The Set Up - 2 Kings 24

How do we build a life that will last? So many times we experience victory in life, but then something happens and completely wipes out whatever success we thought we had. So often in life it’s two steps forward and then five steps back. I lost twenty pounds over the summer, but I gained 25 at thanksgiving. I worked on healing a relationship with my family, but then we had a huge blow up fight. But how to do we… endure? How do we protect the good in life when the troubles come knocking? How can we build a life that will last? Some of you might already know this, but I am a transplant to the Grand Rapids/Byron Center area. My wife grew up in Grand Haven - she’s a true West Michigander, but I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. Grosse Pointe, Troy, Oxford. And as such, I am a lifelong supporter of Detroit sports. Lions, Tigers, Red Wings, I think there’s a basketball team too. I don’t support them because they are good, most of the time they’re not that good. I support them because they are my teams. It’s okay if you support other teams, we can still be friends - I know God loves you and I’m working on it. But rooting for Detroit, it’s sort of my way of holding on to home, even as I have lived all over in many different places. But I grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s when the Detroit lions - well let’s just say I didn’t grow up watching football. But then about ten years ago I became a pastor - and if you’ve seen me preach before, you know I can get a little excited. And so we go hard on Sunday mornings, and usually I’m ready to collapse in the afternoon. My children think nap time is for them - nuh-uh, nap time is for dad. The Lions were terrible, but they were my team. And win or lose I was going to watch ‘em. I’ll never forget, when my boys started to get old enough to watch the games - and one game we were winning at the half. And my son Liam looks up at me, he must have been 4 or 5 at the time. And he said, “Dad, are we going to win this game?” And I didn’t want to crush his little spirit, but at the same time I didn’t want to set him up for failure and so I said, “oh no buddy, we’re lion’s fans. We get excited when our team is up, and then we watch them give it away in the second half. We’re going to lose - that’s what we do.” And that’s the way it went for years. We actually had a year where we lost every single game of the season. 2008, we lost 16 games in a row. Incredible. Then 2021 comes along, and the Detroit Lions hire this fella named Dan Campbell to be the new head coach. And after they hired him, he gave this speech and to start out this morning I want to read you a little snippet. I’m going to cut out some of the more colorful language. He said, “this team is going to take on the identity of this city. And this city has been down, and it found a way to get up. Alright? It has found a way to overcome adversity. And so this team is going to be built on “we’re going to kick you in the teeth” alright. When you punch us back we’re going to smile at you and when you knock us down, we’re going to get up and on the way up we’re going to bite a kneecap off, alright? And we’re going to stand up and it’s going to take two more shots to knock us down. And on the way up we’re going to take the other kneecap. And we’re going to get up and it’s going to take three shots to knock us down, and when we do we’re going to take another hunk out of you - and before long, we’re going to be the last one standing.” And he gave that press conference, and a little bit it was hilarious, because I think he scared some people. It went a little bit viral as the “kneecap speech.” It was kind of intense and very aggressive. They lost 13 games that year. 13 out of 16 - almost all of the games. Knocked down again and again and again. But then the next year, they lost 8 games, and last year they lost five. And this year? [hold up two fingers]. 

Today we are starting a new series called Resilient. We’re going to talk about what it takes to build a life that will last, what it takes to overcome adversity. I think a lot of us set goals, we have high expectations and big dreams, it’s a new year! It’s 2025! I’m going to finally lose the weight, I’m going to finish that home project, I’m going to fix that relationship, get that promotion, accomplish that goal.. but what do we do when life comes in and slaps us down? This morning I’m not going to get into how to build a life where you have no problems - because that never happens. I’m much more interested in how to build a life where you can handle anything the world throws at you. And to do that, we are not going to get our advice from Dan Campbell, inspiring though he may be - no, we’re going to take a loot at the story of a very different Daniel.

