE, it is probably the oldest New Testament writing. 

In the ancient world, letters don’t get to people in a day or two, like we’re used to.  It was a process, one that was expensive and long.  Writing materials are not cheap.  Paul often used a scribe to write, and that person might need to be hired and paid.  Then Paul would have to determine a way to actually get the letter to Thessalonica.  That is likely where Timothy comes in.  Often Paul’s ministry partners doubled as letter-carriers.  While he was in Corinth, Silas and Timothy eventually joined him. Now Paul sends the letter with Timothy who journeys the 200+ miles back to Thessalonica, a trip that could easily take days.  Once there, Timothy likely gathers the Christians and reads the letter out loud to them because not everyone in the church would be able to read. 

We don’t know how long Timothy remains in Thessalonica.  He eventually returns to Paul in Corinth, with news about how the young church is doing.  Scholars believe that about six months after writing the first letter, Paul, still in Corinth, hears Timothy’s report and writes another letter to the believers in Thessalonica, the letter we know as 2nd Thessalonians. 

Think about what we have learned so far about the Christians in Thessalonica.  They are the only Christians in town, they are new Christians, and they are believing in a new religion.  They are a diverse in a society that doesn’t always look kindly on diversity.  They also face a challenge from the very Jews who kicked Paul out of town, and who chased him in Berea. In other words, these new Christians are on very thin spiritual ice. So how were they doing? Did Timothy have good news or bad news?  How is this small group of very new Christians doing?   What Paul says in 2 Thessalonians will give us the answer to these questions.

In verse 1, after identifying himself and his ministry friends, Paul gives the Thessalonian Christians a standard greeting in which he calls them a church.  I find that small detail interesting.  When does a church start becoming a church?  If your church or mine were to start a new church, in a neighboring town, would we call it a church on day 1?  Maybe.  But more than likely we would call it a church plant, signifying that it was new, and not yet a fully-developed church.  We might call it a Bible study, a small group, a fellowship. The Christians in Thessalonica have been Christians for less than a year. How can Paul call them a church? Surely they can’t be mature enough, established enough for that label? Or can they?

In my denomination, the EC Church, we actually have a process that a church has to go through to make the jump from being a church plant to a fully-sufficient church.  Some churches remain in church plant status for years.  Yet Paul calls this new group of Christians a church.  In fact, he had even called them a church six months earlier in his first letter to them, and at that point they had likely only been Christians for a couple weeks or months.  That tells me something I believe is important for all of us. 

Paul calling the Thessalonians a church, though they were very new Christians, tells me that in Paul’s mind, these new Christians would do well to see themselves as a legitimate, fully-accepted part of the family of God.  I can imagine Paul wanting them to feel included in that larger sense of identification with God’s family.  Though they are new to the faith, they are part of God’s family, with all the rights and privileges of God’s sons and daughters.  Those new Christians should not see themselves as second-class Christians. Instead they are a church.

Do you see yourself that way? Part of God’s family? If not, why not? What we see in Paul’s use of the word “church” is his heart for the Thessalonians to be connected. Christians are people who are connected. This is one of the reasons why I love my local ministerium, the 15-20 churches from a variety of backgrounds that work together to reach our community for Christ. We recently held a Community Thanksgiving Service, and it was a wonderful expression of unity, of connection.

What concerns me is when Christians are disconnected. Some Christians believe that they do not need a connection to a church because they can have a personal relationship with God. I would suggest that it should not be viewed as either/or, but both/and. Yes, we can have a personal relationship with God, and we should nurture that relationship, but we can and should also nurture a relationship with a group of Christians, a church. I’m not talking about a church building. I’m talking about a group of Christians that connect deeply and regularly for the purposes of church.

What are the purposes of church? Check back in to the next post, as Paul will eventually talk about that!

Photo by NATHAN MULLET on Unsplash

Introducing our Advent 2021 series – 2 Thessalonians 1, Part 1

For this Advent season, I thought it would be good to study a lesser-known book of the Bible that relates to Advent.  This letter didn’t originally relate to Advent.  Advent was a season of the year that Christians created many years after this letter was written.  But because Advent mean “arrival,” I think you’ll see how this book is fitting. The book is one of the short letters in the New Testament, 2nd Thessalonians. 

