Daniel 3 When the state plays god

We usually call this story “Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in the burning fiery furnace.”  But really it is “Nebuchadnezzar and the giant statue – part 2!”  Remember part 1 – Nebuchadnezzar had a powerful, frightening dream about a huge statue with a head of gold, and feet of iron and clay; the only person who could tell Nebuchadnezzar what he had dreamed and what it meant, was Daniel. And what it meant was that he, Nebuchadnezzar, was that head of gold, but that God's kingdom will eventually destroy all empires...  Nebuchadnezzar was at first, very impressed and awestruck. “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.” (2. 47)

But that didn't last long.  Soon, "You are the head of Gold" became an opportunity too good to miss. So the king began again to obsess about his own importance. Never mind the coming kingdom of God that would fill the whole earth and remove all trace of human kingdoms, Nebuchadnezzar was the Head of Gold! 

1. He cherry-picked the bits he wanted from the word God had given him.  There were bits he wanted to hear.  And there were bits that were more convenient to ignore.   Many of us do the same.  We want to hear about God's love,  grace,  forgiveness and healing; spiritual blessings, being God's sons and having a destiny; but not about repentance, following the One who had no place to lay his head, persecution or treating others as better than ourselves
2. He had received blessing, encouragement, some healing as Daniel interpreted his dream for him.  But that hadn't led to a change in him. He had been blessed.  But he hadn't changed. He is still the same mad, self-obsessed guy!  And some of us do that: we receive the good things God wants to give us – his healing, his approval, his promise. But we don't respond by changing our lives.
3. In fact, Nebuchadnezzar uses  the help God has given him, to move further away from God.  Having gained strength and encouragement by being told he was the head of Gold,  he used the very gifts God had given him – the healing and hope – to go further away from God's plan.  And a few of us will do that. We will take what God has given us, a voice, a skill, and turn it against God himself.  

God is gracious. He does heal. He does forgive. He does speak. He does give us a new destiny, purpose, identity & dignity! But he doesn't do that  simply so  that we can build a bigger, better life for ourselves!

So Nebuchadnezzar sets up an image 2.67 m wide and 26.7 m tall. It was massive – like the statue in the dream. And like the statue in the dream, it was either cast of gold or overlaid with gold.  Like the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream it meant the empire itself.  This was “Babylon-fest” with the statue, and the gatherings of people, and the music, a huge rally in support of Nebuchadnezzar’s worldwide empire.  What it speaks of is a world where the state – or the economy or any other human institution – takes the place of God.  Let me give you some examples of that happening in history.  
1. Octavian, later called Augustus,  the first Roman Emperor, took the title “son of the Divine Caesar”.  A hundred years later the emperor Domitian was called “Dominus et deus” or “Master and God”.  The historic creed, “Jesus is Lord” was a radical thing because the Romans claimed “Caesar is Lord”.
2. Around 1785, The “Triangular rout” taking British goods to Africa, African slaves to the West Indies, and West Indian sugar back to Britain, accounted for 80% of Britain's trade, and people said abolition of the slave trade would ruin Britain.  For that reason, abolishing the slave trade took over 25 years of campaigning, led in parliament by a wee man called William Wilberforce, a Christian.
3. In 1936, Adolf Hitler merged most protestant churches in Germany into the Reich Church. This did not have the Christian cross as its symbol but the swastika. The Bible was replaced by “Mein Kampf” which was placed on the altar. By it was a sword. Only Nazis were allowed to preach.
4. At a dinner in the 1960's a young maths student was invited to have coffee with a select group of professors and one of them advised him if he wanted to get on in the scientific world, “give up these childish ideas of God, they will only disadvantage you among your peers.”  That young man was John Lennox, who went on to become professor of Mathematics at Oxford. Many in social work, education, medicine, and business have found that Christian faith and conscience creates problems in the the institutions they work for.   
So any of us who have power, have to be very careful that we don't allow the seat of that power – be tit a church, a family, a classroom, a trade union of a government – to take the place of God, to demand absolute allegiance. Humanity's deepest curse has ever been its own hatred of God and true goodness. (Wallace)    
Shadrach, Meshach & Abed-nego certainly did not feel able to worship the image.  They – and we can guess Daniel and other Jews likewise – simply stayed at home.  Nebuchadnezzar's regime wasn't so obsessed and controlling that it wanted to pry on people's private lives, so all was well until some people denounced them.  Presumably they weren't the only ones but they were the ones who were named and made an example of.  They show us the Miracle of Resistance. The emperor, though angry, was trying to be nice to them, to give them another chance.   “is it true that you have refused to worship the statue?  Well, that can all be in the past; I'm prepared to overlook it if you start  worshipping along with everyone else.  But if you don't you will be thrown into the furnace.”   Their answer, in verses 17f, is wonderful: “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up.”   That's the faith for a miracle.  It was God at work in the three men, God's Spirit shaping and sustaining their character – as he wants to shape and sustain our character, so that we too can show the miracle of resistance when institutions  try to take the place of God and demand our total allegiance.

No wonder the king was so outraged at that stand.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, were still Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, and they were not prepared to give way.  The king orders he furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, the guards who had to throw the three into the fire were burned to death in the process, and the three were joined by a fourth person, who somehow glowed brighter than that white-hot fire; a supernatural being, God's angel.   And they walked around in that place of horror, watched by Nebuchadnezzar and his advisors, until the King called them to come out, and they came, unharmed, not even smelling of smoke.  The Miracle of Rescue.   God is able.  God does work the miracles of rescue.  See Isaiah 43.

And for Nebuchadnezzar, the miracle of resistance rattled him and upset him, but the miracle of rescue that he saw, moved him to a change of heart.  He acknowledges that God “sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set at nought the king's command.”   And in typical Babylonian fashion he not only praises the Lord but orders that anyone who says anything against the Lord is to be torn limb from limb and his home reduced to rubble. “For no other god can save in this way.”(v. 29) Nebuchadnezzar recognises that there is a greater king than himself.   That's the Miracle of Repentance.  It's a turn-around, a change of mind.  It's what happened to a young Jew called Saul who was on the road to Damascus with an arrest warrant for the local Christians. Jesus met him, and he became one of these Christians himself.  Jesus is Lord.  Jesus is King.  And when he announces his Kingdom, he tells us to “repent and believe the Good news.”

