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Friday, May 10, 2019

I Was Born In Jerusalem, Deported To Babylon


An engraving with a royal inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II. 
(Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1311723)


As our nation continues to slide from a post-Christian nation to an anti-Christian nation, I cannot help but feel I was born in Jerusalem, deported to Babylon.  

I can remember when stores were regularly closed on Sunday, and the Bible was read in public schools. Abortion was not only illegal, but unthinkable. Now we’re legalizing infanticide. Homosexuality was hidden. Today it has moved past normalization to proliferation. Tired of being a boy? Be a girl. 

In this hour, it is good to revisit God’s message (in Jeremiah 29) to “people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” Verse 4 reveals that God was behind it: “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” It was God’s discipline, for God's reasons.  

So, what do we do in our Babylon? Sit in despair under a juniper tree and weep?

Here’s what the Lord told the Israelites:

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Be productive? Work? Bless the pagan city?

I appreciate Jodi Hasbrouck’s comments on verse 11, which is usually quoted apart from its context: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.“

Hasbrouck writes: “In the midst of your suffering, cling to Jeremiah 29:11, but cling to it for the right reason: not in the false hope that God will take away your suffering, but in the true, gospel confidence that he will give you hope in the midst of it.”

“Sometimes,” Jodi says, “trials are of our own doing; sometimes they’re the work of Satan; sometimes they’re just an effect of living in a broken world. Regardless of the source, they're always an opportunity to know God better.”

And an opportunity to bless a pagan nation. As Daniel did, working in a civil service job.