I am privileged, though somewhat fearful,
about opening my Bible this evening and trying to say anything from
it. But I want to preach to you for
a few minutes basically concerning preaching. In Ezekiel chapter
37, and I want to read to you this incident that took place
in Ezekiel's life. And I want to begin here in verse
1 of Ezekiel chapter 37 and read down through verse 14. The hand
of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit
of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the 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 lo, They were very dry. And he said unto
me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord
God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy,
preach upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones,
hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord unto these
bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall
live. And I will lay sinews upon you,
and bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and
put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that
I am the Lord. So I preached as I was commanded,
and as I preached 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 upon them, and the skin
covered them above, but there was no breath in them. Then said
he unto me, Preach unto the wind, preach, son of man, and say unto
the wind, Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds,
O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So
I preached as he commanded me, and the breath came unto them,
and they lived and stood upon their feet in an exceeding great
army. Many said unto me, Son of man,
these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say,
our bones are dried, our hope is lost, we are cut off for our
parts. Therefore prophesy and say unto
them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O my people, I will open
your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and
bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am
the Lord when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought
you up out of your graves, and have put my Spirit in you, and
you shall live. And I shall place you in your
own land. Then shall you know that I the
Lord have spoken it and performed it." the Lord. Charles Spurgeon
preached a message on this incident, and he said
he believed that the first interpretation of it was the return or the salvation
of the nation of Israel. Either the Lord would turn back
to that nation and save them and bring them back to the land
there in Palestine, or he would bring them back there and save
them. I don't know much about that, but I hope that's so. I
think something would be wrong with a man who did not hope that
was so. For God to turn to a nation of
rebellious lost people and save them, that would be wonderful.
But Mr. Spurgeon said he wanted to preach
this as God's saving sinners through the preaching of the
gospel. And that's the way I want to look at it this evening. And
here we see in verse 1 that God is instructing His preacher. He's preparing his heart. He's
instructing him with a strong hand. Now, I appreciate, I never
would want to undervalue or underappreciate men who have been called to the
ministry. They have applied themselves.
They have taken time and expense. Some of them have gone to school.
They have learned and applied that, and I appreciate those
men. I don't know if we're really, humanly speaking, we would be
without such men. We probably wouldn't have an
English version of our Bibles. I never would want to say anything
to undervalue those men. When I was raised as a teenager,
I was raised to equate preaching with ignorance. We look down
upon what they call educated preachers. And I look back upon
that now as being very shameful and silly. I bless God for those
educated men. But having said that, you and
I need preachers that have been along with God. Men that God
has taught Men that God has called, made them to see things and know
things that they could not know without Him teaching them. How
can a man preach except he be sent? He cannot. A man that goes
to preach without being called and without being sent is the
most dangerous man in this world. And a poor believer, if he tries
it, He'll wind up being the most discouraged and distraught individual
in this whole world. We need men who are sent from
God, men who have been along with God and taught of God, as
this man here was. He says here in verse 1 that
the hand of the Lord was upon me. And he carried me out, and
he set me down in the midst of this valley of dry bones. If a young preacher, a young
man, a young Christian, I had one not long ago, came to me,
and he said, I think God's called me to the ministry. Do you have
any advice for me? I said, don't do it if you can
have it. Stay out of it if you can. Because one of the things
you're going to experience, God's going to teach you. God's going
to instruct you. He's going to humble you before
He ever uses you. Don't enter the ministry, brothers,
if you can have it. Stay out of it unless you can
have it. But here's a man that couldn't
have it. Here's a man that had no choice. God wretched down
as it was and got him by Spirit. And he carried him out and he
set him in the midst of a valley of these dry bones. And he said,
preacher, I'm going to teach you how to preach. That's what
he said to him. I'm going to instruct you. I'm
going to put something in your heart. And when you speak, you'll
know it's from me. I'm going to teach you something.
Ain't that the kind of preacher you and I want? Whether he's
educated or uneducated, he's been along with God. God has
instructed him with a heavy hand. And he told him here in verse
2 that he caused me to pass by them round about. And that simply
means he made me consider these bones. I walked up and down through
them. I just didn't glance at them.