Nebuchadnezzar was far from perfect.  Next week we will be looking at another story of Nebuchadnezzar’s life that shows he was still messed up.  God understands we are not perfect.  But he calls us to repent, to change our minds and believe the good news, knowing full well that if we do, we won't be perfect next Sunday.

God does work the miracles of rescue.  But he will not rescue us from the need to make responsible, adult decisions.  In our broken, messed up world, we need to make right, good moral decisions about who will have our loyalty and allegiance. and our worship.  If you are a follower of Jesus, I want to give you the opportunity today, to pray for the miracle of resistance, of the Holy Spirit forming your character so that you can witness for Jesus in our broken world.  And if you are not yet a follower of Jesus,  I want to invite you to experience the miracle of repentance and conversion – to hand your life over to God and let him make of it what he wants to.

© Gilmour Lilly September 2016

Daniel 2: How do I know?

So Nebuchadnezzar has this dream – about “an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance.” (NIV) “an enormous, extraordinarily shiny statue, frightening in appearance.” And when Nebuchadnezzar had the dream, he was disturbed. No wonder! His first instinct was to think “That’s me! Who is more imposing, dazzling, and awesome than me? Whom do people fear more than me?” Because this statue with its head of gold, its chest of silver, waist and thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet of iron mixed with pottery, was knocked into the dust by a rock, that then grew to fill the whole earth. This dream doesn't look good for Nebuchadnezzar, so he – the guy everyone feared – was afraid.

And suddenly, he doesn't know who he can trust. He is asking these questions:

• “How do I know that I am going to get the truth from these guys?” 
• “How do I know that the crawlers and yes-men won't make up some interpretation to flatter me?”
• “How do I know that somebody won't take the opportunity and kill me off if the dream says I am to be toppled anyway.”

So he decides that only someone who knew what the dream was, would be trusted to say what it meant. If someone could tell him what he had dreamed, he would know.

So he calls in the magicians (engravers or writers) and enchanters (mediums) and sorcerers and Chaldeans. All the most educated and plausible and spiritually switched on guys in the empire, the chief advisors and senior priests... and he says “I had a dream last night, and it is doing my head in. Tell me what I dreamed and what it means.” I imagine a long silence. Then one of them speaks up. I imagine, smooth-talking sort of guy, like Sir Humphrey Appleby in “Yes Prime Minister.” “But your majesty, it can't be done like that. If it please your majesty, tell us the dream and we’ll give the interpretation”.

Don't let the sense of comedy detract from the deadly seriousness of the situation. Nebuchadnezzar isn't joking. “I know what you’re up to—you’re just playing for time. You know that if you can’t tell me my dream, you’re doomed.”

Sir Humphrey tries again. “But your majesty, how do we know what you have dreamed? Nobody anywhere can do what you ask. And no king, great or small, has ever demanded anything like this. What you’re asking is impossible unless some god should reveal it—and they don’t hang around with people like us!” That is an admission. Although they – or some of them – were priests and fortune tellers and mediums, men who walked in and out of temples every day, performed rituals, burned incense, studied the stars, maybe had a stab at predicting the future – they had no contact, no relationship, with any of the gods. In fact, despite their religious credentials, they didn't believe that such a relationship was possible. “The gods don't hang with people like us!”

So the paranoid king orders a purge: execute all the “Wise men,” the priests, shamans, intellectuals. And that will include Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah! It was not long before Arioch, the captain of the king's guard, came for Daniel. Courageously, courteously (These were becoming his hallmarks), Daniel engaged him in conversation: “What is going on? Why is the King so angry?” When he found out, he went to the king – no doubt ushered in by someone like Arioch – and asked fro a bit of time and he would interpret the dream ( and by implication find out what the king had dreamed!) It is a remarkable comment on the kind of reputation Daniel already had, that he got in to see the King and won a stay of execution. The King obviously felt that at least there was some possibility of this young Hebrew giving him the answers he needed.

This Daniel guy, How did he know? How could he possibly be any different from the rest of them? That step of faith was possibly the greatest one.... And once they had their extra time, Daniel got his three friends to pray. You kind of think, there must have been a sense of urgency about those prayers. And in the night he knew: it came to him in a vision. He saw what the King had seen. And he praised God for it.

But how did he know? God revealed it to him. The story is awesome in its power; it was a miracle. And it was a miracle of faith and courage, to be taken before the King, and to tell his vision. What if he got it wrong? No amount of education, training or innate wisdom and people skills could have pulled that off. It had to be God.

“How do I know?” is one of the big questions of our day. There is a level of distrust, of suspicion and cynicism in the world we live in.

• How do I know who I can trust? 
•  How do I know that people are not making a fool of me? 
• How do I know I am not just being exploited by other people?
•  How do I know what I know about God?
•  How do I know about the supernatural?
•  How can we be expected to know the King's dream?  
• But how do they know what is possible and what is impossible? 
• How do they know there isn’t a supernatural strand to life to be explored?
  

Daniel knows. He knows because he has prayed. He knows because he has spent the night waiting on God, listening and tuning in to God's voice. He knows because he is prepared to exercise faith. He knows because God reveals it to him. “There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. “

We could stop there. But there's a wee bit more. We need to look at the dream itself and the interpretation. Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, not the whole statue. Each change of metal represented a change of empire. We can see the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman empires represented by the gold, silver, bronze and iron, and even the division of the Roman empire into Eastern and western in the feet of clay. (Although some clever people have different ideas!) So striking is the prophetic force of this, that some people suggest that Daniel must have been written about 150BC, when the Alexander the Great's Greek Empire was declining and the Roman one beginning to rise. But Daniel says “There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.“ So it's not too much for him to predict the coming empires. If there is a “God in heaven who reveals mysteries” then predictive prophecies are a possibility. If there isn't such a god, then we need to explain these prophecies away. It's a matter of world-view. And the more we find out about the Dead Sea Scrolls the more they confirm that Daniel was not written in 150BC, because it is referred to in the Scrolls as part of Scripture and it wouldn’t have been if it had only just been written.

