Now let's turn back to Ezekiel
37. The hand of the Lord was upon
me. Verse 1, Ezekiel 37. Carried me out in the Spirit
of the Lord and set me down in the midst of a valley which was
full of bones. caused me to pass by them round
about, and behold, there were very many in the open valley,
and they were very dry. And he said to me, Son of man,
can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou
knowest." Now, the Lord leaves no doubt as to the first meaning
of this scripture, and this is ease of preaching when the Lord
gives a parable or picture and then turns right around and interprets
it. There's no reason for anyone
to miss the first meaning of this scripture. It's right here
in front of us. If you look at verse 14 or verse 11, you'll
find the interpretation. Verse 11, Then he said to me,
Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are
dried, our hope is lost, we're cut off from our parts. Therefore
you prophesy or preach to them, say to them, Thus saith the Lord
God, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves." Now the people
of Israel, after the Lord Jesus died, were scattered all over
the world. After Christ died on the cross,
there was no nation of Israel. They were scattered everywhere,
all over the earth, in every country. God says here, I'm going
to bring you back to your land. I'm going to bring you back to
your land. He says, I'll open your graves, I'll cause you to
come out of your graves. Israel was all but dead. Even
in the early days of our lifetime, there was no Israel. Jews were
scattered all over the world, but there was no land of Israel.
There was no nation of Israel. It was occupied by other people.
And God says, I'm going to bring Israel back from the dead. I'm
going to bring you back to your graves, and you'll know that
I am the Lord. I'm going to place you in your
own land. Now, that's the interpretation.
The nation of Israel that is prophesied here shall live again. Now, no man can be dogmatic about
the future, but I believe that we're seeing the fulfillment
of this prophecy. I believe that since 1948, when
President Harry S. Truman and others recognized
the nation of Israel, that we, in this generation, were privileged
to see the beginning of the fulfillment of this prophecy right here.
I believe that. The people of Israel are back in Israel. There is an Israel. There's a
nation of Israel, and they're going back to their land, the
land that God gave them, the land that God gave Abraham and
the land that God promised his seed after him. Something's happening
in the Middle East. Then in chapter 38, now this
is astounding. There is a prophecy of a great
war against this nation. Now, God took Ezekiel out and
stood him over a valley. Someone said there had been a
battle fought there. And lots of men had been killed,
and they just left their bodies there, and they rotted, and the
days passed, and the weeks, and the months, and the years, and
the sun beat down upon them. They were dry, very many of them,
very dry, bleached and parched in the sun. And God took Ezekiel
out there and said, Look. And he looked over the valley,
and he said, Ezekiel, can these bones live? And Ezekiel said,
Lord God, you know. And he said, These bones are
the whole house of Israel. They are going to live. I'm going
to give them life. I'm going to bring them back
from the grave. I'm going to bring them to their
own land again. And they're going to dwell in
their land. Now then, he prophesies about something in chapter 38,
verse 14 that's going to happen. It hasn't happened yet. Maybe
we'll see this too. I kind of have a suspicion we
will. In verse 14, Therefore, son of man, prophesy, and say
unto Gog." Gog here represents the enemies of Israel. We know
who they are. Russia is Israel's enemy, the
Arab nation, most every nation. You prophesy and you say to Gog,
Thus saith the Lord God in that day, when my people of Israel
dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it. Their safety is God's
protection. Now you don't recognize God,
so you don't recognize that shield, that hedge I put about them.
They're my people. They're precious to me, and I
chose them out of all nations. God has not forsaken his people.
He has not cast off Israel. Paul said that in Romans 9, 10,
11. But you won't know. They're dwelling safely under
God's protective hand, but not recognizing God. The Communist
bloc does not acknowledge that shield of protection. And thou
shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou and
many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great
company, a mighty army. Thou shalt come up against my
people of Israel as a cloud to cover the land. It shall be in
the latter days. and I will bring thee against
my land." See, all of this is in the purpose of God. God's
the first cause of all things. There may be second, third, and
fourth causes, but God's the first cause of all things. The
Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, but God Almighty decreed it.
