A Word to Babylon

Scripture: Isaiah 47; Daniel 4; Job 31

Sermon: A Word to Babylon

Topics: Babylon, Daniel, Job, justice, mercy

Preached: March 13, 2011

Rev. Mike Abma

The Humiliation of Babylon

47Come down and sit in the dust,

   virgin daughter Babylon!

Sit on the ground without a throne,

   daughter Chaldea!

For you shall no more be called

   tender and delicate.

² Take the millstones and grind meal,

   remove your veil,

strip off your robe, uncover your legs,

   pass through the rivers.

³ Your nakedness shall be uncovered,

   and your shame shall be seen.

I will take vengeance,

   and I will spare no one.

⁴ Our Redeemer—the Lord of hosts is his name—

   is the Holy One of Israel.

⁵ Sit in silence, and go into darkness,

   daughter Chaldea!

For you shall no more be called

   the mistress of kingdoms.

⁶ I was angry with my people,

   I profaned my heritage;

I gave them (Judah) into your hand,

   you showed them no mercy;

on the aged you made your yoke

   exceedingly heavy.

⁷ You said, ‘I shall be mistress for ever’,

   so that you did not lay these things to heart

   or remember their end.

⁸ Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures,

   who sit securely,

who say in your heart,

   ‘I am, and there is no one besides me;

I shall not sit as a widow

   or know the loss of children’—

⁹ both these things shall come upon you

   in a moment, in one day:

the loss of children and widowhood

   shall come upon you in full measure,

in spite of your many sorceries

   and the great power of your enchantments.

¹⁰ You felt secure in your wickedness;

   you said, ‘No one sees me.’

Your wisdom and your knowledge

   led you astray,

and you said in your heart,

   ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’

¹¹ But evil shall come upon you,

   which you cannot charm away;

disaster shall fall upon you,

   which you will not be able to ward off;

and ruin shall come on you suddenly,

   of which you know nothing.

¹² Stand fast in your enchantments

   and your many sorceries,

   with which you have laboured from your youth;

perhaps you may be able to succeed,

   perhaps you may inspire terror.

¹³ You are wearied with your many consultations;

   let those who study^* the heavens

stand up and save you,

   those who gaze at the stars

and at each new moon predict

   what^* shall befall you.

¹⁴ See, they are like stubble,

   the fire consumes them;

they cannot deliver themselves

   from the power of the flame.

No coal for warming oneself is this,

   no fire to sit before!

¹⁵ Such to you are those with whom you have laboured,

   who have trafficked with you from your youth;

they all wander about in their own paths;

   there is no one to save you.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

My thoughts have been in Babylon lately.

I have been teaching a CALL course on the book of Daniel.

And Daniel, of course, is all about living in exile.

It is all about God’s people living in Babylon,

it is all about living as the people of God in a foreign land.^[1]

Even though the actual Babylonian Empire was

neither the biggest,

nor the strongest,

nor the longest,

in Biblical times

it nevertheless has a very definite place in the Old Testament.

It was Babylon that defeated Judah and Jerusalem.

It was Babylon that ravaged,

and raided,

and eventually razed to the ground the Temple.

It was Babylon that displaced thousands of Jews

in 3 different waves of deportation.

The name we associate with Babylon is king Nebuchadnezzar.

And this is only right.

The Babylonians usurped the Assyrians only about

20 years before Nebuchadnezzar took power.

When Nebuchadnezzar was emperor,

he ruled for an impressively long 43 years.

He ruled it at the height of Babylon’s power and influence.

But just over 20 years after Nebuchadnezzar’s death,

the Babylonian empire was finished.

Conquered by the Persians quickly and with hardly a fight.

It would be easier to hate the Babylonians

if Nebuchadnezzar was portrayed as a cruel tyrant.

But clearly Daniel liked or at least appreciated him

and it pained Daniel to give Nebuchadnezzar bad news.

And there was quite a bit to admire about this empire.

It had the finest universities in the world.

It had some of the finest buildings:

the famed hanging gardens of Babylon,

the Ishtar Gate,

Babylon’s impressive Ziggurat,

and of course it’s famous City Walls – impenetrable, or so they thought.

So why did it fall?

