Sermons

Dry bones

21 February 2010

Let me set the scene a little bit from our scripture lesson.
Ancient Israel had been conquered & they had been taken as prisoners, as captives to a strange, foreign land.
For them, everything was strange & different because they were in a completely different culture with different customs, language, food…the whole 9 yards.
As the years passed, home seemed like an impossible dream & their faith seemed just as distant.
So God gives Ezekiel a vision to preach to the Jews that were in his area of captivity.
Let us look then at Ezekiel 37:1-14.
Ezekiel 37:1 “The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones.”
Maybe the Lord took Ezekiel to a former battlefield. Valleys were a common place for war since it was flat & a good place to “duke it out”.
v.2-3 “Then He caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley; and indeed they were very dry. And He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
That is a great question.
If you were knee deep in a pile of dry bones as far as the eye could see....what would your response be?
I would say, these bones are deader than a doornail, deader than a mackerel, deader than dead.
As Ernie Harwell used to say after a home run, “It’s loooong gone!”
Notice in v.2 that God caused Ezekiel to pass by the bones all over the field.
He had to survey, look at & cover the entire field.
We hope spring is just around the corner.
So it is a great time of year to also walk around & examine our life.
In spiritual terms, take a spiritual survey of our life.
Are you closer to God than you were last spring?
Do you love Him more?
Do you have more of a hunger for God’s word?
Are there areas you need to surrender?
Are there areas you need to grow in?
I think there are 2 vital questions we can ask ourselves this morning from this passage:
Q#1: How do you look @ things in our life?
I’m not talking about is the glass ½ full or ½ empty.
I’m talking about do you look at things as they are, or...
do you look @ things through the eyes of Jesus?

a. Do you see the beggar and his shabby clothes or....
do you see a man lost in a pit of sin w/o a ladder

b. Do you see the woman with 6 children from 4 fathers, a welfare check, immoral/loose lifestyle or... do you see a woman in desperate need of a Man, a Man whose hands were pierced?

c. Do you see the ornery kid in need of more attention than anyone can give, who no one loves and no one wants to put up with...or...
do you see that child as a child of God with the potential of being the next Billy Graham or Mother Teresa?

d. Do you see the trials of your life as unnecessary hurdles where God is just playing games with you?
Do you focus on the pain & the problems or...
Do you see the refining fire of the Holy Spirit shaping & forming & molding you more into the image of Jesus by using those trials, pain or problems?
We must see life through God’s eyes & we can only do that when we spend time with Him in prayer, in His Word & time spend with other believers.

Q#1: How do you look @ things…
Q#2: Do you believe God is bigger than what’s the matter?
Notice that God asked Ezekiel if he thought those bones could live.
What would you say if you in Ezekiel’s sandals & you were looking over a field of dry bones?
I think similar questions for us today are simple:
Is there a dry life God cannot touch?
Is there anything that God cannot do?
Is there anything too big for God?
Is there a life so wrong He can’t make it right?
Is there a dry heart He cannot make alive?
Is there a family too unraveled God cannot weave it back together?
Are there any hurts which He cannot heal?
Is there any disease beyond His power to remove?
Is there any sin too deep the Blood of Jesus cannot cleanse? No, No, No, No, No, No, No & No!
You may be here today & feel as if your life is nothing but a heap of dry bones.
Oh, how I want to say to you that God is the solution to whatever you are facing in your life!
He can touch your life as no one can.
In Rev. 1:8, God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega”...“who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
He is the beginning and the end.
He wants to be our all in all.
He is the answer to whatever problem you are facing.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” - Jn. 14:6
John 6:48 tells us that He is “the bread of life”, so Jesus is the only One who can satisfy your hungering in life.
In John 15:5, Jesus tells us that “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
I’m here to tell you that without Christ, I can do nothing & I am nothing without Him & His power.
v.5b-6 “He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for w/o Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”
What happens to a branch that is cut off from the vine? It withers.
Attach yourself to God & you will live & grow & bear fruit.
Over in John 7:37, Jesus tells us “If any man thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (He spoke this about the Holy Spirit.)
It is absolutely awful to be absolutely thirsty, isn’t it?
I’m talking about being painfully parched.
Jesus paints us a very clear picture of what life w/o Him is like! Are you thirsty this morning?
I’m here to tell you that only God can satisfy that thirst in life.
Everything the world tries to get you to drink does not satisfy & leaves you more thirsty than you were before.
Jesus says, “If any man thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.”
The answer to the question “why are our spiritual lives dry and dusty?” is simple.
Our spiritual lives are dry either on purpose or by neglect when we separate ourselves from God.
The way to a richer & fuller relationship with God is found in v.3-14.
1. v.4 - “hear the word of the Lord!”
As soon as Ezekiel obeyed God & started preaching to all these bones, they started rattling around, connecting & forming back into living forms.
What was dead, then arose!
Does that sound familiar?
It sounds like what Jesus did on the third day.
Like these dry bones, He was resurrected.

Do you realize that resurrection is contrary to nature? Everything in nature is deteriorating or dying.
Making something come alive which was dead can only be found in God.
And He is in the business of resurrecting lives.

The bones came to life by the preaching of the Word!
If you feel your spiritual life is dry or even dead, hear or read the Word & you will come alive.
Romans 10:17 “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Get in church, get in His Word, get in prayer, listen to Christian radio, Christian music, Christian tapes throughout the week…surround yourself with the Word in every possible way.
A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going. After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit him. It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire. Guessing the reason for his pastor’s visit, the man welcomed him & after some casual conversation, he led him to a big chair near the fireplace & waited.
The pastor made himself comfortable but said nothing. In the grave silence, he watched the fire flicker and spark around the burning logs. After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all by itself. Then, he sat back in his chair, still silent.
The host watched all this quietly, but in fascination as the one lone ember’s flame diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more. Soon it was cold and “dead as a doornail.”
Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.
Just before the pastor was ready to leave, he picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire. Immediately it began to glow once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.
As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said, “Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the fiery sermon. I shall be back in church next Sunday.”
My day and my outlook is totally different after I have spent time in His Word.
Discouragement disappears as I devote daily devotion to the Divine.
There is no room for fear for I have been filled with His Spirit.
Impatience is inconceivable as an infilling of His infinite love wells up.
Let’s be totally honest, without His Word, there is plenty of room for all those things.
Without His Word, it is like a plant without water & the dryness of the soil chokes all life out of the leaves.

#1 is hear the word of the Lord…
2. Seek more of God’s Spirit to dwell in us
v.14 “I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land.”
It is interesting that the word of the Lord resurrected the bones into living forms, but until God breathed life into them, they were not alive.
v. 7 “the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over; but there was no breath in them.”
When breath was put into them from the four winds, the very breath of God then we find in v.10, “and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army.”
Living and the breath of God are connected in another familiar passage from Gen. 2:7 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
We only have half the equation if we are saved, but not sanctified. We can be saved from our sins and our lives can be turned from dry bones back to life,
but until we have the very presence and power of His Spirit dwelling in our lives we can never fully live for Him.
This speaks to us not only as individuals, but also as a church body. It is only through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit that we can become an exceedingly great army.
We can do nothing without Him.
Yet, with Him, we can do all things!
I wonder if there might be some here today that need a touch from God. I know that we all go through dry times.
Even pastors go through them believe it or not.
Sometimes you feel as if you are reading the Word instead of feasting upon it.
Sometimes you feel as if you are talking to yourself instead of talking to God.
If you have felt a little dry lately in your spiritual walk with God, I want to tell you that He can fill your cup.
I think the temptation when we have dry times is to blame God that He is not closer. It is like the sign I read once, “If God is not close, who moved?”
Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Topics: renewal

Books Referenced: Ezekiel

Names Referenced: Ezekiel