I looked at them. I considered them. And I saw some heads, some skulls
that were split open, arms that were separated from their shoulders,
and leg bones separated from their hip bones. They were scattered
in this valley. And he said, I reached these
conclusions. There were very many of them,
and they were very dry. They had been long dead, and
there were many of them. And I just wonder if this didn't
make this preacher very uncomfortable. I just wonder if he went in and
out among these dead, dry people that he felt so uncomfortable
about. You know where I've reached in my life? I'm just not very comfortable
anymore being around a multitude of lost people. I'm not. I go to the mall sometimes when
my dear wife wants me to go shopping with her, and I've gotten a habit
of going there, and I'll find me a bench or some place, and
I'll sit down. And I watch all this multitude of people, but
I can't enjoy it. My mind keeps wondering. I wonder
if that person knows the Lord. Look at this vast number of people
who are dead in trespasses and sin. I just can't enjoy it much
anymore. I had a family reunion a few
days ago, and a lot of us They're in my family. And I knew the
most of them very well. And every last one of them is
without God and without hope in this world. They're flippant
about it. Brother Scott Richardson said
they're skating on thin ice over hell. And they're flippant about
it. And one of the things it does
to me, it scares me to death. It's a weight upon my soul that
I cannot shake. Paul said, I have continual sorrow
in my heart, heaviness for my kinsmen. I wonder how this man
felt as he walked and looked at these bones. Oh, it was a
weight upon his soul. He realized that he was walking
among the dead. And that's what the preacher
of God is brought to say. Most of the people that you run
into contact with, most of your family, the people that you work
with, are nothing but dead, dry bones. There are many of them. Many of them. And he said here in verse 3,
after he had considered all of this, he said in verse 3, Son of man, can these bones live? That's a good question. That's
a good question. And he said, Lord, basically,
if it's left up to me, they can't. They're too dead. They're too
dry. If it's left up to them, they
can't live. It would be utterly impossible.
If it's left up to anybody else, they cannot live. Only you know,
Lord. Only God knows the power that
it takes to raise a dead sinner to life again. And only He has
that power. The hour is coming in which the
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And that's the
only thing that gives a man life. And only He knows who He's going
to speak to and give life to. Can they live? Only you know,
Lord. And look what He does here in
verse 4. He does something very amazing. This is very strange
that He does this. And he said unto me, Preach upon
these bones. Preach upon these bones. Looking at preaching from a human
standpoint, I know nothing that's more foolish and ridiculous and
useless as preaching. Now some people say, Bruce, you
shouldn't say that, but I'm telling the truth. Can you imagine how
ridiculous this man looked? And how ridiculous he appeared
and useless, standing in the midst of a bunch of dry bones,
preaching to them. Can you imagine some of the noble
people and the wise people from town coming here and pulling
over to the side of the road and saying, look at that fool?
He's mad. He needs to be examined. He needs
to be on medication. They ought to pass a law and
have him arrested. It's foolish from a human standpoint. The nature of preaching in and
of itself is an embarrassing thing. This is why the world
hates it. This is why the flesh loathes
it. This is why people today, even
the religionists of our day, is turning from it. They'll have
their open discussions. They'll have their question and
answer sessions. They'll get a man and his wife
and set them on a couch and have a guest and talk to them. But
you let a man pick up his Bible and take his text and preach
it, and they loathe that. The very nature of preaching
is such that no man will begin to do it rightfully, no man will
begin to do it in truth and continue to do it unless God first has
instructed that man with a strong hand and holds him up as he continues
to do it. He won't. Woe is me if I preach not the
gospel. That's from the lips of a man
who's been instructed of God. The reason some men start to
preach and they quit, they become ashamed of it. They turn to something else.
It's embarrassing. The nature of preaching is embarrassing. Did we not read some word that
God hath chosen by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe? Well, here's a man standing in
the midst of a valley of dry bones and he's preaching to them.
There's the foolishness of preaching. Men will turn to counseling,
sand painting, clown ministry, Christian comics, anything to
get away from preaching. Preaching. And here's the second thing about
preaching. Look at this in the last part of verse 4. Preaching
to these bones and saying to them, O ye dry bones. One of the most difficult aspects
about preaching. The most difficult aspect about
preaching. You and I know what the world
wants to hear. I know exactly what people want. I've been preaching
long enough. I could please people. I know what they want to hear. But preaching to be done in truth
must be preached to the people right where you find them and
in the condition God says they're in. If it's not that, it's not
true preaching. Oh, you dry bones! Why did He
address them this way? That's what they were. Because God had showed him what
they were. Preaching to people who are dead
in trespasses and sins and addressing them accordingly is not a flattering
thing. It don't flatter them, it does
not flatter the preacher. I've never had anything to stir
up shame in my flesh and humiliate me as much as preaching the gospel
to a room full of people who don't want to hear it. And when
I preach it, they don't understand what I'm saying. You don't tell me or no other
God-called preacher that preaching is not a foolish
thing to this world. And it's contrary to the natural
man. There's a man asked me the other day, he said, will you
come and preach my mother's funeral? Preach your mother's funeral?
