Assyrians – The Lowedown

Luke 11

²⁹As the crowd pressed in on Jesus, he said, “These are evil times, and this evil generation keeps asking me to show them a miraculous sign. But the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. ³⁰What happened to him was a sign to the people of Nineveh that God had sent him. What happens to me will be a sign that God has sent me, the Son of Man, to these people.

³¹“The queen of Sheba will rise up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, because she came from a distant land to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And now someone greater than Solomon is here—and you refuse to listen to him. ³²The people of Nineveh, too, will rise up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And now someone greater than Jonah is here—and you refuse to repent. (Luke 11:29-32, NLT)

The Daily DAVEotional

In this passage of Scripture, Jesus is responding to “others” from Luke 11:16 who were trying to test Jesus by asking “for a miraculous sign from heaven to see if he was from God.”

A similar incident occurs in Matthew 16, which I wrote about here. The summary in that passage as in this passage, is that Jesus says that those who demand a sign are evil. This is because all of the evidence needed to determine that Jesus is from God has already been given. I unpack this more in my blog post “When Someone DEMANDS Evidence!”

What’s interesting to me about this passage in Luke is what Jesus says about Jonah that is not in the Matthew passage.

Jesus says that “What happened to him [Jonah] was a sign to the people of Nineveh that God had sent him.”

I’ve read this statement from Jesus hundreds of times without realizing the significance of what Jesus is saying here.

So what’s he saying? Why is this significant?

Coincidentally, my men’s group just recently went through a short Bible study on the book of Jonah, which is only 4 chapters long with a total of 48 verses.

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The summary of Jonah is as follows:

God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, and announce God’s judgment against the city.

Jonah rebels against God’s directive and flees by getting on a ship that is headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh.

God gets Jonah’s attention by causing a great storm that threatens the safety of those on the ship and Jonah gets thrown overboard by the other passengers as a way to quell the storm and save themselves.

As a result of the storm abating, these passengers, who all worshiped pagan gods, end up worshipping Yahweh and making vows to Him.

Jonah gets saved from drowning by being swallowed by a big fish. He’s in the belly of the fish for 3 days before being spit up on some unknown beach.

Some time after this (we don’t know how long exactly), God tells Jonah once again to go to Nineveh and announce God’s judgment against the city.

This time Jonah complies.

When he gets to Nineveh, Jonah once again announces God’s judgment with a very brief message.

The text of Jonah 3 says that the whole city repented, including the king. I’ve always thought their response was interesting and out of character given the haughty and braggadocious attitude of the Assyrians. At the time, the Assyrians were the biggest baddest dudes on the block and were not afraid of any foreign deities or any other regional powers.

2 Kings 18 gives the account of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, in which Sennacherib’s representative said:

“Listen to this message from the great king of Assyria! ²⁹This is what the king says: Don’t let King Hezekiah deceive you. He will never be able to rescue you from my power. ³⁰Don’t let him fool you into trusting in the LORD by saying, ‘The LORD will rescue us! This city will never be handed over to the Assyrian king.’

. . . .

“Don’t listen to Hezekiah when he tries to mislead you by saying, ‘The LORD will rescue us!’ ³³Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the king of Assyria? ³⁴What happened to the gods of Hamath and Arpad? And what about the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did they rescue Samaria from my power? ³⁵What god of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power? Name just one! So what makes you think that the LORD can rescue Jerusalem?” (2 Kings 18:28-30, 32-35, NLT)

The Assyrians were certainly NOT afraid of the God of Israel. To them, Yahweh was as weak as every other regional deity.

So how is it that in the account of Jonah, the Assyrians are so quick to repent?

Jesus’ words in Luke 11 give us additional insight as Jesus says that what happened to Jonah was a sign to the people of Nineveh that God had sent him.

Did you catch that?

