Tag: Exile

Excellence in Exile, Part 3: Divine Wisdom for Struggling Neighbors (Daniel 2:1-30)

On By Tim ValentinoIn SermonsLeave a comment

While in Babylon, Daniel and his three friends walk the same tightrope every believer has to walk today in a fallen world—avoiding isolation on the one hand, and avoiding assimilation on the other. They did it well. In fact, in Daniel 2 these remarkable Jewish teens continue living out the command God previously gave the exiles—to live for the good of a bad city (Jeremiah 29:4-7). They did this by serving their unbelieving neighbors and helping them flourish.

In many ways, Daniel 2 gives us a collision between the wisdom of this word and the wisdom of God. Nebuchadnezzar is the portrait of a man who faces life with worldly wisdom. Daniel, however, is the portrait of a person who faces life with godly wisdom. Quite significantly, this collision is not a fistfight. It’s not a heated debate. It’s not a military battle. It’s a ministry.

Specifically, Daniel has a ministry to a man in crisis. And in that ministry to his royal neighbor, the wisdom of God is displayed. The lesson for us today is instructive: God’s faithful people can help connect faithless people to God.

Nebuchadnezzar’s problems are not unlike our neighbors’ problems today. For example, some of our neighbors may be consumed with worry, anxiety, and insecurity (v. 1). Some may seek professional help for their deepest troubles (vv. 2-4). Some may become suspicious of the world’s best experts (vv. 5-9). Some may hear the world’s experts admit their own limitations (vv. 10-11). Some may grow increasingly insecure and perhaps even violent (vv. 12-13). 

Daniel’s ministry to the king is anchored in his knowledge of who God is. Indeed, he has a lofty view of Yahweh, which is helpful to God’s people today when we seek to help our neighbors who are in crisis. Specifically: 

  • Because God is gracious, his people can approach a neighbor’s crisis with wisdom and tact (vv. 14-15).
  • Because God is missional, his people can view a neighbor’s crisis with a sense of divine purpose (v. 16).
  • Because God is all-knowing, his people can take a neighbor’s crisis to him in prayer (17-19a).
  • Because God is sovereign, his people can praise him in the midst of any crisis (vv. 19b-23).
  • Because God is revealing, his people can offer wisdom for a neighbor’s crisis when needed (vv. 24-28a).
  • Because God is good, his people can serve neighbors in crisis even if they believe differently (vv. 28b-30).

By the time Nebuchadnezzar leaves the stage in the book of Daniel, he comes to recognize that Yahweh is the Most High God of the universe. May that likewise be the result of our ministry to the people around us today.

Sermon Resources:

Series: Excellence in Exile: Faithful Living in a Fallen Land (Daniel)

Divine Wisdom for Struggling Neighbors (Sermon Outline PDF)Download
Divine Wisdom for Struggling Neighbors (Sermon PowerPoint PDF)Download

Contact This New Life directly for the sermon audio file.

Excellence in Exile, Part 2: Cooperation without Compromise (Daniel 1:3-21)

On By Tim ValentinoIn Sermons1 Comment

Believers are resident aliens in this world. Three times in 1 Peter, the followers of Christ are called “strangers” or “aliens.” The Apostle Paul concurs, reminding the Philippians that their “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). In other words, the believer’s primary residence is not planet Earth. Someday we’re going home to a world of heavenly perfection.  

As great as that truth is, it creates a challenge for the people of God. How do we interact with the world while we’re here? What is our relationship to unbelievers supposed to be until we finally go home? This issue has always been a struggle for the covenant community. 

When Daniel and his three friends were aliens in Babylon, they faced a similar challenge. They discovered quickly that the art of being a believer in this world is to love God and love your neighbor—in that order. King Nebuchadnezzar tried to shape their thinking, their identity, and their convictions. But the four teens from Israel resisted a secular brainwashing at Babylon University. They refused to allow themselves to be intoxicated by the glamour that comes from eating at the king’s table while trying to guard their own hearts against personal compromise. They survived in a culture that was hostile to their faith by drawing some lines in the sand and refusing to cross them. 

