Dry bones to HOPE!
Notes
Transcript
Can these bones live again?
Can these bones live again?
1 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.
2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.
3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!
5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.
6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ ”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.
8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ”
10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’
12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel.
13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.
14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’ ”
Hopelessness - Is that something that a Christian ever has to deal with? Or, are we exempt from those kinds of feelings as believers in Jesus?
Bill Hybels recalls a time when Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian was speaking for a leadership conference at Willow Creek Community Church. He writes: “Dr. Bilezikian said there’s life-changing fellowship in biblically functioning community. That was a far cry from the childhood experience of a lot of his audience! The only kind of fellowship that many of his listeners had witnessed revolved around the fifteen or twenty minutes after the service when the men would stand around the church patio and ask each other superficial questions.
‘So how’s it going at work Jake,’ one of them would ask. ‘Fine, Phil. Say, you driving a new pickup?’ ‘Used,’ Phil would reply. ‘What do you have going this week?’ ‘Not much.’ ‘Well, great fellowshipping with you, Jake.’ ‘Same here.’
That was about it. They’d find their wives who were having similar conversations, and go home until next week.
But the Bible says true fellowship has the power to revolutionize lives. Masks come off, conversations get deep, hearts get vulnerable, lives are shared, accountability is invited, and tenderness flows. People really do become like brothers and sisters. They shoulder each other’s burdens - and unfortunately, that’s something that few of the people in that audience had experienced while growing up in church.
In many churches it just didn’t seem legal to tell anyone you were having a problem. Families that sat in the same pew for years would suddenly disappear, because the husband and wife were in turmoil over marriage problems. Instead of coming to the church for help and prayer and support, they fled the other way, because they didn’t feel the freedom to say, ‘we love Jesus, but we’re not doing very well. Our lives feel like they’re unraveling. We need some help!’
The implicit understanding was that you shouldn’t have a problem, and if you did you’d better not talk about it around the church.”
Hybels continues...”I learned that lesson well. When I got old enough to stand on the church patio after services, someone would say, ‘So, Bill, how are things in high school?’
And I’d give the response that I thought was expected. ‘Fine, Ben,’ I’d say. ‘They’re just great.’
I didn’t feel I could tell him that my heart was being ripped to shreds because my girlfriend and I had broken up. Or that I was flat-lined spiritually. Or that I had an older brother who was drinking too much and driving too fast, and I was scared about where his life was heading.
I didn’t say anything, because I felt that a good Christian just didn’t admit to having those kinds of real-life difficulties And in many churches, that’s called fellowship.
It shouldn’t be.” (Rediscovering Church, p. 159-160)
Fellowship really happens when we are able to admit that everything may not be perfect in our lives, but we are doing our best to live by God’s instructions for living. It’s OK if we struggle sometimes, and it’s OK if we find ourselves in situations that test our hope.
You and I, though, face a danger today. You can read the words of hope in the Bible, sing the precious hymns of hope as loud as anybody else, and attend a church called Beacon of Hope Community, yet still remain blind to the hope of your marriage or family, lose hope in the Bible or the church, even lose hope in God Himself. You can sink into the darkness of hopelessness.
Ezekiel’s ministry spanned the years just before and just after the Babylonian exile of Jerusalem and the rest of the nation of Judah.
His first messages (1-32) predict God’s judgment and the exile, along with several prophecies concerning individual nations.
His second set of messages (33-39, which includes our text today) are given during the exile, and are meant to revive Israel’s hope in God. The final chapters (40-48) of Ezekiel describe God’s blueprint for Israel’s future. The book of Ezekiel is full of both warning and promise, both judgment and hope. Our passage this morning is meant to bring hope to these defeated, discouraged people. How?
First of all, Ezekiel’s vision faces a sober reality: Life can seem hopeless. (v. 1-3)
I’m sure that we have all probably felt the pull of hopelessness creep into our lives. I read about a young lawyer who descended into depression. Things were going so poorly for him that his friends kept all knives and razors away from him for fear he could commit suicide. In fact, during this time he wrote in his diary, “I am now the most miserable man living Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I fear I shall not.”
There is no denying that no matter how optimistic you try to be, there are times in life when everything seems hopeless. This vision that God gave Ezekiel paints a very vivid picture of the hopelessness of the nation of Israel.
Ezekiel is transported by the Spirit—we really don’t know whether this is physically, or if it is a vision in his mind—into a large, dark valley full of human bones. Imagine the shock of finding yourself knee deep in human skeletons and skulls, lying everywhere you look. It sounds a little like a modern day horror film, or maybe one of those police shows on television. He has no idea really where he is, but he sees that there is certainly not much hope in this valley of dry bones. The scene is as if he is in the middle of a battle scene that occurred a long time ago. The bodies had been left there, and the bones had long ago been picked clean of all flesh.
Surely there could be no place on earth that was more void of hope! Oh, I know that there have been other hopeless situations throughout the years. Every one of us has faced some pretty hopeless situations - you may be facing one right now as we gather and worship the God that we say is always good.
