Dry Bones on Display

If I were to ask you a simple question- I would already have a good idea of what your response would be. To give you an idea of how I already know the context of your response and my credibility in asking you this question, I will tell you a fact. I have gone throughout downtown asking this question, sparking discussions that have often been above my level of intelligence. As I look back upon these conversations I realize that often times my words were not my own. They were in fact, Christ's.

What is wrong with the world.


My reasoning for dismissing the rules of grammar? I am not looking for your response, I am asking you to quietly hold your worldview in your mind as your read my next few words to you.



Adultery
Divorce
Sexual Promiscuity
Idolatry
Greed
Anger
Ignorance
Death
Lies
Hate
War
Pain
Suffering
Cancer
Suicide
Depression
Poverty
Corruption
Porn Addiction
Drug Addiction
Lust
Emptiness

The list literally goes on forever. We as a people often group together to try and fix these things. Drug Addiction? We will send you to rehab. Porn Addiction? We go set up accountability groups within the Church. Depression? We have pills that can fix you. We come up with all these treatments for all these life symptoms. They work, but how well do they really work? They need something beyond themselves.

We as a people treat the symptoms, yet ignore the cause.


What is causing all of these symptoms?

sin.

Our failure in addressing, the root cause of our symptoms only dig us deeper.We believe that we know what can fix what is wrong with the world, yet we fail to see the lack of completion in our treatment of them. We are called to go to the Lord in times of trial. Rehab, accountability partners, and sometimes medication are wonderful things that Jesus uses to help us. However, we must use them without a foundation built upon Christ. Often times things are going on in our lives that we try to hide. We put on this mask of imagination; a mask that we conjure up for ourselves. We create our own identity, instead of God being our identity. When Adam and Eve came to the realization that they were in sin and naked, they covered themselves with Fig Leaves, desperately trying to cover themselves and be something they simple were not [sinless]. Now apply this to your life. We all have a fig leaf. There is not one human on the face of the earth who does not have a "Fig Leaf" that they are desperately trying to hide behind.

What is your fig leaf?

[Picture this]You lay your head down upon your pillow one night and go to sleep. You slip into a dream. You are in the middle of a desert, but yet there is a crowd of people surrounding you. You are in the middle of a people creating a circle of people looking down upon you. You are standing there. What are the people staring and pointing at? You look to the ground before you. A skeleton is laid out before you. It is your skeleton. Panic sets inside of you. You look for something around you, dirt, grass, stones, ANYTHING. You one desire at this moment is to cover your skeleton. You have to cover your bones. People are seeing inside of you and your deepest darkest struggles are exposed to the people you most want to hide them from. What will the people thing of you? You grab a fist full of dirt, throwing them upon your skeleton, but to no avail. Now the people are staring at you. You Stand up and look hold up your hands. You skin is slowly fading away. You are sinking. You are becoming the skeleton that you once hid from the world. What will you hide behind now? The people are staring, pointing, whispering, talking, gazing, taunting, and screaming. You are screaming, yet no one hears you. You have become the dry bones that you spent your entire existence trying to dispose. You wake up in a desperate sweat and breathing heavily. You realize, that your largest fear is your Dry Bones being exposed.

"All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me." Psalm 22:17

When you look at the mirror what do you see? How do you see yourself? Everyone is hiding behind something. We all have this preconceived notion that other people are constantly looking and evaluating our every move. In reality, everyone is only worried about what others thing. Their only worry is to hide their Dry Bones.  In Ezekiel 37 we see The Valley of Dry Bones. Such as the Dry Bones in Chapter 37, we must be set alive by the breath of our Lord. "Like unburied skeletons, the people were in a state of living death, pining away with no end to their judgment in sight."
                          (Read more:http://www.gotquestions.org/valley-dry-bones.html#ixzz2gtwbZc00)

He  alone can make our Dry Bones lovely and pure. Why should we hide our lives away and pretend to put of an illusion of contentment? Why so many fig leaves? God is calling us out, like He did Adam and Eve. We as a people of Christ should cease to hide behind earthly things and proudly proclaim who Christ has made us (even our Dry bones and every dirty human thing about us). 

Just as my picture above describes, our fig leaves will not last forever; they fade. We cannot hide forever. Even more important, when we look at ourselves in the mirror we do not see our fig leaf. We see our true raw Dry Bones. Jesus does not see our fig leaves. He knows our true hearts.

Our private lives bleed through into our public lives (fig leaves).

What is wrong with the world?