November 18 2007 Lectionary Reading: Exodus 6.2-8

Theme: Towards Advent – the New Exodus

I was speaking to a relative of mine, in the Netherlands recently. He has a very interesting job, he is a leading expert on the sea bed of the North Sea, particularly off the Dutch and English coast. And we had a long and very interesting conversation, because some new discoveries have been made about the sea floor of the North Sea off Holland, and around the Dogger Bank. It was once dry land, connecting the British isles to the continent, it was once a place where people and animals lived, a huge land area of creeks, marshland, small islands, which is now just beneath the surface.

With modern techniques, using soundings taken from the air, the outline of this land has been mapped out, the outline of the great rivers that ran through it, the outline of all its main features, very interesting.

When we read the Scriptures right through, when we take a view of the Bible from above, when we take the Bible as a whole, something fascinating is revealed to us in outline.

Not an outline of great rivers of course, but certainly an outline of the great currents that move through the ages. What is revealed to us, moving down through the ages, is the purpose of God, and when we take the Bible as a whole, it is revealed to us how His purposes unfold.

At this time of year, coming towards Advent, we think about these great purposes, the big picture, the panorama that the Bible gives us.

Just to explain this once again………..

In the book of Genesis chapter 2, at the very start of the Scripture, we learn first about our original state as human beings, the way we were meant to be. Genesis shows us that in a great loving movement, God, the living God of grace and love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – gave us life, and created us, to share life with Him.

He so created us for life in His company that we find our true life, our true being in Him.

Augustine, that great saint of the Church once wrote:

Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.

God created us for life in His company and that is why we find our true life, our true being in Him, our true peace, our true rest in Him.

This was our original state as human beings, declares Genesis.

How different, things are by the time we reach Genesis 4.

Here are the two sons of the first two human beings. Cain, the elder son, the one who tills the ground. Abel, the younger son, the one who tends the flocks of sheep. Out in the open fields, in a fit of jealous rage, Cain kills Abel.

Where is the Garden of Eden now – the dear green place of peace and abundant life ? In place of peace, abundant life, here is jealousy anger and death. What has happened to change everything ?

Well, of course, there lies a fault line between the Garden of Eden, and the death of Abel in a ploughed field. Genesis recounts how the two human beings in Eden, Adam and Eve, would not listen to God, and the relationship between human beings and the living God was broken. Sin entered human life. There is a gulf now, between Eden, and the world.

The further we read in Genesis, the more we see the human relationship with God dissolving. Where once there was communion with God under His absolute care and protection, now on page after page we now see homelessness, conflict, betrayal, deceit. Where God made the first human beings, really out of nothing, out of the soil of the earth, out of nothing, and breathed life into them, we now see human beings slipping back into that nothingness as their relationship with God dissolves. Cut off from its living source in God, human life slips into the weakness, instability, frailty that you and I know. Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel, is simply part, a dramatic sign of a disintegrating relationship with God.

The Scriptures tell us, in teaching, in verse, in history, in command,

what human beings are like……….. what the human heart is like….

Where the living God should have been life for us, at the very centre of life, where we should have lived life loving God with all our heart soul mind and strength as a human race, we turned our backs on Him, and so rejected life, full, abundant and complete.

You can guess that some, perhaps many, perhaps most might say:

This a very pessimistic view of human life isn’t it ?

as a human race, we turned our backs on God, and so lost life, full, abundant and complete……… and we now live as flawed and sinful men and women, this is a very pessimistic view of the human heart, isn’t it ?

Well – we might well ask in return is an accurate view of life ? You only have to watch TV or read the newspapers to see the misery, suffering, death, destruction that sweeps across the earth, the corruption of leaders, the corruption of minds, the evil that there is, you only have to watch TV to see the power of sin: and to see how far we are from God as a world………..

We only have to look in our own hearts to know what the human heart is like, our own heart, sinful, frail, flawed……….

It is from the human heart, says Jesus, there springs theft, murder, greed, malice, deceit, envy slander, arrogance and folly.

But to look out over the great sweep of the Bible,

the amazing declaration of the Scriptures, is that the living God has not given up what He has made - the women and men He has created ! and the declaration of the Bible, is that the Living God still has a loving purpose for this world, this disintegrating world !

