The Gospel According to Ezekiel, Part 2

37:1-14
The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.
And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.
And he said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered, "O Lord GOD, you know."
Then 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, and you shall live.
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD."
So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them.
Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live."
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Then he said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.'
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel.
And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people.
And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it," declares the LORD.

The Gospel According to Ezekiel, Part 1

16:4-8
"And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths.
No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!' I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'
I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.
When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine."

16:15
"But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his."

16:22
"And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood."

16:60-63
"Yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant.
Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of the covenant with you.
I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD,
that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done," declares the Lord GOD.

36:25-27
"I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
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."

36:32
"It is not for your sake that I will act," declares the Lord GOD, "let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel."

Glory which ravishes the heart

In His cross were divine holiness and vindictive justice exercised and manifested; and through His triumph, grace and mercy are exerted to the utmost. This is that glory which ravishes the hearts and satiates the souls of those that believe. For what can they desire more, what is farther needful to the rest and composure of their souls, than at one view to behold God eternally well pleased in the declaration of His righteousness and the exercise of His mercy, in order to their salvation? In due apprehensions of it let my soul live; in the faith of it let me die, and let present admiration of this glory make way for the eternal enjoyment of it in its beauty and fullness.


- John Owen, "The Glory of Christ: His office and grace" (emphases mine)

Blessed Jesus!

Blessed Jesus!

We can add nothing to you, nothing to your glory; but it is a joy of heart to us that you are what you are, that you are so gloriously exalted at the right hand of God; and we do long more fully and clearly to behold that glory, according to your prayer and promise.


- John Owen, "The Glory of Christ: His office and grace"

I will pay that which I never took

When Adam had sinned, and thereby eternally, according unto the sanction of the law, ruined himself and all his posterity, he stood ashamed, afraid, trembling, as one ready to perish for ever, under the displeasure of God. Death was that which he had deserved, and immediate death was that which he looked for. In this state the Lord Christ in the promise comes unto him, and says:

Poor creature! How woeful is thy condition! how deformed is thy appearance! What is become of the beauty, of the glory of that image of God wherein thou wast created? How hast thou taken on thee the monstrous shape and image of Satan? And yet thy present misery, thy entrance into dust and darkness, is no way to be compared with what is to ensue. Eternal distress lies at the door. But yet look up once more, and behold me, that thou mayest have some glimpse of what is in the designs of infinite wisdom, love, and grace. Come forth from thy vain shelter, thy hiding-place I will put myself into thy condition. I will undergo and bear that burden of guilt and punishment which would sink thee eternally into the bottom of hell. I will pay that which I never took; and be made temporally a curse for thee, that thou mayest attain unto eternal blessedness.

To the same purpose he speaks unto convinced sinners, in the invitation he gives them to come unto him.


- John Owen, "The Glory of Christ: His office and grace"

An addition to Jesus?

Please read this thoughtful and convicting post that my pastor linked in his blog.

Brothers and sisters, it's hard for me to know what is in my own heart. I know that, at this very moment, there is stuff lurking in there that, if I could get even a dim glimpse of it, I would cringe with horror. The closer I draw to Christ, the more I want to cry out with Isaiah, "Woe to me! I am ruined!" The more I understand and grow to love Jesus, the more I understand that what He truly did for me once and for all was something that I could never do for myself.

I believe in the Doctrines of Grace, and I follow the doctrinal convictions that Martin Luther confessed during the reformation of the Church. It is in this sense that I am what may be unfortunately labeled as a "Reformed Christian". But I want to confess to you that what pastor Ortlund is talking about in his post has lurked in my heart from time to time in the past... and may lurk there still. I am sorry, and I would ask for your forgiveness if I have treated you in a way that is not glorifying to Christ, or have made you feel that I have placed a barrier between you and myself because of doctrine.

This is why I no longer discuss doctrine with many. But the times when I cease to put into words how I feel may be the most dangerous, for even if my heart no longer makes itself be heard, it may still grow in silent ways away from a faith that places Christ completely in the center, where only He should be. If my heart is still harboring these thoughts without my knowledge, I am sorry, and I ask that God would graciously continue to refine my heart.

But Christ truly is deeper still, and it is the work and glory of Christ that is at the center of my faith, just as He was at the center of Brother Martin's faith and his reformed view of the Church.

Christ... and nothing else. Amen.

I'm dying.

Good, that got your attention. Now that I have it, I would like you to take the time to read this post and take it seriously. Not seriously, as in an overly cliché "look-at-him-he-thinks-he's-so-emo-who-does-he-think-he's-trying-to-fool" kind of way, but in an honestly serious way. I'll try not to make any jokes, to help you take it seriously. Just take the time to read, and think, whoever you are, even if I don't know you. It may be long, but please read it all, and think.

