[Image:Clean Sweep, 2012, JA Van Devender]
Location: Gas Station, Vicinity of Jinshanling, on road to visit Great Wall of China.
Is 14:22–23
“For I will rise up against them,” says the LORD of hosts,
“And cut off from Babylon the name and remnant,
And offspring and posterity,” says the LORD.
23 “I will also make it a possession for the porcupine,
And marshes of muddy water;
I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” says the LORD of hosts.
China has always been an enigma to Western observers. This gas station was relatively modern and like most of Chinese businesses, very clean, considering the location, air pollution, decrepit surroundings, etc. These brooms got lots of use because the dry dirt surroundings (at the time there had been an extended drought) caused tons of dirt and dust to hang in the air. Wind shield wipers were often employed just to enable us to see through the front window. And this was out in the "country" - not downtown Beijing where it was actually worse.
It struck me as strange that here, awaiting use, at this way-stop for modern transportation, were a set of brooms that would have been right at home 4000 years ago. They were most likely made locally... by hand... perhaps even by the folks that ran the station. They were ubiquitous. I saw street cleaners in Beijing whisking off the streets, by hand, using these same types of brooms. During my entire trip, about 12 days, I never once saw a street cleaning machine or truck like we have here. Labor is cheap... people need jobs... let them sweep off the street with a hand wrapped broom. I don't suppose, ultimately, you can fault the logic.
God speaks of the "broom of destruction" in the Isaiah passage above and I imagine that when Isaiah received this revelation he would have understood it in terms of a broom pretty much like these. Babylon's days were numbered and when God got around to sweeping up there would be nothing left but a "clean" desert.
I am always saddened by the post-WWII films and photographs of German cities and suburbs. Japan's cities were wood and paper and the destruction there was relatively quick to clean up and relatively quick to rebuild. You did not have the towering cathedrals or the vaulting houses of commerce, industry and government that you had in pre-war Germany. The shell shocked faces of civilians, defeat writting large across their brows as they stare at the camera with eyes deadened by horror, are framed by carcases of structures in the background. Piles of rubble, many times higher than their heads, tower in the background as people are carting off broken brick and masonry in wheel barrows. Man made civilization, one of the most advanced in the world only a few years before, lay in ruins. It was a dangerous time... starving dogs ran through the alleys, fighting for their lives because it was eat or be eaten whether dog or human. Those who escaped, one or two of whom I have met and conversed with over the years, find it more difficult to talk of those first post-war years than when the skies were raining death every day. There was something more sinister, if you will, when civilization crumbled than when it was dying.
Something like that was in store for Babylon. Even the "porcupine" - not sure what animal is actually in view here - would have to scrounge for its food. Imagine carrion eaters gnawing on human flesh. You get the idea.
When God brings out His "broom" then human beings are brought face to face with the actual measure of their sin. We think of our sin mostly in "light" terms... we don't actually believe that we ourselves are actually worthy of Hell although we are willing to grant that there are a few, really nasty people "out there" who definitely deserve a few years of it... but even then... we shy away from the idea of "all eternity." As long as our lives are relatively comfortable, so is our attitude toward our own sin. We're pretty comfortable with it also.
At some point though, God says... "I've had it with you people" and gets out His broom. In the aftermath, those who still have eyes to see, look around them and realize that God means business. Those in whom the Spirit is working cry out in repentance for their own sin and wail in compassion for those whom they love who know not God. Those who deny the Spirit shake their fists at the sky and call Him unjust.
So it was with Babylon... so it was with the sparkling diamonds of pre-war Europe... so it shall be when the Lord rocks the heavens and the earth and men cry out to the mountains to fall on them and cover them because the wrath of the Lamb has been poured out.
God's "clean sweeps" in the past all are reminders... that's all they truly are.. that sin is serious business. Christians are exempt from the final price of sin because it has been paid off for them, but we would do well to remember Babylon... and Rome.... and Europe, because God's hand in time is to sweep clean the ground on which cities and nations live in open defiance of His name. What happened in those places can happen here.
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