Preached · January 29, 2017
When Things Fall Apart
So my question for you this morning is: when have things fallen apart for you? When has something in your life — a plan, a trajectory, a goal — when has something in your life just fallen apart?
I'll give you a kind of silly example. When we were teenagers, we had these really realistic-looking rubber masks that would go all the way over your head and extend over your shoulders, and we would do absurd, and what we later found out to be illegal, things with them. So, like, my mom would drive us around and my brother would be in the front passenger seat, and he'd have a crash-dummy mask, which was really fun, because you'd pull up to an intersection and brake hard and bash your head against the dash, and people would look sideways at you.
But we also had the more scary masks — you know, werewolf and monsters and Frankenstein and stuff. And so one time it was me, my brother David, my brother Justin. We went to my brother Justin's girlfriend's house, and it was late, like 10 o'clock. It's dark, and we go banging on the window with these masks on — these frightening, realistic, scary masks. And they don't answer, if you can imagine that. They don't answer the door. And so we're banging, we're banging, we're banging. And we see them peek out the blinds and then run away, and then just nothing happens. So finally we take the masks off, and we say, "Hey, it's Justin and Anthony and David. It's the Parrotts. We're just messing with you." And so Justin's girlfriend comes out. She's like, "Our parents are gone. We're watching a scary movie. These people with masks on, banging on our door — what do you think we did? You guys better run. We called the cops."
Come to find out that masking is an illegal activity in the city of Goshen, Indiana, as it should be. It's a terrible idea. So we all pile into what else but my mom's purple minivan and race down the alley as the cops turned the corner. And, yeah, we avoided any sort of misdemeanors, unfortunately. But that plan fell apart pretty quickly. And we never went masking again.
Now, when you think of what things have fallen apart for you, things can get serious pretty quickly, right? For us, when we think about things that have fallen apart, very quickly we think of relationships. We think of boyfriends and girlfriends. We think of marriages that have fallen apart. We think of jobs that we thought were going to last much longer than they did, and then that job was pulled out from underneath us. We think of the children that we intended on having, and that not going according to the plan that we have. Sometimes plans and things fall apart.
Well, today we want to talk about one of the biggest falling-aparts in history. And that's the fall of Israel and of Judah — of God's chosen people rebelling so strongly against the God that has called them that the rug gets pulled out from underneath them.
So, like I said, we're in The Story, chapters 15 and 16. It's a combination of scriptures from 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and the prophets. And we're going to talk about this for two weeks. It's a big deal. Now, this week is going to be kind of like ancient history 101 — a little bit of college going on. That's why I've got my sport coat, professor thing going. Next week is going to be a little bit of Big Tent Revival, a little bit of fire and brimstone. So be prepared for that.
Why Did Israel Fall?
Now, first, let's begin by answering the question: why did Israel fall? Why did they fall?
Israel begins with Abraham, and God promising to Abraham to make a nation out of his son — and for this nation to bless the world. Blessed to be a blessing. And so we see this story through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. We see Israel being called out of Egypt by the power of God, led by Moses and Joshua and Caleb. We see God give Israel his covenant at Mount Sinai, and explain to them how to be a nation, and call them to be a light to the world — to be a kingdom of priests, for them to represent Yahweh to everyone else, to be a community on mission, a missional community nationwide that would call the whole world to the worship of Yahweh, of God.
And then we see the establishment of King David, and God going to David and saying, "Your line I will establish forever. Forever." If you look at the passage in 2 Chronicles, the word "forever" is repeated five times. Forever I will establish your throne. Forever I will establish your kingdom. Forever. It will never end.
And yet, we get to the end of 2 Kings, and it's over. We get to the end of 2 Chronicles, and it's over. So why did Israel fall? Well, long story short, they failed at being this missional community. They failed at being a community on mission to the world. I'm going to talk about three big reasons.
One: A God Shaped by Culture
Number one: Israel had a God shaped by culture, instead of a culture shaped by God. So I want to introduce to you hipster Jesus and buddy Jesus. A God shaped by our culture, as opposed to a culture shaped by God.
Instead of believing God's own report as to who he was — as evidenced in his actions in Egypt, as evidenced by his covenant at Sinai and Jericho and Jerusalem — instead of Israel believing that, the Israelites were much more likely to reject the revelation that God had given and fashion a God into their own image.
Israel, for example, they were called to be monotheists, to believe that there was only one God — not a whole pantheon of gods, but only one God. But much more often, as we read through the history of Israel, they were much more likely to be polytheists, to believe that there were many gods — and that, depending on what you needed, if you needed a little fertility, if you needed a little rain, if you needed a good harvest, if you needed a good planting season, if you needed some good tax news, you had a variety of gods that you could turn to depending on your mood. Sometimes — here's a new word for you, I told you it'd be college today — they were monolatrists: they believed that there were many gods, but their God, Yahweh, just happened to be the best one, or the one that they should worship today. But sometimes that monolatrism would switch, and so sometimes Baal would become the god that they would worship instead, or sometimes it was Asherah instead.
