We so often look at Ezekiel 36
and yet Ezekiel 37 is a glorious passage and it speaks of a resurrection. It speaks of a renewal. It speaks of a return. He says in verse 12, oh, my people,
I will open your graves and cause you to come out of your graves
and bring you into the land of Israel. What a remarkable prospect
that lies before us. I don't know about you, but I've
got to the stage in life where I have every good reason to be
contemplating the time of my departure. And for Christians,
we're just moving, aren't we? We don't change our company.
We just change the place. It's like going upstairs at a
house, isn't it? We're in the same dwelling place. We just
move. What a glorious, glorious event
the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of
people is. It speaks to sinners. If you read the rest of Ezekiel,
you'll see that the reason Ezekiel brings to bear on these people
always is the fact that they are 100% responsible for their
sin and they are 100% responsible for the troubles they're in.
And you might remember that the context of this is that the children
of Israel have have desecrated the land and defiled the temple
of God, and God has sent them away. And he sent the chosen
ones away to Babylon, and in Babylon, when he promises, he
said, I'll be there, I'll be a sanctuary for you in Babylon. He's always a sanctuary for his
people. The people that were left in Jerusalem thought that
they were the blessed ones. They thought that the others
had been rejected by God. Not the case. So often men completely
misunderstand the purposes of God, and may his word be our
guide. But they were people that are
so often, they speak like us, don't they? They say at the end
of verse 11, our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are
cut off from our parts. It is a picture of the resurrection. It's a return, it's a fourfold
resurrection in a sense, isn't it? It speaks of the return of
the Jews out of Babylon, the return to Israel under Cyrus. It speaks, of course, of the
resurrection of the dead. There is a glorious day of resurrection. And it's the promise to God's
church in every age. And in some sense, we're always
languishing and we're always in need of reviving. We're always
in need of having our eyes taken from the things of our own flesh
and the things of this world and taken them, put them back
on Him again and again and again. We're always in need of reviving.
We're in need of a resurrection. I love what Hosea said. Come
and let us return. This is Hosea chapter 6. Let
us return unto the Lord for he has torn and he will heal us. He has smitten and he will bind
us up. After two days he will revive
us and in the third day he will raise us up. In His resurrection was the resurrection
of His people. We were crucified with Him, we
were buried with Him, we were raised with Him, we were seated
with Him. It's all in our union with Him. But also it speaks
of that, the resurrection as it were, which is the new birth
that we trust the Lord will teach us something about this morning. He will raise His people, won't
He, in John chapter 5, Verses in John chapter 5 verse 24 and
25 speak of this resurrection, this regeneration in this world. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting
life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from
death to life. marvel not at this. The hour
is coming, verse 28, in which all that are in the grave shall
hear his voice and shall come forth. They that have done good
under the resurrection of life and they that have done evil
under the resurrection of damnation. So Ezekiel is pictured here as
God's preacher and God's prophet. So what did Ezekiel see? taken to this place he took him place of blessing. And it didn't
look like that when he looked on it. He was going to take him
to a people who were going to be blessed. In verse one and
two, the hand of the Lord was upon me and he carried me out
in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of a
valley which was full of bones and caused me to pass by them
round about. And behold, there were very many
in the open valley and low They were very dry. It is the scene. They were very dry and very,
very dead. It's the scene of a great battle.
A great battle that was so complete that no one, no one buried the
dead. And for the Jews, the burying
of the dead was a huge thing. In fact, if you so much as touched
a trot on a bone, you were unclean under the law. It is, of course,
a picture of the fall of Adam and his race. And such is the
state of all to whom God sends his word and sends his preachers. It's been said so often, isn't
it, that if we're wrong on the fall, we're wrong on it all. And if we're wrong on the fall,
We're wrong on the cross, and if we're wrong on the cross,
all is lost. Ezekiel is confronted as the
Lord confronts Nicodemus with what man is in his nature. Nicodemus
was a picture of man in his best state. What is man by nature? What does God see when he looks
down from heaven? He sees man Like this, man fallen,
man dead, man very dry, man very, very helpless to help himself
in any way at all. What can the dead bones do to
live? This is what Ezekiel learned,
wasn't it? That there is no life in the natural man and there
is no goodness in the natural man. In the flesh dwelleth no
good thing, says Paul in Romans 7. Those that are in the flesh
cannot please God, Romans 8. There are the four nones of Romans
chapter 3. There are none righteous. There
are none that understandeth. None that seeketh after God.
None that doeth good. No, not one. Does that describe
you? Does that really describe you? and say, but that's them over
there, but I'm not quite as bad as some of them. Man is born spiritually dead. The fool is a total fool. Man
didn't fall over and break his little finger in the garden.
He died. He died. Spiritually, he died. They're without God, they're
without Christ, as Paul says to the Ephesians, they're strangers
to the covenant of promise, without hope, without life, they're without
these dead, dry bones. Picture all of the children of
God in their natural state. See, if the fall is not a total
fall, a complete and utter fall of every part of your being,
there's one little tiny spark of something in there that you
can activate to get yourself into a place where you can bring
yourself into the presence of God. You don't need him. Nicodemus, as we'll see, is brought
to a place where he's utterly and totally dependent upon God. It's a total fall, and that's
why these passages of Scripture are so profoundly moving and
so profoundly instructive, as John chapter 3, I trust the Lord
will show us later on. Ultimately, we wait on God to
perform that which He's promised. One of the things that really
struck me about Ezekiel 36 when I was involved in Christian leadership
many, many years ago, is I kept wondering, God's actually made
these promises. And then we're running around
flogging people trying to get them to do the things that God's
promised to them. He does it in the hearts of his people.
He causes his people, the great king, to make them willing in
the day of his power. And there's a great question,
isn't it? A question that's asked by God. Can these bones live? How can these bones live? Job
asked a similar question, isn't it? How can a man be right? How can a man be just with God? Jeremiah asked the same question.
How can the Ethiopian change his skin? The disciples asked
the Lord Jesus, who then can be saved? With man it's impossible,
and not with God. And there is only one answer.
What a great answer. In verse three of Ezekiel 37, That's a great answer, isn't
it? O Lord God, thou knowest. In
every situation, O Lord God, thou knowest. Ezekiel, the preacher,
before he begins to speak, is shut up to the sovereign mercy
of God. The bones can't live by themselves. Ezekiel can't make them live.
Ezekiel is as dependent as the bones for this life. to be created. All things are
possible with God. As Jonah had to go to the belly
of that great fish at the bottom of the seas, his salvation is
of the Lord in its origin, in its operation, and in its fruit
in so many ways. It's a new creation that is coming
to be here, isn't it? It's a new birth. It is a resurrection
and it's a revelation. And the Lord commands, doesn't
he? the Lord commands in verse 4
again he said unto me prophesy unto these bones and say unto
them O ye dry bones hear the word of the Lord Nothing has
changed, is it? We just preach the Word of God. We preach the Living Word. We
preach Christ in His glory, in the glory of His attributes.
We preach a Christ who cannot fail. We preach a successful,
reigning, ruling Christ. And what does Ezekiel do? So
I prophesy. So I prophesy. prophesied as I was commanded
that's all we have to do isn't it he that hath my word let him
speak my word faithfully diminish not a word says God don't change
it don't alter it in any way at all so Ezekiel's message was
not a commandment, but a declaration, telling the bones to do something.
A declaration wasn't a commandment telling the bones to do something,
it was a declaration of what God alone will do. We preach
Christ crucified, what he has done, what he is doing right
now, and what he will. Come, oh breath. Come, O Breath,
breathe upon these slain, that they may live. Verse 9. We just prophesise, we're commanded.
And we command, we don't command anything, we just prophesise
what God says, isn't it? Breathe. Come from the four winds,
verse 9, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may
live. So I prophesied as he commanded
me and the breath came into them and they lived and stood on their
feet an exceeding great army. Let's go back to verse seven
again. 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. And when I
beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up and upon them,
and the skin covered them, and there was no breath in them.
There was a commotion before the Spirit came, wasn't there?
Then Paul, then Ezekiel, charged to speak to the wind when the
spirit comes. There's a commotion, there's
an unsettling when God first does a work of grace in the hearts
of people. There's an unsettling, there's
a stirring that God brings to his people. And then the spirit
comes and there is life, this great army. So I prophesied as
he commanded, verse 10, and the breath came into them and they
lived. The new life requires the very
breath of God. The life that Adam had was the
life that was breathed into him, and he became a living soul.
For us to be renewed and to be born again, we need God to breathe
yet again, and for us to be created out of these dry bones, created
living souls again. Come, O breath. Come, O breath. Come, O breath. When the Spirit comes, there
is life. What power of our God. breath, to give faith, to give
repentance, to give a sight of the Lord Jesus Christ in his
glory, to give God all the glory. Often in the scriptures the Lord
is declared to be the Lord God of hosts, It's a great picture of what our Lord
Jesus Christ does one by one individually throughout this
world as he builds his church. And he builds his church his
way. He builds his church through the preaching of Jesus Christ
and him crucified. He builds his church by his sovereign
operations of grace and mercy. And the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. the games of the defensive weapon
isn't it aren't they the lord jesus christ comes to dead sinners
captive and unable to do anything to help themselves in this world
and he comes to those dead sinners and he says you're mine his people captive. Paul says
he was apprehended of Jesus Christ. He was taken a prisoner of the
Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord as he gathers us
together cause us to rejoice in what He has done in and amongst
us and caused us to have great hope that what He's promised
in the past is what He's doing in the present is what He's done
amongst us and when He begins a good work, as He says in Philippians
1.6, when He begins a work, a good work, He's promised to carry
it out until the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church is His.
It belongs to Him. It's as perfectly secure now
as when God the Father gave them to the Son before the foundation
of the world. We will cry out like the bones,
isn't it? Our bones are dried up and our
hope is lost and we cut off in our paths. And then God says,
I'll open your graves and I'll cause you to come up out of your
graves and I'll bring you into the land of Israel. What an amazing
God we have. May he bless his word to our
hearts. We're gonna have a break, have a cup of tea.