Daniel & Ezekiel: God's Witnesses in Baylon

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand…

Daniel 1:1-2

Some time ago, a friend directed my attention to Daniel 1 and Ezekiel 12 as being relevant to what I teach about God and money. The relevance wasn’t immediately obvious to me but when I studied the passages afresh I began to see things that I hadn’t noticed before.

The first is that Daniel is not only the book which prophecies that from then onwards the people of God would live under foreign domination, and foresees those dominions (or empires), but is also a manual of how the people of God are to live under governments and within societies that do not keep God's ways.

The second thing was how spiritually perceptive Daniel was, right from the start of his captivity. The book begins with the passage at the start of this Reflection. That was an incredible insight for the time! I think that Daniel must have been among only a very few Jews who actually saw God’s hand, positively, in what happened. Everyone else looked on it as a national disaster, as God abandoning His people.

It could be argued that the opening of Daniel was written later in Daniel’s life, or after his death by the editor who collated the book, but I believe that most of the book is constructed from Daniel’s personal papers and is, essentially, what he wrote contemporaneously. I think Daniel saw God at work and that’s why he was able to cooperate so effortlessly in God’s purpose.

The third thing is why Daniel and his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refused to eat Babylonian food. They were chosen to learn Babylonian ways because they were of the Jewish aristocracy and intelligent and capable of learning ‘the literature and language of the Chaldeans’. This included what the Babylonians would have called science but what the Jews would call the occult! (In Daniel 2, we read how Daniel was among magicians, enchanters and sorcerers to be executed for the failure of his colleagues to interpret the King’s dream.) 

Why did Daniel and his three friends submit to learning things forbidden in the Torah but refuse to eat food not forbidden? I think that it was more than a symbolic refusal, especially as Daniel goes about it with great tact. I wonder if there were social implications, so that by not joining in the meals, innocent in themselves as far as most of the food was concerned, they might be tempted into other things, like gluttony, drunkenness, unsuitable entertainments and corrupting relationships.

Figuratively, we shouldn’t feast at the world’s table or get drunk on the world's wine. We shouldn’t be ‘eating up’ everything the world is selling: avarice, covetousness, vanity, pride, celebrity, sex, and anything else that fuels the consumer society in which we live. If we do partake, we must do so with carefulness, anxious that we are not contaminated by it, and it seems to me better to follow the example of Daniel and his three friends.

In passing, I would add that it’s also very interesting to see where Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to cooperate other than at eating the King’s food. It was at worshipping a giant statue that probably represented world empires, as King Nebuchadnezzar had previously seen in a dream, and at not obeying King Darius’ decree to stop worshipping Jehovah.

What in particular struck me about Ezekiel 12 was that the prophet was himself captive in Babylon and that the exiles with him thought that life was better for the Israelites back in Jerusalem. God therefore told Ezekiel to act out the way of life in Jerusalem. He was to dig a hole in a wall and carry his belongings through it, to symbolise how more Israelites would be taken in to captivity. He was ‘to eat [his] bread with quaking, and drink water with trembling and with anxiety’. Older translations finish that quote, ‘…with carefulness.’ As I indicated earlier, having to eat and drink with carefulness is never a good thing.

Daniel and Ezekiel were God's witnesses in Babylon: Daniel primarily to the rulers; Ezekiel primarily to the exiles. Christians today are God's witnesses in pagan cultures but there are many who look at the state of the countries where they live and wish they lived somewhere else or who long for a time in the past when their country seemed to respect and live by 'Christian' values.Yet although both Daniel nor Ezekiel no doubt wished that God's people were living faithfully in the land God had given them, they nevertheless embraced what God was doing through the paganism around them. Their discernment enabled them to cooperate with God's plan and achieve significant social change.

Many of the Jews in Babylon, however, simply acquiesced and adopted the ways of the society they found themselves in. They blended in. They didn't abandon their religion: they still worshipped, prayed and kept the Torah. But they began to live and trade like everyone else, so that when they had the opportunity to return to Israel, only a small minority went.

