Daniel is easily the most fanciful of the Old Testament prophets.  Jonah would be next on the list, and while the great fish catches our attention, remember that Daniel has the fiery furnace, the lions’ den, and the handwriting on the wall, not to mention the apocalyptic visions of both Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar.  Just as with Jonah, we find the more unusual parts of the story more entertaining and memorable than the dry politics of, for example, Jeremiah.  We teach them to children; but adults should pay closer attention!  The first vision found in Daniel usually meets with a simplistic interpretation only half a step beyond what Daniel himself gave, but it has more to teach us, if we’re willing to make a couple of connections. 

After Nebuchadnezzar has a troubling dream, he demands that the wise men tell him both the dream and its interpretation.  Only Daniel can tell what the dream was, because God has revealed it to him.

“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” (Daniel 2.31-35)

Then comes the interpretation.  Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar, “you are the head of gold” (v38), and that the remaining parts of the great image represent the kingdoms that are to come after him, until God’s own kingdom is established, shattering the kingdoms of earth and standing forever.  We can quickly surmise that this is fulfilled in the church, and then we’re ready to move on.

Not so fast!  What’s the very next thing we read about Nebuchadnezzar?  He “made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits” (3.1).  No further detail is given about its appearance, but considering the dream he’s just had, it’s not a huge leap of the imagination to suppose that the image resembled the image he saw in his dream.  But what is its purpose?  Is it to commemorate the dream and remind all the kings of men that their reigns will come to end even while God’s lasts forever?  No, he commands everyone under his authority “to fall down and worship the golden image” (v5), or face death for refusing.

Did Nebuchadnezzar get the point of the dream?  It was supposed to remind him that his power was fleeting and fragile, and that no amount of earthly glory could make him more than a mortal man.  He apparently didn’t listen much past “you are the head of gold.”  Instead of reacting with humility, he wanted everyone else to acknowledge his glory and majesty, without a care for his own future downfall.

This is the same thing we see from the beast in Revelation 13.  The false prophet “deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast” (Re 13.14), and gives over “those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain” (v15).  The visions in Revelation are often mistakenly interpreted as pertaining exclusively to the end of the world and involving a lot of obviously supernatural activity at every step.  Yet we see an example, from more than five centuries prior, of a king doing exactly what John’s vision predicted would happen again, and it wasn’t some miracle-working, many-horned, bear-pawed, talking hybrid—it was the legitimate governing authority, the expected and accepted power of the day, bound by the same laws of nature as the rest of us—although he might claim to be something greater.

The next mistake is to correctly identify the beast from the sea as the Roman state, and then move on, congratulating oneself on cracking the code.  But while Rome is clearly in view, didn’t it look an awful lot like Babylon in Daniel’s time?  And wasn’t the point of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream that Babylon and Rome weren’t so special—that kingdoms of men come and go with monotonous regularity, while God’s kingdom remains?  Babylon wasn’t the first to proclaim its government divine, and it wasn’t the last, either.  Rome also would not be the last.  It impersonated Christ—the horns, the crowns, and the “mortal wound” (13.3)—and it portrayed itself as the savior of its subjects.  Established governments generally want nothing so much as to increase their power over individuals, and for thousands of years they have pulled this same stunt, stoking fears of some physical danger, and presenting themselves as the only thing standing between the populace and disaster.  It’s an effective tool, and its success clearly demonstrates that most people’s minds are not set on things that are above, but on things that are on earth (Co 3.2).  Of course, we have to live in the physical world, and that means we have to deal with physical problems every day of our lives.  But don’t make the mistake of believing that physical dangers are worse, or more severe than spiritual ones.  It’s the other way around.  The physical problems will go away one day, but the problem of sin and separation from God goes beyond this world.  Instead of buying into the cult of the beast and worshiping its golden image, concern yourself with washing your robes in the blood of the Lamb, and being conformed to his image day by day.