You might wonder, “Why 2nd Thessalonians?  Why not start with 1st Thessalonians?”  Well, it’s simply a matter of space.  Advent lasts for the four weeks before Christmas, and four weeks is not enough to cover 1st Thessalonians.  But it’s perfect for 2nd Thessalonians which is much shorter, and basically has the same theme as 1st Thessalonians. So let’s dive in to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1.

In verse 1 we read “Paul, Silvanus and Timothy.”  Ancient letter writing started the opposite of how we start our letters or emails. We always start by addressing the person we are writing to. In the ancient world, the writer began by identifying himself. 

Who are Paul, Silvanus and Timothy?  Paul is the leader, the apostle, the missionary, the man who took the wonderful story of Jesus and spread it like no other in the first century, starting numerous churches across the Roman Empire. Silvanus is another name for Silas, one of Paul’s traveling companions.  Timothy was an apprentice of Paul who would go on to be a pastor of the churches in the city of Ephesus.  Many years later Paul would write 1 & 2 Timothy as letters to help Timothy in his pastoral ministry in Ephesus.  For now, these three men are mentioned as contributing to this letter, but Paul is likely the primary author.  If you glance ahead to chapter 3, verse 17, you can see that he picks up the pen and writes the ending.  As a result, for the remainder of the posts in this series, I will refer to Paul as the author.

He is writing to the Thessalonians. Who or what are the Thessalonians?  Keep your finger in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, and turn to Acts 17.  There we read about the beginning of this specific church.  In Acts 17, Paul is on his second of three missionary journeys recorded in the book of Acts.  We read that he arrives in Thessalonica, which today is the city of Thessaloniki in Greece.  In the first century this was a major city of 200,000 people, the capital of its province. You can visit the ruins of the old city in Thessaloniki still today. 

There Paul shares the Gospel with the Jews and Greeks, and numerous people come to Christ.  We don’t know how long Paul, Silas and Timothy were there, but even if it was a very short time, Paul started the church. The Jews in town were jealous of Paul’s success, and almost certainly considered the Christians to be traitors who were starting a cult.  So they incite a riot, accusing Paul of being a government insurrectionist, and Paul and Silas have to leave Thessalonica under cover of night, and they head to nearby Berea.  But the Jews from Thessalonica find out that Paul has escaped to Berea, so they follow him there and agitate the Bereans against Paul.   

I tell you that to give you a sense of the kind of people that lived in Thessalonica.  The Jews, at least, not only disagreed with the Christians, they also aggressively pursued Paul, trying to stop him.  Imagine you are one of the Christians living in Thessalonica after Paul has been run out of town.  You are part of this new church that has just started.  In Acts 17:4, we learn who the people in the church actually were.  When Paul and Silas were initially preaching there in Thessalonica, “some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, so did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women.”  That was the church.  How many people?  Maybe 50?  Maybe 100?  It was a small group of brand new Christians.

The church was multi-ethnic, comprised of Jews and Greeks.  It also had socio-economic diversity, and it had gender diversity.  It was new, and likely most everyone in the church, if not all of them, were immature in their faith.  The Jewish members of the church would have had a background in their Jewish faith, which would have been immensely helpful.  Those new Christian Jews though, would have been considered apostate by the other aggressive Jews in town.  To what degree Paul was able to disciple the new Christians and build up leaders, we don’t know.  My guess is that he wasn’t there long.  That fact, and the fact that there were Thessalonian Jews so aggressively opposed to Christianity, probably had Paul very concerned that this new church was going to fall apart. 

So how does the letter of 2nd Thessalonians come to be?  Let’s continue the story by remembering Paul’s itinerary.  In Acts 17:1-9, he is in Thessalonica.  In verse 10 he travels to Berea, about 45 miles to the west.  As we heard above, in verses 10-15 we learn that it doesn’t seem he is in Berea all that long before the Thessalonican Jews track him down.  At least in Berea Silas and Timothy can stay to build up the believers, unlike the Christians in Thessalonica who were on their own.  If you are Paul, you’re thinking, “Okay…the Berean Christians are cared for, but I still need to do something about the group back in Thessalonica.”  Paul is a wanted man there, though, so he can’t go back.  Yet, as he writes in 1 Thessalonians 2:17, he longed to go back and visit them. 

