How to read Revelation and apocalyptic literature – Ezekiel 38 & 39, Part 2

When you think of that word apocalyptic, what comes to mind?   The Apocalypse!  The end of the world, right?  A massive destructive event in which most or all people die.  In our day and age, we think of something like a full-scale nuclear war.  Or we think of a giant asteroid smashing into the earth, causing global devastation, like the movies Armageddon or the one that just came out, Don’t Look Up.  This is the stuff of Hollywood.  There are a handful of these kinds of movies and TV shows every year.  Maybe you saw the commercials for the recent film Moonfall, in which the moon crashes into earth. 

There is a name for this kind of literature and media. Apocalyptic. The biblical book of Revelation is likely the most famous and longest example of apocalyptic literature.  In fact in the original language in which it was written, ancient Greek, the name of the book of Revelation is “The Apocalypse.”  In Greek, the word apocalypse means “the revealing,” which is why we call that book “The Revelation.”  It refers to the idea that in this apocalyptic story, a revealing is happening.  Something hidden is coming to light.  God’s plans are being revealed.  Over the centuries the word apocalyptic took on the meaning of global disaster because of the content of the vision in the book of Revelation, but the word apocalyptic did not originally carry the idea of destruction.  It simply means “a revealing.”

Just as we need to have a proper understanding of the word apocalyptic, we also need to understand how to read apocalyptic literature.  I used to think that we could read the book of Revelation the same way that we read a newspaper or watch headline news on TV or online.  News media report current events, trying to give us the literal facts.  They tell us what is happening around the world right now.  I used to think that we should read Revelation that way.  If the book of Revelation told us about a fire-breathing horse, it wasn’t trying to describe a literal fire-breathing horse.  Sure, God could create fire-breathing horses if he wanted to.  But in our world, they don’t exist.  So what I used to think was that we just need to get in the mind of an ancient person who was seeing something from our day and age.  The writer of Revelation, John, I thought, had no idea how to describe what he was seeing, because he was seeing, through the vision, very advanced technology of the contemporary era.  Think about it.  If you are John, living in the first century, and you see a vision of a soldier from 2022 riding on an armored tank as it fires its gun, the best you can do to describe what you are seeing is “it looks like a fire-breathing horse.”  You can do that for the entire book of Revelation, speculating on what modern-era technology that vision might have been showing John 2000 years ago.  What I now realize is that if I read Revelation that way, or if I read any apocalyptic literature that way, I’m not reading apocalyptic literature correctly. 

Apocalyptic literature is not meant to be literal, it is symbolic.  If John saw a fire-breathing horse, then he probably saw a fire-breathing horse, but that horse was a fictional creature meant to be symbol for something else.  When you read apocalyptic literature, you have to do the hard work of discerning what the symbols might point to. A fire-breathing horse, for example, might simply mean “judgment”.

It is highly likely that Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 are another apocalyptic section of the Bible.  Both Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation include very similar imagery that could be interpreted as a future literal global war, but it could also be interpreted figuratively. That’s why I believe it is best to read these chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel like we read the book of Revelation and other sections of the Bible that talk about the future.

In the previous post, we started reading Ezekiel 38, where God tells Ezekiel to perform the Prophetic Stare against a mysterious person named Gog from Magog, who is some kind of prince. Then God tells Ezekiel to speak a prophecy against him. In verses 3-6, the prophecy describes the armies of Gog, Magog and their allies, armed to the teeth.

The rest of Ezekiel chapter 38 describes how the global armies of Gog will amass against Israel, but the Lord will wipe them out those armies.  The passage reads very similarly to Revelation 20, which we studied in the previous post.  While there is death and destruction all over the world, God comes to Israel’s defense and wins the victory.  Stories about God winning in the end can give us comfort in a scary mixed up world. But if we’re not living in the end times, and we don’t feel like God is winning right now, these stories in Revelation 20 and Ezekiel 38 might feel very distant.

At the end of Ezekiel chapter 38, God says something fascinating, something that matters greatly to us now. We’ll look at that in the next post.

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Is it possible to know if Jesus is coming soon? – Ezekiel 38 & 39, Part 1

A woman and her daughter stopped by the church office this week, looking for information about the Hispanic Church that rents from us.  After I gave her the info, she began walking out the office door, then she stopped, turned and said to me, “Jesus is coming soon!”

