“Jesus … went out with His disciples over the Brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered” (John 18:1 NKJV). That garden was the Garden of Gethsemane.

But before we go there, let’s go back and look at the other mentions of the brook in the Old Testament:

• “Also [King Asa] removed Maachah his grandmother from being queen mother, because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. And Asa cut down her obscene image and burned it by the Brook Kidron” (1 Kings 15:23).
• “And the king [Josiah] commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. And [Hilkiah] brought out the wooden image from the house of the Lord, to the Brook Kidron outside Jerusalem, burned it at the Brook Kidron and ground it to ashes, and threw its ashes on the graves of the common people. The altars that were on the roof, the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, the king [Josiah] broke down and pulverized there, and threw their dust into the Brook Kidron” (2 Kings 23:4, 6, 12).
• “Then the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and brought out all the debris that they found in the temple of the Lord to the court of the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it out and carried it to the Brook Kidron” (2 Chronicles 29:16).
• “They arose and took away the altars that were in Jerusalem, and they took away all the incense altars and cast them into the Brook Kidron” (2 Chronicles 30:14).

When righteous kings came into power, they would clean out idols and trash out of the land as well as out of the temple, preparing the temple for true worship of the one true God. There by the brook they burned images and articles for idols. There they threw the dust of pulverized altars to idols and debris found in the temple.

The brook is only mentioned in the Bible as either a dumping ground for evil things or as a crossing point to hard things:

• King David when his son Absalom took the throne from him and he crossed the brook to escape Jerusalem so he would not be killed, taking a group of grieving people with him (see 2 Samuel 15:23).
• Shimei when he broke a covenant never to cross over the brook to leave Jerusalem and crossed back over it to face King Solomon and his death (1 Kings 2:36-46).
• Jesus when He crossed the brook to go to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray through the agony of knowing exactly what was about to happen to Him and to be betrayed by one of His companions.

There is one exception: the promise! The Lord made a new covenant with Judah, and the Brook Kidron was part of it: “‘And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the Lord. It shall not be plucked up or thrown down anymore forever’” (Jeremiah 31:40). No longer was it to be a place to throw away idols and their trash, but it would be “holy to the Lord.” It was to be redeemed!

This brook has touched me. It was used as a dumping ground for evil things, but still it received a promise to be “holy to the Lord.” It was part of difficult situations for people, but still it received a promise to be “holy to the Lord.”

We are that way. Before we were saved and forgiven, we were dumping grounds for Satan’s whims, and Satan through the world and culture continues to feed our spaces and lives with things that have nothing to do with a holy God. There have been times in our lives we’ve had to cross over into difficult places, places we would never have gone if we had our way—loving and praying for a prodigal is one such place. But we have been redeemed, and we are declared “holy to the Lord”!

The brook also reveals a promise for our prodigals. It doesn’t matter how much evil has been in their lives. It doesn’t matter the difficult places they’ve been. It doesn’t matter whether most of the difficulties in their lives have been their choice or not, they’ve already been redeemed, already bought, already paid for by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. They just have to receive the gift of forgiveness!

Psalm 107:10-16 says it like this:

“Those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
Bound in affliction and irons—
Because they rebelled against the words of God,
And despised the counsel of the Most High,
Therefore He brought down their heart with labor;
They fell down, and there was none to help.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He saved them out of their distresses.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
And broke their chains in pieces.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He has broken the gates of bronze,
And cut the bars of iron in two.”

No matter how Kidron-like the lives of our prodigals look, we know there is hope in their salvation!