Returning from Exile

Our Story of Exile

The story of the garden can be framed in terms of exile and return. This is really at the heart of the gospel. Our home is with God, in sinless, deathless, tearless communion. I mourned the loss of an old friend this week - I went to my home church and saw my old friends, saw my 3rd grade sunday school teacher, and I felt an ache in my bones, knowing that there is something wrong. We don’t just need to go back, we need to go home. back isn’t home - I literally live in my old home, and it’s not home. Not really. It’s all passing away. I’m a sojourner here. As much as I resist it, as much as I want to hold on to the world around, me, it’s not really home. God is home, and the story of the bible is how I return to him, and he returns to me through Christ.

Exiled from the Garden

Genesis 3:22–24 ESV

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Romans 5:12–14 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Israel Given a Home

Joshua 23:3–13 ESV

And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you. Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you. Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day. For the Lord has driven out before you great and strong nations. And as for you, no man has been able to stand before you to this day. One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as he promised you. Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.

Israel in Exile

2 Kings 24:14–16 ESV

He carried away all Jerusalem and all the officials and all the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. None remained, except the poorest people of the land. And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon. The king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officials, and the chief men of the land he took into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. And the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon all the men of valor, 7,000, and the craftsmen and the metal workers, 1,000, all of them strong and fit for war.

Jeremiah 29:10–14 ESV

“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Living in Exile. 

An exile is someone who has been forced to leave their home and unable to return. They are living in a foreign land, longing for, hoping for home.

Hebrew word carries an image of being uncovered. Exposed. This is what it feels like to be an exile. You are living as a stranger in a land that has sought to do you harm. You are conquered, and you are being compromised. Every day in that other land, you begin to lose in yourself what it felt like to be home. You start to learn the language and the culture of your oppression and you in every moment are slipping further and further away from what it feels like to be home. 

The stories of Daniel, of Shadrach, Meshach and Abidnago, The tragedy of Lamentations, the story of Esther, all powerfully portray the pressures and hardships of living in exile. Here, the power of the land you live in is in the hands of your enemies. 

Living in exile can cause you to forget your home.

This is what Daniel was fighting against, what Nehemiah mourned, what Ezra and Zurrubabel were united to bring to an end. The people of God had been promised that they could return home.

God’s promise to Abraham, to the people of Israel, is that they would have a home, and that the world would be blessed by them. But the promise felt imposible to hope for. There was a constant compromise. It kept slipping through their fingers. They kept squandering the blessings and promises of God and embracing the cultures of their oppressors and their enemies. They kept running from God. So God came running to them.

The Exile of Jesus

Philippians 2:4–11 ESV

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Ephesians 2:12–13 ESV

remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,

The story of the Bible is the story of homecoming. Jesus was cast out so we could be brought in, exiled so we could be welcomed. The cross is the ultimate exile; the resurrection, the ultimate return.

Jesus was cursed so that we could be blessed! Jesus endured the exile that we deserved! Jesus went out into the wilderness so that we could be brought in, safe and secure, home to God. What a savior!

Returning from Exile:

Nehemiah 7:5–7 ESV

Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up at the first, and I found written in it: These were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried into exile. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his town. They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum, Baanah. The number of the men of the people of Israel:

Returning from exile.  

Sojourning. On a pilgrimage back to the garden. Back to the presence of God. 

What is it like to be returning home, to know that you’re free to go back, free to speak your own language, live in your own culture, live in freedom? On the way home, imagine what you might be doing. You might be reminding yourself of how they live at home. What it’s like to be there. You might be remembering the stories of your ancestors. Imagining the gathering of the people. Familiarizing yourself with the ways of that land, and separating out for yourself what habits you might have picked up in the land of your oppression. 

2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 …what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”

English Standard Version Chapter 18

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues;

for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.

God is calling us to head home, to see ourselves as sojouners.

This is why we call discipleship an all of life, relational, journey, following Jesus to the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit, whereby we are redeemed, adopted and transformed.

It’s an all of life, relational journey. Where we commit ourselves, bind ourselves, to God in Christ Jesus by the power of the Spirit. We live separately from the world and trust that God is bringing us home.

How can we begin to walk in the ways of our true home rather than the land of our exile and sojourning?

We stop living like this is home. It is not. It never was. Don’t get too comfortable here. Don’t even try. It’s husks and ashes.

We practice discernment on the customs and culture of the world we live in. If this is not our home, then we must look on our culture with a healthy skepticism. What do we reject? What do we embrace? What can be redeemed?

We listen to the voice of our King. The word of God is calling us forward, home, to our ultimate future in the Kingdom of Heaven. We sometimes think of the scripture as calling us back, to live in the old ways. But really it is calling us forward, to live in the ways of the Kingdom that is yet to come. We are not living in the past. We are living in the future, as citizens of the coming kingdom.

We pay attention to the longing in our hearts for home. Rather than drown that voice in booze, or drown it out with noise, or stuff it down with food, or full schedules, we must make time in our lives to listen to ache and know that it is pointing us homeward.

The culture of this coming kingdom is love. The love of the Triune God overflowing in God’s love for us, resulting in our love for the triune God. Live in this culture now.

The end of our exile.

We are returning home. One day home will return to us. We will see a New Creation. God will make all things new. New heaven, new earth. New bodies. Resurrection bodies like Jesus’.

English Standard Version Chapter 21

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son

Here is the end. Back to the garden, but in the midst of a city. A city of redeemed people with God in our midst. He will dwell with us. We will be his people. He will be our God. We will be home.