I always feel awkward when people say that.  People don’t know if Jesus is coming soon.  Jesus taught us that no one knows the time of his return.  I feel awkward because I think to myself, “Should I disagree with her, or just nod my head and let it go?”  I decided to say what Jesus taught, “No one knows the time of his return, but I agree that he is coming again.”  She doubled-down and said, “He is coming soon!”  I felt even more awkward. I didn’t want to a theological discussion with a stranger, so I attempted to conclude with another one of Jesus’ teachings, namely that “We need to be ready at all times,” but she beat me to it, saying, “So we should be ready!” That I can agree with.  Why was she so adamant, though, about her belief that Jesus is coming soon?

Well, Jesus also taught us to observe the signs of the times.  The woman’s words revealed that she was was looking around the world, and her conclusion was that Jesus is coming soon.  She is certainly entitled to her opinion.  I have to admit, if you watch the news, she has a point.  I still think she has no idea if Jesus is actually coming soon or if his return is thousands of years in the future, but there are signs of the times that can make you wonder. 

Think about the major international news of the day. What do you think of the Russian military build-up on the border of Ukraine?  Every day the news gives us an update with pictures of tanks and missile launchers and soldiers with guns.  Will Russia invade or won’t they?  Are they increasing their troop strength or are they just doing military exercises and heading home?  Should the United States send soldiers to help Ukraine?  Does it get you thinking about the end of the world?  Maybe this is the beginning of the end!  Maybe Russian president Vladimir Putin is the antichrist.  Are we about to be raptured?  Will we have to go through the tribulation?  It can be very scary if we allow our minds to dwell on it.  Are we living in the book of Revelation?    

How many of you wonder what the Book of Revelation means?  I grew up learning that Revelation talked about the future, and that its wild images of beasts and dragons and blood moons and global war were about the end the of world.  For example, open a Bible to Revelation 20, and read verses 1-8, a passage about the final war. Let me summarize. In Revelation 20, we read that an angel comes down out of heaven and locks Satan in a place called the Abyss.  There Satan stays for 1000 years.  For those thousand years Jesus reigns as King on earth.  The vision continues by describing that after the millennium, Satan is released from imprisonment, he goes to earth where he deceives the nations all over the earth, gathering them up as a great army for battle.  This global army surrounds the city of God, but fire from heaven devours the army and Satan and his minions are banished in a lake of burning sulfur where they are tormented forever. 

That is the story of God’s final victory over Satan.  Even if you haven’t read those details or might not have remembered them, what I suspect might be familiar to you is the idea that in the end God wins the victory over Satan.  But what might not be so familiar are the two names mentioned in Revelation 20, verse 8.  Gog and Magog. The vision in Revelation 20 describes a world-wide army that Satan deceptively forms from all the nations of the world, and that army is called Gog and Magog.  What does that mean?  Gog and Magog. Who or what are they? 

Now I invite you to turn to Ezekiel 38.  That’s right, the prophecy we just read about in Revelation has a connection to the prophecy of Ezekiel.  This week we are studying Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39, and we begin by reading Ezekiel chapter 38, verses 1-6.

Notice in verse 1 that the prophecy starts with Ezekiel’s final Prophetic Stare of the book.  The Prophetic Stare is when God tells Ezekiel to set his face against something.  To perform the Prophetic Stare, I imagine Ezekiel would walk out of his house in front of his neighbors and people walking down the road.  As they are watching him, Ezekiel would stop and stare at something.  The Prophetic Stare had no power in and of itself, but it was instead a symbolic shining of the light of God’s truth on something.  We don’t know how long Ezekiel would stare at things when he was performing the Prophetic Stare.  Probably long enough to get people’s attention, because then, in addition to the Prophetic Stare, God would give him a spoken word to prophesy, and that spoken word would explain what Ezekiel was staring at and why he was staring at it.  In verse 2, we learned that Ezekiel is to stare at Gog, of the land of Magog. 

Those are the two names we read in Revelation 20, verse 8.  Who or what are Gog and Magog?  Does Ezekiel’s prophecy give us the answer?  We heard in the prophecy that Gog is the chief prince of Meshek and Tubal.   Did that bit of information help you learn who Gog is?  If you had asked me before this week if I knew about Gog, Magog, Meshek and Tubal, and you even gave me the clues that Gog and Magog are mentioned in both Ezekiel and Revelation, I would have told you that I had no idea who or what they are.  Only that they had something to do with prophecy.  And if I’m honest, even after researching it this week, I still don’t know who they are.  Guess what I learned from the biblical scholars who write books and commentaries about this stuff?  The scholars don’t know who Gog and Magog are either!  They might be a real king and a real land. See Genesis 10:2 where most of these names are mentioned as grandsons of Noah…but that was thousands of years prior to Ezekiel’s era. What could this mean? We don’t know. Given what we read in Revelation, Gog and Magog might be names God gives to a demonic army.  We don’t know.  It’s very cryptic.

