image by Matthew Schwartz from Unsplash The valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 is one of the most graphic and powerful visions given to us in the Bible. I've always been fascinated by the imagery of that scene. Imagine seeing it come to life on the big screen. It gives me vibes reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean and Qin Shi-huang's terracotta warriors for reasons I can't explain. Slightly creepy surreal; yet without the horror element. For the context of this vision: the people were unable to believe Ezekiel's prophecies of restoration in chp 36, because the bleakness of their external situations made them lose hope. There was a general atmosphere of despair, hopelessness, pessimism, even bitterness. We don't have to look far to see traces of that same attitude in our world today. It's hard not to be depressed. It's hard not to be overwhelmed by the vast problems in our lives, our immediate situations, or on a larger scale; in our communities and countries. God gave Ezekiel this vision for a reason--to show them that hope lay not in how conducive or hopeful their external situation was, but in Him. He did not comfort them by saying, "oh, it's not that bad, you shouldn't be so pessimistic!" He did not present a strategy after analyzing all the pros and cons of their situation, the statistics for success, the potential actions they could take. "Never say die. Believe in yourself. Here are the odds, and here's what we can try." He didn't encourage them to work harder, to put in more effort: "You just have to push yourself harder for what you want! You got to fight for this! The real war is in your mind! The only place left to go now is up!" and all the other motivational pep talk phrases you can find on laminated posters in bookstores, in capitalized Times New Roman font. God showed the people of Israel exactly what their external situation was like--dry. Bleak. A valley of bones; not just dead bodies with traces of life still visible on them. Dry bones, all the signs of life and potential evaporated from them. God showed Ezekiel, not in one isolated action but in a specifically ordered process, how He restored those dry bones. He caused them to connect to each other, the skeleton army to reform; He caused the sinews and flesh to appear on them in a grotesque rewind. And finally, most importantly of all, He breathed life into them. The external situation was not the determining factor; no matter how dry the bones were, how impossible it seemed for life, God's power to transform and restore remained the same. Instead of obsessing over the bleakness of their situation and wallowing in despair--"Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!"--they should have sought God, looking to His ability to restore when human hope seemed impossible. It was not a question of whether God could restore them, but a question of whether they believed He could. Similarly, even when all the apparent signs of life were there, when the external situation was promising, He showed them that it wasn't what really mattered. They were still dead, despite the skin, the hair, the muscles; "...but there was no breath in them." It was still a valley of death, as surely as when they had been heaps of dry, disconnected, random bones lying around. Without God, even the best, most ideal external situations cannot disguise the fact that we are still dead. Spiritually dead, surrounded by death, despite the deceptive appearance of life. It was God's breath of life upon them that transformed a valley of bones--of bodies--into "an exceedingly great army," a force to be reckoned with. With this symbolism, God introduced His promise of transformation and restoration from within, not just externally: "Then you shall know that I am the Lord...I will put my Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it." (v13-14) If your life is going amazingly well, if you're flushed with success and pleasure and you have no griefs or anxieties driving you to seek God--please don't forget that we can still be like Snow White in her glass coffin; life-like to all appearances, but virtually dead. If you're struggling with despair and hopelessness, feeling like you're one of the dry bones in the valley-God calls you through Ezekiel, exactly as you are: "O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live." He promises you what may seem impossible right now. Peace. Joy. Fulfilment. Forgiveness. Grace. To both of us, He offers the same promise: "...I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore...I will be their God, and they shall be My people."
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image by Devin Avery from Unsplash Ezekiel is a book about God's holiness and judgment, just as surely as it is a book about God's mercy and compassion. The theme of restoration, specifically the comprehensive, holistic restoration of God's people--in their relationship with God, in their sin-damaged hearts and natures, in persecution by their enemies, in their relationships with each other--is a central one, which unites those two aspects of God's character. In Ezekiel 36 and 37, the picture of perfect Christian unity is depicted as one of the most beautiful blessings we have to look forward to in Heaven. But do we agree? Many of us, far from seeing Christian community as a blessing God gave to us and a foretaste of heaven, associate it with legalism, unlovingness, miscommunication, and failure to give us what we want or need (more on that in another post.) In Ezekiel, however, the Messianic kingdom emerges, not as a place, or a system, but a community. Its first defining feature is the perfected unity of God's people; a true and lasting unity for eternity. Likewise, in What is a Christian Worldview? Phillip Ryken points out that the New Heavens and the New Earth are described as the City of God. Why not garden? Or world? City implies and foregrounds community. The most basic defining characteristic of a city is people, living together in close proximity. One of the main elements of God's New Earth will be Christian unity, perfected. If we shirk from Christian community, if we like to emphasize that our spiritual walk is something exclusively between God and ourselves, we might need to reconsider just how ready we are for the City of God. Why? There are so many possible reasons, some passably legitimate if not taken to an extreme, others downright disturbing. And only we know which one is ours--if we're being honest with ourselves. We're unwilling to make ourselves vulnerable and accountable to others. Perhaps there are petty sins and unhealthy habits we're reluctant to acknowledge or confront. Being critical and intolerant of differences/weaknesses/mistakes constantly prevents us from loving others, as we always decide that they're lacking or undeserving of our effort and involvement. We're pathologically afraid of getting hurt, perhaps from some past traumatic experience (whether in the church or outside.) We don't want to get too fond of anyone or feel obliged to anyone, and we view any attempts to grow closer with suspicion and wariness. We make excuses that there's no one "compatible," as if this were a dating site. Different personalities, different backgrounds, different opinions--too much to handle. We believe that the answer lies in another denomination, in the next church, in a better pastor or Sunday School teacher, in a demographic group or income bracket more like our own, in a dress code, in a more vibrant and spiritual-minded youth group or a more participative Bible study group (this was me years ago.) Our crippling insecurity and need for validation--and our unwillingness to admit it--makes us too proud to make advances. So instead we wait for others to approach us, feeling entitled to their initiative, because otherwise doesn't it reflect badly on this church, that they're "unloving" and "self-centered?" Granted, the unity and relationships we experience here on earth cannot escape from being tainted by sin. We will experience betrayal, heartbreak, disappointment, miscommunication, bitterness, loss--as with any other relationships between sin-stained humanity on this sin-stained earth. But that very process, as so much else of what we experience in life, is part of God's plan for our sanctification. We persevere, looking forward to the New Earth and the City of God, where these relationships will be perfected, and we will experience unity as God intended it to be. Christ's love for His church is something we would do better to emulate, out of all the many areas we seek to emulate Him in. image by Jeremy Perkins from Unsplash "Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” Exodus 3:1-4 Okay, so that was the desert. Why did Moses make so many excuses when God finally, after what must have seemed years of silence, revealed Himself to him? God told him, in words that couldn't be any clearer, that yes, He had chosen him to save the people of Israel. After years of self-doubt and disappointment, Moses' pet dream and life goal suddenly exploded into reality. Why didn't he scream "YESSSSS FINALLY I KNEW ITTT"? After the humbling desert phase he went through, Moses had fallen into the other extreme--the crippling fear of unworthiness and failure. Like Moses, the excuse of unworthiness often keeps us from serving God. We don't need to look far. A common protest when it comes to finding new Sunday School teachers/Bible study leaders is always "But I'm not spiritually mature enough!" Humility, as we can also see in Moses' life, is an essential quality for every servant of God. Yet often when it comes to serving God we can be manipulated by fear disguising itself under the pious cloak of humility. When we feel crippled by a sense of self-doubt and unworthiness, instead of panicking we need to ask ourselves several questions: 1. Are we willing? Under all our fears, are we even willing to serve God in the first place? That should be our first self-examination, because that after all is what matters most to God. Our flesh is weak, and will always be weak; but is our spirit willing? 2. God, if He sends us, is sending us with His presence and His help. As with Moses, He promises to be our sufficiency. He repeatedly tells Moses: I will be with you; I will help you; I will help you speak, I will teach you what to say. (and yet, Moses' fears are louder than the Living God speaking directly to him--actually out loud at that!) 3. It's not just us. Everyone is unworthy to serve God. Let that sink in. God delights in using and transforming unworthy people. He has always used common, unskilled people to do His work. It is the process, not the end--or He would not bother using us at all, since He has the power to accomplish His plans without us. Hence, we see God's patience in addressing all Moses' fears, as this is also part of God's plan for Moses' own spiritual life, for growth in his relationship with God. God's outburst was not the irritated banging of a sticky TV remote, but anger against Moses' overwhelming fear and lack of faith, even in the face of God Himself. God was not just prepping a clumsy tool for His great plan; God was shaping His child. image by Ian Dooley from Unsplash "For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand." (Acts 7:25) When we read about Moses our go-to is usually the original, factual Exodus account. However, Stephen's account of Moses's story in Acts provides some new light on it, giving a more personal perspective into Moses the person. According to this verse, Moses was already clear about God's purpose for his life. At that point in time, young as he was, he already recognized that his unique position as the adopted son of Pharoah's daughter not only preserved his life, but enabled him to have the skills, education, and power which his Hebrew peers would not have. He probably considered how he could use his position to negotiate with or influence Pharoah, or how one day he might rise to an even more powerful rank in the palace... At any rate, it seemed clear to him that God's plan for him to rescue his people would inevitably rely on his privileged position in the palace. Why else would God place him there, right? Who else among the Hebrews had this much power, wealth, and ability, was as well-equipped? However, the way I see it, Moses's rash murder of the Egyptian was an indication that he had become too complacent. Too self-assured. So sure that he was the chosen one to deliver his people, all the more so because it was so obviously a righteous cause, he took things into his own hands. In typical Lone Ranger/vigilante style. But the murder--despite all his good intentions--was still a murder. And to Moses' shock, he wasn't immediately hailed as the saviour he had seen himself to be. Reality check: his fellow Hebrews were suspicious of him. To them, his Egyptian upbringing made him not fully "one of us." They rejected him and kept him at a distance, resentful of his privilege, wary of how he could straddle both cultures/races/and the power dynamics. "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" And at once, Moses went from prince to criminal. The next thing he knew, Pharoah was after his life. Now he was even worse off than other Hebrews; he wasn't a slave, but he was a fugitive and an outlaw. His life was worth even less than those of the Hebrew slaves labouring in the fields. To Moses, this must have been devastating. How was he going to rescue his people and accomplish the mission he was so sure he had been born for, when he had officially sunk to the lowest strata of society? Now he was an outcast from Egyptians and Hebrews alike, a man caught between two cultures and belonging to--or wanted by--none. At this point, it would be only human for him to experience some sort of depression and despair after going through such a drastic erasure of self-identity. Everything he was familiar with, everything he had assumed about himself, was gone. So it looked like he wasn't the chosen one to save God's people, after all. Despite Moses' zeal and clarity of God's purpose for his life, he had to accept that God would work out His plan in His own way. God took him out of the palace, as simply and surely as He had put him there. God purposefully gave Moses those years in the desert, learning how to farm and care for livestock, the routine, daily duties of a husband, father, shepherd. Preparing him. Changing him. Equipping him, as surely as the prince's education he received in Egypt. And most importantly, learning to place his life in God's hands. By the time God spoke to him through the burning bush, he was a different man. When he finally returned to Egypt, he was no longer the naive, sophisticated prince, the foreigner the Hebrews were so suspicious of. He was a man who had experienced hardship and hard labour as they had, who had struggled to survive in the wilderness, who had experienced first-hand what it was like to be at the very bottom of the social system, to be the underdog, the oppressed. Moses was qualified to lead and represent the Hebrews--in a different but equally crucial way. We may be so sure of God's plan for our lives. We may think it's so obvious, how God is going to use us. And even if we're not wrong--as in Moses' case--God may have major lessons for us to learn first. A path which isn't as straightforward and smooth as we expect or feel entitled to. Like Jeremiah, sometimes we may cry out in frustration and despair: "He has blocked my ways with hewn stone; He has made my paths crooked." (Lamentations 3:9) What Moses learnt and experienced during that phase, even as he learnt to accept God's providence for his life, even as he had to humbly come to terms that yes, perhaps he wasn't God's chosen one after all--was what made him into the man and leader he eventually became. The Bible calls Moses the humblest man on the face of the earth, and perhaps those years in the desert were the reason why. |
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