These Dry Bones, Ezekiel 37:1-14
Introduction
The famed American Evangelist and Pastor, D.L. Moody, would tell a remarkable incident in connection with an early visit to London. He had gone there for a visit. He was unknown in London, hence he did not expect to preach; but a little while after arriving there he was invited to preach for a certain church, which he did. He described the ceremony as a very cold and uninteresting service to him, but he announced that he would preach again that night.
Upon reaching the church, he noticed that the atmosphere had changed, he did not know just why. At the close of the meeting he was led to give an invitation for those who wanted to be saved to stand. A great crowd of people stood. He left the next day for Dublin, Ireland. Shortly after arriving there he received a telegram from the church to return, stating that the whole community was in an upstir and clamor for a series of meetings. He went back and found that a great revival was beginning, and hundreds of people were being converted.
Not long after he learned the secret. An invalid lady, who could not attend the church, was praying for a mighty outpouring of the Spirit upon the church. She prayed for months. Once she saw in the papers’ accounts of some of the Moody meetings in America, and, although she had never heard of Mr. Moody before, she began to pray that God would send him to her church in London for a revival.
One Sunday morning her sister, upon her return from the service, informed her of Moody’s presence and his preaching, whereupon she spent the whole afternoon in prayer that God would make that night a night of power. That explains the difference between morning and evening services!
Oh, I tell you what we need in the churches is praying members! Oh, if we could find even one who would thus resolve to pray to God for salvation and power to come upon the church. This is the need of today – importunate prayer, like the Syro-Phoenician woman’s “Lord, help! Lord, help!” (Matt. 15:22–28).
Transition
This morning it is my strongest desire that you might hear the very voice of God echoing in the chambers of your hearts. As you listen to the words I speak to you today, I encourage you to listen even more closely to what God Himself would say to you today. I am but His messenger and He desires you lend to Him an unblocked ear, a listening heart, and an open mind.
It is my earnest prayer and hope that you would leave today steadfast in your commitment to see revival sweep through our Church, through the Illinois Valley, and perhaps even through our entire Land!
That is what we will be talking about today; revival! Scarcely a person living in the modern landscape of Christianity in America will deny that we are in need of revival in churches, revival in our land, and revival in our lives.
This morning I hope to point in the direction that will bring about these things in our time and in the not so distance future.
Exposition
In today’s Scripture reading we hear of the Lord carrying the prophet Ezekiel into the valley of dry bones and revealing to Him a vision of the restoration of Israel.
The majority of Evangelical scholars agree with me – proving that they must be right (laugh) – that this passage is pointing to the future restoration of Israel which is yet to occur or at least yet to fully occur.
In my estimation this prophecy has already begun to occur in what happened in 1948 when Israel, after two millennia, once again resettled the Holy Land that had promised to her as a Nation. This event was unprecedented in history and at least in my assessment, absolutely defies all natural explanations.
At no other time in the history of civilization has a people group, a Nation, underwent such incredible hardship, been expelled from its homeland, and then after so many centuries been reborn as a Nation!
It is important to note here, however, that in Matthew 25:13 Jesus says, “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.” (NKJV)
The restoration of Israel in 1948 may very well be the beginning of the fulfillment of this prophecy but there may be any number of twists and turns and decades and centuries and even millennia yet in store for humanity prior to the return of our Lord to this earth.
While there is clearly eschatological value in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, and no doubt one day we will dive into those deep waters together, today I would like to focus on a very high principal contained in this passage of Scripture.
Namely; that God is in the business of restoration and revival. Just as God promised to restore life to the old dry bones of the Nation of Israel, so too God is telling us that He alone is the giver of life and breathe to His Church!
But buildings don’t breathe do they? Buildings may fall into disrepair and need renovation but only people experience revival! Church buildings are wonderful monuments to God but we are the vessels which carry God’s message to His world and we – the true Church – are in critical need of revival!