Men with wicked hands performed it, but God decreed it, God purposed
it. And God says, I'm going to bring
you against my land. You're going to do what you want
to do. They will harden his heart. Scripture says God hardened his
heart, too. How does God harden a man's heart? By withholding
light, or warmth, or heat that would melt it, or the word that
would convict it. And God says, I'll bring you
against my land, and here's what, here's why, that the heathen
may know me when I'll be sanctified in thee. Oh God, before their
eyes, I'm going to be sanctified in thee." That means that God
is going to be recognized by what he does to God, and may
God. When God steps in with great
power and great judgment, the whole world is going to stand
back wide-eyed in astonishment, and they're going to say, there's
a God in Hitler. A whole lot like Nebuchadnezzar said when
he came back from the bull rushes, there's a God in Hitler. he giveth
it to whomsoever he will. Thus saith the Lord God, verse
17, look at it, Art thou he of whom I have spoken an old time,
by my servants, the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in
those days many years that I would bring thee against them? And
it shall come to pass at the same time when God shall come
against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall
come up in my face, For in my jealousy and in the
fire of my wrath have I spoken. Surely in that day there shall
be a great shaking in the land of Israel." Perhaps an earthquake,
I don't know. But it's going to come from the
hand of God. These foreign armies are coming
against Israel. I talked to my brother, and this
is not for publication or advertisement or anything like that, but my
brother was a colonel in the Army, and he served with our
very secret divisions of NATO, and he told me before he died
that when he left his office at night in Frankfurt, Germany,
that the door was shut and sealed like a vault. There were papers
in there that were as vital, so vital and so important, that
his office door was a vault. And I asked him one time, when
we were talking about this, I said, what's the general opinion of
the officers in the Army? He moved in that top circle of
men who discussed these things. I said, what's the opinion? Just, I know you don't know,
and I know that nobody knows, only God knows, but what, you
fellows, when you talk, where is it going to be? Where is the
action going to be? There's going to be World War
III. Where is it going to be? Where
do you think it's going to be?" He said, Israel, that's where
it's going to be. My brother was not a student
of prophecy. My brother probably never read
the 38th chapter of Ezekiel or the 39th chapter. But he said,
I believe, and he said, even the men who stand around and
talk about wars and conflicts and the future and what it holds
for this nation and other nations, he said, they believe it's going
to be in Israel. not going to be in Vietnam or
China, it's going to be in Israel, the Near East. You can talk about,
well, the oil is going to cause it, or national pride is going
to cause it, or something else, but it's going to be caused and
it's going to be in Israel. And they're going to start it
and God's going to finish it. I believe that. I think that's
what we're reading right here. I'm not adding a thing to this,
I'm just reading what God says here. He says, in the latter
days, I'm taking Israel back to the land I gave them. They're
going to be like a people come back from the grave, and we've
seen that happen. I don't care where you run into
a Jew. He's a Jew, if he's in New York, or Ashland, or Russia,
or Germany, or Africa, where he is, and that's 1900 years
have passed, and they're still an identified people. They're particular people. You
know, I'm a Heinz, hit seven variety, and you are too. You
can't tell whether I've got a lot of Irish and Scotch and Wales
and Welch and English and no telling what all. And you're
the same way. But if there's a Jew here tonight,
it'd be a Jew. Now you explain that to me. And
the only way you can explain it is that God has preserved
their identity. So that the fish of the sea,"
verse 20, listen to it, "...so that the fish of the sea, and
the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and
all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men
that are upon the face of the earth, are going to shake at
my presence." and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the
steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the
ground. And I will call for sword against
him, against God. May God throughout all my mountains
sayeth the Lord, God, every man's sword shall be against his brother."
It's going to be such a slaughter that the next chapter, verse
I forget the verse down here, but it tells, it says, it's going
to, verse 12, 39, it says it's going to take seven months to
bury the dead. Seven months. Chapter 39, verse
12, And seven months shall the house of Israel be in burying
of them, that they may cleanse the land. In verse 21, I'll call
for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord.
Verse 22, and I'll plead against him with pestilence and blood.