In vs. 11, the Lord will interpret these bones in Ezekiel’s vision as symbolizing His people, Israel living in exile, with no human hope of ever returning home again. It looks as if they will never live to see God’s promise fulfilled—you remember, the promise that Israel would possess this land and be His special people. From a strictly human standpoint it looks hopeless. Life can seem hopeless. You’ve been there, haven’t you? You’ve felt the cold hand of hopelessness rest on your shoulder, tempting you to call it quits, inviting you to give up your dreams, grow up and face the facts, get real—there is no light of hope!
But is that really true? Can these bones live again?
O Lord, You know.
When life seems hopeless, it’s time to turn to the Lord. When you walk among the bones of your destroyed hopes, it’s time to look to Jesus, and at least entertain the possibility that He can bring hope even when life turns hopeless. With God, it’s always too soon to give up hope.
The young lawyer I told you about earlier, eventually discovered this for himself. He survived his period of deep depression, and struggled through many more to finally be elected President of the United States—a guy by the name of Abraham Lincoln. There’s no denying that life can seem hopeless, but in those times we should do as Ezekiel did, as the nation of Israel did—look to the Lord, Who alone can offer us hope. But how does He give us hope in these seemingly hopeless situations?
Ezekiel’s vision shows us in vs. 4-10
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!
5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.
6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ ”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.
8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ”
10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
God commands Ezekiel to preach to this bunch of dead bones. I have a calling on my life to preach the good news—and I have told God that I will tell the good news—and I have told God that I will tell the good news wherever He leads me. But I have to tell you, if I felt He was leading me to speak to a bunch of dead bones, I would certainly wonder why He was sending me to such a group. Dead people, by definition, don’t hear. Skeletons don’t have ears. Why in the world would you preach to dead bones? Why would you call out in this valley of death O dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord!
So the prophet starts to speak, and here’s where it really gets strange! First a rattle among the bones, then they rise up and start connecting to one another. I’ve seen enough of those police shows on tv to know that that just doesn’t happen! Then, muscles and tissue begin to cover the bones, and finally skin wraps itself around the bodies of these dead people. But there is no spirit in them.
Then God commands Ezekiel preach to the wind, that the spirit will enter these bodies. The word for wind and spirit is the same word in Hebrew, the word ruach. and instantly, we are reminded of the man that God had created back in Genesis, there was no life until He breathed the wind or spirit into him.
7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
In verses 12-14, God explains that this resurrection symbolizes how He will raise the nation of Israel back from their spiritual death and bring them back to the land of Promise. Though it looks like it’s all over for them, God gives them hope that He can restore life to them.
What we see clearly illustrated in this vision is that there is no hopeless situation when God’s Spirit is unleashed! It was true on the Day of Pentecost as well, when the disciples and followers of Jesus were locked in the upper room for fear—they found themselves in a hopeless situation until the Holy Spirit came on them!
A little over a month before he died, the famous philosopher and atheist Jean-Paul Sartre declared he often said to himself, “I know I shall die in hope.” Then in profound sadness, he would add, “But hope needs a foundation.”
Hope needs a foundation or it’s just wishful thinking. You can hope for anything, but if your hope is not grounded in reality, it is only a a matter of time before it evaporates. Whether your hope is in money, health, the government, other people, or just trying to convince yourself that everything will be OK, none of these things are solid foundations for hope. Ezekiel’s vision gives us the only sure foundation for a hope that will stand forever: the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
Leigh Richmond, in his “Dying Cottager,” tells of his last visit to the death-bed of a young convert that he had led to Jesus. He asked the girl in the valley of the shadow of death what was her hope for eternity?
Putting her thin, wasted fingers on the Bible that lay beside her she said, “Christ here!” Then, placing her nigh transparent hand on her heart she said, “Christ here!” And then pointing upward, she said, “And Christ there!” Glorious hope!
The Christ you find in the Bible, the Christ you find in your heart, the Christ Who is building a home for you in heaven—this is the sure foundation of our hope. Is He your foundation for hope this morning?
Vaclav Havel, the Czechoslovakian poet/President, spoke these words after years of suffering oppression and persecution: “I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart…I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big a gift as life itself.”
Now, let me ask you this morning: is your hope real, or is it just wishful thinking? Is the flame of hope burning brightly in your life, or are you trapped in the darkness of despair?
Charles Stanley has written these words about Ezekiel. “In his day, hope had become a rare commodity. Ezekiel must have felt as desolate and useless as the piles of bones that he had seen in a startling vision. As the prophet sat in the middle of the valley, he knew that only a miracle could bring together his decimated and scattered people. Yet as Ezekiel watched, a miracle of life took place. Where before only dry bones had littered the landscape, the Lord added muscles, tendons, and tissue. And into those restored, silent bodies, God breathed new life. Maybe you feel dry, defeated, emotionally scattered. Perhaps you sit alone, dejected, watching a panorama of death unfold before you. But do not despair! If the God of Ezekiel is your God, then know that even the dry bones before you can live again. In His grace they can live and stand upon their feet-an exceedingly great army.”