Exile & Return

A story of creation and rebellion, of rescue and redemption.

A story of kings and proph, prophets of love that goes farther than failure, of a cross that breaks the curse and a king who conquers death.

It's the greatest story ever told and it's still being written.

Good morning. It's great to worship with you. And last weekend it was great to serve together. You know, last Sunday evening at our serve day celebration, we opened what for us is an annual process of affirming our church budget and a few key officer positions. This year that includes a few proposed bylaw changes.

We're gonna put a QR code up here on the screen, and if you've already participated in this process, we're grateful for that. But we just wanna ask because that online ballot closes this evening. If you're a member of our church family and you haven't yet participated in this budget affirmation process, we would love it if you would take your phone out and scan that code. There are six very simple questions it's going to ask you, and we'd really appreciate your help and participation in that process. A few days ago, I stopped to gas up my car, and I noticed as I did as I was pumping gas into my vehicle, that there was no weight at the car wash. And that's because at the moment, it was raining.

You know, washing your car on a rainy day is what we would call an exercise in futility. Sort of like taking a shower right before you go and do all of your weed eating. You don't want to do that. It's kind of like sweeping your floors before you dust your ceiling fans. Anybody ever learn that the hard way?

Yeah, you don't want to do that. It's like trying to get a spaghetti stain out of a white shirt or making 50 copies of a blank sheet of paper and then neatly stapling them in bundles of five and then feeding them one by one into a shredder or trying to change somebody's mind by insulting their opinions. On Facebook, we see lots of examples of exercises in futility on a regular basis. And I want you to hang on to that because this idea of futility is going to come up again in just a few minutes. Two weeks ago, we did a high speed flyover of a handful of events in Israel's history, beginning with the fact that God gave Israel the law, including the Ten Commandments, through a prophet named Moses.

And then God led Israel through a leader named Joshua, in conquering the land of Canaan that he had promised to Abraham's descendants. We saw how Israel turned away from God and he allowed their enemies to make life hard for them. And that cycle of rebellion and punishment continued for years. Eventually, wanting to be like the nations around them, Israel asked for a king and God gave them Saul, who proved to be a disappointment. So as Israel's next king, God chose a guy named David.

And David is where I want us to start our time together this morning. Now, we took a much more detailed look at David's life a couple of months ago on July 27th as a part of our Flawed Heroes series. So if you want to do more of a deep dive into David's life, I would refer you back to that message. But in case you missed it, let me just quickly sketch a few highlights of David's life. David served his father Jesse as a shepherd.

He also served King Saul as a musician. And when Israel went to war and no one in Saul's army was willing to stand up against a blaspheming God mocking giant named Goliath, David took his sling and and a stone and he killed the giant and won the battle. And that made David an instant hero. But it also made him an object of resentment for Saul, who was envious of David's popularity and wanted to kill him. So for the remainder of Saul's reign, David had to watch his back and live on the run from Saul.

Eventually, Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in battle. And the tribe of Judah in southern Israel made David their king. And he ruled the kingdom of Judah for seven years. But the northern tribes of Israel made Saul's son Ish Bosheth their king. And there was civil war between those two nations until Ish Bosheth was assassinated and Israel and Judah were reunited as one country.

Well, David ruled that United Kingdom for 33 years, during which he conquered and rebuilt Jerusalem. He brought the Ark of the Covenant there. In fact, if you visit Jerusalem today, there's an ancient section of the city known as the City of David that I got to visit just a few years ago. David wrote about half of the Old Testament book that we call Psalms, which God's people read and sang as reminders of his faithfulness. David was Israel's most celebrated king, but he was still imperfect and sinful and broken.

When we looked at David's life just a few weeks ago, we zoomed in on one particular episode when David, who was a married man, spotted a beautiful woman named Bathsheba bathing. And even though he learned that she was the wife of one of his soldiers, David sent for her. And he slept with her. He broke God's fifth commandment by committing adultery. And David then broke God's fourth commandment, do not murder, by having Bathsheba's husband Uriah killed in battle and then taking her as his own wife.