Now, Daniel might be one of the most famous books of the bible - it has SO MANY epic stories that a lot of us learned even when we were kiddos. Even if you’ve never been to church maybe you’ve heard the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Or you might remember the story of Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego - getting thrown into the fiery furnace. Or maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “he saw the writing on the wall” - that comes from this book, chapter 5. Daniel interprets dreams, receives bizarre visions, stands up for his faith, facing terrifying oppression and defeat. And over the next few weeks we’re going to get into all these amazing stories - but the important part is that through every trial, Daniel remains steadfast. He’s one of the most incredible examples in scripture of facing impossible obstacles without even so much as flinching. He stood firm. Resilient. This is a guy who knows how to build a life that will last - no matter what the world throws at you. 

Now before we get into this book over the next few weeks, I really wanted to take the time to give you a frame for the painting we are about to create. And so we are going to dive into 2 Kings, chapter 24. Because here’s the thing about the bible - we’ve actually talked about the prophets a lot lately. They are the mouthpiece of God, God would give them messages and they would give it to the people or to the king. But one of the most important things to understanding the old testament is that we have a chunk of books that are history - like first and second kings, which describe what the kings did. These are historical accounts of what is happening between kingdoms in the ancient world. And then we get the prophetic books which is what the prophets were saying while all that stuff was happening. And so what happens is that we have different books of the bible that are happening at the same time. One book tells you the history of what the army was doing, and one tells you the stuff the prophet said to the king. If this was game of thrones or rings of power - this book is the battle scenes and this other book is all the politics and drama and backstabbing happening in the court - but it’s ALL happening at the same time.

And so we dive into 2 Kings, chapter 24 (*whisper* this is the battle scenes) and it says in verse 10, [read v.10-12]. Babylonian army, King Nebuchadnezzar comes in and defeats Jerusalem.  And then it keeps going in verse 13 [read v.13-14]. Now this might be the most important piece of the framework to understanding the book of Daniel - the practice of exile. You see, there was this common practice back in the day, when a new empire took over an area - they would go in and take all the people and force them to move away, and send them somewhere new. They just come in and force everyone to move out, take them away from their homeland. It was really effective because it would take the fighting spirit away from a group - which made them easier to control. Because everytime in history these empires would conquer massive areas of land - once you beat them, the second question is okay, “now, how do I control them?” And exile was one of the most effective ways. When you force people away from their homes- they have nothing. No home, no land, no identity, no life really. Exiles are basically just a shade higher than slaves. And listen again to who they took [read v.14 again]. You can’t move everybody, so they take the elite of a society. The commanders, the craftsmen, the artisans. You move them to a new place, and encourage them to assimilate. Get them mixed in with the population so they lose their identity. It finishes up in verse 15 [read v.15-17]. You take all the leaders and the elite of a society and ship them out to Babylon, and then install a puppet king. Let go of your old life - that Israel thing, that God thing, all that’s gone - you are Babylonians now, so you get Babylonian names. The new rulers of the region are trying to strip them of anything they used to be attached to - even their names. It’s all about conformity and control. Forget all that “people of God” stuff, we will tell you who you are. And so that’s the story of Daniel, he’s this young man, a jewish kid practically, who has been captured and has to figure out how to live his life in a strange and foreign land. How to hold on to who he is in the face of incredible obstacles.