Daniel isn't interested in explaining where each of these empires would arise or what they would be. All that matters is that, despite their different characteristics, whether rich and malleable like gold, or hard and practical like iron, all empires are the same... they may do some good, but in the end they are all proud, oppressive, and none lasts for ever. Not the Roman empire, the dynasties of imperial China, the British empire, the Ottoman empire, the Third Reich the Soviet bloc or Islamic State. Their thrones must fall. A rock knocks the statue down as quickly and finally as David's smooth stone from the river knocked down Goliath.

Babylon was built on a sandy and muddy plain that was fertile because the rivers Tigris and Euphrates carry tons of silt. There isn't a rock in sight, the mountains are way to the north. You've seen the pictures on TV. There wasn’t a rock in sight. It's because of the lack of rock, that all the houses and temples were made of brick. You can make bricks out of mud. So a rock was an unusual thing. The superhuman hand that carves it out, does so from mountains many miles away. It's the hand of God. The same hand of God that had allowed Judah to be take in to exile. The same hand of God that had set Nebuchadnezzar up to become King. God is sovereign, and his Kingdom – not made with hands, brought from heaven by the Lord Jesus Christ – will eventually knock down all the empires of this world, and grow to fill the whole earth.

How do we know? How do we know that the Kingdom of God will triumph? How do we know that the Bible is reliable? How do we know that miracles happened and happen? Like Daniel, we know by faith. We know as we spend time with god. As we pray. As we listen. As we step out on that faith. As God's Spirit surges through us in a power that produces gifts and fruit – supernatural words and works, and strengthened character.

© Gilmour Lilly August 2016

Daniel 1: Young, Smart, and in a Strange Land

Life was not easy, when Daniel was born in Judah, a small country that was under the power of the mighty Babylonian empire.  For a hundred years, Judah had been trying to fend off foreign invaders; their kings weren't much good and the King when Daniel was a young man was called Jehoiakim. He was a puppet – the emperor was pulling the strings.

Pic by Kencf0618, Creative Commons share alike license

Judah had to pay tribute to the empire.  The Babylonians had taken the gold and silver cups and plates from the Temple in Jerusalem; word came back that they had ended up in the temple of one of their gods.  It was like a sign of defeat.  Not only was the temple bare (and soon it would be destroyed) but the cups and plates were in an idol temple. It looked like the Lord wasn't as powerful as the gods of the Babylonian empire.   Why did God allow it?  The prophets had warned that God was more interested in people living right, than in the temple and sacrifices.  So telling the truth, treating each other fairly, avoiding false gods, and really loving the Lord, were more important than sacrifices.  You don't get to be a car by sleeping in a garage; you don't get to be a Christian by hanging around in church.

Eventually the emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, had ordered that the smart young guys from the nobility – people like Daniel, were to be carted off to Babylon.   Imagine it was you. What does it feel like?  What a wrench – to have to leave home,  your Mum and Dad  wondering if you were ever going to see them again. and travel several hundred miles, to start training for a new career. Lots of sadness, a bit of anxiety; and maybe a bit of excitement too.  After all, they had been picked out for special treatment and training. They got to hang with other smart young people; they didn't have to dig the fields or work on a building site; and the food was known to be good. They could have  a good career working for the empire.  Maybe things weren't so bad, after all...

And then when they came to Babylon and saw it....  They had been proud of Jerusalem, with its temple.  But Babylon was so much bigger and more splendid. It was the biggest city in the world at that time.   The River Euphrates ran through it.  It had sixteen splendid gates, decorated with shiny blue tiles; and images of lions, dragons and bulls. The royal palace had huge roof-gardens to keep the queen happy – she was born in the country.  Inside the city were hundreds of temples – and there were temples outside as well.  It was massive and overwhelming. Wow!  It must have Mae them feel like kids from some wee backwater.

And when the training started, it was quite intense.  It was three years – like going to university.  They would have to learn to speak the language of the Chaldeans – like a Babylonian, not with a foreign accent. 

They had their names changed. 
Daniel means “God is Judge” and he was renamed Belteshazzar – “ Bel protects his life”.
Hananiah –  “The Lord shows grace” – was renamed Shadrach – “Command of Aku”
Mishael – “Who is like God?” – became Meshach – “who is like Aku?”
Azariah – “The Lord helps” – became Abed-nego – “Servant of Nebo”
Just so you know, Bel, Aku and Nebo were Babylonian gods.

They were to eat the very best in the land – the same menu as the King, and the same wines.  But they had rules about what they could and could not eat. 

The point is that everything was new, and not just unfamiliar but a deliberate attempt to change them as people.  To make them into something other than what they were.  It was an assault on their nationality and their identity.  Their language, their names, their food laws, were tied up with their values, their worship, their identity.  The idea was that when they finished their three years training, they would think and feel like Babylonians.  They would be no different to the rest of the students.  How do they respond? 

• “Yesss!  I haven't got my mum breathing down my neck!  This is the good life!   Freedom, time to make my own mind up about things, and grab my own opportunities!”  or 
• “Oh dear, I can't hang around with these people.  They're all terrible pagans.  Must keep separate!”

Neither!    They show amazing wisdom, in finding their way around a strange land.  

They knew there are Blessings in Babylon. They were happy enough to learn the language and study the literature of Babylon.  That is a good thing.  They would be able to communicate with the people round about them in Babylon.  They would understand how these people thought.  What were the stories they shared? What were the things they believed?  What was important to them? Learning like that is a good thing.  They didn't have to agree with it all.  But it was important to know.  Guys, we need to understand how people think.  We need to know how to communicate with the people round about us.  There were good things in Babylon.   We need to learn and that is not a bad thing!  

Pic by Bernard Gagnon, creative commons share alike license

They were able to live with their new names.  They  didn't protest at being given Babylonian names, even names that spoke about the Babylonian gods.  But they didn't give up their old names, either. (See Daniel 2. 17, 26 and 4. 8, 19).  Even the King says “Daniel” occasionally!   Why was that?  They knew who they were.  And they knew who their God is.  Nebuchadnezzar could call them whatever he liked, and they would answer.  But they knew they were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.  Guys, to survive in our society, we need to know who we are, and who our God really is.  If we don’t; know who we are, then we become like shape-shifters,  like chameleons, always trying to blend (though Chameleons don't change to camouflage themselves but to reflect their mood!)   And in Christ, every one of us is a brand new creature.  We are all special and valuable. 

