Jim McGuiggan
It’s all about faith. Israel should have known it was through death, promise, death, resurrection, fullness of life and fulfillment of promise. Listen to me. Listen. When Jesus speaks about himself,
his dying, he never speaks about it dying end of story. He always speaks of it as dying and rising. And when he says, as he does in Luke 24, twice, when he says to the guys on the road to Emmaus, ⁓ fools, slow of heart to believe.
all that the prophet said, how that the messiah is to suffer and then be raised to come to glory. When he says that, when he says all the prophets and all of that, he’s not talking about 25 independent verses.
He’s talking about the whole story is told. If you read the Old Testament in the light of Jesus Christ, Jesus will say, you see all of that death and God bringing life out of death? It’s all about me. It’s all about me. You see when he does that with Abraham?
You see, when he does it with Israel, bringing them out of exile, it’s always life from the dead. And I, that’s me. I’m no different. That’s my story. And that’s how he does it with me. I die according to his will.
I die.
he brings me to life again. Now, in the middle of all of that story, and the exile carried off, and people dying, and war going on, all of that happening in a world, the shape of it God didn’t make, we make, war and killing one another and doing this, that, and the other. In the middle of all of that, this death and feebleness
Inability to save yourself. Inability to raise yourself. Inability to start all over. All of that is going on, don’t you see? And I’ve mentioned it, but let me mention it again, that in Ezekiel 37: 1 to 14, Ezekiel, dry bones, big valley, speak to the bones. The bones
spoken to. They all come together, knee bone connected to this. Then skin and sinew come over them, a big valley full of cadavers. And God says, what about this? Can it live? Speak to the wind. Speak to the Spirit. And the wind comes and the breath of God enters into that nation. He tells us in 37:14
All of these stand for the nation of Israel. And I’m going to bring them out of their graves in exile. The whole story, the whole story is about human inability, human weakness. It’s all about being dead. And God, Abraham, Adam and Eve,
eat and you’ll die. And they die, but God brings life again. Abraham, poor thing. ⁓ and the world die, but through the waters God brings no one his family. It’s all about trouble and weakness, feebleness and human inability, and through death to life.