Today, many Christians seem to be 'eating and drinking' everything that capitalism offers. And, moreover, eating carelessly ! One of the great myths of capitalism is that if large corporations and rich businesspeople are allowed to make huge profits, then everyone – rich and poor – will benefit, as the standard of living for all of us is lifted on the rising tide of prosperity. The reality, of course, is very different. Except in the rare examples where businesspeople use a substantial proportion of their wealth for the benefit of their workers, such as the housing, social and medical facilities that a few Victorians provided for their workers, capitalism only serves to systematically move wealth from the poor to the rich and to progressively widen the gap between them.

One of the great tragedies of ‘Western’ Christianity is how so very many Christians and churches have bought into this capitalist myth - literally, 'eating it up'!. It seems to me that they believe that a rising tide of prosperity can benefit the Kingdom of God, also. Too often, Christians go into business in order to make money they can donate to the church, adopting the normal business ethos that everyone else takes for granted. Or they start charities that function along contemporary 'business' lines. This may look like what St Paul did when he made tents to support his own ministry but it's only a superficial similarity.

I've often written in these Reflections about the difference between free trade in goods and services that are of value to communities, and fairly trading in these in order to make the money needed to live, and the maximisation of profit that is fundamental to capitalism. The different is crucial. We can fulfill the fundamental command to love our neighbours as ourselves when we trade to serve but never when we trade primarily for our own profit! The indiscriminate pursuit of profit has led to trade in goods and services that are not just of dubious value to people but which harm them, threatening their physical, mental, emotional and social well-being.

Money is the temptation that distracts us from living for God, the resource we think we need to do His work and the leaven that corrupts our work for God. It's become 'another Gospel', an alternative Good News for people to live by! Generations of Christian teachers have therefore warned about justifying a love of money by saying how much they will be able to help the church and the poor. In the 4th Century, John Cassian warned against corrupting Christ’s words, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’, to justify avarice and greed. Even rationalising that if they get more, they can give more! In the 19th Century, Charles Finney warned Christians about the dangers of ‘conforming to the world’ in business practice in order to make money that could be used to fund good works and help to expand the Kingdom of God. He said, ‘A holy church, that would act on the principles of the Gospel, would spread the Gospel faster that all the money that ever was in New York, or ever will be’.

Daniel and Ezekiel stand as examples of godly men with important work to do for God in secular societies. We do well to learn from them if we wish to influence our own society.

© Copyright Philip Evans 2014. 
What is freely given should be freely shared, so please feel free to share these Reflections freely and at no cost to others.

A Personal Message

Dear Friends,

The series of Reflections on what Jesus taught about money concluded last weekend and so I am taking this opportunity to say 'thank you' for the expressions of gratitude and assurances of prayer and to share some personal information.

A couple of weeks ago, the Money-Ed project that All Souls Church had funded at Clubhouse for 3½ years came to an end. It was my initiative to end the project. I suspected that it had run its course before I became ill last November. Then, when I was restricted to working from home, new potential seemed to open up as these Reflections gained more subscribers from the among the congregation at All Souls Church and around the world. This, however, was not the primary reason that Money-Ed was set up and earlier this year it seemed right to discuss its future with the leaders. It then seemed right to all of us for the project to conclude at the end of August, which is the end of the church’s ‘year’, the 12 month cycle of church projects. When I’m restored to good health, we’ll look at what to do next; in the meantime, the Reflections will continue, God willing.

In view of this, the Money-Ed email address is being replaced. If you have it in your address book, please replace it with philip.evans@clubhousew1.org (although emails addressed to Money-Ed should continue to reach me for the foreseeable future).

My health problems continue unimproved and undiagnosed. The indications that I mentioned in March proved to be false leads but two new theories are to be explored in the coming months. I'm aware that I sometimes give the impression of being worried about my condition but the reality is that it's some of the medical decisions that I find difficult to cope with. The irony is not lost on me that while I seek to help people transcend the role of money in in their lives, I’m being treated within a health service where every medical option is essentially a financial decision.

