Jesus Wants to Save Christians - Chapter two

The descendant of Solomon find themselves enslaved in Babylon. They once had the palace and the temple and slaves and the thriving economy and the massive military. They had wealth, and influence and peace and blessing, but they lost it. They forgot their God, they neglected the widow and the orphans and the refugee, and everything fell apart.

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered. There on the poplars we hung our harps… our tormentors demanded songs of joy…How can we sing… while in a foreign land?” Psalm 137:1-4

They hung up their harps. The harp was an instrument of joy and celebration. The harp was a sound you heard when life was good. But the Israelites are not in Jerusalem anymore; they’re in Babylon - Where they hang up their harps. And they weep. They cry out in Babylon.

When the system works for us, when we have the power and choice, when we’re ruling from Jerusalem, when we have no needs to speak of, who needs to cry out? Crying out reminds us of our dependence. Weeping leads us to reconnect with God.

It didn’t take long for these exiles sitting by the side of the river in Babylon to connect their agony with the story of their ancestors who were slaves in Egypt. If God freed our people once before, couldn’t God do it again? And so it’s here, in exile by the river, amid the tears of despair, that God’s people begin to dream again.

Prophets rose up in the midst of all of the despair and hanging of harps and proclaimed not the end but the beginning of something new. On the heels of colossal failure, the Jewish prophets imagined the greatest picture of hope and the future anybody’s ever thought of anywhere.

The real problem, the ultimate oppressor, is something that resides deep in every human heart. The real reason for their oppression is human slavery to violence, sin, and death. There’s an Egypt that we’re all born into, and that’s what we really need an exodus from.

An exodus is a departure, a leaving, a movement. It’s motion, energy, and action. An exodus is something you do, something you’re caught up in, somewhere you’re going, something you join because you don’t want to stay where you are. The prophets called it “the way”. (Isa. 40:3)

Apparently, anyone can join (Isa. 40:5). Everybody is welcome to come home. People of “the way” headed home. (Isa. 48:20) Now “the way” wasn’t a new idea. (Exodus 13:21)

But in the new exodus, the one in which everything will be different than it was before, the truth will be so deeply etched into people’s consciousness that they will naturally do the right thing. New exodus people, remarried to God, leaving exile, headed home.

They understood the danger of returning. The danger of returning is that we will forget what just happened. And so the way, the prophets insisted, would lead back to some sort of new Jerusalem.

But the prophets didn’t stop here. A new exodus, a new way, a new marriage with a new covenant, a new city, with a new temple, one big enough for the whole world to worship together in – what’s left for the prophets to promise? What’s left is love. (Isa. 29: 19-25)

For the prophets in exile, no vision was too large, no dream too big, no hope too beyond what would happen in the new exodus. A movement bigger than any one nation, bigger than any one ethnic group, bigger than any one religion – all of which raises the question, who will lead it?

Isaiah calls him a “Prince of Peace” and predicts that he’’ “reign on David’s throne… upholding it with justice and righteousness…forever.” (Isa. 9:6-7) Isaiah said that he’d have the Spirit of God on him and would “proclaim good new to the poor.” (Isa. 61:1)

Here by the river, in exile, all of these expectations began to coalesce into one person: a servant, a prophet like Moses, a prince of peace, a way out of exile. What began as hope for a Jewish leader for Jewish people needing an exodus from exile in Babylon evolved over time into the expectation of a leader who would be for everybody.

And this is how the Hebrew Scriptures, also called the Old Testament, end. With all of these suspended promises, hanging there, unfulfilled, undone, waiting. A group of people by a river who have lost it all, asking the questions:
What if we had it all back?
What if we could do it again?
What would we do differently?
What if a child was born and a son was given?
What if David had another son?