Exile, The Story of All of Us

Intro

Exile Week 1

The story of all of us.

I love that bumper video. It is what this series is all about.

This is what Exile is.

It is this notion that you are in a different world. That you somehow don’t fit in the world that you are experiencing

There are times in our life that we wake up and we are just in a different world, most of us have experienced this.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of September 11th, we all woke up to world that had changed in an instant

I flew to san Francisco a month after 9/11 and there were soldiers there with AR-15’s...

It was a whole different world

The advent of phones in our pocket that have the internet…We are in a different world

This has happened a thousand times in our history…

There are times in my life when my eyes are opened and I am like…Wow, where am I?

Anniversary story

A few years back my wife and I went out for our anniversary. We wanted to do something totally different, so we went to the Santa Monica Pier in the morning and we rented bikes to ride down to Venice beach

If you have ever been to Venice beach you know that it is just really a different place…

So we are getting hungry for lunch and we start looking around for a place to eat…

So we end up going to this little place that just looked like a normal restaurant,

but after they brought us our water I knew I was in a strange land that I didn't recognize…

A lady comes up and says, “Would you like some Chlorophyll drops for your water?”

I had to think for a second because this is not a question I had ever gotten at a restaurant before…

So I asked her: “Chlorophyll? Like from science?”

I was so confused, I literally didn't understand what she was asking of me…

If you don't know Chlorophyll is what gives plants its green pigmentation

So I politely declined the invitation to drink Chlorophyll

So we are having a nice but strange lunch and I go to the restroom..

And the bathrooms are not marked, so again…I was really confused because I didn’t want to go into the wrong bathroom, that would be rude

But I found a sign on the wall that said, this bathroom is for people who don’t know or don’t care what gender they are.

And I had an honest thought that…Ok thats nice that they care for people who don’t know their gender, but where’s the men’s room?

Call me old fashioned but I just don’t want to go to the bathroom in front of some random woman.

But I was able to make it in and out without incident...

Then I go back to my table and I am telling desiree how crazy the bathrooms were when the dessert cart comes rolling around

And all of the desserts were super expensive and we were wondering why 1 dessert was like, $20 …Well it turns out they had a little something extra in them..

When Desiree and I walked out of that place we kind of just gave each other the look and said…what just happened?

We felt so out of place, it was a world that on the surface looked very much like the one I am used to but just had a twist every where you looked..

What we experienced was cultural exile…The world had changed and I felt like a stranger in it

I was not at home any longer!

In this series one of the things we are going to talk about is no where has this change occured more than the church

Has anyone felt this way before. Just so out of place because the world around you had changed

Exile is the idea that we feel displaced or even expelled from our true home

And today one of the things that I want to do as I intro this series is to give a big overview of just what exile is in the Bible.

When you read the Bible one of the most common threads is this notion of exile…

There are things that happen in our lives which dominate the way that we view our lives…There are these events which almost give us a new set of glasses in which to see the world.

You may have had these events in your own life.

For the Jewish People, Exile is the lens that they began to see everything through.

And before we get deep into the Bible this morning, I want to tell you a little bit about the way in which the Old Testament was formed…

So you might know the story:

Human Kind is in the garden, they sin, they get banished…God forms a community out of this man of faith, Abraham…That community becomes slaves in Egypt, they go to the promise land…

In the promised land, Abraham’s family form the people of Israel

Israel gets to the height of power and then they become so sinful that God allows them to be defeated and carried off into exile.

In 587BC, The Babylonian army marches into Jerusalem and completely demolishes it.

People are carried off to exile in this land of Babylon…So you can picture this, this would be modern day Iraq and Baghdad…

Babylon was an interesting world power in that, most world powers conquered nations and used them as slaves and as ways to make money. They saw other nations as a cheap labor reserve. But Babylon had this immense interest in knowledge. In other cultures. It didn't just want to be a brute world force, it also wanted to be the modern day Internet with libraries.