As we continue following his itinerary in Acts 17, Paul next travels 200 miles south to Athens. After what seems to be a relatively short stay in Athens, in Acts 18:1 we read that he travels to nearby Corinth, 50 miles to the west of Athens.  As we skim through Acts 18, we learn that Paul is finally able to settle down a bit, staying in Corinth at least 18 months, but likely longer.  Silas and Timothy eventually join him there. But Paul has not forgotten the Thessalonian Christian. It really bothered him being apart from them, so at some point he sent Timothy, we read in 1 Thessalonians 3:1, to deliver the letter we know as 1 Thessalonians. Timothy eventually returns with news from Thessalonica. 

Will Timothy bring good news? Or bad news?

We’ll find out in the next post!

Photo by KaLisa Veer on Unsplash

The important connection between Sci-fi and Advent – 2 Thessalonians 1, Preview

How do you feel about science fiction?  Are you a sci-fi lover?  A sci-fi hater?

I love sci-fi.

I love pretty much any sub-genre within the larger sci-fi umbrella.  What’s not to love? Time travel, futuristic technology, spaceships, lasers, intergalactic travel, and of course, aliens.  Sci-fi has it all!  I recently started watching a new streaming TV series called Invasion, and the premise of the story is the question, “How would people really respond if powerful aliens attacked earth?”  To answer that question, the show follows the lives of four very different people in four very different places in the world as they react to the invasion.  But that’s show biz for you, where aliens are real.  They’re not actually real, though, are they?

Do you ever wonder if UFOs are real?  Unidentified Flying Objects made the news recently as the government has declassified documents, and there seems to be a movement to search for alien life!  Some people claim that our planet has been visited many times.  These most recent declassified documents include videos of Air Force pilots seemingly mystified by what they are seeing on their radar screens.  Objects in the air making movements and traveling at speeds that no human object is capable of.  Maybe it was just a fleck of paint on their camera being blown by the wind, or maybe an extra-terrestrial has been spying on us. 

Advent is the season of the year that reminds us that an extra-terrestrial has already arrived.  But not the extra-terrestrials of ET or Alien.  God has arrived.  In fact, Advent means “arrival”.  The Son of God, the Messiah, Jesus, arrived. God became flesh.

Advent also reminds us that Jesus is coming again!  That’s why our 2021 Advent theme is “Ready for the Return,” and we’ll be studying the New Testament letter of 2nd Thessalonians.  Why 2nd Thessalonians?  Because whenever you think of Advent, you obviously think of 2nd Thessalonians, right? 

Take a moment this weekend to read 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, or perhaps the whole letter, which is only 47 verses, to see if you can determine why this short letter might be the perfect study for Advent.  Then check back in to the blog on Monday as we’ll begin discussing 2 Thessalonians 1 and Advent.

Photo by Artem Kovalev on Unsplash

How to think Christianly about America (or any nation) – Ezekiel 29-32, Part 5

This week we have been studying the rise and fall of great powers, because we learned about the fall of Egypt as prophesied by Ezekiel in Ezekiel 29-32. In the previous post, we learned that in recent history, the rise and fall of great powers is controlled by economics. So we have to ask, what about God?  Isn’t God involved?  Does God decide which nations rise and which fall?  Does God want some nations to be great and others lowly?  What should we Christians think about this?

Remember the prophecy to Egypt in Ezekiel.  Their nation had been a regional superpower for centuries.  Now God declares that Egypt was going to fall, and it would not be great again. 

I write as an American, and much of what I have thought about Ezekiel 29-32 this week has clearly been colored by my context as an American. Christians in America have long had a somewhat confused understanding of the relationship between God and country.  What we see in this passage is that God desires to be in relationship with all people.  He is not interested in the rise and fall of great powers.  He is interested in people.  Nations come and nations go.  America rose and became a superpower, and it is possible that America will fall from that place, maybe in our lifetime, maybe a thousand years from now.  Maybe all that potentially scary news about China (which I started this week’s blog series with here) will come to pass and they will attack and defeat us.  We don’t know, of course.

In the Old Testament, God often talks about nations and their longevity.  We Americans can think that we want our preferred version of America to last forever.  Usually the version of America that we want to last forever is the version that benefits us.  But does God promise that any version of America will last forever?  No.  Instead there is a rise and fall of nations throughout history.  That is par for the course of world history.  What, then, is the Christian way to look at our citizenship in America? 

