The Way of the Exile
When I grew up as a kid, I was raised on the old 50s and 60 tv shows—Hogan’s Heroes, Get Smart, F-Troop, Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes—all the good stuff. And honestly, that was a great time to be a fan of old tv shows and movies because that was right when people were making remastered box sets of those old shows. I remember one time going I was trying to beef up my Tom and Jerry dvd collection. I went to Walmart with my dad and I saw this Tom and Jerry dvd I had never seen before, and I was 100% convinced I needed to spend all my allowance money on it and get it. I was so excited. But then when I got back home and put it in the DVD player, I realized to my chagrin that it was a newer Tom and Jerry cartoon from the last 10 years and not the old ones that I loved. Look, no matter how hard you try, remaking old shows like that just never turns out well. I think I watched half an episode and couldn’t finish any more, I hated it so much. I learned that day how disappointing it is when you’re expecting something to be really good but the reality turns out to be not what you expected.
You ever have an experience like that? Maybe a friend really hypes up a restaurant to you. “It’s going to be the best pizza you’ve ever had,” or whatever it is, and then it turns out to be horrible.
We live in a world full of unmet expectations, don’t we? Full of experiences where we’re expecting one thing and reality turns out to be another. This is something we all face even as babies. You ever see a kid screaming at the top of his lungs because a toy was put away or he didn’t get to watch a show on tv or something? Why's he so upset? Because he was expecting to be able to do whatever he wanted, and reality turned out to be something different.
As Christians, we can sometimes feel that same disconnect between who we are called to be and how to fit into the world around us. We know that life is supposed to work a certain way. We may not even realize we believe that or know how to define it, but we do. We’re caught in between the world we live in and the world we anticipate in the future. And a lot of times we either end up feeling guilty for being too comfortable and at home in this world, or we end up being so focused on what is to come that we miss what we have now. We either feel so earthly-minded that we’re no heavenly good, or we’re so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly good.
The Bible word for this struggle is exile, and it’s actually a pretty main focus of the Biblical story. Exile is the Bible word for whenever we feel that disconnect between the way things are the way things should be. That being said, if I were to ask you to write down some main theme words that come to mind when you think of the Bible, I doubt that exile would be on any of your lists. That’s just not really a word we use much any more, and if we do, at least in a Christian context, it really only refers to one small part of the Biblical story—the Jewish exile in Babylon.
But this is a theme that, once comprehended, it can change your understanding of the Bible and of your place in the world. And that is my humble goal here this morning—to change the way you view the world. Because of this message, I want you to know how to live as an exile. I want you to feel a longing for your future capital H Home while still appreciating your current home. My goal is to get you thinking like an exile this week, and you’ll see what I mean as we move along.
You may have heard the term exile in church before in reference to the time when the Jewish people were taken captive by Babylon in 586 BC. We talked some about that in our recently-completed Nehemiah series since Nehemiah and Ezra and Zerubbabel lived on the tail end of the exile as the people began returning to the land. That 70ish year period of time is usually what Christians mean when they talk about exile. But in reality, exile is a theme that starts on page 1 of the Bible and applies to all of us today.
Genesis 1 records the Creation story as told throughout Jewish history. And in verse 31, we get to the end of the Creation week. I’m going to read verse 31 and the first 10 verses of chapter 2. I want you to envision what’s going on in this story as we read it.
Genesis 1:31–2:10 KJV 1900
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. 4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
What a picture, right? It’s beautiful. It’s very good. God has created Man and Woman and placed them in this garden paradise. It’s kind of funny, we’re used to referring to Adam and Eve, but did you realize that’s not exactly how their names work in the story? Adam is the Hebrew word adam; it means man or human. So what we think of as a name was actually just the Bible’s calling him “the man” or “the human.” Now, as the story goes on, it does seem like Adam became his name, what people called him, but there is no definite point where we’re told that happens. If you read the first two chapters really carefully, you’ll see that chapter 1 verse 27 just says man, chapter 2 verse 5 man, verse 15 man, 16 man, 18 man, and then, all of a sudden, verse 19 says Adam like a proper name, and then that continues through the rest of the story.
And while you’re looking closely at the text, you’ll see that Eve is not even named Eve until after the Fall. Pretty much all translations just call her “Woman.” It’s the Hebrew word Ishah. Hebrew has another word for man—ish. Ish, man, Ishah, woman. So, until the Fall, their names are Human and Female Human. Do you think the Bible is trying to get across the idea that they are representing all of humanity here?
