After he shows Ezekiel just how desperate the situation is in the valley, God asks the prophet an important question:

“Son of man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3a).

How would you answer that question? I heard someone on television the other day say that America is on the brink of the greatest Christian revival the world has ever seen. He said it as if it was just a matter of time — an absolute certainty. I hope he’s right, but I don’t know how he knows that. Does that guy have some insider information I don’t have? Or is he just making stuff up? There’s a great danger in confusing optimism with faith. Ezekiel could have said yes, but he didn’t.

Ezekiel could have said no. And I’ve heard some other Christians say that things are going from bad to worse and will until Jesus comes back. There’s a popular book out right now asking whether or not we are living in the midst of the last Christian generation. That’s a little presumptuous to begin with — asserting that there is such a thing as a Christian generation. It’s also a little pessimistic. I hope that author is wrong, but, again, who knows?

Ezekiel refused to answer in either direction. He simply said, “O sovereign Lord, you alone know” (v. 3b).

Have you ever asked someone a question and had them reply, “God only knows”? Here’s a situation where that answer is truly appropriate. God only knows what the future holds. Will there be a revival in America? God only knows. Will our religious freedoms be eroded to the point where we have state-sanctioned and state-approved churches? God only knows.

Ezekiel was saying, “There is no way I can know what you will do with these dry bones. You have the ability to make them live again, but I don’t know if you have the desire to do that.”

We need that kind of humility in our day. We need an attitude that says, “Keep me from the arrogance that claims to know how everything is going to work out. Keep me from the presumption that believes I can make this happen on my own.”

We also need that kind of faith. We need to say, “Keep me from the unbelief that says these dark days and difficult times are no match for your power.”

Ezekiel would neither despair or presume. He found his rest in the sovereignty of God. And so must we.

I don’t know if the future of the church in America is revival or decline. God only knows. I don’t know if the people I pray for will come to faith or not. God only knows. I don’t know if the missionary doors that are opening around the world right now will remain open or begin closing. God only knows.

If God knows — and if I believe him to be trustworthy — I can resign as emperor of the universe. I can find rest in God’s sovereignty.

Ezekiel records, “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry” (Ezekiel 37:1-2).

Ezekiel and the folks he works among have just found out that Jerusalem has been destroyed. They’re confused and afraid. They’re beginning to think God has a credibility gap — there’s a huge discrepancy between the promises of God and life as they are experiencing it. In spite of God’s promise to bring the people back after a while, they say, “No, there’s no hope. We can’t go on.”

The people of God have always been a melodramatic lot.

God gives Ezekiel a vision to explain some things to him — one of the more famous visions of the Old Testament. In this vision, God took Ezekiel to a valley that was like a mass graveyard filled with skeletons, as if there had been a huge slaughter there hundreds of years earlier. The bones represented the house of Israel. There weren’t just a few bones; there were “a great many bones”. And they “were very dry”.

This probably wasn’t the most enjoyable experience of Ezekiel’s life and career. But it served to impress upon him just how hopeless the situation was. These bones weren’t just a little dead; they were very dead for a very long time. There was absolutely no life at all in that valley. Nothing in the valley could serve as a spark or a catalyst for life. If life was to come, it would have to come from a source outside of the valley.

This is actually a good place to start thinking about salvation. As long as you think there’s a chance of life spontaneously generating from within yourself, you won’t turn to the Source of life who exists outside your system. Until you realize how dead you are, you won’t ask for life. You’ll think, “I can do this myself.”

This is also a good place to start thinking about ministry. When I used to look at want ads from churches looking for staff leaders, so many of them say something like this, “We’re looking for someone who is a proven soul-winner.”

I think I know what they mean, but they need to remember that no human is a soul-winner. God is the soul-winner. At best, we are the crew God hires to harvest. We can plant and water and cultivate and harvest, but only God can bring life out of death. That’s not something I can do (or anyone else for that matter). Too often, churches who are looking to the guy in the pulpit to be THE soul-winner are really looking for someone who will do all the work for them. We’re all called to share our faith with people, but we’re also called to remember that, short of direct intervention from God, dead things stay dead. We don’t bring people to life; God does.