If we don’t know the identity of Gog and Magog, should we just throw these chapters of Ezekiel into the dustbin of history? No! In fact, we’re going to find out through the rest of this five-part series that Ezekiel 38 & 39 are quite important for us in 2022. Check back in to the next post, as we’ll start to learn how.

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What do people in your community think about God? – Ezekiel 38 & 39, Preview

What is God’s reputation in your community?  When the people in your neighborhood or workplace think about God, do they view God as having a good reputation or a bad reputation?  I would encourage you to ask them.  You might find it fascinating to hear what they have to say, and it just might lead to a spiritual conversation.  To clarify, the question is not about the church’s reputation in your community.  The question is also not about Christians’ reputations in your community.  Of course the conversation might get into those very related topics.  But the question is: what do people in your community think of God?  In their view, does he have a good reputation or a poor reputation?  And why?

If people answer that question negatively, or perhaps critically, it might be due to blaming him for allowing bad things to happen.  Also, and this is where the conversation might drift into the topics of the church and Christians, people sometimes have a negative view of God because they have watched hypocrisy from Christians, or they have been hurt by Christians. Recently evangelicals have garnered a poor reputation for the way some of our ranks have behaved morally and politically.  Studies have even shown that people don’t want to follow Jesus because his so-called followers don’t follow his teachings.  Yikes.  Is that true of you?

Prepare for negative responses by determining to just listen to people, to ask clarifying questions, and by avoiding rebutting their opinion.  Too often we Christians have been argumentative as we have shared our faith.  What we should do is follow the method of Jesus.  Skim through the Gospels and notice how frequently he asks questions.  Listen for how your friends and neighbors describe their opinion of God’s reputation.  Try to learn from the opinions of people in your community.  Why do they believe what they believe?  What has led them to the conclusions they have arrived at?

I think it is also likely that people will have positive responses.  As Gandhi once said, “I like their Christ, but I do not like their Christian.”  Like Gandhi, people generally have a positive view of Jesus, and for good reason: Jesus was simply amazing, loving and genius.  Sometimes people say they do not like what they perceive to be the legalistic, punishing God of the Old Testament, but they really like the gracious, forgiving, self-sacrificial Jesus. If you are looking for common ground with people who have a negative view of God, I suspect Jesus just might be that common ground.

I am asking what God’s reputation is in your community because it has everything to do with the next few chapters of Ezekiel.  If you have an opportunity this weekend, take a moment and read Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.  They are wild chapters. Then join us on the blog next week as we talk further about God’s reputation.

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How to live in a covenant of peace with God and others – Ezekiel 37:15-28, Part 5

In this week’s five-part blog series on Ezekiel 37:15-28, we have been observing God’s desires for his people. So far, he expressed his desire for his people to be unified, to be cleansed, and to live under the rule and reign of King Jesus. God has one more desire for them.  Look at Ezekiel 37, verses 26-28.

God will make a new covenant of peace with the newly unified nation, and he will put his dwelling place among them, so that he will live with them.  We have heard about this new covenant in previous chapters of Ezekiel, such as here. God desires a new covenant because the old covenant that God made with Moses and the nation of Israel had been broken.  It was shattered by their disobedience.  Now God desires a new covenant of peace, and through that covenant and God’s action of keeping the covenant, we are his people and he is our God. 

You and I have the benefit of hindsight, seeing how this new covenant came into being through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Praise God that we can have a relationship with him, and that through the relationship, which he did all the work to establish, we not only have the hope of eternal life, but also the promise of abundant life on earth.  God’s desire has made this possible.  What we see in this passage is the flourishing of humanity that God’s heart beats for.  It is a desire for his people to dwell in unity, even when there is not uniformity, to live in righteousness, to serve King Jesus, and to be the people of his covenant of peace.  This is the restoration that God envisions in Ezekiel 37:15-28.

It is a restoration that God is at work, seeking to accomplish peace.  It is a restoration that we embrace and work towards as well.  It will not be fully realized until Jesus returns, but now, as we wait for his return, we make it our life’s mission and purpose to usher in his Kingdom.  It starts with us, unified under the banner of King Jesus. 

So how are God’s desires at work in your life?  Are there ways you might be struggling with disunity?   Remember the youth group retreat I mentioned in the first post in this series?  The one where my youth pastor stopped a retreat and confronted the youth group about their disunity?  Right then and there, in front of everyone, he invited people who had problems with each other to get up and confess their sins, go to people, make things right, seek forgiveness, express their hurts.  Clear the air.  