Jeremy Nettles

And they brought in the ark of God and set it inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before God. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord and distributed to all Israel, both men and women, to each a loaf of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins.

Then he appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel. Asaph was the chief, and second to him were Zechariah, Jeiel, Shemiramoth, Jehiel, Mattithiah, Eliab, Benaiah, Obed-edom, and Jeiel, who were to play harps and lyres; Asaph was to sound the cymbals, and Benaiah and Jahaziel the priests were to blow trumpets regularly before the ark of the covenant of God. Then on that day David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the Lord by Asaph and his brothers.

Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name;

        make known his deeds among the peoples!

Sing to him, sing praises to him;

        tell of all his wondrous works!

Glory in his holy name;

        let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! (1 Chronicles 16.1-10)

Thanksgiving stands alone among the holidays commonly celebrated in this country.  Most of the mainstream holidays are designated by the federal government, and commemorate events of civic importance, and these were all established at some point during the relatively short history of the United States of America.  Then, there are the religious holidays, which originated in the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar, which for many centuries set aside this day or that throughout the year to remember events and people in the Bible, as well as so-called “saints” since then.  And then, of course, there’s New Year’s Day, which is, well, New Year’s Day.  This is mostly a civic holiday, but it holds the distinction of being probably the oldest continuously celebrated holiday in the world (although the date chosen to mark the new year is a subject of debate).  But Thanksgiving is different.  It’s not one of the Catholic holidays, but it has been celebrated regularly since the 1600’s, long before our country was established.

In fairness, it’s essentially a harvest festival, and there are many examples of that sort of thing all over the world.  But what makes Thanksgiving unusual among them?  Most of the harvest festivals around the world at various times have boiled down to a celebration of this sentiment: “we did it!”  This makes a good deal of sense, since harvest is hard work, and marks the completion of the broader hard work of farming, so necessary to the task of keeping us all from starving to death during the cold, dark winter.  But only rarely has such a down-home, practical, dirt-under-the-fingernails holiday been invested with the more spiritual message, “God gave it!”  It’s baked right into the name, Thanksgiving.

In the long passage quoted above, there’s an excellent example to follow.  David retrieved the ark of the covenant from Kiriath-jearim, where it sat for many years, all but ignored.  Uzzah lost his life as part of this endeavor.  Obed-edom took responsibility for its security.  David built a semi-permanent house for it in Jerusalem.  The Levites carried this heavy, gold-plated all the way to its new home.  A long list of musicians, gatekeepers, heralds, and attendants accompanied its progress toward the city.  Many of these same people were enlisted to serve in the ark’s presence continually at its new home.  Many people pitched in to make this happen.  Many people made sacrifices.  It was a group effort, if ever there was one.  When they celebrated, what was their cry?  Not, “we did it!” but “give thanks to the Lord.”

That’s the sort of attitude that we ought to have about most things.  Jesus tells a parable about a servant and his master:

“Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Luke 17.9-10)

Paul says something similar about building up God’s house, the church:

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Corinthians 3.5-7)

At times we shy away from giving glory to God, for fear of presuming he altered the course of events in answer to our prayer or need.  Skepticism about this sort of thing is warranted—if we assume every occurrence is a stamp of God’s approval or indicator of his anger, we’re no better than Job’s so-called friends, who badgered him incessantly over an unknown sin they assumed must be the cause of his catastrophic misfortune.  God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt 5.45), but we shouldn’t deny that he also cares about us, answers our prayers, and “richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1Ti 6.17).

It’s good to work hard.  It’s good to reap the benefits of your labor.  It’s good to work together, it’s good to plan ahead, and it’s good to celebrate success.  But recognize that success isn’t entirely your doing.  “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (1Ch 16.34).

