Dry Bones

He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, You know.” Again He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.’ Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the LORD.’” Ezekiel 37:3-6, NAS

What does America really need today?

Christians are fighting for morality. Engaging in the culture wars. Standing up for traditional marriage and religious freedom and the rights of the unborn. Getting involved in politics and filmmaking and the great Twitter wars.

And so we should; so we must. It is right to speak the truth; Jesus wants us to make disciples of all nations, and to teach them all that He has commanded- which includes what the Bible has to say about movies and gender and modesty and selling chicken sandwiches on Sundays. (Matt. 28:20)

Perhaps if we could convince enough people to agree with our propositions, America would be a better place.

Watching the World Burn

Recently, I watched multiple video clips of- well, terrible people doing terrible things. A crazy woman attacked a family of four and wounded their child before walking off with complete, calm composure. A bar fight breaks out and a man continues to beat his unconscious victim until he was so damaged that he will probably never be the same again- if he even lived through it. I watched A Quiet Place– a powerful film full of tragedy and terror and sorrow. And while in the last case the story is fictional and the villains are fantastical, the truth of the matter is that this whole world is full of tragedy and terror and sorrow.

Around the globe, billions of people daily face starvation, thirst, abuse from loved ones, abuse from strangers, crime, exhaustion, the loss of loved ones, failing health. There are girls growing up in the sex-slave trade whose daily lives are a chain of miseries. There are babies being torn apart inside the wombs of their mothers who will never know what it’s like to take a breath on their own. There are women who tremble every time they hear their husband’s footsteps, and kids who run when they hear their father’s voice. There are people thinking about ending it all because of their regrets or their guilt or their bitterness or their fear.

The list could go on indefinitely. We live in a world of pain.

Americans generally, and I as a homeschooled Christian American in particular, are quite blessed in that we normally exist in a state of relative peace and quiet. We don’t usually hear gunshots (unless we live in Chicago) or lose friends to bombings. We have ready access to food and running water and medical services. A rough day for us is when the water heater is broken or the car gets a flat or the iPhone hits the tile. First world problems, indeed.

But the truth of the matter is that even with all of our wonderful American amenities this doesn’t solve the real problems of the heart. Depression and anxiety and dysfunctional families and fatherlessness and suicide and crime and a feeling of hopeless irrelevance don’t go away once people get more money.

And even the veneer of American prosperity is beginning to crumble; we see racism and misogyny becoming more and more a part of American culture through the culturo-political dialogue of identity politics, when they had largely faded into fringe irrelevance; we hear politicians and talking heads insulting and berating each other; we don’t know what a boy or a girl is but if you guess wrongly in any particular case you might get sued; drag queens are cuddling with little children and the parents of said children are watching in silence; schools are getting shot up, cops are getting shot up, cops are shooting people up, and my little sister is playing with some black kids at a hotel swimming pool and one of them asks her if she is a racist.

We are living in a dying, self-destructive culture, in the middle of a dying, self-destructive world.

We are living in a valley of dry bones.

How To Make America Great Again

In the midst of this rather weighty weekend for me, I re-watched the film Woodlawn.

In the midst of a cultural moment reminiscent of some sort of Battle Royale, the (largely factual) story of Woodlawn comes as a breath of fresh air. Amid the daily cries of “racist!” and “sexist!” and “white supremacist!” and “whateverophobe!” we have a film that shows a culture that was just as divided by race as we are today- if not more. Name calling and seething bitterness and hate. Blacks and whites sending each other to the hospital when fights break out on campus. And into this culture came a Gospel. And where that Gospel came, suddenly, blacks and whites became brothers. Suddenly, there is joy. There is healing. There is hope. Suddenly, skin color takes its proper place… irrelevance. And we are all one in the Blood.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

Social justice- real social justice, not some Marxist form of class warfare- real social justice swept through a community. And how did this happen? It happened because a few Christians were praying. A few Christians were preaching. A few Christians were believing.

Even more foundationally, it happened because the breath of God brought the bones to life.

God can, God does do this. He is in the business of bringing the dead to life. And, frankly, He has the corner on the market. But here’s my question- are we asking Him to? Are we expecting Him to with a faith that is commensurate with His power?

One Way

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

You’ve heard that verse before. But I want to draw your attention to the latter half. Who does the healing?

In other words, the most important thing for any nation is not who is in office or what bills got past committee. The most important thing is whether or not God is healing their land and calling the dry bones to life.

Voting and political involvement are important, and it’s good to debate our options and opinions in light of Scripture. But frankly, if you’re a Trump voter or a third-party voter, a conservative or a libertarian, so long as you are voting by faith and not by sight, so long as your views are shaped by Scripture and not by fear or cultural noise- good for you. We don’t need to divide and condemn each other, especially since politics are not the foundational issue for the life of our country. God raises kings up and brings them down. His favor is vastly more influential than any human endeavor.