You may be an incredible communicator with a gift for sharing your faith with others. But you cannot bring a valley full of very dry bones to life. God is the only one who can do that. No gifts, talents, resources or programming can introduce life into death.

Unless you begin with the understanding that dead things stay dead without direct intervention from God, you’ll view salvation and ministry the wrong way.

For the generation older than me, Kennedy’s assassination was probably THE defining moment. Every American in their 50s can probably tell you where they were when they heard about it.

My generation will probably do that with the tragic events of 9/11. I was in Denver, sitting in my graduate course on Advanced Hermeneutics, when we heard that something was happened in New York. We found a television and watched in horror as the second plane went into the buildings. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. This kind of thing simply didn’t happen in America. This is the kind of thing that happens elsewhere — in Beirut or Bosnia, not in America.

For weeks, many Americans just couldn’t get their minds around what had happened. What in the world was going on? How? Why? We thought God would protect us. We’re a Christian nation, right?

Now, imagine you’re among those 10,000 folks living in exile near the Kebar River with Ezekiel. There were folks who were saying, “This will all be over in a little while. You watch. This will be over soon, and we’ll all be back home sleeping in our own beds and making sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem.”

But days turn to weeks turn to months turn to years. And more than a decade passes. You begin to doubt the prophets who claim this is going to be over soon. What if it never ends? What if you end up spending the rest of your life out here in the middle of nowhere? No, you think to yourself, you simply cannot allow yourself to think those kinds of thoughts.

And then the unthinkable happens. A stranger wanders into town; he says he’s run all the way from Jerusalem. That’s 700 miles he’s come to give the news: Jerusalem has been destroyed.

You think, I must not have heard that right. Did he say Jerusalem? Destroyed? But Jerusalem is the City of God — the place where God put his name. We built him a house there with his own room. What about that house and that room? The temple is still standing, right?

No, the temple has been burned to the ground along with the rest of the city. There is nothing left but smoldering rubble and ashes.

How can this be? Has God forgotten his promises? Has he given up on us? Did he change his mind?

We all find ourselves asking questions like this. At one time or another we all end up wrestling with the gap between life as God has promised it and life as we experience it. So, how do you survive during those times? Faith seems pretty easy on a day like today. It’s about 70 degrees with a slight breeze. Things are blooming. My kids are relatively healthy. My wife is lovely. I’ve got good music playing in the background (Kurt Elling singing “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing”).

But how do you get through life when the promises of God seem a million miles away?

In the story of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, several key characters play the roles of prophet, priest and king. But they were just acting. They weren’t really shepherds; they simply played that role for their own benefit.

First, Jesus was taken to the house of Annas the priest. Here’s a great example of a shepherd who neglected God and God’s agenda for the sake of his own personal agenda. The Bazaars of Annas in the temples were infamous for their ridiculous exchange rates — bordering on extortion, really. There was one place in the temple where Gentiles could come and pray to YHWH, the God of the Israelites. This was where Annas placed his Bazaars — keeping the temple from being “a house of prayer for all the nations” as God had commanded.

The position of high priest seems to have been kept in a tight family circle, and at this time, the position was held by Annas’ son-in-law: Caiaphas. When Jesus stood before Caiaphas, surrounded by elders and teachers, this shepherd of Israel stood by while God Incarnate was slapped and spat upon. He had been given the task of leading people in the worship of God; instead, he led them into violence against God.

So, Jesus was sent from the priest to the king — a man named Herod. Here’s a king who abused his power by ordering the execution of John the Baptist (a true prophet). Herod responded to the word of God, as it was faithfully delivered by the prophet of God, more like a butcher than a shepherd. He was supposed to defent and protect God’s people from their pagan enemies; instead, he offered Jesus up to the Roman governor: Pilate.

As the governor of the land, Pilate’s responsibility was to establish truth and administer justice. Though he wasn’t a prophet, he did receive a revelation from God — in a dream to his wife. But when Pilate spoke with Jesus, he knew his decision would have little to do with truth and more to do with popularity and pragmatism. His decision about Jesus wasn’t based on justice but on the prevailing mood of the people. Pilate washed his hands and went with the popular vote.

So, as we said yesterday, the Good Shepherd became like a sheep and was “led like a lamb to the slaughter”. He sufffered under the shepherds who abused their power, compromised the truth and neglected the Lord. And on the cross he became the sacrificial lamb who would take away the sins of the world.

