One more of these stories from the Old Testament, if you’re willing to hear it.

Hezekiah, around 715-687 BCE, was king of Judah. Now Judah was where the Temple of the Lord was located (see last week), but since the days of Solomon, the Temple had been closed and temples and altars to other gods were set up throughout the kingdom. The worship of God had been so forsaken that parts of the Temple were used to worship other gods.

And it’s into this setting that Hezekiah becomes king.

The Bible records that the very first thing Hezekiah did as king was open the doors to the Temple, repair them, and order the Levites (the God appointed priests) to “consecrate themselves,” to get themselves ready to minister before the Lord. The Bible records this massive cleaning project – it took eight days just to clear a path across the courtyard to the Temple and another eight days to clean out the temple itself.

Can you imagine the amount of garbage and pagan worship that was dragged out of the temple and burned?

After the Temple is clean, Hezekiah offers a sin offering on behalf of the people of Judah. He positions musicians around the Temple to begin their music after the sacrifice had been made.

And the Bible says that all those gathered “sang praises and worshiped with their heads bowed.”

Perhaps we too need to sing a new song to the Lord. After a season of rebellion from God. After we recognize sin in our lives. After we find ourselves worshiping idols, maybe we need to clean out our Temple.

And sing to the Lord a new song.

There’s another great story from the Old Testament: Solomon, King of Israel and son of David, finishes building the temple of the Lord – this magnificently huge and beautiful structure. (As a side note, when Ezra rebuilt the temple, those who had seen Solomon’s now destroyed temple wept because it couldn’t compare in size, scale or beauty. In fact, read that story and compare it to the one we’re talking about today.)

On the day of dedication (think opening day for every sports team at once and in the same place…) everybody shows up from all over Israel. The Bible literally says “all of the men of Israel,” which means men, women, children, servants, plus tourists and foreigners there for the party. And they sacrifice animals, sheep and cattle, to the Lord which in our current context sounds barbaric and gross, but then was a symbol of joy, celebration, hope, and peace with God and with others. Again the Bible says that “so many sheep and cattle were sacrificed that they could not be recorded or counted.”

Joy – in the extreme.

And that’s just the drum roll. Because now, the Bible says, the ark of the covenant, the physical sign of God’s presence and favor with His people, the reminder of all that God required and all that He promised to do and be for His people, the ark of the Lord was carried through the crowd, up the steps, and into the temple!

And the crowd goes wild.

The people begin to sing “as with one voice” – HE IS GOOD; HIS LOVE ENDURES FOREVER! (Which is even easier to shout in Hebrew: Towb Chessed Olam! Towb Chessed Olam! TOWB CHESSED OLAM!!!) Literally: Goodness and Mercy Forever!

It’s at this point that God shows up. “The temple was filled with a cloud.” God joins the party: Towb Chessed Olam!

And it’s a show stopper – literally. “The priest were not able to perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.” Towb Chessed Olam!

I think there is a valuable lesson in this story, be joyful. Sing for joy. Let gladness and joy overtake you. Shout for joy.

As we continue to “sing to the Lord a new song,” let us bend our hearts and voices with songs of joy to the Lord: TOWB CHESSED OLAM!!!

There’s this great story in the Old Testament. Jehoshaphat (Je – hoe – show – fat), the King of Judah, is invaded by not one or two, but three foreign powers. 2 Chronicles says that Jehoshaphat was “alarmed” – the Bible is full of understatements like these: three powerful nations in alliance to destroy 2 of the tribes of Israel, and Jehoshaphat is “alarmed.”

The King calls together all of the people and standing before the temple of the Lord commands the people fast and pray to the Lord for help. Jehoshaphat prays this marvelous prayer (2 Chron. 6-12) in which he praises God and reminds God of all of the promises God made to His people. And the end of his prayer is brilliant – “We have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.”

Jehoshaphat hears a word from the Lord commanding him to gear up for battle and face these enemies. It’s here that Jehoshaphat does something no other successful military commander has ever dared. Instead of positioning cavalry or infantry or even medics at the front of the army, Jehoshaphat places a choir singing “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His steadfast love endures forever.”