Do you need to do that?  Do you have people in this room who have hurt you?  Or are there people who you have hurt?  Are there people who perhaps you have a brokenness with?  My youth pastor wasn’t doing anything weird.  He was just doing was Jesus himself said to do in Matthew 5, the same thing I say every time we take communion at Faith Church.  Don’t go through with communion if you have a broken relationship.  It is better, Jesus said, to go make that relationship right, than to go through with a religious ritual, and I believe Jesus’ teaching applies to communion.  Healing relationships is God’s heart for unity, more so than performing a religious ritual.  In the room that day on that youth retreat, I watched as teenagers got up and in tears shared their hurt, asked for and gave forgiveness.  It was a powerful moment.  One I obviously haven’t forgotten in 35 years.  I can still see it fairly clearly in my mind.

What about you?  Who do you need to make things right with?  What areas of lifestyle sin do you need to be cleansed from?  Take the time now to commit to God who you are going to talk with.  Take the time now to talk with God.  Then make a plan to heal the broken relationships in your life.

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What God’s cleansing means and why we should all want it – Ezekiel 37:15-28, Part 4

During the ongoing Covid pandemic, the topic of cleansing has probably been on your mind from time to time. Do you remember early in the pandemic when it was recommended that we cleanse our groceries after we got them home? People would buy cleanser and wipe down their cereal boxes and soup cans, trying to eradicate Covid from their lives. Hand-washing was and is important. But would it surprise you to learn that God also desires cleansing? It’s a very different kind of cleansing.

As Ezekiel continues writing about God’s prophetic word in Ezekiel 37:15-28, we find out that God not only desires unity for his people, but he has three more desires. God’s second desire for his people (found in verse 23) is that they are cleansed, so that they are his people and he is their God.  In the prophecy, Ezekiel addresses the sin of the nation.  The Israelites practiced idolatry, and they committed offensive sin. 

It would be tempting to read this and think, “Yeah! That’s what’s wrong with America.  America is having so many problems because we have turned away from the Lord.”  But remember that when we read the Old Testament and hear God making pronouncements about Israel, we search for the principle, and then we apply it, not to our nation, but to the church.  That is because God’s new covenant, which we is the fourth desire, and which we will learn about in the next post, is not with a nation but with the church.  God doesn’t have a covenant with America.  So what we need to do, when we hear about God’s desire for his people to be cleansed, is to look in the mirror.  In what ways do we Christians need to turn away from idols?  In what ways do we need to stop our offensive sinful acts? 

These are big questions.  My guess is that very few of us think of ourselves as worshiping idols or committing offensive sinful acts.  Maybe none of us think of ourselves that way.  But we would do well to consider it.  What are the uniquely American Christian idols that you and I might be worshiping?  And what are the offensive acts that even we might be committing?  We need to talk about that.

As we can see in verse 23, God wants a people for himself that is cleansed from idolatry and sin.  He wants us to be his people, and him to be our God.  He wants to be in relationship with each of us.  If we are committing idolatry and offensive sinful acts, those things get in the way of us having a close relationship with God.  We might call ourselves his people, and we might think we are his people, but if we are not living the cleansed life, we are not living as his people. 

Thankfully he has made cleansing available to us.  God acts in love on our behalf, helping us to have forgiveness.  Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, God has won the victory over sin, death and the devil.  Do you need, therefore, to give yourself over to him?  Do you need to turn away from sinful acts?  We all sin.  But what I am talking about are what we could call lifestyle sins.  The people of Israel were practicing idolatry and offensive acts as a lifestyle.  How about you?  Do you need cleansing from lifestyle sins?

God desires unity for his people and cleansing for his people.  In Ezekiel’s prophecy, God shares a third desire for his people.  Look at verses 24-25. God says he will save them, placing a new king of the line of David over them. This is a prophecy that finds its fulfillment in two stages.  The first stage is the near-future fulfillment when the people of Israel are gathered back to the land of Palestine, which took place under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the temple was rebuilt.   

In the second stage of the fulfillment of the prophecy, God says, they will have a new king.  But notice how the prophecy describes this future king.  The people listening to the words of the prophecy should know that God is talking about a very different kind of king.  He gives them a clue about how different this king will be.  Do you see the clue?  He says in verse 25 that this king will be “forever.”  What kind of king will be king forever?