To answer that question, we need to jump over to the New Testament where we learn that we Christians see ourselves first and foremost as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Our earthly citizenship is temporary, because every earthly country is temporary.  Even if USA doesn’t end in our lifetime, it will happen sometime.  But God’s Kingdom will never fall.  God’s Kingdom is eternal. 

Christians, therefore, should be focused on the Kingdom of God.  Our lives, our choices, our actions, should be to glorify Jesus and follow the pattern of life that he lived.  There were Christians living through all of the 1700 years before America was born.  Those Christians were disciples of Jesus, pursuing the mission of God’s Kingdom all around the world, and they did that without an entity called the United States of America.  How?  Because God’s Kingdom isn’t dependent on any nation.

But we are citizens of an earthly country. I am an American citizen. For my fellow American Christians, what does it mean, then, to think Christianly about our citizenship in America?  For those of you who are citizens in other countries, you can ask yourselves the same question. What does it mean to think Christianly about citizenship in your country? I have written about this in a previous blog series, staring here. But I also recommend that we strive to answer these important questions by remembering the perspective of God’s Kingdom.

We should want God’s Kingdom to come all around us.  Just as Jesus prayed: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  We Christians, then, not only pray for God’s Kingdom to come wherever we live, but we also participate in ushering in the Kingdom.  When I say “usher in the Kingdom,” I am not talking about the goals of any political party.  Remember the Purple Church series a few months ago?  Jesus is neither red nor blue.  The church should be neither red nor blue.  The church should be purple, a place where people who lean red or blue can mix together focusing on God and making his Kingdom our priority.

We’re a purple church because God doesn’t want to be in relationship with a temporary nation.  He wants to be in relationship with people.  That’s why God’s Old Covenant was with the nation of Israel, but his New Covenant is with the church.  God is in relationship with his people, the church.  Our hearts, our goals, our decisions should flow from that perspective.

We, the church, then, strive to fulfill the mission of the Kingdom, no matter what country in which we hold earthly citizenship.  As we live in those countries, we desire to fulfill the Great Command and the Great Commission.  We also desire those nations to be places of goodness and human flourishing.  That’s why we Christians take the lead in pursuing equality, freedom, and justice, no matter where we live.  That means we should be active in rooting out injustice.  We follow the teaching of Jesus to love God, love neighbor, and help people become disciples of Jesus who can live the way of Jesus.  We are people who are filled with the Spirit, so that the fruit of the Spirit is flowing freely from us into the lives of others around us. 

Our hope is not in a political party.  Our hope is not in a geographic region on the globe.  Our hope is not in a form of government.  Our hope is not to make a nation great again.  Our hope is in the Lord.  Our passion is to make his name great.

As the Jews in Babylon learned from Ezekiel’s prophetic oracles about Egypt, God desired a relationship with all people, even those who were enemies of Israel.  God wants to be known by all.  That should be our heart too.  As our hearts are more like God’s heart, then geography, nationality, ethnicity matters less, and people matter more.

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

What is the cause of the rise and fall of the great powers – Ezekiel 29-32, Part 4

When I traveled with Michelle to Cambodia in 2016, we visited Angkor Wat, one of the seven wonders of the world.  It is astounding.  Ancient temples built a thousand years ago reminding us that there used to be a super power there, the Khmer Kingdom.  It was a far-reaching kingdom, a superpower in Southeast Asia.  But no more.  Now vines grow through the buildings of Angkor Wat.  They are a tourist attraction, gorgeous astounding place to visit.

Same goes for the pyramids in Egypt, which are the actual graveyard of the Pharaohs (considering that we talked about Sheol, the graveyard of the superpowers in the previous post).  Now we can look at their mummies in museums.  But it’s not just the Khmer Kingdom or the ancient Egyptians. Let’s take a quick, very general trip through world history, and we will find that the same end has come for superpower after superpower.  How many others are in the superpower graveyard?

Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians and the Assyrians conquered most of the Ancient Near East, and then the even more powerful Babylonians conquered Assyria and Egypt.  Eventually the Medes and Persians would conquer the Babylonians.  Then came the Greeks, then the Romans, and eventually the Muslims in the middle east.  There were other superpowers in Asia, Africa and the Americas. In Europe, for a time the Spanish and the French were quite powerful, then the British became perhaps the first global superpower.  Many other European countries wanted to be global superpowers too, colonizing new lands around the globe, often in brutal ways.

Then there are the contenders or pretenders to the throne.  The nations that want to be superpowers, but just don’t quite make it.

Comedian Norm MacDonald once remarked that the news tries to scare you with stories about these nations that want to be superpowers.  Countries like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.  MacDonald asks, “Does that news ever really scare you?  Do you ever wake up in the middle of night scared, thinking ‘Ahh, that country across the ocean…I wonder if they’ll get me?’  Probably not.”  Then MacDonald says, “There is one country that worries me, though.  Not Iraq, not Iran, not North Korea.  The only country that really worries me is the country of Germany.  I don’t know if you are students of history or not, but in the early part of the previous century, Germany decided to go to war. And who did they go to war with?  The world!  That had never been tried before.  So you figure it would take about five seconds for the world to win, but no…it was actually close.  Then about thirty years pass, and Germany decides to go war again. Once again it chooses as its enemy, the world!  This time, they really almost win.  You’d think at that point the world would say, ‘Listen Germany, you don’t get to be a country any more on account that you keep attacking the world!  What do you think you are?  Mars, or something?’

While Norm MacDonald’s joke is funny, that’s not quite how it went down.  In his book called The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy says that, that in both World War 1 and World War 2, there was a moment when it was obvious that Germany would lose each of those wars.  Kennedy suggests it was the same moment in each war.  Do you know what Kennedy is referring to? 

It was when the USA decided to join the Allied powers in the fight.  For all intents and purposes, when the USA entered the war, it was over.  How do we know that?  Economics.  Kennedy looks at the rise and fall of great powers from 1500 to 1980, and he traces the same pattern.  Economics win wars.  When the USA joined World War 1 and World War 2, we brought an unparalleled economic engine to the war effort.  It could be argued that German and Japanese technology and military genius were actually superior to ours.  It doesn’t matter though.  Economies win the war.  They always win.  Sure Hitler and Nazi Germany, along with their Axis partners put up a good fight, but they were no match for a massive economic engine that could fight wars on multiple fronts.  We could just keep pumping people and equipment and munitions into those battles, and little by little we could wear them down.  And we did.  It was just a matter of time. This is the story of the rise and fall of the great powers. 

Often we talk about these world wars as battles of good miraculously winning over evil. Kennedy disagrees. Does this mean that God has no say in the matter? Are economics more powerful than God? Are we to understand Ezekiel 29-32 only as prophetic oracles of Babylon’s economic ascendancy and Egypt’s economic inferiority and loss?

In the next post we’ll talk about God’s hand in the rise and fall of the great powers.

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash

The graveyard of world superpowers – Ezekiel 29-32, Part 3

This week on the blog we are studying Ezekiel chapters 29-32, which are all prophecies about the destruction of Egypt. In the previous posts, here and here, we learned that God said in chapter 29, that Egypt, a regional superpower was going to be attacked by Babylon, and would never again have a position of power.

Now look at chapter 30.  We’re going to move rather quickly through the next few chapters.  In chapter 30 verses 1-19, God asks Ezekiel to say a lament for the destruction of Egypt.  It’s a dark section of verses describing an arsenal of destructive methods to be unleashed on many towns and cities of Egypt. Why?  In verse 19, no surprise, then they will that he is the Lord. 

In verse 20 we’re back to year 11 (as Ezekiel’s prophecies about Egypt are dated), and God gives another prophecy of how Babylon will destroy Egypt, with God playing the role of the metaphorical mobster, breaking Pharaoh’s “arms”. Read it, and I’m guessing you’ll find it gruesome, like I did.  Why would God describe his judgment so violently?  Because then they will know that he is the Lord, the famous phrase which is mentioned twice in this short section.  Though they made bad choices repeatedly, God still wants to be known by the Egyptians.