You want me to come and preach your mother's funeral? You better
not ask me to come and preach your mother's funeral. You better
ask me to come and say some nice things about her. I'll do that.
She was a good mother. She loved her children. She was
good to her neighbors. But that's not what you asked
me to do. You asked me to come and preach. I preached at the funeral of
my nephew. Lost his 12-year-old son in an
accident. He was affiliated with a university
down south. And I went there to preach in
a whole room, I mean a humongous room. the place they opened up
for me to preach to. And it was anybody in that community.
It was their professors and doctors. And here I am. I couldn't pass
a third grade test that kids could take. And here I am preaching
to them people. And I tell you as I begin to
preach, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal
life. And I hadn't preached for two minutes, and I tell you,
I saw all the disappointed faces of my relatives. And I saw those
professors and those doctors, the smirks on their faces and
the anger, and they looked like lions ready to roar upon me. And I left there that day with
shame and embarrassment for what I saith and what I preached. And then I got ashamed that I
was ashamed. Lord, forgive me for being ashamed. But that's
the nature of preaching, you see. You address men right where
you find them. You address them just like they
are. And what are they? They are dead
and trespasses and sins. Paul said, do I teach the things
of God or the things of men? Do I seek to please men? If I
seek to please men, I shall cease to be the servant of Christ.
But I tell you, he said, brethren, the gospel which I preach is
not after men. It's not pleasing to the flesh
of men. It's a humiliating thing to the
hearers as well as the preacher. And you can only know it by revelation. I neither received it of men,
neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. O ye dry bones, hear the word
of the Lord. O ye dry bones, carnal-minded,
enmity against God. Your souls are dead in trespasses
and sins. Your conscience accuses you.
The law curses you. God says you're guilty even before
Him. How do you comfort lost people?
How do you go to the hospital and comfort them? How do you
comfort them in a funeral service? When they look at you and you
know what they're saying. Here we come for some comfort,
and what's this vain babbler doing? He's stirring up more
trouble in us. Don't he have any respect? Don't
he have any decency about him? Don't he have any love? Can he
give us any comfort? What is a man to say? We just
confront people where we find them. And if they're dead, they're
dead. Has the Lord Jesus washed you
from your sin? Then you're dead and trespassed
into sin. If not, has God given you a new heart? If not, then
your heart is as hard as an animal's dog. Has God awoken you up to
flee from the wrath to come? If not, you're still under wrath. That ain't very flattering, is
it? And that's to you who know the Lord. It ain't hard to preach to you,
you see. But I'm talking about getting in the valley of dry
bones. I'm talking about the shame and the embarrassment of
that. I end my message this evening and come down here and somebody
comes and jumps on to me and confronts me about it, I just
send them to Brother Jim. You go to the pastor. And look what he said in the
last portion of this, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. O ye dry bones, O ye dead bones,
hear, hear, ye dead bones. Does that make any sense? That's the nature of preaching
the gospel. We do not wait until sinners become sensible of their
danger. We do not seek out awakened sinners
to preach to. We do not wait until men cry
out, what must I do to be saved? We preach the gospel to them
who are dead and have never heard it before. We preach the way
of life to those who are presently dead in sins. God will have us preach Christ
to those who don't know Christ. who don't love Christ, who don't
believe in Christ, who have never come to Christ. If it's our aim
in preaching to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus,
then we must begin by preaching Christ to those who do not know
Him. I don't know how else God gives
life to men, except preaching the way of life to them. I don't
know how else men are made perfect, who are imperfect, except preaching
the perfect substitute to them. You go out and tell a dead man
to hear? You go out and tell a dead man to look and he'll
see? Hear and your soul shall live? Well, if it was left to the poor
preacher to affect it, Just give it up. Give it up. But this brings
us here to verse 5, and look at this. This is very encouraging. Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones. Well, that changes everything,
doesn't it? Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones. God is preaching to the bones.
