A New Exodus

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Doyle Walker

Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago • Presented 4 years ago • 23:46

Freedom

Prayer

Kingdom of God

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A New Exodus

Good Morning today is Sunday April 26th. Welcome to today’s episode! Today I want to pick up on something I mentioned in our last episode and expand on it a bit. As well as set the stage for the next few episodes. If you recall, last time I mentioned that an important aspect of understanding our place in the culture. Was that we live a life in exile. That this world is not our home. Nor is it our hope in its present state. But I what I want to talk about today is something that is connected to this idea.

Prayer

In 2005 a study was conducted from 860 Protestant church pastors around America. That study revealed that only 16% of those pastors were satisfied with their prayer lives. 47% were somewhat satisfied, 30% somewhat dissatisfied, and 7% very dissatisfied. Wonder what their church members' prayer lives are like, then? Which percentage would you fall into, as an "average" Christian?

Much of the reason Christians are dissatisfied, including pastors, is that we've strayed far from the type of praying Jesus taught His disciples how to do. Often referred to as the "Lord's Prayer", the better phrase is the "Disciples' Prayer" because it was the disciples who asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.

The "how" of prayer is often misguided. The Roman Catholic Church, as well as many mainline Protestant denominations misunderstand and therefore misapply the "Lord's Prayer" and turn it into a repetitious cycle. Yet just before Jesus introduced the "Disciples Prayer" He told them, "When you pray, don't babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again" (New Living Translation). So evidently, when we just recite the prayer in a rote manner, we're actually missing the point, and misleading ourselves. I wonder if God gets bored with that kind of praying?

Instead, Jesus teaches us to pray in full faith that God is not only listening, but that He already knows what we need before we ask Him (v. 8).

The prayer Jesus leads us to pray is all about the "how" of praying, as well as the "what". In other words, we pray in full faith in God's loving, kind, good, and faithful sovereignty to us and over us. And we also pray through the concepts and truths He taught in the prayer. That prayer is all about the mission of the kingdom of God from beginning to end.

So as strange as it may sound at this point. The Lord’s Prayer is connected to this idea of exile. Now you may be asking, what in the world does the Lord’s Prayer have to do with living in exile? That is what I want to show you today. And in the episodes that follow. The information for how this is connected is from the works of N.T Write and his work on the Lord’s Prayer (LP).

The Lord’s Prayer

For almost two thousand years, Christians have recited the words of the Lord’s Prayer, the only one that Jesus is recorded as having taught his disciples (Matt. 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4). But what does the prayer actually mean? Many interpretations of the prayer have been given over the years. But other questions also arise about the prayer. What did Jesus himself mean when he taught it to his disciples? And how would they, as first century Jews, have understood its language and imagery? These are important questions, and modern commentators have spilled an enormous amount of ink in the attempt to understand the prayer in its first-century context.

Without a doubt the LP sits at the heart of Jesus’ message and ministry. Despite the widespread agreement that the Lord’s Prayer reflects the heart of Jesus’ message, questions still remain regarding exactly what the prayer reveals about how Jesus understood himself, his mission, and the coming of the kingdom of God.

Several years ago, N. T. Wright published a brief but thought-provoking article in which he argued that the Lord’s Prayer should be understood as a prayer for the “new Exodus.” N.T Write describes The Lord’s Prayer is an invitation to know God and to share his innermost life.[1] He also describes the LP as the “true Exodus” prayer of God’s people. Rooted in its original context the LP takes on new significance when viewed with Jesus’ announcement that God’s kingdom is breaking into the story of Israel and the world[2]. While at the same time, opening up God’s long-promised new world and summoning people to share it.[3] If we fail to look at the LP in its original context, the prayer will simply fall back into a state of a generalized petition for things to improve[4]

Throughout the Old Testament, the prophets had expressed the hope that God would once again redeem the people of Israel in much the same way that he had done in the Exodus from Egypt. In this new Exodus, God would release his people from slavery to sin and death, put an end to their exile from the promised land, and gather them, along with the Gentiles, into a restored kingdom and a new Jerusalem. According to Wright, the ancient Jewish hope for a new Exodus is the key to unlocking the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer:

The events of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, the people’s wilderness wandering, and their entry into the promised land were of enormous importance in the self-understanding and symbolism of all subsequent generations of Israelites, including Jews of the Second Temple period. . . . When YHWH restored the fortunes of Israel, it would be like a new Exodus—a new and greater liberation from an enslavement greater than that in Egypt. . . . And the Lord’s Prayer can best be seen in this light as well—that is, as the prayer of the new wilderness wandering people. . . . This can be seen more particularly as we look at each of the clauses of the Lord’s Prayer from a new Exodus perspective.