They were not, however, willing to eat the King's food or drink his wine.  What was that about?  In Daniels world, food and drink was closely connected with worship. There were rules about food that was clean or unclean. Food was used for sacrifice – and then some of the sacrifice was eaten. Wine was used in toasts to the Babylonian gods.  The Babylonians had taken the cups from the Temple in Jerusalem and later on they would be used in a drunken party.   So this was their cut-off point. Daniel “resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine”  He had fixed in his mind that he wasn’t going to go along with that. He could benefit from the learning, even learning about the gods of Babylon    He could live with being called Belteshazzar.  But he wouldn't toast the gods of Babylon or eat their food. He had the Lord. That was all he needed.  The gods of Babylon, Greece, Rome, and of secularist atheism, are all part of the natural world.  Daniel's God, our God, is not part of the natural world, but outside, before and beyond it.  So Daniel and his three friends protest.
Ashpenaz, the guy in charge of their well-being, is worried.  “Look, if you guys start to get plooks and runny noses, and they find out it's because you've not been eating the royal food, it's me who will get my had cut off!”   They do it gently, respectfully, carefully, understanding how Ashpenaz feels.  They make a deal, confident that God will look after them and keep them healthy: try us for just ten days.  Then see if we look OK.  In challenging what is wrong in our world, we need to do so with gentleness, compassion and understanding.

What made them able to do this?  I believe there were three things:
Commitment: they had drawn their line in the sand,  they were not going to cross it whatever it cost.
Confidence: they knew what they believed and why they believed it and expected God to be big enough to look after them.
Companionship: they were in this together; they supported one another, prayed for one another, talked things through with one another. 

And after ten days, they are looking healthier than those who have been guzzling the King's food and wine.  And after three years, they are top of the class. Straight A's. The combination of hard work, commitment and faith pays off. But it's more than that. .These four are “ten times better” than not just the other students but the experienced magicians and enchanters. This is a miracle. It's supernatural.  God has done it.  God doesn't guarantee that we will always prosper like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.  But he does promise that when we engage sensitively and wisely in our world, he will come through and work a miracle in our lives.

Finally, a word to those who are older.   The book we are studying is called “Daniel.”  Not “Belteshazzar”!  Although some of the action happened to a bunch of teenagers, Daniel survived into old age, and wrote his story down.  It is the testimony of a man who has proved God.  What an important place there is today, not just for the teenagers, not just for the young mums and dads.  But there is a vital role for the older people, the grannies and grandpas, who have proved God, and who can continue to say in a difficult and challenging world “Keep at it.  God is for real, and he does come through and answer our prayers.” 

© Gilmour Lilly 2016

Jonah 4: The Heart. God's love, mission and our pain

God's heart for the lost and for us

So Jonah has heard God's call to go to Nineveh.  He has followed his initial reaction to recoil at the very idea of giving an enemy empire the opportunity to turn to God.  Running away from God he has ended up in a fierce storm, and has seen pagan sailors show more of  a heart for God than he had at that point.   He has prayed a prayer of commitment and faith, from the darkest place.  Then he has had a second chance, and has gone to Nineveh and preached – with results that any self-respecting preacher should be thrilled with.  But Jonah isn't thrilled. He is angry. 

So he prays.  It's an interesting prayer: an angry prayer  from a mixed-up and angry heart. But at least he is, in the midst of his darkness, again praying.  God has wide enough shoulders to cope with our angry prayers.   For some of us, if we take nothing else from Jonah 4, we need to hear this.  It's OK – and even necessary – to shout at God, and tell Him what we feel like.

He says to the Lord “I knew it.  It's just typical. I come and preach to this lousy lot of sinners, and what do you do Lord?  You go and send revival.  I knew you’d do it.  You're too soft, Lord, with your your compassion and your covenant love.  I knew you were going to show chesedh (the Hebrew word for Covenant love) to Nineveh....  But I always thought Israel was your covenant people!  I'd rather die than watch Nineveh getting into a covenant with you.”  His heart and his theology were wrong. 

And God challenges him.  The Voice, still and quiet, says “You're angry Jonah.”

“Yes, Lord”

“And you feel you are right to be angry?”  “The purpose” says A J Glaze “was to lead Jonah to reflection so that he could see himself.”  But God doesn't do that by accusing Jonah or pointing the finger.  God could have said,  “Jonah, you disobeyed me once, I have looked after you through all of that, and still you are bitter, and too thick to understand my plan for the nations”.  But he doesn't.  Rather, he gently helps Jonah to see that his heart and theology are wrong.

Image: G Lilly

And just how wrong.  He ends up sitting on the hillside, makes a bivouac out of a few leafy branches,  and watches to see what will become of Nineveh.  He's thinking, “Maybe they haven’t really repented.  Maybe God can see through all the crocodile tears.  They won't keep it up.   Maybe God will judge them after all.”  So he's watching, waiting for an earthquake, a bolt of lightning, a plague of locusts, or an enemy army appearing over the horizon.  And it's hot up the hill; the leaves on his shelter shrivel up and let the sun in.  Jonah is miserable, exhausted from his adventures, his journey, his preaching.  So God causes a plant to grow over his wee hut, to keep the sun from burning Jonah.  That's better, “Thank you Lord!”

Then next morning, just as Jonah is beginning to feel comfortable again, God sends a worm to attack the plant and it dies, as quickly as it has grown up.  The sun gets even hotter and there is an east wind, the sirocco, blowing across the desert, bringing more heat and dust and drying out the air.  Poor old Jonah is even more miserable than before.  Once again, the depression and self-pity come out: “Lord, take away my life,  it's not worth living!”

Then the still, small voice, again:

“You're angry, Jonah.” 

“Yes, Lord.”

“And you feel you are right to be angry?”

