OT Lesson: Daniel 2:31-45 (GNT)
Your Majesty, in your vision you saw standing before you a giant statue, bright and shining, and terrifying to look at. Its head was made of the finest gold; its chest and arms were made of silver; its waist and hips of bronze, its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. While you were looking at it, a great stone broke loose from a cliff without anyone touching it, struck the iron and clay feet of the statue, and shattered them. At once the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold crumbled and became like the dust on a threshing place in summer. The wind carried it all away, leaving not a trace. But the stone grew to be a mountain that covered the whole earth.
This was the dream. Now I will tell Your Majesty what it means. Your Majesty, you are the greatest of all kings. The God of heaven has made you emperor and given you power, might, and honour. He has made you ruler of all the inhabited earth and ruler over all the animals and birds. You are the head of gold. After you there will be another empire, not as great as yours, and after that a third, an empire of bronze, which will rule the whole earth. And then there will be a fourth empire, as strong as iron, which shatters and breaks everything. And just as iron shatters everything, it will shatter and crush all the earlier empires. You also saw that the feet and the toes were partly clay and partly iron. This means that it will be a divided empire. It will have something of the strength of iron, because there was iron mixed with the clay. The toes—partly iron and partly clay—mean that part of the empire will be strong and part of it weak. You also saw that the iron was mixed with the clay. This means that the rulers of that empire will try to unite their families by intermarriage, but they will not be able to, any more than iron can mix with clay. At the time of those rulers the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that will never end. It will never be conquered, but will completely destroy all those empires and then last forever. You saw how a stone broke loose from a cliff without anyone touching it and how it struck the statue made of iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God is telling Your Majesty what will happen in the future. I have told you exactly what you dreamed, and have given you its true meaning.
NT Lesson: Luke 2:1-5 (NRSV)
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.
Sermon
Introduction
Good morning. I hope you had a good week last week. We had PPM Christmas programme last Friday, and also the November-December combined Gourmet Seekers at Parky’s smoke house. Many times, shop, store, and house are interchangeable. But I found not always. Recently I found that there is a smoke house, and there is a smoke shop. And they sell very different things. So last Friday, we met at smoke house, not at smoke shop. Smoke shop is one of the last places I may go. Now, it is December, and it is officially Advent according to the Liturgical calendar as well, and the big Christmas tree at the County Court was lit up yesterday. I was there yesterday, and it was wonderful except one thing—there were so many people smoking when it is packed with children. In Manitoba, you cannot smoke when children are around you even in your own car. I want that law in Indiana. Anyway, we do now feel like it is Christmas. Samuel, Hannah and I also had a carriage ride yesterday at the Memorial park.
Rome in OT
With these festivity, let us begin today’s topic. What can make your Christmas more joyous than the Advent Sermon series? Today’s topic is Rome—not the city of Rome but the ancient empire of Rome. Rome is known to us better than any other ancient empires because along with the ancient Greek, Rome laid the foundation of European civilisation. After the Roman empire disappeared, all the ruling and scholar class across Europe spoke Latin among themselves. Germany used to call themselves ‘Holy Roman Empire’ when it was neither holy, nor Roman, and not an empire. Very well advanced technology and philosophies of Rome stepped back quite a bit at the Medieval Europe, and we call it dark age. Rome is quite well known to us because of so many movies and TV shows such as 2000 film Gladiator, 2005 HBO series Rome, and countless other shows. And also the NT depicts Rome quite in detail. But there is no direct mention of Rome in the OT because Rome did not exist yet. But today’s OT lesson has some indication of Roman empire.
One day, the emperor of Babylon had a dream, and he wondered what his dream was about. Normally, you ask, “I had so and so dream. What does this mean?” But the emperor asked the scholars and the dream interpreters, “I had a dream. Tell me what I dreamt and its meaning.” I am not sure if he did not remember or just wanted to test the dream interpreters. Anyway, no one was able to tell the dream. But Daniel alone said the exact dream and its interpretation. Daniel said four empires—gold, silver, bronze, and iron. There are some discussions about the identity of those empires but the general perception is that the first is of course the current empire, Babylon; the second is the following Persian empire, and then the Greek empire built by Alexander the Great, and then the last one is Roman empire. Daniel says that the last one is as strong as iron, and the scholars of military history say that the Roman empire possibly and probably had the most powerful military force in history, excluding the times after the guns and modern weapons. In the dream, the Roman empire was the legs, and there were two legs. Likewise, in 286 A.D. Rome was divided into two empires, Eastern and Western. The Eastern empire later knowns as the Byzantine empire. Like the two legs of the statue, Rome became two separate empires.
Pax Romana
Interestingly there are so many similarities between ancient Rome and America. The national symbol for both countries is eagle. It is of course not just a coincident because so many countries after Rome chose the eagle as their national symbol in the hope of being as powerful as Rome. Both Rome and America have incomparable military power at their time. The only difference is that Rome was army based, and America is Navy based. Their culture, philosophies, and education were not of their own but came from their previous empires. Rome got it all from Greece, and America got so many things including the language itself from the British empire. Both Rome and America had civil wars, and got even stronger after that. There are so many other things but let me mention just one more thing—peace. You all must have heard Pax Romana. When I was at grade schools in Korea, I heard and learned about Pax Americana.
