Exile 2: Exiled to Babylon

This morning we’re continuing our series looking at the theme of exile that runs throughout the Bible. We’re coming up on a year now since this virus uprooted us from our normal lives, scattered us around the county, and forced us to inhabit a world very different than the one we long for. Early on in the pandemic, pastors, theologians, and myself began to talk about our experience as a form of exile. We’ve been exiled from gathered worship, exiled from dinner parties, exiled from schools and workplaces. And one year later, it’s safe to say that many of us still feel that exile today.

Exile is a major theme in our Scriptures, and yet it’s not one that many of us readily point to. The framers of the Bible knew all about the feeling of being forced to live in a foreign world, because it was something they and their family lived through. In 586 BC, the global superpower of its day, Babylon crushed the nation of Israel and carted away thousands upon thousands of its citizens, scattering them across their great empire. And even when they were allowed to return to their ancestral land, it still felt like foreign soil, because they didn’t own it anymore. It belonged to their oppressors. And so as with every traumatic experience, this exile came to do color how Israel perceived their world, and how they told their story which is recorded for us in the Scriptures.

Last week we examined how the framers of the Bible saw their own experience of physical exile from their home as a type. It was an experience that exemplified the reality that all of humanity is living in exile from their true home, as a result of their sin. So in the same way that the Israelites longed to go back home, we all yearn for the day that we can return to our home with the Lord. But the good news is that in Jesus, God has secured for us a way back, because in the cross of Christ, our sin has been forgiven, our debt has been paid, and now just as we follow the cross into worship on Sunday morning, so now we follow Jesus home into the very presence of God.

This morning we’re going to look at the other side of the coin. Last week we focused on what we have been exiled from - our true home with the Lord in the Garden of Eden. This morning we’re going to look at what we’ve been exiled to. And here we see, again, the imprint of Israel’s own exile, as the place to which we’ve been exiled to is regularly depicted and even named as Babylon. So this morning we’ll look at three things: first, we’ll look at how the Bible uses the image of Babylon to describe corrupted human society. Second, we’ll see how the problem of Babylon is universal and terminal. Finally, we’ll see how Jesus shows us the way out of Babylon.

So, turn with me to Genesis 11.

We have here what is often called, the story of the Tower of Babel.

This passage is the concluding scene in the story of humanity’s fall. You see, most of the time, when we in the church talk about the Fall, with a capitol F, we’re talking about Genesis 3 with Adam and Eve, the snake, and the forbidden fruit; but in fact, that’s the simply the first scene in the tragedy that is the Fall. From chapters 4 through 11, humanity enters a death spiral as they move further and further away from the life they were made to live in the Garden of Eden. And just before Genesis chapter 12, where God chooses Abraham and his family to become the vehicle for his great redemptive plan, a plan that culminates in Abraham’s long-off descendent, Jesus, but just before the beginning of that grand story-arc, we have this story. Humanity has been exiled from the Garden, they’ve descended into terrible acts of violence, even revelling in it, they keep moving eastward, away from God, until they end up in this city. It was as far from God’s kingdom as you could get, and it’s called, in Hebrew, Bavel.

Bavel is used over 200 times in the Old Testament, and this is the only time it is translated as Babel. Every single other time in the Scriptures, Bavel is translated as Babylon. This is why it’s important we know that this is Babylon. The story of Genesis goes like this: God had formed for himself people, but they rebelled and sinned against God, and so they were exiled from his kingdom, and they moved further and further away from his presence, until they find themselves in Babylon.

This is exactly what happened to the people of Israel! They were God’s people, God formed them, but they rebelled and sinned against him repeatedly, so God brought in a foreign empire to forcibly exile them from their land, and where were they exiled to? To Babylon.

You see, In the Jewish mind, Babylon became a “kind” of place - it became an archetype. This was true even during Jesus’ day. The Apostle Peter ends his first letter giving some personal greetings, and he says that the church in Babylon send their greetings, even though Babylon was destroyed more than 500 years before Peter was born. He wasn’t of course referring to the actual Babylon, but he was using the city as a symbol for a type of place.

So what kind of place is Babylon, exactly? In Genesis 11, we see that Babylon is the image of corrupted human society.

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

If the story of Adam and Eve is the story of personal sin, personal rebellion against the ways of God, then Babylon is the image of corporate sin and corporate rebellion against God. This isn’t about the actions of individuals, we’re reading about the actions of a whole society.

And what is the nature of their rebellion? They aren’t building just anything in their city, they are coming together, all of one mind, to build a tower that reaches up into the heavens, into the place of the gods. They are striving to elevate their name, their honor, and their power up to God-like status.

