(Read part 1 and part 2 before you read this!)

Shortly after the time of Solomon (its pretty easy to see Solomon as the beginning of the end) the Kingdom of Israel starts to crumble and fall apart. Immediately after Solomon’s death the nation is split in two, and the time of blessing and God’s favour seems to have gone.

Its not long before they find themselves in the land of a foreign power, under the control of another nation. The once mighty Israel is no more. The wealth, the prosperity, the blessing - its all gone.

Once more they are slaves.

Once more they find themselves in exile.

Exile.

Exile is where you search your soul. Its there that honesty kicks in. You know something has gone wrong and so you search yourself to find out what.

They begin to remember the things of God, the promises He made, the covenant He spoke to them. They begin to realise they had relied so much on their own power that they had forgotten to follow Him, to seek Him, to love Him. They realise they were meant to be His people and He was meant to be in their God. They realise they got it wrong.

You see, it takes a ground breaking, earth shattering moment like exile to get a bit of perspective.

They begin to realise they need God.
They begin to dream again - He saved them once, maybe, could he, would he do it again?

But something else happens too. A prophetic voice begins to speak in the midst of exile, one that raises their eyes even further than they had dared to look.

They dream, but not just for themselves, for the whole world.

They dream of Messiah, an anointed One, who will come and bring redemption for all.
They dream of a new Kingdom, one not like the Kingdoms of the world, but one of God.

You see they realise that something needed to be different, or it would all go wrong just like it did last time.

This time they dream that God will put the “truth in their minds, and write it on their hearts”.

They start to get whats its all about - that God isn’t all that interested in religion, or sacrifices - what he is really after is people who will live the way He wants them to live, who will bring truth, justice, mercy, grace and love to those around them. That is the worship He wants, the sacrifice He desires. They begin to see the bigger picture - that God isn’t just their God, the God of Israel, but that He is the God of the gentiles (Isaiah 48) and the God of the world.

You see that is what exile does - it focuses you on what is important. It shows you your mistakes, and gives you time to plan a new way forward. It gives you an opportunity to take stock, to rediscover what is important, and to change the way you are going.

What starts as a hope that they will be saved from the Babylonians grows and expands - they start to expect a divine rule who will establish a Kingdom that will last forever and ever and ever. One who will reconcile them with their historic enemies (Egypt and Assyria) and show them a new path of peace.

A kingdom for everyone.

And that is the hope with which the Old Testament ends.

A people in exile dreaming of a hope for all humanity.

A hope unfulfilled.

A people dreaming and asking - what if we had it all back, what if we could do it again, what if we could do it right this time?

(Read part one before you read this!)

But that’s exactly what they did do. Forget.

Not straight away, it took a while. But slowly, surely, one moment, one decision at a time they forgot.

God did everything He promised to them; He gave them a land flowing with milk and honey, He went before them into battle and ensured their victory - they ruled over the nations all around them. They had it good, really really good.

But they forgot.

They forgot they year of Jubilee. They forgot the land ownership laws. They forgot to look after the poor and the widow among them.

Worse than that, they decided God wasn’t enough for them. They looked at the nations around them - the nations God has put under their control - and saw that they had kings in charge of them; and they decided they wanted that too.

The people God has chosen to be His idol on earth decided that God’s way wasn’t the way they wanted to live. They decided His way of community wasn’t good enough, and so they started to return to the way of the world around them - the way of empire.

The crowning moment of the Israeli nation is the time of Solomon; the man of wisdom. This is the moment that the Jewish people look back on with such fondness, the time when they were the most important people in the whole world.

But what if this time wasn’t a good time, but a bad one?

Let me explain.

1 Kings 9 v 15 says this: “Here is the account of the forced labour King Solomon conscripted to build the Lord’s temple, his own palace…. and Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.”

Forced labour. You mean slaves? But surely that’s not how this community was supposed to work?

Solomon used the slavery of his own people to build the temple of God - I don’t know about you but something just doesn’t quite seem right about that. The God who hears the cry of the oppressed, who rescues those in need - His temple was built by the hands of slaves.

And then of course, any self respecting King needs a big palace to live in. So Solomon did exactly that. And then he built some for his wives too. Did I mention one of his wives was the daughter of Pharaoh? You know, Egypt - the people they were supposed to leave behind?

It gets worse still.

Hazor, Meggido and Gezer are military bases.

Solomon is using his massive resources, and the slavery of his own people to protect, well, his massive resources. You see, when you have a lot you begin to get nervous about making sure you always have a lot - and thats exactly what Solomon did. Why trust God when you can have a massive army to protect you?

So let me sum all this up really simply for you.

Solomon has become Pharaoh. Jerusalem is the new Egypt.

