2 Chronicles 36:15-23

Transcription

1 Chronicles 36: The LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place; 16 but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD against his people became so great that there was no remedy. 17 Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their youths with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or young woman, the aged or the feeble; he gave them all into his hand. 18 All the vessels of the house of God, large and small, and the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king and of his officials, all these he brought to Babylon. 19 They burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels. 20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had made up for its sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years. 22 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom and also declared in a written edict: 23 Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him! Let him go up. 1

2 The Last Word Famous last words not in life, but at the movies. It s only fitting that some of Hollywood s classic movies end with famous last words, words that perfectly summarize or reflect the movie s main theme. Some of these lines you might recognize without being given the title of the movie [SLIDE]. There s no place like home. The final line of The Wizard of Oz [SLIDE], spoken by Dorothy as she wakes up in her own bed surrounded by familiar faces and realizes that Oz was all a dream, perfectly captures the movie s theme of the joy and comfort of home. From home to horror [SLIDE]: The horror! The horror! The last line of Apocalypse Now [SLIDE], spoken by the dying Colonel Kurtz, is a fitting end to a film about the horror of not only the Vietnam War, but war in general, and the depravity that it induces in human beings. Here s a really old one [SLIDE]: Oh, no. It wasn t the airplanes. It was beauty that killed the beast. You might not expect philosophy from a monster movie [SLIDE], but that s what you get at the end of the original King Kong. This might be the most famous last line of all [SLIDE]: I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. These words [SLIDE], from Casablanca, are spoken by Rick, the amoral owner of Rick s nightclub, to Captain Renault, the amoral chief of police. Rick says this to Renault once he realizes that Renault will not arrest him for having killed a Nazi officer. Instead, Renault orders his officers to Round up the usual suspects. Speaking of which [SLIDE], there is the crime thriller The Usual Suspects. (Okay, this one I gave away.) At the center of The Usual Suspects is the identity of a legendary 2

3 criminal mastermind who hides in plain sight by using a false identity. The movie ends with the villain revealing himself by saying, The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn t exist. From the mysterious to the ridiculous [SLIDE]: Roads? Where we re going we don t need roads. The ending to Back to the Future [SLIDE] is brilliant on two levels: It embodies the zaniness of mad scientist Doc Brown, and it sets up the sequel, Back to the Future II. I ll give you one more. This one should definitely sound familiar [SLIDE]: The name s Bond, James Bond. That signature line is spoken near the beginning of every other James Bond film [SLIDE], but in Casino Royale, a movie that tells the origin of Bond, it is saved until the very end. It s a brilliant stroke of writing and filmmaking. Only at the end do we get this iconic character s introduction. The old is made new. The end is the beginning. A similar dynamic is at work in the last words of 2 Chronicles [SLIDE], our reading for today. These verses speak of an end and a beginning. The end comes in the form an invading army from Babylon. The Babylonians tear down the walls of Jerusalem, burn the temple, and lead the people of Judah into exile. The nation of Judah, as it was known, is over. But there is also a beginning. Years later, a new king arises in Persia, the kingdom that has conquered the once invincible Babylon. This new king, Cyrus, represents a new hope for the people of Judah. He frees them from captivity, allows them to return to their homeland, and most amazing of all, declares that he, a Gentile, has been entrusted by the God of Israel to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. If a scriptwriter in Hollywood wrote this script, it would be rejected for being unrealistic. Yet here it is in the Bible. 3

4 I mentioned a moment ago that this passage marks the end of 2 Chronicles. Not only that [SLIDE], it marks the end of the Hebrew Bible. The order of books in the Hebrew Bible is different than the order of books in the Christian Old Testament. In Jewish Bibles, 2 Chronicles comes at the end. It s the last book, whereas in our Bibles, it s right in the middle of the Old Testament. In our Christian Bibles, Chronicles comes right after Kings because much of their content overlaps. 1 Kings begins with Solomon, who rules over a united kingdom. However, beginning in chapter 12, the kingdom divides in two, with Israel to the north and Judah to the south. And thereafter 2 Kings tells the story of each nation s kings and whether they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord or were wicked. This pattern continues until 2 Kings 17, when the northern kingdom is destroyed by Assyria. Thereafter, the focus is solely on Judah. Chronicles also tells the story of the united kingdom. David and Solomon, the two kings of a united Israel, are the main focus. However, something interesting happens after the death of Solomon when the kingdom divides. For the rest of 2 Chronicles, the sole focus is on the southern kingdom of Judah. The writer of Chronicles, who remains unknown to us, doesn t seem to be interested in the kings of the northern kingdom. They get mentioned only in passing. There s a good reason for that, and it has to do with the historical period in which Chronicles was written. Chronicles was written after the exile. That much can be seen in the last paragraph, which mentions the kingdom of Persia and its king Cyrus, who ended the Babylonian exile by allowing Jews to return to their homeland. All of the events in Chronicles take place before the exile, but the book itself is written later. This is a very different situation than in Kings. (I know this might seem like a lot of historical background, but trust me, this is going somewhere. Besides, historical background is important when you re reading a historical book!) Kings was most 4