Let me put this in a way that I found helpful this week. Have you ever been in a really, really tall building? I’m talking like more than thirty stories? When you are on like the 46th story of an office building in downtown Atlanta and you out the window and down towards the ground, everything looks tiny. The cars look like hot wheels, the people are the size of gnats, everything looks miniscule, and you feel bigger and more substantial in comparison. In reality, you’re the same size you’ve always been and you’re even smaller than some of the folks walking around outside, but you’re so high up that you feel larger than life. I heard someone saying this week that if they were to have an office way up there with that kind of view, they’d be making very different decisions than if they were office-ing out of a local coffee-shop. Why would that be the case? Because you’d come to think of yourself as more significant than others. This is the age-old critique we have with politicians, isn’t it? We say they have become so disconnected from the average Joe, that they don’t even know the needs of the people anymore.

This is how Babylon operates. It is corrupted human society where we pursue our own greatness and power and prestige, no matter the cost. Why do the costs not matter? Because we deserve to be served and adored and worshiped, because we are gods.

Now, we are quick to point to other nations, other cultures and societies, and say, “Oh, yeah. I see Babylon in that. Nazi Germany? Babylon. Communist Russia? Babylon.” But I guarantee if you ask the local Starbucks barista if they see this in our city, they’d say “Absolutely.” I’ve been in those trenches, and if you want to see humanity exalting itself to the place of God, spend some time working the Starbucks drive-thru line on Monday morning. If you were to ask the single mom working three minimum-wage jobs and is getting priced out of her home as her neighborhood is gentrifying, does she live in Babylon, she’d say, “Absolutely.” Because her family plays second fiddle to the bottom-line.

The Bible clearly tells us that Babylon is universal and it is terminal. In the early part of Israel’s story, they were always the people that God was saving from the Babylons of the world. God rescued them from Egypt, from the Ammonites, from the Canaanites, from all the other -ites as they made their way to the land that God promised them. But once settled, once they begin the work of forming the structures of their own society, the story of Israel changes. They were no longer the ones being saved from Babylon, but increasingly they were becoming Babylon themselves. The problem of Babylon is universal. It touches every human society, including our’s.

The problem is universal, and it’s also terminal. When an illness is terminal, that means there is no hope of recovery. It can only end in one way…death. The prophet Ezekiel gives us this dramatic image of life in Babylon. Ezekiel was a prophet during the Babylonian exile. He lived in a refugee camp in Babylon. And in Ezekiel 37, God gives Ezekiel a vision. Ezekiel looks out over a valley, and spread out all around him, filling every part of the valley are dry, sun-bleached, human bones. It’s just this valley of death, and the Lord says that these bones are an image of the people of Israel in exile.

To be in exile to Babylon is to be dead. Really dead. Like camel bones in the desert kind of dead. There is no coming back from it. Imagine the weight of that for a moment, because our neighbors who do not know the gospel, this is their worldview. Babylon is the end of the road for humanity, and there’s no hope of a better life. This is the mentality of our generations. We’ve learned all about the Modern Era, with all the optimism of creating a better world only to suffer through the bloodiest century in human history. That optimism is largely gone now, and what’s taken its place is a bitter nihilism that says, “Life is hard, so just try to make it the best you can.”

There is a hint of truth to that that we see in the Scriptures. Living in Babylon is a kind of death. It’s terminal, meaning there is nothing we can do to step out of it. If we’re getting out of Babylon, it won’t be by any action that we take.

But Ezekiel’s vision goes on:

Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”

We may be dead in exile here in Babylon, but there is yet hope for us, because our God is the God of resurrection. Our God is the one who makes the dead rise again, and the message that he places on the lips of Ezekiel to give to those living without hope in Babylon, is the message of resurrection. God himself will bring us out of both exile and death, and the way that he’ll bring us out is through a new act of creation.

Jesus taught this same message. When he is speaking to Nicodemus in John 3, one of the most well known conversations in all the Bible, Jesus tells this man who is searching for answers, “You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you are…born again. You cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you are born of …the Spirit.” Can you hear Ezekiel’s vision in what Jesus is saying? The only way out of life in Babylon is to be born again, to enter into a new life that is energized by God’s own breath, his own Spirit.

And this is why we say that Jesus shows us the way out of Babylon. Because while we were dead in our exile, he came for us, to open our graves, and fill us with God’s Spirit that we may have a new life. And that new life is characterized by the forgiveness of our sins, but more than that, we no longer live as citizens of Babylon. No, our citizenship is in heaven, as Paul says. We no longer live a life of self-exaltation, seeking to be served and adored in thise world, but now as those who have been forgiven and raised to a new, Spirit-energized life, we live to exalt someone else. We live to serve someone else. We live to glorify someone else, and that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus shows us the way out of Babylon, and if you’ve ever wondered what does it look like to live as a citizen of heaven in our life on earth, look no further than the life of Christ. He exalted, served, adored, and worshiped God perfectly every moment of his life, and thus in his life we see the life that we are called to. We see the society that the church is called to be. A society of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. It’s no wonder that Paul calls these the fruit of the Spirit.

So family, Lent is often described as a season where God’s people empty themselves in order that Christ would fill them. Where do you need the Spirit’s reviving work in your life? Where do the strongholds of Babylon continue to hold you in exile? Where do you need Christ to come and throw open the graves and pull you out, that you may know life in his kingdom here and now?