Exiled

Introduction

Daniel 1:1–2 ESV

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.

Why would God allow a heathen king to be victorious over His own people, much less allow them to be exiled into a foreign land? Why would He allow the sacred articles of the temple to be put into the treasury of a heathen god? These questions aren’t insignificant questions for theologians to debate. These questions get to the heart of who God is, and how He saves the world. To find the answers we need to step back from Daniel’s time to the beginning of the nation of Israel when Moses was leading a rag-tag group through the wilderness with a portable sanctuary.

Covenant

It had only been a short time since God had freed the people from Egypt. Camping near the Mountain where God gave the Ten Commandments, the Israelites still didn’t understand God. They were afraid of Him. They thought He must be a more powerful version of the gods of Egypt. And so God told Moses:

Exodus 25:8 (NKJV)

And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.

No, the God who orchestrated the Exodus was not like the gods of Egypt. He wanted to be with Israel. This is a God of communion and connection. A God who LIVES with His people. But this wasn’t just a God who was choosing favorites by being with the Israelites. God Had told Abraham, the great-great-great-great grandfather of the people that were now wandering in the wilderness, that through His family all nations of the earth would be blessed. And so God told the Israelites:

Exodus 19:5–6 (ESV)

‘Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

A whole nation dedicated to the service of God. A kingdom of priests. That was God’s plan. In other nations the priests were a small group of elites that held coveted positions of power and influence. They disseminated the edicts and doctrines of the gods. But in Israel they were ALL suppose to be priests. Which means they were intended to be the teachers and leaders of the WORLD. But this goal of a nation of priests hinged on a very important qualification—“if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant…”

Throughout the rest of the Book of Exodus God gives Moses instructions and the people build the sanctuary. Among these instructions is a command to “Remember the Sabbath” And a weekly miracle of manna that reminded them to rest from their work and let God provide for their every need. The Sabbath was a sign of trust and allegiance, and a demonstration that the God of Israel was a saving God.

Back in Genesis 15, God had made a covenant with Abraham and it was super clear who was doing what. God had promised to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham children who would be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. To seal the deal He promised His own life as the surety for this covenant. And he asked Abraham to simply follow Him into the land of Canaan where God would put his children. He also asked Abraham to circumcise his children to show their allegiance to Him because it would be through Abraham’s “seed” that the Messiah would come. They weren’t suppose to intermarry with the heathen, so this sign of the covenant was a very practical differentiation that said, “we are the Lord’s” and made them distinct from the world.

Honestly, what God had asked Abraham to do was super simple.

Go this direction.

Cut your foreskin.

Don’t marry the heathen.

It wasn’t hard stuff to do, but the significance was that each one of these things demonstrated allegiance. Were they the children of God, or were they following the gods of this world?

While Abraham had the simple tasks of showing his allegiance, God promised that He would do all the hard stuff that Abraham couldn’t do.

Hard stuff:

When the Israelites were caught in captivity in Egypt it should not have been surprising that God came to their rescue and delivered them in a miraculous way. God had promised to do all the hard stuff. They just needed to follow Him.

While they were still in the wilderness God was preparing them for the work they would need to do to clean up the land and make it a place where God would reign supreme. Notice how God makes it super clear who is doing the hard work of driving the rebellious heathen from the land:

Exodus 23:27–28 ESV

I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.

Another time God told them not to raise up standing armies or build fleets of chariots for battle because God had promised to do the hard stuff and win their battles. They just needed to follow Him.

So the covenant is pretty simple—Israel keeps their allegiance with God while God leads them, protects them, provides for them, grows them into a great nation, and ultimately blesses the world with Salvation through one of their children—the Messiah.

But as you and I know it didn’t end up being that simple. Israel didn’t stay loyal to God.

They intermarried with the uncircumcised heathen

They worshiped the gods of the heathen

They abandoned God’s sanctuary and all the services that reminded them that HE Would be the one to give His life for the world

They even offered their children as burnt offerings to false gods, as though they could fix things by doing the hard stuff themselves

They established armies with chariots and horses — forgetting that God had promised to do the hard work of winning their battles

They broke the covenant by trying to do themselves all the things God had promised to do for them.

God’s Solution to Rebellion

The fate of the world was literally riding on the covenant God had made with Abraham. What could He do if the Israelites didn’t want to participate? How could God keep the promise of a Messiah that He had made to Adam and Abraham?

There is a solution, but it’s not a comfortable one. Remember, God can’t force love. It’s the central part of his being to love, but selfless love isn’t demanded or coerced or forced. Love is attracted and won. So what do you do when love is taken advantage of and all your best efforts end with your children rebelling against everything you’ve taught them is good and right?

While they were in the wilderness, God had told Israel exactly what would happen If they turned away from the covenant and from God. He begins by reminding them that He would do the hard stuff:

Leviticus 26:3–7 (ESV)

“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.

