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New Exodus
by
Cory Harrison
In my community we believe that we are on a
journey. An exodus if you will. We call this trip the New
Exodus, a concept that we picked up from Mars Hill Bible
Church. The New Exodus is simply a phrase used to describe
one of the greatest redemption stories in history. It takes
us through four main locations in the Hebrew Scriptures.
You see, in the beginning, God created all
things good, but humans didn't live according to how God meant
them to live. They rebelled against God, and we call this
rebellion "sin." When sin entered the world, it began to grow,
fracturing our relationships and communities; eventually
building an empire of itself. But God did not abandon his
creation to destruction and decay, and promised to restore
this broken world. As part of this promise, God chose a
people, Abraham and his descendants, to represent him in the
world. He blessed them and instructed them to use that
blessing to bless others. It is Abraham's descendants who we
find enslaved in Egypt.
EGYPT
Exodus 3:7-8a
The Lord said, “I have indeed seen, the
misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out
because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their
suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…”
Egypt is the place where people are in bondage
and not only is it the place where they are in bondage but it
is also the place where God hears the cry of the poor and
oppressed. They are enslaved to a pharaoh.
Pharaoh: oppressive dictator who enslaves
people through violence all to build his own empire.
So this cry changes history.
When these people cry out, it moves God to
answer because God always hears the cry of those who are
oppressed and in bondage.
Now for us that means that Egypt is not just a
real place but it is a metaphor for our lives. We have all
been born into Egypt, bondage, into sin and we need a
rescuer.
Egypt is also first and foremost an example of
a whole system of slavery. It can be an individual thing
representing the sin that we are all born into, but it can
also be a systemic thing. Sin can gather a head of steam and
become a whole system of oppression and keep people in
bondage.
Now in my sect of the Christian church, we
found, in our beginnings, this same system of Egyptian Empire
forming in the 1800’s. There were people who were living in
bondage, addiction, slavery to their sins, poverty,
oppression, and ultimately living life for Pharaoh not God.
They needed a rescuer. Thus came the birth of
The Salvation Army. The Movement came to say, “You don’t have
to live this way any longer. God has heard your cry.”
SINAI
Now God does not just rescue the Israelites to
be some sort strange club of people who have been rescued.
But he has a plan and a purpose for them, a path for them if
you will.
We know that God brought them out and…
Exodus 19:3-6
“Then Moses went up to
God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said,
“This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what
you are to tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen
what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles wings and
brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my
covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured
possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for
me a kingdom of priest and a holy nation.”
Sinai is the place where God gives people a
mission and identity.
On Sinai God establishes a kingdom of priest.
What is a priest? A priest shows you what the
god is like that that priest is representing.
So the invitation to these people is to be the
kind of community that when others look at them and the way
they live they will see in a very mystical and yet tangible
ways see what God is like.
They are given a mission and identity.
God is looking for a body.
In Exodus, God says to Moses, you will be like
God to Pharaoh. So the medium is the message. So you are the
message to the world. You are God to the world. Your light
is the light to the world. We are flesh and blood: God to the
world. What is the message? That God is alive, that God is
real, that God is up to something good in the world.
So it is not just the rescued from slavery and
bondage that God wants for His people but it is mission and
identity.
All of the theology from the New Testament
about the church being the body, the hands and feet, the idea
that God is dwelling in the midst of his people, the basic
idea of the ‘church’ then is already present back at Sinai.
It is not a new idea but one that existed long ago. It has
been there since the beginning it is just getting a rebirth in
the New Testament. God has been looking for a body. He has
been shopping for hands and feet to show this world what he is
like.
So the Israelites are brought out of bondage in
Egypt and placed on Sinai and given mission and identity.
The beginnings of The Salvation Army were much
the same. The goal wasn’t to have a bunch of rescued and
redeemed people but to give them purpose and identity (i.e.
uniforms, covenant, rank). They were to use these tools to
show the world what God was like.
Did they do it? The Jews, or the
Salvationists?
