During Sunday's sermon, Pastor Art reiterated that it was the LORD who carried His people into exile. The people were removed from Jerusalem, their beloved homeland, and planted in a strange place.
Pastor Art shared that we, in this twenty-first century, may also experience the discomfort and uncertainty of exile. We may have left the towns in which we grew up. We may have had to leave jobs or churches or loved ones. Things change. People change. Life happens and we find ourselves standing in the middle of an environment where we don't know the lingua franca.
What can we do?
Well, our guest pastor gave us a loving, serious warning: Don't look back.
And while his point about not looking back was reinforced by his references to Jeremiah 29 and Proverbs 3:5-6, I'd like to take the liberty of bringing another Bible verse into the mix.
Jesus tells a true story about the end of the age and the tendency of man to desire the familiar even when the familiar is destined for destruction. And in the middle of His talk, He says, "Remember Lot's wife." (Luke 17:32)
He didn't say, "Remember Noah's neighbors" even though they'd been mentioned earlier in Luke 17. Perhaps that's because Noah's neighbors didn't have the privilege of Lot's family. Lot had two destroying angels come into his home, announce the impending destruction, and lead the family by the hand into a safe place. What grace was extended!
But for Lot's wife, the safe place did not hold as much attraction as the unsafe place. She longed for the familiar, and her strange death has made her become a byword and example of how dangerous it is to covet the thing that God has condemned.
Are you in Babylon? Then be in Babylon. Don't look back.
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