The Assyrians had already heard of what happened to Jonah by the time he arrives with his message of impending doom. Somehow, the ordeal on the boat, in which Jonah’s God, Yahweh, had immediately calmed the storm, got back to the Assyrians. It seems most likely that the other passengers on that boat, the ones who ended up worshipping Yahweh and making vows to Him, told their story and the word quickly spread.

This scenario reminds me of the Israelite’s deliverance from slavery to the Egyptians, in which God not only demonstrated His power and sovereignty through the various plagues, but who also delivered the Israelites by parting the Red Sea while destroying the Egyptian army who attempted to follow.

When the Israelites finally arrived at the edge of the promised land, the multiple nations they would eventually displace had all heard of God’s great acts of deliverance, causing the Israelites to be greatly feared.

Tha Assyrians had gotten word about this powerful God, so much so that when Jonah finally arrives on the scene, he needs no introduction and barely has to say a word to convince the Assyrians that God means business.

The result is that this world empire that had seen themselves as invincible, were now on their knees begging the God of the universe not to bring impending disaster upon them.

Jonah’s rebellion led to a divine encounter for a group of pagan seafarers, whose story got back to the very nation Jonah was supposed to warn. So when Jonah finally gets to the destination to which God had sent him, the people are amazingly ready to respond.

Jesus’ message to those who want a sign is this: the Assyrians heard about Jonah so that when Jonah showed up, they knew he had been sent by God.

In the same way, what happened to Jesus would be THE sign that Jesus was sent by God.

What was it that happened to Jesus?

He was crucified and dramatically rose from the dead.

If the resurrection is not enough evidence for someone who demands a sign to know if Jesus really was sent by God, then no amount of evidence will do.

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Reflection

Are you a person who needs evidence, or a sign that Jesus is God? If so, what evidence would convince you?

Why do you think Jesus says that people who require a sign are part of “this evil generation?”

Many people have a hard time believing the story of Jonah, particularly the part where he is swallowed by a great fish. How does Jesus mentioning Jonah in this Luke passage add credibility to the story of Jonah?

Jesus says that He is greater than Jonah and yet people refuse to listen to Him. Why do you think people refuse to listen to Jesus? What steps can you take to ensure that you don’t stop listening to Jesus?

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Ezra 4

¹The enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were rebuilding a Temple to the LORD, the God of Israel. ²So they approached Zerubbabel and the other leaders and said, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God just as you do. We have sacrificed to him ever since King Esarhaddon of Assyria brought us here.”

³But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the other leaders of Israel replied, “You may have no part in this work, for we have nothing in common. We alone will build the Temple for the LORD, the God of Israel, just as King Cyrus of Persia commanded us.”

⁴Then the local residents tried to discourage and frighten the people of Judah to keep them from their work. ⁵They bribed agents to work against them and to frustrate their aims. This went on during the entire reign of King Cyrus of Persia and lasted until King Darius of Persia took the throne. (Ezra 4:1-5, NLT)

The Daily DAVEotional

This passage in Ezra 4 describes an interesting scenario. Some locals who claim to worship the same God as the Israelites do come to the leaders in charge of rebuilding the temple and offer to help. Yet the first verse describes them as “enemies” of Judah and Benjamin.

What in the world is going on?

Can’t we all just get along?

For the sake of unity and harmony, shouldn’t we agree to partner with those who claim allegiance to the same God we do?

On the surface, it makes logical sense to affirm those who invoke the name of Jesus or who claim that they worship the same God we do.

The problem though is that invoking the name of Jesus or saying that we affirm the same God doesn’t mean that our beliefs are in alignment. In fact, it’s possible, even likely, that they aren’t.

In this passage, we learn that the Jewish exiles were in the process of rebuilding the Temple.

To understand what is really happening, let’s take a moment to review how the Israelites got to this particular moment in time.

The Israelites had been warned by God over and over again that disobedience to Him and continued idolatry would incur severe consequences in the form of being conquered by rival nations.