I expect I find this difficult because I've lived all my life in the UK and recall a time that was (or perhaps it just seemed to be) more caring, less compartmentalised (I've been to seven different hospitals and am the only channel of communication between most of them) and the financial control less transparent. I’m very fortunate that a lot of health care in the UK is free when you need it and that I don’t have the same problem as many of my readers who need money just to see a doctor and get basic medicines. But although the way money controls health care here is more complex, it’s no less effective in manipulating the way doctors think and who gets treated.

I'm grateful to everyone who prays for me and encourages me to greater faith for healing. Two verses often quoted to inspire me are Isaiah 53:5 & James 5:14-16. The first explains that it’s by Jesus’ wounds that we're healed and the second describes how church leaders should pray for sick people. 'The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.' I believe what these verses say but it’s clear that not every sick person in the New Testament was healed in this way.

Paul tells us that death has reigned in the world since Adam (Romans 4:5), and that Christ shall reign until he has defeated all his enemies (1 Corinthians 15:25), so it’s only towards the end of Revelation that we read of a new heaven and earth where there is no death, mourning, crying or pain anymore. Jesus' work of redemption generally, including physical healing, is therefore a work in progress.

The Apostle Paul had a 'thorn in the flesh' (although it's not certain that it was an illness or disability) and he was ill when he first preached at Galatia. There's nothing in his letters or in Acts to suggest divine healing then or after he'd been stoned or flogged or had endured exposure, shipwreck or hunger. Timothy had a persistent stomach problem. Trophimus was left behind sick at Miletum and I infer from Paul's letter to the Philippians that when Epaphroditus' was ill while in Rome that his healing did not defy a natural explanation.

Paul was much more concerned with holiness than with health (although he did think health important) and testified how illness and problems can prove invaluable to our spiritual growth. He wasn’t alone in thinking this: as well as Romans 5:1-5, please consider James 1:2-4 & 1 Peter 1:3-7.

I'm happy to be prayed for by any of God's people, even if I can' quite agree their theology about healing, knowing that God blesses our faithfulness. And while I'm disappointed not to be healed, and not complacent about the inadequacies of my own faith, I know that God will act when it’s for the best.

With my best wishes,

Philip

© Copyright Philip Evans 2014.
What is given freely should be shared freely, so please feel free to share this Reflection freely and at no cost to others.

JESUS and MONEY

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Jesus of Nazareth

Last weekend, we began to reflect on this invitation from Jesus found at the end of Matthew 11. This concludes both that reflection and this series of reflections on what Jesus taught about money.

Adam and Eve lost the rest they were created to enjoy when they were banished from the Garden of Eden. Later, God offered to restore this rest to the Israelites when they possessed the Promised Land. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. They so angered God by their repeated unbelief and mistrust that God withdrew the offer: Psalm 95 quotes God: ‘As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest”.’

It seems to me that what Psalm 95 records is not quite how it seems in the account in Exodus and Numbers. The Psalm refers to what happened at Rephidim, when the Israelites were thirsty and God ordered Moses to strike a rock that then gushed enough water to satisfy all 600,000 of the men and the women and children with them. The story is told in Exodus 17.

Rephidim wasn’t the first place that the Israelites had complained to God, refusing to believe that he could deliver them in spite of what they had seen him do already, and it wasn't to be the last, but the name for the place became Massah and Meribah, which mean 'tempted' and 'contention' respectively. According to what King David implied in Psalm 95, this is where God decreed that the Israelites would not enter their rest.

After this, the Israelites went to Mount Sinai where they received the Ten Commandments and the rest of the ‘Law’, including the instructions for the tabernacle. But in spite of their apparent devotion, and all the work they put into building the tabernacle, both at Sinai and subsequently they repeated complained about God and what he was doing. They even built a golden calf to worship!

Finally, they arrived at the border of the Promised Land: the story is told in Numbers 13-14. Twelve spies were sent to reconnoitre but ten of them returned too afraid to try to conquer it and the people sided with them. Moses pleaded with God to forgive the people’s unbelief: God replied, 'I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers…’ The only exceptions were Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who believed God's promises.

