Good morning and welcome to the
Sunday morning broadcast of the Grace Community Church of Rock
Valley, Iowa. We invite you to tune in this
time each week as we bring you the message of the grace of God.
Stay tuned at the end of the message for contact information.
Let me read to you the first three verses of Ezekiel 37. The hand of the Lord was upon
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. 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. He asked
me, Son of man, can these bones live? I said, O sovereign Lord,
you alone know. From the Lord's experience on
the Mount of Temptation, we learn the devil's method. When he would
motivate a man to worship him, he takes him to a high place
and shows him the kingdoms of the world, then says, I will
give you all of these if you will only bow down and worship
me. That is, to win our hearts, the
devil shows us the glories of this world, in particular, those
tokens of man's achievements, powers, and possibilities. And
he promises all of it to those who will worship him. In this,
we learn the keynotes of Satan's message, the world, man, human
will and works, and reward based on performance. And do we not
hear this voice of the serpent in most preaching today? It seems
our nation has given over to a satanic brand of Christianity
in which preachers set before men the hope of blessing, achievement,
and comfort in this world, and all of it hinging on worshiping
the God they set forth. Physical health, riches, victorious
living, success and happiness, and other such things are shown
to the people, and it is said, God will give you all of this
if you will only worship Him. There it is, that devil's word,
if. if you will," is the keynote
of satanic religion. Even though the preacher gives
that deal-making God the name Jesus, it is not the Jesus of
the Bible. Do not be fooled. Every religion
dependent on your works is a devilish religion. It is true that God
has sometimes said, if you will. but it was only to prove that
we neither can nor will do what is required to earn His favor.
Never has God held forth blessing to fallen man with the expectation
that any man would avail himself of those blessings by his own
will and power. When the devil preaches his gospel,
he takes men to a high place and shows him human glory. But
when God teaches his gospel, he takes man to a deep valley
and walks him through the regions of death. He shows him not life,
but death, not success, but failure, not possibilities, but inabilities,
not achievements, but failure, not righteousness, but sin, not
hope, but despair. God's first lesson to men is
to extinguish the light of human wisdom and power and expectation
and walk men through the darkness of His own depraved nature. To
what shall man be compared? No, more, to what shall the people
of God be compared? For the Lord says that His lesson
to Ezekiel concerned the whole house of Israel. To what are
we compared? Bones. dry bones. Very dry bones, says the Scripture. There are some very important
lessons for us in this story, lessons to abase and lessons
to uplift. As with all truly gospel messages,
this message destroys any hope we may have in the abilities
of man, and it holds out great hope in the will and power of
God. In comparing us to very dry bones,
God teaches us that we have nothing in ourselves, that is, nothing
good or profitable. Paul said it this way, In me,
that is, in my flesh dwells no good thing. To convince a person
that they have some weak points, some flaws, or some deficiencies
isn't difficult. We're all aware of that truth.
The difficulty comes in convincing people that they have nothing
other than weakness, flaws, and deficiencies. All confess to
doing sins, but very few understand that we've never done anything
other than sin. God used this illustration because
of what the Israelites themselves had said about themselves. They
expressed their condition in three ways. First, they said,
our bones are dried up. This is the condition of man
objectively. By this I mean that, naturally
speaking, we are spiritually dead like dried-up bones. We
are dead by virtue of our connection with Adam, the representative
of us all. God promised death to Adam if
he ate of the forbidden tree. Adam did eat, and he did indeed
die. In Romans 5.12, Paul wrote, Therefore,
just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through
sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.
And 1 Corinthians 15.22 says that in Adam, all die. Adam holds a unique position
in humanity. He was the representative of
all of us in the Garden of Eden. Whatever he did there is imputed
to all of us as though we ourselves did it. No other natural man
has held that position. But so closely are we identified
with Adam that when he sinned, it was taken that each and every
one of us did the same thing, even though we would not come
into existence for thousands of years. But we are also dead
by virtue of our own sinful natures. Even though we are considered
guilty of Adam's sin, we can make no boast that we are any
better than Adam. Adam's sin is not the only sin
we bear by any stretch of the imagination. Not only was Adam's
transgression imputed to us, we also inherit his nature. We
are like him, sinful rebels against our Creator. Have you ever noticed
that people do not have to be taught to lie, cheat, and steal?
Violence needs no instruction. No discipline is required for
hate. Our children come into this world and it's not long
after their arrival that we see this truth played out right before
our eyes. Every last person born into this
world, left to himself, will become a selfish, violent, dangerous
person. We parents spend upwards of 20
years trying to teach our children to act civilized, to love, not
hate, to share, not hoard, to give, not steal, to help, not
harm. As Paul quoted from the Old Testament,
there is none good, no not one. And we are dead by virtue of
our own transgressions. We not only bear Adam's nature,
we follow in his footsteps. We act like he did. We do that
which is forbidden, taking what has not been given to us by God. Now, this bone-dry condition
describes our objective condition by nature, but it also describes
how a believer can feel his subjective experience of life under God's
hand. I don't have time to go over
the various things that can bring us into this condition, but suffice
it to say that God's chastening hand can make us feel like we
are dead as can be. Our hope is gone, said Israel.