Jeremy Nettles

And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.” (2 Kings 5.10-11)

This man possessed some degree of faith in the power of God to heal, and even trusted that Elisha was able to convey that healing to him and cure him of a miserable affliction, leprosy.  But he formed his own expectations about how it would look, and when he encountered reality, he was underwhelmed, disappointed, and offended.  Securely situated almost 3,000 years later and in a very different culture (to say nothing of modern medicine), we’re inclined to give a mental “tsk, tsk” to Naaman and say he just should have done as Elisha told him.  But we have the benefit of hindsight, while Naaman was wrapped up in the moment.

Naaman is far from being alone in building misguided expectations and going astray as a result.  Consider the widely held expectation that the Messiah would be a political ruler, establishing a literal throne in Jerusalem, in order to cast off the yoke of Rome and lead the Jewish nation to its rightful position as master of all the earth.  In this case, the expectations were even built on promises given through Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and many others of the Old Testament prophets.  But what did Jesus say, when publicly questioned about the kingdom of God?

“The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17.20-21)

Despite having been told the kingdom would not look as they expected; despite having seen on one occasion that Jesus deliberately evaded those who “were about to come and take him by force to make him king” (Jn 6.14), after his death and resurrection the disciples asked “‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’” (Ac 1.6).  We’d expect these people to be among the least likely to insist everything conform to their preconceived vision.  They’d learned so much from Jesus, and he’d even directly addressed this topic with them before.  But they’re just like Naaman.

It’s a good thing we’re so much wiser than the Apostles!  Surely we would never make this mistake…would we?  We might roll our eyes at the childish expectations of people we read about in the Bible, who developed some kind of vision of what God was going to do, only to be blown away by the reality.  But we’re no better, ourselves.  Speaking of the exact time of the impending judgment, Jesus said, “‘concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only’” (Mt 24.36).  Yet how many hours have been wasted as we argue over all the apocalyptic details?  People who profess to completely trust Jesus write books, make movies, bicker incessantly, and break fellowship with their brothers to start new movements, based on the notion that they can figure out when Jesus will return, as if God had left a trail of bread crumbs in the more figurative prophecies of the Bible.  If we trusted Jesus, we’d give up on that, and focus on living lives of godliness.

It’s not just our expectations of how and when the end of the world will appear; people both today and throughout history since the beginning of the church have been trying to fit God’s plan for our salvation into their own expectations of what’s right, what’s good, what’s just, what’s possible, what’s appropriate, and what’s beautiful.  Certainly God is all of these things, and it’s reasonable to conclude that his plan from before the foundation of the world reflects his character.  But we must remember that our flawed, human perception of all these virtues, while it is implanted by God in our nature, can only take us so far, and that his revealed word supersedes the law written on our hearts and the testimony of our conscience (Ro 2.15).  Simply put, what you think makes for an appropriate standard of eternal reward or condemnation, is of no concern or merit before God.  He doesn’t care.  He doesn’t have to consult us.  He doesn’t have to fulfill our expectations.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” (1 Corinthians 1.18-19)

The smartest people in the world are fools, in comparison to God.  Many of those who profess to be wise find fault with God’s plan, and call it—as well as those who put their faith in God—folly.  They generally won’t use that term, but that’s what they mean when they say it’s backward, anti-Science, ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, harmful, and a never-ending list of less savory insults.  God’s plan just doesn’t make sense to them.  “Christ crucified” is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1Co 1.23).  “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (v27).  It doesn’t match their vision.  Not only does the message of the cross fail to glorify the world’s wise, but it’s too simple, and too humble for their liking.  But our expectations make no difference to God.  It’s not as if his instructions are all that challenging.  It’s the same as with Naaman:

But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” (2 Kings 5.13)

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

        a time to be born, and a time to die;

                       a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

        a time to kill, and a time to heal... (Ecclesiastes 3.1-3a)

This isn’t a question we like to consider openly, mostly because people’s opinions on the matter can be so strong.  This is natural, because questions of life and death are among the most important ones we face in this world.  In fact, we use the expression, “a matter of life and death” to stress that something is of utmost importance. But importance itself doesn’t constitute an answer!  It’s up to God to provide that.