He's doing it through the preacher, but he's doing it. Now, ain't
that encouraging? The Lord Jesus told His apostles
and disciples, He said, go into all the world and preach the
gospel, and lo, I am with you. And how did Peter say they preached
the gospel in his day? With the Holy Ghost sent down
from heaven. They went forth and preached
the gospel everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming
the word. You let a man stand and preach
the gospel as the Lord has taught him the gospel from his word,
he has the assurance that God is with him and God is speaking
through him. When they shall deliver you up,
the Lord Jesus said, and mock you and scourge you and threaten
you, take no thought what you're going to say, or how you're going
to say it. For it's not you that speak,
it's the Spirit of your Father speaking in you. Ain't that amazing? We are ambassadors for Christ.
Ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you
by us. It's God speaking. One of the major errors of this
poor lost world, when they despise preaching, they have no idea
who it is that's really doing the preaching. That's not for
me. That's that man's opinion. God
is speaking. God is speaking. He's doing it
through His preachers. That's the only way I know He
speaks to the church today. He's calling you. He's warning
you. He's encouraging you. He's encouraging and comforting
you through the lips of a clay man. Thus saith the Lord unto these
bones. And notice verse 5 and verse
6. I like this. Behold, I will cause breath to
enter unto you, and ye shall live. Well, a man that preaches
the gospel not only has the promise that God is speaking through
him. It's God preaching. But now he has the promise of
the purpose of God going to be fulfilled through his preaching.
God is going to do something. God's going to work a miracle.
And He wants Ezekiel to know that before He does it. Now why
would He want Ezekiel to know that? Because He doesn't want
him to despair in his preaching. He doesn't want him to get discouraged
and quit. So He tells him, I've got a purpose
behind your preaching. I'm going to do some miracles
behind your preaching. While you're preaching, I'm preaching
through you. And I'm going to breathe upon
these slain and they're going to live. I want you to know that.
Now, brothers and sisters, that's encouraging. It's encouraging
when you've got a fifth grade education. And when you have
to have the dictionary open when you go to write somebody a letter
because you can't spell. When the Lord gives you some
instructions and He says, I'm going to be with you. And I've
got this glorious eternal purpose. And though you're nothing but
a clay vessel, I'm going to so work through you to bring my
eternal purpose to pass. I've got some men. I've got some
women. I have elect souls. I'm going
to use you to call them out." Now, ain't that a blessing? One
fellow told me one time, he said, if I believed that, I'd stay
at the house. If I didn't believe that, I'd stay at the house.
If I believed it was up to me to affect anything as a preacher,
I would stay at the house. If I had to convince a man of
sin and righteousness and judgment to come, I'd stay home. If it was up to me to reveal
the Lord Jesus Christ to a man's heart, I'd hide under the bed
somewhere. Because He's in the bosom of
the Father, and only the Holy Spirit can open a heart to know
Him. And the Lord said, that's what
I'm going to do. I'm going to do it through your preaching.
You can have the assurance of that. That's my purpose. This is what made the Apostle
Paul continue to preach. He said, I preach. And because
I preach the gospel, I suffer for it. Even to bonds. They've got this chain on me.
I'm a prisoner for the gospel's sake. I'm in bond. But the word
of God is not bound. Therefore, I endear all things
for the elect's sake. that they may obtain that eternal
salvation which is in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we preach anything.
We can preach with encouragement, with a promise that God is bringing
His eternal purpose to pass through our preaching. And notice something else about
verse 5 and verse 6. It's a proclamation of covenant
blessing. I will, and you shall. When you say it like that, that's
covenant blessing. The old covenant says, this do,
and then you shall. The new covenant says, I will,
and you shall. I will breathe upon you, and
you shall live. I'll open up your graves, and
then you'll come up out of them. That's covenant blessings, ain't
it? Grace goes before bleeding. Grace goes before repentance.
Grace goes before salvation. And we're talking about a grace
that wasn't just conjured up because some other plan failed.
We're talking about eternal grace that was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world ever began. Somebody said, I'd never preach
election to lost people. Why not? Why not, for crying out loud?
