It has been a long time since I have gotten really mad at
something one of the pastors has said on a Sunday. Today I was livid.
We were talking about Ezekiel, which is one of my favorite
books in the Bible. Pastor Dan started
out talking about King Manasseh. This
was a bad dude. He worshiped the pagan
gods killed so many people it was said the streets ran with blood. This guy even burned his own son in a
sacrifice.
As we know, God doesn’t let men like that stay in power in
the Old Testament. God allowed the
Assyrians to take Manasseh into captivity.
While there he repented. God, seeing
the change in his heart, forgave him and freed him. Manasseh had a second chance.
Pastor Dan tried to make the point that this kind of resurrection
should offend us. He went on to talk
about the valley of the dry bones later in the book. This is one of my all time favorite stories
in the Bible. Here’s what happens: God comes, plucks Ezekiel up and drops him in
the middle of a valley of dry bones.
God has Ezekiel prophesy to the dry bones. As he is speaking he hears a rattling and
sees the bones come together and the tendons are formed and muscle and
skin. God then has Ezekiel call the
breath for the bodies. It comes in and
enters the body and they all come back to life; a vast army awakened from a
deep slumber.
Still the pastor tried to say that resurrection should be
offensive to us. That pissed me
off. We should not be anymore offended
by the idea of a God of resurrection than a God of love or a God who will fight
for us.
If we as Christians claim to profess the resurrection of
Christ, then we should not be offended of resurrection. It’s what our God is about. In the Old Testament we see it with the dry
bones; we see it with both Elijah and Elisha when they brought people back from
the dead. We see it in the way God
continually takes Israel back even though they constantly spit in his
face. And when Christ dies the book of
Mark says that the graves are opened and the dead go walking around. Resurrection is what our God does!
I am offended by the thought that I should be offended by
the resurrection. When we are claiming
ourselves as heirs to the resurrection of Christ we should not be offended by
that inheritance. There are no lost
causes with God. There is no one who
doesn’t deserve a second chance. Everyone
gets that who ‘confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in
their heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.’ You will be saved from damnation; you will be
saved from yourself; you will be saved from the things that consume you.
The resurrection doesn’t offend me, it gives me a reason to
live.
2 comments:
I wasn't there to hear it, but maybe that's what he meant and just didn't communicate it well? Like Brennan Manning's idea of "vulgar grace." Manning knows the importance of grace and how dependent he is on it. But he says we should offended by a God who is so tasteless as to extend grace to some of us. But God does. God is willing to be so undignified as to be found in the company of such vulgarity. And that is where the true beauty of grace lies - in just how offensive God chooses to ignore that it is.
There's also this. http://churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/outreach-missions-articles/164601-jamie-arpin-ricci-why-youll-be-offended-by-the-justice-of-jesus.html#.UPVybNg1j0I.twitter Dan and I once had a small twitter battle about willingness to tell johns Jesus loves them.
That may have been what he was trying for, but he did not succeed. He just kinda got stuck on the reasons we should be offended and never quite made it to the point that we should expect it. It was kind of a 'well we don't like it, but God does what he wants.'
We should long for it, not just tolerate it.
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