While most world powers when they went to conquer a land saw the leaders of the community as a threat, Babylon looked at them as an asset.

Now I don't want to give you the false impression that the exile was easy and no big deal. It was absolutely traumatizing.

So a prevailing idea back in this day was that you were tied to your land, why? Because your ancestors bones were buried there.

So let me give you just a small picture of what it was like to be conquered and exiled

During the Assyrian invasion one historian of religion writes this:

“”Deportations totally disrupted life in the inhabited world in the first millennium. It was not enough for conquerors to annihilate every sign of human habitation to the ground, not enough to cut down the trees and burn the crops in which they described as, “a scorched earth policy”; they disinterred the dead and removed the earth by removing the fettle top soil, loading it on carts and taking it home with the expressed aim of ensuring that…””their name and that of the decedents, their remains and those of their offspring, should no longer be on the lips of humanity.”

-Gerdin Jonker, The topography of remembrance (From Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile p.50

In the ancient world, you are tied to your land because that is where your ancestors were burred and

We want to make a statement that there is no where else to go back to. There is no more home.

And all of this shaped the way that the bible was compiled…

So we look at the bible and we see one Book. But its actually 66 books all woven together that took over a thousand years to compile.

What happened in the Babylonian exile was that Babylon decided that they wanted the academics, they wanted the best…Sure they scorched the earth…Sure they demolished Jerusalem…But give us your best

So the academics were priests and scribes who all had a patch of the quilt…and over the years in Babylon they stared putting all of these parts together into the Hebrew Bible. Why?

So their kids would never forget the story…

One of the chief fears of those going into exile was not that they would never come home….But that they would be raising children who looked more like Babylon culture than they did Jewish culture…

I mean isn’t this somewhat our fear too? That our kids won’t stick with following Jesus…That our kids will just go look like the rest of the world?

So the Old Testament was birthed out of this oppression…This event of exile was so prolific in their lives

Because of these exiles who carefully and painstakingly took all of these texts and put them together into the Bible…

Exile becomes the common set of glasses in which to look at the entire Bible…It is literally the story of all of us.

So exile reminds us that there is a true home…But we are not in it right now...

So in the following weeks…We will get into this idea as the church in exile…But in order to understand all of that…you need to understand what exile is first...

So where nearly every theological idea originates is in the Garden of Eden right?

When you read the biblical account of Eden you see that this is humanity’s true home. This is the way that God had intended that all of creation live…

When we study the book of Revelation at one point, at the very end of that one of the things you will see

Heaven is depicted as a new Eden…

So this Idea of Eden is our true home…

Jesus points back to Eden in so much of his teaching

What we miss partly because most of us don’t read Hebrew is just how much Eden language is scattered through out the Bible

So In the garden there are three relationships that are as they should be.

The Three Essential Relationships

1. God and Man: Genesis 1:27 We see verses like Man and God walking in the garden, Man is made in the image of God.

2. Man and Woman: Genesis 2:22-25 We know that Man and woman were naked and unashamed, This is a picture of Eden…No shame in relationships…I mean what would happen if suddenly all of the shame that you have built up in your life over the years suddenly went away?

3. Man and Creation: Genesis 1:26 We get this picture of man having dominion over all of creation. Man named the animals…Really what we see here is a picture of man and woman at home with the created world. Ruling in God’s place over creation. They were at peace with the animals.

So we have these three relationships that are as they should be.

So turn with me to Genesis 3:

You know the part of the story where they are deceived…they eat of the tree and they shouldn't have done that…

Go to Genesis 3:8-12

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

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Did you catch that? The first relationship that is broken is what? Between man and God…I was afraid so I hid…

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11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Did you catch that?