I'd never preach covenant blessings to lost people. I wish somebody
would preach covenant blessings to me when I was a teenager,
going around about my self-righteous efforts, my legalistic efforts
to save myself. I wish somebody had come and
told me, there's such a thing as covenant blessings, and that's
what you need. Few of you are trying to do something
to live, and you've got it right backwards. You need life so you
can do something. The devil used to come to me
when I lived in my teenage years, and my wife will bear witness
to this, because me and my wife dated all through high school.
And sometimes she tells me, you were the most miserable, person
that I've ever been around in my life. And I was. I was. I was trying to save myself. And you don't have a more miserable
person in this world than the person trying to save themselves.
I went for a long time trying to think. I thought to myself,
well, it's God's will to save me by me doing the best I can.
And all I need to do is just pray harder. And boy, I'd go
to bed of a night scared to death. I fell today. Conscience screaming.
And then I come to think, after hearing a little bit of free
will Baptist preaching, that's where I went, my dad was a free
will Baptist preacher. Well, it wasn't God's will to
save me by myself, but it's God's will to save me with the best
I could do, plus Jesus Christ. It took both of us. So I struggled
with that for a long time. I wish somebody would have come
and told me about covenant blessing. And finally, I just threw up
my hands in utter despair. And the devil said, you can't
be a Christian. You can't live a Christian. Well, he was right.
I don't know what his motive was, but he was right. Until
I saw, by God's grace, it was God's will to save me by Jesus
Christ alone. And soon as I saw that, I was
saved. He gave me life. Then everything
else followed that. Covenant blessing. I will and
you shall. We tell people, try to get ahold
of the Lord. You're not going to get ahold of Him, but He gets
ahold of you. Look and live, but you'll never
look, you'll never live, until He gives you life. That's covenant
blessing, isn't it? That shuts this way up to the
Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. It's of the Lord. In verse 7, look at this, so
I prophesied, I preached. Why did you do that? He commanded
me to. He commanded me to. And look
what happened. I guess really, in a spiritual
realm, it's just natural for this to happen. As I began to
preach, there was a noise, a shaking, bones come together, bone to
his bone. Flash came upon him, skin covered
him. You know, it's just natural.
Brother Tim mentioned something last night about a man's conscience
screaming at him. When a man's conscience starts
screaming at him, I know a little bit about this from experience,
he'll start trying to get his act together. He's scared not
to. That's why Catholics stay out drunk half the night and
go to Mass the next day. Their conscience is screaming at them,
you see. And in a way, the Lord uses some of it. And this is
the amazing thing about the Lord, how He uses some of this stuff. I need to get me a Bible and
start reading it. That's what a man says. That's what I say.
Go ahead, you want to do that. But I just about bet you won't
understand what I'm saying. Boy, I need to get in church
somewhere. You better be careful where you go. Boy, I've got to
get out of this lust. I've just been... What about
lust up here? You can't get out of it. But
that's what men start doing when their conscience goes screaming.
I wonder why that Ethiopian eunuch went all the way from Ethiopia
up to Israel, Jerusalem, to worship. He didn't know the Lord did.
Lydia dwelt there with those ladies, came there and got on
the bank of the river to pray. Unsaved. It's just natural, I
guess, when that starts happening. I encourage people all the time,
lost people, won't you come hear the gospel? Once you get your
Bible, start reading it. Once you start seeking the Lord. But here's the danger of all
this, you see. If the Lord don't intervene and
keep them, here's the danger of all this. After they've done
all of this, they rest in it. And all it is is a farm. And they're dead still. The bones came together, the
flesh came upon them, and there they were. And they may have
been pretty, they may have had a farm, but they were dead. They
were dead. And the Lord said here in verse 8, there was no breath
in them. Then He said unto me, Preach
unto the wind, preach unto the wind, O son of man, and say unto
the wind, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
upon these slain, that they may live." Sometimes we'll say, well,
we preach to men, and that's all we can do. But you know,
really it's not. Not everybody is called to preach.
But all the Lord's saints are called to pray. And after Brother
Jim has labored and after he's preached, You ought to go home
and say, Lord, O come, O Holy Spirit. Come, O Spirit of life. Those who are sitting under the
gospel tonight as our pastor preach, come and breathe life
unto them. Make the Word effectual unto
them. We can all pray, can't we? O Lord, come and get me. God bless you. God bless you. Thank you, Brother Gio. Thank
you, dear congregation. Thank.