And here's the thing: when you're a polytheist, it's much easier to worship those kinds of gods, because they're easier to control. You've got leverage on these gods. If you push the right buttons, then these gods can be like a vending machine to you. So whatever you need — well, you make the right sacrifice, and that god is obliged to give you whatever you want.
And amazingly, the gods that Israel worshiped always seemed to agree with what Israel wanted. They never seemed to push back all that often. Gods never seemed to push Israel to do something that was difficult or hard. The gods that Israel worshiped, when they weren't worshiping Yahweh, they didn't call Israel to be a light to the nations. They didn't call Israel to be unique or different. They didn't call Israel to be a nation of priests. These gods were much more likely to have Israel have an Israel-first policy, where they could enslave other people to do their bidding, where they could steal the resources of anybody that they wanted to. And this was not God's plan for Israel. Their God just started to look like everybody else's gods.
We see this in Elijah's confrontation with the priests of Baal. Like Pastor mentioned last week, Elijah asks, "How long are you going to waver between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him."
So the first big failing of Israel was that they had a God shaped by their culture. And when you do that — when you have a God that starts to look more like you than God — well, that naturally leads to big problem number two.
Two: Spiritual Consumerism
Spiritual consumerism. Santa Jesus.
God had given the Israelites a blueprint of what worship of him would look like. And sometimes I think we forget this, but the sacrificial system was an invitation to dine with the divine. When you brought your sheep or your birds or your cattle to the temple, and it was slaughtered, it was killed — it wasn't just wasted meat. You ate it. You partook. And some was given to the priest, and some was given to your family. And you were there in the temple of God, in the presence of God Almighty, who had called you out of Egypt, who had given you a covenant of love. And God says, "Come and dine with me."
And so God had given that all to Israel. God had given them a covenant of how to be a light to the nations, of how to love God fully with your heart and your mind and your soul and your strength, of loving your neighbor as yourself. These aren't just brand-new ideas that Jesus pulled out of nowhere. These were ideas built into the covenant that God had given Israel. They were protections as to when and how to release slaves from slavery, when and how to forgive debt, how to make sure that no person ever had too much wealth.
Worshiping Yahweh was never meant to be easy, but it was meant to be good. It meant putting the needs of others before the needs of yourself. And consumerism is the exact opposite of that. Consumerism is the self-focused drive to get as much as I can with the least amount of effort. Which is exactly what the Israelites did.
For example, God would call every family to the tabernacle, and eventually to the temple, to make sacrifices and to dine with God. And so that meant a trip. You had to pack your things up, pack up your cattle, whatever you're going to sacrifice, and bring it to Jerusalem, bring it to the temple. It was difficult. You know, there were no cars, there were no trains, there were no carriages. You had to basically walk or ride. And so, not surprisingly, the Israelites found a way to do this easier. The Israelites would build their own altars on the high places. And so you see the high places be mentioned again and again throughout the Old Testament. And these high places — you know, basically where we build water towers today, that's where an Israelite would build an altar back then. And sometimes these altars would be to Yahweh, but most often they were just the altars to whatever local pagan deity was around at the time. And it was just more convenient. There was no need to travel to Jerusalem when you could just travel to your local water tower and make your sacrifice there. We wouldn't want our worship to demand too much of us.
There was supposed to be a variety of tithes that you would give throughout the year. You would give a tithe on your harvest or on your income, and these tithes were used to support not only the priesthood, but the poor and the widow and the orphan and the immigrant who had no land. But these tithes were ignored. "I wouldn't want to give my money to somebody leeching off the land."
There was supposed to be a time of Jubilee, every 49 years, when debts were forgiven, slaves released, boundary lines of whose property was owned by whom reset, and the land allowed to rest. And Jubilee never happened. "Nah, we can't be showing people too much forgiveness. They might get used to it."
And so eventually, the consumerism got so rampant that the entire law that God gave — those stone tablets, those scrolls — got literally lost. They didn't know where they went. Many, many years later, there was a construction project in Israel to refurbish the temple that had been in disrepair for years. And basically, the contractor is digging around and finds these scrolls. And there's this really funny scene where the contractor goes to King Josiah, one of the good kings of Judah, and he says, "I found this book." He doesn't know what it is. He's just like, "I found a book." So King Josiah says, "Well, read it to me. What does it say?" And so it's the law. It's what we know of as Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Josiah rips his clothes out of frustration and anger and sorrow, realizing how far away they've gotten from the God who called them out of Egypt.