That leaves us with the burden of examining his word to find out what are his standards.  For most of us, our first encounter with this question in the Bible came in Exodus 20.13, which the King James Version renders, “Thou shalt not kill.”  Seems pretty straightforward!  Lest we shrug off this commandment as only applicable to the Jews under the Mosaic covenant, in the New Testament both the Apostle Paul and Jesus himself uphold the same commandment, in Romans 13.9, Matthew 5.21, and Matthew 19.18.  If we consult other translations, especially modern ones, we’ll find that they generally say, “You shall not murder,” which raises the question: what’s the difference between killing and murdering, and why do newer translations encourage us to do the former, but not the latter?  Of course, we only react that way because we grew so accustomed to the King James wording, and we might pause and wonder why even the KJV renders the pertinent phrase in Matthew 19.18, “Thou shalt do no murder.”  Clearly something is amiss, and bears further examination.

While a quick look at the 6^th commandment might lead us to conclude it is always and forever unacceptable to take a human life, that interpretation is simply false—it rejects God’s commandments in the very same Law of Moses to kill killers.  For example, the very next chapter says, “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death” (Ex 21.12).  The instances of capital punishment prescribed in the Law are far too many to mention.  How can this be, unless our initial gut reaction—killing is always wrong—was missing something?  While we’re at it, we might as well ask, did the 6^th commandment permit the Jews to kill animals?  Once again, the Law explicitly requires that they do so, in too many examples of compulsory sacrifices to include here—it’s generally ok to kill animals, and often necessary to do so.

This serves to highlight, if we didn’t already know it, that context matters, and when God says, “Thou shalt not kill,” the basic principle is abundantly clear, but we still ought to ask what exactly he means.  It may surprise you to learn that the Hebrew language (as is also the case for Greek) has several words that can fall under the broader definition, “kill.”  Maybe we’d think they must have been a vicious, bloodthirsty society in order to need such an extensive, morbid vocabulary, but we have an even larger one in English!  There’s the catch-all: kill, but there’s also murder, execute, euthanize, assassinate, slaughter, exterminate, lynch, hit, massacre, and many more terms.  Each of these carries its own, subtle implications and connotations, even though many of them could be used interchangeably in some contexts.  When you encounter these words in different contexts, you immediately understand all the baggage that attends each one.  The same is true of the vocabulary in the Bible.  This is why the translators who rendered the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, not long before Christ, could easily see that the commandment referred to criminal killing of a human being, and translated it accordingly: “you shall not murder.” The Greek term (φονεύω) explicitly means illegal and immoral killing, and they chose this word over less-precise synonyms.

So what does all of this mean?  If the world were ideal, there would be no killing—every person is made in the image and likeness of God (Ge 1.26), and holds a unique value to him, which he promises to honor: “for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning” (Ge 9.5).  But we brought sin into the world, and bear the consequences still.  We broke it.  We’re the reason people kill each other, and ought sometimes to be killed, themselves.  God’s covenant with Noah not only allowed, but mandated the death penalty: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Ge 9.6).  So, too, did the Law of Moses, which also permitted and mandated killing in war (e.g. De 20.10-18).  Finally, it permitted killing in the course of defending oneself or one’s home (Ex 22.2).  On top of these, God shows approval to Abraham for using lethal force to rescue Lot and others captured by Chedorlaomer’s army and destined for slavery (Ge 14), and in the New Testament we see approval for Moses’ killing of the Egyptian who was savagely beating another Hebrew (Ac 7.23-25).  The details, of course, are as finicky as they are important, but in broad terms, we could summarize these categories of moral and justified killings as follows: judicial punishment, warfare, and protecting innocent life and limb.  Each of these is “a time to kill.”

Should we go looking for opportunities to engage in violence?  Of course not.  Jesus told Peter on the night of his betrayal, “‘Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword’” (Mt 26.52).  But note also that he told Peter earlier that very same night (Lk 22.36-38), “let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one,” and allowed Peter to carry his sword with him to the garden.