And the Bible is abundantly clear on this. We read three passages this morning from one end of the Bible to the other………. and all of them, in their own way, declare this truth: The Living God still has a loving purpose for this world, this disintegrating world, and still comes seeking us, to restore us to Himself !

In the book of Exodus, we read of one of the great moments of this:

In around 1400 BC when God calls a group of slaves to Himself, and begins His work of restoring, rescuing, saving this distingrating world.

Through Moses God brings this slave people out from slavery, breaks their chains, their shackles, their fetters, frees them from tyranny and leads them out of Egypt in a great exodus. Out of all the peoples of the earth, God chooses and calls this downtrodden people into being, Israel.

Rescuing them from Egypt, guiding them by Moses through the desert to the mountain at Sinai, He makes a covenant with this people, an agreement with them. God, in His love and care gives the people instructions on how to live together as His people. Instructions for the care of the poorest, how to care for the land, how to caer for each other, what food to eat, guidelines for everyday life. And at the heart of the people’s life, God restores the relationship with Himself, He gives them sacrifice and worship so that His people might come near Him. The Lord says: we read it in Leviticus 26, we read The Lord says 3 "`If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. If the people of Israel follow the instructions that God gives, there will be blessing after blessing, the grape harvest, the corn harvest, seedtime all flowing into each other. Peace in which neighbour lives in peace with neighbour.

Here, the Garden we catch a glimpse of in Genesis, is being restored.

Disintegration is halted, in its place is order, for Israel, life beautifully ordered round holiness and rightness, praise and worship of God…..

To return to the great sweep of the Bible:

This great event of the Exodus echoed and re-echoed down through the life and faith of Israel. In July 587 or 586 BC, The people found themselves slaves for a second time in their history. Now they were taken to far off Babylon. For the second time in history, Israel found itself in exile.

But in the midst of the years of forced labour, in exile, far from home…

suddenly the prophet Isaiah comes with a new, fresh Word from the living God.. Isaiah the propher declares that God had redeemed them in the past – and He will do once again. The wonderful declaration of the prophet, is that God will make a new way, a new exodus for His people. Though Israel had been faithless, deaf to God’s call, yet, declares Isaiah, Israel will be led along a way it does not know. God will this time call a servant of His own, a man of perfect obedience and lowliness…..who would lead the people out in a new Exodus. In a new, living way that the people had never expected.

To read the Gospel of Mark, to ponder the gospel, is to see that the gospel writer shows us just this promised new living way, not just for Israel, but for all the peoples of the world.

God calls His servant, Jesus. Where faithless Israel grumbled, resisted, rejected God long ago in the desert, Jesus is perfectly faithful, listening to the Father, and doing all that He asks.

What is set before us in the gospel of Mark, as in all the other gospels is an account of the life of Jesus: a human life of unbroken communion with God, and of perfect faithfulness to God, a life lived always in God – always in the Father’s will, a life of love.

Into this disintegrating world, the Father has sent His servant, Jesus.

And as Mark 13 makes clear, despite wars, rumours of wars, earthquake famine and destruction, all the seeming signs of disintegration, God’s steady faithful purpose for us in Jesus will steadily unfold, will faithfully develop, will be lovingly worked out. In a way none had ever expected.

Jesus, the lowly servant of the Lord, is the new source of human life, the root the wellspring of the new human life. In Him, through Him, with Him, through His cross and resurrection, the restoration of the world, the restoration of men and women, you and me, has begun.

When we look over the great sweep of the Bible, as we have done this morning, we see that from first to last, the Bible shows us this and declares to us what God has done, and is doing and will do for us. For the Word of God declares, that the living God has moved, has acted, in power, to redeem the world, to bring us back to Himself through Jesus, the lowly servant of the Lord.

God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, this sinful frail, flawed, world says John 3.17 but to save the world through Him…

In Jesus of Nazareth, His lowly servant, God has come into the world as one of us, as a human being like ourselves. And Jesus Christ has reshaped human life, recreated this life, purified our sinful, frail, flawed, life and through His Spirit He shares this life with us as a gift. So, as we begin to look forward to the season of Advent, with the rest of the Church, we are not simply reading through the readings, singing the hymns and carols, as we always do. We are celebrating the awe inspiring, great and loving purposes of the living God down through history, celebrating the awe inspiring, great and loving purposes of the living God who has sent His own Son to us, in Jesus Christ our Lord, who in His death and resurrection, has restored us to life.

AMEN.