“You bet I do.  I feel so angry I wish I was dead!” 
This guy was really messed up!  There is a connexion between our thinking and our feeling.  Psychology talks about negative automatic thoughts (things that just seem to arrive in your head from nowhere) coming from distorted ideas and dysfunctional beliefs.   Jesus says the truth will set you free – and that implies that deception, wrong thinking, can make you a prisoner. 

Image: G Lilly

We can see a connexion between commitment to an ugly, violent and hate-filled belief system, and poor mental health: that has become obvious in the actions of the attackers in Nice, Rouen, and Bavaria in the last two or three weeks.  You can see it in ISIS; you can see it in an entity like Westboro Baptist Church; you can see it in racism and white supremacism – and in the “Black supremacism” of Mugabe's Zimbabwe; we can see it in the intolerance that some on both the left and the right in politics have for anyone who opposes their own extreme views.  If we allow hatred, racism, and a feeling of superiority in, it will make us ill.

Then there is a much more personal level.  Remember that Jonah was already worn down physically by what he had experienced in the past few weeks or months.  He had been at risk of his life and indeed had been prepared to die during the storm (In chapter 1).  He had gone through a physically trying experience in the belly of the fish. He had been on a journey overland from Israel to Nineveh; he had been preaching to people he didn't know or like or relate to.  He was doing something for God that he didn't understand.  Physically and emotionally, things had happened that were tearing him apart. His world-view began to fall apart – because God refused to hate the people Jonah hated.  He began to feel he had been humiliated and made to look like an idiot – after all his prophecy of doom was not going to happen.  As a result, he began to sink into the mire of “Poor little ol' me!”  Life's not worth living.  

He wasn't the first person in the Bible to be there.  Moses got so tired and overwhelmed with the task of looking after the Israelites, that he said to the Lord “You may as well kill me now!” (Numbers 11.  15).  Elijah got burned out through hard work, opposition and  a sense of failure, and said “Take away my life for I am no better than my fathers”.  (1 Kings 19. 4)

So if that is where we are today, feeling “Life's not worth living” we are not alone.  We may need to get someone to help us.  To listen, to tell us we are loved; to help us explore the roots of our struggles; to pray with us.  And there are some things we can begin to do for ourselves: we can begin to challenge our deeply held and unhealthy ideas about ourselves, the people around us and the future.

God is there for Jonah Gently but firmly, God speaks: “You valued your plant, with its big leaves, although you didn't plant it or look after it.  Shouldn't I value Nineveh and its thousands of people?  I planted and looked after them.  I am their Father, too.  And they are so lost...”

And that's the punch-line. Boom-boom. Abruptly, the book comes to an end.  God has a heart for broken people.  He has a heart for broken pagans in Nineveh.  He has a heart for the nations.  In his sovereignty, God had sent the storm, the fish, the plant, the worm, and the burning sirocco: and the point isn't that we should resign ourselves  to wahtever bad stuff comes along as the purposes of God.  The point is that God exercised his sovereignty and used sometimes drastic means, to bring his message and his grace to Nineveh.   Look outside, down these streets.  What is there?  People who don't know their left hand from their right, morally, spiritually, emotionally.  People who are spiritually hungry and thirsty.  People who may be praying even as we are hankering for the simplicities of the past, sleeping to block out the present and despairing for the future.  God loves our Nineveh. And it’s called Rosyth!

Image: G Lilly

And he has a heart for broken Jonah.  The book ends here: but his story goes on: whoever wrote the story of Jonah – if it was not Jonah himself – must have information from Jonah.  So Jonah. was, in time,  able to talk about  his story.  He went on to develop an understanding of Yahweh as the God of all nations; and to grow a heart that reflected that understanding: a heart that cares for the last, the lost and the least; a heart that was secure in having God as his Heavenly Father.  God exercises his power to bring his grace and compassion to the lost, and to bring his healing to his people do that we can be able to bring his grace to the lost.

© Gilmour Lilly 2016

Jonah 3: The mission: being part of a move of God

Image by G Lilly

The call   Verses1-3a.
We have learned (Chapter 1) about the “voices” that surrounded Jonah and about how we must recognise the voices of our own prejudice, God's love, our spiritually hungry neighbours – and find our own voice in testimony; and we have learned (Chapter 2) how to pray, in the darkest of circumstances, a prayer of faith and commitment.  Jonah has come through these experiences, he has messed up pretty badly; and in fact he is still messed up pretty badly; and again the Voice says to him “Go to Nineveh!”.  This time, there is no argument.  “OK, Lord, I'll go!” 

God takes the initiative.  Not Jonah.  God's grace is at work for Jonah – generously calling Jonah to be involved in what God is doing, despite Jonah failings.  God calls Jonah again: he goes, not because he wants to; he goes not  because he sees things differently.  His heart and this theology are still lagging behind – but with his will he decides to go and preach in Nineveh.  God's grace is at work for Nineveh, quietly insisting that the people of Nineveh will have their opportunity to hear God's word, God's warning,and to turn to Him.   

The City  Verse 3b
As he calls Jonah, God refers to Nineveh. as “That great city” (v. 2).  And as Jonah goes, the writer tells us Nineveh was “very large” (NIV) or “Great to God” (Heb)  – three days' journey to cross.  Some people wonder how accurate this all is:  the writer says “Nineveh was huge” (past tense).  Does that mean the Jonah story was written many years after Jonah lifetime?  Not necessarily.  Is the size of Nineveh. exaggerated?  No.  “Nineveh.” can refer to both the walled city – which was fairly small – and to  “the Greater Nineveh” district centred on and governed by the city, an area that would be three days' travel to cross.  (That would make sense of the talk about cattle as well as of the dimensions of the place.)

Therefore Nineveh was  a place of significance: a populous city and region and the capital of an empire.  And it was “great to God” – not just a figure of speech but a statement of theological truth.  Do we need to understand the significance of the place God has called us?  It may be bigger than we think; and it is important to God. 