Queen Elizabeth of England just celebrated her 70th year in that role. Hers is an astonishingly long reign.  Depending on how you count the length of a monarch’s reign, Elizabeth nears the top of most lists.  4th place on one list, and on all lists, she is the longest reigning female monarch.  70 years!  But that’s nothing compared to “forever”. 

When the people in Ezekiel’s day heard him talk about a king that would reign forever, they should have asked the question, “How can that be?”  They knew their history.  King David reigned 40 years and then he died.  In the history of the Kings of Israel and Judah, 40 years was a very long reign.  Not the longest, but it was a very long reign.  But “forever”?  Kings don’t reign forever!  What kind of king can reign forever?  Clearly, this will be a very different king.  Who is this king?

The king mentioned in the prophecy, we know from hindsight, is Jesus.  If you read Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1), legally, he was adopted by his father, Joseph, who was a descendant of the family of David.  Then if you study Luke’s genealogy (Luke 3), Jesus is also biologically, through his mother Mary, a descendant of David.  But Jesus was different from the Davidic dynasty.  All the Davidic kings were born, lived, and died.  Jesus is the king who will reign forever. 

Also notice that Ezekiel’s prophecy describes the future king’s reign as an era in which the people will follow his laws and be careful to keep his decrees.  We know that the prophecy is depicting a future time when Jesus returns in person, takes the throne, and ushers in his Kingdom.  For now, though, we participate in advancing Jesus’ Kingdom here on earth, in expectation of that future.  Obviously, our Kingdom work now will not achieve the full expression as when Jesus returns.  But we still work now to see King Jesus honored and glorified in all we do.  That’s why we pursue sharing the good news about Jesus in both word and deed.  We preach the content of the Gospel, and we do the deeds of the Gospel.  Both word and deed proclaim the good news, the Gospel, that Jesus is King and that there is true hope only in him, so people should give their lives to follow him.

We are King Jesus people.  We see everything we do as followers of the King.  God’s desire is for his people to live as followers of King Jesus.  Whether you are a student in school, an athlete on a team, a worker, a parent or grandparent, you live out those roles as a follower of King Jesus.  Jesus’ way of life should inform and shape how we live our lives.  We seek to root out and eradicate, both in our lives and in our communities, that which is opposed to the way of Jesus.  That’s why we are so concerned about the fruit of the Spirit flowing from our lives, and why we pursue justice in our community.

I invite you to check back to tomorrow’s post, as we’ll learn that God has one more desire for his people.

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The uncomfortable necessity of unity – Ezekiel 37:15-28, Part 3

Have you ever had the unsettling experience of being in a conversation and having very little idea of what the other person is talking about? You think to yourself, “I am embarrassed that I don’t know about this. It seems like I should have known about this.” I’ve had that feeling in my local ministerium. I’ve been studying the Bible and theology for 30 years, and there will be times when my pastoral colleagues in the ministerium are discussing passages in Scripture or having a theological opinion about culture, and I have never heard what they are talking about. While it is disconcerting, I am thankful for it. Why? Keep reading. It has everything to do with unity.

Unity is what Jesus taught in John 17 when he prayed that his disciples would be one as he and the Father are one.  We see the teaching of unity through the New Testament, rooted in the “one another” statements that David Hundert taught us this past week. 

This desire for unity is why I have been mystified and frankly, disappointed, by the way some people have responded to their connection to the church family in recent years. 

It’s why I preached the Purple Church sermon last year.  If you don’t remember that one, it was about the idea that we American Christians should not identify as red or blue.  When I say, “red or blue,” I am referring to the colors of the two main political parties in our nation.  Red is Republican.  Blue is Democrat.  I’m not saying that it is wrong to be registered in a political party, and that everyone should be independent.  What I am saying is that Christians’ allegiance is not to a political party.   Our allegiance is to Christ and his Kingdom.  That means people in one church family will have a variety of perspectives about political, social and cultural issues.  And that is okay.  The church of Jesus is not red or blue.  It is purple.  In other words, the church should be a place where all people mix together in harmony.  God desires oneness.  God desires that we focus on his Kingdom, not on a political party.  That means we who are part of the church family need to rise above partisan politics and love one another.  We in a church family keep the main thing the main thing; a relationship with our living God is our top priority.  As the song goes, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

Therefore I believe it is very important that Faith Church participates in our local ministerium.  We have something like 45 churches in our school district, but only 15-20 participate in the ministerium.  Author John Armstrong titled his book Your Church Is Too Small because too often churches or denominations are isolationist, unwilling to work together.  God desires unity. 