So here's all the things King Josiah had to do — in the temple, the place where God was meant to be worshiped. He had to remove the idols to Baal and Asherah, and they had idols to the stars and the moon and the sun. Josiah — literally, in the temple of God — Josiah had to tear down the dormitories for the shrine prostitutes. He had to fire all the different priests of all the different religions. He had to tear down all the alternative worship sites. He got rid of the altar where everyone knew that you could sacrifice your child if you really needed to. And you know Solomon, that great king? Well, he got rid of all those extra altars that Solomon built as well. Josiah had to confront the consumerism, the easy worship, the worship that ignored God's very word, to get Judah back on the right path.
Consumerism, of course, is the air that we breathe in every day. It's the ocean we swim in. It's the spiritual force that tells us, when our relationships get too hard, run away. Buy the cheapest groceries you can and the cheapest clothing you can, and don't give a second thought as to where they came from. If it breaks, don't fix it — just buy a new one. It's what makes us want a microwave spirituality, a spirituality that just says, you know, a minute of prayer a day, the scripture of the day on K-LOVE, and two worship services a month at max, and we're good. No need for the long haul. When things get too hard at your church, well, there's 17 other churches. Just go find a new one. Shop around. So many to choose from. Consumerism doesn't demand anything from you except to find the path of least resistance.
Three: The Failure of Parents and Leaders
So Israel fell because they created their own God, a God shaped by culture. They were in a glut of spiritual consumerism. And three: the absolute failure of their parents and leaders.
There's this tragic, repeated pattern throughout the Old Testament where the parents failed to do the words of Deuteronomy and to pass on their faith to their children. This is no more apparent than the kings of Israel and Judah. Check out this pattern. David, a man after God's own heart — his son Solomon, heart turned after other gods. Jotham (these are all kings of Israel and Judah), Jotham did what was right, and Ahaz sacrificed his son in the fires. Hezekiah removed the high places; his son Manasseh rebuilt the high places. Josiah did what was right; Jehiel has did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
And this, of course, kind of pricks a little too close for us, because we know it's a problem in our own culture as well. We probably all know what the largest spiritual or religious affiliation is for people my age and younger. None. No religious affiliation. Fully one-third of my generation have no religious affiliation at all. That's nearly double the amount of baby boomers who would say the same thing. The younger you are, the less likely you are to attend a church, believe in God, or pray. And even more scarily, as we track young people as they get older, it's not like, "Oh, they start to have a family and they come back." No — the older they get, the more likely they are to say, "I don't believe in any of that stuff." We struggle passing on our faith.
And so did Israel. Israel and Judah, they had leaders. They had priests. They had a functioning temple, technically. They had copies of the law — maybe hidden in a drawer, but they had them. Israel was a spiritual nation, a God-seeking nation. And yet, they fell. Their leaders abused their power. They pretended to speak for God. They invoked Yahweh's name for their actions, but it was a God that they had shaped into their own image. The God that they invoked looked nothing like the God of Mount Sinai. They had a national religion that was a combination of Yahwism, the worship of Yahweh, and paganism. And it was absolute poison.
Any leader — a leader of a family, an organization, a church, a business — any leader's first priority is to figure out what reality is, what is actually true. And Israel's leaders lost sight of reality, of truth. They consulted prophets. And when the prophets agreed with the leader, with the king, on what they were going to do — lo and behold, those prophets were to be believed. They were good prophets. And when those prophets disagreed with what the king was going to do — wouldn't you believe it? — those prophets can't be trusted anyway, now can they?
There's this great story in 1 Kings chapter 22, where King Ahab consults his 400 prophets. Now, these are prophets of other gods, mind you, and they're on his personal payroll, but he consults his prophets about whether or not he should go to war. And amazingly, all of these prophets whose paycheck depends on the king said, "Yeah, go to war. Whatever you think is right, it's good. Good idea." And so Ahab is forced by another king: "Why don't you go consult that one prophet left who actually is a prophet for Yahweh?" And so Ahab begrudgingly goes to this prophet of Yahweh, and the prophet says, "No, if you go to war, you're going to die. You're going to be killed." Ahab hates this prophet, hates his message, sends the prophet to prison, goes to war, and is promptly killed in war.
When leaders and kings claim that only they alone are to be trusted, only they alone have the solutions, with no reference to God, no reference to truth, no consulting to anyone but their own wisdom, those leaders will fail and lead the organizations and countries and churches they lead to ruin.
What Actually Happened: The Timeline
So three things led to Israel's fall: consumerism, a God created by culture, and the failure of parents and leaders. So, let's get down to it. What actually happened? Let's go to the timeline. Love a good timeline.