The elephant cannot save us. Only the Lamb can.

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

You’ve probably noticed the political temperature of the country these days. Suffice it to say we’re well past the point where you dump the noodles in. But as Christians we should be the very best at calm and compassionate conversation, for two reasons.

Firstly, we serve a sovereign God, and His Kingdom is unshakeable, His counsels will stand, His decrees will come to pass. We are Christians before we are Americans. I love my country. I’m proud to be an American. But my first allegiance is to Christ. And whatever happens to America, He will not be surprised, scrambling to come up with a plan B. He is in control of it all. So we don’t have to fear; we are citizens of a higher Kingdom that remains, though the kingdoms of this world rise and fall. (Is. 46:10)

Secondly, Scripture tells us that when we are talking to unbelievers, we are talking to folks who are spiritually blind, spiritually dead. Well, you don’t get angry with a blind man because he can’t see the sun. And our nation is full of blind men, and we are getting all amped up trying to reason with them so that they come to agree that there is a sun. (2 Cor. 4:4, Eph. 2:1)

This realization should make us humble, as we remember that we too were blind, and it was only the mercy of God that caused us to see.

It should make us compassionate, as we remember that these folks are genuinely lost, and they might actually believe that they are a girl stuck in a boy’s body, or that abortion is a moral good, or that socialism will actually help the country. We know that they have a foundational knowledge of right and wrong written in their hearts by God (Rom. 1); at the same time they may have come to such a point of cultural and personal deception that, on a conscious level, they really believe they are doing the right thing. Assuming that they’re just plain out to purposefully destroy everything good is not only unnecessary- it’s also unmerciful. They usually are just arguing for what seems so clearly true to them, just like we would if we were in their shoes.

It should also make us cautious. We can only see the sun when God opens our eyes. Those who don’t know Christ are still dead in their trespasses and sins… even if they are conservative. They get a lot of things right, but at the end of the day their trust is still in government, in humanity, in reason to save us all.

These blind men step outside and feel the heat of daylight and conclude that there must indeed be something objective out there… but they still can’t see the sun. They have some truths, but are missing The Truth. And that is the key issue.

Political activism cannot open the eyes of the blind; only the Holy Spirit can do that.

A Knife To A Gunfight

Traditional American values and conservative principles stand no chance against the powers of sin and satan. The unchecked depravity of the heart of unregenerate man alone is enough to eventually choke out political liberty and societal morality. And the devil has nothing to fear even from a squeaky-clean Andy Griffith Show society. He likes living in a clean house. His only concern is that he gets to be the master of the house. (Jer. 17:9, Luke 11:25)

There is only One powerful enough to deliver a nation from the clutches of sin and the power of the evil one. If our hope for preserving American liberty is grounded in human reason or conservative values or traditional morality then it is a vapid hope. In the long run, these things will lose every time to the power of human depravity and demonic deception.

All the forces of conservatism cannot overpower sin and hell. Only Jesus Christ can do that.

All’s Well That Ends Well

This is true regardless of what you believe about the end times. The only way the world is going to come more and more into submission to Christ through the advance of the Gospel, in spite of all opposition, until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord- as good post-millenials believe- the only way that happens is by the moving of the Spirit of God. If we are building the Church of Christ in our own might, with lots of writing and speaking and not much prayer and fasting, then we would do well to consider what exactly it is we are building, because there’s only One Person who gets the credit for that construction job, so if our name is on the building it’s probably the wrong building. (Matt. 16:18)

And the only way the church is going to remain faithful and even grow through increasing persecution and perhaps even eventual tribulation- as good pre-millenials believe- the only way that happens is by the moving of the Spirit of God. And if we are not building the Church of Christ by the power of the Spirit, we would do well to consider what exactly it is we are doing with our time down here. If you believe the Titanic is going down, then you’d better be either fixing holes, fitting life jackets, or filling lifeboats. And singing Nearer, My God, to Thee all the while. If your eschatology tells you the world is going to hell in a handbasket the right response isn’t “OK, guess I’ll enjoy the ride.” (Matt. 24:24)

We are to occupy until He comes. We don’t know when that will be. That means pouring our hearts out in prayer, preaching the Gospel, teaching our children, and laboring to take dominion of the earth for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. (Luke 19:13, Matt. 28:18-20, Gen. 1:26-27, Deut. 6)

And we keep doing that until we find out who was right about this whole end-times thing.