Why does Psalm 95, and Hebrews 3-4 that quotes it, refer to what happened at Rephidim? I think because that was where the Israelites sealed their own fate. Their repentance then and later was, at best, superficial and they continued to doubt and complain. As it says in Psalm 78, 'They did not keep God's covenant... They forgot his works and the wonders that he had shown them... They tested God in their heart... They spoke against God...'

To what extent are we like that? Committed enough to be outwardly obedient but in our hearts lingering on the edge of dissatisfaction, distrust and rebellion?

The next generation of Israelites did enter the Promised Land under Joshua’s leadership but they didn’t enter into God’s rest. As Hebrews explains, ‘If Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on’. (That time ‘later on’ is another reference to Psalm 95.) Why did those Israelites stop short of God's rest? They didn’t persist in driving out all the people who occupied the land before them or inhabit the entire territory promised to Abraham but stopped when they felt they had had enough. Leaving themselves vulnerable, they began to tolerate false religions, often intermarrying and adopting pagan customs and frequently slipping into blatant idolatry. Psalm 106:34-40 graphically describes the tragedy.

During the ‘golden age’ of King David’s rule, the promise of entering God’s rest was renewed when the Ark of the Covenant was taken to Jerusalem. Psalm 95 is the invitation but nothing in the history books suggests that the people did what was necessary. In fact, throughout Israel's history, the people never displayed more than superficial devotion to God. Not even in times of 'revival'! When Kings Hezekiah and Josiah later repaired the Temple, restored true worship and led the people in rededicating themselves to God’s ways, the nation reverted to idolatry as soon as they died.

When still later the exiled Jews in Babylonia were allowed to return to Israel, they did not follow God’s ways, even with godly men like Ezra and Nehemiah leading them. They intermarried, tolerated and adopted foreign gods, traded on the Sabbath, loaned money at interest and even took fellow Jews into slavery. Happy to be back in the Promised Land, they wanted to live as much as they could like they had lived in Babylon.

Jesus renewed the invitation and the author of Hebrews assures his readers, including us, that it's still available. ‘Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it’. We should therefore ask, What is it to enter into God’s Sabbath rest? I think it can be summarised as contented persistence.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had everything they needed, and more, but they wanted the one thing that God did not permit and did not believe that He had forbidden it for good reason. When the Israelites first tried to enter the Promised Land, they could not bring themselves to believe that God would be with them to defeat the people already there. The next generation did not persist in inhabiting all that God had promised them as Abraham’s descendants. Most Israelites did not participate in the worship King David organised around the Ark of the Covenant or take to heart the examples of leaders like Hezekiah, Josiah, Ezra or Nehemiah. Having left Babylon, the few Jews who did return to Israel did not leave Babylon's ways behind them.

Most of the people who witnessed Jesus’ works and words failed to grasp the significance. Ever since, few Christians have trusted God so completely to reject the norms and expectations of the societies in which they lived in order to respond to Jesus' invitation to, 'Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me'. There’s a lot to learn from this metaphor. Two animals yoked together to pull a cart or plough need to be compatible and the less experienced one must be teachable; for us, it means joining with Jesus in doing his work, relying exclusively on his resources and going his way. This requires adopting the sort of lifestyle that Jesus described in his Sermon on the Mount, in his parables and all his other teaching preserved for us in the Bible, particularly what he taught about money. Among other things, we’re to serve God, not money, and not even try to serve both, because the love of money is not just sin but the root of all evil; we’re to beware covetousness in all its pleasant guises, and in spite of the ways we find to justify it, because covetousness is idolatry; we're to love our neighbours as ourselves, whatever the cost, even when people we don’t like and those who persecute us seek our help.

During this series, we've reflected on the need to be shrewd in the ways of the Kingdom of God, not shrewd in the ways of society like the dishonest manager in Jesus' parable. The weekend before last, we reflected on how difficult it is to leave Babylon but the greater challenge is to get 'Babylon' out from inside us if we are to transcend the influence of money in our lives. Thankful for redemption and salvation, we must not rest content with the promise of future heaven but persist, pursue and seek to enter God's rest now. This is ultimate shrew!

This is the final Reflection in this series on 'JESUS and MONEY' .

© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.

Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.