So Yahweh plants a garden in an eastern land called Eden, and He forms the human and female human there. It’s fascinating that the Bible says God planted the garden. You ever think of God as a gardener? It doesn’t say He created. It says He planted. I realize that’s kind of semantics, but that idea of planting a garden becomes really important in later parts of the story. We’ll even get to see one of those later on in the message, so keep your eyes open.
And notice that the garden is not called Eden. The garden doesn’t have a name. We just know it’s in this land somewhere off in the east and that the land as a whole is called Eden. God loads the garden with potential for all manner of incredible creativity and beauty. We know that God gave the man and woman a commission, a mission statement in Genesis 1:28.
Genesis 1:28 KJV 1900
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
We usually treat this verse as a command, and in a way it is. But first and foremost, it is a blessing. It’s God’s benediction for humanity to go out and continue creating and innnovating and making very good things like He did. We cannot create out of nothing like He did, but we can use the resources He has given us. Think about all that the first man and woman could do and make and start and invent! Imagine being the first person to write a song or to create a musical instrument or cook a full on meal or develop a medicine or to design a shovel or a wheelbarrow or a wheel!
If there’s one key word I want you to associate with the Garden, it’s potential. I used to describe the Garden as perfect, but the more I study the text, I realized that the Bible never calls the Garden perfect.
Think about it. Perfect means complete. It implies that there is nothing to come that could possibly be better. You can’t do better than perfect. Yet the Garden had the test at the tree. The serpent entered the Garden and tempted the woman. Those would not happen in a perfect paradise. If the Garden was perfect, it would not need to be subdued. . . .If you study the new heavens and the new earth as presented at the end of Revelation, those imply perfection. There are no tempting trees there. There are no smooth-talking serpents there. But the Garden is a jumping off place. It was like the headquarters for continuing God’s work of creation through our creative acts.
So, the key word for the Garden is not perfection. It is potential. Humanity had the potential to further the order of God’s creation with new inventions, technology, art, expansion, and so much more, but there was also the potential to further chaos through all of those things.
Consider technology for instance. Today, we think of technology as a cell phone or a Tesla or something like that, but at its core, technology is “the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes.” Technology is any creative advance in bringing order to the world. At one point a shovel was technology. A piece of paper was technology. You can do a lot of good with a shovel. Or you could hit someone with it or ruin their yard. There are a lot of good uses for a piece of paper, but you could also write hurtful words about someone on it.
God loves innovation, art, technology. Think about it. He’s the originator of everything. That’s as innovative, artistic, and technological as you can get. But with every new advance, there is a potential to use that for good or for evil.
That is where sin and the Fall come in. One preacher has said that sin is believing a lie of the devil over the truth of God. That’s what sin really is. When you boil it down, every wrong thing you do is because, consciously or (usually) subconsciously, you determined that doing that action was good (tov) in your eyes, that even if you knew something about it was bad (not tov), the immediate gratification was worth the eventual negative. That is what sin is. It’s a tradeoff. See, God doesn’t arbitrarily define sin however He wants to define it. He created you, so He knows what will be good for you in the end and what will harm you in the end. The things that will harm you in the end are sin. The word sin has so much religious connotation around it, but that’s really all it is. It’s something that ultimately is not good for you, and that’s why God has told you not to do it.
It’s like if a toddler wants to touch a hot stove. He’s judging the immediate gratification of learning something new to be worth more than any potential risk. But a nearby adult sees that and knows the very real risk is absolutely not worth knowing what the top of the stove feels like. So she snatches the toddler away. Is the toddler going to understand that? No, he’s probably going to be bawling his eyes out. He had his own idea of what would be good or not good to do, and so did the adult. Which one was actually right? The adult. It’s the same thing with God and us. Sin is when we try to define good and evil on our own terms. When we decide to touch the hot stove because some vague future risk is nothing in comparison to the immediate pleasure. And God was just trying to keep you from hurting yourself all along.
That’s what happened in the Garden. If you think of the Garden as some big, perfect paradise where we all were supposed to relax and never have a care in the world, you’re going to be really confused why there’s a tree of determining good and evil and a serpent that wants you to eat from that tree. But if you realize that the Garden was a unique spot within a very good creation where heaven and earth met and important decisions were made for the ruling of the earth, that tree begins to make a little more sense. I don’t think there was anything magical about the tree or its fruit (which was never specified as an apple, by the way). The point of the tree was that God has defined what is good, what is tov and what is not tov. And now humanity has the choice to decide if they will go along with that or be selfish and define good and evil by what is good to me even if it hurts you.