But on the third day….

Are there any better words than that?

On the third day he rose from the dead. Death is like a dark valley, and Jesus has travelled through it. It may still be a dark place, but it is now a safe place for all who will trust and follow the Good Shepherd through the valley of death. We fear no evil, for he is with us and has promised to see us through to the other side.

God gave very low marks to the shepherds of Israel. He looked at their work and saw terrible abuse of power, a deliberate compromise of truth and a blatant neglect of God. God’s flock was malnourished, uncared for and unprotected. The situation was so intolerable that God decided to intervene. But he did so in a very unexpected way. God told Ezekiel, “I myself will tend my sheep” (Ezekiel 34:15).

Ezekiel must have thought, “That sounds great and all, but how exactly is that going to happen? God is way up there beyond the azure blue, and we’re stuck down here by the Kebar River.”

Roll the clock forward 600 years.

When Jesus was teaching the sheep of Israel, they were still living under the kind of religions leadership that abused its power, compromised the truth and neglected the heart of God. At one point, Jesus looked at the people and saw that they were “like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

A little while later, Jesus blasted the shepherds of Israel. He said, “All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers” (John 10:8). They used their authority to pursue their own agendas. Then Jesus identified himself as the Shepherd spoken of through the prophet Ezekiel: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

As the Good Shepherd, Jesus would do a number of things for the sheep. First, he would feed the sheep with God’s truth. Second, he would seek out the lost sheep. Third, he would lead the sheep and protect them from their enemies.

He went on to say, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6).

But the shepherds in Israel didn’t really like what he had to say about them or about himself. They did not like the truth he taught, the way he led or the life he offered. So, they treated him like a sheep. They abused him, compromised the truth about him and rejected him.

And the most amazing thing is: He took it. He let it happen. The Good Shepherd became like one of his sheep, and like a sheep he was led to slaughter.

God grades out the shepherds of Israel through his prophet Ezekiel. And they do not receive favorable marks.

“The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not the shepherds take care of the flock?”‘” (Ezekiel 34:1-2).

Ezekiel was serving a community of 10,000 people who had been uprooted from their home in Jerusalem and marched 700 miles away. They were living as exiles near the Kebar River near Babylon, and they must have wondered, “What did we do that was so bad? Why did we get taken away while others got to stay home? Why not previous generations? Were we that bad?”

God wants them to understand that this punishment is not for the sins of one generation. There has been a pattern of disobedience, disloyalty and dishonor. And, as the old saying goes, the fish stinks from the head down. God had trusted the shepherds of Israel with the tremendous responsibility of leading his people, and they had done a terrible job. Disaster came upon the people of God because of a massive failure in their leadership.

Specifically, God brings three charges against the shepherds of Israel: (1) the abuse of power; (2) the compromise of truth; (3) the neglect of God.

I think it’s interesting that he chose those three charges. The leaders of Israel were certainly guilty of a number of violations — multiple wives, blatant immorality and sinful behavior. Why do you think God would focus in on these three charges?

In the Bible, all three of these leadership roles (prophet, priest and king) come together in one word-picture that encompasses all three dimensions of biblical leadership: Shepherd.

A shepherd feeds sheep — that’s the role of a prophet, to feed the people of God a healthy diet of the Word of God.

A shepherd seeks sheep — that’s the role of a priest, to find sheep who have wandered off or are injured.

A shepherd leads sheep — that’s the role of a king, to give direction and protection to the flock.

So, when God talks about shepherds, he’s speaking about all three dimensions of leadership together — revealing, reconciling and ruling; preaching, pastoring and leading — everything that is involved in leadership among the people of God. He is probably not thinking of one person filling all three roles. Few people in history have ever been able to fill more than one at any given time (Moses, Deborah, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah — anyone else in the Old Testament?).

The shepherds of Israel would have included some who were prophets, some who were priests and some who were kings. Together they provided leadership for God’s people. And, as we shall see tomorrow, they did a pretty lousy job of it.