Jeremy Nettles

You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5.4)

Look around at any American town of significant size, and it’s quickly obvious that there are an enormous number of churches to choose from.  Why are there so many?  Is the problem that churches just keep overflowing their capacity to fit people?  No, the median church size is only about 75 people, and nearly all of them can fit more in the pews, and would love to do so.  So why don’t more churches merge, and increase their numbers that way?  Mostly because of doctrinal disagreements.  Many congregants are simply searching for what they like or enjoy, but in general the leaders have some degree of conviction about what is true, acceptable worship, God’s plan for salvation, and many other related things.  When these ideas don’t line up, the result is division.

We should all be seeking to worship as God commands.  The example of Nadab and Abihu is enough to drive that lesson home: “And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord” (Le 10.2).  What was their offense? They “offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them” (v1).  Additionally, as is evident from the passage above in Galatians, a major mistake in our understanding of the gospel can have catastrophic effects, up to and including being “severed from Christ” (Ga 5.4).  Clearly, then, we need to find churches that both preach and practice God’s word, not the ideas or commandments of men.  We need to find churches that are sound. 

That word isn’t used of churches in the Bible; in fact, it’s hardly used as as adjective at all!  But around the time the church had grown enough to face serious struggles with division on a large scale, suddenly it pops up nine times in Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus, describing people’s faith, and more importantly the teachings they promote.  For example, he tells Timothy,

the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4.3-4)

Yet even though Paul had written numerous letters to numerous churches telling them they were wrong about numerous doctrines, behaviors, and attitudes, he never writes any churches off as having wandered entirely away from the faith, aside from the Galatians.  How can it be that churches who tolerated rampant sexual immorality, racial bigotry, selfish ambition, divisive behavior, loafing and mooching, rules not imposed by God, and more—how can they be considered sound?  These churches, for all their problems, are still treated as if they’re basically on the right path, or just in need of a slight redirection to bring things back into line.  But the reason isn’t that all their flaws were acceptable; it’s that they didn’t fully know better, yet.  When the Apostle clears up any doubt, they have a responsibility to shape up.  What would have been the result, if they’d refused?  Jesus later told one of them, the church at Ephesus, “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Re 2.5).  The lampstand represented the church itself in the preceding verses, so it’s clear Jesus means that at present it’s a legitimate church, but if they do not repent they will cease to be his body—no longer recognized before God.

Today, there are no living apostles to tell us new revelations from God or make binding decisions about the church and its work.  Instead, we all are responsible to the words already revealed by Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament.  No congregation will be entirely free of problems until we’re all joined in one body to our head, Jesus, at his return to this earth.  But a sound congregation is one that continuously learns God’s will, revealed to us in his Word, and obeys even if it means making drastic changes to preferred beliefs, doctrines, and practices.

Most of the churches you see around any town don’t look much like the church of the first century.  They’re filled from end to end with man-made doctrines and practices that seemed like good ideas when they began, but are much like the “unauthorized fire” that Nadab and Abihu used in their worship, which offended God not because it was so obviously contradictory to his prohibitions, but because “he had not commanded them” to worship in that way.  What can you do, if you discover upon comparison with the pattern in the New Testament, that your church is violating God’s instructions, or adding its own atop them?  The answer isn’t always as simple as we’d like, but the first step should be to inform them!  Perhaps it is a sound church, and will correct its course to fall in line with God’s will, not man’s.  If not, then you must ask yourself: will I hitch myself to group whose lampstand Jesus has removed from it’s place?  This isn’t an excuse to church-hop or church-shop, or to build your own church that consists of you and your immediate family.  Occasionally, the best you can do is worship with a group that does some things you can’t do in good conscience, but discuss the issue openly and clearly abstain from those things. Other times, the best you can do is move on and look for the New Testament church elsewhere.  Examine your own conscience and motivations, and give yourself first to the Lord; and then to his church.

Jeremy Nettles