The Garden teaches us that the world is very good. And the Bible never says the world stopped being good after the Fall. What changed is that man and woman decided to define good and evil according to what they thought would best benefit them in the immediate future. It’s the same choice so many of us make every day. We are so quick to put my good over your good even if it hurts you. We cut off people when we drive. We rush in front of people in the checkout line at the supermarket. We decide to keep money that doesn’t belong to us. We post on Facebook whatever comes to mind, not thinking or caring about how someone else might perceive it. We make really bad decisions. And it’s those sorts of bad decisions that led God to drive Adam and Eve out of the Garden.
Genesis 3:22–24 KJV 1900
22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
This is the first instance of exile in Scripture, and it’s not about the Jewish people. That concept of nations and ethnicities doesn’t exist yet. This is a worldwide problem. The Bible teaches that we are all exiles from the Garden, from the way life was supposed to be. The key word now is redefine. Genesis 3:15 sets up two types of people—the line of the woman and the line of the serpent. That does not mean physical descendants, but rather in metaphorical or spiritual sense. In other words, every decision you make is either going to align you with the purposes of the line of the woman or the line of the serpent. This is the story of Scripture from this point forward. We are all in exile, and there are two ways of life to choose from. And notice that it is not the physical way versus the spiritual way. They are both partly physical, and they are both partly spiritual. The difference is in what you do with good and evil. One path accepts God’s definition of good and evil, while the other redefines good and evil based on what benefits you regardless of the consequences it has to other people.
Both of those paths lead somewhere. Following God’s definition of good and evil in your life leads to the restoration of Eden on earth, the re-creation of the new heavens and new earth as recorded in Revelation 21. Following the serpent’s pattern of redefining good and evil however benefits you in the moment—that path ends in Babylon.
Here’s where the story gets really interesting. If you’ve been in church a while or you’re a history nerd, you’re probably somewhat familiar with Babylon. It became one of the first major world powers in history as it conquered much of the known world of it’s time. It was pretty impressive. It was also pretty oppressive in its practices. History tells us that the Babylonian Empire started somewhere in the early 600s BC, but did you realize that Babylon as a city and, more importantly a way of life, started way earlier than? Does anyone know where Babylon first appears in the Biblical story?
It’s actually in Genesis 10:10. After the Flood, Noah’s descendants repopulated the earth and eventually split into family clans, tribes, that traveled to different parts of the world. One of those descendants was Nimrod. Today, Nimrod is used as an insult to call someone stupid, but the Biblical Nimrod was no idiot. He is only mentioned four times in Scripture, and he is arguably the first recorded king in history. Genesis 10:8-10 says,
Genesis 10:8–10 KJV 1900
8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. 10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
What’s important for us today is that little mention that the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. Genesis 10 and 11 reference a place called Bavel or Babel. But if you were to search that Hebrew word, you’d find that it is the Hebrew word for Babylon. All the times Babylon is mentioned in the Old Testament, it is the word babel. So this Babel that Nimrod built is not just a random city. It’s Babylon. Nimrod built the first iteration of Babylon. The Tower of Babel is really the Tower of Babylon.
The Bible never specifically says that Nimrod was a bad person, but it does use Babylon as a symbol for oppression and evil. So over time, tradition painted Nimrod as a really bad guy. There are even stories outside the Bible of Nimrod’s being a giant like Goliath was. Or one of my favorites is when Nimrod supposedly goes to war against Abraham with this massive army, and then Abraham summons an army of gnats to attack Nimrod.
Stories like that got passed down with time to make Nimrod out as an evil rebellious, godless king. The modern connotation of being an idiot didn’t get popularized until the 1930s as a result of, and you’re gonna love this, Looney Tunes. Seriously. There was an early episode of Looney Tunes from 1932 when Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck called Elmer Fudd a Nimrod because he was a wannabe hunter. Remember Nimrod was a mighty hunter. So believe it or not, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck taunted Elmer Fudd with a Bible reference to make fun of his lack of hunting ability, and that is why we see Nimrod as an insult about being an idiot today. That is a sentence I guarantee you never thought you’d hear in church.
Whether or not Nimrod was exactly how we’re used to picturing him today, it does seem like the Bible wants to get across that he chose the line of the serpent over the line of the woman.