For context, we're talking BC — before Christ — so the numbers are running backwards. They're counting up to zero, to Jesus. And so: 1446, you have the Exodus, the Red Sea, Sinai. 400 years later, you have King David established, the monarchy strongly established, a united Israel. 930, after the time of Solomon, Israel and Judah split. For some contemporary history: during the 800s BC would be Homer, the Odyssey, the Iliad. 776, you have the first Olympics. 753, Rome's founded.
And in 722 — so 700 years after Israel is called out of Egypt — the northern kingdom, Israel, is taken over by Assyria. Assyria takes them over. And here's how Scripture describes it:
Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, came up to attack King Hoshea of Israel, who had been Shalmaneser's vassal and had paid him tribute. But the king of Assyria discovered that King Hoshea was a traitor. And therefore the king of Assyria, Shalmaneser, seized him, put him in prison. The king of Assyria invaded the entire land, marched against Samaria, laid siege to it for three years. And the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon and Kuthah and Avon, Hamath and Sepharvayim, and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. And they took over Samaria and lived in its towns. And to this day they persist in their former practices. They don't worship the Lord. They don't adhere to the decrees or regulations, the laws and the commands, that the Lord gave.
According to some estimates, Assyria deported nearly one-fifth of the nation of Israel out of the land and brought in thousands of foreigners. Anybody who could read or write, any leaders or governors or mayors — they were deported or killed, and the capital city destroyed.
An Aside: The Ten Lost Tribes
Now, this leads to a quick little aside I want to make about the ten lost tribes of Israel. There's a myth out there that this northern kingdom, the ten tribes, that they're out there somewhere — that these ten tribes are lost and they're still around. And if you can think of a people group, there's somebody in that people group that claims they're part of the ten lost tribes. The Japanese, Ethiopians. There's a movement called British Israelism that claims that all Brits — and therefore the majority of Americans — are part of the ten lost tribes.
However, it's a myth. Scripture doesn't support this in the least. One way that we know that is when Hezekiah had a religious reform and had a Passover, he invited people from the north. He invited Ephraim and Manasseh, inviting them to come to the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover. So we know from archaeology, we know from other written records, that these ten tribes just didn't disappear. They were greatly destroyed, but many of them found refuge in Judah, in the southern kingdom. And this was a period where, for the most part, Israel and the twelve tribes kind of lost their identity, and you were more likely just to be described as a Jew.
Now, this is all personally important to me, because I have this relative who fell into a cult that taught him that he was part of the ten tribes. And because of that, he now believes that he has to follow the Jewish law. He's basically cut off most of his family, and what family he still has connection with, he tells them regularly that they're on their way to hell. So I just want to tell you: knowing your Scripture matters, friends, because if you don't, you're seducible to pretty false teaching.
The Fall of Jerusalem
So, what happened to the southern kingdom? Back to the timeline. So, 722, Assyria conquers Israel. 715, a few years later, King Hezekiah becomes king of Judah and rebels against Assyria. In 612, Assyria falls and the Babylonian empire takes its place. In 609, King Jehoiakim becomes king of Judah; Nebuchadnezzar dethrones him and sets up a puppet king. 597, 586 — King Zedekiah is the last king of Israel. In 586, Jerusalem finally falls.
This is how Scripture describes it:
He killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary and did not spare them — the young men, the young women, the elderly, and the infirm. He carried to Babylon all the treasures of the Lord's temple, and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value.
And that's the fall of Israel and Judah.
The Promise of a New Covenant
That's a pretty bad place to leave a sermon. So I want to leave you with the promise that the prophets were making at this time:
The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. And it won't be like the covenant I made before with their ancestors, when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt, because I'm going to put the law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people, for I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.
And so we leave today with a sense of devastation, that God's missional community in Israel and Judah has failed — and a sense of hope, that there is a new covenant where God will write on our very hearts his ways and his path.
Communion
So I want to invite the worship team forward, Pastor John and the servers, because we are about to celebrate that new covenant this morning through communion. And Pastor John will give us an opportunity to think and pray on the words that we just heard, to make any confessions that we need to make before we partake of this new covenant together.
And so I encourage you to think: Are there ways that the God that you worship looks more like you than God? Are there ways that you have succumbed to an easy faith, a faith shaped by consumerism? And are there places where you can step up as a leader or as a parent in passing on the faith to the next generation?
Let's pray. Almighty God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the teaching that you give to us, God. And God, even though today was a hard lesson on the failings of our ancestors, of our predecessors, we know that you are a God of hope, and we know that you are a God who does not leave us in destruction, who does not leave us in the tatters and the ruins of things gone awry, but you are a God who calls us to a resurrection life built on the foundation of Jesus. So help us to seek your face as you really, truly are, God, and to know the embrace of your love. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
