So what now? So what is God going to do about God's redemption of the world? That is the question that any student of the Bible ought to ask themselves when they arrive at the end of the Books of II Kings and Jeremiah. They ought to ask about God's redemption plans because the end of those books describes the people of God being carried into exile, their capitol city being burned, their Temple being thrown down and hope leaving the building (so to speak). The people had been carried to a foreign land whose customs and religious affinities were much different from those that were required by God of the children of Israel. In other words the people through whom God was supposed to redeem the world were homeless, Temple-less and leaderless. It would appear that the powers and principalities of the world had defeated this part of God's plan and so perhaps God would have to choose another way. This seems to have been not only a detour on God's Road to Redemption, but a dead end.
The marvelous thing about God however is that there are no dead ends on God's Road to Redemption. While this was not clear in moment in which God's people watched their lives be torn apart, it would become clear as time progressed. It would become clear for a number of reasons. The first was that they began to realize that the Prophet Jeremiah had been right; the demise of the nation was not caused by foreign gods defeating the God of Israel, but was God's punishment for the nation's failure to trust and obey. Second, the words of the prophet Ezekiel made it clear that even though the geographic location of the people had changed (Israel to Babylon) God's love for the people had not. He did this through a series of prophecies in which he witnesses the glory of God actually traveling from the Temple to the people in Exile. Finally the powerful words of Second Isaiah (a prophet who claimed the mantel of the original Isaiah) declared that God would not only forgive God's people, but would bring the people back to the Land of Promise in order that they continue their role on the Road to Redemption.
It was only slightly more than 40 years after the people had been sent into exile (583BCE – 538 BCE) when God used Cyrus of Persia as the liberating agent of God's people. Cyrus and the Persian army obliterated the Babylonian Empire, sending it into the dustbin of history. Cyrus then declared that all captive peoples (including the children of Israel) would be allowed to return to their homelands. Over the next few decades (until around 515 BCE) the Israelites returned to their homes and began to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Along the way home however something happened which once again might have short circuited God's Road to Redemption. As the people gathered in Jerusalem two of their leaders, Ezra and Nehemiah began to enforce the complete separation of the people of Israel from all other peoples. These leaders made Jews who had married foreign women, divorce them. They also made all of the people promise to maintain absolute purity in order to once again be a completely distinct people. This re-emphasis on purity and separateness was another detour along the Road to Redemption because the focus of the people was on cultural survival and not on being a part of God's redemptive work.
Last week we spoke of the Road to Redemption being long and winding. This week as we recall the people returning from exile we witness those who are to be redemptive agents forgetting their purpose. None-the-less God remains true to God's promises of redemption coming through Israel (an achievement which comes through the Jewish messiah Jesus of Nazareth). Hopefully this fact will continue to give us hope that even at those moments when we lose focus on our role in God's redemptive work, that God will always bring us back to our true task: working for the reconciliation and redemption of the world.
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