Slideshow image

Summer Video / Devotional

During the summer weeks we want to encourage growth in our Christian faith. There are many ways to do this. For these summer weeks we encourage you to watch a Bible Project video as one way of growing deeper. So, please watch (on your own, with friends, family, small group, others) the following video, read the following reflections and think about the questions. Happy watching, thinking, reflecting and growing!

 

June 29 Devotional ["Exile"]

 

1. Watch Video

2. Read Reflection (from Bible Project Web Site)

For followers of Jesus, the story of his life, death, and resurrection is the absolute center of our practice, belief, and worldview. It’s the central event which generated the entire Christian story and the New Testament.

However, these events didn’t occur in a vacuum. Jesus saw himself fulfilling a larger storyline that was told in His Bible, the Hebrew Bible, or as most Christians refer to it, the Old Testament. One of the most important events in Jesus’ Bible, which also changed Jewish history forever, is the Babylonian exile.

The exile left its mark on Israelite history in an unparalleled manner and played a key role in the formation of the Bible itself. For the Israelites, the exile was the watershed moment of their history on which the entire Bible gains its significance; everything else orbits around the gravity of this faith-shaking moment.

The entire national structure of the kingdom, which was thought to be ordained by God himself, came crashing down. This event fulfilled centuries of prophetic warnings, as hundreds of years of tradition, culture, and history was destroyed in just one year. This was their Day of the Lord, and it left them absolutely devastated.

Read the book of Lamentations if you want some somber reflection on what it felt like to live through the tragedy of Jerusalem’s destruction and the people’s enslavement under Babylonian rule. You can understand how it may be hard to find hope in such a situation.

After spending decades in a foreign land under foreign rule, the Israelites are allowed to return home under Persian rule. However, this offers only a false climax. The people's hearts and spiritual state is as broken as it was before they left. Hope for future is all they had, but we know how that story ends! Jesus.

3. Questions To Ponder /Discuss

i. What are your refletions after watching the "Exile" video?

ii. What does "exile" mean to you?

iii. How you ever felt like you were in exile?

iv. How does Jesus free us from exile?

NOTE: for more devotionals check the right side bar of the church's web site for upcoming devotionals and videos or contact the church office or Pastor Jo (jschouten@nacchurch.org)