For today, let’s think about these three distinct roles and try to apply them to our churches. Most churches expect one person to fill all three roles at once (even though they’ll only pay him for one role at a time). Or they want one person to fill the first two roles while a group of men fills that third role and act as if they are “above the law”. If the “kings” of a local church don’t like what the “prophet” has been saying (or how well he has balanced his prophetic duties with his priestly ones), they fire him and get someone else who is foolish enough to sign up for two jobs’ worth of responsibility with no job’s worth of authority.

Hmmm…I’ve stared at that last paragraph now for about five minutes trying to figure out whether that’s appropriate for publishing or not. I think that is an unfortunately accurate assessment of many churches I’ve encountered. I know there are churches out there who have a healthy balance of all three roles in place. Thank God for those churches. But the majority of churches I know are struggling with this. So, I’m going to keep that paragraph as is, and I eagerly await the avalanche of email I’ll get about this one.

Understanding these three roles, and the balance they provide, allows a church to ask itself some helpful diagnostic questions:

Is there a good, healthy diet of teaching here? Does some of the teaching we hear make us uncomfortable? Does it merely re-affirm what we already believe or tickle our ears with what we want to hear? Does it make sense biblically? Does it help us live more Christlike lives? Are people being spoken to on behalf of God?

Is there a place where people can bring their needs and have them lifted up to God? Are lost people being sought? Are wounded people being helped and healed? Is prayer a vital part of our church’s life? Is God being spoken to on behalf of people?

Is there clarity of purpose? Are things well-structured and organized and administrated? Is our church practicing good stewardship? Are people being protected and guarded? Is the whole church pursuing the purposes of God?

By way of background as we look at another theme in the Book of Ezekiel (God’s scolding of Israel’s shepherds in Ezekiel 34), there are three distinct leadership roles in the Old Testament. First, there was the role of the prophet — someone who would receive the Word of God and communicate it to the people. Prophets gave leadership in the realm of truth.

Second, there was the role of the priest — someone who would bring people into the presence of God by offering prayers and sacrifices. Priests were the mirror image of prophets. Prophets spoke to people on behalf of God; priests spoke to God on behalf of people.

Third, there was the role of the king — someone who would lead the people into battle and protect them from their enemies. He was also responsible for leading the people in the right paths.

These three leadership roles are woven through the entire Bible story. The prophet brought God’s truth to the people. The priest brought the people of God into the presence of God. The king was supposed to lead the people in the right way of living. You could say the prophet was about revealing, the priest was about reconciling and the king was about ruling. These three functions, when properly combined, reveal God’s plan for stable leadership.

Ideally, these three roles provided a system of checks and balances for Israel. The king ruled, but the prophet spoke the Word of God — sometimes confrontationally — to the king. Nathan is a good example of this with David. Elijah spoke this way with Ahab (with decidedly different results). Same with Jeremiah and King Zedekiah. Prophets were supposed to hold kings accountable.

Also, the king ruled from the palace, but when he came to the temple, he was not allowed to offer a sacrifice. Only a priest could do that. So, a king could not enter the presence of God without the help of a priest.

By the way, God’s people still need balance in these three areas of leadership today.

Twenty years after Ezekiel’s first vision of God’s glory, he was still stuck 700 miles from home working among a group of 10,000 exiles. He was 50 years old when God spoke to him again (Ezekiel 40), giving him a vision of a massive temple. Its measurements were not in feet or yards but in miles, and the description of it goes into great detail about the dimension of each wall and gate. It was gigantic.

Then Ezekiel sees “the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east” (43:2). The east, of course, was the direction in which the glory of God had headed 20 years earlier when God had abandoned the temple and focused his redeeming work on the community of his people by the Kebar River.

What he saw next must have overwhelmed Ezekiel with joy: “The glory of the Lord entered the temple through the gate facing east…and the glory of the Lord filled the temple” (43:4-5).

Got the picture? Ezekiel was a desperate, confused and discouraged person who must have wondered what God was doing in his life. But he saw the glory of God and realized that there was no place God could not go and nothing that God does not see.

Then God showed Ezekiel that the focus of his redemptive work for the next 70 years would not be exclusively on the temple in Jerusalem. Certainly, it was still in Jerusalem. Jeremiah shows us that in his Lamentations. But it was also on the 10,000 people near the Kebar River, and it was in the city of Babylon with Daniel and his friends. God is pretty good at multi-tasking.