Now to chapter 31, and the next prophecy is dated a couple months later in the 11th year.  The theme continues as the prophecy is again about the destruction of Egypt.  This prophecy might sound familiar, as it is a parable of a cedar tree, very similar to the parable in chapter 17.  This time Pharaoh, king of Egypt is compared to a great tree that God will cut down.  So far, we’ve had God the Crocodile Hunter, God the Mobster, and now God the Lumberjack. 

Finally, we move to chapter 32, dated nearly at the end of the 12th year of exile. Verses 1-16 are a lament, a crying out in anguish for the Pharaoh of Egypt, because of his downfall. In verse 17 we have another date, and it is in the 12th year, but Ezekiel doesn’t give us the month.  So maybe it was the same month as the previous prophecy.  We don’t know.  It doesn’t matter.  Verses 17-32 change the scene to the underworld, the place of the dead.  In Hebrew this place is called Sheol, and it is not the same as the New Testament concept of hell.  In this chapter it is referred to as “the earth below,” the “pit”, the “grave”, the “depths.”  There in Sheol, in this underworld, God envisions many nations and peoples who have gone there already, and now Egypt will join them.  It is a dark, ominous ending to the oracles against Egypt. 

So we’ve just had four straight chapters of prophecies of judgement against Egypt. But it is not as though Ezekiel walked out of his house, and just started rattling off all these prophecies in one big long blast against Egypt.  Remember the dates?  In these four chapters what we read are a bunch of short prophecies, uttered at a variety of moments, some many years apart.  They were collected and compiled at a later date because they were all about Egypt. Also, when Ezekiel actually gave the prophecies, we have to remember that Ezekiel is living far, far away from Egypt.  He wasn’t like Moses who lived in Egypt and walked into Pharaoh’s palace and confronted him.  Instead Ezekiel gave these prophecies to the Jews living in Babylon with him.  Think about that: prophecies…about Egypt…given to Jews…in Babylon.  Shouldn’t prophecies about Egypt be given to Egyptians living in Egypt?  Not in this case.  In this case, God wanted the Jews living in Babylon to hear these prophecies about Egypt.  Why? 

First of all, God wanted the Jews to hear these prophecies because God wants the Jews to know that he wants a relationship with the Egyptians.  You and I might think that is obvious.  But it wasn’t obvious to the Jews.  They considered themselves to be God’s chosen people.  God was their God.  In their minds God was not the God of other nations.  All the other nations had their own gods.  So the God of the Jews, whose name is Yahweh, in their thinking, did not need to be shared with other people, especially when those other people were often enemies.  In these chapters God makes it very clear that he not only wants to be known by the Jews; he also wants to be known by the other nations.  God’s heart is a heart for all people.  God’s heart is a heart for the world. 

Second, God wants the Jews to hear these prophecies, because he wants them to understand that there is a rise and fall to the nations, and that rise and fall does not hinder God’s desire to be in relationship with all people.  Go back to chapter 29, verses 13-16, which we studied in the previous post.  When I look at all of the prophetic oracles about Egypt in chapters 29-32, it seems to me that chapter 29, verses 13-16 is the most important section.  That’s the section where God says after the attack by the Babylonians, and the people of Egypt are scattered to the nations, God will return them to their homeland in Egypt.  But Egypt will not be what it used to be it.  It will be lowly. 

Imagine you are an Egyptian person living in Ezekiel’s day.  The armies of Babylon attack your land, and destroy it, forcing your people to be exiled.  In your hearts and minds, you remember the days when Egypt used to be a superpower.  It would be completely normal for an Egyptian to long for Egypt to return to those days.  It would be completely normal for them to want Egypt to return to its previous power and might.  But God says that won’t happen. 

Think about that.  Egypt was a superpower, but as the world situation developed, a new superpower was on the rise.  Babylon.  Babylon would sweep through the region, like God swinging his sword, and the all the nations would fall before them, including Egypt.  In fact, God says, in chapter 32, verses 17-32 that Egypt is going to the superpower graveyard, Sheol.  What we are seeing in these chapters is what some have called the rise and fall of great powers.  It is basically the main topic of history. 

Check back in to the next post, and we’ll try to go back through world history, laying out the story of the planet by the rise and fall of great powers. 

