Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 10

Chapter 10--Captivity

Why do we feel so disappointed every time a good king lets us down? We keep thinking to ourselves—maybe he will be the one who gets it all right and never sins. But then he does sin and we feel so bad for him. If you feel that way reading about the kings, it is because the Holy Spirit has put a longing in your heart for someone who will come along and get it all right. Someone who will be faithful to the end and who can be our real hero. God’s prophets, men like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and many others told the people that this man would come and rule forever someday. 

Who is this man? Isaiah describes him as a suffering servant who will be crushed by God, who will then become a conquering king and redeemer. Jeremiah calls Him a righteous branch who will reign as king and deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land. Ezekiel tells us this man will be God himself and he will be like a shepherd who will seek out his lost sheep. And Daniel has a vision where he sees this same man ascending in the clouds of heaven to take his seat on God’s throne. Even God’s prophets had only a glimpse of who this man would be and what he would be like. But they all knew one thing: this would be the king they were all waiting for ever since the Garden of Eden when God told Eve it would be one of her descendants. This last king would be THE ONE we have all been waiting for. He would be the one to restore Eden.

Everybody did an awful lot of waiting. And then some terrible things happened. Judah was taken captive by the Babylonians and Jerusalem was completely destroyed and the temple was burned to the ground. God’s dwelling place no longer existed. Do you think God will divorce Judah? They would have deserved it, but God had another plan. He would spare a small remnant so that he could keep his promise to David about giving him a son who would rule forever. God used the Babylonians to preserve the line of David by taking the royal family and all the princes to Babylon where they were treated very well. 

Daniel and his friends were some of the royal family taken to Babylon. While they were in Babylon, Daniel and his friends were placed in high positions of authority because they were very wise. Daniel could even interpret dreams! Does that remind you of anybody else? 

Daniel interprets dreams

Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into a fiery furnace because they refused to worship the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar. 

The fiery furnace

Daniel also continued to pray to God when laws were passed that prohibited praying to anybody but the King. Because of that, he was thrown into a den of lions.

The lions' den

Other people besides the royal family could choose to go to Babylon if they wanted, and Jeremiah the prophet told them to go. Some people did not believe Jeremiah because all the other prophets told them to stay in Jerusalem! They said that Jerusalem was God’s dwelling place and God would never want them to leave. 

Whom should they believe? How did they know whom to trust? Here is how they knew: A century and half earlier, the prophet Isaiah told the people that Babylon would conquer Judah and that God would spare His people by bringing them to Babylon. By this time, everybody knew that Isaiah was a true prophet because everything he predicted came true. So those people who were reading their Bibles could tell the difference between the true prophets and the false prophets. That is how they knew Jeremiah was telling the truth. The people who believed God went to Babylon while Jerusalem was destroyed. So God spared the believers. He called them his remnant.

After 70 years of captivity the people of God would be given a chance to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and the city. Most of the people did not want to go back by that time because they had been born in Babylon and it was their home. Plus they had families and little kids and they were wealthy and prosperous there. It probably looked a lot like America today. The last thing they wanted to do was go back to a deserted place that looked like a pile of rubble and travel through the desert with all their kids and animals. They liked Babylon just fine. But the people who read their Bibles knew that God was going to destroy Babylon because Isaiah told them that too.  In fact, Isaiah even told them the name of the king who would let them go back home! His name was Cyrus. The people who did not read their Bibles did not know the truth. They trusted in their wealth and prosperity. But God in his mercy gave them a couple more chances to return before he destroyed Babylon. 

So once again the remnant returned to Jerusalem and built the temple and the city. It was really hard work and they were persecuted by their enemies, but eventually the job got done. There were a few prophets like Haggai and Zechariah encouraging the people during this time and the people began once more to look for the promised King, the Son of David. You would think it should be about time now, wouldn’t you? After all this waiting and waiting? Instead, there were 400 years of silence. Four hundred years of no prophets and no word from God. 

Even this would turn out to be grace as God prepared the entire world for the spread of Christianity under a unified world government!


Evidence of God's Grace to Me:

 A baptism and a foot washing

Katy and Sadie watch Alice eat lemons: