All right, open your Bibles tonight
to the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter 37. I don't know of a passage in all the scriptures
that discourages me more than this text of scripture. And yet at the same time, I don't
know of one that encourages me more. Because in it, we're faced with
the awful state of man. But in it also, we're made to
know the great power of God. Ezekiel in this 37th chapter
begins, with the hand of the Lord was upon me. Who ought to preach the gospel? Those who decide they want to
go into the ministry, or those who have the ability to speak,
those who have a feeling, whatever, those whose parents or friends
say they ought to go into the ministry. Every prophet and every apostle
and every true preacher of the gospel was such because the hand of
the Lord was upon them. The hand of the Lord in choosing
them, the hand of the Lord on moving them toward that place,
The hand of the Lord upon them so that they could do nothing
else, the hand of the Lord upon them enabling them. The reason that Jeremiah had
the burden of the word of the Lord, the reason why any of us
have the gospel, it's because of the hand, the sovereign hand
of the Lord. And he says, the hand of the
Lord was upon me and carried me out in the Spirit of God and set me down in the midst
of the valley which was full of bones. Everybody that speaks for God
is in a particular place at a particular time to a particular people to
speak the word of the Lord. We don't decide where we'll serve. We don't decide to whom we'll
preach. That's religion for you. And
I always thought it very strange that in religion, in false religion,
when a preacher feels led to go to somewhere else, it's always
bigger and more money. That's not always the case with
the servant of the Lord. Because of all the places, I'm
sure that Ezekiel would have liked to have spoken and been
a minister for the Lord and bore his word. It wouldn't be amongst
the people who are described in this way. He set me down in
the midst of the valley, which was full of bones. And that certainly speaks, I'm
sure, of the world, of the universal state and condition of every
person in the world. Just a valley of dry bones, full
of bones. And then it says, and he calls
me to pass by them round about. In other words, God in his providence
moves his ministers, moves his servants where he will among
the people. that he's called to preach to
and gives them opportunity as it pleases him. He opens the
door. He gives a door of utterance
in one place to one people or whoever it is. When you read
the book of Acts, it tells us that Paul and those that travel
with him, that they set out to go in one direction in people,
but the Spirit of the Lord forbade them. So they turned and they
started to go in another direction, and God was not in that. They
went again to another direction, and God was not in any of those. That didn't mean that those people
didn't need to hear the gospel. That didn't mean that those people
weren't in the same state that everybody else was in. But the
Lord sovereignly that night gave Paul a vision of a man in Macedonia
saying, come over and help us. And I like what Paul says there. He doesn't say that I determined
by that that God had called us to be medical missionaries or
this kind of missionary, but he said I determined that God
had called us to go and preach the gospel to those people. He calls me to pass by them roundabout,
and behold, there were very many in the open valley, and lo, they
were very dry." How many? It doesn't say. But they were
definitely all in the same state and condition. It didn't matter
who he preached to. It didn't matter where they were. They were everyone in the same
state and condition, dead in trespasses and sin. And he says there that they were
very dry. And by that, I take it to mean
that the bodies of these dead bones, they'd been dead a long
time. I can just picture a sun-bleached
desert lying full of nothing but bones, and they're white. They've been there a long time,
and they've been dead a long time. How long have sinners in this
world been dead? They've been dead since they
died in their father, Adam. And if they're alive physically
now, they've been dead, spiritually dead, since the day they were
born. They have been dead a long time. It's very dry. And then he said to me, and he
said to me in verse 3, son of man, can these bones live? I do believe that that is a question
that every preacher of the gospel has to get an answer for himself
to. Can these bones live? And I like what Ezekiel says. He says, And I answered, O LORD
God, thou knowest. I know this. If it's up to them,
they cannot live of themselves. And if it's up to me, They cannot
live because I made them to live or because I preached to them. I'm as hopeless and as powerless
and as weak as they are. But you know, you know whether
they can or not. And then in verse four, he says,
I guess you might say the most foolish of things to Ezekiel. Again, he said to me, prophesy
or preach to these bones. Now, in I Corinthians, when Paul
takes up the matter of preaching, and he says, the preaching of
the cross is foolishness to them that are perishing. But he's not only talking about
the cross, the gospel of the cross, But he's talking also
in the context there of the methodology of preaching. In other words, not only is the
message foolishness to those that perish, but the method is
foolishness. If God was going to do something
for somebody, if God was going to give life to somebody, do
something beneficial to somebody, surely he'd do it by means of
using some way than having a sinful man to preach the gospel to him. Surely he'd do it a different
way, have angels herald it or speak audibly from heaven or
something like that. Surely all this is to them that
are perishing foolishness. The preaching of the cross is