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For one reason or another, I've been thinking about death lately. I'm not entirely sure why. It's not that it's been crowding my thoughts, in an unhealthy, morbid sort of way. It's just that I've been having an abnormally sober judgment of my own life and the fact that it's ending.

I want to tell you that there will come a day when I'll close my eyes for the last time, my heart will pump its last bit of blood through my body, and my lungs will release their sustaining hold, never to expand again. It will be at that moment that I will no longer be alive, and I will never spend another waking moment in this world as I now know it. A couple days later, perhaps even a week or so, there will be a small section in the newspaper that will try to explain why it happened. It will say that my life ended because of a heart attack, or some sort of cancer, or an incurable disease, or even a car wreck. Who knows, maybe if I'm lucky it will say that I died of natural causes in my old age.

But whatever it says, it won't be true. I want to tell you that right now. Whatever the doctors say is the reason for my death will not be the truth. The true reason why my body will no longer function on that day is because I'm related to you... and because you're related to me... because we're both related to a man named Adam who lived, and died, a long time ago. I'm going to die because of the fallen state that I was born into. I was born to die, actually. I guess it won't really make sense for me to ever have to tell anyone, "I'm dying", or even for anyone to ever react to that statement. The fact is that I am dying now. I've been dying for 26 years. Nothing a doctor will ever say to me can change that.

Because I'm a Christian, I think that people believe that I'm not supposed to be afraid of that day, that I'm supposed to be happy because that's the day when I will get to see my Savior Jesus Christ in all of His glory. But I want to admit to you that that's not true. I'm kind of scared for that day, and it makes me sad to think about it. No matter how much I may think I know about resurrection and heaven, the fact is that I don't really know what it will be like. Will death hurt? Will I be scared on my death bed? What will I think about? Who will be with me? What will they be thinking about?

I get sad sometimes when I leave somebody, not knowing when I will ever see them again. But there will come a day when I will leave everyone around me forever, in a sense. My wife, my children, my friends, my family: I will never again get to see them in the same way that I see them in this life. Sure, I hope to see them in heaven, but I don't even know what that will be like. My wife won't be my wife anymore. What will she be to me? Will I remember the time I spent with her during this life? What will happen to those memories? Will my children know that I'm their father? If not, how will I feel about that?

What about the people I knew and loved who didn't look to Jesus' work on the cross for their eternal salvation, who were misled by the people around them, by their culture, and by their own hearts into thinking that God would have mercy on them because they were "pretty good people"? They will not be with me. Will I cry for them? What will I feel? I don't even want to think about what they will feel.

There's a part of me, deep down inside my emotions, that doesn't want to go, that doesn't want all of this to end. I know that I should want it to end, that I should want all of the the hurt, disease, war, hate, hunger, and worry of this world to be nothing more than a faint memory of something that once happened long ago. I know that I should want to leave and be with God now. But I don't yet. There's so much to do still. There's so much time to spend with my friends and family before I'm gone, or before they're gone. And there are so many people to talk to about Jesus. And I'm scared.

If you're reading this, and you don't know of the good news of ultimate salvation from the sting of death and from the curse of sin, and I talk to you someday (hopefully soon) about it, please don't take offense. Please don't be angry with me for it. The truth is that if I talk to you about it, I will be very scared. My heart will be beating fast in my chest, my palms will be sweaty, and my body will be warm with adrenaline. This will be happening to me because, if I talk to you about Jesus, I will be afraid of what you might think of me, of what you might say back to me. I'm afraid that you will think I'm a freak, or some sort of a brainwashed nutjob. But the very real truth, as honestly as I can tell it to you now, is that for me to find the courage to talk to you about Jesus anyway, in spite of my fear, is because I care for you. If I try to talk to you about your eternal salvation, it's because I wonder about it, and I care about it, because I care about you. If I ask to talk to you about the gospel, it's because I love you. Please don't be mad, because I'm going to be scared enough as it is. But please listen to me, because I love you. If you know that I love you, please listen to what I have to say.

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If you're reading this and you don't know what's going to happen to you on the day that you die; or you think you do, but you're not really sure; or you try not to ever think about it, and put it in the far back of your mind; or even if you once did, but you don't have a confidence or an assurance about it anymore... please talk to me. Send me an email. It doesn't matter if you don't know me. I would like to talk to you about it, even if I'm scared. If you're scared, I won't think you're silly, because I'll be scared, too, but please talk to me anyway. If you do know me, don't be alarmed if I send you an email sometime, or give you a call to talk. Please don't think I'm silly, but talk to me.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." -Romans 1:16

carignanc@gmail.com