Dear friends,
As we start off another year, we are still conscious of how troubled our world is. Wars and rumours of wars continue to fill our news media. When will mankind ever come to peace? … not until the Lord returns! It may look as if God has lost control of the world as nations war against each other, but that is a failure to understand God’s purpose in creating and appointing the nations. Paul, in his speech in Athens, speaks of God’s ongoing rule of the world through his rule of the nations.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: We meet again to talk about the great God whom we proclaim in the gospel, just as the apostle Paul did in Acts 17, when he was called to the Areopagus to explain the strange teaching that he was bringing to Athens. We read in Acts 17:26-28
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’.
Paul spoke to the Athenians of the God that they professed they didn’t know, as denoted by the inscription, ‘To the unknown god’. Paul told them that this God is the creator of the universe and a sustainer of life. That’s what we have looked at during the last two weeks. This week, we will focus on Paul’s proclamation that God is the ruler of the nations.
Peter Jensen: We have grown up with the concept of national identity and its profound influence on us. For example, we are engaged in mortal combat with one of our oldest enemies: the English cricket team. We Aussies gather in huge numbers in loyalty to our country to defend the Ashes against the English. We’re keen to play against other nations as well, which reflects a loyalty to our own.
But a more significant example, and one that has particularly impacted the older generations, is what happened in the 20th century with loyalty to our nation regarding wars. The willingness of Australians to volunteer to put their lives at peril to defend the nation was fairly clear. I often wonder what it is about a nation that makes us so keen to offer our lives.
Phillip: Indeed, it is extraordinary. I once watched a rugby game where the Welsh team sang the hymn Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah. But in the last verse, instead of singing, “Bread of Heaven, bread of Heaven,” they sang, “Wales forever, Wales forever.” I even noticed that the volume of the singing increased at that point, demonstrating the unity that comes from a shared national identity. However, this sense of national identity varies across the world. In the African continent, tribalism is stronger than nationalism, because some tribes transcend the national boundaries that were imposed by the Europeans.
There’s also the problem of religion. For many people, their nation is more important than God, yet there are others for whom God is more important than their nation. What do you do when loyalty to God puts you in conflict with your nation? Or what happens when your personal ethics are of a different character to the ethics of your nation, and you are called upon to do things that you think are unethical? The Vietnam War, for example, saw significant demonstrations in Australia against the fight that the national government had committed the people to. Many may say that nationalism is a freedom of expression, but at the time, it felt divisive of the nation because people claimed an ethical framework which was of greater significance than the national decision made through Parliament.
We may take the nation-state for granted today, but where did the concept originate?
Peter: One of the main features of the nation-state’s historical foundation arose after the 30 Years War in Europe during the mid-17th century, sparked by tensions between Protestants and Catholics, which was eventually resolved by the Treaty of Westphalia. As a result of the treaty, it became clear that from then on, nations would have their own identity vis-à-vis, for example, the papacy or the Holy Roman Empire, and that the religion of the nation would be the religion of its ruler. There was also the principle of non-interference with other nations. So the idea of the national state was influenced significantly through that treaty, and we live with it today.
Phillip: Of course, problems arose when one nation, in this case Germany, took upon itself a morality—or rather, an immorality—that exceeded what everybody thought was humane. There was a nation which, after it elected Adolf Hitler, took upon itself a way of life that the rest of the world has disapproved of, to such an extent that the name of Hitler is used to represent the epitome of evil.
Peter: There were people under that regime who stood against Adolf Hitler’s leadership, including some famous Christians. It’s important not to forget these courageous people.
Phillip: Indeed. There’s a wonderful picture of the workers at a dockyard saluting Hitler, where right in the middle of it, one man stands with folded arms, refusing to participate. Thankfully, there were people of conscience back then.
At the end of the war, when it was discovered how dreadful the camps of the Holocaust were, we executed the leaders of that nation through the Nuremberg trials. Moreover, we created the United Nations, which developed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a set of principles that ruled over the nations. There’s an uneasy tension that exists in many places including Australia, where, as governments attempt to pass legislation, people say, ‘You cannot do that because it contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’ Not everybody accepts it, of course. At the time that the Declaration was founded, 48 nations accepted it, 8 abstained from doing so, and 2 did not vote at all.
One of the nations that did not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was Iran, because at the time, Iran was under the Shah. After the Great Revolution took place under the Ayatollah, Iran rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1982 because they claimed that it was a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian traditions. That’s not a bad description of it, which is interesting; I think that Christian tradition puts more emphasis on responsibilities than rights. But by the year 2000, the Muslims had created the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, which expresses the right to a dignified life in accordance with Islamic Sharia. So the problem with the Universal Declaration is that it’s not universal.
The nations want to rule themselves, but the verse that I read earlier tells us that God rules them. Paul said that God “determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place”, and that from one man, he made every nation. How do you see that in the scriptures?