The people of God have become the very thing that God saved them from.

Moses has earlier warned that if they did choose a King he “must not acquire great numbers of horses…. He must not take many wives, or His heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold”. (Deuteronomy 11)

So lets see. Solomon: horses, yep; wives, yep; silver and gold - yep.

In the midst of that verse there is a telling phrase “His heart will be lead astray”. That harkens back to the first commandment - where God is to be their first love. Solomon has forgotten where the centre is. He has forgotten why he is where he is.

It didn’t take long; around 400 years, but the people of God have become the empire. The new humanity has been lost amidst slavery, disobedience and greed. They forgot what they were they for - they looked out for themselves and not for the things of God. Instead of being bearers of grace and mercy, liberation and freedom they chose greed, wealth and comfort.

And so God finds himself in a bit of a position.

How do you deal with it when you’re people become the oppressors?

What do you do when the image the world is seeing is your image?
What happens when your body looks nothing like you?

Well thats what exile is for…

(The following is inspired by Rob Bell’s book Jesus wants to save Christians; along with another book called Unveiling empire - reading Revelation then and now)

Let me take you to the moment it all began. Not to Genesis. Not to Golgotha. Let me take you to the foot of Mount Sinai.

The Hebrews (descendants of Jacob) have been slaves for 400 years in Egypt - the world superpower of the day. They weren’t servants, they were definitely not equals, they were slaves. Slaves. The sort of people you beat around, force to work and generally use until they die. The sort of people who are expendable, because there are so many of them. The sort of people an empire relies on to be the plebs, the bottom of the ladder, the ones to stand on and abuse in order to make the system work.

Just three months ago they managed to escape Egypt, led by Moses with the help of a few plagues. They crossed the Red Sea in some style, walked for a while, and then found themselves at the foot of Mount Sinai.

And this is where it begins.

God sets out His stall.

We know this moment as the ten commandments, but that name makes me feel like its a set of rules to follow. Its so much more than that.

This is where God defines humanity.

The God who created everything speaks directly to a group of people, and tells them how they are going to live, interact and relate to each other. He tells them the way He dreams humanity would live. And then He tells them to be the dream.

And He pulls no punches; He meets empire head on and shows them what He thinks about it.

To the people who have spent 400 years being told that Pharaoh is the God above all He says: “You shall have no other God’s before me”. He puts Himself firmly, immovably in the centre of their existence. He is God - there is no other.

To the people who have been surrounded by the gods of Egypt, the statues, the temples, the altars, He says: “You shall not make for yourself an idol”. He doesn’t want anything to represent Him, to try to capture Him - but why? Go back a few generations to Abraham and you get the answer. God wanted His people to be His idol; to be the expression of himself to the world. He told Abraham that He would bless Him, so that he would be a blessing to the world. Here, in this moment He reaffirms that call - He tells His people what their purpose is. He wants them to show the world what He is like.

Next, He tells them not to misuse (literally ‘to carry falsely’) the name of God. He wants them to express Himself to the world, so He follows that up by telling them to make sure that they do a good job of it. You could say He’s telling them “Don’t make me look bad”.

And then, to the people who have been used, abused and beaten mercilessly with hard work and labour He speaks an astounding word of grace. “Six days you shall labour, but the seventh day is a Sabbath”. For six days you will work, but the seventh - that is His day, a day of rest. God institutes a way of ensuring people can keep going, keep working. He institutes a way of making sure humanity prevails…

With the remaining commandments God unravels for them what community looks like - he tells how they are to relate to each other. He shows them that they aren’t individuals, but they belong to each other, that they need to respect each other and look out for each other.

And after He defines humanity He goes on to expand on what it looks like.

He tells them to be set apart (holy), and not to be like the nations that surround them. He tells them to live in community - to look out for each other, and treat each other with justice and mercy. He creates laws that ensure one can never be in power over the rest, such as jubilee and land ownership. He creates laws that ensure they look out for the poor and the stranger among them. He even creates laws that make sure they look after the creation that He has made for them.

Like I said, its more than a set of rules. Its much more.

God asks these people to show the world who He is, and what He is like, by the way they live, by the way they act. He asks them to be His body on earth.

God wants them to be a nation “shaped not by greed, violence, and abusive power but by compassion, justice and care for one’s neighbour”. He wants them to be anti-Egypt, anti-empire. He wants them to show the world there is a different way of living altogether.

He even gives them a way of remembering what it was like to live under the Egyptian empire.

He creates a festival that they are to celebrate every year called Passover during which they re-enact the night they left Egypt. They celebrate leaving Egypt. There is even a moment in the festival where the youngest of the family asks “Why is it that we are doing what we are doing?” - and the story is explained. God wanted to make sure that they don’t forget their story, that they don’t forget what He has done for them.