But there’s a way to draw those lines and a way not to draw them. Daniel didn’t lead a march, a sit-in, or a protest rally. He didn’t engage in hate speech. He didn’t walk around Babylon with a placard saying, “Thou shalt not eat non-kosher food,” or “Prepare to meet thy God.” Instead, he practiced cooperation without compromise. Daniel was sympathetic to the king’s official and didn’t want him to lose his head because of his faith. So, Daniel wound up cutting a deal—and it was a deal that God honored. 

One can’t help noticing that Daniel had a genuine respect for the unbelievers around him. He wasn’t a religious snob with a holier-than-thou chip on his shoulder. There was an ease with which he moved in secular circles. He wasn’t edgy around people who didn’t share his faith. He wasn’t uncomfortable around people who worshiped idols. He didn’t treat them like they had spiritual cooties. Rather, he was kind and deferential to them. He also accommodated them—but only in so far as his own faith would allow him to do so. God was always his first loyalty. 

Jesus, of course, was the ultimate resident alien. He didn’t arise from within the human race; he came from outside it. That’s what Christmas is all about. In his life and ministry, Jesus was totally loyal to his heavenly Father. He never compromised, and he never sinned. Yet he moved freely and easily among the people who were far from God, leading them to see more clearly his truth and love for everyone.In his death on the cross, Jesus became alien-ated by bearing in his own body the sins of the world in himself. He did that so that everyone could become undefiled by faith, and believers could someday go back home with him.

Sermon Resources:

Series: Excellence in Exile: Faithful Living in a Fallen Land (Daniel)

Cooperation without Compromise (Sermon Outline PDF)Download
Cooperation without Compromise (Sermon PowerPoint PDF)Download

Contact This New Life directly for the sermon audio file.

Excellence in Exile, Part 1: Living for the Good of a Bad City (Psalm 137:1-9; Jeremiah 29:4-14; Daniel 1:1-2)

On By Tim ValentinoIn Sermons1 Comment

Spiritually speaking, much has changed in America during our lifetime. From a Christian perspective, some of these changes are sad, revolting, depressing, and even scary. As a nation, we’re far from God, and the church at large is in a funk because of it. Older evangelicals especially can’t believe the changes they’ve witnessed. It is depressing. Like Israel in exile, we’re tempted to lament the situation, curse the darkness, and “hang up our harps on the poplar” (Psalm 137:2). But while these reactions are understandable, it’s vital to remember that God has a plan for his people even in spiritually dark times. Especially in dark times. 

Jeremiah 29:4-11 provides some much-needed encouragement. This famous passage of Scripture is often ripped from its context, but the context is vital to understanding its message and contemporary relevance. The “plans” that God has for his people are not individual recipes for success, but plans for effective corporate witness and an eventual end to the exile. “But until then,” says God, “don’t run from the pagan culture; settle down in it. Live among your neighbors and love them. Help them flourish. Seek their welfare. Live for the good of a bad city.” 

In other words, his marching orders for believers are to live out the wisdom of God in their neighbors’ midst, captivating them with the reality of who God is. The unbeliever’s eternal destiny is God’s business, but the believer’s business is to be a good neighbor and stay loyal to God in the process. It’s to be in the world but not of it. 

And because God is “beautifully sneaky,” he’s always up to something good in the midst of something bad. Magi attended the birth of Christ precisely because the nation of Israel went into exile. Had the covenant people stayed in their familiar and comfortable land, the messianic prophecies never would have reached the Gentiles. But they did, and that’s likely how the Magi knew to connect the astronomical phenomenon with the birth of the new king. God’s love is truly for the whole world. 

And so it is today. It’s the scattered church that can plant seeds for the harvest. When a culture is spiritually dark, God’s people can graciously turn on the light. That’s part of what it means to be “excellent in exile.” The book of Daniel shows us how.

Sermon Resources:

Series: Excellence in Exile: Faithful Living in a Fallen Land (Daniel)

Living for the Good of a Bad City (Sermon Outline PDF)Download
Living for the Good of a Bad City (Sermon PowerPoint PDF)Download

Contact This New Life directly for the sermon audio file.