Now, a prophet named Nathan was sent by God to confront David's sin. And and David was convicted by what Nathan said. So David wrote Psalm 51 in which he asked God to cleanse and renew his heart. We looked at Psalm 51 a few weeks ago, but let's revisit the first three verses. Psalm 51 begins like this.

David wrote, have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion. Blot out my transgressions, wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Psalm 51 opens with David just acknowledging his painful awareness of the depth of his sin and the immensity of his need for God's grace. It contains three words that I want to quickly call our attention to, because these are really important words. The first word is when we see again and again, it's the word transgression.

And in the original Hebrew, this is a word that speaks of willful disobedience. When David slept with another man's wife and then had that man killed, he rebelled against God. He knew what God had commanded, and he decided to ignore it. The second word I want to highlight is the word iniquity. This is a word that describes a heart that has become twisted or distorted.

See, rather than honor God, David's heart was twisted in that he chose to focus on his own desires, which is always where sin comes from. We decide, even for a moment, that I'd rather do what I want to do than what I know God has clearly indicated that he wants me to do. That's where sin gets started. And then the third word is the word sin. It's a word that means to miss the mark.

Imagine going target shooting and not even hitting the paper. I mean, not even once. When we sin, we fall short. We miss the mark. We fall short of God's best for us.

David missed the mark of God's holiness by lusting and murdering. Well, like the Bible itself, the Psalms are not arranged in chronological order. So Psalm 32 celebrates the forgiveness that David found after he prayed. Psalm 51. Psalm 32 begins like this.

David says, blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one who sinned, the Lord does not count against them, and in whose spirit is no deceit. David was amazed by God's grace as he wrote those words. And Just like Psalm 51 contains three words that describe our sins, Psalm 32 uses three expressions that describe God's response to our sin. One of those words is the word forgiven.

It's a Hebrew word that means carried away. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the day of atonement. We read about it in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, chapter 16, that day when a priest symbolically placed the people's sins onto the head of a scapegoat that was then released to carry those sins away into the wilderness. David uses the word covered in Psalm 32. If you've ever tried to paint a light color onto a wall that was already painted with a dark color, or maybe you've tried to paint a light color paint over a piece of wood that had a dark stain on it, you've probably found that that dark color paint or that grain of that stain tends to bleed through the lighter color.

So you have to use a masking primer like Kilz to cover up all the dark stuff first before you apply the lighter coat of paint. God's forgiveness covers over our sin like that. It hides it from view. We also have this image of the fact that God does not count, meaning that when God forgives us, he no longer holds our sins against us. We talked about this a few weeks ago through the life of Abraham.

But when we trust God, his righteousness, his perfection, his holiness is credited to us through our Faith together. Psalm 51 and Psalm 32 tell the good news that God is eager to forgive us. God is ready to wash away our guilt. He is willing to cleanse us from our sin. One of the most significant things we learned from David's life is that not only is our sin great, but God's grace is even greater now.

Toward the end of David's life, one of his dreams was to build God a temple in Jerusalem. But God had other plans. God said to David, when your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood. And I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

And that promise that God gave to David had two layers of significance. For starters, there's this big picture, prophetic sense, in which those words refer to Jesus. Because God had promised centuries earlier to bless the world through Abraham. And David was both a descendant of Abraham and an ancestor of Jesus. And because they shared a family tree, Jesus was often called the son of David.

But there's also this immediate biological sense in which this promise referred directly to David's son, whose name was Solomon. Now, when Solomon became king, he asked God for wisdom to rule well. This is an inspiring part of Solomon's story. And because Solomon asked for discernment rather than wealth or power or long life or revenge on his enemies, God gave him all of the above. Like David, Solomon was also a writer.

He wrote the Old Testament book Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, as well as a good chunk of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs, which is just full of practical, timeless wisdom. Proverbs for centuries was essentially the parenting manual for the people of God. Parents used it to instill wisdom, the art of living life skillfully in their kids. From Proverbs, for example, we learn the source of wisdom.

