Hope in the In-Between - Devotion 1
Coming Out of Exile
Coming hope is a huge theme in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is an Old Testament prophet, which means that he gave the people the Word of God. God used Isaiah to tell the people what He was saying and to tell them what He would do. He prophesied from 739 to 681 BC to the people of God in Jerusalem. His prophecies spanned over the reign of four different kings: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
During Isaiah’s day, the Israelite people found themselves living in very dark times. They were living under judgment because they had broken their covenant with God, followed other gods (idols), and lived rebellious lives of sin. They followed just about everything other than God. Their kings made pacts with nations around them, hoping to save them rather than going to God. They had turned to both Egypt and Syria, nations that did not follow God and had fallen further away from the one true God. God’s judgment on His people comes throughout the book of Isaiah in the form of foreign nations like Assyria and Babylon, overtaking God’s people and eventually leading them into exile. They had lost their homes, possessions, and families and were in danger of losing their identity if they took their eyes off God. People who experience this kind of exile long for hope to hold on until they can be rescued and released from their captors. Exile is a place where people desire someone to save them. Isaiah spoke hope into this darkness.
We need hope in the darkness that faces us today. I speak to so many people who struggle with what is happening in the world as a whole but are also struggling with what is going on in their world. Exile is not necessarily a word we consider when we look at our own lives. We hear of refugee camps in other parts of the world, and those people would be considered exiles for sure. However, we do not consider ourselves exiled here, even though there are so many people struggling. When a person wakes up and wonders if today could possibly get any worse than yesterday, that person just may be living in exile.
Some may say that the news we hear across the world today in the 21st century brings echoes of a type of exile from what life could and should be like. We long for the world to be different because we hear of terrorist attacks, abuse in all kinds of forms (child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse of power), corruption in governments, epidemics in society from human trafficking to opioid addiction, power, and hedonism leading to oppression and exploitation. Our world is in exile.
These stories surround our lives and can make it feel like we live in a modern-day exile away from what God intended and desires our lives to be. Yet, not all of these stories are in the world around us or in the news; they are present in our own lives and can find us walking in a dark season. They can be divorce, disease, debt, depression, death, family struggle, expectations, and job troubles. Whether we are reading about exile in Isaiah 700 years before the birth of Jesus or experiencing it almost 21 centuries after His first Advent, people all around us and so many reading this book are experiencing the effects of exile and need hope to hold on to in life.
Where do we find hope? Where does it begin? Just as Isaiah spoke, HOPE is coming.
“And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!” Isaiah 9:6b-7 (NLT)