Leviticus 26:11–12 (ESV)

I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.

But then he turns to the consequences of rebellion:

Leviticus 26:14–17 (ESV)

“But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you.

You don’t need to go very far forward in Israel’s history to see these results. After the people settled in the land of Canaan, they rebelled against the covenant by forgetting the sanctuary and worshiping other Gods and doing whatever they wanted to. They didn’t keep the weekly Sabbath much less the Sabbath’s of the land. So God gave them over to the Philistines, and the Amorites and allowed famines to come to wipe out their crops. You can read al about it in the book of judges. Each time they faced hardships they would eventually cried out to God for help. Right away God sent a judge or a prophet who would lead the people in obeying God’s commands and God would work a miracle to overthrow the heathen. Deborah, Sampson, Gideon, and Samuel are just a few examples of God’s miraculous deliverance when the people turned their allegiance back to Him.

Obey God and He does the hard stuff. That’s the promise. Break off your allegiance to God and you’ll have to deal with the hard stuff on your own.

Because these were the people through whom God promised to bless the whole earth through the Messiah, they HAD to obey the covenant or else the whole plan was lost. But God doesn’t force people‘s allegiance. He requires it in order for the promises to be fulfilled, but He can’t force someone to worship Him. So, instead, he provides ample evidence that He is the only source of life, justice, health, goodness, peace, prosperity and hope. And without Him all they have left is misery, servitude, sickness, and suffering.

If they experience hardship and they turn back to God, then great. But what happens if they don’t turn back to Him when things get hard?

Leviticus 26:18 (ESV)

And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins,

This word sevenfold is an important word for us to understand. It’s an adverb that indicates severity or degree of punishment. It is important to recognize that this is not a time period being described here though some have tried to make this into prophetic time. You’ll notice that in Levitic 26 there are 4 statements, each progressive and more intense, that include this word “sevenfold.”

When you read this in the KJV or NKJV translations you’ll notice that it says, “then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.” This way of phrasing it is understandably similar to the “seven times” or seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s discipline when he was proud in Daniel 4. It sounds similar to the time, times and half a time of Revelation 12 which indicates 3 1/2 years or a prophetic 1,260 years. It seems similar in those translations, but with a key difference. In Daniel and Revelation when a prophecied time period was being indicated it ties the number (in the case of Daniel 4, seven) with a period of time, such as a “Which sounds an awful lot like the “seven times” or seven years of punishment Nebuchadnezzar was given for his pride in Daniel 4. Or this might sound like the time, times and half a time — the 3 1/2 years that are mentioned in prophetic time in Daniel and Revelation. Except, in Daniel and Revelation, when “time” or “times” is mentioned it includes a number and a time period. For Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4 the number is seven and the time period is an “iddan,” or a year. So, seven years. In Daniel 9 the number is seventy And the time period is a “shivua,” or a week. In Revelation 12 we find an interesting arrangement where a time (a year) is combined with two times (2 years) and a half of a time (half a year). This simple equation makes up 3 1/2 “iddan” or years.

But this arrangement is not at all what we see in leviticus 26 where we only get a number — seven — and no time period. In Hebrew this isn’t difficult to figure out. The number seven isn’t a time period, it’s an adjective that modifies the discipline promised — seven times more disciple, or sevenfold more discipline than at first. This isn’t a prophecy about the number of years of punishment, this is about the intensity and repeated nature of the punishments.

With that cleared up lets read it again:

Leviticus 26:18–20 ESV

And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

When you read this statement about the heavens becoming like iron and the earth like bronze you can easily connect the dots between Israel’s idolatry with Baal and Ashtoreth during the time of king Ahab and the three and a half years of drought and famine that Israel experienced under the prophet Elijah. Remember, the goal of these punishments is repentance, so God didn’t just punish them, He sent a prophet to call them back to Him. For a time they turned back to God after Elijah called them to choose between Baal and God. But not all the Israelites repented, and ultimately the nation rebelled again.

Leviticus 26:23–25 (ESV)

“And if by this discipline you are not turned to me but walk contrary to me, then I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins. And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute vengeance for the covenant. And if you gather within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.

Over and over again God brought discipline upon a rebellious Israel and a rebellious Judah. One king after another in the northern tribes of Israel turned the people away from the temple, away from the covenant and away from God. And God allowed disease, and wild animals, and foreign nations to cause all kinds of trouble among the Israelites. But they didn’t turn back to God. They settled into their heathen practices and so God allowed the heathen nations to take them over, scatter them and then take over their land. By the time the Assyrian nation was the superpower of the world The territory of the ten northern tribes of Israel was occupied by the heathen. But there was still a loyal following among the two southern tribes known as Judah. Though they too had rebelled against God over and over again. God had brought one devastating punishment after another on them, too, but the difference between the northern tribes and the southern tribes is that the southern tribes had a king here and there that would follow God and turn the nation back to Him.