God is not talking about uniformity.  Uniformity is when the people in a group think, talk, dress, and act the same way.  The military is a uniformity.   Not the church.  In the church we practice unity in diversity.  The ministerium demonstrates unity in diversity.  In the ministerium we have Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and more.  We put aside doctrinal differences and seek to make Christ our focus.  Sometimes I am in Ministerium meetings listening to other pastors explain their view of a situation, and I think, “Sounds like they are using a different language,” because their theology and history and approach to a situation is so different from mine.  But that’s okay.  We can have different viewpoints, but still work together in unity for Christ.  We are to be a people who practice unity.  

As Ezekiel continues giving the prophetic word, we find out that God has another desire for his people.  Check back in to the next post to find out what it is.

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The important meaning of Ezekiel’s sticks – Ezekiel 37:15-28, Part 2

In Ezekiel 37:15-28, we learn that God has asked Ezekiel, the Saturday Night Live prophet, to do one final skit. Start by reading verses 15-17, where God describes the skit.

Here’s a summary of the skit. Ezekiel is to take two sticks.  On one stick he writes the word “Judah,” which is the name of the Israelites’ Southern Kingdom where Jerusalem was the capital city.  On the other stick Ezekiel writes the name, “Ephraim,” which refers to the Israelites’ Northern Kingdom.  By mentioning the two Israelite Kingdoms, God is bringing up a major sore spot in the history of his people Israel: a civil war that broke the country in two, many centuries before the time of Ezekiel. 

Ten tribes to the north broke away to become the nation of Israel.  The two remaining tribes in the south became the nation of Judah, retaining the city of Jerusalem.  Those are the two nations that God tells Ezekiel to write on the sticks. 

Imagine being a nation that has a dark spot in its history.  We Americans know a little something about that, don’t we?  Genocide of indigenous peoples.  Slavery of millions of other people.  Civil War.  Now imagine that our Civil War turned out differently.  What if for the last 150 years there has been a United States of America to the north and a Confederate States of America to the south?  If that alternate history had happened, we Americans would be able to understand a bit about the cultural and social situation of the Jews in Ezekiel’s day.

Ezekiel’s skit concludes as he joins the two sticks together. It’s a pretty simple skit. When I preached the sermon live in Faith Church’s worship service, I had previously walked outside, found a tree branch, and broke it in half. Then during the sermon, I took the two parts of the branch and placed them together. Why does God ask Ezekiel to perform such a basic skit? I sometimes wonder if Ezekiel ever questioned God, even if just in his own mind, “Lord, really? Do all these simple skits make any difference?”

There in Ezekiel’s village in Babylon, Ezekiel performs the skit.  Look at verses 18-22 to find out what happens next.

God says that the people watching Ezekiel join the sticks together will ask him, “Won’t you tell us what you mean by this?” When I read that the people ask, “What does this skit mean?”, I thought, “Did they really not know?”  The meaning of the skit seems obvious, doesn’t it?  God will gather up the people from the nations where they have been exiled, and he will bring them back to the land and form them into a new unified nation.  You can see it right there as Ezekiel joins the sticks. What’s so difficult about understanding the skit? What’s wrong with these people?

To give the people there in Ezekiel’s village the benefit of the doubt, think about it this way.  Imagine that someone comes up to you holding two sticks, and on one stick they write “USA” and then on the other stick they write “United Kingdom.” With a flourish they join the two sticks together, and they ask you “What is the meaning of this skit?”  I suspect you probably would not think that the skit was trying to illustrate that two nations were going to become one. We Americans, if someone performed that skit to us, would likely think it meant something about our shared history and ongoing close relationship with the UK.  We would almost certainly not think that the skit meant we were going to dissolve our nation and merge with them.  It has been a long, long time since we were part of Great Britain.  245 years ago, to be exact.  What’s done is done.  There’s no going back.

If you can understand that, then you can understand how the people in Ezekiel’s village might not understand the stick illustration.  It had been even longer since they had been one nation, about 350 years.  The people in Ezekiel’s village likely didn’t see reunification as realistic or necessary.

That is why God asks Ezekiel to explain the skit in detail. The explanation is that God will return the people of Israel from all the foreign nations where they have been exiled, bringing them once again into the Promised Land. But instead of two separate nations, they will be a unified nation and people. 

What do we learn about God’s heart through the skit?  God desires unity. 

Click “Next” below to keep reading it might mean that God desires unity.

