2,000 years ago, the Pharisees heaped requirements for salvation on people they could not possibly bear. Now, Kanye West proclaims his faith in Jesus Christ, produces an album called Jesus is King. Now, “sensible” Christians have heaped more and more requirements on Kanye to “prove” his conversion is real. My brothers and sisters, have we become the Pharisees?
At the end of time, we will arrive at the beginning of our eternity. Everything that God has done throughout the course of mankind has sought to return humanity to eternity with Him. Out of love, Christ made a way for our salvation, for our redemption, and for our sanctification. All of this in order that we would rest in eternity in the ecstatic presence of God. There is no area that God showed himself to be unsuccessful and no action that was not accounted for before hand. Jesus Christ was slain before the foundation of the world and heaven will collide with earth in pursuit of the people of God.
Ezekiel 37, with its familiarity causes us to glaze over the full depth of the passage. We often are able to intellectually understand the idea of dry bones will rise and walk again. We picture images of skeletons standing up like cheap halloween specials but miss the significance of where we are in this story. As God shows Ezekiel the dry bones, God asks “Can these dry bones live?” Ezekiel while answering God, undoubtedly came to the same understanding and fear that we all face. We come to understand that we are the dry bones and fear that the answer is no.
The author of Hebrews connects the prophesies of old with the works of Jesus Christ. For the old prophets, God revealed a future where the old covenant would disappear and a new covenant would be established. Where people once studied the word of God, in the new covenant, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the covenant would become a part of their DNA and their very identity. The sins will be forgiveness and they will be established for eternity. The old will be made new and restoration will come for the people. Through Jesus Christ, the Old Covenant established between God and His people will be fulfilled and a new covenant will be established by the grace of God. Our response to this new covenant is nothing short of following wherever God leads us and submitting to His will.
Towards the end of John’s Revelation he understood God’s desire for the salvation of His people. God was making all things new. The plan wasn’t to attempt to tidy of or to make a used car to be like new, but to reform and remake a person new. There is a difference between new and like new and God would be making all things new. God, on His sovereign throne, would command existence itself to be restored to fullness by His powerful might and His wondrous grace. Though sin had been introduced to the world and through it death, God removes the decay for the restoration of mankind.
With the thoughts of brokenness and emptiness we can easily seem to think that we are at the center of the Universe’s attention. This isn’t to trivialize our struggles, for they are indeed very difficult. Our brokenness is a real brokenness. In the larger scheme of the world and in creation, we see a larger brokenness that…
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