I'll rain upon him, upon his bands, and upon the many people
that are with him, an overflowing rain with great hailstones, fire,
and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself and
sanctify myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations,
and they shall know that I am the Lord. Even so, come Lord
Jesus." I'd give thanks for that. I'd praise God for that. I hope
by His mercy I get to see that. I'd sure like to hear the people
of this world recognize a sovereign, almighty, omnipotent, eternal
God, wouldn't you? And he says he's going to do
it. But let's go back to chapter 37 a minute. Now, it's got an
application to Israel. And if you want to, go back and
read these chapters and just let God speak. You don't have
to just put time and dates and hours upon it and the names of
these nations. Just let God speak. And it will
be an amazing thing, I believe, that you'll see here. But this
passage has another application. It has a spiritual application.
And it shows the restoration of every child of God from the
grave of sin. You think this is a miracle?
It will be a miracle. But I can tell you an even greater
miracle, and that's when God saved your soul from the death,
the spiritual death, that you inherited in Adam. It took a
miracle to put the stars in space. It took a miracle to put the
sun in place. But when God saved my soul, it
took a miracle of His love and His grace. Now look, first of
all, we see in four or five things that I want to point out here,
we see the prophet's vision. I see Christ and His mercy and
grace throughout the whole Old Testament. And we're supposed
to. He says in verse 1 of chapter
37, "...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 a
valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them
round about. Behold, there were very many,
and they were very dry." The prophet Ezekiel saw the valley
full of dead, dry bones. Every true prophet of God sees
the same condition right now. As we look over this world, we
see all the sons of Adam dead in trespasses and sin. Somebody
says, what happened out there in that valley? They had a battle,
and these men lost, and it left them dead. What happened to this
world? There was a battle in the Garden
of Eden, and we lost, and it left us dead. Turn with me to
Romans chapter 5. Let me show you that. In the
fifth chapter of the book of Romans, God said to Adam, He
said, Adam, in the day you eat of this tree, you'll surely die. And when Adam ate of that tree,
the scripture says, he died. Now, he didn't die physically,
but he died spiritually. And when Adam died, who is the
father of us all, death Condemnation, judgment passed upon all men. Look at Romans 5, 12. Listen
to it. Wherefore, as by one man, sin
entered into this world. Sin entered the beautiful valley,
the Garden of Eden. Sin entered God's creation. And
death came with sin. And so death passed upon all
men. for that all sinned. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15.22,
in Adam, all died. All died. And in Ephesians chapter
2, when the Apostle Paul was writing about the conversion
of this church at Ephesus, he said in chapter 2 of Ephesians
verse 1, And you hath he quickened who were dead. dead and trespasses
in sin. This valley here, this picture
that we're looking at in Ezekiel 37, is not only the house of
Israel that shall be restored from their grave, but this is
the spiritual world that has been visited by sin and left
full of many dead, dry bones, all have sinned and come short
of God's glory. In the sons of Adam, there's
not spiritual life, there's not even a flame of spiritual life,
there's not even a spark of spiritual life. They're dead. Without hope,
without help, without Christ, and without God. And tragically,
without any desire for God. They're like those bones. They're
dead. Now then, back to Ezekiel 37.
We see the picture. The true prophet of God looks
over the world and he sees a world of dead, dry bones. The battle
fought in the Garden of Eden left them dead, without God and
without hope. Now the prophet's question, verse
3. And he said to me, son of man,
can these bones live? And my friends, if you have some
conception of the spiritual deadness of natural man. If you have some
conception of what spiritual life is, you too have pondered
this question. Now most people, preachers included,
don't know what dead in sin means. And most people, preachers included,
do not know what eternal life is. spiritual death is to be without
God, it's to be without light, it's to be without life, it's
to be without knowledge, it's to be without hope. It's the
same as natural death in one sense of the word. And God says,
as Ezekiel stood there and looked at these bones, bleached and
parched in that sun, God said, And if we look at those who hate
God, who love evil, who are law unto themselves, who are self-willed,
who crucified the Lord of glory, God asks this question, can these
who hate God love God? Can these who love evil pant
after holiness? Can these who are law unto themselves,
can they bow to God's will? Can these who are self-motivated
and self-willed and filled with envy and strife and malice and
hatred, can they love God's will? Can these who crucified the Lord
of Glory, can they crown Him King? Job asked that question. He said, how can man that's born
of woman be clean? How can it be? Jeremiah asked
that question. He said, Can the Ethiopian change
his skin? Can the leper change his spots?