Why did it fall to the Persians after a relatively short time – less than 100 years.

According to the histories we have of the time,

it was a military weakness.

A tributary of the Euphrates river ran through the city.

Where the river entered the city,

a metal grate was made,

allowing water to flow in

but still keeping everyone else out.

Apparently the Persians cleverly diverted the flow of the river,

causing the water level to drop enough

so that their soldiers could wade into the water

and slip under the metal grate and into the city.

That is how the history books describe the fall of Babylon to the Persians.

However, how does the Bible explain the downfall of Babylon?

Jeremiah and Isaiah both point to the ludicrous idolatry of Babylon.

But it isn’t so much idolatry that leads to their undoing.

It is a lack of justice and a lack of mercy.

Look at what Isaiah 47: 6-7 says:

I was angry with my people;

I profaned my heritage.

I gave them (Judah and Jerusalem) into your (Babylon’s) hand,

but you showed no mercy;

on the aged you made your yoke exceedingly heavy.

You said, “I shall be mistress forever,

so that you did not take these things (mercy and justice) to heart,

or remember their end.

What God is saying through Isaiah, is that

yes, he allowed Babylon to defeat Judah, to capture Jerusalem.

But then the Babylonians allowed things to go too far.

The Babylonians showed no mercy.

The Babylonians did not have an empire established on justice.

This interpretation fits very well with what Daniel has to tell Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 4.

Remember Nebuchadnezzar has that dream of an amazingly large tree reaching all the way to heaven?

The large tree is a symbol of the Babylonian Empire.

Then suddenly a messenger from heaven comes and declares it must be cut down.

This dream was a warning to Nebuchadnezzar.

A warning that his empire was too arrogant,

too distant from the concerns of its people.

The Empire was about to be reduced to size.

At the end of interpreting the dream,

Daniel says that there were a couple of things Nebuchadnezzar could still do to help atone for his sins and his iniquities:

Nebuchadnezzar could practice justice

and he could love mercy.

Doesn’t that sound so…..prophetic?

What does it mean to walk humbly with God?

To practice justice and love mercy — that’s what it means.

PRACTICE JUSTICE, LOVE MERCY

We have heard these words before.

But what do they mean?

If Nebuchadnezzar were to ask for advice for

how to practice justice

and how to love mercy,

what would you say?

Do you mind if we go to another book of the Bible for a minute?

Do you mind turning to the book of Job, chapter 31.

Job is such an amazing book because he is never identified as an Israelite.

His wisdom is seemingly a wisdom that applies to all people in all places.

Job, you may remember,

is suffering one calamity after another.

In chapter 31 Job gives his final defense.

Chapter 31 has been a bedrock of Biblical ethics for centuries.

The language is a little clunky in the NRSV translation.

If you don’t mind, I would like to use Peterson’s translation in The Message.

I will start at verse 13 and go to verse 28:

This is Job speaking:

Have I ever been unfair to my employees

   when they brought a complaint to me? What, then, will I do when God confronts me?

   When God examines my books, what can I say? Didn’t the same God who made me, make them?

   Aren’t we all made of the same stuff, equals before God?

   ^{16 -18} “Have I ignored the needs of the poor,

   turned my back on the indigent, Taken care of my own needs and fed my own face  while they languished? Wasn’t my home always open to them?

   Weren’t they always welcome at my table?

   ^{19 -20} “Have I ever left a poor family shivering in the cold

   when they had no warm clothes? Didn’t the poor bless me when they saw me coming, knowing I’d brought coats from my closet?

   ^{21 -23} “If I’ve ever used my strength and influence to take advantage of the unfortunate, Go ahead, break both my arms, cut off all my fingers! The fear of God has kept me from these things —  how else could I ever face him?

If Only Someone Would Give Me a Hearing!

       ^{24 -28} “Did I set my heart on making big money

   or worship at the bank? Did I boast about my wealth,

   show off because I was well-off? Was I ever so awed by the sun’s brilliance

   and moved by the moon’s beauty That I let myself become seduced by them

   and worshiped them on the sly? If so, I would deserve the worst of punishments,

   for I would be betraying God himself.