But they would only go so far in repentance. They would turn back to the worship of God, but they wouldn’t tear down the idols or remove the worship places for the false gods.

After one good king, Josiah, was killed in a battle with Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, the people crowned his younger son, Jehoahaz, king. But having been beaten by the Egyptians, Judah was now under their control. Neco overthrew Jehoahaz, who only got to be king for a few months, and installed another son of Josiah, Eliakim, in his place. Neco changed his name to Jehoiakim to demonstrate his role as a vassal king under Egypt. Jehoiakim ruled for three years under Neco, but the world powers were shifting. Neco met Nebuchadnezzar in battle at Charchamesh and was utterly defeated. His armies were decimated and the nation of Israel was now under the control of Nebuchandnezzar. To secure his position, Nebuchadnezzar’s army marched down to Judah and took control of the territory of Judah.

And now we are now back to where we started In Daniel 1.

Daniel 1:1–2 (ESV)

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.

Babylon’s armies didn’t destroy the land. They just established a presence there and took a few of the elite children back to Babylon to train them in the ways of their new government. Daniel and his three friends were among these captives.

But there is more to Leviticus 26, and more to the story of God’s people. While Daniel was in training in Babylon, Judah was busy rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar. Remember, God was going to be the one to win the victories? So, when Judah decided to go against the punishment of God by rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar instead of repenting and turning to God for help, they were simply doubling down on their rebellion against God. And what would God do if they continued to rebel against Him?

Leviticus 26:27–35 (ESV)

“But if in spite of this you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. And I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and my soul will abhor you. And I will lay your cities waste and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing aromas. And I myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled at it. And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

“Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.

The last chapters of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, and the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Lamentations and the first part of Ezra are all records of this time in Judah’s history. They tell us that Jehoiakim was a wicked king. Jeremiah tells how the king raised a property tax to pay the Babylonian fees. There wasn’t enough money in the royal treasury to pay the basic fees of a vassal nation, but Jehoiakim took the property tax money and built himself a lavish palace. He was a selfish, godless king. Soon he rebelled against Babylon and was removed from being the king. In his stead Nebuchadnzzar installed a third son of Josiah and changed his name to Zedekiah and things got even worse.

2 Chronicles 36:12–14 (ESV)

He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. All the officers of the priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations. And they polluted the house of the Lord that he had made holy in Jerusalem.

In spite of Jeremiah’s council to humble himself and submit to Babylon, Zedekiah decided to rebel against Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar sent his army to besiege Jerusalem. They quickly overcame the surrounding cities and towns and set up siege works against the walls of Jereusalem. For 18 months Babylonian Armies surrounded the city. Food became so scarce that they people were dying of starvation. It became so bad that they became canabals, just like God had predicted in Leviticus 26. Finally, the Babylonian army breached an outer wall of the city.

Instructions were given to prepare the people for deportation. Only the poorest of the land were allowed to stay. When the people had been removed from the city the soldiers burned everything. They tore down the walls. They disassembled the temple, stone by stone, removing the bronze and silver and any remaining gold. The city was left a wasteland.

Conclusion

When you hear about all these trials and hardships Israel went through, you might be tempted to have a negative outlook on God’s plans for the future. As they trudged through the desert to Babylon Israel appeared to be getting farther and farther from their hope—the Temple. But the truth is that God was with them for every step in the direction of exile. Babylon was God’s method of calling Israel to repent and give Him their allegiance.

Jeremiah, a prophet that experienced the rebelliousness of Israel first hand, ended up being left behind in a wasteland. Listen to his heart as he expresses his emotions about the future:

Lamentations 3:22–26 ESV

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Wait for the Lord. That’s the best thing they could do. God had a plan to save the world, and all Israel needed to do was to let Him lead.

We are at the beginning of Daniel’s Story—a series of messages that will take us through the captivity of Israel, to the promised Messiah who would save the world, and all the way down to the judgment that will bring God’s kingdom and an end to evil. It’s a story of a a man who was a child of God exiled in a heathen country with a cruel king.

But more than anything else this is a story of a God who promised to do the hard stuff and who asks for your and my allegiance in return.

Have you been giving your allegiance to God? Or are you acting like the Israelites who went to the temple on the weekend but also kept their idols and worshiped them during the week? Is there something that you’re holding back from God that is causing you to be half-way in and half-way out of His covenant?

That didn’t work so well for the Israelites and it doesn’t work well for us either. You can’t serve both God and the world.

So I’m going to invite you to choose today who you will serve. Like Elijah on the mountain with the priests of Baal, I’m asking you to choose. If God be God, then serve Him.

Closing Song

Whether you’re doubling down on your allegiance to God or making this commitment for the first time, or coming back to God after a period of rebellion, I’d like to invite you to stand and sing this song with me. It’s called:

Lord I'm Coming Home (296)