Can you do good? He said, Love evil. And the disciples asked that
question. They said, Lord, who can you do save? You find that
question running all the way through the Bible. I know the
modern evangelist, he's got all the answers. Come down now and
shake my hand, meet me in the promised land. But that's not
the answer. Run down, send your soul winners
down there among those dry dead bones and shake hands with them,
see if any of them rise up and live and walk. Shaking hands doesn't give life.
If you kill them, go down and shake hands with them, that won't
give them life. Can they live, God said, can these dead, dry
bones live? Can these spiritually dead sons
of Adam, can they really have the life of God in them, the
life of love in them, the life of truth in them? Is there a
possibility that a dead sinner can be made to live? And when you contemplate what
spiritual death is, and when you contemplate, most folks can't
because they're strangers to it, what spiritual life is, you'll
ask the same question, can these bones live? Not can they make a profession
of religion, all natural men are religious by nature. It's
not can they decide for Jesus, it says can they live. Can they
live the life of faith, the life of glory, the life of God, the
life of love, the life of beauty, the life of truth, the life of
peace, the life of rest? Can they live that? They've got natural life. Natural
life's not spiritual life. You've got mineral life, you've
got plant life, you've got animal life, you've got natural life.
Something most folks don't know anything about is spiritual life. And spiritual life is as high
above natural life as natural life is above plant life or animal
life. You can't teach an ape geography
and you can't teach a natural man the love of Christ. You can't
teach a higher mathematics, and you can't teach a rebellious
daughter of Adam or son of Adam what it is to walk in Christ. It's a life they know nothing
about. They're strangers to it. God says, Can they live? All
right, look at the prophet's answer, verse 3. And he said,
and there are two things I want to point out here. He said, O
Lord God, thou knowest And the first thing that caught my attention
was this. The only one who knows if they
can live is the one who has the power to make them live. Thou
knowest. Turn to Matthew 19. This is interesting
here. We have the same thing reenacted
here between the disciples and the Master. In Matthew 19, listen
to this. Matthew 19, verse 25. When the disciples heard it,
or heard what life is, when they heard what salvation is, when
they heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, and they said, Well,
who can be saved? And Jesus beheld them, verse
26, and said, With men it is impossible, impossible. But with God, all things are
possible. And that's the reason Ezekiel
stood back here and he said, God, thou knowest. And God comes to preachers today
and says, look out there. Lift up your eyes upon the field. Look at the dead, dry, parched
bones. Look at them. Can they live?
The Lord, I can't give them life. I may propose all sorts of remedies
and recipes and rituals, but I can't give them life. I might
go in and anoint Lazarus with some sweet-smelling perfume and
make him smell better, but I can't give him life. And I might roll
a stone over his grave and make the community a better place
in which to live, but I can't give him life. And he can't give himself life
either. These dead bones may perform
through manipulation by their ministers all sorts of deeds
and acts and make all sorts of decisions, but life is not in
their power. Here's the second thing I noticed.
He said, verse 3, the last line there, O Lord God, Jehovah God,
Savior God, Jesus Christ, Lord God. Thou knowest, because as
such, as a saving God, as a redeeming God, as Jesus Christ, you can
make Him real. Jehovah God. You see there? O
Lord God, O redeeming God, O Saviour God, not just O Elohim thou knowest,
but O Lord God, if thou shalt confess without Jesus to be Lord,
Jehovah, Joshua, Saviour." In terms of John 17, here's what
the prophet is talking about. Don't rebel against this, it's
the heart of our message. Don't rebel against this. When
you do, you'll find yourself speaking against God. John 17,
2, the Lord Jesus Christ said, Thou hast given me power over
all flesh, that I should give life, eternal life, to as many
as Thou hast given me. O Lord God, Thou knowest You
know because you are the source of life, and you are the power
of life, and because as such you can give life, and life is
in thee. You have the power over all dry,
dead bones to give life to whom you will. Turn to John 5. Here it is again. In John 5,
verse 21. John 5, verse 21, says, As the
Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth, or giveth life to
them, even so the Son quickeneth, and he will." Verse 24, "...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 unto life." This is a spiritual
resurrection here. This is not physical resurrection.
