Hope - Near or Far?

The Bible Gives Hope 

      There’s so much more than meets the eye; my assignment this past week was to teach a lesson of hope in Sunday School.  The focus of our lesson found in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel was to reveal how the Bible gives hope to people.  Armed with only a half-hour and twenty-eight verses, I felt boxed in by the boundaries established by this lesson plan.  It was like picking up a storybook, opening to the third chapter, and reading a couple of pages, and explaining the relevance of the complete story.  I love research, so the boundaries don’t fence me in.  If I would have let the lesson alone prepare me to teach, I would have missed a better application for the children. 

     The thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel takes place in the latter days of Ezekiel’s prophetic utterances and involves two short stories, one involving dry bones and the other involving two sticks.  This was Ezekiel’s third vision of four.  Ezekiel received these visions while in exile in Babylon, the capital of Babylonia.  At the beginning of the book, Ezekiel was speaking truth, while everyone else claiming to be prophets told lies, or tickled ears.  It was the intent of this vision to bring hope to the people who had heard many messages of gloom and destruction from Ezekiel in the past.  
     If we want children to engage in a lesson, we have to find the relevance in Biblical stories for them.  Is it enough to say that historical people in the Bible, held captive in a foreign land felt discouraged, and when encouraging words came to them, hope was restored?  How might children relate to feeling hopeless?  We might hope that this is not a common emotion felt by preteens, but things we read in the paper and through social media tells us a different story.  This story may actually hit closer to home than we realize with false teachers telling us what we want to hear.

     Throughout Ezekiel’s timeline as a prophet, God wanted to be relevant to His people.  He loved them, but they had rebelled and continued to disobey Him.  The exile was the consequential outcome of their bad behavior.  God wanted His people to know that He was their rescue plan.  He was their only hope.  If that is all I had to offer my ten and eleven-year-olds, I seriously doubt that this lesson would sink in and make a difference to them.

Teaching in Context

     It is difficult to teach in context, if the materials we read through a curriculum is the only thing that prepares us to share a story.  Teaching can be challenging when one only studies what another person has prepared.  Assuming responsibility for what is taught is a big part of a commitment to teach children, and we prayerfully have to consider the magnitude of the role we’ve been assigned.   Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling out others for poor teaching, but recognizing that a "pre"-prepared lesson plan isn't always the answer.  I often find that the suggested activities distract, rather than support the materials. 
     In the story we were called to teach, the bookends needed to move past the boundaries of the select verses shared in the curriculum.  Thank goodness the Holy Spirits’ job is to train us and equip us for the assignments and challenges we will face.  He prepared me over the summer through my daily reading plan to understand more about the stories found within the Law and the Prophets.  We see how often Jesus quotes from the Old to enhance the New message.  This morning I concluded that Jesus was teaching his disciples this same message in Matthew 13 when he said, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of the house, who brings out treasure what is new and what is old.”  How often our training is reinforced by amazing Biblical accounts found in ‘old’ places.     

     Sometimes we only need to go back a verse or two, as chapter markers cut off messages mid-stream.  Other times we may need to go back a chapter or two, and sometimes we need to start from the beginning of the book.  I felt like understanding a little more about Ezekiel’s life was in order before I shared this weeks’ lesson with the kids.  It had been Ezekiel's task to warn the people, and God told him that they would not listen to his words.  His role resembles that of many Sunday School classroom settings!  God wanted the house of Israel to know that He was their God and that He loved them and wanted good for them.  Isn’t that the same message we should share with those we’ve been entrusted to teach?

Who is Ezekiel - What is his Job?