The message   Verse 4. 
When Jonah arrives in Nineveh, he begins to preach (the only actual prophecy in the book): “In forty days Nineveh will be overthrown!”  Jonah preaches without offering, apparently, any hope of repentance, restitution or reconciliation. But he knew such things were likely to happen; but his heart wasn't in it.  How do we handle a message of judgement in our world?  Does it come too easy to preach a message like that? Too often as Christians we are seen as "against" things: we need to find a better way of being God's people.   How do we preach judgement without preaching an angry, finger-wagging god?  

• We live in a moral universe.  There is a difference between “right” and “wrong”. Right now I am not going to go into the details of where the boundaries lie. Simply to say that there is “right” and “wrong”.  And that is a good thing.  In a world where the rich get richer and richer, and the poor get poorer and poorer; in a world of Hitlers and Stalins and PolPots and Mugabes, a world of polluted rivers and shrinking ice caps, an world where slavery still persists on several continents, a world where the rule of law is simply an excuse for oppression and a euphemism for the survival of the fittest, it is a good thing, that there is a moral dimension. 
• We have a moral God. That moral dimension in the universe is there because God is a moral being. He has standards.  There is a “judge of all the earth” and he “shall do right”.  There is judgement to come for all the evil in our world – and we are all part of that. 
• The Jesus story – his life, death and resurrection – are about the actions of a moral God.  In his life he demonstrated the rule of God: the justice and compassion of God in contrast to the mess in a broken world.  In his death, he dealt with the sin inside us: he judged it.  If you want to know how God feels about evil, look at the cross. Jesus Christ was “overthrown” in our place.  He took our judgement and defeated our enemy.   In his cross the love and the justice of God meet.  In his resurrection, it becomes clear that there is nothing else that anyone can throw at Jesus, the sacrifice and the victory are complete.  “Right” will triumph in the world.  There is mercy for every person who calls out for it – because the judgement has already been handed down.
• And at the end, nations will be overthrown.  All evil will be overthrown.  But those who have thrown their lot in with Jesus and sought his kingdom have an escape, a hope for the future in a Kingdom where injustice and evil have been overthrown for ever.  Salvation and the Kingdom of God are fundamentally rooted in the morality, the justice, of God. 

So we are to preach the justice, the judgement, and the mercy of God.  We live in a moral universe, and every man and woman needs to be ready for that justice. 

The response  Verse 5 -10 
When Jonah preached, the city repented,  “from the greatest to the least”.  This looks like a grass-roots movement:  somebody, somewhere in Nineveh, began fasting in repentance, and before long his neighbours were fasting and telling their neighbours to fast too.  Normally the Government would do something like call the people to fast.  That is is why the NIV fudges the translation by saying “a fast was proclaimed”.  But the Hebrew clearly says “The people believed God and proclaimed a fast."

Eventually the news – a summary of Jonah's message – reached the King.  He was then running to catch up.  He makes the fast “official” – and includes animals as well as people. Verse 8 in the Hebrew is literally  “let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God” (AV) 

Image by G Lilly

That may seem a bit extreme: how can the cattle pray? Apparently the King and his officials did not see a problem, nor did the person who wrote the story.  The Gospel message calls for action not semantics – quibbling over the meaning of words. Never mind if the grammar isn't right.  Never mind if you didn't like the opening song or  you'd prefer it if the preacher was wearing a dog collar and gown.  If the message of the Cross, the message of God's justice and God's love, makes sense to you, then you need to do what the people of Nineveh did: believe it and repent: turn your life over to God.  

The constant bellowing of hungry cattle would have been a reminder to the people of what they were doing and why they were doing it.  Specific sins including violence are mentioned.  Here is a head of state and a people ready for transformation.  Here is the kind of societal, national transformation that defines “revival”. It's a bit like the impact of the Gospel on the culture of Ephesus (Acts 19).

And God relented and did not judge the city.  It survived – and went on to strengthen its position as the epicentre of a powerful empire (not alwasy a very nice empire!) 

Revival is like that: it can change the trajectory of a nation. It can avert judgement.  Spiritually it is from heaven down: it starts with God.  But socially it is from the bottom up.  But its results are always mixed and never permanent. Nineveh didn't remain a revival centre.   In the 1929 a move of God started that became known as the “East Africa revival”.  It started in Rwanda, and spread to Kenya and Uganda.  But it didn’t prevent Rwanda from having a civil war and genocide in the 1990's.   Each generation must turn to God for itself, in its own way, in its own time. 

So, people of God, like Jonah, we are not perfect.  Our hearts may not be right; our theology may not be right.  But God calls us to go to our Nineveh... to our world... to get out there, out of our comfort zone. Because he loves the world... God calls us to see our city as “Great to God”  and worth reaching with the Good News. Because he loves the world...

God calls us to proclaim this message of justice and mercy, meeting at the Cross.  Because he loves the world...  God calls us to start with ordinary people, and expect him to start there too. 

Because he loves the world...

And God calls us to expect the miracle to happen, people to turn to him – to reach our generation..  The past generation has had its revival.. The next generation will need its own revival.  We want to see revival in our generation.   Because he loves the world...

© Gilmour Lilly 2016

Jonah 2: Prayer – in a dark place

v. 1 “inside the fish Jonah prayed”   I can't think of a more unlikely, unpleasant, or compelling setting for a prayer, than this. 

Let's face it –  it is unlikely.  I guess you have heard, as I have, stories of sailors being swallowed by whales:  James Bartley, buried in Gloucester in 1909 was described as a “Modern-Day Jonah” although his story is disputed and doesn't prove the Jonah story.  Scientists don't think there is air in a fish’s or whale's stomach – though they believe a man could survive in a whale’s lung. The point is not that the story of Jonah is plausible.  The point is that it is implausible: it had to be a miracle.  Either he survived, miraculously.  Or he died and was raise – miraculously.

And in fact, in his prayer Jonah reckoned himself as  a dead man. 

Can we pray in the unlikely places – where it looks like even survival is unlikely.  Can we pray with an eye to the future when we are facing a reality that suggests there isn’t a  future? Can we pray with the faith that says “It's Friday – but Sunday's coming”? (Good Friday, hoep hangs of a cross, waiting for Easter Sunday).  Can we pray for people to turn back to God in an environment where people are turning away from God in vast numbers? Can we pray for the triumph of God's Kingdom in a world where nations including our own seem to be falling apart?  Can we pray for healing when all looks hopeless? Can we pray for that family member to find faith, while they continue to walk away from faith? 