The Bible says that the three invading armies turn on each other and in the fighting amongst themselves, all three were destroyed. But Jehoshaphat and his choir didn’t know this – imagine the fear in the alto section as the choir comes to the crest of the last hill….

And then imagine the joy as everyone realizes what the Lord has done for His people! Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! His steadfast love endures forever!

Maybe you feel like you’re facing an enormous battle. Like three powerful nations have ganged up on little-old you. Maybe you feel like you have “no power to face this vast army that is attacking you.” Rearrange your forces. Put your choir first. Sing to the Lord a new song.

For weeks now, we’ve been looking at the exile that the Jews found themselves in for 1000 years before Jesus. The slavery and torment they suffered at the hands of their captors, the Babylonians. The reasons for this slavery.

We’ve looked at the Jews’ misplaced trust and idolatry of the relics of their faith (the temple, their worship practices, their sacrifices); their refusal to be a “light to the nations,” focusing the message of God’s desired relationship inwardly; their failed economic policy, neglecting the needs of the widow, the orphan, denying justice to the poor; and their sense of entitlement and ownership of the good gifts God had blessed them with.

And we’ve seen along the way how we share much in common with these Jews – how our actions and inactions as Christians have relegated us to an obscurity in the world, a new kind of exile, where we cry out, like slaves in a foreign land, for rescue.

And it’s when we’ve discovered ourselves in this exile that we can finally hear from God the words of rescue he has spoken:

The Resurrection of the Dead.

The prophets began to hear from God that the people had fallen so far, they were like dead men. But, God promised, he would raise them to new life.

“They are now dead,” Isaiah writes about the Hebrews, “they live no more; You punished them and brought them to ruin; You wiped out all memory of them. But,” he continues, “your dead will live, their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust (a reference to Adam’s creation), wake up and shout (a reference to the Spirit of God filling Adam’s lungs) for joy!”

The prophet Hosea declares: “Come, let us return to the LORD. He will heal us. He will bind up our wounds. He will revive us. He will restore us so that we may live in his presence.”

Hosea later, speaking in the voice of the Lord, says, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from death. Where, O Death, are your plagues? Where, O Grave, is your destruction?”

Do you get that?!? God, the author of life, is taunting Death and the Grave to fight him!

And the resurrection isn’t just promised for God’s people in exile – but for all people, whose separation from God feels like death. “On this mountain (Jerusalem) God will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations. God will swallow up death forever. The LORD will wipe away the tears from their faces; He will remove the disgrace of his people from the earth.” And just to underline it Isaiah writes, “The LORD has spoken!”

Each week in worship we recite the Apostles’ Creed which declares that “We believe in the resurrection of the dead.” And I wonder if for many of us, we feel that this resurrection will only take place long in the future, after our hearts stop. The promise of resurrection does mean that (as we have witnessed in an empty tomb and a risen Jesus), but it means something more immediate.

Because Jesus the Messiah has risen from the dead – God has already enacted his plan of rescue. We need no longer live like slaves in a foreign land – for Death has been destroyed and the Grave is powerless. God has raised us and God will continue to raise us on the last day.

As Ezekiel proclaims: “I, the LORD God, will give you an undivided heart. And I will put a new spirit in you (a reference to the creation of Adam). I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. You will be my special one, and I am your God.”

“When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses, when your businesses become larger and your bank accounts grow – then you will say: ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me!’”

For 400 years, a people, who claimed to be God’s special possession, God’s anointed people, God’s chosen ones, this people slaved under the hand of the most powerful military/industrial complex in the world. So great was the power of Egypt, so vast were its resources, so influential were its artisans that the world still bears the marks of this empire more than 5000 years later.

And it’s under this empire’s rule that “God’s people” were slaves. They owned no land. They worked for someone else’s gain. They were beaten, abused, and murdered without any course of justice.

It’s here that the people cry out to God.

It’s here that God hears their cry.

As exiles.

As slaves in a foreign land.