Now I know I’m nerding out a little bit on all this history stuff - and I hope you’re still with me, but let me take a second and show you how this applies to your life here today. All the way over the new testament, in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 10 we get this line, and this is how the story of Daniel applies to your life today. Let’s put that on the screen [read v.10-11]. And this is really the key teaching that I want you to grab onto this morning - we, in our lives on this earth, we are exiles in a foreign land. As a follower of Jesus, if you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to stick out. We have a whole set of values and a way that we live that looks weird to people outside of our faith tradition. You see it all over our lives. The way we approach money, sexual ethics, generosity, forgiveness and conflict, even just the way we approach having enemies - it’s different than this world. The way we approach suffering and serving others and death. It’s sort of like, someone from the outside looking in would say, “Y’all mean that you set aside a chunk of your money and you just give it to other people? To the church? To the needy? To the hungry? Like, with our economics, people look at that generosity and it baffles them - why would you do that when you could go shopping? Wait a minute, you take time everyday to think about other people and to pray for them and spend time with God? Why would you do that when you could be scrolling on tiktok? There’s a family with no presents under the tree at Christmas and it’s 7 days before the biggest holiday and everythings a chaotic nightmare in both our calendar and our wallet - but on no notice over 50% of the church stood up and said, “I would like to sacrifice my time and my money to help someone in need.” (Was that too obvious? Can you tell that these are NOT hypotheticals?) When you build a life on the foundational principles of obeying God and serving your neighbor - loving God and loving your neighbor, it will create a life that is baffling to the rest of the world. I saw this thing on twitter where an atheist was trying to make fun of Christians and he said, “if you believe all that forgiveness stuff, you realize that Paul, who killed Christians before he converted, he went to heaven and had to meet and face those people” and he was trying to dunk on Christians, but it backfired. He got majorly ratio’d, because there were so many Christians flooding the comments about how beautiful that is. And there was a pastor, Jonathan Pokluda, who put it like this, he said, Yeah, “The apostle Paul entered heaven to the cheers of those he martyred. That’s how the gospel works.” To those of us who believe in forgiveness, and the transformation that comes when you give your life to Jesus - it’s not baffling, it’s beautiful! But all of this gets to the main idea - a follower of Jesus will always look like an exile on this side of heaven. Peter finishes up with verse 12, check this out (put on screen) [v.12]. That verse right there is the key that unlocks the book of Daniel for our lives in the modern world. I know there’s a lot of cultural Christianity in West Michigan - but even still, we live in an unbelieving world, surrounded by unbelieving people and Daniel is a great great guide for how to live as exiles in Babylon.

So let’s jump back to Daniel - I have one more thing I want to show you. I think a lot of us when we think about living as Christians, we set it up as if the world is this angry, aggressive attacking force. But the reality is that sometimes the world’s ways are not aggressive, they’re seductive. I think some of us imagine that temptation is when we are confronted with a really easy and obvious moral choice. Like, “Murder this person” and we say “no i won’t do that, I know it’s bad.” But in the real world, in our daily lives, it’s much sneakier, alluring even. “Maybe it’s okay to lie a little bit, why don’t you keep a little more of that money for yourself, what’s the big deal if you sleep with whoever you want to? Is it really that big a deal if I don’t forgive, and I just hang onto the grudge?” The world is not going to draw a big, obvious moral line and say to you, “betray your values” - no, the assimilation of exiles is gradual. No, they’re going to try and pull you in in small ways here and there to get you to be like them.  

For Daniel, you’ve got to realize, it’s sad to lose his home, but actually Babylon was really cool. The Babylonians were this powerful and advanced culture. They actually had this impressive architecture - did you know this, Babylon was home to the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Hanging Gardens, I think we have an artist depiction was this mountain made out of levels of gardens, it took really advanced engineering to pull that off. Legend says that Nebuchadnezzar had it built for his wife the Queen because she missed the green hills and valleys of her homeland. They also had this thing called the Ishtar Gate which looked like this [show picture]. Impressive architecture, Aand what I’m trying to say with all of this is that it was a very impressive kingdom. Very awe-inspiring, and tempting to be a part of. But it was a world built on a different foundation than the people of God. There was this King Hammurabi before our story with Nebuchadnezzar, you might have heard of him, he came up with one of the earliest and most comprehensive legal codes, Hammurabi’s code based on a system called “an eye for an eye.” If you’ve ever heard that phrase, this is where it comes from. Which, of course, is the system that Jesus is going to come and completely destroy a couple hundred years later. Jesus said, “you’ve heard eye for an eye, but Christians are going to do it differently.” [pause] Babylon was not just a place of hardship and oppression, it was also full of really cool and impressive temptations for the exile. And what I want you to realize with all of that is that even when the world seems good, God is better. Babylon was an amazing place, very impressive and it made a lot of sense to a lot of people. But one of the crucial facts that exiles like Daniel held on to is that even when the world seems good, God is better.