JOB and JUSTICE and MERCY

Job may not have been an emperor,

but he was certainly a wealthy and influential man.

In fact, Job is described in chapter one as

“the greatest (or most influential) of all people in the east.”

Here, in these words, we get fleshed out something of what it means

to practice justice and to love mercy.

Notice that it is more than just feeding hungry people,

and clothing naked people,

and providing shelter for homeless people.

It involves seeing the equality of people:

“Didn’t the same God who made me, make them?

   Aren’t we all made of the same stuff, equals before God?”

Job is not simply giving out handouts here.

He is involved in the life of the poor, the homeless, the needy.

He is involved in the life of the most vulnerable in his community.

He wants the best for them.

He wants them to delight in life.

JUSTICE not CHARITY

I have been using the word justice to describe

what Job did and

what Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire failed to do.

Justice – which in Hebrew is mishpat, a word occurring well over 200 times.

You may be thinking that justice doesn’t sound like the right word.

helping the poor,

feeding the hungry,

clothing the naked,

housing the homeless,

and everything else Job mentions

sounds more like charity than justice.

But I propose to you that there is a problem

when we think of this as charity rather than justice,

and let me tell you why.

Charity, as we understand it in the English language,

is a voluntary giving of help.

Charity conveys a good activity but an optional activity.

It would sound strange, even wrong to require charity.

Yes, we have an obligation to be just (fair),

but a choice to be charitable.

But that is exactly why we should not see

what Job did

and what Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon failed to do

as charity.

Job says at the end of his speech that if he failed in doing any of this

he would be betraying God himself

he would have been false to God above (NRSV).

This does not sound optional to me.

The same is true for Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar.

They were answerable to God himself

for their failure to practice justice,

and their failure to love mercy.

These passages in Isaiah and Job,

help us understand that

helping the most vulnerable in society –

the homeless, the hungry, the elderly, the sick —

these thing are not optional; they are imperative – a must.

This is not a failure to practice charity.

This is a failure to do justice, to love mercy.

JUSTICE TODAY

We confuse charity and justice a lot in our world and in our culture today.

I think that confusion is part of what is driving the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East.

Take all those countries in North Africa and the Middle East that are witnessing demonstrations and calls for change.

Why so much unrest?

In these countries,

where oil and gas accounts for so much of the economy,

ruling families grow immensely wealthy.

They may use some of their wealth

to feed people, house people, clothe people.

They may even think that these citizens should be grateful for the help they receive, not angry.

But they are blind to the reality that

they have no real interest in the dignity of the average person.

They have no real interest in the true well-being of the average person.

They may practice charity, but they are not promoting justice.

CONCLUSION

And here is the fear.

In this country as well,

people, especially church people, Christian people,

have confused charity with justice.

We see poverty,

we see the homeless,

we see the needy

but we see our response as optional.

We see it as charity – something we may or may not choose.

But Biblically,

a failure to respond

to the needs of the most needy in society

is an offense to God.

It is a betrayal of God.

It is being false to God.

It is a failure to do justice.

It is a failure to love mercy.

For me, the parallels between

the very wealthy and well-educated Babylon

with a large gap between the wealthy and the poor

and the very wealthy and well-educated North America

with a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor

are somewhat unnerving.

That is why I find one of the most chilling verses in Isaiah 47 is verse 8:

Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures,
   who sit securely,
who say in your heart,
   ‘I am, and there is no one besides me;

Doesn’t this hit close to home?

Doesn’t this resonate with our own world:

a world

that is addicted to pleasures,

that is enamored with security,

and that is a take-care-of-me-first world

and if there is anything left over, I may help someone else?

Isaiah 47 is a warning to Babylon,

but also a warning to all of God’s people living in Babylon

who were becoming a little too “Babylonian.”

It is a warning for us too.

We may also live in a modern-day Babylon,

but we must never be of Babylon.

And the surest way to know that, and practice that,

is to do justice

and love mercy.

Amen

1. CALL refers to a Calvin Academy of Lifelong Learning class. Daniel begins in the Babylonian Empire, but there is reason to believe it was written as late as the Hellenistic Empire, when the Jewish population of Jerusalem was being oppressed by the Seleucid rulers. ↑