Cities are a beautiful thing. I am a city boy. You drop me off in the country for more than 3 days, and I start feeling anxious. I want to be back around the hustle and bustle. Cities have good food. They have business and headquarters and shops and stores and monuments and museums and libraries and hospitals and science laboratories and all manner of amazing, wonderful, innovation-driving things. Cities are a marvel of human ingenuity. They are a monument to the creative power and ability of the human race.
But they are also a monument of selfishness, chaos, and death. More people live in cities than live in the country. That’s kind of what makes it a city. More people in one area means more chances for something bad to happen, more opportunities for my definition of good and evil to clash with your definition of good and evil, more opportunities for my benefit to be reliant upon your misfortune. And that’s why cities have high crime rates, murders, rape, prostitution, corruption, homelessness, and so much more. While I absolutely love being in and visiting cities, even the best city is going to have some horrible stuff that happens behind the scenes or at night or sometimes even right out in the open. That’s the story of human civilization. We band together, build cities and civilizations, and then use our newfound resources at the expense of other people. That is what a city does. That is what an empire or a nation does. That is what Babylon comes to stand for in the Biblical narrative. Babylon became a symbol for all oppressive regimes throughout human history.
That does not mean that all cities are inherently evil. There is a lot of potential for good that we cannot overlook. We cannot throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. But we do need to recognize that world systems are rarely very good. They usually involve trampling on those who are too small, too weak, or too different to be a part of the system. When human beings get together and make decisions, we are notorious for redefining good and evil according to whatever benefits our group regardless of the affect on others. And like it or not, choosing to put yourself over someone else aligns you with the priorities of Babylon.
In fact, as a whole the story of humanity is the story of exile in Babylon. You say, “What do you mean, I’ve never been to Babylon.” There’s a connection between the Jewish exile from the promised land that we’re familiar with and the exile from the Garden we’ve been talking about today. The book of Genesis can be split into two uneven halves—chapters 1-11 and chapters 12-50. 1-11 cover all of humanity. 12-50 narrows the focus down to the family of Abraham through whom God would reach all tribes. The first division starts with humanity being exiled from the Garden and it ends in Babylon. Chapter 11 is the story of the Tower of Babel, or the Tower of Babylon as we now know to call it. Chapter 12 then is God’s calling Abraham out of the area of Babylon, but we know that his descendants would eventually end up back in Babylon in the 70 year captivity we’re familiar with. So, the story of all of humanity in chapters 1-11 sets us up for what is going to happen in the rest of Scripture.
Israel eventually is taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. That was a serious low point for the nation because everything they tied their identity to—Jerusalem, the temple, the priests, the royal family of David, the promised land—all that is back in Israel. And Babylon was not a nation you’d want to be taken by. Historically speaking, Babylon was known for once it took over a people group, they would strip you of your entire identity. Any cultural heritage you had is now Babylonian. They would split up families, and they would even change your name. It was a complete indoctrination into the ways of Babylonian society. We see that happen in the book of Daniel when the four Hebrew youths from the royal family get assimilated into the culture of Babylon.
By that time, there were generally two reactions people had to Babylon. You either resisted through violence or you sold out through acceptance. In other words, you were either trying to topple the Babylonians, or you were trying to become the Babylonians. What would you do? Remember that for the Jews at this time, their nationality was tied to their religion. So, they thought you either had to defend Yahweh by fighting, or you could give up and accept the Babylonian way of life and their gods. One way would probably get you killed. The other way might kill you on the inside. What if you had a family to take care of? Would you give in then to protect them? Some Jews did.
But what’s fascinating is that the four Hebrew boys didn’t do either of those. Look at Daniel 1:5-8.
Daniel 1:5–8 KJV 1900
5 And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank: so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king. 6 Now among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: 7 Unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names: for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and to Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to Azariah, of Abed-nego. 8 But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.
At first, it’s sounding like the boys are selling out to Babylon. They take on Babylonian clothes, names, and even positions in the government, but they do not sell their souls to save their own skins. They were actually living out a third option. Notice what happened in verse 8. Yes, they lived in Babylon and began working for it, but there were certain lines they still would not cross. We see this again in chapter 3 when they refuse to bow down to the idol Nebuchadnezzar made. The boys understood the way of the exile. Their purpose was not to take down the government from the inside. That is not the mission of a follower of Yahweh. He has not given us commands to start a resistance against governments like Babylon. But He also does not want us to bow down when those regimes cross a line.
