Scripture: 2 Chronicles 36: 15-21
Sermon: Broken
Topics: destruction, temple, Jerusalem, grief
Preached: March 1, 2017
Rev. Mike Abma
2 Chronicles 36: 15-21
15 The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling-place; 16but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord against his people became so great that there was no remedy.
17 Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their youths with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or young woman, the aged or the feeble; he gave them all into his hand. 18All the vessels of the house of God, large and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his officials, all these he brought to Babylon.
19They burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels.
20He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had made up for its sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfil seventy years.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
These six verses at the end of the 2 Chronicles appear to be
simply another entry in the annals of Israelite history:
the walls of Jerusalem — broken
the house of God — burned
the people of Jerusalem – marched off into exile by Babylon.
But anyone who knows the Prophets,
the Major Prophet – Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel
and the 12 Minor Prophets,
knows that the destruction of Jerusalem
and the ruin of the Temple
created a huge crisis of faith.
The event dominates the landscape of the Prophets:
Isaiah anticipated it.
Jeremiah warned of it.
Ezekiel lamented it.
And so many of the Minor Prophets
do the very same things.
While the walls of Jerusalem remained intact,
And while the Temple still stood,
There was a sense that Israel remained unbroken.
But once those walls were breached,
once the Temple was burned,
there was no denying it any more.
Israel was broken ….broken seemingly beyond repair.
JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM
We may ask why?
Why did Israel seem to have such a deep emotional attachment
to this one particular city,
and to this one particular building in the city, the Temple.
Isn’t a city basically stone and brick and mortar
arranged into walls and structures and domiciles?
And wasn’t the Temple simply an overly large,
overly elaborate building used for religious purposes?
But for the Jews of this time,
Jerusalem and its Temple
made their eyes gleam
made their hearts lift
made them feel a deep sense of awe and wonder.
Let me summarize the three ways Jerusalem and the Temple
attached themselves to the deep emotions of Israel.
First, Jerusalem the City built on a mountain was striking. And the Temple, built on the highest point of that Mountain was simply Big and Beautiful. It had stood there in Jerusalem for over 4 centuries. It glowed with the glory of the days of David and Solomon. When people looked at this City and this Temple, their eyes gleamed and glistened. It was so beautiful it filled every Israelite with pride.
Second, unlike other faiths that had multiple temples,
Israel had only One Temple,
reflecting that they worshipped only One God,
the True God
the maker of heaven and earth.
The Temple was the site of all sacrifices,
the place for all feasts,
the destination of all pilgrimages.
The Temple was the heart of the nation.
Simply seeing this Temple
and knowing it stood strong and solid
filled every Israelite heart with peace.
Third, and most importantly,
this city on Mount Zion,
this Temple built on its apex
was the place where heaven and earth met.
God may have had his throne-room in heaven,
but his footstool was right there on earth,
in Jerusalem
in the Temple.
This is where
His NAME
His PRESENCE
His POWER resided.
If you wanted to get as close to God as you could,
you came to the Temple.
When the earth was shaking,
and all was chaos,
what do the Psalms say?
They say, “Look to God who is in his holy temple,
And you will have refuge and peace” Psalm 11
That is why the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple
is about more than breached walls and burning buildings.
The whole identity of God’s people was wrapped up in
that city and in that Temple.
When the Babylonians came and destroyed it all,
Every Israelite asked,
“How can this be?
How can we continue to exist?
Do we have a future?
Have we any hope?”
BROKEN and BROKEN WITH GRIEF
Can we continue?
Do we have a future?
Have we any hope?
These are the questions Bryan Stevenson asks near the end of his moving book Just Mercy.
Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer,
And he and the organization he founded
Worked tirelessly
To free those on death row who were wrongfully convicted;
Worked tirelessly
To reduce the sentence of those give sentences way out of proportion to the
crime they committed;
Worked tirelessly
To help those who were give death sentences even though they were just
kids when they committed the crime, or had the mental capacity of a kid.
Near the end of the book, one of the people Bryan Stevenson was advocating for
was in fact executed, put to death.
And Stevenson was broken.
He could no longer bear all the brokenness of life:
A system of justice that was broken;
Clients who were broken by poverty, by racism, by mental illness;
A society that did not seem to care anyone because it was broken
by cynicism, by hopelessness, by prejudice.
“I can’t go on,” he writes.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Everything seemed broken.[1]
Back to Jerusalem and the Temple for a moment.
In Ezekiel 24, the prophet Ezekiel loses his wife.
She dies and Ezekiel is devastated with grief.
God says to Ezekiel,
“You have lost the delight of your eyes.”
Now tell my people
“They are about to lose the delight of their eyes,
They are about to lose the object of their affection.”
God was talking about them losing their City and their Temple.
When the “delight of our eyes”
and when the “focus of our affection”
is taken away,
we experience a whole new level of brokenness.
Many of you heard of the family here in Grand Rapids
That lost a child, a 25 year old daughter,
In that tragic accident on #131
An accident which also cost a young 27 year old man,
and husband and father his life.[2]
To lose a child — can anyone really recover from such a loss?
Shirlene and I know a couple who are our age.
They were able to have only one child, a son, named Matthew.
Matthew was everything to them.
He carried all their hopes.
He was their future.
Then, suddenly and tragically, he died.
Unknown to anyone, he had a heart defect,
and Matthew’s life ended at the young age of 23.
Such a loss is a thunderclap of a blow.
It breaks us and forces us to ask:
“Do we have a future?
Have we any hope?
Can we keep going?”
CHRIST — TEMPLE AND ONLY SON
In this Lenten season
We will be in the Old Testament
Pondering the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple,
And all that that entailed.
As we do that, we should always keep mind
The One who called himself the New Temple;
The One who came from heaven to earth
and who is God the Father’s one and only Son.
From God the Father’s point of view,
His Son is the delight of his eyes,
His Son is the focus of his affections.
And yet this Father
Sent his one and only Son to us
To be betrayed by us,
To be broken by us,
To be put to death on a cross by us.
CONCLUSION
In many ways,
the cross is a sign of brokenness and death.
For all of you here Ash Wednesday who received the mark of the cross,
For all of you here who have been marked with the seal of baptism,
We know this sign points to
brokenness before it points to wholeness.
We know this sign points to
death before it points to life.
So we bear the sign of the cross,
We bear the mark of baptism
Knowing that
When things go from bad to worse
When those we love are taken away,
When we feel utterly broken,
When death, perhaps our own death, stares us in the face,
Nevertheless
Nevertheless
Nevertheless
We know and confess and believe
that something remains.
Beneath the broken ruins of life
something eternal, something glorious remains.
For we believe, as Hebrews 1:3 tells us,
That no matter how terrible things appear,
The One who died for us, the One who rose for us
Is holding all things together by his powerful word.
Amen
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