Pastor and author, Robert Morgan, talks about a businessman whose route to work every day took him through the city park, where every day he saw an old fellow sitting on a park bench. The businessman thought the old guy was homeless since he always looked dejected. So, one day, feeling a surge of compassion, the businessman handed the old man an envelope containing ten dollars and a note saying, “Never Despair.”
When the businessman came through the park the next day, the old man handed him an envelope with sixty dollars in it. The old codger explained, “Never Despair was in the money paying six to one in the second race.” As it turns out, the old fellow was an illegal bookie.
Do you find yourself on the brink of despair? Then this message is for you—"never despair, because you never know what good God can bring out of your situation.”
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Ezekiel 37, Ezekiel 37, where God speaks to those beyond the brink of despair.
Ezekiel 37:1-2 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. 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 (ESV).
God took Ezekiel out to an old battlefield with the bones of the defeated army bleached and unburied. It was a picture of utter defeat. Babylon had decimated the Jews, leaving most of them dead on the battlefield and taking just a few prisoners with them back to Babylon. So God asks Ezekiel a question.
Ezekiel 37:3-10 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 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.” 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. 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. 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.” 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 (ESV).
What seemed to be impossible, God did, raising this dead army back to life. So what does it mean?
Ezekiel 37:11-14 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD” (ESV).
Though the nation of Israel is dead from all outward appearances, God will bring the nation of back to life. First, He will physically restore them to their land. Then He will put His Spirit in them and revive them spiritually.
To be sure, God physically restored Israel to their land twice—The first time was in 536 B.C. when King Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return to their land after 70 years of captivity. The second time was on May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel 2,000 years after Rome destroyed the nation and scattered the Jews all over the world.
God has physically restored Israel to her land, but her spiritual restoration awaits the coming of her Messiah, Jesus.
Now, if God do that for Israel, dead for 2,000 years, think of what He can do for you. If you are wondering, “Is there any hope for me?” or “can these bones live?” Then hear the word of the Lord. Hear Him answer with a resounding “YES!” and trust Him to do it for you.
TRUST GOD TO REVIVE YOU.
Rely on the Lord to restore you physically and spiritually. Depend on the Almighty to bring life in a place where there is only death.
Ephesians 2 describes the condition of every believer before and after they put their faith in Christ.
The Apostle Paul writes, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:1-5).
Those without Christ are spiritually dead. Like Ezekiel’s dry bones, they lie on the battlefield bleached and unburied, defeated by the world, the flesh, and the devil. But the moment you trust Christ with your life, God makes you alive with Christ.
This is something you could never do for yourself. God does it all, not because you deserve it—you don’t. God gives you life, only because He loves you. He is rich in mercy and full of grace. So, if you haven’t done it already, trust Christ with your life and experience the new life that only God can give you.
That’s Glenn Person’s story which he recently shared in the Christianity Today magazine. He writes:
You’re probably familiar with the popular arcade game called Whac-A-Mole, where mechanical moles randomly pop out of their holes while you try whacking them with a mallet before they retreat. I grew up in a “reverse Whac-A-Mole” world, feeling like the only mole in a family of mallets.
All the men in my family had significant issues. When I was 12, my dad left our family. He withheld both financial and emotional support, and he rejected or mocked conventional displays of affection. In Matthew 7:9, Jesus asks, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Well, I have someone I can nominate.
But my dad wasn’t the only disaster in our family. When my grandfather was in his 60s, he decided he had cancer, so one day he jumped in front of a speeding train at a railroad crossing. His was not our family’s sole suicide. My brother suffered from schizophrenia and manic depression. After spending most of the last 20 years of his life in and out of mental hospitals, he hanged himself. My mother’s side didn’t escape dysfunction either. Her father had an emotional breakdown and spent several months in a hospital for indigents. There wasn’t a healthy man anywhere in sight.
Religion played almost no role in my family. But deep down I knew that something was wrong in my life, which led me to dabble in occult practices like astrology, séances, and white magic.
During my sophomore year of college, I stumbled into a campus Christian meeting and heard the gospel for the first time. As the presenter spoke, the Holy Spirit burned two realizations into my heart: that this “new thing” was 100 percent true, and that I would be a part of it. That night, even though I knew almost nothing about the theology of salvation, I brushed aside my intellectual skepticism and eagerly made a commitment to Jesus.
Over the next few months, I became increasingly involved with a couple of campus Christian groups. I was impressed by how “together” the members seemed and by the quality of their relationships. I also began applying my intellectual curiosity to questions surrounding the Bible’s reliability. I discovered far more support for the intellectual integrity of the Christian faith than I had ever supposed.