Each line of the prayer is rooted in the language and imagery of the Scriptures of Israel and in the prophetic hope for a new Exodus. When this Old Testament background is adequately considered, the Lord’s Prayer does, in fact, appear to be a prayer for the new Exodus and all that it entails: the coming of the Messiah, the release of God’s scattered people from exile, and the ingathering of the Israel and the Gentiles to the promised land of a new Jerusalem. To borrow a felicitous phrase from Wright himself, the Lord’s Prayer reveals what can be called a “typological eschatology,” in which the events of the first Exodus establish a prototype for how God will save his people in the end-times.

Understanding the way in which the Lord’s Prayer opens up the heart of Jesus’ “New Exodus” invites those who so pray to become part of it.[5]

We will move into each part of the LP in turn in subsequent episodes. But for our purposes there are some things we need to establish at the outset. First recognizing the multitude of interpretations of the LP the goal is that we will try to determine what Jesus himself meant when He taught the prayer to his disciples. Which should be the goal of all good Bible study. Recognizing the limitations of understanding will be unable to be completely exhaustive. There has to be an underlying assumption of historical authenticity here. Which follows what most scholars that the LP is historically authentic to Jesus. Second, we have to realize the differences between Matthew and Luke’s Gospels have slightly different versions of the LP. Finally, the key to unlocking the original meaning of the LP is found in looking into the OT context of the imagery and language that Jesus understood and used in each part of the prayer. Every aspect of the prayer is ultimately tying to the ancient Jewish hope for the coming Messiah and the gathering of both Jews and gentiles in a new Exodus.

Even before His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus had perfectly fulfilled the Old Covenant, down to the smallest detail. This had the effect of bridging the gap for His people to now enter the New Covenant Kingdom of God. This Kingdom will eventually be fully realize done day at the second coming of Jesus. But that is in the future. We are in the “now”.

And this means we are in between the inauguration of the Kingdom of God at the first coming of Jesus, and its consummation, or full-on arrival date at His second coming. Put another way, when Jesus came to earth He initiated the “True Exodus” for the true people of God. It was unlike the first Exodus in that the land of slavery is sin, and the promised land is heaven. The whole sphere of things is spiritual, with clear connections and ripple effects in the physical. However, as Romans 8 clearly teaches, both creation and our bodies–the physical elements which are affected by the spiritual - are groaning for the day of final redemption. That will be a day when everything completes the greatest Exodus from sin. Like the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night leading Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea, Jesus Christ has already led the church, the true Israel, out of spiritual Egypt through the cross and empty tomb. In a sense, the church is still trailing behind Christ, crossing the Red Sea on the safe, dry ground of an immutable adoption by the Father.

We’ve been born again, out of slavery and into sonship. The train of saints traveling this path will continue until the last soul has crossed to the other side. Then the end will come, when Christ comes with His angels to bring the kingdom to earth and end, once and for all, every trace of sin in His universe.

The “Already-Not Yet” Kingdom of God

Our Exodus will be complete on that day. But until then, Jesus teaches us that we are to patiently maintain a mindset of “already-not yet.”

Theologians talk about the kingdom of God as being already here, but not yet here, already but not yet. It’s illustrated really nicely in a specific passage. This is in 1 Cor 15. We read:

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

Did you catch that? Jesus is reigning, but then He has to destroy His competition so that He can deliver up the kingdom. He is already reigning, but yet there’s still something out there that He has to deliver to the Father. There’s still a conquest idea; there’s still something to be won, and that something of course is the nations of the world. The already/not yet approach is what I want you to consider when you think about the nature of the kingdom of God. What I am suggesting is you don’t have to choose between A or B; they are both realities; they are both present in Scripture. The kingdom is already here, but not yet.[6]

This state of eschatological limbo accounts for so much of the confusion and frustration we experience on this earth. The deeper we feel this, the deeper we know that the kingdom is still future. Even though Jesus already brought His Kingdom to earth, sin is still in the DNA of everything around us, posing constant opposition to the Kingdom. We feel it and it pains us to the very core. It is the pain of the “not yet” Kingdom of God.

Wright, N. T. (2002). The Lord’s Prayer as a Paradigm of Christian Prayer. In R. N. Longenecker (Ed.), Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament (p. 133). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Heiser, M. S. (2017). BI171 Problems in Bible Interpretation: Why Do Christians Disagree about End Times?. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

http://www.robwilkerson.net/2011/02/currently-praying-mission.html

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/569543b4bfe87360795306d6/t/57f53b366b8f5bd3469b7d22/1475689276685/LordsPrayer%26NewExodus.pdf

https://www.scribd.com/document/39353001/Praying-the-Mission-Introduction-The-Lords-Prayer-as-Biblical-Theology-for-New-Exodus-Community-REVISED-Draft

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