We Be All Dead Men - Ron

In our Lifegroup (that’s a fancy name for Sunday School that means the same thing), we are studying through Exodus and the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. A phrase caught my attention the other day that never did before. In Exodus 12:33, when the Egyptians are urging the Israelites to leave, they say, “We be all dead men.” That may not strike you like a lightning bolt, but it did me. I've felt that before. To my core.

Think about this, 600,000 Israelite men, and perhaps two million Israelites in all, were leaving Egypt. They had been slaves there for centuries. But the Egyptian people had been so ravaged by the judgments of God, that they were eager to see the slaves go. In fact, they enriched the Israelites as they went! Why?

In the mind of the Egyptians, the judgment of God was death. The tenth plague had touched every house in Egypt. The firstborn of each household had died, from the least to the greatest. The future was clear: We be all dead men. Or, in the words of Young’s Literal Translation, “We are all dead.” Essentially, they are saying, “No one can stand before this kind of power. If we do not appease this God, we are as good as dead.”

This is the beginning of a healthy fear of the Lord. Not the end of it, but at least a start. This is what the seafaring men experienced during the storm brought to them on behalf of Jonah. When they found out who Jonah was, where he came from, and which god (really: God) he served, the Bible says they were “exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this?” Their second question is logical, “What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us?” (Jonah 1:10-11)

What are they saying? The same thing that the Egyptians said, “We be all dead men. If there is no escape from the wrath of this God, we are dead.” It is likely that the fear of God these men experienced turned into a full and reverential fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7).

In Isaiah, we see a similar, but different use of the same sort of phrase. Isaiah 59:10 says, “We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.” The ESV translates that last phrase as: “among those in full vigor we are like dead men,” and the American Standard Version says, “among them that are lusty we are as dead men.” The New American Standard version agrees mores closely with the ESV and ASV in saying, “Among those who are vigorous we are like dead men.”

What is the point of this discourse? Why are we here, and where are we going?

We don’t like to talk much about sin and failure. Check that. We don’t like to talk much about our own sin and failure. We are loud and proud to point out the sin and wickedness of the world. And rightly so, I think. Many of the things our society applauds ought to make us sick. But if you read my last post, you know that I reached a point where, like the people of God in Isaiah, I thought, “I’m a dead man. Whether it is light or dark, I’m falling over. I’m standing in a field of plenty but getting nothing. I’m dead.”

Some of us live there. I lived there for far too long. We go to church and get nothing. We read our Bible and we are as the dead. Life and blessings surround us, but none of it gets through. We grow worse. More withdrawn. Angrier. Confusion reigns. Bitterness grows. Why? Not always, but many times it is the same thing that caused the Egyptians to rush their enslaved workforce out of the country. This is the same thing that caused the sailors to toss Jonah overboard to his death and the same thing that caused the Israelites to “roar all like bears and mourn sore like doves” (Isaiah 59:11).

It is the judgment of God. We long to escape it, but like the Egyptians, our fear is infantile and not reverential. Therefore, we actually push God and things that remind us of Him further and further away, while the inner man screams out to us that these are the very things we need the most. We languish in this turmoil and are as dead men.

But to paraphrase the first two verses of Isaiah 59, “It isn’t as if God’s hand is suddenly too short to reach you in your distress and pain, and it isn’t as if His ear has stopped working so that He cannot hear your cries. Rather, your iniquity has separated you from Him, and your sins have hid Him from you. He will not hear.”

Verse nine of the same chapter (paraphrased again) says, “This is why judgment seems so far from you and all things seem unjust. This is why you are waiting for light that doesn’t come and are longing for brightness but experiencing only dark.”

I have had sin in my life before that I feel like I honestly confessed about 1,876 times. I legitimately thought that every time would be the last time. Before God, I can honestly say that I would bow my head in the quiet shame of my heart and admit to Him my hatred of my sin and failure. I could seek His face and forgiveness and in some small measure feel forgiven.

But I never felt out of the woods. Life was full of panic; always worried that somehow my sin would be exposed. I was always ready with my excuses. “Oh, that was a long time ago,” I would say. Or, “I’ve been experiencing victory over that for some time now!” But neither of those statements ever felt deeply true.

I remember reaching out to a relative once and asking him for advice and for guidance. It was the only time that I honestly poured my heart out to someone else about my struggle.

His response was cold and short. There was no offer of continued support. He offered the Sunday School answers that I could have given myself; answers that had never helped. These were the answers handed out by the church in bulk, like some sort of ‘Get Well’ grab bag at a surprise party for the sick. Basically, a way of feeling like you have helped someone without actually getting down into the mud with them and…you know…helping them.

The reason that he could offer me neither help nor hope was because his struggle with sin was still raging. It consumed his private life. Eventually, it consumed his public life as well. He could not give me answers that he did not have; yet he could not be honest with me, either.

Look, I get it. It is a huge and scary thing to try and be transparent when you have a reputation and testimony and a family and maybe even a ministry. For pity’s sake, if King David felt fear and trepidation in the face of his sin, going so far as murder to cover it up, why are we surprised when Christians choose to struggle alone for years and years rather than seek help?

But this leaves us as dead men. Our churches become full of dead men. Our homes become run by dead men. So we have to have the conversation. For the sake of our brothers and sisters, we need to have the conversation. For the sake of our marriages and families, we need to have the conversation. For the sake of our churches, we need to have the conversation. And for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ and His fame, we have to have the conversation!

The broken cannot be fixed by the crippled. We who are shackled cannot untether those who are bound. We who are slaves cannot lead captives to freedom. And furthermore, I do not think that God ever intended for us to live secret lives isolated from the help of our brothers because we fear isolation from their fellowship.

Maybe the church at-large hasn’t been great about living out Galatians 6:1-2. Or maybe, just maybe, we are so internally judgmental of others that we assume everyone else will be the same toward us. Just an honest thought. Here are those verses, in King Jimmy’s English: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

John Gill says this about verse two, and I find it extremely helpful: “saints bear one another's [burdens], not by making satisfaction for them, which they are not able to do, nor by conniving at them, and suffering them upon them, which they should not do, but by gently reproving them, by comforting them when overpressed with guilt, by sympathizing with them in their sorrow, by praying to God for to manifest his pardoning grace to them, and by forgiving them themselves, so far as they are faults committed against them.”

What if this was the kind of response we found in our churches? What kind of freedom could you experience if you knew this would be the response from your brothers and sisters in Christ? It is eventually what I found. I found a group of Christian men that did everything John Gill wrote about. Gentle reproving when needed. Comfort when guilt threatened to capsize rather than a piling on of more. Sympathy from them as fellows running the same race and subject to the same failures. Genuine concern and prayers for grace.

1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Without this, we become as dead men. What a sad testimony for those whom the Lord has quickened. To become as dead beneath the weight of our guilt and shame. We who are under no condemnation live beneath it out of our own pride and at our own peril.

Confess your sins to God and your faults one to another. Bear each other’s burdens. I bet you’ll find there are many others like you and me. Withering on the vine. Plugged in to life, but as dead men. It must not be this way. The world is searching for life abundantly and we Christians are connected to the source. We dare not be as dead men.