An Apostate Comes Home

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Monday, May 10, 2019

Again a message came to me from the Lord:  “Son of man, take a piece of wood and carve on it these words: ‘This represents Judah and its allied tribes.’ Then take another piece and carve these words on it:  ‘This represents Ephraim and the northern tribes of Israel.’  Now hold them together in your hand as if they were one piece of wood.  When your people ask you what your actions mean, say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will take Ephraim and the northern tribes and join them to Judah.  I will make them one piece of wood in my hand.’  “Then hold out the pieces of wood you have inscribed, so the people can see them.  And give them this message from the Sovereign Lord:  I will gather the people of Israel from among the nations.  I will bring them home to their own land from the places where they have been scattered.  I will unify them into one nation on the mountains of Israel.  One king will rule them all; no longer will they be divided into two nations or into two kingdoms.  They will never again pollute themselves with their idols and vile images and rebellion, for I will save them from their sinful apostasy.  I will cleanse them.  Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.  Ezekiel 37:15-23

I learned a long time ago that interpreting Scripture is to resist reading-into a passage what you want to see.  But there are immutable principles contained in Old Testament promises (to Israel, for instance) that apply across all experience.

God did not want a divided Israel any more than He would want a divided church.  However, God would not approve of a polluted, but united church either.  In God’s message to Ezekiel, the wooden pieces represented the divided kingdoms, put back together to be one united Israel.  The caveat for God’s covenant people is that re-uniting isn’t the whole deal; sin, pollution and apostasy cannot remain.  If Israel would continue to enjoy the blessing of God’s promised covenant they must put away their rebellious ways.  Apostasy (being fallen) must go!

In keeping with ascribing the nature of Israel’s relationship with God to the contemporary church, I see a parallel in the struggle of my own Methodist tribe.  There has been a decades-long struggle for unity in a dilemma over the acceptance of LGBTQ+ persons as normative and co-equally acceptable with heterosexuality.  This conundrum cannot be resolved absent from the apostate coming home.  The question then is, which side is apostate?

That IS the bottom line.  Either the LGBTQ+ are willful sinners and must repent of their behavior, or the Traditionalists are being Pharisaical, again-nailing Christ to the cross, and persecuting true believers; in which case, those are the ones who must come to the altar and repent.  Without humble repentance this impasse will continue like the two wood pieces of Israel, arms folded, unwilling to face each other, and refusing to come together; we remain the divided apostate church.

In this state I am so reminded of two children, fighting, angry, churlish, truculent, and so very far from their parents’ heart-hope to see maturity develop.  These children are fighting each other and cannot see how their real enemy is within, each thinking the other is the problem, when their own attitude is the real issue.

To quote Forrest Gump’s mama, stupid is as stupid does.

It would seem to me we are defining ourselves by our behavior, and Father God isn’t at all pleased with His offspring.  Perhaps it would be a good thing to divide the wood pieces and go to our neutral corners, face the wall and return to the table when we can be civil.

For You Today

I would invite you to join me in not worrying too much about the tremendous stress we see in today’s culture over the sexuality war and how it is dividing the church into fragments.  End time portions of Scripture predict the apostate church, and we are inexorably moving towards that day.  Keep your head clear to see the fields white for harvest and keep your heart open to love everyone!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Christian Rohlfs [Public domain] via  Wikimedia Commons  
             Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©