Pastor Wilbert L. Mcleod, founder of Canadian Revival Fellowship, is quoted as saying, “Revival is God’s finger pointed right at me.”
I read the story of an eight-year-old boy who told his father a joke one morning while his dad was frying eggs for the family’s breakfast. “Dad, how can you eat an egg without cracking the shell?”
The father thought about it for several moments before finally conceding that he did not know. He replied, “Have someone else crack it for you.”
Now this reminded me of how so many Church folk often are. They want the benefits the church has to offer without sharing the responsibilities. They want revival as long as someone else does the praying. They want good programs as long as someone else does the work.
If you want to eat eggs, you’re going to have to break some shells.
Revival is personal. We are in desperate need of revival in our land. We live in a time when up called down, when sin is called good, when those things which are most precious are cast aside as rubbish and those things which are base and vile are exalted and even worshiped.
Legislators have not managed to legislate morality, families are failing apart amid terrible pressures and outright attacks, Churches are not seeing the crowds they once did; who would disagree that we need revival in our land?
Perhaps you say to yourself this morning, “That’s great Pastor, I agree! But what am I to do about it. What on earth can I do to stop the onslaught of a rushing elephant?! I am but one person, I am too old, I’m too young, I don’t have enough influence to change a thing?!
When the Lord took Ezekiel out to the valley of dry bones He did not say to Ezekiel, “Make these dry bones live again.” He said to Him, “I, the Lord will cause these dry bones to live again!”
The Lord told the prophet to prophesy – to speak – to the dry bones and tell them that the Lord God Almighty would cause them to live again. Our task is not in fact our task. God has chosen to work through us and in us but revival is not caused because of us. The Lord alone breathes new life into old dry bones.
Proverbs 21:31 says, “The horse is prepared for the day of battle, But deliverance is of the LORD.” (NKJV)
When we look at what we see occurring all around us in society our hearts rightly cry out saying; “How are my modest arms capable of carrying such boulders?” But you see, it is not our arms which must be employed in this battle. It is our knees and our hearts earnestly seeking the Lord to intervene on our behalf.
Psalms 51:15-17 says, “O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart – These, O God, You will not despise.” (NKJV)
God is not waiting for us to move mountains; He is waiting for us to seek Him earnestly. He is waiting for us to wait on Him.
Rodney “Gypsy” Smith was a traveling Evangelist in the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. He was a contemporary of the great evangelist of that era like G. Campbell Morgan and others.
He was once asked how to start a revival. He answered, “Go home, lock yourself in your room and kneel down in the middle of your floor.
Draw a chalk mark all around yourself and ask God to start the revival inside that chalk mark. When he has answered your prayer, the revival will be on.”
Why not covenant with God to draw that private circle? It has been said that, “When Christians are on fire, believers are warmed and sinners are attracted to the light.” We don’t need more gospel-preaching in our land – there is plenty of that to go around.
Conclusion
We must be the change that we wish to see in our world. If God is to revive the Church He will do it through us. Most notably, he will do it through our prayers.
Acts 12:5 says, “Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.” (NKJV) Today, it is as though the spiritual life of the Church has been locked in prison and we must join together in praying for its release!
Prayer does change things. Of this much we can be sure. But the most powerful aspect of prayer is that it changes us! When we go into our prayer closets and seek the face of the Lord, we place ourselves in a position for God to speak to us, to change us, and to revive us!
Revival starts with me… and with you…. It starts in a quiet place after having drawn a circle around ourselves in chalk and asking God to begin the revival within that circle…
Today I am asking you to covenant with me as the people of God in Peru, Illinois to return to regular and consistent prayer or perhaps for the very first time in your life become a person of regular and consistent prayer so that these dry bones might live again!
In the coming weeks we will be talking more about the nature of prayer but for today, for this week, let me invite you and encourage to make a decision to partner as the people of God in a lifestyle of prayer and waiting on the Lord to do what only He can do – to revive His Church once again.
Let us pray.