The Permanent Exile of Death (Isaiah 25:6-8)

On By Tim ValentinoIn DevotionalsLeave a comment

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines. 

On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.  

The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.  

Isaiah 25:6-8

There’s something pitiable about the person who lives in exile. To be in a faraway place when your heart is back home can be a severe discouragement. We can’t help feeling sorry for people who’ve been evicted or evacuated against their will. To be separated from the comforts of loved ones and familiar surroundings is to be assaulted by loneliness, fear, anxiety, and possibly even despair.

Have you ever felt like an exile? It’s a miserable sensation. The child going away for summer camp, or the teenager going away to college for the first time might have a sense of exile. So might the missionary who heads off to a strange and hostile land after years of being cloistered in a Christian subculture. 

man-alone-gray-fog

To be separated from the comforts of loved ones and familiar surroundings is to be assaulted by loneliness, fear, anxiety, and possibly even despair.

Indeed, exiles come in many forms—the military spouse who gets dragged all over the globe; the chronically ill patient who’s confined to a hospital bed; the success-driven businessperson who gets strapped into a plane seat yet again; the incarcerated man who can do nothing but hang his wrists on the iron bars all day long.

Then there are those who may be physically in their homes, but they, too, feel like exiles: the widow separated from her beloved husband, now living in a quiet house with echoes of poignant memories flooding her soul; the teen athlete who desperately wants to compete but has to stay cloistered in her house while a pandemic runs its course; the child whose parents are emotionally absent and unavailable to provide support and affirmation in those critical, formative years.

All of them can feel like exiles, and all of them desperately want to go “home.”

The people of Isaiah’s day knew that feeling well. Theirs was the plight of the exile. They’re a long way from home, and they have “miles to go before they sleep.” But Isaiah 25 is a song of liberation—an Old Testament Magnificat that anticipates real hope for a bright and glorious future. The hymn breaks into the text unexpected, celebrating the end of the tyranny and shame that have befallen the Jews for so long. God is clearly on the move, having subdued the enemies of Israel and having promised to restore them to a place of peace and prominence once again.

plant-from-tree-stump

With God, even the worst exile is only temporary. Verses 6-8 in particular celebrate the end of darkness and death for the covenant people. The marvelous truth is that Israel as a nation will rise again from the dead.

As is often the case with Old Testament prophecies, the divine Author could see more than the earthly author (cf. 1 Peter 1:10-12). It’s not difficult to capture glimpses of a greater resurrection in this passage—the bodily resurrection that awaits all believers at the end of the age.

empty-tomb-linens

With God, even the worst exile is only temporary. The marvelous truth is that Israel as a nation will rise again from the dead.

In fact, when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:54 that “death is swallowed up in victory,” he’s citing Isaiah 25:8. When John writes in Revelation 7:17 that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,” and again in 21:4 that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more,” he’s surely alluding to the same prophecy. Isaiah’s original vision exceeds all expectations.

purple-mountains-majesty-stream-pine

Indeed, humanity’s exile to this sin-scarred planet of crime, cruelty, injustice, and death will one day come to an end. Like Israel of old, the church may continue to fail God in many ways, but God is still God, and he will keep his promises:

•  He will prepare an eschatological feast for his people (6).

•  He will destroy the corpse’s shroud that enfolds us all (7).

•  He will swallow up death forever (8a).

•  He will wipe away the tears from our faces (8b).

•  And he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth (8c).

In other words, death itself will be exiled forever, and the people of God will finally be home. And the authority for such a great hope is that the Lord himself has said it will happen (8d).

great-feast-table-fireplace

Thank you, God, for your power over death and the hope that it brings. As we journey through this life—sometimes feeling like strangers and exiles—encourage our spirits by helping us to remember that you will keep your resurrection promises. In the midst of our many failures, disappointments, disillusionments, and inadequacies, help us to stay focused on the glorious future that awaits the people of God. We’re eager to see you, Lord, and have you dry our tears. Until then, help us to hope. Amen.