He wants to make sure they don’t forget what empire looks like.

I’m really looking forward to the Wells weekend this Friday and Saturday. It should be a great moment of sharing vision and stepping forward into the future together.

Adrian and I have been preparing a joint talk for the Saturday morning which is coming together really well - should be challenging and inspiring.

See you there!!

Ryan

Man’s chief end

I’ve been thinking a little about the phrase from the Westminster Catechism that says “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”. Not that I’m trying to disagree with a well formed statement, but I’m not sure it quite says everything it needs to.

In the beginning there was nothing but God. All three parts of Him. The Father, source of wisdom, power, knowledge and love; the Word - the spoken expression of who God is, declaring His greatness, His wonder, His majesty; and the Spirit - the guide, the conscience, the breath of God.

Who knows how long the trinity existed before they decided to create everything - it probably can’t even be measured as time was yet to exist! Together the three members of the God head existed as a perfect, beautiful community - each displaying love to the others, and submitting in beautiful reverence to the other roles within the community. Some use the word ‘perikinesis’ to describe this communion - the dance of the Godhead. What a beautiful representation of how community is to work - a dance, a free flowing creative expression of life.

At some point the Godhead decided that the love they had for each other, the community they shared, was overflowing. It is in God’s nature to express creativity, and so using that creativity they created the universe. Out of the very mouth of God all that we know and see - all that we can’t yet see even with our technology and science - was created.

At the pinnacle of creation, after 5 days of God creating and seeing that “it was good” - God formed some dust into a body, breathed life into it and created man. No longer was “good” enough to express creation, no no. Creation was now “very good”. The creation of one man, one life, one flesh took creation from “good” to “very good”. The Godhead had created the purpose of creation - mankind.

But why?

Simple. God wanted to express his love.

Man’s chief end is not just to enjoy God and glorify Him. That is far too one sided. That discounts the entire purpose of creation. Yes we are to bring Him Glory. Yes we are to enjoy Him. But those are side effects - not the core reason.

The purpose of creation was… so that He could love us. Let that sink in.

God created

everything

so that He

could love

You.

How does that make you feel? Does that change how you look at yourself? It should!

Don’t get bogged down in all the wrong, all the sin, all the imperfection you see in yourself. Those things are there, those things are real and need to be said sorry for. But…

God created everything so that He could love you.

So don’t you think he can get past the other stuff, which is pretty small in comparison to the universe, to still love You despite your sin, your wrongdoing, your imperfection?

It gets better still… stay with me.

The Hebrew writers of the Old Testament had no concept of the word perfection. It wasn’t a thought that even existed in their mindset. The progression of God saying things were good, until man came and it became very good was meant to continue. There is no doubt in Hebrew scolars’ mind that things could have become very very good, or very very very good. God’s intention was that in community with man, as he already expressed in the trinity, creation would get even better. So you could say that…

God created everything so that He could love you, and be in communion with you.

That’s why heaven isn’t going to just be a worship party. If we’re going to get back to the restoration of the original plan for humanity, then God has so much more in mind. We’re going to create an ever increasingly more wonderful, more God worshipping, more mind-blowing creation through the expression of our communion with God.

Amazing.

God wants relationship with you. He wants you to be part of his trinity-community. You could say when you join in it becomes a quad-rinity - isn’t that amazing?

He wants this so much, that one of the God-head chose to be human, chose to take upon himself all the frailty and fragility that came with the sinful path chosen by Adam, chose to succumb to death despite living a perfect life, so that He could say sorry for our sin and become the sacrifice that means God no longer sees any sin in us. If we believe in him and what he has done for us, then we are ‘in Christ’ - meaning God looks at us and sees Christ in our place. He sees perfection instead of sin. He sees obedience instead of disobedience. He sees love instead of hate. He sees acceptance rather than rejection…

Jesus didn’t become human for a season, he chose it for eternity. When we see him in heaven we will see the scars that he bore for us, we will see his humanity. God scarred himself forever, so that we can be part of his community. That is how much he loves us. That is how much he wants us to be in communion with him.

God created everything, became human, chose pain and death for himself, so that He could love you, and to be in communion with you.

Please receive that truth. Please let it sink it.

It is freeing. It is liberating. Its is something worth rejoicing over and living for.

God wants to be in relationship with you. Whatever excuse you can think of to argue against that is meaningless in the light of what he has done for you. Nothing you can ever do can take away from the sacrifice he made just to be available to you.

It is totally unfair, it is totally one sided, but that is the expression of God’s love for you.

Your part is to just say yes, accept him - that really is all it takes…