Photo by Alex Rose on Unsplash

The surprise identity of the original Crocodile Hunter – Ezekiel 29-32, Part 2

Who will win in a fight between an African male lion and a Nile crocodile? - Quora

September 4, 2021, was the 15th anniversary of the death of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. Steve Irwin was a fascinating man, but ultimately his life’s passion of interacting with dangerous wildlife led to his demise. I was surprised to learn this week that Irwin was actually not the original Crocodile Hunter. Who was the original? As we continue our study through Ezekiel 29-32, the answer might surprise you too.

Look at Ezekiel chapter 29, verses 3-6.  Ezekiel never ceases to amaze with its wild imagery, and this section is no different.

What we read in these verses could be titled, “The Parable of the River Monster”.  Or maybe “The Parable of the Destruction of the River Monster”  In this parable, God is saying that the Pharaoh of Egypt is the river monster.  More the likely, the monster he is referring to is the Nile Crocodile, which is a huge variation of croc that can grow to 16 feet long.  They still live there to this day.  All crocodiles are freaky, scary creatures.  Big powerful, and surprisingly fast.  Though God is saying that the Pharaoh is like the croc, powerful, in charge of the mighty nation of Egypt, the Pharaoh is no match for God.  God depicts himself as the Crocodile Hunter, hooking, capturing and leaving the croc to be preyed upon in the desert. 

Why does God say he is going to do this?  Does he have some random vendetta against Egypt?  No.  Look at verse 3.  God says that Pharaoh claims, “The Nile is mine; I made it for myself.” That’s a bold claim.  Did Pharaoh make the Nile?  He and the other Pharaohs before him certainly had numerous expansive building projects, which would include taming and controlling the Nile.  But God shakes his head at the arrogance of some leaders.  We saw this in chapter 28 with the King of Tyre, who grew a prideful heart.  Now God points out the selfish pride of Pharaoh.  Pharaoh doesn’t own the Nile, and he didn’t make it for himself.  God made the Nile!  Pharaoh’s arrogance is a direct affront to God.  Pharaoh is claiming things about himself that can only be claimed about God.  God is the creator, not Pharaoh.  Pharaoh has become arrogant. So what will God do? Scan down to verses 9-10.  God says that because of Pharaoh’s arrogant claims about the Nile, God is against him. 

Now let’s back-up to verses 6-7.  God says that Egypt and the Pharaoh were like a staff of reed for Israel. The staff was supposed to support them, but when Israel leaned on the staff, it shatters into splinters which pierced and hurt Israel.  This figurative speech refers to the time that Israel asked for help from Egypt when the Babylonians were going to attack Israel, but Egypt was unsuccessful.  Therefore, as we read in verse 8, God will allow a sword to destroy Egypt.  We have heard God talk about this sword in Ezekiel chapter 21.  God’s sword is the nation of Babylon.  As Babylon sweeps through the Ancient Near East, it will destroy everything in its path, like God swinging a sword of judgment against the people who have rebelled against him.  What will be the result?

Scan through verses 6-16, and three times God mentions the most important phrase in Ezekiel.  We have heard it so many times in the book, that you probably know it by heart.  “Then you will know that I am the Lord.”  It is so easy to focus on things like the sword of God’s judgment, or God the Crocodile Hunter, and get an image of a violent God.  But the better way to view the judgment of God is to remember that the people brought judgment on themselves because of their rebellious choices.  God wanted them to live a very different way, a far better way. God wanted to be known by them, to be in loving relationship with them.  That is his heart, to be in relationship with all people.  Not just his chosen people Israel; he wants to be known by all people, even the enemies of Israel.  In that sense, these chapters, and the four chapters before, are astonishing.  God wants to have the same kind of relationship with Israel’s enemies that he wants to have with Israel, a close loving relationship.  

That is likely why God envisions a restoration for Egypt.  Look specifically at verses 13-16.  God says that he will restore Egypt to the land of their ancestry, but life will not be the same as before the Babylonian attack.  Before the attack, Egypt was a powerful kingdom, but after the attack, Egypt will be a lowly kingdom.  In fact God says Egypt will be the lowliest of nations, never again to exalt itself above others.  Hold that image in your mind: Egypt, once a superpower, will be humbled.