Peter: Going back into antiquity, although the modern nation-state isn’t exactly the same, you see peoples, empires and nations. That begs the question, ‘To what extent is God involved in all this? Does God let us be free to do what we want?’ Though the biblical picture is certainly one of sin and wickedness, the Lord in his mercy overrules, turning sin and wickedness to his good purposes. One prominent example is that of the Pharaoh when the Israelites lived in slavery in Egypt. When the Pharaoh, upon being asked by Moses to let the Israelites go, declined, the Bible interestingly says of him that the Pharaoh was raised up to serve this purpose. It tells us that the Pharaoh hardened his heart against the word of God, yet it also says that God hardened his heart. In other words, God used Pharaoh to achieve his great purpose of the redemption of his people.
Likewise, the references to Nineveh in Isaiah 30, or the books of Jonah and Nahum, are of a similar nature. Nineveh was the terror of their day and the huge power associated with the empires. Isaiah 10 describes the Assyrians as an axe in the hand of the Lord to bring his righteous punishment to his people. This isn’t to say that the punishing horde pleases him, but that even their wickedness can be used to do his purposes.
Likewise, Cyrus in Isaiah chapter 45 was raised up by the Lord to free his people when they were in bondage again.
Phillip: Isaiah 45 is interesting, because Cyrus didn’t know the Lord who raised him up, and he was even called the Messiah. The people of Israel didn’t like the fact that the rescuing, redeeming Messiah was Cyrus the Pagan, yet God raised up Cyrus to send the people back.
Peter: It’s a bit of a mixed message, this business of nations. How and why were we divided into what we think of as nations?
Phillip: It takes us back to our episode on the Tower of Babel. When humans were all one, building their way to heaven, God in his purpose confused our languages so as to divide and scatter us. It’s the judgement on our arrogance, preventing us from doing more damage, because as a united, sinful humanity, we would do untold damage to God’s world. So God in his grace judges us by scattering us into different languages and nations. That’s why it’s God’s purpose to appoint people in their differences to be unable to work together, which is what Paul is referring to in Acts 17.
Peter: I can remember first hearing about the United Nations and being so awestruck by the wonder of that suggestion. Of course, the United Nations was preceded by the League of Nations, which in the end was a failure. But when we were young people, the United Nations seemed to be a beacon of hope in the world, that what we had experienced in the First and Second World Wars need not happen again. There are many symbols that point to the rolling back of the Tower of Babel. For example, the Olympic Games are a powerful symbol of unity, until instances of cheating arise and until nations are expelled. There’s Esperanto, the language that was invented so that all people everywhere could speak the same language, which I understand is almost gone. It’s difficult now to have such a glowing feeling about the United Nations as one did back then, although I wouldn’t say that it’s been a total failure. There have been some wonderful things coming out of that activity of drawing the nations together.
Phillip: But of course, there were 50 major international wars between 1945 and 2000, so it didn’t succeed in stopping conflicts.
Peter: To quote Paul again, God has “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” The whole consequence of Babel is not intended to make us move away from God but to seek God.
Phillip: It is intended to move us away from self-salvation and from the hope that humanity will be able to find its way to God. To our frustration, we have to turn back to God, because we can’t do it ourselves. So Jesus tells us that we will always hear of wars and rumours of wars. We want peace, and we should work for peace wherever there is a chance to do so. But we must accept that we’ll never succeed because of human sinfulness. We laugh at the beauty pageants where the contestant is asked about what they want for life, and they all say, “World peace.” But frankly, our hopes and expectations of universal human rights in the United Nations are not much better than the beauty pageant contestant. Nations don’t want to be dictated to by outsiders. Take, for example, Britain and Brexit. They don’t want to be run by Brussels. You may agree or disagree with it, but nations have their own integrity. Yet their integrity can be profoundly immoral and wrong.
Peter: It’s compromised by human sinfulness. World peace is not stupid; it’s unachievable.
Phillip: World peace is only achievable through the Prince of Peace, who came to die for us and rise again. God creates world peace.
Peter: This is not only important for us at this moment in history either, because it is easy to forget that the great empires of the past have passed away. We have lived since the Second World War virtually under the beneficial eye of the United States of America, not with total success—there have been fifty major wars since the United Nations was founded—but it has been a good time in one way within human history. Yet empires pass away, and they often pass away by corruption, by sin from within the nation. There are many signs indeed in the Western world of the return of corruption, which will, in the end, bring us down.
Phillip: Indeed, and we talk of the Western world and Australia at our privilege. But Sudan has been at war for 50 years; thousands are being killed, but not on our television sets because they’re not Westerners.
Peter: What does this have to do with what Paul says, that “They may seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him”?
Phillip: It’s the ‘perhaps’ in that statement which tells us that God has frustrated our lives so that we will not be satisfied with this world and what we are doing, in such a way that we will turn to find something greater, namely God himself. But, sadly, many people don’t; so next week we will talk about how we can find God.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this talk on Acts 24-25 entitled Who Rules Rulers?
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