Big emphasis in Proverbs. Chapter 1, verse 7 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. This is where it starts. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. From Proverbs we learn the importance of seeking truth and not just popular opinion.

Proverbs 14 says, There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. You know, long before there was such a thing as social media, Solomon knew that simply regurgitating other people's words without consulting God's word often produces the opposite of wisdom in our lives. From Proverbs we learn the importance of managing money well and avoiding debt. Chapter 22 says, the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender. Any of us who have ever been in debt understand that.

And it talks about the importance of choosing friends wisely. Proverbs 13 says, Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. Curious. Anybody in here ever make a dumb decision because of the people you were with at the time? Yes, that is a part of our growing up story.

Some of us maybe are still living that, right?

Proverbs talks about the power of godly community. It says, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. How many of us in this room have grown or been sharpened by the influence of godly mentors and friends? God calls us into community for that very purpose. And we see in Proverbs some wisdom about healthy communication and resolving conflict.

Chapter 15 says, A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. And we see that Played out every day in the rage that dominates online comments, name calling, and finger pointing. Solomon was a guy who had the means to pursue anything he wanted. So he looked for meaning in all sorts of things, which conveniently all started with the letter L. I appreciate him doing that for us. Solomon tried laughter.

He sought out entertainment and amusements of all kinds of. He looked at libations is a fancy word. You could just say liquor. But he medicated himself with alcohol and drunkenness. He decided to alter his mood in that way.

Solomon poured himself for a season into labor. He built luxurious homes and botanical gardens and the magnificent temple in Jerusalem that replaced the Tabernacle as Israel's central place of worship. And in the midst of all of that, Solomon was very focused on lute. This guy had vast wealth. His yearly intake of gold amounted to over $3 billion in today's terms.

If ever anyone knew whether money can buy happiness, it was Solomon. And Solomon also had a penchant for lust. There are some guys who collect baseball cards, but Solomon collected women. He had 700 wives. You didn't hear that wrong.

700 wives. Solomon could have been wrong in 700 different arguments at any given time. And as if that weren't enough, he had 300 mistresses on the side. Before, there was Hugh Hefner, there was Solomon. Solomon could have anything he wanted, and he did.

His book, Ecclesiastes, reads like a journal that he kept as he searched for meaning in all sorts of places. Solomon wrote, I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless.

Chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun. Solomon indulged himself without restraint. He found a lot of things along the way, but happiness was not one of them. Nothing Solomon felt or drank or achieved or acquired or experienced brought him lasting satisfaction. He couldn't take any of it with him.

When he died, he and he realized that no matter how famous he became, he would eventually be forgotten. Solomon used the word meaningless. Some Bible translations would render this word as futility or as vanity. He used the word over 30 times in Ecclesiastes, which is a pretty depressing book if you stop before you read all the way to the end. But in the end, this is what Solomon wrote.

Now all has been heard. Here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. Those are wise words.

The problem was, even though Solomon had the wisdom to know right from wrong, he chose poorly. He knew the difference between good and bad, but his execution was really lousy. In fact, despite his wisdom, Solomon repeated the very same sin that had plagued Israel for generations. The sin of idolatry. You may remember that when Israel first entered the land of Canaan, led by Joshua, God warned them that if they allowed themselves to mingle and to intermarry with the locals, they would wind up worshiping their false gods.

It just so happens that many of Solomon's wives were Canaanite women. And that is exactly what happened. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods. And his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David, his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the detestable God of the Ammonites.

So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did not follow the Lord Lord completely. To please his wives, Solomon built them places of pagan worship, some of which involved wicked practices that God had said expressly that he hated, like prostitution and child sacrifices. Solomon abused his God given freedom and he misused his life. So the Lord said to Solomon, since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees which I commanded you, I. I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.

Nevertheless, for the sake of David, your father, I will not do it. During your lifetime, I will tear it out of the hand of your son. Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him, but will give him one tribe. For the sake of David, my servant, and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen. So God gave Solomon's kingdom and expiration date.

