Ezekiel has been hammering people with God's Law. He is putting for God's righteous requirement that they act in a holy manner and that they engage in living belief that is in accord with that behavior. I put those two statements in that order on purpose. Israel, like many of us, knew that God's holy people need to act in a holy way. They realized their failure. Undone sacrifices, priests who were not working as priests because they were finding their other careers more lucrative, Sabbaths ignored, all manner of failure to keep God's requirements. Yet even more importantly, they were starting to realize that their failure ran deeper than their behavior. They were condemned for being unbelieving.
We also realize, if we take a moment, that our actions are replete with sin and error. When we consider it, we see that our actions are rooted in unbelief. We know how we should believe, that we should love and trust our Lord with all our heart. Day after day we realize and confess that we do not love and trust our Lord in all things. We also realize that we are unable to do so. What rescue is there for us?
Look at what Ezekiel says today. There is nothing that is so dead that cannot bring it to life. There is nothing so desolate that he cannot plant it to be a fruitful garden. There are no skeletal remains that are so ruined he cannot give them integrity, flesh, and life. There is nobody, nothing, that is outside of the ability of our Lord and Savior to bring redemption. And how does he redeem this world to himself? He does it through his Word. Jesus Christ, the living Word of God, speaks himself into our hearts and lives, brings us repentance, purchases our forgiveness, makes us no longer disjointed skeletal remains, but turns us to people who are truly living in him. He takes our barren wasteland and makes it a fruitful garden. He does this through his Word. Look to the Scripture, God's record of the Word of God incarnate. Look to baptism in which we are joined to our Lord through the washing of regeneration. Look to communion in which we become partakers of the living Word of God. In him we live and move and have our being. In him all things hold together. In him are all the riches of the Godhead in bodily form. This is our great Lord and Savior.
Lord, let us look to your fullness, not to our brokenness.
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