foolishness. But that's what he says. unto these bones, and say unto
them, O ye dry bones." Now, he didn't say there, say
unto them, O you nice people. He didn't say there, O you slightly
disoriented people. In other words, when God calls
one to preach and sends him to preach to sinners such as we
are, the preacher of the gospel has to call them what they are. He has to call them what God
says that they are. You dry bones. you dry bones,
you dead, spiritually dead people, you lost people, you sinners,
you wretched creatures, lifeless, dead in trespasses and sin, he
has to call them by God's grace, remembering what he is himself,
he has to call them, pronounce to them what God says that they
are. Because we never know what we
are by our feeling. We never know what we really
are, our real condition based on what mama or daddy told us
or our best friend or our husband and wife or these foolish preachers
of our day. We never know what we are by
what they say we are. We only know what we really are
by what God says that we are. Sinners. Lost. Helpless. Nothing but dry bones. Can't hear spiritually. Can't
believe of our own selves. Can't do anything to please God. All our works are nothing but
filthy rags of self-righteousness. He not only says, preach to them,
he not only says, call them exactly what they are and tell them what
they are, what I say that they are, but he says, say to them,
hear the word of the Lord. This all seems foolish to the
natural thinking. To say to a deaf man, hear the
word of the Lord. To say to the spiritually deaf,
as God says that they are, they hear not, hear the word of the
Lord. To say to the spiritually blind,
see the Lord Jesus Christ. To say to those who are dead,
live. All these things seem so contradictory
and they seem so foolish to us naturally, so much so that in
religion they use and try about everything else. We'll have a play and we'll illustrate
and show the truth this way. We'll have a cantata or a song
service and we'll make it all more understandable and palatable
through a song. We'll have some kind of gimmick
here or there because if man is what we think he is, he just
needs a little bit of help to understand. But he's not in a bad state. All these things are given to
us in pictures, especially in the Gospel of John, to show what
man's state and condition is spiritually. And to this people. to all these
people who come in here, who hear on the internet or hear
by a CD or something like that, all of them in the same condition
naturally, and you call upon them to hear the word of the
Lord. He doesn't say here, you better
hear what I'm saying. He doesn't say, I'm going to
give you this, which is my theological position, or here's how I feel
about it, or this is my opinion about it, or this is what old
Dr. So-and-so says about it. He says, hear the word of the
Lord. Sometimes I get to thinking about
how precious. I just look at my Bible sometimes
and I think about how blessed and how precious this book is
to possess, to be able to read it. that over a course of time,
God took all these different authors and he spoke in all different
kinds of situations and kingdoms and whatever in the face of,
oh, ever so many enemies in every time and place, and yet he preserved
the record of his son with such harmony and such agreement among
these writers that it cannot bear anything but the marks of
the divine hand. It's the word of the Lord. And I don't ever argue anything
based on history or based on reason or anything. I don't argue
with anybody, anything, except based on the Word of God. If it's not the Word of the Lord
we're talking about, forget it. And I'm not even called to debate
it. I'm called to proclaim it and
say, hear ye the word of the Lord. But now here's the difference.
Here is absolutely the difference in verse five. Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones." Somebody said, if when a man preaches the gospel,
the only voice that you hear is his voice, you'll be none
the changed for it. But here, under this preaching
of the Word of the Lord, in this God-sent, God-called servant,
God speaks. I always think of that old hymn that says,
All is vain unless the spirit of the Holy One come down. If God doesn't speak, and I am
afraid that in our generation, it seems like almost his voice
is down to a whisper, But if he doesn't speak, everything
that is said will be in vain. If he doesn't speak with that
voice that wakes the dead, if he doesn't do what we read about
in Ezekiel 16 to that infant in the field and come where we
are and say, live. Not one person. Not one person will be saved. Not one soul, not one person
will ever be raised to spiritual life. Not one person will actually
have true Christ-believing faith. Not one person will have any
hope, any genuine hope if God is silent. I'm afraid we gather together
Oftentimes, and I get through preaching, you might say, well,
that was a good message, preacher. I enjoyed it. It's nothing if God doesn't speak. My words, even if they be true
words, and I hope they're true words, they're according to this
word of the Lord, but if my words just go forth and they fall on
empty heads and empty hearts and deaf ears and all, nothing
has changed. That's why I pray. I pray, Lord, speak in our day. Speak in our midst. Speak to
our children. Speak to our families. Speak
to our friends. Speak to the people of this area. Cause them to hear this gospel. Cause them to believe. Cause
them to be convicted of their sin and need Christ. Cause them
to come to life. Because if you don't, there's no hope. I'm telling
you there's no hope. You can look at them and say
that they're moral, and they might be, and I'm glad they are,
but they're dead. They can be your flesh and blood. They can be the ones you love
the most in this world. They can be your best friends.