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Ezekiel’s final skit – Ezekiel 37:15-28, Part 1

When I was in youth group, I’ll never forget something that happened at a youth retreat.  In the middle of one of the sessions, my youth pastor stopped the retreat and told us that he knew there was disunity in the group.  I was a newbie, in 9th grade, and this was my first high school retreat.  I was looking around the room wide-eyed, wondering what was happening, as I was not in the loop.  My youth pastor said that we were not doing anything else on the retreat until we dealt with the disunity and broken relationships in the group.  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was interested to see where this was going.  You could hear a pin drop in that room.  Apparently, everyone else was also interested in where this was going.

It probably doesn’t surprise you to hear about a youth pastor concerned about disunity in his high school youth group.  But what about the church?  Are we unified?  This week on the blog, we’re studying Ezekiel chapter 37, verses 15-28, and we’re going to learn that God has something to say about unity, and he says it through Ezekiel’s performance of a skit.

In our study of Ezekiel, we’ve watched as God told Ezekiel to do numerous prophetic skits.  One time he shut himself inside his house; one time he built and played with a model of the city of Jerusalem, and then laid down on the ground outside for months.  Another time he cut his hair, chopped it up and burned it.  Due to Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry of skits, I’ve called him The Saturday Night Live Prophet, because the TV show Saturday Night Live features skits.  Now in Ezekiel 37:15-28 God tells Ezekiel to perform one last prophetic skit. 

Before we learn about the skit, remember that Ezekiel lives in Babylon, probably near the Euphrates River in what is modern-day Iraq.  He grew up in Israel, in Jerusalem to be precise, the son of a priest.  But when he was a young man, likely headed toward becoming a priest himself, the powerful nation of Babylon attacked and defeated Jerusalem, taking 10,000 Jerusalemites into captivity, including Ezekiel, transporting them the 900 miles to Babylon.  After living there for a few years, and right around the time of his 30th birthday when he would normally have entered the priesthood, God called Ezekiel to be a prophet.  All of Ezekiel’s prophesying, which by chapter 37 have been going on for about a decade, has taken place right there in Babylon, in the village of 10,000 Jews in exile.

As you read this passage, picture in your minds an ancient village in the middle east. There are people around outdoor cooking fires.  Animals walk the streets.  Children play.  There are market stalls where people sell produce and wares.   Ezekiel walks out of his house, to a place where his neighbors and villagers can see him.  They know Ezekiel.  He has been a prophet of the Lord for years, and they sometimes come visit him hoping to get a word from the Lord.  Some likely think he is off his rocker.  Some might wonder if his messages are really from God.  Worse, his messages have been mostly gloomy, calling out Israel’s sin and predicting the destruction of Jerusalem.  Not the kind of thing you want your kids to hear.  In fact, I had to skip one chapter of Ezekiel because it is NSFW (inappropriate…yeah, the Bible is sometimes graphic).  Some people in Ezekiel’s village probably saw Ezekiel coming and they walked the other way. 

But in chapter 33, after years of prophesying that Jerusalem and the temple were going to be destroyed because of the people’s wicked rebellion against God, something different happened.  All those years, the people could easily have said, “Yeah, right, Ezekiel.  God would never let that happen to his city, his temple, his people.”  They even had evidence on their side.  When Babylon had previously attacked the city, and defeated them, which led to their exile, Babylon installed a Jewish puppet king on the throne, and Babylon did not destroy the city or the temple.  It seemed that things were still okay.  But in chapter 33 that changed. 

In the middle of chapter 33 a man showed up with bad news from Jerusalem.  Babylon had once again attacked the city, but this time Babylon showed no mercy and the destroyed the city, including the temple.  This news meant all of Ezekiel’s prophecies had been true.  This very bad news verified Ezekiel as an authentic prophet of God.  The people, if they doubted before, now had good reason to pay attention to Ezekiel.  But did they?  Were they falling over themselves in a mad rush to learn from Ezekiel what God wanted them to do now? 

Maybe, maybe not, as we learned at the end of chapter 33.  The people were hearing information, but they didn’t allow it to lead to formation.  In other words, they acted like they wanted to learn what God would have them do, but God says to Ezekiel, it’s just an act.  The people just want to be entertained.  They don’t want to change their ways.  They had information about God, but they didn’t allow that information to change their ways. With Jerusalem fallen, with the temple destroyed, what we do know, however, is that God’s message has started to look toward a new future.  In the previous few chapters we learned how God asks Ezekiel to prophesy messages of hope and restoration.  God desires to give the people a new heart, and the Spirit of God will make their dry bones live.  Now God has another message of hope through a new skit. 

In tomorrow’s post we’ll learn about Ezekiel’s final skit.

