Credibility Gap

On January 8, during the twelfth year of our captivity, a survivor from Jerusalem came to me and said, “The city has fallen!”   Ezekiel 33:21

The bedraggled stranger was exhausted after his seven-hundred-mile journey. He walked into town, asked for directions to the house of the prophet, and said that he had bad news. Ezekiel never forgot that day.

It had been twelve years since the ten thousand exiles were deported to the Kebar River. In that time, they’d had endless discussion about what would happen next in Jerusalem. False prophets insisted the exile would be only for a short time and that soon God’s people would be back in God’s city—but that’s not what God said.

When the news of Jerusalem’s fall came, it’s hard to imagine the impact it had. Jerusalem was the city of God, and these people grew up in Sabbath school singing, “A river brings joy to the city of our God, the sacred home of the Most High. God dwells in that city; it cannot be destroyed” (Psalm 46:4-5).

How could God allow this? Had he given up on his people? God promised, “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart” (Ezekiel 36:26), but the people just said, “We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished” (37:11).

They felt there was a credibility gap between their circumstances and God’s promises. They were finding it difficult to connect the Word of God with the broken reality around them. Perhaps you’ve felt that way. The preacher talks about how the life of God, poured into the church, transforms the community. He reads the Bible’s wonderful promises, but you see the godlessness of our time and say, “We’re finished!”

There are times when the broken circumstances of life make us feel that we’re beyond the range of God’s promises, and that while they may be for other people at other times in other places, they are somehow not for us. If you have felt that, then the vision God gave to Ezekiel is for you. God did not abandon his people, and he will not abandon you.

For further reading, see Psalm 46