The woman gave it to me: In other words now there isn’t just strain between man and God now…The dude just blamed his wife! Now the seeds of strain between humanity are sown

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13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Now do you see the blame game playing out here…So Humanity and God are strained…Humanity is strained within itself…and now the woman…is like…No God it was your creations fault…

So man’s sin breaks these three essential relationships and it result in humanity’s banishment from the garden

I think if were all really honest we can see the effects of these broken relationships in our own lives..

1. The very fact that you come to church reveals that you desire to experience God…Because something is broken between you and God..God has placed eternity in your heart…this yearning for something more!

2. We see the effects of this in human conflict in marriage and everywhere else in our world

3. And we can see the effects of a broken relationship with creation through many things…I get the sense that the trash island that is the size of Texas that is currently out in the pacific is not natural…By the way. Caring for our earth is something that is instilled in creation by God…Its not a liberal or a conservative idea; it's a Biblical one…

Genesis 3:22-24

22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

So there are these key words that are used in Genesis there that sort of tune us into the fact that this not just a story of getting kicked out of some place but that this is actually a story of exile.

Now the reason why we go back to these Hebrew words is not to prove to you that I know how to look up Hebrew words…But to show you that the original readers of these stories read in Hebrew…and in English sometimes the same word is used for something but its totally a different Hebrew word…So I go back to these words to show you a clear progression of when these words are used together it is always pointing back to the garden.

So there are these three key words

shä·lakh' - Banish

gä·rash - Drove out

and the other one…we don't have to look in Hebrew is the word

qedem East…

So what happens in the very next story in the Bible?

Cain and Able…Cain kills able

Genesis 4:14

14 Today you are driving me from the land (gä·rash), and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

Genesis 4:16

16 So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

So just like his parents…he was already living and working east of Eden and now the same thing happens

He was driven from the land, he was Banished to the East…

From the garden, the Bible continues to move eastward toward Babylon.

Genesis 11:1

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

So genesis 11 is this picture of the whole world moving away from the garden. The whole world moved eastward. And they all settle in Babel…

Now the Hebrew word for Babel is Babel…..and the Hebrew word for Babylon is Babel…

They use the same word…

What the authors of the Bible are trying to tell us is that the whole earth is living in a state of exile…

Babel or Babylon becomes this code word that means far away from what God intended..>far away from the world that you used to recognize…Far away from the world as it should be…

Babylon is the world or the culture in which you wake up in and realize that you are not at home any more.

There is a lot of conversation today about what is the modern day Babylon...

And the answer is really simple:

All of it...

All of a culture that unites around human authority

All of a culture that mocks God by pretending that he doesn't exist.

All of a culture that is right in their own eyes...

You live in it and breathe Babylon in every single day…You are an exile

You are living in a world where the culture finds new ways to celebrate sin! that is Babylon…And its not America…its the human condition apart from God.

So outside of the garden we are all exiles

We find ourselves in Babylon

But there is one family in the story of the Bible that God is going to use to lead us home...

So in Genesis 1-11 the whole human family moves eastwards towards Babylon

And then Genesis 12 starts with Abraham…And guess what…Abraham begins to move westward toward Canaan...

In Genesis 12: Abraham was seen as the first returnee from exile…But let’s look at the way the author of Hebrews re-tells the story

Hebrews 11:8-10

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

See in Genesis 11: All of humanity made a city called Babel…

And Babel was Humanities attempt to make their own name great! Literally the foundation of the city of Babel was human power and authority

And Abraham we the beginning of a revolution. The man that God would eventually use to lead all of humanity out of Exile…The Author of Hebrews says that Abraham went to toward the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Literally there is this great comparison set up in the first 11 chapters of the Bible...

Do you want to live in this Human based exile and corruption called Babylon

Or do you want to go westward with Abraham?

See the idea here is that Abraham is the father of all of the people of God…he was the one with faith..>He was the father of Israel…He made the covenant with God….His family would show the way to freedom...

The idea here is that God’s people are always walking out of Babylon…That Babylon is the culture and the air that we all breathe….

