“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, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god.” (Daniel 1:1-2)
Yes, we are still covering the exile of Judah. We have gone back to 605 BC, when Daniel and others were taken to Babylon in the first wave of deportation. The temptation is to say, “Really? Are we ever going to get past the exile? Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel were not enough?” The short answer is, “Yes and no.”
Yes, we will move on to other things. Eventually. And, no, those books were not enough.” How do I know they weren’t enough? Well, God gave more.
What stands out to me is, “And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand.” Here, we see God’s sovereign ability to work with and within the geopolitical developments in the world. Sometimes we may be tempted to say, “I’m not concerned with politics because that’s worldly. I want to focus on spiritual things.” While a focus on spiritual things is good and admirable, God is also connected to the political goings on.
In Daniel, we see that God utilized or caused (depending on one’s theological position) the rise of the Babylonian empire to discipline Israel. That is a sanitized description of how God worked in this scenario. While God did use Babylon to discipline Israel, there was a lot of bloodshed and suffering that took place. Enter the critic: “If God is so good, why didn’t he discipline Israel in a way that didn’t require blood and suffering?”
Notice that the critic’s question is not different in spirit than the the Bible reader’s spirit in his frustration at reading more about the exile. Both are suggesting that God should have done things differently. One person is a fan of God. The other is a critic of God. Yikes! As a fan of God, I don’t want to sound like a critic.
Father, help me to appreciate all that you do in the way that you do it. Amen.
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