And God would not abandon his temple forever. There would come a time when his presence would return to the great city, and his glory would fill a new temple. But this new temple would not be like the old one that had been destroyed. It would be massive, beyond any city’s ability to contain it, beyond any scale of engineering or imagination. It would be so large that it would become a center of worship for people from every tribe and nation who would turn from their idols and seek the true and living God.

At the risk of making this post too long for most people to read all the way through, if you understand the story of Ezekiel, you’ll understand the story of the whole Bible.

The Bible story begins in a garden — God’s place. A man and a woman enjoy the presence and blessings of God there, but they choose to reject him. As a result, they are thrown out of God’s place — east of it, in fact — just like God’s people were thrown out of the city of Jerusalem. And God’s place was destroyed; the Garden of Eden is nowhere to be found today. But God was not content to stay in his place and wait for his people to return to him. Rather, he took the initiative and went looking for them. Most of the Bible is a record of God’s relentless pursuit of his people.

The story of Jesus is the ultimate example of God coming to this strange and sometimes hostile place in which we live so that those who seek him are able to find him. Six hundred years after Ezekiel’s crazy visions, Jerusalem had been rebuilt and a new temple had taken the place of the old one. Jesus of Nazareth — the one the writer of Hebrews calls “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3) — came to visit a group of discouraged and confused people who lived under foreign oppression.

One day the radiance of God’s glory went to the temple, but he was rejected there. So, the glory of God left the temple, not on a flying platform, but bound and escorted by guards with swords and clubs. The glory of God left Jerusalem, bearing a cross to a place outside the city wall. There he hovered on top of a hill for several hours, drawing people from every nation and tribe to himself.

Of course, on the third day, he arose from the dead. For 40 days he talked to his followers about God’s kingdom, and then he went to a mountain east of the city, called the Mount of Olives. He stood on the very spot where Ezekiel had seen the glory of God hovering as the platform left the temple, and then — as the disciples watched — he ascended into the presence of the Father.

The glory of God appeared. The glory departed from the city as he was rejected and crucified outside Jerusalem. The glory has returned to the throne in heaven, and the glory of God will come again. That’s where the whole story is headed.

And God promises to bring his people back — not to the Garden of Eden, but to a new creation — bigger and better than the original ever was. The Bible story points forward to the time when the great exile of human history will be over and God’s people will be brought to God’s place to enjoy his presence forever. On that day, we’ll go one better than Ezekiel. He saw the Lord descend in a vision for a few moments; we’ll ascend to meet him in the air and be with him forever.

No matter how great you think that might be, it’s sure to be bigger and better than you can even imagine!

The wheels in Ezekiel’s vision are covered with eyes. That tells us that there is nothing God does not see.

When I was growing up, our church would sing a hymn that creeped me out. Actually, there were a few, but the one I’m thinking of here went like this:

All along on the road to the soul’s true abode,
There’s an Eye watching you.
Every step that you take this great Eye is awake,
There’s an Eye watching you.
Watching you, watching you,
Everyday mind the course you pursue;
Watching you, watching you,
There’s an all-seeing Eye watching you.

Cue the scary music. We’re being watched.

The story goes the songwriter (J.M. Henson) was at a revival meeting where he heard the revival leader tell a group of boys who had misbehaved the previous night, “We’re expecting order here and you had better be careful, because there’s an all-seeing eye watching you tonight.”

The revival leader meant the county sheriff whom he had invited personally to the revival. Henson saw God as the ultimate sheriff and wrote the lyric above.

Usually when we tell people, “God is watching you!” we’re trying to scare or intimidate them into behaving well. And there’s probably a place for that. But when Ezekiel — turning 30 and living 700 miles from home near the Kebar River — finds out that there is nothing God does not see — it means something more.

God does see all of our bad behavior. But he also sees every hurt, every frustration. He sees the rejection and the confusion. He notices every time one of his servants does for others without getting anything in return. He sees your motives and intentions, and he knows what you would do if you could. He sees the suffering of his people in prison and in orphanages and in hospitals. He sees people who continue to do the right thing even when they are not rewarded for it. He sees everything. For a lot of folks, there’s more comfort in that thought than there is warning.

The first lesson of Ezekiel’s crazy vision is this: There is no place God cannot go.

The second lesson is this: There is no thing God does not see.