Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, chapter 37. That’s not one we spend a whole lot of time in, so I’ll give you some time to find it. Ezekiel is in the second half of the OT. It’s after Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah…
While you are looking up Ezekiel 37, I’ve got a question for all you car guys (and girls) out there. And I realize I’m showing my ignorance here. But let’s say you are looking under the hood of a car that’s got the engine running. The fan belt is spinning, the pistons are pistoning, the alternator is … alternating. it’s just humming along. You ask the guy behind the wheel to rev the engine. He puts his foot on the accelerator, and the engine roars. The blinkers work, the brake lights come on when you press the brake pedal, the windshield wipers go back and forth.
Here’s the question: Can you tell, just by looking at it, whether the car is in drive or in park?
And the answer is no. I double checked this with a couple of car guys in my family—my brother and my brother in law, just to make sure I was right about this. My brother, ever the smart aleck, said, “Well, if you’re standing in front of the car, and the motor’s running, and the guy behind the wheel puts the car in drive and takes his foot off the brake… yeah, James. You’re gonna be able to tell the difference as soon as the car runs over you.
And yeah… I’m not THAT dumb. But the fact remains that if all you are looking at is the engine humming and the gears spinning and the fan whirring and the radio blaring and the wipers flapping back and forth, then you have no way of knowing if the car is in drive or if it’s in neutral.
So now take that truth, and apply it to the church. Any church. Our church. We are starting back up again. The calendar is beginning to fill up again. Classes are meeting. Restrictions are easing. There’s sound and lights and activities and stuff going on. But are we going anywhere? Is there forward motion, or is there just movement?
Are we in drive, or are we in neutral?
What about your personal life? We are busy people. We’re constantly in motion. But the question comes back—is there forward motion, or is there just movement. Are you like a NASCAR driver, racing around and around at 200 mph, but at the end of the day you haven’t gone anywhere?
Over the next few weeks, we are going to talk about some SHIFTS that we need to make, both in our personal lives and in the life of our church, in order to be the people God wants us to be. We’re going to talk about shifting our attitude. Shifting our actions. We’re going to ask the question, is there anything about our priorities that we need to shift? It’s going to be a great series, but today, I want to talk specifically about the church. About how, before we can shift INTO any other gear, we have to shift OUT of neutral.
So that brings us to our Scripture passage for this morning. I want us to look at Ezekiel because I think we are going to find some common ground with this prophet. Ezekiel’s entire ministry happened during the time of Judah’s exile in Babylon. When Ezekiel had his first vision, it was just the fifth year of what would be a 70 year period where life as they had known it had been turned upside down. The temple had been destroyed, their children were getting absorbed into a new culture, and Ezekiel himself was trying to figure out, where is God in all this? What is life going to look like on the other side of quarantine (oops! I mean exile!)
So in Ezekiel 37, which is probably the most well known passage in the entire book, God gives him this vision. Let’s stand to honor the reading of God’s Word:
37 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come 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.”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Pray with me…
Now, unlike some of the other visions in the prophetic books, God actually gives us an answer key for this one. In verse 11, the Lord tells Ezekiel, “these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.”
In other words, they are stuck in neutral. Not only is there no forward motion, there’s no motion at all. And they’ve been like that a long time—notice the bones are dry.
And God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” There’s four parts to the answer. If you’re a linear thinker, this will probably frustrate you, because I’m not going to go in the same order as the text. But stay with me.
1. Can these bones live? They must have the breath of God
I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. (Ezek. 37:8)
God gives Ezekiel some instructions, and the bones come together. Verse 4 and 5 said “there was a rattling sound” (which must have been really freaky) and then bone joined to bone, and then they began to be covered with tendons and sinews and flesh. Verse 8 says, “and skin covered them” but are they alive? No. Why not? “There was no breath in them.”
I wonder how many churches this might describe. From outward appearances, it might look like the church is alive. There’s activities and events. The doors are open and they are having worship services. There’s gas in the bus, and the bus goes places on a regular basis. But here’s what we learn from Ezekiel’s vision:
• Appearance doesn’t equal life (Rev. 3:1). We see this in the criticism Jesus has for the church in Sardis, one of the seven churches in Revelation. He tells them, “You have the reputation of being alive, yet you are dead.”
• Activity doesn’t equal life (Matthew 7:21-23). A full calendar of activities doesn’t mean a church is actually alive. In Matthew 7, Jesus has some truly terrifying teaching. He says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
• ONLY God’s Spirit can bring life! (Job 33:4; John 6:63; Romans 8:2,10,11). Underline the word “breath” in verse 8. That’s the Hebrew word ruach, and it is the same word that is used for Spirit. All through the Old Testament—
o The spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the water in Genesis 1:2. ruach
o God breathed into Adam and Adam became a living being—ruach.
o You get a double shot in Job 33:4: The Spirit [ruach] of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Without the Spirit of God inhabiting what we do, we are stuck in neutral. No matter how busy we become, we won’t be alive as a church.