In preparation for Christmas, we’ve been looking at the 1000 year blank most Christians draw when they think about the Old Testament scriptures in their Bibles. The time between Solomon and Matthew where most Christians lose the central thread of the Biblical Narrative – they lose the plot of the story. It’s been in this exercise that we’ve begun to take a long look at the story of the Hebrew people: rescued, rebellious, and ransacked – only to find the central hope of the exiles is salvation through the Lord’s Anointed One, through his Messiah.

It’s as God rescues his people out of Egypt “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” that God says something absolutely incredible.

For 400 years, this people had been abused through systematic injustice. For 400 years, they’d planted no crops of their own, raised no livestock of their own. They had nothing but that which they took with them in the night as they fled the land of Egypt.

God takes his special people into the wilderness. It’s almost as if God wants some alone time with his people.

And God says something incredible: “You will plant your own crops.” “You will raise your own livestock.” “You will lie down and rise up in peace.” “Your families will live in houses.” “You will dwell in a land of safety.”

400 years of slavery, and now, while wandering in the wilderness, God promises that his people will have lives of their own again.

But God issues a warning – “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise your God for the good he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget your God. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses, when your businesses become larger and your bank accounts grow, then your heart will become proud and you will forget that God brought you out of slavery, through the wilderness providing for you along the way.”

“If you ever forget the LORD, your God, and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them – you shall surely be destroyed.”

How easy is it for us to look around our lives and begin to claim ownership of the things around us? To fret over my mortgage, drive my car, invest in my personal savings account. It doesn’t take long for us to begin imagining that we deserve, own, created these things.

How easy is it for us to look at our church and claim ownership of it? My church. My worship. My God.

How easy is it for us, after recieving God’s lavish generocity over us, to turn away on our own path and wander, like slaves in a foreign land, in search of rescue.

The number one charge leveled against the Hebrews by the Prophets of God before they were carried off into captivity was that they had practiced a failed economic policy.

We’ve been looking at the 1000 year blank most Christians draw from Solomon to Matthew. The fuzzy areas of the Bible where, by negligence or by insufficient explanation, our sense of the overall story of the scriptures is lost. We’ve discovered so far that the Bible’s hope of Messiah comes precisely from these scriptures – for when the people were carried off into exile in Babylon, God promised rescue through His “Anointed One” (Heb: Messiah) in terms like “the Forgiveness of Sins,” “the Salvation of God,” “the Resurrection of the Dead,” “the New Life of the Kingdom of God” (for those who understand: “ha’olam haba”).

When the prophets summarize the reasons for the impending exile, the number one reason they cite is that Israel has continually “defrauded laborers of their wages, oppressed the widows and the fatherless, and deprived foreigners of justice” (Malachi 3:5).

That word “oppressed” is a Hebrew word – “a shaak” and it literally means to defraud, extort, exploit, to obtain through deceitful practices. When it is used in the Bible it consistently refers to robbing people of food and money.

Again and again, the charge is leveled – you have failed to do justice, you have failed to be honorable in your business dealings, you have failed to extend grace to the oppressed.

Isaiah 1:17 Isaiah 1:21
Isaiah 5:7 Isaiah 5:23
Isaiah 10:2 Isaiah 29:21
Isaiah 59:4 Isaiah 59:8
Isaiah 59:11 Jeremiah 21:12
Lamentations 3:36 Ezekiel 22:29
Hosea 12:6 Amos 2:7
Amos 5:7 Amos 5:12
Amos 5:15 Amos 6:12
Micah 3:1 Micah 3:9
Habakkuk 1:4 Zechariah 7:9
Malachi 3:5

Do you think God finds this important?

And the people God is standing up for – the widows, the orphans, the poor, the oppressed, the foreigners – God isn’t worried only about the financial condition of His people. You don’t have to be a Jew to deserve God’s grace.

You don’t have to believe in Jesus to deserve God’s grace.

It’s not hard to find points of intersect here. The single largest accusation leveled against the Hebrew people was that they failed to promote justice and grace to all of God’s world.