They can act religious. They can do this and be nice
and kind and all these other things. But if God hasn't spoke
to them, they're just lost. Lost religious people. Lost moral
people. lost good people, as we say,
even though God says there's none good, no, not one. Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and
you shall live. God's voice, as you might say,
is the cause of everything. In the book of Genesis, when God is speaking in creation,
the old theologians called that the divine fiat. That's the divine voice of God. Because when He speaks, when
He speaks, it is. He said, let there be light. Or as it actually says, I think,
light be and light was. And that's why when Paul speaks
about the new creation and how God speaks in the new creation,
how he speaks to sinners who are in the same state that the
natural world was, void and without form and in darkness, and he
says, let there be light, and he causes the light of his glory
to shine, the light of his grace to shine, and it shines in the
face of Jesus Christ. That's when we know when he's
spoken. When sinners who are dead and
blind and hopeless and helpless rebels against God when they
see glory in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
they see it because God has spoke to them. He spoke to them mightily
and powerfully, and they could not turn away from it. They could
not escape his voice. They could not hold back the
life that it brought. He said, light be, and light
was. You were saying the other night
about Saul of Tarsus. You know, a fellow in Kentucky
once said to me, he said, you know, when we preach the gospel
to the least likely, we've really preached it to the most likely. Can you imagine wanting to face
Saul of Tarsus with the gospel? Can you imagine being sent to
that fellow who's hailing men and women into prison, having
them stoned? But when the Lord Jesus Christ
spoke to him, It didn't matter who he was.
It didn't matter how hardened he was. It didn't matter how
ignorant he was. It didn't matter how religious
he was. It didn't matter how self-righteous
he was. When God spoke to him, he lived. God says, I'll cause breath to
enter into you and you shall live. Turn over to John 5 and
verse 25 or thereabout. Verse 24. Christ said, Verily, verily,
I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him
that sent me, hath everlasting life. An old preacher said, he's
got it. He's got life. He's got everlasting
life. If he hears the word and believes,
God's given it to him, spoken it to him, and shall not come
into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Now, he hadn't even died physically
yet. and he will probably die physically. But Christ says he's
passed from death unto life. Barely, barely, I say unto you,
the hour is coming, and now is. Now is. Oh, I pray that that's
still the case. I have reason to think that it
is. God's still sending somebody
to preach the gospel. There are few people that stand
up for God's word, preach the gospel. He hadn't come yet. Christ hadn't
come yet. The hour is coming and now is
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they
that hear shall live. He said that a long time ago. They that hear the voice of God,
they'll live for sure. And I will lay sinews upon you,
and bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and
put breath in you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that
I am the Lord." This is a sudden thing. But it seems to be a progressive
thing. God speaks and they live. But it's given by this evidence,
bone comes to bone and sinew and flesh. There's one thing for sure. The
more God speaks to us, the more we're sure that our covering
is only the righteousness of Christ. The only skin we've got before
God is the righteousness of God, the covering, the cloak, the
coat. And when you live, when men and
women live by God's grace, he speaks to them, they live, ye shall know that I am the Lord. I don't even try to convince
people, but when the Lord speaks to their
heart, they're convinced. When the Lord opened my heart
and showed me just how He was and how His Son, Jesus Christ,
was all the salvation that there is, and it was His work and not
my work, I knew it was the Lord. I wasn't so sure about a lot
of things up to that point, but like Paul, on that road to Damascus,
when he finally did come to his senses after being spoken to
and smitten by the Lord, he said, Lord, who are you? I don't know exactly who you
are, but whoever you are, you are the Lord. And they'll know that salvation
is of the Lord. I may not always be able to explain
it well. I may not be able to give the
best definitions, but I'm going to stand up here and tell everybody
who will hear me that salvation is of the Lord. It's of His appointing,
it's of His grace, it's of His Son, it's of His mercy, it's
of His purpose. So I prophesied, verse 7, so
I prophesied as I was commanded. I see preachers, these young
preachers these days, they have not got it in their head that
the greatest privilege God could give them would be to speak his
word to men on his behalf. Everything's got to be just right.
Everything's got to be just the right condition. I tell you,
when the Lord first gave me this message, I would have paid somebody to
let me preach to them. I wasn't wondering about whether
or not we were going to have a big building or whether or
not I was going to get a big salary or what kind of benefits
I was going to get. All I knew was I had to preach
this gospel. I didn't have to preach. But if I preached, Paul said,
woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. The greatest responsibility anybody
can have is to preach the gospel, tell men and women about God.
