Jerusalem in 586-584 BC looked like Afghanistan today (20 August 2021). Then the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar had captured the capital, Jerusalem, for the third time in 20 years. This time they were just tired of Judean resistance and sent their combat engineers in to destroy the city. They tore down the walls, destroyed every defensive position, burnt the palaces and the temple and ripped them down stone by stone. The best and the brightest had been taken to Babylon in 605 BC (Daniel and his three companions were in that group) to take their place in the Babylonian bureaucracy (Nebuchadnezzar had an empire to run, and empires require bureaucrats who know the territory.) and a new king had been placed on the throne.

Several kings later and it was King Zedekiah’s turn to experience Babylonian justice. The prophet Jeremiah (A thankless job to say the least!) had been warning the people and the political leadership for 30 years that their rebellion against the God of heaven would end in catastrophe. They beat him, starved him, ignored him, and would have killed him many times over had not God prevented it.

Zedekiah received one last warning from Jeremiah: Do not resist Nebuchadnezzar. Submit to his authority and you will live and even keep your throne. Resist and you will pay an unbearable price. Z’s response was that he appreciated the counsel but he didn’t think he could go along with it. Obeying the God he had rejected his entire life just wasn’t in the cards. Well, you know the story, the city fell, Z and his entourage sneaked out the back gate and did a runner hoping to get to Egypt. He didn’t get far. He and his family and officials were captured, taken north to N’s headquarters, tried, convicted, and sentenced to the horror of watching his sons executed, and then having his eyes plucked out so that for the rest of his life the last thing he would remember seeing was the blood of his sons flowing in the courtyard.

Here’s a challenging aside if you’re interested. N’s wholehearted declaration of God’s sovereignty is recorded in Daniel. Daniel, that faithful man of God, was his Prime Minister. It was as a God-fearer that N came against Jerusalem and destroyed it! N was God’s servant executing God’s judgment against the apostasy of Judah. People will often say when you or I as Christians declare and work God’s judgments against evil men and women, “I thought you were a Christian! How can you go to war? How can you kill other people? How can you speak so forcefully against another’s lifestyle or practice? God isn’t like that!” O yes he is. God may be slow to anger, but when he says, “Enough!”, it is enough and his judgments, most often at the hands of other men – good or bad – will come. The meek and lowly Jesus of the New Testament is the LORD of the Old. God has not changed. He hated the rebellion of Judah then and he hates the rebellion of the nations today. His justice may seem delayed, but it is not. For every nation, for every person, there is a cup of iniquity that once filled must be emptied. And that wrath, for the wrath of God is what it is, must either be spent on the rebel or on the rebel’s substitute at Calvary.

Now where was I? Ah, yes, Z is blinded and taken in chains to Babylon. Jerusalem is in ruins and various factions are in contention over who will be in charge of what remains. N has put a Jewish official, Gedaliah, in charge at the temporary capital, Mizpah. The Babylonians caught and released Jeremiah. They tell him he can either go to Babylon with them where they’ll make sure he is well-cared for, maybe even move into Daniel’s palace, or he is free to go be Gedaliah’s spiritual advisor. He chose the later.

G was a good man – naïve but good. He settled into Mizpah and went to work trying to bring some sort of government to the region. And here is where the story gets interesting! As you can well imagine after the collapse of the government, the surrounding nations start looking for opportunities to extend their territories or at least their influence into the fallen land. Ammon was one such nation and Ishmael, one of the minor princes of Judah was their man to make their move. (I mean, seriously, do you think the Taliban moved back into Afghanistan without the support and assistance of Iran and Pakistan? They may not be Iranian or Pakistani puppets, but they are instruments of influence for those two nations, and they have been funded, trained, and equipped by them.) So Ishmael is commissioned to assassinate Gedaliah. You with me so far?