Paul told the Ephesian Gentiles that before God's grace was fully
revealed in Christ, they were without hope. There is no hope
for our souls apart from Christ. All those without Christ are
without hope. And even those who are by the
grace of God in Christ go through periods when they cannot see
Christ in their hearts, and therefore they have no sense of hope. The
Israelites went on to say, we are cut off. Here is why they
had no hope. Having been cut off from the
temple, they could see no way for their national sins to be
atoned. That temple was a picture of the Lord Jesus and His cross
work. Anyone cut off from that work has no hope. Going back
to Paul's word to the Ephesian Gentiles, he wrote, you were
separated from Christ without hope and without God in the world.
And there are times when the believer feels cut off from God,
having no hope for he cannot perceive his connection to Christ.
Do you recall the words of the psalmist in the 42nd Psalm? As a deer pants for running streams,
so my soul is thirsting for God. This was the cry of a Jew cut
off from the temple. Yes, the temple was there, and
yes, all the grace of God represented by the temple was still applicable
to the psalmist. But for whatever reason, he could
not go there, and he felt cut off. And likewise, we who believe
go through those times when we cannot seem to get Christ to
come to us, and without His presence, we are without hope, and our
bones are dry. Now it may be depressing to hear
that such is our case. Many people do not like to hear
such preaching, for they always want to feel good. But keep in
mind that it is the devil who aims for making you feel good
even while you are in bad shape. God will deal honestly with you.
Furthermore, in your heart, you know that this is your true condition. You know that there is no good
in you. You may spend a great deal of
energy trying to make something good of yourself, and failing
that, maybe you try to make others think there is something good
in you, but you know better. Is it not good, then, that God
speaks honestly of what you are? Would you not want a doctor to
give an honest diagnosis before he sets out the proper remedy?
In this vision, which God gave Ezekiel, God does reveal what
He is going to do to remedy Israel's awful condition. How much more
comfort can Israel draw from the Lord's remedy once they are
convinced that He understands their true condition? By telling
Ezekiel of the humanly hopeless condition of Israel, Ezekiel
can be sure that whatever remedy God comes up with will be well-suited
to those in such a hopeless condition. In the same way, we should be
glad that the Scriptures set us forth as totally incapable
of arranging and performing our own salvation. We already know
that such is true, and since the Scriptures acknowledge that
truth, we can be certain whatever gospel God sets forth in His
book will be suitable to our condition. Thank God for the
Scriptures' honesty about what we are. What is the remedy for
dry bones spirituality? Very simple, the sovereign grace
of God. Listen to what God tells Ezekiel
to preach to the dry bones. This is what the sovereign Lord
says to these bones, I will make breath enter you and you will
come to life. 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. Notice all the divine I wills
of this declaration. There is nothing of, if you will
do this, I will revive you. How silly to think that dry bones
could ever hear or respond to a word from the Lord. Salvation
is not so much an offer as a declaration. God offered nothing to the dry
bones of Ezekiel's vision. He declared to them what he would
do, and then he did it. He told Ezekiel, God's gospel
preacher at that place and time, what to tell the bones. Ezekiel
told them, and the bones reconnected, and muscle and flesh was added
to them. Yet they were still dead. No amount of preaching
can by itself make a man alive to God. Ezekiel was told to prophesy
to the wind and blow upon the newly formed bodies. Actually,
in Hebrew, one word can be translated breath, wind, or spirit. So this
is a picture of the Spirit of God giving life, that is, the
new birth, to His people. The Spirit of God is called the
wind and breath of God. Just as God breathed into Adam's
nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul,
so does God breathe spiritual life back into His people, and
they become spiritually alive. In the vision, that which was
once a pile of very dry bones was reformed into a full body,
then given life. So dead, broken sinners are reconstituted
and given life by God. In all of this you will not find
the will or power of man at all. As God said in verse 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. God be
praised for His powerful, sovereign grace that can make dry bones
a vast living army, and may God be pleased to do the same for
you. We pray that you've been blessed by today's message. Visit
our website where you can find more information regarding our
church. Our web address is www.rvgrace.com. There you can find information
on our worship times, audio and video recordings of our worship
service and Bible study, plus a weekly devotional. Our email
address is pastor at rvgrace.com. Until next week, may the God
of all grace and comfort bless you in Christ Jesus.