 A follower of Jesus will always look like an exile on this side of heaven. Peter tells us that we are strangers walking in a foreign land. This world is not our home. Christians, with the way we follow Jesus, will stick out in a world that is built on a different foundation. But here is where it gets really good - turns out, those raised in exile are stronger than those raised in comfort. Turns out (and this is so simple, it actually feels sort of obvious) - turns out when you face obstacles in life, you learn to overcome and you become stronger than you would be if you never faced any obstacles. Let me see if I can explain it like this. Out in Arizona, couple of decades ago there was a scientific experiment called “Biosphere 2” - this is a true story. Basically, they tried to create this huge isolated dome to mimic the earth’s life. I think we have a picture of it here [show picture]They wanted to know if they could create an isolated dome and fill it with life - sort of a test run to see if they could create an earth ecosystem in outer space or on other planets. And so they built this giant dome out in the desert, and it was a four year experiment in the 90’s and it failed catastrophically. They ran out of food and oxygen and everyone in there almost died. One of the biggest reasons it failed was that they couldn’t keep up the oxygen supply, because the trees kept falling over and dying. And so they start researching - why are the trees falling over? And they realized there was one thing missing from the tree’s environment. Wind. Turns out in the real world as a tree grows, the wind pushes it back and forth. Just a little, but it’s enough that the tree develops something called Stress Wood. It’s a different cellular structure that’s much stronger than normal tree wood. Stress wood is why trees sway in the wind, but don’t immediately fall over and die. But if a tree grows up in a dome without wind, it never develops stresswood, and eventually it just topples over. And what they saw in the experiment reflects the biblical truth which is this - without resistance, without challenges and obstacles you will never develop strength. 

Just like Daniel living in babylon, Christians who follow Jesus are always going to look like exiles on this side of heaven. And that sounds like a bummer, and it is! It can be really hard to follow Jesus when the culture is trying to push you another way. Sometimes we’re oppressed and beat up, sometimes we’re tempted and seduced - I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s really hard to follow the way of Jesus. But it will make you stronger. It will create in you the fruit of the spirit, the character and spiritual muscles that God wants to grow in your life. The lesson of exile is the lesson of stress wood! Through every struggle and trial you are growing the spine you need to stand up to the rest of the world. 

So to close out, let’s make this really practical. It’s a new year, and I wanted to share with you my dream for Center Church. Because here’s the thing - there are seasons in life when we need shelter, we need rest - and in those moments I want the church to be a refuge for beat up and broken people. But when someone has recovered - what I really want this church to become is a spiritual training ground. I want Center Church to be a place that helps people develop spiritual stress wood. I talked about this a little bit on Christmas Eve - wherever you are in your walk with Jesus, whether you’re a brand new Christian or you’ve been a follower of Jesus for decades, I want this church to be a place that nudges you a little bit closer to Jesus. That challenges you to be more Christ-like every day. And I’ll tell you - this is hard for me as a leader too. Because I’m a huge people pleaser. I just want everyone to like me - I don’t want to challenge you. It’s so much easier to comfort you than it would be to push you into growth. But I would be a terrible personal trainer if I walked up and you’re struggling with weight and I say, “Boy those sure look heavy. Let’s just get rid of all that weight, that’s too hard - here’s a coloring book, why don’t we go sit down.” Without the weight there is no growth. Without resistance, there is no resilience.  What if we could build a place that creates people who look at the problems life throws at them and they say, “I know what to do.” 

As a pastor, I dream of a church that is a training ground that prepares you for what life will throw at you, so that WHEN things hit the fan, and they will I guarantee it, some of you are in that right now - when things hit the fan, you can handle it. I think about our kids program - Center Kids - I don’t just want it to be known for how fun it is or how big or how trendy, I want it to be known for spitting out kids who have an authentic belief in God that will last for their entire life. It doesn’t matter if your church is giant and you’ve got hundreds of kids if in 5 years those kids have been chewed up by the world and left the faith. We are no longer in the glory days of the American Church where everyone was a Christian and everyone went to Church and all that was just assumed. No. Our exile has become more obvious, and that’s probably healthier for all of us. So let me leave you with this final question  - Where in your life is God asking you to live as an exile? What spiritual muscles do you need to develop? A resilient life, a life built to last IS possible. Let’s take that first step. Let’s pray.