Pax Romana is a Latin expression whose meaning is “Roman Peace,” or “Peace by Rome.” After the civil war at Rome, there was no more challenges against Rome because the military power of Rome was beyond description at that time. There could be regional strives, local fights, but no more big battles and war for centuries. Pax Americana is almost the same. After the second world war, America rose up to the super power of the world, even though there was cold war, and regional conflicts, but most part of the world has been relatively at peace. There are several good things from Pax Romana or Pax Americana. The very first is the safe travel. I have been to many countries including, South Korea, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Germany, France, Switzerland, and India. But I have never feared my own safety. Anyone who travelled to other countries, were you afraid for your safety, thinking like, ‘There is a big chance that I might be killed during this trip.’? Probably not. But most of the human history, travel itself was extremely dangerous, not to mention the international travel, but also domestic travel as well.
Tolerance
Beside the military power, Rome has another unique thing which is distinguished from almost any other empires in history. That is the length of the nation. All empires in China lasted in average two hundred years. Old Babylonian empire lasted two hundred and ninety-nine years. New Babylonian empire stood only for forty-two years. Assyrian empire lasted exactly three hundred years even. Persian empire which we talked about last Sunday lasted two hundred and twenty-eight years. Do you know how long the Roman empire lasted? From the birth of the nation at 753 B.C until her fall at the hand of barbarians at 476 A.D., Rome stood for one thousand two hundred and twenty-nine years. While all other empires lasted only two-three hundred years, how come Rome stood for over thousand years?
While all other empires built the wall at their borders, Rome tore down its walls around the city of Rome and built the famous road system. Even today, we say ‘All roads lead to Rome.’ Being the empire with huge land comes with many different peoples to govern and rule over. Then you have two choices. One, you oppress them so that they can follow your rules in fear of harsh punishments. Most empires chose this easy path. The other option is to embrace them. Rome chose this. Rome conquered Greece and said, “Oh, you guys believe in Greek mythology? That’s fine. Just pay tax.” Rome conquered Gaul and said, “Oh, you guys believe in Thor, the hammer and thunder god? I don’t care. Just pay tax.” Rome conquered Egypt and said, “Oh, you guys believe in Osiris? Whatever. Just pay tax.” Rome conquered Israel and said, “Oh, you guys believe in YHWH? Interesting. Just pay tax and don’t revolt.” But Jews occasionally did not pay tax and revolted against Rome. That is why Rome came and crushed them. As long as you pay tax, Rome did not care and did not bother. And this attitude of Rome led to relatively good tolerance toward religions. During some crazy emperors, Rome persecuted Christianity a lot, but most time they were like, “Hey, you are worshipping Christ, which is against the law. But you guys all paid tax so well for the last ten years. I’ll just say that I didn’t see you guys doing this.”
Peace and Tolerance Helped the Gospel Spread
You may think that I am talking so much irrelevant things today. And now I tell you that the world peace through Pax Romana, building the road system, and the religious tolerance all helped the gospel of Jesus Christ, our baby Saviour to come on Christmas day. When I read the Acts of the Apostles first time, and all other epistles in the NT, I was amazed at how freely, safely Paul and other apostles were travelling. Famous prophet, Nehemiah had to obtain a letter from the emperor when he was travelling from Persia to Jerusalem, and the letter says, “I am emperor. If you do any harm to the bearer of this letter, I will find you and I will kill you.” But at the time of Pax Romana, no one needed to get the emperor’s letter to ensure their safety. Anyone can go anywhere without any fear. Of course Rome did not achieve Pax Romana for the gospel of Jesus Christ to spread. They built the Pax Romana for themselves. They achieved the peace only for themselves. It was purely selfish motivation. But because of that peace, apostle Paul was able to travel around the world and spread the gospel. Think about even Julius Caesar himself was captured once by pirates, not of Caribbean but of Mediterranean. But by the time of apostle Paul, there was no such thing as pirates in and around the Roman empire. Paul did not have to worry about his safety during his missionary journeys around the world to spread the gospel.
Rome built the amazing road system, which is still being used daily basis in Italy, France, Spain and many other parts of Europe. Because of those amazing road system, apostle Paul was able to travel among the cities in the empire much faster and way more conveniently. And because of the Roman tolerance, apostle Paul was able to preach the gospel anywhere he went within the empire. Many times he was accused but mostly not by the Roman government but by the Jews who did not like his message. So in the light of Roman empire, we should make peace, even with someone you don’t like.
Karen
Recently, I learned a new English word, Karen. According to the internet dictionary, A karen is a while, middle-class, entitled, mean and privileged woman demanding her own way beyond the scope of what is normal and displaying behaviour that is considered rude and unreasonable. This is a rather long definition. If you go to YouTube and type “karen,” you will see millions of videos which fit exactly in that definition. They are mostly unreasonably yelling and screaming. But this word breaks my heart, because all the ladies that I met in my life with the actual name of Karen, were all super nice ladies. So in my life, none of Karens were actually karen. But there is nothing I can do about the new English words and the definitions. Anyway, if you watch some of the karens on YouTube, you will realise it is almost impossible to make peace with such people. But I also think there could be some reasons why those ladies on YouTube act like that, which was either not filmed or edited out. Anyway, if we meet karens in our actual life, I understand that we may not be able to make peace with them, but at least we must try our best to make peace even with karens. If this is the case with karens, there is nothing I can tell you more about our family, friends, and neighbours. We have to make peace with them.
Conclusion
Friends, the great and powerful Rome built the Pax Romana and achieved the world peace, not for the sake of the gospel but for their own cause. But eventually the peace served God and the gospel of our baby Saviour. So we must make peace in our houses, with our friends and neighbours for our own benefits. But once we build peace with other people successfully, then we may have a chance to serve God and the gospel of our Lord through that peace. There must be many ways of making peace with each other. My way is eating together and having conversations. But I will not force you one way over the other. So today, when you go home, here is your homework, think about your own ways of making peace with other people. And let us make peace according to your own way. Then Christ Jesus will reconcile and make peace between us and God. Amen.
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