Laurel First Church of God
Ezekiel: "Can These Bones Live?"
Sunday Message
Locations & Times
1635 Grandview Drive, Laurel, MS 39440
1635 Grandview Dr, Laurel, MS 39440, USA
Sunday 10:30 AM
Ezekiel: the Dry Bones
"Can These Bones Live?"
Introduction
It doesn't take long. In fact as little as overnight, chicken bones can start to stink in the garbage. You have probably noticed it too. If you make, eat chicken, with the bones in it and put the bones into the trash, but forget to take the trash out for more than 24 hours, the whole house will smell like rotting flesh.
Now, bird bones are much lighter than mammal bones and as such they break down faster, dry up faster and begin to smell sooner. And, because of their lightweight, we are encouraged not to give chicken bones to our pets. They splinter easily and can get sideways in the throat of our companions causing pain, suffering and even death. Never mind that it doesn't seem to have the same effect on the fox who robs the hen house.
Yet, you can give your dog a heavy, thick, strong ham hock bone and she will be able to chew on it for days and sometimes weeks.
But what about human bones?
About the only thing which survives from a decaying corpse is the bone. It is true for animals as well. The soft tissue deteriorates rapidly and the hard, calcium forged bones can be found decades, even centuries later. In fact, it is the large bones of ancient animals that form the fossils which attest to their life, even thousands of years after their death.
Can These Bones Live?
Jurassic Fiction
One of the most popular movies in theaters this summer was Jurassic World. There are six movies in the Jurassic Park series, each of them based on the assumption that modern science can take latent, old, decayed bones of dinosaurs and use some portion or DNA to re-create living, breathing animals in the modern world.
Now, Imagine for a few moments that you have wondered into the Badlands of South Dakota and into a previously unexplored canyon and found some dry bones lying on top of the ground. Would your first question be: "Can these bones live?" Would it be your second or third question? In fact though you may try to imagine what the animal looked like, sounded like, acted like, you would probably not conceive of the possibility that dry bones could somehow come back to life. And as the movies, each of them, has pointed out, it might be rather disastrous to try.
God's Query for Ezekiel
Yet, this is exactly what God does when he takes Ezekiel in a vision to a valley of dry human bones. Ezekiel doesn't ask the question, God does.
Turn with me to the book of Ezekiel in your Bibles, chapter 37. Listen and read along.
Ezekiel 37:1-10
***** Play Video*******
The Vision of Dry Bones
The vision of dry bones, was just that, a vision. Ezekiel was not in some graveyard or mass grave site. He didn't witness God literally bringing dry bones to life. But... if God can create humanity from the dust of the earth (from nothing), he can surely create humanity from a pile of bones and make life again.
However, this is not the point of the vision and Ezekiel understands it. The vision is spiritual. The faith of the people of God had dried up long ago. It was many generations before that, for many families, they had forsaken Jehovah and turned to serve and offer sacrifices to human inventions. Their faith was dry. The life that God had intended for them had decomposed with an awful stench, until finally it withered away and they were spiritually "dead" in their trespasses and sins.
Now, they had been separated from the land, the spirit of God had left them, and finally they came to realize their great need of him. Finally, they recognized that the other gods they had been worshiping were lifeless and could not give life. In fact, worshiping the false gods had sucked the life right out of them and left them spiritually as a valley filled with dry bones.
Nothing Is Too Difficult for God
Ezekiel demonstrates that he is a wise man. Maybe it was his training as a priest. Perhaps it was the cumulative knowledge of the visions that he had seen. Possibly, it was his knowledge of history and many miracles that he had read about God doing in the past.
Abraham and Sarah questioned God's power and his strength. He had promised them a child and it had been 25 years. They were both old. But when they questioned the visiting angel, his reply was straight forward, "Is there anything too difficult for the Lord?"
Ezekiel does not fall into the trap. He does not give into his 5 senses. He does not rely on human wisdom. "O Sovereign Lord, you alone know." (37:3)
David had demonstrated his faith in God's provision, God's supply, God's ability to do abundantly more than we could ask or think, when he went to battle against the giant, Goliath. The three Hebrew Children had demonstrated their unflinching trust in God to save them, even in the face of the overwhelming heat of the fiery furnace. Elisha did not shrink back from the challenge and asked God to make the ax-head float after one of the prophets had lost it in the river. Nothing is impossible for God.
This is the message that Jesus gives to us as he tells how difficult it is for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The disciples were amazed and dismayed at the same time. "If this is true, how can anyone be saved?" Jesus stated the undeniable fact that guides each of us on the path to salvation and keeps each of us pressing toward the goal of salvation, "With man this is impossible, with God all things are possible."
Applying God's Message to Ezekiel
It is important for us to remember the message that God gives to Ezekiel in this passage. The message is still applicable today. God is still able to give life to dry bones.
Many would have given up on the 15 year old gang leader. He was knee deep in drugs, crime, violence and blood. We would be justified if we said that he was a spiritually dry bag of bones. But one preacher stayed out on the streets preaching. David Wilkerson believed that God was able to take the hard heart of stone out of Nicky Cruz and give him a new heart that would respond to his call.
But it doesn't happen just for young people. I have a dear friend who came to salvation after 69 years of living an empty, hollow life. It has been his pleasure for the last decade to serve God with a new fervor, a new vigor, a new life. And he is passionate about Jesus. Everywhere he goes, to everyone he sees, he speaks of Jesus and his patient love for those who are best described as the walking dead. (Bob Harrity).
We have often heard testimony from the Hellfighters and the women from Teen Challenge about how their life was upside down, about how they were messed up, tossed out, arrested, separated from family and friends by their own choices, living a life that could best be described by a valley of dry bones.
But then something happened. Then, they entered their own valley, then they reached rock bottom. God took them on a journey away from everything familiar, into exile, and there in that place of amplified sorrow and sadness, weeping and contrition, he did it once more. He breathed life into the lifeless. He poured out his spirit on their dry bones. He called out to the dead and brought them back to life.
God is able. God is still able. God can raise up dead men and women, today.
Invitation
Listen, if you are in a hopeless, lifeless, dead end existence, God is calling out to you today. If the stench of death is all over you like yesterday's chicken bones, God is able. If you are a burnt out, burnt up, lifeless bag of dry bones, God wants to restore life to you, to give back what the devil has stolen from you. God wants to take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. God wants to deliver you from your body of death and give you life, real life, spiritual life, everlasting life.
And if there is someone in your life, in your family, in your community who is hard-hearted, unforgiving, mean, cruel, violent, insolent, vicious, hopped up on every kind of drug, immoral, slanderous, ungodly, I believe that you need to hear that God is still in the business of raising up an army out of the dry bones of life. Don't give up. Don't quit praying. Don't assume that they are too far gone for God to reach. If they still have breath in their fleshly bodies, it is not too late for God to transform them, redeem them, give them spiritual life.
Why did Jesus tell Nicodemus that if a person wanted to enter the Kingdom of God that he had to be born again? Why did he say that a person had to be born of the Spirit?
He said these things because none of us is naturally oriented to God. We are all born with a curse. We are all born with a nature that seeks selfish ends. We are all spiritually dead lifeless bags of dry bones. But what God has done for us, he can do for others. What God has done, he will continue to do. He wants to bring as many people as possible into the life giving power of his Holy Spirit and give them real life, true life, eternal life.
God is still in the business of making dry bones live.
"Can These Bones Live?"
Introduction
It doesn't take long. In fact as little as overnight, chicken bones can start to stink in the garbage. You have probably noticed it too. If you make, eat chicken, with the bones in it and put the bones into the trash, but forget to take the trash out for more than 24 hours, the whole house will smell like rotting flesh.
Now, bird bones are much lighter than mammal bones and as such they break down faster, dry up faster and begin to smell sooner. And, because of their lightweight, we are encouraged not to give chicken bones to our pets. They splinter easily and can get sideways in the throat of our companions causing pain, suffering and even death. Never mind that it doesn't seem to have the same effect on the fox who robs the hen house.
Yet, you can give your dog a heavy, thick, strong ham hock bone and she will be able to chew on it for days and sometimes weeks.
But what about human bones?
About the only thing which survives from a decaying corpse is the bone. It is true for animals as well. The soft tissue deteriorates rapidly and the hard, calcium forged bones can be found decades, even centuries later. In fact, it is the large bones of ancient animals that form the fossils which attest to their life, even thousands of years after their death.
Can These Bones Live?
Jurassic Fiction
One of the most popular movies in theaters this summer was Jurassic World. There are six movies in the Jurassic Park series, each of them based on the assumption that modern science can take latent, old, decayed bones of dinosaurs and use some portion or DNA to re-create living, breathing animals in the modern world.
Now, Imagine for a few moments that you have wondered into the Badlands of South Dakota and into a previously unexplored canyon and found some dry bones lying on top of the ground. Would your first question be: "Can these bones live?" Would it be your second or third question? In fact though you may try to imagine what the animal looked like, sounded like, acted like, you would probably not conceive of the possibility that dry bones could somehow come back to life. And as the movies, each of them, has pointed out, it might be rather disastrous to try.
God's Query for Ezekiel
Yet, this is exactly what God does when he takes Ezekiel in a vision to a valley of dry human bones. Ezekiel doesn't ask the question, God does.
Turn with me to the book of Ezekiel in your Bibles, chapter 37. Listen and read along.
Ezekiel 37:1-10
***** Play Video*******
The Vision of Dry Bones
The vision of dry bones, was just that, a vision. Ezekiel was not in some graveyard or mass grave site. He didn't witness God literally bringing dry bones to life. But... if God can create humanity from the dust of the earth (from nothing), he can surely create humanity from a pile of bones and make life again.
However, this is not the point of the vision and Ezekiel understands it. The vision is spiritual. The faith of the people of God had dried up long ago. It was many generations before that, for many families, they had forsaken Jehovah and turned to serve and offer sacrifices to human inventions. Their faith was dry. The life that God had intended for them had decomposed with an awful stench, until finally it withered away and they were spiritually "dead" in their trespasses and sins.
Now, they had been separated from the land, the spirit of God had left them, and finally they came to realize their great need of him. Finally, they recognized that the other gods they had been worshiping were lifeless and could not give life. In fact, worshiping the false gods had sucked the life right out of them and left them spiritually as a valley filled with dry bones.
Nothing Is Too Difficult for God
Ezekiel demonstrates that he is a wise man. Maybe it was his training as a priest. Perhaps it was the cumulative knowledge of the visions that he had seen. Possibly, it was his knowledge of history and many miracles that he had read about God doing in the past.
Abraham and Sarah questioned God's power and his strength. He had promised them a child and it had been 25 years. They were both old. But when they questioned the visiting angel, his reply was straight forward, "Is there anything too difficult for the Lord?"
Ezekiel does not fall into the trap. He does not give into his 5 senses. He does not rely on human wisdom. "O Sovereign Lord, you alone know." (37:3)
David had demonstrated his faith in God's provision, God's supply, God's ability to do abundantly more than we could ask or think, when he went to battle against the giant, Goliath. The three Hebrew Children had demonstrated their unflinching trust in God to save them, even in the face of the overwhelming heat of the fiery furnace. Elisha did not shrink back from the challenge and asked God to make the ax-head float after one of the prophets had lost it in the river. Nothing is impossible for God.
This is the message that Jesus gives to us as he tells how difficult it is for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The disciples were amazed and dismayed at the same time. "If this is true, how can anyone be saved?" Jesus stated the undeniable fact that guides each of us on the path to salvation and keeps each of us pressing toward the goal of salvation, "With man this is impossible, with God all things are possible."
Applying God's Message to Ezekiel
It is important for us to remember the message that God gives to Ezekiel in this passage. The message is still applicable today. God is still able to give life to dry bones.
Many would have given up on the 15 year old gang leader. He was knee deep in drugs, crime, violence and blood. We would be justified if we said that he was a spiritually dry bag of bones. But one preacher stayed out on the streets preaching. David Wilkerson believed that God was able to take the hard heart of stone out of Nicky Cruz and give him a new heart that would respond to his call.
But it doesn't happen just for young people. I have a dear friend who came to salvation after 69 years of living an empty, hollow life. It has been his pleasure for the last decade to serve God with a new fervor, a new vigor, a new life. And he is passionate about Jesus. Everywhere he goes, to everyone he sees, he speaks of Jesus and his patient love for those who are best described as the walking dead. (Bob Harrity).
We have often heard testimony from the Hellfighters and the women from Teen Challenge about how their life was upside down, about how they were messed up, tossed out, arrested, separated from family and friends by their own choices, living a life that could best be described by a valley of dry bones.
But then something happened. Then, they entered their own valley, then they reached rock bottom. God took them on a journey away from everything familiar, into exile, and there in that place of amplified sorrow and sadness, weeping and contrition, he did it once more. He breathed life into the lifeless. He poured out his spirit on their dry bones. He called out to the dead and brought them back to life.
God is able. God is still able. God can raise up dead men and women, today.
Invitation
Listen, if you are in a hopeless, lifeless, dead end existence, God is calling out to you today. If the stench of death is all over you like yesterday's chicken bones, God is able. If you are a burnt out, burnt up, lifeless bag of dry bones, God wants to restore life to you, to give back what the devil has stolen from you. God wants to take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. God wants to deliver you from your body of death and give you life, real life, spiritual life, everlasting life.
And if there is someone in your life, in your family, in your community who is hard-hearted, unforgiving, mean, cruel, violent, insolent, vicious, hopped up on every kind of drug, immoral, slanderous, ungodly, I believe that you need to hear that God is still in the business of raising up an army out of the dry bones of life. Don't give up. Don't quit praying. Don't assume that they are too far gone for God to reach. If they still have breath in their fleshly bodies, it is not too late for God to transform them, redeem them, give them spiritual life.
Why did Jesus tell Nicodemus that if a person wanted to enter the Kingdom of God that he had to be born again? Why did he say that a person had to be born of the Spirit?
He said these things because none of us is naturally oriented to God. We are all born with a curse. We are all born with a nature that seeks selfish ends. We are all spiritually dead lifeless bags of dry bones. But what God has done for us, he can do for others. What God has done, he will continue to do. He wants to bring as many people as possible into the life giving power of his Holy Spirit and give them real life, true life, eternal life.
God is still in the business of making dry bones live.