     If the children had no idea who Ezekiel was, nor what job he had been assigned to do, I wasn’t sure how telling them a piece that resembled a ghost story from the middle of the book would help their understanding of how we can rely on the Bible for hope.  We began by talking about what type of book this story was recorded.  This book is categorized as a major prophet along with four other texts including, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Daniel.  This story takes place when both Ezekiel and Daniel are in Babylon, a home away from their homeland.  The role of a prophet is to speak as a representative of God and we will often read words like, “Thus says the Lord,” to show where the message is coming from.  The prophet is the mouthpiece, like John the Baptist was in the New Testament.  The purpose of prophecy is to foretell the future, but not as a fortune teller whose message is not from God.  Ezekiel, in this story, was surround by fortune tellers who were called false prophets.

     In order for a prophets’ words to be received as truth, validation was required.  The validation process was to have some of his prophesies to come true during his lifetime.  This is called ‘near-term’ prophesy.  With this validation, Ezekiel's long-term or far-term prophesies were accepted as reliable.  Many times prophesy is both near-term and far-term, meaning that it will have a partial fulfillment during the prophets’ life with a complete fulfillment after he dies.  This is the case of the vision we shared in this Sunday School lesson.  This is often referred to as a dual prophesy.  It is the latter fulfillment that I believe my Sunday School class needed to recognize.

      Asking my preteens to tell me who Ezekiel was or what he had been assigned to do resulted in blank stares.  I would have had the same reaction just six months ago.  I knew that he was a prophet, one with a longer book, making him a major, not a minor prophet.  I would have known the location of his book, nestled between Lamentations and Daniel, but I would not have been able to tell my classroom students any details about his life of service.  I would have only had general knowledge, and armed only with that, I would have shared a very weak lesson.  We need the Holy Spirits' guidance and counsel as we teach, and there is no better way than submitting to a daily reading plan.  God can direct our path into what we need to know according to what we are called to do.  

     Here’s some interesting details about Ezekiel.  He was about twenty-five years old training to become a priest when he was taken from Jerusalem to Babylon in the second transfer of captives.  Daniel had arrived in around 606 BC; whereas, Ezekiel came into the refugee camp around 597 BC.  Daniel was receiving top-notch training in the kings "university," a privilege afforded to an aristocrat; he was from a noble family.  But Ezekiel probably resided in a city of tents among other exiles, a commoner.  Sitting by a canal in Babylon, Ezekiel receives his first vision when he was called to be a prophet.  Some think that this calling may have arrived on Ezekiel’s 30th birthday, the day he would have officially rose to the ranks of priest.  A prophet and a priest had much different jobs, so like God equipped Moses to lead the Israelite's through the wilderness, God would equip Ezekiel for his role as a prophet.  He had no prior training.  

     Ezekiel, by an authors’ account, would be considered the protagonist, or the main character in the book that bore his name; however, this is not Ezekiel’s story, but Gods’ story of redemption.  Throughout this book, Ezekiel receives many strange assignments.  As I read through his life account, I am grateful that I was not given his assignment.  Ezekiel relays the messages he receives from God like a street actor.  He has play acting skills and at times is asked to pantomime his roles.  It would be like someone on the main street in Disney coming up to share a story with you, or possibly like a game of charades where others may guess what you were doing.  For example, he uses action figures to inform the people that their temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed, like a young man might play with power rangers.  Another time God tells him to cut his hair, like a young lady who donates eight to ten inches of her hair for a worthy cause; however, unlike that, he had to weigh his hair on scales and separate it into thirds.  He is asked to burn one-third, flay one-third with a sword, and thrown one-third in the air.  All of this is done on public display.  He is to keep out a few strands and tie them to his clothing.  Do you think the people around him might cross the street to walk on the other side?  Wouldn’t he be considered weird? 