How do we know whether or not we are inhabited by God’s Spirit? Let me ask you this—is there anything we are attempting that, apart from the Holy Spirit, we would fall flat on our face? If we weren’t depending on the Holy Spirit, if we stopped praying and just did everything we were capable of doing in our own strength, how long before anyone could tell the difference?
In order to get out of neutral, we have to have the breath of God in everything we do.
Can these bones live? It depends on the pleasure of God. When God asks the prophet, “Can these bones live,” Ezekiel gives a very humble answer—Sovereign Lord, you alone know. What does the word “sovereign” mean? You see the word “reign” in “sovereign.” That means that is has something to do with the authority God has to rule and reign and make decisions in his kingdom. So anything and everything that happens within the kingdom of God happens because God either wills it to happen or permits it to happen. And, there is nothing in all the universe that is out from under God’s sovereign rule. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, put it this way: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
So, can these bones come back to life? Lord, you alone know.
Can a church recover when a pandemic shuts the doors of the church and attendance is a third of what it was six months ago? If the sovereign Lord wills it, then yes. If He doesn’t, then no.
There will be churches that don’t survive this. Brian Kinnaman, the president of the Barna group, told the Christian Post last month that 1 in 5 churches may permanently close as a result of the coronavirus. Another study says that almost half the churches in America (47%) could not cover three months of expenses if tithes and offerings dried up.
He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” (Ezek. 37:3)
Now, before we get all gloom and doom, I want to reassure you about some of the promises God has made about the church. This is Church with a big C—the church that has existed continually since the resurrection of Christ.
• Ephesians 5:25-27 describes the church as the bride of Christ. We talked about this just a couple of weeks ago.
• Colossians 1:18 says she is the body of Christ.
• Colossians 1:27: The church is the hope of the world. It is God’s plan A for making the glorious riches of the kingdom known to the Gentiles.
• And she is the household of God, according to 1 Timothy 3:15.
So even though some churches will close, THE church will endure until Christ comes to get her. We know that from God’s Word. If the gates of hell will not prevail against God’s church, then neither is the coronavirus!
Some practical facts about THIS church what about our church? Our church continues to experience God’s favor. 2020 has been a tough year, but by God’s grace, giving has remained strong throughout the pandemic. We are entering our 30th year of ministry as a church. This past Wednesday night as we began our missions classes again, we had the biggest crowd for our prayer time and Bible study since I’ve been your pastor. This year we baptized eight people. That’s down from previous years, but its still twice as many as the average number of baptisms per church in the southern Baptist convention, and that’s with the pandemic. So I’ll take it.
So while God never promises to any individual church that it will endure, God is blessing Glynwood, and I believe he will continue to bless our congregation as we continue to be faithful to him.
Which brings us to point three. Can these bones live?
Can these bones live? It begins with the word of God
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!’” (Ezek. 37:4)
Friends, I really don’t know any other way to put it, but without the word of God, we don’t have anything to talk about when we get to church. God’s word is the beginning, middle, and end of everything we do as a church. I could preach an entire sermon on each of these next four points (and probably will, one of these days), but you can remember the four basic points of our core belief about God’s Word by remembering the acronym SCAN:
God’s Word is Sufficient: That means it contains everything we need to know for how to live a life that pleases God. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15–17). If Scripture is “God-breathed,” then it is not man-breathed, and, although it was penned by men, those “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). No man-made writing is sufficient to equip us for every good work; only the Word of God can do that. Furthermore, if the Scriptures are sufficient to thoroughly equip us, then nothing more is needed.
God’s Word is Clear: Theologians call this the “perspicuity of scripture, which I think is hilarious, because nobody knows what perspicuity means. And what it means is that that the message of the Scriptures can be understood by the great masses of people who wish to understand it. God’s Word has been revealed in such a way that everyone who wants to know what it means can make sense of what it says. In addition, they are able to live in accordance with these truths. Now that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some things in Scripture that are hard to understand. But God’s wisdom is available to anyone who desires to understand it.
God’s Word is Authoritative. That means that it is the final word in all matters of faith and practice. It can’t be added to. It can’t be taken away from. It stands alone as our authority.
God’s Word is Necessary. This simply means that the knowledge of God and His will that is necessary for salvation cannot be known apart from God’s Word. You can know about God through creation. But you can’t know God apart from Scripture. Why? Because Scripture is our one source for the story of Jesus.
Can these bones live? It will be for the purpose of God
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army. (Ezek. 37:10)
I love the choice of words here. When the valley of bones came to life and stood up on their feet, how did Ezekiel describe them?
He didn’t say, “They stood up on their feet—a large group.”
He didn’t say, “they came to life, and they were a prominent social organization.”
He didn’t say “they came to life and stood and their feet as good, upstanding people who made a positive contribution to the community.
No. The prophet Ezekiel saw what was dead and dry and lifeless come to life, stand on their feet—a vast ARMY.
• An army has a purpose greater than itself—there’s a mission.
• An army has a focus outside itself—it doesn’t exist simply to exist. And individual soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors don’t act to benefit themselves.
• An army has one commander above itself
