Why Nations Fall

 

Statue_planet2 KINGS 17:7-15

At the end of the movie Planet of the Apes (the original with Charlton Heston), Heston’s character and his female companion are riding a horse down a beach—ostensibly toward freedom, when they come across something sticking up out of the sand. The closer they get, the more Heston begins to realize that it’s a familiar icon—The Statue of Liberty. He had thought he was on a different planet, but now he realizes that he’s on earth, but thousands of years in the future. And his country, and all its symbols, are forgotten—dispatched to the realm of archaeology.

Hard to imagine that ever happening, isn’t it? It’s virtually impossible for Americans to think that symbols like the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument or Mount Rushmore or the White House would ever be forgotten or lost, only to show up thousands of years later in an archaeological dig, with future people trying to figure out what it all meant.

But here’s the thing: people of every civilization in the history of the world have thought that their way of life, their symbols, their icons could not possibly ever be forgotten or ruined. And yet, history teaches us that every civilization, every dynasty, every empire eventually winds up as an archaeological curiosity sticking up out of the sand. Travel in the sites of the old world and you see it over and over again—the ruins of Egypt, Greece, Rome: great civilizations, great empires, but now just broken columns and crumbling architecture.

The stories we read in 1 and 2 Kings in the Bible are illustrative of this principle. There’s a lot of detail here about the different kings and wars of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah—Kingdoms that, no doubt, the rulers and people thought would last forever. But these texts tell us that within the course of a few hundred years these kingdoms would be at best reduced and, at worst, wiped out. But, then again, so would the kingdoms and empires of their conquerors.

This period in biblical history corresponds to the rise and fall of two great empires in the ancient world: The Assyrians and the Babylonians. The Babylonians you’ve probably heard of, but the Assyrians are less well-known for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

The Assyrians were a factor on the world stage for some 1700 years and, in many ways,  were the Nazis of the ancient world. They conquered most of the Ancient Near East including the northern Kingdom of Israel, and they did so with a cruelty that would seem to be unmatched in history. Listen to how one Assyrian king named Ashurnasirpal describes his treatment of a defeated people:

“I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to the stakes round the pillar. . . . Many captives . . . I burned with fire; and many I took living. From some I cut off their hands and fingers and from others I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers; of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living, another of heads, and I bound many heads to posts around the city. Their young men and maidens I burned in the fire; the city I destroyed, I devastated.”

These are the kinds of writings you find in Assyrian ruins– endless boasting of military conquest. This was the original terrorist state and they ruled for almost two millennia.

But then, suddenly, the Assyrian empire was no more. Having stretched their empire too thin, the Assyrians were vulnerable to attack. The neighboring Babylonians and Medes, who had been subject to this Assyrian cruelty, took the opportunity to finally revolt and laid siege to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and, in fairly short order, destroyed it completely. A world power was so devastated that just two hundred years after the fall of the city, the Greek historian Xenophon visited the site and encountered the ruins of the enormous fortifications of Nineveh and none of the locals could tell him who these fortifications belonged to. It was the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand—the Assyrians were simply gone, wiped out. And no one cried. The prophet Nahum would write, “Nineveh is in ruins. Who will mourn for her? Where can I find anyone to comfort you?” (Nahum 3:7).

The answer, of course, is no one—the Assyrian empire, the most powerful empire of its time, fell virtually overnight.

The Babylonians were the next power to rise, but their time in the driver’s seat of the ancient world was relatively brief—less than a hundred years—but long enough to conquer the southern Kingdom of Judah and take away many of its citizens into exile and slavery. But the Babylonians themselves would soon be conquered by the Persians, who were then conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, whose empire eventually became the outline for the Roman empire.

You get the picture. These empires come and go, and the Bible portrays this continuous shift of power as a kind of human folly. Yes, God uses other nations to judge Israel and Judah, but then these nations are in turn judged themselves and taken over by others.

What’s it all mean? Well, I think one of the main points of these texts is to teach us that our reliance on our own national power and longevity is grossly misplaced. Reliance on Kings, military power, nationhood, boundaries, monuments, conquests, and the like ultimately leads to forgotten monuments sticking up out of the sand. Nations and empires fall and the Bible wants to teach us that our deepest loyalties, hopes, dreams, and aspirations need to be given to a higher purpose.

Historically speaking, empires fall for a number of reasons. Edward Gibbon, who wrote the seminal work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, said that there were eight different reasons for the fall of that empire and, by association, the fall of any empire. You see those reasons listed here:  a decline in morals and values, poor public health, political corruption, unemployment, inflation, urban decay, inferior technology and military spending. Look at any empire that’s fallen in history and you can trace it to a combination of these causes. I don’t know about you, but when I look at this list and look at my newspaper, I see it happening to us already! Cullen Murphy’s recent book Are We Rome? is an interesting study on how our own country is ticking off everything on Gibbons’ list.

But while these may be socio-economic reasons why nations and empires fall and wind up on the scrap heap of history, the Bible offers another reason that would seem to trump all the others. Look again at the text we read early from 2 Kings 17. The writer lays out the real reason for the decline and fall of Israel and Judah:

“All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God…They worshipped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them…They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.”

See, for God the problem of nations and empires isn’t that they’re not managing themselves well, it’s that they don’t realize that they are subject to a greater authority. When people begin to worship their symbols, their prosperity, their military power, their economy, and their pride, they make those things into gods that, ultimately, will lead people collectively and individually to ruin. 