That’s where the prophet Jeremiah comes into the picture. During the captivity, certain self-proclaimed prophets popped up amongst the Israelites, telling them that God was going to deliver them from this captivity soon and that they needed to be ready to fight Babylon. But God gave Jeremiah a very different message.
Jeremiah 29:4–7 KJV 1900
4 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon; 5 Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; 6 Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. 7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
That is not what we would expect. Imagine if you were one of these exiles in Babylon and you heard that God had a message for you. You’d probably be thinking, “Oh boy, this is it. He’s about to tell us that He’s going to judge Babylon and that we get to go home. Let’s get ready to fight.” Or maybe you’d given up hope and expected the message to be, “You’re all beyond redemption. You’ve messed up too many times. Just give in.”
But neither one of those is God’s message to a people in exile. He tells them to build houses and start families and seek the peace of the city—what city? Babylon!—where they were currently living. The city of oppression and all that horrible stuff—we’re supposed to actively fight against it right? No, we’re supposed to pray for the peace of it. And don’t miss that when God told them to build houses and start families, He also told them to plant gardens. Think there’s any connection to a Garden He had planted a few thousand years before? I think so.
You see, the way of the exile is to restore a little piece of Eden wherever you are and then share that blessing with the people in your circle of influence.
The way of the exile is to enjoy the goodness of the world without bowing to the system of the world. It requires us to recognize that God created a good world and that there are still good things to enjoy in this age. We believe that movies and music and books and sports and games and medicines and food and drink are all good. They can be used for good or bad, but just because they are physical things does not mean they are bad. We are not Gnostics. The Gnostics were a group from the time of Jesus that believed everything in the physical world was bad, and that salvation came through becoming more spiritual than physical. That’s not right. God created a physical world. We don’t believe that the physical world equals bad and the spiritual world equals good. We acknowledge that there are good and bad aspects of both the physical and spiritual world. That is why you get some verses in the Bible that encourage you to eat, drink, and enjoy life and others that warn you to love not the world neither the things that are in the world.
The way of the exile is to acknowledge those two balancing truth. They are not opposing; they’re balancing. It is wrong to overlook the good things of the world. It is also wrong to accept everything in the world. The way of the exile is in between those two. The role of the Christian exile is to work in the redeeming and renewing of the world. He is not to sell out to Babylon, accepting everything it puts out, but he is to do his best with where he is, seeking the wellbeing of the world around him, and working to redeem it.
Babylon was a very real, physical city and empire, but it also came to mean more. In the Bible, Babylon came to stand for “any human institution that demands idolatrous redefinitions of good and evil.” In the time of Jesus, that human institution was Rome. It was the major world power that took advantage of the poor, the weak, and the outcasts of society for its own betterment. Rome was the new Babylon. And that’s why, years after the ascension of Jesus, Peter ends his letter to the Christians spread abroad with,
1 Peter 5:13 KJV 1900
13 The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son.
Babylon didn’t exist anymore. It fell to Persia which fell to Greece which fell to Rome. There was no church at Babylon. It was the church at Rome, but Peter, thinking like a Jew (because he was one), understood that all of us are living in exile, and that the spirit and mission of Babylon gets carried on with each successive world power. So yeah, you might not have time traveled to Babylon, but Babylon might have time traveled to you. Any city or nation can be like Babylon reincarnate when it abuses the people under it for greater personal gain. Any human being can revive a piece of Babylon in his own life when he chooses to put himself above his neighbor.
We are just exiles in this world, working to bring back little glimmers of Eden everywhere we go. We are doing the work of the New Creation. The key word of the New Creation is renewal. The hope of exile is that one day everything will be made new again, and we will get to see our home again. For us, that does not mean getting to fly away to some cloud with a harp and a halo. The end goal of Scripture is not leaving earth to go to heaven. It’s heaven coming down to renew earth. I don’t know a better way to end this study today than how the Bible ends it. Look at Revelation 21 with me. This is the culmination of the exile story, not just for Israel, but for us, for all of humanity.
Revelation 21:1–7 KJV 1900
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
Your job this week is to bring little glimmers of that future reality into your present reality through your words and actions. You can choose to define good and evil on your own terms according to what seems to benefit you most, but I’m just telling you, it’s going to land you in Babylon, and you’re not going to like how much that costs. Or you can choose the way of the exile. You can enjoy the goodness of the world without bowing to the systems of the world. You can restore a little piece of Eden wherever you are and then share that blessing with the people in your circle of influence.