With this new identity and purpose that have
been given by God, we find that there are 2 ways it can go.
JERUSALEM
The Israelites end up living in Jerusalem.
When the Jews get to Jerusalem and they have been given all of
this blessing from God, there are 2 directions they can go
with it.
This is what we find out about them.
1 Kings 10:9
”Praise be to the LORD your God, who has
delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel.
Because of the LORD’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you
king to maintain justice and righteousness.”
And so we discover that the reason God gives
them this blessing and identity is so that they would maintain
justice and righteousness. He gives them a heart for those
who have been stepped on, pushed out, marginalized and
oppressed.
The problem is that they don’t stay true to the
mission. And something significant happens: the fall. We
read 2 dimensions to the fall of Solomon’s empire.
I Kings 9:15
”Here is the account of the forced labor
King Solomon conscripted to build the LORD’S temple, his own
palace, the terraces, the wall of Jerusalem…”
We discover that King Solomon now has slaves.
Notice the second dimension in the fall of this
empire.
I Kings 11:3-4
“He had seven hundred wives of royal birth
and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.
As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other
gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his
God…”
In Jerusalem we learn that Solomon not only has
forced labor, he has slaves and we learn that he has 700
wives.
So what they began to build was this empire of
comfort.
Life became a bit about maintaining their own
system and what they liked versus what God wanted, which was
justice and righteousness.
Here is why it is fascinating: they had slaves
and his heart was turned away by his own lust. Just like
with Egypt where we read that there was an individual
dimension and a group or corporate or systemic dimension. It
is the same with Jerusalem. There is an individual dimension
with Solomon’s heart being turned but also a group dimension
with slaves.
These people were slaves. They then began to
build their empire on the backs of slaves.
They have now become the system of injustice
and oppression that they once needed rescued from.
The oppressed have now become the oppressors.
This is why a key word in all of the Jewish
festivals is: REMEMBER.
Why?
Because we may forget.
Remember Egypt was always the theme. Remember
Egypt, remember Egypt, remember Egypt. When they get to
Jerusalem, have they remembered Egypt?
They have forgotten. They are now causing evil
to people in the exact same way it was caused to them.
So this is what can happen in the movement when
“God has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness
but all of your resources go into protecting and preserving
all you have been given.
This is what can happen in The Salvation Army
when we use the resources that we have been given not to bless
those who have need but to further our own comfort. I am
afraid that in the Army we have come dangerously close to
following the way of Solomon. We have come dangerously close
to abandoning the mission of maintaining justice and
righteousness and have instead furthered our own comfort.
And so it can go two ways in Jerusalem.
Babylon
For the Israelites it doesn’t go so good and
leads straight to Babylon.
2 Chronicles 36:15-20b
The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent
word to them through his messengers again and again, because
he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they
mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his
prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his
people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the
king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the
sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young
woman, the elderly or the aged. God gave them all into the
hands of Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the
articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the
treasures of the Lord's temple and the treasures of the king
and his officials. They set fire to God's temple and broke
down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and
destroyed everything of value there. He carried into exile to
Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they
became servants to him and his successors…”
God has rescued his people from slavery and
oppression from Egypt. He has given them mission and purpose
in Sinai. But when they arrive in Jerusalem, they begin to
lose that mission and purpose.
God sends them prophets who keep warning them,
“Come back. Return.” Return to your mission and identity.
Don’t keep going down that route. Return. Come Back.
The story goes to a forth location which is
Babylon. They are in a foreign land and they become
servants. Another word for servants is what? Slaves.
So the Old Testament centers around these 4
locations. And God allows them to be crushed, they end up as
slaves in a foreign land which takes us back to where the
story began.
What a pivotal time it is for The Salvation
Army.
We are standing in our proverbial Jerusalem
with our mission, purpose, and identity before us.
We have been called to maintain justice and
righteousness. And continually lurking at our door is the
temptation to maintain our own comforts.
Is Babylon in our future or will we heed the
warning of the modern day profits that God has given to warn
and remind us to return to the mission.
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