     Turning strange behavior into bizarre behavior, he plays the part of a scapegoat by committing himself to obediently follow all of Gods’ assignments.  For 390 days he lay bound on his left side, and another 40 days he laid bound on his right side.  He was probably not laying on a cushy mattress, but on hard, dry dirt.  I imagine he must have felt extreme soreness in his joints, and fatigue in his muscles, not to mention how bad he must have smelled.  He was told to measure out all of his daily rations of food and water and cook his bread that he would eat over cow dung.  Ezekiel petitioned with God over how his food would be prepared, but even that I must admit would have been hard to swallow.  God was causing Ezekiel to bear the burden for sins of his people.  
     Ezekiel had a relatively short life compared to our life expectancy today.  They think he lived to be about 52 years old.  Although it took longer to gather this background information than share it with my students, it resulted in listening ears and many questions.  I was fortunate to achieve more than Ezekiel did.  Sparking a child's interest in the Bible so that they will walk out of Sunday School and share it with a friend or family member should be one small goal in children's ministry.  

Biblical Account:  Dry Bones and Two Sticks

     The current story begins with Ezekiel in Babylon, where he has been a refugee for about five years.  Awake during this vision, God gives him a two-part story.  God first takes Ezekiel to a valley filled with dry bones.  God asks Ezekiel if these dry bones could live (again).  Ezekiel has enough common sense to defer the answer back to God.  He says, “God, only you know.”  God then commands Ezekiel to speak to these bones.  Upon hearing the Word of the Lord, the bones begin to rattle and reassembly themselves into skeletons.  Then they begin to cover themselves with muscle and skin.  My high school daughter who teaches with me, requested that I not make any reassembly noises or pantomime this part of the story.  I obliged.  As fully formed bodies they lay lifeless on the ground.  They lacked breath.  I was thankful not to be teaching this story on Halloween. Then God commands Ezekiel to call breath into these dead bodies.  As he does, the bodies begin to breath, they stand and form a vast army.  The transition from this vision to its meaning was simply that God wished to restore the hopeless and weary captives as shared by the curriculum.

     The second part of Ezekiel’s vision involved two sticks.  On the first stick, God asks Ezekiel to write, ‘this stick belongs to Judah and his kingdom.’  On the second stick, God asks him to write, ‘this stick belongs to Joseph and his kingdom.’  The exiles would have known that this first stick represented them, the southern kingdom and the second stick belonged to the ten tribes that had been separated and scattered from them over a hundred years prior.  Holding the sticks together represented that God intended to re-unite them.  As an exile in Babylon, this story would have given hope, since they had no knowledge of the whereabouts nor survival of their distant relatives.  Imagine believing you would never again see someone you loved and learning that you would be reunited.  Some of my kids had recently lost a grandparent, so this story could be useful to bring comfort to them.     

Visualizing the Lesson 

     Drawing a crude map on the whiteboard, I shared a few geographical locations relevant to the story.  Beginning with three bodies of water:  The Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea, I then marked five cities on the whiteboard:  Samaria and Jerusalem to the west of the Jordan, and Damascus, Nineveh, and Babylon to the east.  The city of Samaria had been the capital of the northern kingdom made up the ten tribes referred to as Israel during the period of the divided kingdom.  The city of Jerusalem was the capital of Judea, where the two tribes (Judah and Benjamin) resided. The Levitical priests were also part of this southern kingdom.  I drew some arrows on the map to show the scattering of the northern tribes by Assyria (Nineveh), and a curved line between Jerusalem and Babylon to show the 70 year exile. 

       Ezekiel’s work was not a posh position, it had many uncomfortable moments.  In addition to street acting, he was asked to eat a scroll and God stuck his tongue to the roof of his mouth for a period to prevent him from speaking.  Through all of Ezekiel’s efforts to please God, his Jewish neighbors refused to listen to him.  God told him that this would be the case.  I cannot imagine anything so demoralizing or discouraging.  He was not allowed to mourn the lost of his precious wife which was the turning point of his prophesy moving his message from destruction to real hope.   

 What is Hope – What Does Hope Mean to You?

      Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.  The lesson plan suggested that we ask the kids to define what hope means to them by giving examples of what they hope for.  The expected results might be, I hope to receive a specific gift at Christmas time.  I hope that my friend can come over to play.  I hope that my grandmother gets better because she is not feeling well.  I hope I will pass my math test on Monday.  I hope I’ll get a puppy. 