Brass Tacks

So what is the Scriptural process for a nation to receive this healing? Let’s go back to Chronicles.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

The process laid out in this passage starts with the people of God- those who are called by His Name. That was Israel then; today, it is the Church. The Church is the pillar and support of the truth. If truth has collapsed in the land, we know where to look. Judgment starts in the house of God. So this isn’t about those people out there messing everything up. God’s arm is not short, and the gates of hell weren’t recently updated with new Gospel-proof technology. The harvest is still plentiful. It’s a question of harvesters. It’s a question of beseechers. Christ will build His church, and the gates of hell will fall. But He does His work through His people, and He calls us to do our part. (1 Tim. 3:15, 1 Pet. 4:17)

There are five specific action items for us as Christians to do:

1. Be called by His Name. This isn’t stated straightforwardly but it’s implied. God doesn’t promise to do any nation-healing based on “moral reformation.” When He works the miracle of healing, He will do it in such a way as to exalt His Name- and this is a great act of mercy, because healing without the Healer could only be temporary. We must tie ourselves explicitly to the Name of Christ. We must march under the banner of the Cross. The Christian flag must fly higher than the American flag, or any other flag. Our political and cultural and moral dialogues and decisions must be based on Scripture first- not statistics, not traditions, not “traction.” We must be called by His Name.

2. Humble ourselves. We see this all throughout Scripture, and it’s serious business. Fasting, weeping, sackcloth and ashes kind of business. Tearful, travailing kind of business. Crying out “woe is me!” and “have mercy on us O God!” and “why do You stand far off, O Lord?” kind of business. This is a humbling that realizes the utter desperation of our situation if God does not act. A humbling that is an external manifestation of internal contrition. Our nation is descending into insanity and depravity and our hearts should be breaking over this. Life can’t, life shouldn’t just go on as usual. There’s a real war, and we’ve been unfaithful, and our nation- our children’s future- our neighbors’ eternity- it’s all at stake here. We need to feel the weight of that.

3. Pray. What’s your prayer life like? What’s my prayer life like? How’s the attendance at the church prayer meeting? We need to be praying like it all depends on the moving of the Spirit of God, because it does, and we need to be praying like God answers our prayers, because He does. What percentage of our prayer time is spent on our first-world problems, and what percentage is spent on “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done?” Are we crying out for the lost? Are we beseeching, begging, imploring the Lord of the harvest to raise up those workers, and ending with a hearty “here am I, send me!”? Are we praying for the lost? For our kids? Our pastors? Front-line missionaries? The persecuted Church? Each other? Ourselves? For revival and growth and the glory of the Name of Jesus Christ? I’m preaching to myself too here. How high of a priority is prayer for me? How often do I spend with my wife chilling before a screen, and how often do we labor together before the throne of grace? Let’s all go watch War Room, and then let’s all clean out our closets.

4. Seek His Face. Abide in Christ. Yearn for that closeness of fellowship with the living God. Hunger and thirst for righteousness. Scripture, prayer, preaching, fellowship. Draw near to Him- and He promises to draw near to us. It’s an open invitation. But we have to come from a place of desire. A place of hunger. An insatiable yearning and passion and fervor to see and to know and to follow Christ. To go and have fellowship with God in such a way that we come down the mountain with our faces shining. This isn’t a pursuit of cultural reformation or personal improvement. It’s not a humbling of ourselves because we want stuff to be less messed up. It’s not prayer for the preservation of our comfortable way of life. It’s a desire to see Him. Nothing less. To taste and see that YHWH is good. And to be empowered and overpowered by His goodness. To lay it all on the altar and say “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Sell it all. Buy the field.

5. Turn from our wicked ways. Repent of our sin. If we are truly seeking the face of God, if we are truly delighting in the perfect Christ, we will not cling to the pleasures of sin. And as we draw nearer to the perfect Light of the World, as we study His Word, as we seek His Face, He will show us more and more to repent of. He will sanctify us into the image of His Son. It will be painful and difficult. Running a race, fighting a battle, carrying a cross was ever thus. We must be ready to tear down each and every high place that He reveals to us. Even- especially- the ones that we are very, very comfortable with. Whether the sin is pornography or apathy or greed or gluttony or compromise or unfaithful preaching or a worldly paradigm for church life or rejecting His blessing of children or allowing our children to become disciples of Babylon, we must repent- and that means more than a mental acknowledgement. It means practical, faithful obedience.

There is hope. God’s Word gives us hope. There is hope in one Name, one Word, one Truth. It’s not in the power of republicanism or the wisdom of the Constitution. It’s in the vivifying mercy of God.

We are standing in a valley of dry bones. We can resign to living among such macabre company. We can spend our time assembling the skeletons. Or we can cry out for the Breath of God.

Whether He will save America or not, I don’t know. But I do know that He is mighty to save, and I do know that He answers prayers that are in accordance with His will, I do know that the advancement of His Kingdom is His will, and I do know that He is not done filling the earth with the knowledge of His glory. So I’m excited. He will act. He will hear. He will heal. The gates of hell will fall. And when the time comes and the Lord of all the earth does breathe upon the bones- well, that’s going to be a sight to behold.

And everyone will know Who gets the credit.

#DryBones #GabrielHudelson #Conservative #Republican #Repentance #Revival