So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was
a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together,
bone to his bone. There's always, there's always a noise. There's
always a shaking. As these bones come together. Somebody said it's either revival
or riot. Always a stir when God's at work. There's always a disturbance. Some people are disturbed by
this. The Jews were disturbed by this.
The Pharisees among them were disturbed by this. Everybody
was, it was, they said, these men have turned the world upside
down. It says there was an uproar in
the city. And there always will be. Because
everything that the gospel is about, man's against naturally. It offends his pride, it offends
his works, it offends his character, it offends his ability to help
himself, it offends his independence. But the bones came together,
bone to his bone, and when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh
came upon them, and the skin covered them above, but there
was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, prophesy
unto the wind, The wind. Prophesy, son of man, and say
to the wind, thus saith the Lord God, come from the four winds,
O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live. We call upon the Spirit of God. We plead the promise of Christ.
When I'm gone, it's expedient that I go away, because if I
don't go away, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, won't come. We preach the Gospel and beg
the Spirit of God. You say, well, He's going to
He's going to give life to God's elect anyway. They're going to
hear, yes, that's exactly right. But I'm going to beg him to do
it. I'm going to beg him as long
as I've got breath, as long as they've got breath, I'm going
to beg him. Holy Spirit of God, please breathe
on these slain. You know, the word for spirit
in the Greek is pneuma, wind, breath. That's what Christ is
talking about in John 3 when he says, the wind blows where
it will. You don't know where it come
from. You don't know where it's going. You can only see the effect
of the wind. Buddy, when the Spirit of God
begins to work in a person's heart, you can see the effect
of it on the outside. Or you can't see it to work.
But you can see the effect of it, because that person will
start talking little about themselves and more about the Lord Jesus
Christ. They'll attribute to Him and
to God all the glories that God sets forth of Himself. They'll
say, I believe His Word. I've gone to His Word. I'm taking
that. And I hate every false way. That's what the psalmist said.
Through thy words I find out what's right, what's true, and
I hate every false way. So I prophesied as he commanded
me. You know what? Ezekiel must have
been called. Because in the face of this,
in the face of all that's going on, He's keeping right on preaching.
So I prophesied as He commanded me. So I prophesied as He commanded
me. So I prophesied as He commanded
me. What else can you do? Preach the truth and pray that
the Spirit of God will give life. So I prophesied as he commanded
me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood
upon their feet an exceeding great army." They weren't a bunch of mealy mouth. wimps when
it comes to the faith. They couldn't be tossed to and
fro by every winded doctrine. They weren't among those that
said, well, there are many faiths and many ways to God and you've
got yours and I've got mine. It says they were an army. That's why Paul says, endure
hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. That's why he talks
about those spiritual weapons. Our weapons are not carnal, but
mighty through God to the tearing down of strongholds. What stronghold?
The minds and imaginations of men. That's the word. Sharper than a two-edged sword.
The helmet, the breastplate, the shield, the sword of the
spirit. An army. And an exceeding great
army. Because that army is great because of one thing. The one who leads them. He's great. They can't help but be great. And they march through this world. And they have their traveling shoes on, shod with
the gospel of peace. And they preach the gospel, bear
witness to the gospel. And they're living souls stepping between the bones. They're in a place of deadness.
Everything around us is dead. And we're just walking through
this world, stepping through the dead things. We're like that maniac of Gadara
that he dwelled among the tombs. That's where we live. We're just pilgrims and sojourners.
Don't look like soldiers, but we are. And we're following our
captain. Because those who are born of
the spirit of God are also led by the spirit of God. As many
as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. They
are the children of God. They're led away from themselves
as far as trusting in themselves. They're led away from their own
opinions and their own ideas and their own flesh, and they're
led to the truth. They're led by the truth. And
they're led to Christ. Christ. Ezekiel was sent to preach to
the dead. So is every preacher. Every preacher that the hand
of the Lord is upon. Every preacher that preaches
the truth, the glorious grace of God, the free and sovereign
grace and mercy of God. But all they preach to don't
stay dead. Here one, there one. And you know, the wonderful thing
about situations like the internet now, you might preach to a small group
here. One here, one there, one another place. You just don't
know who the Lord is pleased to speak to. And he'll raise up this exceeding
great army. They'll hear, I may never hear
of them in this life, but his sheep will hear his voice. They'll hear him say, live. And they'll live. When I came in here tonight,
I told some of them I just have felt kind of blah today. I don't
know why. But this sure encourages my heart.
what God will do, what God can do, what God's promised to do. Our Father, we thank you for
your great sovereign grace and power, that
you truly are God mighty to save all your people from their sins. We plead your spirit. We beg your mighty spirit to
give life, to take poor gospel ramblings and speak with that
voice that wakes the dead. We pray that you do it for your
glory, for your glory alone. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.