JESUS and MONEY

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Jesus of Nazareth

This invitation of Jesus is recorded at the end of Matthew 11 and is probably the most underestimated statement he made. It isn’t the sort of temporary rest that we all enjoy from time to time: it isn’t sitting down to rest, to ‘take the weight off our feet’; it isn’t a good night’s rest in bed; it’s not even the rest we enjoy when we’re on holiday. It is a complete, final, utter rest in the completed work of Christ; it's, a unique rest that embraces mental health, peace of mind and heart and an assurance of living out of adequacy. It's only in that rest that God’s people can find relief from mammon and refuge from the pressures to conform to the societies in which they live.

The first chapter of Genesis describes God creating the world in six days. The next chapter begins, ‘…And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done’. That doesn’t imply that God was tired and needed a rest. God is by nature all powerful and never tires but He stopped because He had finished what He was doing and began to enjoy what He had done. It didn’t mean to imply that there was no work still to do because, as Jesus said, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working’ (John 5:17).

If you create a garden, you have to design and landscape it before adding plants. That all involves a lot of work. At the end of it, when the work is done and the garden complete, you rest and can enter into the enjoyment of it. But this doesn’t mean there’s no more work to do! It doesn’t mean that from then onwards you can sit idly through every day. Every garden has to be maintained but, nevertheless, in a real sense you’re able to rest in the completed work and it’s in that sense that God rested on the seventh day.

We see something similar about Jesus' own ministry explained in the opening words of Hebrews: ‘When he had by himself purged our sins, [he] sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.’ Although Jesus, God the Son, took his seat alongside God the Father, it didn’t mean there is nothing more for him to do. As St Paul explains, Jesus 'must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet' (1 Corinthians 15:25).

In the Genesis story, Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day and so the next day, the seventh, the day of rest, was their first full day on earth. They enjoyed God’s rest. Obviously, there were things to do. They had to work: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’, God told them, ‘and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ But this wasn’t work as it became later.

Genesis 3 describes how the devil, in the guise of a serpent, lured Adam and Eve into sin. As a result, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and there was a curse on creation. Among the consequences, the very nature of work was transformed. ‘Cursed is the ground because of you’, God told Adam. ‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’

Adam and Eve were meant to enjoy God's rest forever: unlike the previous six days, the seventh day did not have an evening and a morning. But even living amidst such abundance, they forfeited their rest by wanting just the one single thing God had forbidden them: the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were therefore vulnerable when the devil suggested to Eve that God had had forbidden her and her husband the fruit from all the trees in the garden.

That suggestion was not correct, and Eve knew it, but when she corrected the devil, she got it wrong herself. She said that they were not even allowed to touch that tree! Amidst all this misdirection and error, the devil successfully exploited Eve's discontent. He convinced Eve that God was withholding some good that was legitimately hers, so that she came to see sense in the idea of disobeying God! Later, Adam concurred and together they lost their rest. You don’t have to believe the story literally to take the point. The rest that Jesus invites us to is the quality of rest that Adam and Eve enjoyed at first.

I plan to continue this theme next weekend, when it will be clear that failure to believe and trust in God is not wanting only what he has forbidden, like the 'forbidden fruit', but includes the lawful and legitimate things that the Israelites coveted after they left Egypt with Moses: the sorts of things and experiences that we see others enjoying but which God has not provided for us. For now, therefore, I invite you to think about what you want that God hasn't provided. Not just the things and experiences that society takes for granted but are forbidden by God, like sexual impropriety, drunken excess and debasing entertainments, but the legitimate, everyday pleasures we see that others have.

Could lacking these be a cause of some uncertainty within you about God's goodness towards you? Could they create a vulnerability within you to the devil's lies and confusion about what you're missing out on? Are you susceptible to the discontent the consumer society provokes to keep us spending? Do you feel the need to have what others have in order to be fulfilled? Could this be subtly distracting you and drawing you away from the best that God has in mind for you, from resting in adequacy that only God can create for you?

This is the penultimate Reflection in this series, JESUS and MONEY, but the Reflections will continue and I'm planning a series about contentment, based on St Paul's Letter to the Philippians, to begin in October.

© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.

Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.