God made due on His promise as the Israelites, the Northern Kingdom, were conquered and subdued by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. Likewise, Judah, the Southern Kingdom, was conquered and exiled by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

What happened when a nation like Israel was conquered was a systematic process of acculturation. Large numbers of the conquered nations’ citizens were typically transported to the conqueror’s country, where they were dispersed and expected to assimilate into the dominant culture of the conquering nation. In this case, large numbers of Jews were transported to Assyria, where they became exiles living in a foreign land.

At the same time, citizens of the conquering nation were encouraged to relocate into the land of the conquered nation, thus bringing that culture into the new province of the conquering nation. In this scenario, Assyrian citizens were relocated to Israel, where they brought their customs and their religious beliefs.

The net result was the slow erasure of the conquered nation’s culture in favor of the conquering nation’s culture.

So when Israelite exiles were finally allowed to return to their homeland, they find it populated with Assyrians who had moved there to occupy the land. These Assyrians were not worshipers of Yahweh, at least not exclusively.

So when Ezra references, “the enemies of Judah and Benjamin”, he’s talking about these Assyrian transplants who have been living in the land but who are not native to the area, and who do not reflect Jewish culture.

But don’t these Assyrians worship Yahweh now? After all, don’t they “worship your God just as you do”?

This is the claim, right? They claim that they worship Yahweh and that they also sacrifice to Him. Doesn’t that make them fellow God-fearers? What would be the harm then in partnering with them to rebuild the temple? Shouldn’t we work with those who share our interests?

Notice that in the first verse, these Assyrians are described as “enemies of Judah and Benjamin”.

Here’s the important point: just because someone says they worship the same God as you doesn’t mean that their views are in alignment with yours. Additionally, it doesn’t mean that their intentions and their ultimate allegiance is the same as yours.

This is extremely relevant in our own culture, where the label “Christian” gets thrown around so much that it’s almost cliche.

Just because someone says they are a Christian doesn’t mean that their understanding of what it means to be a Christian is biblical. Furthermore, just because a person says they believe, or “respect” Jesus, doesn’t mean that their view of Jesus is biblical and in alignment with what the Christian church has traditionally believed and taught.

We are seeing this play out first hand in Texas, where a young congressman, James Talarico, is running for U.S. Senate. Talarico claims to be a Christian but when you evaluate his theological positions, it’s clear that his version of Christianity is progressive, not orthodox.

What that means is that even though he identifies as Christian, and he says that he follows the teachings of Jesus, it’s clear that his understanding of Christianity and Jesus is not in alignment with traditional, biblical teachings.

Talarico has made a number of statements that demonstrate that his version of Christianity is actually not Christian at all. Foremost is his belief that Jesus is not the only way to salvation and that other religions are equally valid representations of God.

I don’t mean to pick on Talarico. He is just a prominent example of a growing strain of Christianity that is not actually Christian. This ideology has hijacked the name and terms of Christianity to promote its own evil, anti-biblical views in an effort to mainstream them within the culture.

Progressive Christianity is just one example of an ideology that uses the names and terms of Christianity in ways that aren’t actually Christian.

So when someone says they are a Christian, or they say that they like Jesus or even that they follow Jesus, that doesn’t automatically mean they believe what the Bible teaches on these matters. It could simply mean that they have adopted the culture’s views of Jesus and Christianity.

We would be wise to explore their views further before aligning ourselves with those who are actually opposed to the work of God. We might find, just as Ezra did, that when it comes to the work of God, “we have nothing in common.”

Reflection

What clues from this passage affirm the fact that these Assyrians truly were “enemies of Judah and Benjamin”?

If these Assyrians living in Jerusalem truly did worship and sacrifice to Yahweh, why do you think they would try to frustrate the building of the Temple?

What are some examples in your own experience where someone claims to have the same views and values as you regarding Jesus, the Bible and Christianity, but it becomes clear from their actions that they are actually “enemies of God.”

Are there any circumstances where we as Christians might align ourselves and partner with those who are not Christians? What guidelines or principles might help you determine when and when not to partner with those who don’t share your faith?

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