That's only in the latter verses. Verily I say unto you, 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. For as the Father
hath life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life
in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment
also, because he is the Son of man." Don't be amazed at this.
for the hour is coming in which all that are in the grave shall
hear his voice and live." But verse 24, 25, and 26 is a spiritual
resurrection. And don't be amazed at this power
of Christ to raise men from spiritual death. The hour is coming when
he's going to actually, literally raise them from the grave, from
the dust, from the bottom of the sea. and from the atoms of
the air, give them back their bodies. And I'm talking about
religion, I'm talking about life. Can these bones live? We've got
too much religion now and too little life. We've got too much
mechanics of religion. We have too much theology and
doctrine and too little life. Too much head knowledge and too
little heart experience. I want life. I want life. All right, he said, here's the
Lord's command. We've seen the prophet's vision,
a dead, dead world. The prophet's, the Lord's question,
can they live? The prophet's answer, I don't
know. They don't know. You know, Lord God, because you
died to give them life. He died that he might be Lord
of the dead and the living. Now the Lord's command, watch
it, he said, all right, preach to these bones. And you say,
oh you dry bones, you hear the word of God. Now that's an unusual
way to bring life, the dry bones, isn't it? But that's God's way. I've had people say to me, if
I believe what you believe, that sinners are dead and have no
power to give themselves life, that only God can give them life. Only God can make them live.
I wouldn't believe it. You mean you wouldn't do what
Ezekiel did here? What would you say if the Lord
told you to do that? Now, you little smart aleck,
God sends you to hell if you didn't mind Him. He said, Preach
to them! That was the command. And verse
5 says, verse 7 says, So I preached as I was commanded. I did what
God told me to do. And that's what everybody better
do, what God tells them to do. God says you preach to them,
and that's what God tells us to do today. He says in 1 Corinthians
1, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.
But unto us it is saved. It's the what? The power of God. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel. It's the what? The power of God. Unto salvation, unto life, the
gospel is. Of his own will beget he us with
the word of truth. We're born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible seed, the word of God. Just as God
said to Ezekiel as he stood over that valley of dry dead bones,
preach to them and tell them to hear you, hear the word of
God. And that's exactly what every
New Testament preacher is commanded to do right now, is to preach
to dead sinners and command them to repent and command them to
believe and command them to hear the word of God. He said that
they don't have ears, but the one who commands them to hear
will give them ears. The Lord Jesus Christ said to
a man one time with a withered hand, he said, stretch out your
hand. And the fellow didn't stand there and offer all these excuses,
but my hand is withered, but I can't stretch it out. He just
stretched it out. And as he stretched it out, it
was made whole. What does the Word of God say?
Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. The Holy
Spirit. Well, let's go to the next point.
The Prophet's dependence, verse 9. So he preached to them, he
preached to them, but they didn't have any life. And skin and all
these other things had the appearance of life. So the Lord said, prophesy
to the wind. Now everybody that knows anything
about the Bible knows that this word is breath. And everybody
that knows anything about the Bible knows that breath is the
Holy Spirit. And this is a picture of the
Holy Spirit. So he said, prophesy to the wind,
to the breath, Son of Man. And you say to the wind, to the
breath. The Lord God says, breathe upon these dead that they may
live. rather than it's the Holy Spirit
who gives life. It's the Holy Spirit who quickens
the dead. It's the Holy Spirit who reveals
Christ. It's the Holy Spirit who gives
life. The law won't do it, even the
gospel won't do it, apart from the Holy Spirit. As much truth
as we preach, as we preach the truth of God, our dependence
is not upon our argument, It's not, and I wish we wouldn't pray
this way, and I know we're sincere when we do it. Lord, enable the
preacher to say something tonight that will convince my brother
he's lost. The preacher can say these things
until he's blue in the face, until your brother's a wizard
old man, but unless the Holy Spirit opens his ears and opens
his heart, he's not going to see he's lost. Lord, enable the
preacher to say something tonight that will cause my sister or
my loved ones or my son or my daughter to believe on Christ.
