Deuteronomy 4: Exile, Restoration and Children

There is always restoration after exile. This is a point that is made again and again through God's story. If you do not obey my laws and decrees and commandments to be my representative humanity on earth, YHWH says to Israel in Deut. 4, I will send you into exile-- you will lose the land I have given you and will be scattered. This does not sound like a big deal to the Western mind-- "So i will find another place to live"--but to Israel (and the rest of the Ancient Near East) land was life. For Israel it was even more than that though land was a symbol of God's covenant with Israel. To be exiled from the land meant that God was not happy-- that Israel had broken its agreement with God. If land was life, then exile was death.

Exile would happen if Israel broke the covenant charter of YHWH, specifically here in the context of worshipping other gods (4.25)--idolatry. The reasons that such action calls for the heaviest of ramifications is because God and Israel were not just wooing eachother they were married. Thus to go after other gods was to sleep with another person--it was adultery-- Israel would be cheating on YHWH by sleeping with other gods (Deut. 4.25)-- and exile was God's divorce from her.

Within that covenant relaiionship between Israel and YHWH (and it must be said as it was said at my wedding by the preacher "A contract, a covenant is not") when marriages go sour there is one people group that suffers the most: the children. And God has their well-being in mind. Teach these laws to your children (4.9; 4.25)-- make sure the children understand my story from birth-- my committment to them, my love for them. YHWH holds the children up in Israel's face and says "Don't stray into the enticing world of idolatry with your pagan neighbors for your own sakes, but if you can't keep your hands to yourself for that reason then think of the children! They will suffer for your mistakes. They will join you in exile and it wont be pretty."

But even with the great threat of exile (which they ended up going into of course), God says something very merciful (for a god that is supposedly so mean and nasty in the Old Testament); "But if from there (the land of exile) you seek the Lord you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and soul" (4.29). God gives a second chance, a way back to the land and to relationship with him (notice the latter is whats promised; 4.30). YHWH is the god of forgiveness and restoration. This is the shape of God's story, and more importantly his heart-- on the other side of judgment there is always the promise of vindication, on the other side of exile there is always restoration, on the other side of death there is always resurrection--for those who trust him. This is why it makes sense that Jesus kingdom movement is explained by him at one point in his ministry in the story that has become known to us as the parable of the Prodigal Son. A waywayrd son (in exile) wants to come back and his father, who he had disobeyed and rejected, comes running out to him to embrace him--restore him. "But if from there you seek the Lord you will find him."

Interestingly enough the seeking in the story of restoration is a seeking with "the heart and soul" (4.29). That is the toughest seeking of all, because that is the difficult work of spiritual formation and allowing ourselves to be changed by the god we seek, at the core of our being--which means our lives begin to change...and people around us will take notice. If that happens there could be trouble, especially when it happens when we are in exile--the world around us doesn't like to be threatened by people who bear the image of God--they would rather people bear the image of money, sex, power, greed, selfishness--whatever--as long as its not a seeking after God. But God created us to bear his image in the world and that is a story above and beyond any of the other stories being offered to us by the world around us. In fact Deut itself says so. Reflecting on the creation narrative in which God puts mankind in the garden as his agents of image bearing beauty and wonder, the writer says "Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?" (4.32) the answer of course as in all rhetorical questions is No. And I Agree.

Lord shape my life to conform to yours so that i can bear your image well on earth as it is in heaven.