God, however, calls people of all nations and races to a higher way of thinking—an allegiance to a greater Kingdom and a most powerful ruler. Fidelity and faithfulness to God is the key to eternal longevity. It’s fine to be a citizen of a country like ours, but God calls us first to be citizens of his Kingdom—a Kingdom that encompasses the whole world for all time.

Jesus would talk about this often in the New Testament. In fact, most of his teaching will be about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God (also known as the Kingdom of Heaven) isn’t about a place faraway in the clouds, but is focused on a present and future reality on earth—that God is King now and his reign will be made manifest in the future. What the Israelites consistently forgot, and what we forget, is that we have all been called to be citizens of God’s Kingdom and subjects of God’s reign and rule first and foremost because, after all, only God’s Kingdom is eternal.

Paul wrote to the Philippians that “our citizenship is in heaven.” Now, some clarification about that (and here’s where context helps). In the first century AD, Philippi was a Roman colony—a place populated by Roman colonists. They were citizens of Rome, but no one was expecting to eventually go back to Rome to live. In the same way, Paul says, we have our citizenship in heaven, which is a way of saying that our allegiance and loyalty is given to God, but we live in on earth and in earthly kingdoms. We are not to expect that someday we’ll go “back” to heaven, but rather that we are to populate and colonize earth with the life of God. I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: the point of the Bible and Christian faith is not about getting people into heaven, but about getting the life of heaven into people so that they can live the life of God’s Kingdom on earth.

That life has certain markers and characteristics. 
•    Faith and allegiance to God as creator, redeemer, and sustainer of humanity and all of Creation
•    Moral, ethical, and spiritual practice (i.e. Mosaic Law, Sermon on the Mount)
•    Transcends boundaries of nationality and race
•    Emphasis on community of all nations “under God”
•    Living in the present with an eye toward the future

Life lived in God’s Kingdom has an eternal dimension. Regardless of whether our countries and kingdoms come and go, when we put our faith and allegiance in God we begin to see our lives as having a larger purpose that reaches beyond borders—a purpose that can never be buried in the sand. We are participating in God’s mission of redeeming the whole world.

A few years back I was standing at the door after church like I normally do, and a woman cornered after a worship service. She was deeply offended by the absence of the American flag in the front of the sanctuary and missed the “Christian” flag, too (An aside: Who came up with that flag, by the way? Was there a first-century Betsy Ross somewhere in Asia Minor? But I digress.) The woman began the conversation with a finger pointed at my chest saying, “My son is a Marine, and you should be honoring this country by having the flag up in the front.”

Well, I’m a veteran, too (Army), and I certainly understand her passion. I have saluted the flag, displayed it in my own home, worn it on my sleeve, proudly served my country and, while I was fortunate to never have experienced the horror of live combat during my 10 years in the infantry, I knew I could have been called on at any time to sacrifice my own life for what that flag represents, as many have done and continue to do. The Stars and Stripes have been a significant symbol in my own life.

But there are places where that symbol is less important than others. I may sound heretical to some of you, but I’ve come to believe that one of those places is in the church.

The U.S. Flag Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Section 175.k states, “When displayed from a staff in a church or public auditorium, the flag of the United States of America should hold the position of superior prominence, in advance of the audience, and in the position of honor at the clergyman’s or speaker’s right as he faces the audience ….” When I exegete that passage of the code, it seems to me to be saying that in a public meeting place, the flag should have the greatest position of honor to the right of the speaker. And, in most cases, that’s exactly where it should be as the prominent symbol.

The way our church is set up, however, there is another symbol of “superior prominence” immediately to the right of the pulpit that is hard to miss and seems to cry out for the place of honor. It’s the cross, of course — the center of focus for just about every worship space in all of Christendom.

While the flag reminds us of the sacrifice of men and women who gave their lives in defense of the United States of America and its freedoms, the cross reminds us of a Savior who gave his life for the whole world. It reminds us, too, that if we are truly following Christ, then our primary allegiance must be to his Lordship, no matter where we live. Patriotism has its place, but it is always less prominent than the place of discipleship. When we come into a place of worship, we’re called to recognize that we are citizens of the kingdom of God, first and foremost, and Americans second.

So I gently reminded the proud Marine mom that morning that I celebrate her son’s service and respect the flag so much that I didn’t want to violate the Flag Code (or at least my interpretation of it). In this place, I said, we always pledge allegiance to a greater symbol first. In here, it’s always “Dependence Day” because when we worship, we recognize our full dependence on God to save us. That’s why the cross is our symbol of superior prominence.

Indeed, we say a pledge of allegiance every week—the Lord’s Prayer. Think about how that goes:

Our Father in heaven: We acknowledge God is the original founding father of the whole world. It’s his name that we hallow and him that we worship

Your kingdom come: It’s God’s kingdom, not the kingdoms of this world, that brings ultimate peace and wholeness to the earth. It is a kingdom that seeks to make life on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread: We acknowledged that everything we have comes from God.

Forgive us our trespasses: Where the world seeks revenge and power, God offers forgiveness.

Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil. Only God can ultimately deliver us from evil—no army, no nation. Only God, in the end,  can truly conquer evil, sin, and death.

For yours is the kingdom: not ours. Forever. Amen (so be it).

Someday, all of our monuments and achievements will be fodder for future archaeologists. What will last? Only God’s kingdom will matter.

So, which Kingdom do you want to serve?

 

 

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