One of the other warlords, and there are plenty, General Johanan by name, comes to G at Mizpah to let him know that Ishmael is working for the Ammonites and is being sent to kill him. Why not, says Johanan, let me take my men and kill Ishamael before he gets to you. No way!, says G, no Jew would ally himself with Ammon and attack Babylon by killing me. You are lying on Ishmael because you’re just jealous of him.
Well, Ishmael kills Gedaliah and a bunch of other people and a little civil war among this remnant of Judah breaks out. Johanan hunts down Ishmael and his men and, although Ishmael gets away, ends the Ammonite adventure. But . . . now Johanan and some of his allies are in charge and they don’t know what to do. They’re afraid the Babylonians are going to exact reprisals for the death of G and the Babylonians who were there in Mizpah. So they do what any reasonable person would do – they ask Jeremiah to inquire of God for direction: should we stay or should we take refuge in Egypt? These must be good guys! They want to know God’s will! Right?
Jeremiah inquires of the LORD, and the LORD replies. “I know you’re scared. You’re afraid the Babylonians will come down on you for Ishmael’s rebellion. They won’t. Stay right where you are. Pick up where Gedaliah left off. Protect the people and care for the land. You are in the middle of a 70-year exile that began with the first invasion. Hang in there. I’m putting all things in order. Don’t go to Egypt. If you do, you will die there of plague, famine, and sword.”

Jeremiah delivers the message, but instead of Johanan lifting his hands in praise for God’s assurances, he says to Jeremiah, “You lie like a rug! God didn’t tell you that! You and that assistant of yours have made this up. We’re going to Egypt. And you’re coming with us just in case we need to inquire of the LORD again.”

It is amazing, although we shouldn’t be amazed, how people want to hear a word from the LORD but only so long as that word agrees with what they’ve already determined in their hearts to do. Johanan was one of those sorta godly men who can really talk the talk but only walk where their desires lead. Egypt was at war with Babylon and so Egypt was the wise man’s refuge. Little did he know, or I should say, he knew what the prophet said but didn’t believe him, that Nebuchadnezzar was soon to set his throne up in the heart of Egypt and bring that dynasty to an end.

Johanan looked like such a good and wise man when he was warning Gedaliah of Ishmael’s duplicity. But his refusal to listen to the word of God through the prophet revealed him to be a religious opportunist. He was in it for himself. He was measured in God’s scales and found wanting.

Let me summarize and get out. God sent Babylon to punish Judah for worshipping the gods of their neighbors. To the one to whom much is given, much is required. God has given revelations of himself and his will to all nations, and by the standards of those general revelations they will be judged. But to Israel and Judah, and to us, he his given us special revelation of himself and his will through the scripture and through his Son, and by those standards we will be judged. He will, not may, but will, punish America and the American church for our rejection of his word and will. I can’t say when or how, but I can say will.

In the story of Johanan we see a man who looked good but inwardly was as corrupt and wicked as those whose rule brought about the destruction of their city. The history of the Church is strewn with the wrecked lives of seemingly godly men who inwardly were just dead men’s bones. Don’t let that discourage or dismay you. God said that’s how it is and how it will be until The Return of the King.

And the story of Jeremiah is the call to be faithful in every circumstance, regardless the pressure to compromise or say what the people want to hear. Be faithful until death and the crown of life awaits!

How to Know the Truth

Jesus said, “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.” But how can we know what it true? Is there a “gold standard” by which we can measure every other utterance or opinion and gauge its truthfulness?

Once upon a time someone said that the best antidote for error was more information. If a lie is stated then meet it with the truth – and the truth will tell. That is no longer the case. With the advent of mass media through the internet we are flooded with information, both true and false, and there is so much we can browse for hours and just go farther down the rabbit hole.
So let me suggest a way forward.

First and foremost, know the word of God – the scripture. And I mean KNOW it. Having a memory verse tucked away here and there to pull out when needed is not sufficient. We have to know the word. We must understand the history, the personalities, the geography, the timing of the word. We must understand the literary structure of the bible and grasp its genres. And we must have been born into the family of God! Without the New Birth we cannot understand the bible no matter how versed we are in all its literary components, but Christ has promised that when we are infilled with the Holy Spirit, he will lead us into all the truth. So, it’s a “Both And.” We must know everything we can about the bible, its structure, and its setting. And then we must be guided by the Holy Spirit in its interpretation.

