Things were looking up for Judah. While their northern neighbor Israel had been annihilated by the Assyrians, Judah had escaped. Through a miraculous intervention of God (or a highly unlikely set of fortuitous events…given one's take on history) Jerusalem, Judah's capitol, was never captured and its leaders never put to death by the Assyrians.
Unfortunately as we have witnessed so often with God's people, the blessings of one generation were not appreciated by the next. The kings that followed this escape were mostly a pretty sad lot. Some were quite evil (Manasseh who erected altars to other gods and returned to child sacrifice) while others simply were inept. There was one bright spot, Josiah. Josiah reinstituted the Torah, removed foreign gods and tried his best to return the nation to a more God-centered way of life. Unfortunately he was killed while trying to defend his nation from the Babylonians (the Empire that annihilated the Assyrians).
The kings who followed Josiah seemed to have learned nothing from his efforts or the fate of Israel. The prophets had declared that Israel was destroyed because they had failed to be a nation of justice, compassion and inclusion and were instead a people of oppression and greed. One would think that Judah would, at all costs, attempt to live otherwise. Regrettably Judah believed itself to be invulnerable because God would never forsake them and could therefore live as it pleased.
Judah believed they were invulnerable for two reasons. The first reason was that the Assyrians never conquered Jerusalem. The people of Judah saw their miraculous escape as God's promise that God would always protect them. The second reason was that Jerusalem housed the Temple, the very throne of God. Surely Judah believed, God would never allow God's own house to fall. Thus Judah believed they could do as they pleased and God would look the other way.
The Prophet Jeremiah proclaimed that this was not so. He declared, "Do not trust in these words: the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord" (Jeremiah 7:4)…Behold you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder…and burn incense to Baal..and then come and stand before me in this house (the temple) and say…we are delivered! – only to go on doing these things which are abominations?" (Jeremiah 7:8-11) In other words Jeremiah was telling Judah that if it did not get its act together it would suffer the same fate as did Israel…which is exactly what happened. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and carried the leaders of the nation into exile. The Promise (of God's worldwide restorative work) was now in peril for the people of God were scattered across the face of the earth.
For you and I this story ought to remind us that our vision needs to be one that guides us in establishing a community that reflects God's desires for justice, compassion and inclusion. If we are to be the bearers of God's promise then our church ought to reflect these virtues that were at the heart of both the Torah and the teachings of Jesus. By creating such a community we allow the promise of God's restoring work to be experienced by all those with whom we have contact. By becoming such a community we allow the promise to live in us. Though we will never be perfect, we can with God's help, lead a very different life than Judah and Israel.
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