5 likely written during the exile. The book of Kings seeks to answer the question, How did this happen to us? How did we, God s people, lose the land that God had given us? The way that Kings answers that question is that the people brought their suffering upon themselves through their sin. In their persistent idolatry, in their indifference to injustice, in their failure to care for widows, orphans, and aliens, in their trust in political alliances rather than God, the people s sin rose to such a level that God could no longer tolerate. To punish the people for their sin, God raised the Babylonians to conquer Jerusalem, destroy the temple, and lead the people into exile. Exile was punishment for sin. But that s Kings. Chronicles was written at a later time, a time after the exile, so the author of Chronicles is not interested in the question How did this happen to us? The exile is over, and so the author of Chronicles is interested in an entirely different question. His question is: Are we still God s people? It s not hard to see how the question would have changed. The Jews were in exile for about fifty years ( BC). That was a long enough time for children who were born before the exile to become adults. It was long enough that many Jews were even born in exile. For both of these groups, the idea of the exile as punishment was not immediate for them. That was their parents or their grandparents generation. In their context, the question Why did this happen to us? wasn t relevant. Instead, they had a different question: Are we still God s people? That question makes sense for a people who were no longer in exile and who had returned to their ancestral land. Underlying that question was the fact that, even though they were once again in Judah, the land wasn t entirely theirs. What was once Judah was now part of the Persian Empire. And even if Persia approved of the rebuilding of the temple, they would never allow a king to sit on the throne in Jerusalem. 5

6 Remember last week when I said that 1 Chronicles is often neglected because...well, honestly speaking...it s pretty boring? It begins with nine chapters of genealogy, going all the way back to Adam. No doubt wading through all those names makes for a boring read for us. But for Jews, each one of those names was evidence of the fact that they were indeed still God s people. They were the people of God because they could trace their lineage through generation after generation, back to Judah the son of Jacob, Jacob the son of Isaac, Isaac the son of Abraham, and on and on all the way back to Adam. For Jews, genealogy is theology. But what about us? What is this passage saying to us? All this makes for an interesting history lesson (I hope you found it interesting), but what are we supposed to make of this passage? What is it saying to us? What we see in this passage is not only the history of Israel, we see our own history. More than history, we see human nature. We see people who, despite knowing better, remain stubborn and persistent sinners. We see people of God who act in ways that are opposed to God s ways. Interestingly, the writer doesn t identify any specific sins of the people. In verse 14, which comes just before today s passage [SLIDE], it is said that all the leading priests and people were exceedingly unfaithful (2 Chr. 36:14). Yet even there, the specific ways in which they were unfaithful are not mentioned. It s as if the writer expects the reader to fill in the blanks, to speak for themselves what is left unspoken. In that way, reading this passage is like looking into a mirror. We are confronted with our own exceeding unfaithfulness. Each of us can fill in the blanks with the ways in which we are unfaithful to the way of Jesus Christ, the ways that we despise his words words like [SLIDE]: 6

7 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt. 5:44.) [SLIDE] Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me (Mt. 10:37). [SLIDE] Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt. 5:28). [SLIDE] None of you can become my disciples unless you give up all your possessions (Lk. 14:33). [SLIDE] If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross daily and follow me (Lk. 9:23). In this passage we see ourselves reflected. We also see a God of compassion, a God of second, and third, and fourth chances, a God who tries again and again to call his people back from their self-destructive ways, but to no avail. And then, with no other alternative, with God s words having been despised and ignored, God speaks a word of judgment [SLIDE]. That judgment comes in the form of an invading army from Babylon. They conquer. They kill. They destroy. They tear down the city s walls. They burn down the temple. They uproot the survivors from their homes and lead them into exile. For those who survived, life as they knew it was over. Exile was a kind of death. The book of Lamentations, written during the exile, begins by comparing the city of Jerusalem to a widow: How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become (Lam. 1:1). 7

8 Death has a finality to it. If we think of life as a story, death has the last word. Death will place the period at the end of the last sentence. Each of our life stories, and those of everyone we love, will end in death. Yet God is not finished speaking. The story continues. While God speaks a word of judgment, judgment is not God s last word. Amid the forsakenness of exile, in the midst of despair and death, God has one more word to speak. That word is grace [SLIDE]. For the Jews living in exile, the agent of God s grace comes from a most unexpected source from a Gentile, a foreign king. In 538 BC, the conquerors of Judah, the Babylonians, were themselves conquered by forces led by King Cyrus of Persia. And Cyrus, in his first year, wastes no time in freeing the exiles and allowing them to return home. Beyond that, he even declares that he has been charged by the God of Israel to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. I mentioned earlier that 2 Chronicles is the last book of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew scriptures end with this proclamation from Cyrus. Not with prophecy. Not with the law. Not with a psalm. But with a proclamation by a foreign king. Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him! Let him go up (2 Chr. 36:23). Let him go up. The wording even suggests resurrection. Arise! Go up! If the exile were like death, then return from exile is a form of resurrection. The Hebrew Bible ends with these words of hope and resurrection, of exiles returning home, and of life brought from death. But they would not be God s last word. God would continue to 8

9 speak of hope and resurrection and of life in the midst of death, but not only for the people of Israel. This time God would speak for all those beyond the borders of Israel. God s last word would be spoken to the entire world through Jesus Christ [SLIDE], God s Word made flesh. Jesus Christ is God s last word. In Jesus Christ, God speaks a word of judgment and a word of grace. For Jesus is the judge who is judged in our place. On the cross Jesus faces the judgment of God on our behalf. On the cross Jesus bears the consequences of our sin. And one thing this passage shows us is that sin has consequences. Our inhumanity to one another devours us from within and destroys our neighbor from without. But Jesus who was crucified was also raised. Let him go up! And we have been raised with him. Let us go up! We have been raised to new life in him. If he died for our sake, then he was raised for our sake as well. If we share in his death, then we share in his resurrection. We who were dead in sin have received new life. We who wandered in exile have been brought home into the arms of God s love. This is God s word to us: we were dead, but we have been raised. Let us go up! 9