I don’t care what you think about homosexuality – extend God’s grace, promote God’s justice to those who are in need. I don’t care if you think welfare is a good or bad idea – extend God’s grace to those who need it most. I don’t care if you have a mistrust of Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Atheists – God’s grace isn’t merely for you.

Rob Bell, a pastor in Grand Rapids Michigan, sharpens this point a bit.

“Do you want to understand God’s love? Do you want to understand God’s grace? Do you want to understand, truly understand, what it means for God to have enveloped you in His Grace, Peace, Forgiveness, Hope and Light? Orient yourself around the Strange, the Different, the Unintelligible, the Co-worker, the Embarrassing-Relative, the Person-Who-Absolutely-Drives-You-Crazy: circle around them and in your frustration and pain of trying to serve and love them well – you will be face to face with what it means for God to have embraced and loved you in all your strangeness, difference, and unintelligibility.”

May God find us crying out, like slaves in a foreign land, for renewal, restoration and forgiveness – may we seek the arrival of the Mad Prophet’s Hope.

I pass 15 churches on my way to work every morning. 15. One every mile. There are half as many filling stations on the same route – which, I guess, means that my car gets better millage than my prayers.

We’ve been looking at the “fuzzy” sections of the scriptures. The 1000 year blank that most Christians draw from Solomon to Matthew. The dominant story of this period is one of rebellion and exile – and hope (but one birthed as slaves in a foreign land).

Which carries me back to the 15 churches I pass every morning (and twice on Sundays).

When God called his people out of Egypt, he called them out “in the sight of all the nations.” He rescued his people to show the world what he is like. He gave them his law to show the world how humanity was created to live. He led them in a cloud and pillar to announce to the nations that “the LORD, he is God.”

Then the people got to the land of promise and the light that was for the nations turned inward. What was given to the Jews for all people was closeted away, placed in a temple, protected by armies and borders and a king.

One of the reasons the prophets give for the exile of the Jews into Babylon was that they failed to serve their purpose – they failed to live their lives publicly to the world, to be a light to the nations.

Isaiah 60 says it so emphatically (read this outloud and with a strong voice for the impact): “Arise! Shine! For your light has come and the Glory of God rises upon you! Don’t you see that darkness covers the earth? Terrifying darkness covers all peoples? But the LORD rises upon you! His Glory appears over you! Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of the dawn!”

Paul takes up this theme and hinges it upon Jesus: “Do everything,” he says to the Phillipians, “so that you may become the children of God – shining like stars in the universe.” Again he says to the Ephesians: “You were once in darkness, but now you are in the light of Jesus. Walk, live, act like children of light!”

So again I tell you, I pass 15 churches every morning. Which makes me ask a question: Are we being faithful to our mission? Are we shining the light to all the world; living, walking, working acting like the children of light? Or are we placing mirrors around ourselves and shining only inwardly?

Maybe I can put this another way. Is the church looking merely to become better, faster, fitter, greener, cleaner, and more efficient? Are we spending all of our time energy and resources making sure that we’re ok? Have we forgotten what it means to be lights in the darkness?

There are 15 churches on my route – and yet, aside from Sundays, they’re always dark.

Flash back with me 2000 years or so to a man named Simeon. Simeon waited his whole life for the promise of God to come to pass – for God’s anointed, his Messiah, to come into the world. And when in his age he sees the infant Jesus consecrated at the temple, he begins to sing:

Lord, as you have promised, let me rest now in peace.
For my own eyes (right before me and not in some prophecy) have seen your salvation
Which you have prepared to be a light – a light to all the nations
A light for Gentiles, a light for Jews, a light for all peoples.
The Glory of all your people!

Maybe for you, you find yourself still in exile – still hoping, like slaves in a foreign land, for rescue. Waiting for an infant Messiah to carry new light into the darkness – shining through your hearts.

Sing it again: “For we have seen your salvation which you have prepared to be a light – a light to all the nations. A light for old people. A light for young people. A light for gays. A light for the poor. A light for the alcoholics. A light for the divorcees. A light for the pregnant teenagers. A light for the desperate businessman. A light! Shining! Your glory has come!”