With a correct understanding of the bible we can then measure all other claims to truth. Let me illustrate. Genesis 1 – 3 tell us how we came to be and what we are. There we find that God made us in his image, in other words, to reflect his character. He made us male and female that we might participate with him in the continuation of creation. Now you pick up the Washington Post or the New York Times and one of their journalists will tell you that a celebrity who was a woman yesterday is a man today. She had her breasts removed and has started taking testosterone to develop male features. Is she now a man? No. God made us male and female. She is now a mutilated woman just as a man who covers his body with tattoos, splits his tongue, and has plastic horns implanted on his head has not become a fantasy monster – he is just a mutilated man.

But let’s take this a little further: can we now trust that journalist and that newspaper to tell us the truth about any other topic? I must say a categorical NO. If they lie about something we know about, we cannot trust them on any subject about which we know little or nothing. That doesn’t mean they intentionally lie about everything, but because we now know they will lie or distort the truth to fit their politics, we have to have reservations about anything they might report.

Now let’s apply this principle to Covid and the governments’ response to it. It Covid a disease? Yes. Is it a disease about which we should be so concerned that we will deprive people of freedom, income, and property? Are the various media telling the Truth about this disease? I don’t think so. If they had a biblical understanding of our mortality, they would not get overly wrought about the death of people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s – regardless the cause. The 90th Psalm says we should live into our 70s and 80s if we are so blessed, but our days are like a morning vapor, here and then gone. So when the media mix and mingle the few deaths of the young and otherwise healthy with the many deaths of the elderly and otherwise ill, we can know they are distorting the facts and telling a lie to advance a political agenda. 90% of those who have died with Covid in the US were over 60. (Which means only 10% were not in the “we expect them to die sooner rather than later” category.) We can be sad about each death, but each of those deaths is an expected death. The God who had determined every day of their lives before they had ever lived a one, had decreed it was their time to die.

Then there’s climate change. We know the climate is changing. We don’t know what that means or how it will effect our lives here on earth. We’ve only had the means to record temperature data for about 140 years and we know from examining the ice sheets and tree rings, etc., the climate has changed radically without our aid multiple times through the millennia. In fact, the climate is always changing – it grows warmer and then grows colder, all without human intervention. A couple of volcanoes will pump out more sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide in a few weeks than humanity will produce in a year. When the media write their scare stories about manmade climate change, they are telling far more than they know to be true. The people who cannot tell a man from a woman cannot be experts on man’s impact on the planet. If we understand the bible, we know that God uses the climate and weather for his purposes – he controls it and not us. We should be good stewards of this planet, but we should never think it is ours to control.

We need to take this healthy skepticism into everything we read whether it comes from left, right, or center, a preacher, a president, or a journalist. Everyone has a bias. Everyone has an agenda. And most reporters lie like a rug.

2 Corinthians 5:16–17 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (ESV)

Galatians 6:14–16 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. (ESV)

The Church is having an identity crisis.

Someone said that 1100 Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, and that may be true. But this is not the issue being addressed in the bible. If your native tongue is Spanish you will want to worship God in Spanish. No, the issue being called out as antichrist is the attitude of ethnic superiority.

The church was born in the synagogue and in the temple. Her Lord and Foundation was and yet is a son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His lineage traced back to Judah and his “son”, David. Jesus was a Jew and the early church was a largely Jewish church, ut it quickly expanded into the larger world of the gentiles. As the church met the world conflicts was almost inevitable. We saw it first right there in Jerusalem almost as soon as the Holy Spirit descended upon her at Pentecost.

Families take care of families, and the early church was a family church. But the Spirit was drawing men and women by the thousands into the fellowship and the widows with foreign roots were easily overlooked in the distribution of aid – and that’s why the church has deacons, to take care that no one is overlooked in the ministries of the church.

