Two weeks ago, I introduced the biblical themes of exile and plague as a means of letting the Bible (rather than the news!) interpret the season of coronavirus. Last week, I wrote that God uses both exile and plague to call his people to repentance, and mentioned the general sins that Americans have—an over-dependence upon money, idolizing personal freedom, and the failure to care for the vulnerable. As we move forward, I encourage you to continue to pray that God will show us how to repent and follow him in these areas.
Today and next week, I want to turn specifically to two major components of exile that we are experiencing. These are a forced fast from the worship God himself instituted and a forced season of Sabbath rest. Next week will be devoted to the forced fast from worship, and this week to the forced season of Sabbath.
Although there are several periods of exile recorded in the Bible, the major, 70-year exile to Babylon was explicitly connected to the Sabbath. The failure to keep the Sabbath year (no crops were to be planted 1 year out of 7) was one of the reasons for the exile, and its length corresponded to the number of Sabbath years the land had been denied (Lev. 25:2-4; Lev. 26:33-35; II Chron. 36:21).
Christians can legitimately disagree on how to keep the Sabbath. Jesus showed that we are not bound by a strict Jewish interpretation. He used the Sabbath to heal others and allowed his hungry disciples to pick and “snack on” grain as they walked by a field. He declared that the Sabbath was for our benefit, and certain things were permissible that a legalistic observance prohibited. But he did not abolish the day, nor excise it from the 10 commandments! In Hebrews 4, we learn that the Sabbath was given as a foretaste of the rest that awaits us in heaven, and therefore it is more important than we tend to think. Sabbath, or true rest in God, is our future in the new kingdom! We need concrete practices in the present to prepare for what lies ahead. (This principle applies in most areas—what we do in the present should reflect what will be true of us in heaven. Pilgrims who are walking forward to their true home live according to this true home.) Even if the way we honor the Sabbath is more fluid than the Jewish model, it should be no less important to us to develop Sabbath practices.
Honoring the Sabbath necessarily means resting from our work in the world’s economy. Many of us are experiencing a form of this right now, and many are finding that it is hard and frustrating. We long for rest, but when given too much of it, we get restless. We define ourselves by our occupations; ceasing from work unmasks our misplaced identities. Rest forces us to ask the question, “Who am I?” It confronts us with the fact that our identities in Christ are fairly unformed, while our economic identities are well-established. It is dislocating for our soul when we lose our purpose, and Sabbath reveals that our purpose is defined more readily by the world’s economy than by the kingdom of heaven.
Honoring the Sabbath also confronts us with our lack of trust. We work and save because we assume that it is only by our work that we will be secure. Trusting that God will provide is difficult, and when we stop working, we are reminded of our dependence, our limitation, and our mortality. We avoid these thoughts through work and amusement. Actually ceasing from work and amusement is like fasting—our frailty and discontent come rushing to the surface. What if my efforts aren’t enough? What if it all comes crashing down? What will happen to me? Am I worth anything? The questions come quickly when there is no work to justify our existence or amusement to distract the heart.
We are in a season of forced Sabbath. Even if you are still working, you likely have more time on your hands than you want! I encourage you to use this season to go deep into Jesus for your identity. Let him define you. Allow the questions of trust and identity and justification to come to the surface, and let Christ, not your work, answer them. His answer, unlike our own, is gentle and kind.
In Christ,
Steven+
What are the people of God supposed to learn in moments like this?
Last week I introduced the ideas of exile and plague as a means of understanding how to live faithfully in the present. As I said then, I am not a prophet and am not claiming that God is judging us!
Instead, given that we are experiencing elements of exile and plague, I simply want to be faithful to the word of God by asking, “What are the people of God supposed to learn in moments like this?” It is easy to let how we think about the current situation be dictated by the media, our personal political philosophy and our understanding of medicine. While we can learn from these sources, our ultimate guide is the word of God. It must dictate our thinking. What does it tell us about times of exile? What does it tell us about times of plague?
As I said last week, I am addressing the church, rather than secular culture, because the pursuit of God and the willingness to let Scripture interpret history must begin in the family of God. As the adage goes, we cannot give what we do not have. If we are unwilling to hear what the Bible says about this season, we cannot expect those outside the church to listen.
The summary of biblical theology on both plague and exile is that God uses them to call people to repentance. His mission is the reconciliation and re-creation of the all things in his Son, Jesus Christ. Whenever plague and exile occur, it is because mankind, as a whole, needs to be called back from its headlong pursuit of the wrong things and reconciled to God.
This raises the question: From what wrong pursuits are we supposed to turn back? By what are we tempted? Before answering this question, I must begin by stating that each of us has our own, particular place where we are pursuing and trusting the wrong thing. I encourage you all to ask God to reveal to you where you personally need to repent and trust God anew.