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A failed youth group merger? – Ezekiel 37:15-28, Preview

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In the fall of 2003 Faith Church’s youth group merged with the youth group of our sister church.  Well, we kind of merged.  What led to the merger was that our sister church, at the time, was renting space from a local Christian school, and their rental arrangement was not conducive to having a consistent youth group gathering.  So in early 2003, our sister church approached Faith Church about having me be the youth pastor for a combined youth group.  At the time, I had been at Faith Church for less than one year as youth/associate pastor. I agreed with Faith Church’s leaders that the merger idea had the strong possibility of being a win-win for a variety of reasons. We worked out the details and launched the new group that September. 

For the launch we decided to rent the gym at the Christian school, thinking that it would be good to start things off on our sister church’s home turf, as the rest of our youth group gatherings would take place at Faith Church.  Being in a gym, I planned a sports-themed event, as well as a teaching time.  When it came time for the teaching, the students sat on the bleachers, and the two groups were completely separate.  Faith Church students to my left, and our sister church students to my right.  It wasn’t surprising that they naturally gravitated to people who were familiar.  As I looked at the two separate groups, though, I had to admit that the merger wasn’t starting off very well.

I suspected this might happen, so I had planned a symbolic unity activity.  With the students on different sides of the bleachers, I told them I was going to play a song, and during the song they were follow the instructions of the song.  The song I picked was “Come Together,” by the Beatles.  I will admit that the lyrics of that song are basically nonsensical, except for the chorus, which repeats over and over, “Come together.” 

I played the song, and you could see the loathing in the eyes of the students.  They begrudgingly got up and found someone from the other church to sit next to.  Over the course of the next three years our youth groups were officially together, one group.  But I can’t say that true unity took place.  Did any enduring friendships between the two groups happen?  Maybe a couple.  Why did the groups fail to bond?  Unity is hard work, isn’t it?  It’s not just difficult for teenagers.  We adults can struggle.  As we continue our study of Ezekiel, God has some very important words to say about this common human struggle.  Take a moment this weekend, read Ezekiel 37:15-28, and then join us on the blog next week as we talk about it further.

Help carry others’ burdens – Love One Another, Part 5

Editor’s Note: This week we welcome David Hundert as guest blogger!

In the previous post, I said that we disciples of Jesus are people who set aside our personal pride for the sake of the whole. How do we do that? In Galatians 6:2 the Apostle Paul writes, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

Helping one another discern and stay in step with the Spirit, especially investing in restoring a brother or sister who has strayed, is one way in which we “keep serving one another in love.” In the immediate context here, “burdens” can figuratively refer to the moral and personal struggles in which we all find ourselves from time to time. Each of us will at some point need to rely upon each other to help us carry this weight in order to remain in Christ. Paul also understands this to include all burdensome experiences of life; all the trials that life seems to just send our way. We as believers are to extend love, kindness, support, and as needed, material help toward those experiencing these burdens so as to make their lives easier to bear.

As we conclude this five-part series on one of the most repeated phrases in the New Testament, I haven’t shared all 40 of the verses that deal with how we need to relate to “one another,” but we did cover quite a few. I have been trying to make a point that a lot of what we are dealing with in the world today deals with our perspective of ourselves and those around us. Obviously, most of what Paul wrote to the various churches was being written to believers about how to relate to other believers. Why is that? Because a lot of the mindset and attitudes that people had toward one another in that day before they accepted Christ, hadn’t changed. The sin that was present before they accepted Christ has been carried through the front door of the Church and is affecting the peace that should be present in the body. Worse than that, was that this was accepted or at the very least, glossed over by the Church.

In 2,000 years, have we changed that much? We are still bringing our pre-salvation attitudes with us on Sunday mornings. We are allowing the world to season and fertilize our lives instead of the other way around. The world looks in the front door of our churches and then, when we go to share the gospel, they say “why do I need what you have?” What makes what you’re offering any different or any better that what I already have?” They say, “I look in on a Sunday morning, and see your worship service and it looks as you’ve been baptized in bad vinegar, but then you go home and get more excited about a football team.”

Brothers and sisters, we need to change that if we want people to see value in a relationship with Jesus! It’s been said, that the definition of insanity, is that we keep doing the same things over and over the same way, while expecting a different result. We just can’t keep doing what we’re doing, the way we’ve been doing it, if we want to see change around us.

Again, Paul was talking to believers, how about how we should deal with unbelievers? Jesus said it best. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus states, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love your neighbor as yourselves. This means everyone! You have never, and will never, look into the eyes of a person who God doesn’t love as much as He loves you. Please watch the video below, as it does an excellent job explaining this:

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