Jesus told his disciples to take the good news of reconciliation with God to the whole world, and take it they did. Within 40 years churches had been planted throughout the Roman Empire and was expanding into regions beyond. With growth came growth pains. A people doesn’t give up its sense of uniqueness overnight. The Jews had been the set apart and chosen people of God. It was hard to look at these gentiles, these foreigners, these babblers in strange tongues, as equals, as fellow children of God. But that is what they were!

So we have Paul writing to the churches those verses we read above. Circumcision doesn’t count! Uncircumcision doesn’t count! (Yes, some of the gentile Christians were seeing their freedom from Judaism making them “better” Christians than their tradition-bound brethren.) Look, Paul said, when you became a Christian you stopped being a Jew, or a Corinthian, or a Galatian, or a Roman, or any other ethnicity in all the world. When you were born again, when God made you new, you lost your ethnicity for a new identity all together. You identified with Christ, and with Christ alone.

And that brings us back home. The Church is made of men and women of every nation, ethnicity, language, height and weight. It is a reflection of the peoples of the world. But it is one Church, with one Father, and with one doctrine. It can never fracture along ethnic lines and still call itself the Church. There cannot be a White Church with White doctrine, and a Black Church with Black doctrine. The Church has little to say about ethnicity other than to say the color of your skin or the language you speak matters little or not at all. What matters is, do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you believe his Word? Are you a child of God and a citizen of the kingdom of heaven? Or are you American, or African, or Indian, or Chinese, or . . .

May we truly be one people serving one God and loving one another.

I was listening to the news this morning while driving to a dental appointment. One of the news items was that Mr. Obama was buying a minority interest in NBA Africa. No, I’m not commenting on the marvel of how a poor man becomes rich when achieving high political office, but he has the $$$$$ to buy an interest in the NBA.

What sparked my interest was that he was investing in an Africa project. He’s from Africa. He has family there. He’s interested in Africa and all its varied peoples. And that’s a good thing. He can be a good American and care about Africa. And of course that got me to thinking about the Church and the diversity that exists within her. (I use the feminine pronoun rather that the neuter when referring to the Church – she is after all the Bride of Christ.) I’m not talking here about the diversity of nations, families, clans, ethnicities, and language groups that make up the Church – those are superficials. No, I’m talking about doctrinal diversity.

The Church can be both unified and diverse simultaneously. We must be unified on the fundamentals of the Christian faith: God is. He is unique in all his universe. He has always been and always will be. He is One God in Three Persons who created heaven and earth. There is a rebellion against his rule that began in heaven and is being waged here on Planet Earth. Humanity in our First Parents joined the rebellion and became subject to the death that comes to those who rebel against the Sovereign. God chose, why I don’t know, to redeem and pardon some of them by the death, burial, and resurrection of his Son. To those he has redeemed he has given the Holy Spirit to transform their minds and to make them his own. And he has given them eternal life to be realized when the Son returns to claim his own and to end the rebellion forever. On these facts the Church stands. To reject them is to reject membership in the Church.

But the Church can also be diverse. I often say I don’t even agree with myself! Once we go beyond the Fundamentals as expressed by the early church in the Apostles’ Creed and the other early statements of faith, we are diverse. The church (I capitalize when speaking of the universal body of the redeemed, and lower case when speaking of the human institution.) first divided east and west into the Roman and Orthodox churches, and ever since the Reformation has been dividing into a thousand expressions – some of which at least are still true to the Fundamentals while having different views on matters of church organization and polity, manner of baptism, the partaking of communion, and on and on. A Christian who has a sincere conviction on believer baptism by immersion can have close Christian fellowship with one who is equally sincere in his belief that the aspersion of infants best celebrates the community of faith.

Now back to Mr. Obama. America is not a mono-ethnic nation. As a nation of migrants we come from all the world’s peoples. Even the so-called “white” people come with very diverse family and cultural traditions. It is only right that Mr. Obama have a special interest in Africa. He’s rooted there. It would only be a cause of alarm if he were to start calling for the destruction of our national Declaration of Independence and Constitution and replacing them with some pan-African slogan. He can be fully American and yet be African in the same way that my Christian brother can be fully Christian and be a Baptist or Presbyterian or Assemblies of God, or Church of God in Christ.