But we also have tendencies as a culture, and the Bible brings up certain issues frequently because mankind is always tempted by certain types of faithlessness. As a culture, we are overly dependent on our money, and assume that money will solve the problems of life. We are also, as a culture, fixated on the idea that the highest common good is personal freedom. Thoughtful Christian philosophers and theologians have noted that the right to live our lives exactly as we please is the chief virtue of modern America, and that personal pleasure is the primary use of freedom. The Bible’s explicit claim that freedom is only given so that we might become servants of righteousness and slaves of God falls on deaf ears in America. Our cultural understanding of freedom for the sake of personal fulfillment and pleasure has infected the church. As a whole, the church in America has abandoned the notion that the Sabbath is still supposed to be kept (more on this next week!). We are also often deaf to the preaching of the prophets, apostles, and Jesus himself concerning the vulnerable. Throughout the Bible, God says frequently that he longs for his people to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, protect the orphans and widows, visit those in prison, bring the homeless into our homes, and receive the sojourner (i.e., immigrant). We are tempted to let our political systems tell us what to think about these people, rather than letting the Bible transform our political thinking.
Perhaps most of all, though, we face the temptation that all men and women who have ever lived have faced. We face the temptation to depend on something (on anything!) other than God. We face the temptation to be our own gods or let something we long for be god for us. Faith, the absolute dependence on God alone, is difficult, and we are face-to-face every day with the temptation to trust something else.
I hope and pray that we would let the word of God examine us in this season, and that we would repent of the places where we have trusted in the wrong god. I hope and pray that the church learns from this experience to worship and serve God alone. It is only in him that we will find rest for our souls, and he alone is worthy of our adoration.
In Christ,
Steven+
Interpreting the Current Season
There are two frequent biblical images that apply to the church in America today: exile and plague. While we are not in exile from our native land, we are experiencing a form of exile. And while the coronavirus pales in comparison to the Black Death, it is still a sickness that has swept the globe causing death and panic.
Naming our situation with these biblical images helps us to analyze it and begins to show us how to live faithfully in the present day. For the next few weeks, I want to explore several lessons of exile and plague. But today, to set the stage, I want to offer a brief overview of these images:
Exile and plague are the result of unfaithfulness to God and his commandments. When the people of God are idolatrous and ignore the will of God, plagues and exile follow. God is not the author of evil—the Bible is explicit on this point—yet he does at times remove his protecting hand and allow the natural fruit of sin to afflict his people when they are persisting in it. The natural fruit of sin is exile and death (plague is a subcategory of death). We see this in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden. Afflicted with mortality, they are driven from their true home. Deuteronomy and the prophets are full of warnings to this effect: reject God and his commandments, and plague and exile will follow.
Yet God never allows plague and exile for the sake of destroying his people. These two natural results of sin are always allowed by God so that his people would repent. Every plague that afflicts Israel is an invitation to repentance; every period of exile is an invitation to repentance. God’s desire is the flourishing of his people, yet there are times when their disobedience and idolatry must be stopped before it destroys them forever. God allows exile and plague to call them back to himself.
The experience of plague is self-explanatory, and the fact that I am applying it to our current situation likely self-evident. But it is probably necessary to state why the biblical image of exile fits the situation we are in. Simply, one of the marks of exile is the inability to worship God in the way and place that he himself commanded. We hear this in the Psalm 137, which was quoted last week. “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres…How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” The people of God were banished from the temple of God and forbidden the sacrifices that God himself instituted. We too have been shut out of churches and kept from the worship that God himself instituted—the sacraments! Sabbath is also intertwined with exile, and also applies to us. Judah refused to listen to God in this regard, and so he drove them from the land so that the land could have its Sabbath! The seventy years of exile fulfilled all the Sabbath days that the people failed to keep. They had worked when they should have rested because they did not trust God and desired material prosperity more than obedience. We too live in a culture that prizes material prosperity above obedience and struggles to trust that God will provide. The church has effectively disregarded God’s command to honor the Sabbath. Thus we too have been forced into a type of Sabbath as our economy has ground to a halt.
Before I close, I must state the obvious—I am not a prophet. I do not know without doubt that God has allowed this period for these particular reasons. I cannot state without hesitation that this period is his judgment, or even his discipline. I also must acknowledge that there are righteous people in churches across America who have faithfully followed God. Yet we will not be harmed by hearing the lessons of exile and plague, and should always be willing to hear the call to repentance. You might also wonder why I am speaking simply of the church, as secular America has rejected God and his will in a far greater way than the church has. I am addressing the church because repentance must begin with the household of God. We cannot call our nation to repentance if we refuse to let God’s word examine us. We would be negligent and unfaithful if we refused to ask, “God, what do you want us to hear in this time?”
We will explore over the next few weeks what is supposed to come out of a period of exile and plague. Particularly, we will explore repentance, worship, and Sabbath. I hope and pray that the church in America emerges from this time with a greater willingness to follow God and a greater desire to participate in the redemption of our land.
Steven+