     Before teaching this lesson, I thought a little experiment was in order.  During my hair appointment, I asked my stylist to tell me what she was hoping for.  Since she is starting a new business venture, she said, “I hope for success.”  I asked my husband who was hoping for good weather as he had some upcoming business travel on his agenda.  My high schooler had upcoming exams, she hopes to pass with flying colors, and my middle schooler echoed her response as a newbie to the exam process.  We talked about a medical condition facing grandma and hoping for a good result.  It became very evident in asking, everyone was focused on near-term result.  Not a single responses suggested that we were looking far off into the future.  It is a lot easier in our self-gratifying culture to hope for things that we want to happen soon.  

Greater Hope

     Now God is willing to allow Ezekiel to speak about hope.  The hope of returning to their homeland was paramount.  The news that they would reunite as a nation was encouraging.  Without placing the story into its contextual relevance, one would miss the far-term prophecy offered in this lesson.  If one is unaware of the preceding story found in the thirty-sixth chapter, the far-term aspect of this prophecy would be missed.  In this chapter, Ezekiel has introduced the idea of Gods’ new covenant.  “And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” (Ezekiel 36:26–28 (ESV))

     The reason that the Israelites needed a new heart is that their hearts had become hard and rebellious, just like ours do.  The law and the sacrificial system had only covered over their sin but had not removed it.  God promised a new method of atonement that would wash away sins.  He also made a promise to put His Spirit within His people.  In hindsight it is easy to see that this New Covenant was the blood of Jesus that would take away sins, and the redeeming resurrection of Jesus Christ brings victory over death.  
     In the New Testament book of Acts, we learn about the Holy Spirits’ arrival on the day of Pentecost.  These Old Testament Jews would have had difficulty understanding the significance that this New Covenant would bring.  I have little doubt that they could have understood the full importance of the dry bones story or that plan God had in mind to unite the house of Israel once again.  The partial fulfillment was about placing them back in their homeland, but in their return with Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah found in other prophetical books is not the complete story.  

What Dry Bones and Two Sticks Means for Us

     It is now safe to conclude that we can understand the relevance of the new covenant promised in the thirty-sixth chapter since we live at a time when this prophecy is now history, yet only partly so.  But we can also comprehend the deeper meaning of the dry bone story.  I asked the kids in my Sunday School class to share what they know about the second coming of Christ.  One thing they knew for sure was that Jesus was returning in the clouds.  So, I asked them to describe any preliminary signs one could look for to signal Jesus return.  One shared, a trumpet will sound.  I was pretty impressed with that young ladies’ knowledge.  But, there is more revealed about this second coming found in the 24th chapter of Matthew. 

     Looking at gospel according to Matthew we are warned, “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” (Matthew 24:23–24 (ESV)) Wasn’t that what Ezekiel had also been fighting against?  We can have greater assurance that we will not miss Christs’ return when we know the signs to look for.  According to the Bible, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Matthew 24:29–31 (ESV)

     Likewise, Paul gives the church in Thessalonica this hope of Christs' return when he shares this in his first Thessalonians letter.  “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”  (1 Thessalonians 4:16–18 (ESV))

     Paul also teaches that we will discard our old earthly bodies and replace them with new heavenly bodies. 

“We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing.  For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.  God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee, he has given us his Holy Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 5:2–5 (NLT))   Doesn't this passage sound a bit like the dry bones story found in Ezekiel?  Also in Revelations, the two sticks story concludes with God, himself dwelling among us.  Listen to how Revelations describes this event.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Revelations 21:1-4 (NLT))

Just like the Israelite’s who saw their return to Jerusalem in three waves beginning with Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah and the reuniting of their kingdom in the near-term, brought hope.  We can have confidence in the far-term prophecy that awaits its’ fulfillment; with this, we have hope!   

Seeing the Bigger Picture

How easy it is for us to become distracted by what we hope for this week, this month, the next season, or next year.  How can your eternal hope be communicated to someone who is without hope this week?