They've heard it a thousand times. But there has to come a day when
the Spirit of God reveals Christ to the heart. Has he ever revealed
Christ to you? Now Saul of Tarsus had the doctrine,
he had the law, he had the scripture, he had these things, but he had
not life. And one day he said it pleased
God when he was forty years old to reveal his son in May. One
day, God gave him life. He had the doctrine, he had the
orthodoxy, he was fundamental, and I feel that some of us are
in the same shape. We're orthodox, we're fundamental,
we know the doctrine, we have the theology, we go through the
motions, we obey the ritual, we perform the ceremony, we're
trying to live a Christian life. We don't even have life. It takes
the Holy Spirit to give life. And that life is the life of
God. And that life is the life of
faith. And that life is a divine life. And bud, when that life
comes, you'll be different. You'll think differently. You'll
speak differently. You'll act differently. That's
the life of God. That's a special life. That's
a faithful life. That's a God-anointed life. It's
the life of God. That's what it is. It's spiritual
life. Oh, Christmas Evans, I talked
to the pastor in Canada. He's from Wales. Christmas Evans
was that old one-eyed preacher through whom God sent revival
to Wales years ago. Hundreds and hundreds of people
were suddenly converted in a matter of days. God's Holy Spirit came
down upon that little island. But Christmas Evans one time
was supposed to preach one Sunday morning at 11 o'clock and the
people assembled and the deacons were there and no preacher. So
one of the deacons turned to Evans and said, have you seen
the preacher this morning? Well he said, I saw him come
to church but I hadn't seen him since I saw him outside. He said,
well, it's time to start the service. He had one of these
pocket biscuits, you know, and he looked at it and said, it's
time to start service. And, you know, the deacon said, well,
you go one way and look for him and I'll go the other. And so
they started looking. After a while they came back
and met there and the first deacon said, I didn't find him, did
you? He said, I found him. He said, where did you find him?
I said, I found him in his study. He said, what was he doing? I said, he was praying. And the
deacon said, well there's a time to pray and there's a time to
preach. You go tell him it's time to preach. Oh no, he said,
I'm not going to bother him. He said, you know what he was
saying? He was saying, Lord God, I've gone into that pulpit by
myself for the last time. If you don't go with me this
morning, I'm just not going. I'm just not going. We need that, don't we? Alone,
our words, they fall right down there. Or tragically, sometimes
our persuasion and our psychology and our reasoning wins us converts. And they're converted either
to us, or to our theology, or to our doctrine, or to a free
ride to glory, or to miss hell, or to denomination, or through
our words. But oh, when God the Holy Ghost
takes the fact of sin, as it's written in the Word, and sends
that error into a sinner's heart, he'll never be the same. It just
tears his heart out, it just breaks, it just crushes, it just
wounds his spirit. And then the Holy Spirit takes
this good news of Christ coming down here in the flesh as a man
and dying on the cross for my sins. His love will not let me
go. how he agonized and suffered
in our place and in our state, and the Holy Ghost takes that
truth and just smashes the heart, just crushes the heart. It's
love at first spiritual sight, first spiritual revelation. He
was hanging on that cross for our sins, dying for our iniquities. when the Holy Ghost of God takes
the Word and gives life, spiritual life, the life of God, and we
quit hating one another and go to loving one another. I'm a
different person. And we quit complaining and go
to rejoicing. And we quit murmuring and go
to praising God. And we quit living down here
in the weeds and the marsh and the bogs and the sex pools of
the vanities of this life, and Christ becomes first! With some people, money's first
and God's last, or pride's first and God's last, or family's first
and God's last, or self's first and God's last. You got religion,
but you don't got life. In life, God's first. Christ
is first. You're still a dry, dead bone.
That's all. But when the Holy Spirit comes,
you're just life. Life. Our Father, bless the word, give us life, divine, supernatural
life. Let these dead, dry, worthless
bones live again. Live in the image of him who
created us for his glory and for his eternal praise. Speak
the word, but speak the word in the power and unction of the
Holy Spirit. Too long our words have fallen
only upon the ears of men and women. Let them fall upon the
heart, pick the heart, break the heart, lose and wound the
heart, and bring that sinner to his knees, and to her knees,
crying for mercy at the feet of Christ, looking to him who
loved us and gave himself for us. In his blessed name we pray.
Amen.