Solomon died about 931 B.C. and his son Rehoboam took over Solomon's splendor. The magnificence of his kingdom had been achieved through high taxes and a lot of forced labor. So Rehoboam's advisors urged him to win favor with the people by being kinder and gentler. But Rehoboam chose instead to listen to a band of arrogant young men who urged him to to demand even more of his people than his father had.

So the majority of Israel said, not my king, and they followed an upstart leader named Jeroboam instead. And the result was a divided kingdom from Solomon on the Rest of the Old Testament recounts the history of two rival kingdoms. The 10 northern tribes became the kingdom of Israel, which eventually established the city of Samaria as its capital. And for about 200 years, the nation of Israel had a series of corrupt and unstable kings, many of whom seized power by assassinating their predecessors. And all of Israel's kings, from start to finish, beginning with Jeroboam, were worshipers of idols.

They were pagan and corrupt. Now the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin merged together to become the Kingdom of Judah. And and Judah remained loyal to the dynasty of David, and its capital remained in Jerusalem. Judah, unlike Israel, did have some wise and some godly kings smattered throughout their history. Some of those kings instituted reforms and they led their people back toward God.

But like Israel, more of Judah's kings were corrupt and engaged in idol worship than weren't. So both Israel and Judah became cluttered and corrupted by idols. And God sent numerous prophets through a period of centuries to call his people back to him. And yet his people insisted in idolatry. And both nations eventually fell.

About 722 B.C. israel was conquered by the Assyrian empire and many of its people were deported. And those northern tribes were essentially lost to history. The nation of Judah stood more than 100 years longer than Israel did. But eventually Judah fell to the Babylonian empire, which destroyed Jerusalem and the temple around 586 B.C.

and sent many of Judas people into exile as well. Years later, the remnants of both Israel and Judah were were freed from captivity. They were allowed to return to their homeland and they worked hard in an effort to rebuild what was lost. But they never regained their former glory. It was always just a shadow of what had been.

And when the Old Testament ends, things feel kind of bleak and unresolved. Israel has been anticipating and hoping and stumbling and failing for centuries, and they're still waiting for a Messiah. If you've ever tackled one of those one year chronological Bible reading plans, you know it takes about nine months to finally get to the New Testament before Jesus arrives on the scene. And that feels like a long time. When you're starting in January and you're working your way, it's not until about October that you finally get to the New Testament.

But that's just a tiny taste of how long Israel waited for Jesus. Between the Old and New Testaments, there was a gap of 400 years, four centuries of silence that drove home how deeply and how desperately we need to hear from God. Think about that. The US is just shy of 250 years in existence. We're talking 150 years longer than that.

You remember the word that Solomon used so often in Ecclesiastes. Meaningless futility, longing for more. It's a picture of life without God and the state of our world. In the New Testament book of Romans, the apostle Paul wrote these words. He said, the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

For the creation was subjected to frustration, to futility, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it. And then Paul goes on to say, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We saw at the beginning of this series that God originally created a perfect world. But once humanity sinned, everything suffered, death entered the picture, and creation was subjected to frustration. But even then, God promised a day when all things will be made new, a day when Christ will rescue all of creation from futility.

Now, that ultimate renewal of God's creation is still a future event that we anticipate with the return of Jesus. But through Jesus, God offers each of us personal renewal right here and right now. During that period of judgment and exile for the nation of Israel, God promised through the prophet Ezekiel these words. God said, I will take you out of the nations. I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean, clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors. You will be my people, and I will be your God. If the Old Testament demonstrates anything about humanity, it's that we don't consistently keep our promises. We can have the best intentions in the world, but we fail to follow through on them. Our actions just don't live up to our intentions.

So to live the life we're made for, what we need is not more rules. What we need is a new heart. The life that God intended us to live can never be found through a new set of commandments. We need a new heart. And that's why God's ultimate plan wasn't to give us another set of ten Commandments.

