New Exodus (Excerp from “Simply Jesus”)
This would, in the other words be the new Exodus. Work through the seven themes once more. The tyrant would not be the Jerusalem leaders (though they, in love with their own wealth and prestige, were in league with the dark powers), not even Rome (though Rome would nail him to the cross), but all the powers of the Accuser, up to and including death itself. The leader would be, of course, Jesus himself; that, we must assume, is why he chose to make his decisive move at Passover-time, knowing that it would lead to the death of the firstborn, the beloved son, a hint he dropped in one of his last parables (Mark 12:6-8). The vocation would be the vocation he had marked out for Israel in the Sermon on the Mount: going the second mile, turning the other cheek, loving enemies, and praying for them even as they nailed him to the cross. The inheritance would not, now, be a restored holy land, but the whole world, the uttermost parts of the earth, which had been promised to the Messiah as his inheritance and then promised again to the servant as the realm to which he, through suffering, would bring God’s justice.