And it is unpleasant.  Just about unpleasant as you could get.  Pitch dark. frightening, filthy and possible stinking; nobody likes to keep company with a part-digested meal – either one's own or someone else's. Can we pray when we are in unpleasant and painful situations?

But it is compelling, isn't it.  The very horror of it, the very unpleasantness of it, the very real danger and unlikeness of survival, all makes it the more urgent to pray.  There isn't very much you can do.  (No internet; no-one else to talk to; you can't read your bible, you have no chance of cutting your way out even if you have a knife.)  All you can do is call out to God.

And how Jonah prayed!

This is very much a prayer of faith. 
It is written in the past tense.  Verse 2 sums it up. “in my distress I called to the

Image: G Lilly

Lord, and he answered – Lord, you answered!   It's both a statement of faith, a testimony and a prayer of praise.

In fact the Old Testament doesn’t' recognise our slightly artificial separation between praise and prayer, as though they were different things. To pray is to reach out to God, to connect with him.  How can you connect to God without acknowledging who he is, praising and worshipping him? 

Jonah is able to recognise that his experience of the last few days, the last few minutes – running away from God, the storm, being thrown into the sea,  has been a time of separation from God, of being spiritually and physically at death's door.  He quotes a great deal from the Psalms, including Ps 42. 7:  “all your waves and breakers swept over me.”  His inner life and his very physical life have been in mortal danger. 

In the midst of it, Jonah recognises God's sovereignty.   (v. 3) “You threw me into the sea. Your waves; your breakers.”   (v. 3)   And “you, Lord my God,  brought my life up from the pit.”  (v. 6)  In the midst of it all – even Jonah's own sin and blindness – God has been at work.  And God is still on Jonah's case. 

So Jonah is able to be confident that God who has been at work, will continue to be at work. “You have, so I will...” (v. 4, cf v 8)   The story of God's salvation in his immediate past, of God's sovereignty that is able even to encompass Jonah's mistakes and sin, means that Jonah is able to anticipate God's continuing salvation – even in the place where he finds himself, in the stifling airless atmosphere of the fish's stomach.   So in this dark place, he looks for help from God's holy temple – maybe the temple in Jerusalem, though more likely for  an Israelite, the dwelling of God in the heavens. 

This is a prayer of confession, repentance and commitment.
Verse 8: Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies (NLT)  But the words s translated “ worthless idols” mean literally “Lying vanities” - the word is the same one used at the beginning of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity”.  It can mean a  mere breath,  vapour, something fleeting, useless, or worthless.  Calvin says they are  “all inventions with which men deceive themselves”  including Idols and false gods but also including the emptiness of going our own way, trying to run our own lives, without God,  as Jonah had done.  

So Jonah is not making a jibe against the sailors with their false Gods, or against Nineveh: he is admitting that he has put himself in the same boat as they, turning away from his covenant relationship with the Lord, for a mere breath.  He has traded the permanent lasting gift of a relationship with God for the perishable goods of his own pleasure. 

But God has kept his hand on Jonah. So Jonah is back into his relationship with the Lord:  (v. 9) “But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you.  What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, 'Salvation comes from the Lord.'”  He doesn't want to be among those who chase after lying vanities.  I is emphatic: “I will praise you and sacrifice to you...

Jonah wants to worship the Lord – with his voice, and by bringing a sacrifice to the Lord. 

He wants to keep his vow to the Lord.  Whatever obedience the Lord requires, Jonah will give. 

His testimony is that “salvation is from the Lord.”

So that is Jonah's prayer, in a dark place.  Praise, faith, confession, commitment.  Not a word of pleading for help.  Now there is  place for saying “Lord, help!”   There is a place for making your requests known to God.  There is a place for being specific in our prayers. But there is also a place for  a prayer like this.   “Over to You, Lord!” It's the spirit of Ps 118. 17:  “I shall not die but live...” 

That's how Paul was:  At midnight, in jail in Philippi, “Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them”. (Acts 16. 25) and the prison walls collapsed in an earthquake.  No wonder, later on, in other difficulties, Paul wrote to the Church in Philippi  “For I know that as you pray for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.” (Phil 1. 19 NLT)

You could sum up Jonah's prayer in this way:  “Lord, I have been in a dark, dangerous and frightening place – indeed I still am.  But you're in charge, not me.  You can even use the mess I make, and I can already see you at work; so I know you will bring me through this. And Lord, we all need to put you, not temporary things, first – and I've been chasing the wrong things.  But Lord I will worship you.  I will do what you want.  Salvation is from you.” 

Or in the powerful words of the Lord's prayer: “Father, in Heaven may you Name be honoured.  May your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Give us today the bread we need, forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil , for the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, Lord, forever”. 

So how do we pray in the dark place? The place where -- like the sea in Hebrew

Image: G Lilly

thinking -- demons are all around?  God is OK with us simply praying "Help!"  God is OK with us presenting our requests to him. But he doesn't want us to panic or to plead for help. He wants us to pray with a robust faith that's rooted in who he is and what he's already done. And he wants us to pray with submission: with repentance and commitment.

And two certainties will follow:
1. Jonah trusts God and wants to obey him. But he still has issues with Nineveh. He is still doing God's will through gritted teeth (as we shall see.)   Like Jonah, we will still have stuff that needs sorted out.
2. And the miracles happen. Jonah survives and is eventually puked up onto a beach in Palestine, to continue his journey.  God will answer! God's on our case and will act.

© Gilmour Lilly 2016

Jonah 1.

Voices: Jonah and his world

“See Nineveh?  It's pretty bad: they are evil, mean, immoral. Their sinfulness is right in my face,”  God says.  

And Jonah is like “Yes. Amen Lord!  I agree.  They deserve your judgement Lord!”

And God says “Go there.  Tell them.  Warn them.” 