Well, let's. Let's go. Let's double down. Let's give 20 commandments. This time that wasn't the answer.

God's answer was not to give better leaders than Israel had had before. His answer was to give his Holy Spirit. God wants to live personally within each of us, to cleanse us of our sin and renew our hearts and transform our desires and put our lives back on course. All of God's promises ultimately point to Jesus, who ushered in a new way of relating to God. The apostle Paul wrote these words in Romans chapter 8.

Paul said, There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life, has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the flesh, those who are dominated by what their bodies desire, have their minds set on what the flesh desires. But those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their mind set on what the Spirit desires.

The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. What we see throughout the Old Testament is that trying to earn our way to God through our good behavior is an exercise in futility. The law couldn't save us. It could only point out our sins. It could only condemn our sins.

So God gave us His Son. Jesus put on flesh and he satisfied the penalty that the law demanded for our sin when he died in our place at the cross. And then Jesus gave us his Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us life peace by aligning our minds and our hearts with his. And that's the story that we see being played out again and again and again in the lives of people as God calls us to Himself.

Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated our friend Mackenzie's baptism. And we often ask people when they're baptized, to share with us a story about the events that led up to that decision. And Mackenzie shared her story with us. And I have her permission to share this with you today, Mackenzie said, I went to church as a child, but I later began to question God's existence. And without any spiritual anchor to speak of, my life just went off the rails.

I found myself caught up in drinking and dabbling in a number of different New Age spiritual practices. But God still pursued me and during my freshman year of college, my roommate and I began watching TikTok videos of people explaining how Jesus had changed their lives. So we went to an Easter service, and we found that to be impactful, although my life didn't change immediately. Then I got a gift from my mom. My mom gave me a sweatshirt that says Love like Jesus.

And that gift reminded me that I am most fulfilled when I'm pursuing Jesus. So I started to attend church regularly. I eventually broke up with my boyfriend, who was not a believer. We just weren't spiritually on the same page. And shortly before my college friend Jake left Indiana for grad school, he invited me to Greenwood Christian Church.

Going to a new church is scary, but I walked into the building and I felt at home. Later that week, Jake invited me to a worship rehearsal. Joel invited me to audition, and despite intense performance anxiety, I'm now playing guitar in the band. Since then, MacKenzie says, I have seen Jesus heal me from the inside out. My performance anxiety gone.

Why? Because after 10 years of musical training, I now exist to serve and please God, not a director. Jesus has changed me. I've died to my flesh. GCC and Jake and Joel and Chris have played an incredible part in this.

They pushed me spiritually and musically, and I have never in my life felt so supported and alive. I feel called to be more of a leader. And I believe that being recruited for worship was only the beginning. I've made it my mission to bring as many of my college friends to church as possible. And you will rarely see MacKenzie here without several friends in tow.

She's just become really active about inviting others to come and explore what Jesus is doing in her life. McKenzie's story is just one of many around here that echoes what God's word stresses, that to live the life we're made for, what we need is not more rules. What we need is a new heart. And Jesus specializes in heart renovation. That's the business he's in.

And so one of those next steps, like Craig talked about earlier, one of those next steps we want to invite you to explore is that of asking Jesus to renew your heart, inviting the spirit of God to be present in you, to steer the rest of your life in a different direction than what the chapter of it leading up to this moment has looked like. Jesus is all about changing our hearts, and he does that through the indwelling work of his holy Spirit. Would you pray with me, Lord God, we're grateful this morning for this story that you have been telling since the beginning. Beginning of time we're grateful, God, that you didn't just create us and wind us up like a clock and then walk away. We're grateful that you didn't just give us a set of commandments and then hold us at arm's length.

We're grateful that you didn't just put on flesh and come and die in our place. And then tell us to get our act together and walk away from us. That you have chosen to live within us through your spirit. God, we need that. Our lives need that.

Our church needs that. Our world desperately needs that. And so, God, we ask that you would move in our lives, that you would move us to welcome you, to invite you to be present in all that we do and all that we are.