Abraham was himself the foundation of a new kind of people who would want to walk back toward the garden

So many of you know the story of the Bible

So Abraham’s family which is called Israel

It ends up in Egypt…Which was a form of Babylon

Then God uses Moses to lead in the Exodus and right when they get into the promise land…These spies go in for 40 days and come back with these massive grape clusters and the implication is…the promise land is a huge Eden like garden….But The spies say, there are giants in the land we can not defeat them lets go back to Egypt…

So right when God’s people are about to come out of exile…God sends them for 40 more years to wonder in the dessert…A sort of exile within the exile…

Then they finally get into the Promised Land, after 40 years of wondering

In this land the people of God eventually build their own Cities, they build the temple…They get to the very height of power in Jerusalem and then they walk away from God…

The people of God start oppressing others…Then the prophets…If you read them start saying People of God…start living the way God has called you or

He will gä·rash you, drive you out of the land and he will shä·lakh' you or Banish you…

The prophets borrowed this exile language from Genesis…

And then the defining moment for Israel happens…First the Assyrian and then the Babylonian Exile happens…(And we are going to talk a lot more about this in the coming weeks)

And when the exiles are returned home…They were never really home…They were conquered by the Persians, and the greeks and then the romans…

But then this young guy named Jesus of Nazareth shows up and

Matthew 4:14-17

14 to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:

15 “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— 16 the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

17 From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

And Jesus call to all people…Is come out from the Land beyond the Jordan AKA East of Eden…For I am ushering in a new kingdom…A new city of God....what Abraham’s family failed to do in bringing back all of humanity…Jesus would do...

And Jesus’ message…Repent! It means turn around! You are living in Babylon and in exile…and you have been there so long it just seems normal to you

When Jesus says repent he is saying that his kingdom is coming near…It is that City of God …whose architect and builder is God…Its coming near!

You don’t need to live in exile any more...

Maybe you are here today and you feel like

Response & Challenge

So the whole story of the Bible is one of exile...

One of being away from your true home..

And today we are just scratching the surface of everything we are going to discuss but at the heart of exile…are these three relationships:

So maybe your here today....

1. Your relationship with God has been in exile: You’ve been coming to church out of sheer obedience or I don’t know someone just dragged you to church today and you have never been in the past…Maybe you’ve been searching for God. What I know about God is that he created you for relationship with him…And your first step out of exile is to surrender your life to Him.

2. Maybe your here and your relationship with others is in exile today…No matter what way you turn you just keep banishing and driving people out of your life. Jesus wants to transform your marriage, or your singleness. He wants to transform all of your relationships by dwelling in you...

-He wants to bring you out of exile into freedom and he wants your life to be a bacon of freedom...

-So maybe today you are just holding on to something. and what you need is to surrender that to God and you need to go to those relationships and bring them out of exile. God is with you. He wants this!

3. Maybe you are here today and you are in exile with the rest of creation: And this is not just like the plants and animals…But I what I am saying here is other people who are outside the church Literally you do not know people who are non christians. You have insulated yourself from the rest of the world as to not be corrupted by the world...

-But what I mean is that you have organized your life in such a way that you don’t have to share your faith any more. …And you have to be careful with that because it is in the organizing your life that way when your faith becomes weak and stagnant

-Jesus sought out sinners

-Its what everyone got so upset at him for...

-If your here today and you are in a sort of Christian Exile…I want to challenge you to pray for someone whom you can share Jesus with...

So here is what I want to do this morning:

If you are here and in one of these three areas…I want to invite you to a time of decision

Maybe your first step out of exile is putting your trust in Jesus …That can happen with a prayer…and if you do that I want you to come talk to me or one of the pastors because we have some next steps for you

Maybe your next step out of exile is reconciling with someone else…We will talk about this more in the series…but forgiveness is the path out of exile...

Or maybe for you today the path out of exile is beginning to share your faith again…And living unashamed

Lets pray