As we continue through the end of chapter 29, at verse 17, we fast-forward about 16 years to another prophecy about Egypt.  In this prophecy God is no longer speaking in figurative language.  He is speaking plainly, describing how Babylon will destroy Egypt.  Then in verse 21, he says something very odd, “I will make a horn grow for the house of Israel.”  That is figurative language again, referring to the growing strength and prosperity of Israel.  In other words, God is saying that while Egypt falters, Israel will once again flourish.  Then God finishes this prophecy saying that he will open Ezekiel’s mouth, Ezekiel will prophecy, and the people will know that he is the Lord.

Check back to the next post as we continue studying Ezekiel 29-32 to learn about God’s heart for all people, even our enemies.

Do world events scare you? – Ezekiel 29-32, Part 1

Did you hear the news that China’s military has created full scale outlines of American Naval vessels in their deserts?  Satellite images show that one of the models of US warship is on rails so that it can be moved.  Why?  To practice bombing them?  Or maybe you heard that China has developed hyper-sonic missiles that travel five times the speed of sound. They actually launched one this past summer that circled the globe.  Did you hear that President Biden had a video meeting with the President Xi of China, at least in part to talk about what appears to be a Chinese military build-up?   There is talk of the United States boycotting the upcoming winter Olympics in China. There is also tension over China’s claim to Taiwan.  Some believe that China is working on the capability to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the USA.  Want me to keep going?  I don’t want to. I hate this kind of news.  It’s unsettling.  It sounds scary, right? 

That feeling of fear might be exactly what some people in Ezekiel’s day were feeling about a growing threat from a superpower nearby.  What people were afraid? And what superpower were they afraid of? This week on the blog we return to our study through Ezekiel, looking at chapter 29-32, and we’ll not only answer those questions, but also how it matters to us Christians living in 2021. Let’s get started by opening a Bible to Ezekiel chapter 29.

In Ezekiel 29, verse 1, we read the date, “In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth day.”  That means the God gave Ezekiel this particular prophecy when he had been living in exile in Babylon for ten years, ten months and twelve days. 

If you’ve been following the blog series since the beginning, does that date strike you as curious?  We’ve had many dates in the book of Ezekiel so far, and they are always in this format, telling us how long it has been since Ezekiel and his fellow 10,000 Jews from Jerusalem have been exiled in Babylon.  In that sense, this date is just like the rest. Why I am saying that this date in Ezekiel 29:1 is curious? 

Let me give you a clue.  Turn in your Bible to Ezekiel 26, verse 1, and there we read the previous instance that Ezekiel dated his prophecy.  Notice what year it is?  The eleventh year.  Now do you understand why the date in Ezekiel 29 is curious? 

In chapter 26, he writes about a prophecy that happened in the 11th year. Now in chapter 29 he goes back to the 10th year.  Is he time-traveling?  As we have seen throughout our study, God gives Ezekiel some very unique prophetic methods, but time-travel is not one of them.   This date jumping, however, will continue.  Scan ahead to Ezekiel 29, verse 17, and what do you read?

“In the twenty-seventh year, the first month, the first day.” 

Now he is jumping way ahead into the future.  Except, as I just said, there is no time-travel going on.  What is happening, then?  Either Ezekiel himself, and a later person or group who published his writings, first compiled them.  They put some thought into their compilation, and they decided to forego a strictly chronological approach.  Instead, they used a thematic approach.  In this case, the four chapters, Ezekiel 29 through 32, that we are studying today, are all about the same topic, though the prophecies about that topic were from a variety of dates.  What is topic? 

Go back to Ezekiel 29, verse 2, and we read that God instructs Ezekiel to set his face against Pharaoh king of Egypt and all of Egypt.  That’s the topic:  Prophecy against Egypt and the King of Egypt, who was called the Pharaoh.   

Throughout our study of Ezekiel, God has asked Ezekiel to set his face against many things.  I have been calling this The Prophetic Stare.  I imagine that Ezekiel would walk out of his house, right there in his village in Babylon, living with the 10,000 fellow Jews who were exiled from Jerusalem, and he would stare.  That’s what he would do when he would set his face against something.  The stare, in and of itself had no power, but in staring at something, Ezekiel was shining the light of God’s truth about whatever he was staring at.  Usually, the stare accompanied a spoken prophetic word, so people would eventually find out what he was staring at and why.  In this case, God had something to say about the king and people of Egypt.  What does God say?

Join us for the next post, as we’ll talk about that.

Photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash