When It All Comes Apart

INTERPRETIVE PAGE

Text: Ezekiel 37:1-10 (NLT)

C. I. T.: God promised restoration to desperate people through the power of his Word and

              Spirit.

M.O.T.: Supportive

Thesis: God gives us new hope through His Word and the Holy Spirit.

M.O.S: There have been many tragic or difficult events in the church recently.  This

             sermon is to help the congregation to see that no matter how bad things

             may seem God has the power to restore us for his service.

Title: When It All Comes Apart

Outline:

            I.  When it all comes apart, God reveals the circumstances to us (vs. 1-2).

           II.  When it all comes apart, God restores us through His Word (vs. 7-8).

          III.  When it all comes apart, God revives us through His Spirit (vs. 9-10).

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INTRODUCTION

            Do you remember back to the time when you were saved?  There was great anticipation of what God was doing, but for some reason, the newness of being a Christian wore off.  The excitement of being different seemed to fade a little.   

            One of my college roommates had a father who was a football coach.  He told me about the enthusiasm of his first game.  Signs would read things like “Destroy Pineville High,” but they lost every game.  The next year he said the signs had softened a bit, they only read things like, “Hurt Alexandria High,” and they still lost each game.  His junior year the signs started reading things like, “Maintain Dignity Against Dixie High,” but they still lost every game.  In his senior year, the year to make a difference, the signs would simply “Welcome” the other team.  I was sitting in our dorm room during our third year in college and he had opened his hometown newspaper and there in big bold letters across the front page of the paper read the head lines “Woodmont High  Breaks 72 game Losing Streak.”  A reporter later asked his dad how he could explain the new life in his football program.  He said, “All we needed was something we had lost long ago.  Somewhere around the 20th or 30th loss, our school started accepting the fact that we would always lose.  We forgot it was possible to win.  All we needed to win was the one thing that we had lost long ago.”  When the reporter pressed for what that one thing was the coach simply said, “Hope.”

            One can certainly say that our text for tonight shows us a situation of lost hope, but also God’s healing power.  

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            Follow with me as I read Ezekiel 37:1-10.  “1The LORD took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the LORD to a valley filed with bones.  2He led me around among the old, dry bones that covered the valley floor.  They were scattered everywhere across the ground.  3Then he asked me, “Son of man, can these bones become living people again?”  “O Sovereign LORD,” I replied, “you alone know the answer to that.”  4Then he said to me, “Speak to these bones and say, “Dry bones, listen to the word of the LORD!”  5This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Look! I am going to breathe into you and make you live again!  6I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin.  I will put breath into you, and you will come to life.  Then you will know that I am the LORD.  7So I spoke these words, just as he told me.  Suddenly as I spoke, there was a rattling noise all across the valley.  The bones of each body came together and attached themselves as they had been before.  8Then as I watched, muscles and flesh formed over the bones.  Then skin formed to cover their bodies, but they still had no breathe in them.  9Then he said to me, “Speak to the winds and say: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come, O breath from the four winds!  Breathe into these dead bodies so that they may live again.”  10So I spoke as he commanded me, and the wind entered the bodies, and they began to breathe.  They all came to life and stood up on their feet – a great army of them (Text, NLT).”

            In this passage, we see Ezekiel at a point when things could not have looked gloomier.  Nevertheless, God promised to restore a desperate nation through the power of His Word and Spirit (C.I.T.).  Tonight we will see how God can restore us “When It All Comes Apart” (Title).  

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I

            When it all comes Apart, God reveals the circumstances to us (vs. 1-2).  There are many reasons that we lose the freshness of our life with Jesus.  The dry bones show us a state of hopelessness.  Dry bones are the farthest of all from the possibility of living.  They are without any flesh or beauty.  They see no beauty in Christ and Christ sees no beauty in them.  They are without marrow or spirit.  They are without any activity or power of moving or changing on their own.  How does someone get in this condition?

            Sin gets in the way.  “Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold.” (Mt 24:12)  I have known godly Christians who have fallen prey to sin in their lives.  They think that it can never happen to them.  They begin to toy with sin and before long they are out of church and serving God altogether.

In 1982, “ABC Evening News” highlighted an art exhibit. It was a chair with a shotgun attached to it. It was to be viewed by sitting in the chair and staring down the gun barrel.  The gun was loaded and was set on a timer to go off sometime in the next one hundred years.  The interesting thing was that people would line to sit and stare down the shell’s path.  They knew full well that they could be shot at point blank range.  However, the odds were so great that they thought the exhilaration of staring down the barrel of a loaded gun was worth the risk.  We hear that story and we think, “How Foolish.”  Yet how many people who would never dream of sitting in that chair, live a life of gambling with sin.  They sit and toy with sin until it ultimately destroys them.  When we as Christians allow ourselves to toy with the pleasures of sin, we are not only risking our own self-destruction, but we also forfeit the joy of our salvation.  Being a child of God doesn’t have the same excitement it once had.

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            Life gets in the way.  In the parable of the sower, we see that the cares of this life cause us to loose hope.   There is so much that goes on in the world today.  Unfortunately, little of it would please God.  We allow ourselves to become so preoccupied with our situation, the problems that we face, and the tragedies that we endure that we leave God out. 

            Boredom sets in.  Have you ever come to a point in your Christian walk that you felt like you were going through life just passing time.  You are spending time in prayer, but you wonder if your prayers are even reaching the ceiling.  You come to church, but it’s more out of a duty than a genuine love for God.  If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’ve been in that place that I’ve been describing. 

Have you ever seen a sailboat race?  As long as there is wind in the sails, they are full of activity.  But, when they hit the doldrums and the wind ceases to fill the sails, things can become very tense because there is no way to steer them without wind.  The valleys we face in our lives are like that.  They are dry places where there is no joy.  They are dead places where there is no hope.  They are dangerous places because no believer should ever stay there. 

In times like these, I think of God’s question to Ezekiel.  Can these bones live?  I think that Ezekiel must have been something of a diplomat because he gave a very

Guarded answer.  It was a direct question, which required a yes or no, but he was rather cautious. 

            When we as Christians find ourselves in the valleys of life, there is a way out.  Some may say, but you don’t understand my situation and that may be true, but the biggest lie that we can tell ourselves is that it’s impossible.  Nothing is impossible with God.  The first step is to admit that there is a problem.  Ezekiel could not deny the

To show a second step to the previous question

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To describe the fullness of lost hope

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severity of the situation and God wanted him to know exactly how dead these bones were.  He wanted him to realize that the problem was too big for him to handle alone.  We will have a harder struggle when our pride keeps us from admitting there is a problem.

II

            When it all comes apart, God restores us through His Word.  Some people you meet when they are in a valley may say things like, “I’m bored with the Word, or it doesn’t seem to impact me the way it once did.”  Read it anyway.  Even when it seems as dry as the bones in the valley.  Whether or not we “get anything out of it,” the Word of God is still vital.  We must determine to read it even more until it does speak to our hearts again. 

            Robert Sumner in his book The Wonders of the Word of God tells about a man in Kansas City who was severely injured in an explosion.  The victim’s face was badly disfigured, and he lost his eyesight as well as both hands.  He was just a new Christian, and one of his greatest disappointments was that he could no longer read the

bible.  Then he heard about a lady in England who read Braille with her lips.  Hoping to do the same, he sent for some books of the Bible in Braille.  Much to his dismay, he discovered that the explosion had destroyed the nerve endings in his lips.  Out of frustration one day, as he brought one of the Braille pages to his lips, his tongue happened to touch a few of the raised characters and he could feel them.  At the time that Sumner wrote his book, the man had read through the entire Bible four times.”

            My desire is that I could always have that same kind of yearning to read God’s word.   Jeremiah says, “Your words are what sustain me.  They bring me great joy and are my heart’s delight.”   I can tell you from personal experience that in times of

To show the first source of hope

To show how God’s word is a source of strength

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 great stress or great confusion. God’s Word has been the only source of my restoration, whether a fellow Christian spoke it, or I read it myself.  The second step to getting out of the valley is to read the Word.  Ezekiel merely spoke the word and the dead and lifeless were restored, but there was still no life in them.

III

            When it all comes apart, God revives us through his Holy Spirit.  There was an abundance of head knowledge, but it takes the heart to love God.  It required the simple faith and hope that the nation had lost long ago.  If we are going to experience personal revival, it won’t be because we talked ourselves into it.  It will be as we pray for the power that only His Spirit can give.  Zechariah 4:6 says, “It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the LORD Almighty.”  No matter how dry we feel, prayer must be our first discipline. 

            C.S. Lewis said, “The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day come rushing at you like wild animals.  And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of

view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”    

            Believing that prayer is the greatest contribution that we can make in critical situations, I urge that we take time to pray – to really pray.  We need to pray for our children, our youth, our elders, our pastors, our church, and our homes.  Most importantly, we need to pray for those who have never known the redeeming love of Jesus.  The third step is to pray for personal revival.  God gives us new hope through His Word and Holy Spirit (Thesis).

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CONCLUSION

            Well there is a fourth step; we need to live as though the victory has already been won.  Jesus Christ died and rose again in victory over sin and death.  The victory is here.

We don’t have to fight for it, we merely have to claim it.  There is victory for the believer who finds themselves in a valley of dried bones. There can be victory today especially for the person who does not have a personal relationship with Jesus.  I know that there have been many difficult events in the lives of our church all you have to do is to look at the prayer list (MOS).

INVITATIONS

            If you are hurting and feeling run down, there is hope in the Lord.  He helps us to see the problems, he restore us with his word, and brings us back to life with his Holy Spirit.  Things may be out of our control, but he is working out our experiences and can use them so we can help others.  God will not waste one of our experiences.

            If you have never trusted Jesus as Savior, you may be feeling like those dead bones.  Whatever the reason, God can help you know hope like never before all you have to do is trust him. 

To show where our hope rests

To give hope to the hurting

To give hope to the lost.