Now Jonah lived some-when around 800-750 BCE, in Israel,  when Jeroboam II was King.  Israel didn’t have the Temple: that was in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.   Israel was always the first to rebel against the Lord, though usually Judah wasn't far behind. As kings of Israel go, Jeroboam was not as bad as some,  He continued to worship false gods, but on the positive side, he bad tried to rebuild the nation that had lost power and prestige.  To make Israel great again.  (Sounds familiar?)   And Jonah was there, bringing words from God about “Restoring the boundaries of Israel” (2 Kings 14. 25)

500 miles North East of Samaria, the capital of Israel, was Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire.  As Jeroboam worked to get Israel back almost to the strength of Solomon's days, there was this empire to the north, getting bigger and bigger.  Demanding tributes and taxes.  And God was telling Jonah, “Go there”.  So Jonah says “What?  You cannot be serious?”  (A quote from John MacEnroe as it's Wimbledon week!)

And God says “Go there, go to Nineveh, and read out the charges against them.”

Now, as I said, Nineveh is 500 miles north-east, overland, across fields and deserts.  So Jonah went and found a boat.  He went to Joppa (Jaffa) and booked  a passage to Tarshish – possible Tarsessus (around modern Cadiz) in Spain, the other side of the straits of Gibraltar.  About as far away as he could go, in the opposite direction.

And (he thought) he had done it.  It looked like he had shaken God off.  Got away from his disturbing, nagging presence,  It wasn't as though he imagined God was limited to one place: Jonah wanted to get away from intimacy with Him.    Jonah 1.  God Nil.  Or so Jonah thought.   But God really isn't limited to one place.  On a ship, crossing the Med, God could still reach Jonah.  He sent a storm, (sovereignly using the forces of nature, as he did again in verse 17.)

Huge, frightening waves... slippery decks, timbers groaning beginning to split, everyone soaking wet, sea water in the hold...  

Picture by G Lilly

So the crew start to get religious. They're from different places and they are praying to different gods.  But Jonah is asleep.  Snoring (the Greek OT tells us!).  Possibly had a few glasses of wine to keep him warm, and drown out that voice.... Sometimes the people of God are running away, sleeping, drowning out God's voice, and people who are not the people of God, are praying, each doing their own thing to try to contact God and find an answer to the challenges they face...   

The sailors do a bit of divination to find out why this disaster has overtaken them.  They recognise that this is no ordinary storm.  And the dice they throw, tell them the problem is the passenger, Jonah.  So they go to the hold.  They shake him, wake him up, and demand to know what is going on.  He confesses it all.  He's a fallen preacher.  He's been running away from God, but God has caught up with him.  At last, it looks as if Jonah is beginning to get the message.  He is beginning to show some interest in speaking out for God – even if that means speaking to foreigners.

As the sea gets rougher they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?’”

“Throw me in. It's not you God is after, it is me.”   At last there is a change in Jonah himself. He is willing to take his punishment.  Here is at least some sign of a conversion, however incomplete.  “He meets again not only God, but the truth from which he fled. He not only meets that truth, but he offers his life for it.”  (Expositors Bible Commentary)

Understandably, the sailors were reluctant to throw a passenger overboard in cold blood.  So they continued rowing for the shore – but the storm only got worse, and eventually they did what Jonah said, threw him overboard.   They were praying “Lord, don't judge us for this.  We're doing what Jonah told us.”  And God comes through:  when Jonah goes overboard, the storm stops.   When they do throw Jonah into the waves, the sea becomes calm.. And immediately, there's a prayer meeting on board.. These sailors from all over the place, with their different gods, begin to fear the Lord. 

That's what we want, isn't it?  In our messed up and godless world, to see men and women – maybe some of them “spiritual”, some superstitious, everyone doing their own thing – beginning to “fear the Lord” and turn to him in surrender and faith.  If it's going to happen, we need a Jonah moment.  We need to hear and deal with the different voices that are shouting at us...

1. We hear the voice of our own prejudice, bigotry and disobedience, and turn from that.  That is perhaps the most difficult bit to sort out.  Jonah wasn't through on this one by any means.  It would take several miracles, a lot of prayer, and listening to God's voice, and a big step of cold, intentional obedience when he didn’t feel like it, before he beat that one. 
2. Responsiveness to the voice of the missionary, compassionate God.   We have to sober up.  We have to get more spiritual.  We cannot afford to drown out the voice of God.   Not with  busyness; not with clever ideas.  Not by surrounding ourselves with people or noise.  Not by substances including our won adrenalin!
3. Understanding the voice of our neighbours – the pluralism, the spirituality as well as the superstition.  Can we understand a world where “everyone prays to his or her own God” and where that is seems as OK?  I'm not asking you to agree with it (far from it!)  But we need to understand it.  We may see superstition, but we may also see an element in belief in the Supernatural.  Are we in the place where we can respond effectively to that?   Heaven help us if we make Christianity all about “believing ideas” rather than about an encounter with God Himself. Many people have abandoned the church not because it is too spiritual, but because it is not spiritual enough. Heaven help us if the world is praying and we are sleeping.
4. Finding our own voice – speaking honestly and faithfully.  The bad news and the good news.  “I am a runaway prophet” is not a great way to be starting, but it was honest.  It is that honesty about his own failure that gave Jonah the opportunity to talk to the sailors about who God is and how the could be saved from their predicament.  We need to find our voice – admitting we have as a Church in the Western world messed up, failed to live the life of jesus.  And we need to find our voice, pointing to who God is. 

So it's not all over for the sailors.  And it's not all over for Jonah, either.   God stepped in again.  He appointed a huge fish to swallow up Jonah (which should not create a problem for people who believe in God:  we don't need to “prove it's possible” and we don’t need to spiritualise it away.)  It's simply a  “miracles of divine intervention.” Chapter 4 tells us the Lord also appointed a Plant (v6) a worm (v7) and a scorching wind (v8). 

God uses things he has made to carry on his work with Jonah.  He is still on Jonah's case. 

Picture by G Lilly

  And he is still at work to bring us to the place where he wants us to be: a place of trust, obedience, intimacy, and engagement with his mission in the world.     Jesus said “unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.”  (John 12. 24 NLT)  that's the Jonah experience.  That's what the people of God need. As we surrender ourselves to Christ and to his mission, then the harvest will come.

© Gilmour Lilly 2016