Years ago, I visited a counselor hoping to piece together the complexities of my background. After hearing parts of my story, he commented, “There is no explanation for you. In my professional opinion, someone with your background should be unemployable, divorced three times, abusive, an alcoholic, or some other kind of addict. The fact that you’re none of these things is a testimony to God’s incredible grace.”
In fact, Glenn Pearson spent 19 years as executive vice president of the Georgia Hospital Association. And since he retired, he has mentored about two dozen younger men, offering them something he never had. He says, “It’s just one way God continually uses what could have been a curse on my life to bring blessing to others” (Glenn Pearson, “There Is No Explanation for Me,” Christianity Today, April, 2023, pp. 94-96; www.Preaching Today.com).
God can do the same for you no matter how hopeless or spiritually dead you are. It takes just two things: 1st, hear the word of the Lord; and 2nd, receive the Spirit of the Lord.
In Ezekiel 37, God told Ezekiel 5 times to preach His Word to the dry bones. Then, no less than 10 times, God’s Spirit or breath blows on them and they come alive. In the same way, when you hear God’s Word and receive God’s Spirit, God makes you alive!
So hear the Word of the Lord—Christ died for your sins, He was buried and He rose again, so that all who believe in Him will not perish but have eternal life (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; John 3:16). Hear the Word of the Lord.
Then receive His Spirit into your life. Welcome God’s Holy Spirit within to give you an eternal abundant life and to begin to change you from the inside out. If you are wondering, “Is there any hope for me,” 1st, trust God to revive you through His Word and His Spirit. Then 2nd…
TRUST GOD TO UNITE YOU with your enemies.
Rely on the Lord to reconcile you with individuals you once considered foes. Depend on the Almighty to turn your enemies into friends. That’s what God promised to do for Israel.
Ezekiel 37:15-22 The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the people of Israel associated with him’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ And join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not tell us what you mean by these?’ say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand. When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms (ESV).
Since the days of Solomon’s successor, the House of Israel had been divided into two nations—Israel (or Ephraim) in the north and Judah in the south. Even after Judah’s return from exile, the nation was still divided. You remember. In Jesus’ day, 500 years later, there was great animosity between the two as Jews in the south despised their Samaritan neighbors to the north.
Even so, God promised to unite the natation as one, using that word “one” seven times in these verses. Indeed, that’s what we have seen today in our lifetime. When Israel became a nation in 1948, they formed just ONE nation, not two, but one!
Soon, their Messiah will come, Kind David’s heir to the throne, who will cleanse them from their in and give them peace, along with the assurance of God’s presence forever!
Ezekiel 37:23-28 They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. “My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore (ESV).
God will not only reconcile Israelis with each other. God will reconcile the entire nation with Himself forever! This is the promise of reconciliation, which applies not only to Israel, but to all who put their trust in David’s heir to the throne, Jesus, the Messiah!
The Apostle Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 5: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).
On the cross, God treated Jesus as a sinner, so He could treat us as saints, so He could reconcile us to Himself, turning His enemies into sons.
All you need to do is trust Christ with your life. Stop fighting God. Or as Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5, be reconciled to God, and let Him begin the process of changing you from the inside out.
I’m reminded of the Civil War story I told just two years ago (2024) about Lee’s surrender to Grant.
After a long night and day of marching, Lee and the exhausted Army of Northern Virginia made camp just east of Appomattox Courthouse on April 8. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant had sent him a letter on the night of April 7, following confrontations between their troops at Cumberland Church and Farmville, suggesting Lee surrender. The Southern general refused. Grant replied, again suggesting surrender to end the bloodshed. Lee responded, saying in part, “I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this army,” though he offered to meet Grant at 10 the next morning between picket lines to discuss a peaceful outcome.
Having watched the battle through field glasses—Lee then said, “Then there is nothing left for me to do but go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.” But meeting General Grant at the Mclean house, Lee said “We are pressed and are ready to surrender. What are your terms?”
Surprisingly it wasn't judgment. It wasn't prison. It wasn't retribution… The terms were to stop fighting and to start living. Give up your weapons, go home and plant your fields. The soldiers who hadn't eaten in days were given meal rations, horses and mules to plow fields. The war was over but for many people, life had just begun (Harold Holzer, Gabor S.Boritt and Mark E. Neely Jr., “Appomattox Courthouse,” HistoryNet; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s a picture of what God does for those who surrender to Him. Just stop fighting Him and start living. Be reconciled to God.
Then be reconciled to each other. Let God begin the process of changing you from the inside out. Then, let Him begin the process of reconciling you to your enemies, turning them into friends.
I remind you that the Bible says Jesus “broke down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (Ephesians 2:14-16).
Jesus’ death on the cross not only brought God and man together. It brought Jew and Gentile together, as well. It brought people who hated each other into “one new man,” the church.
My dear friends, the cross can bring you and your worst enemy together, as well. Now, if you think that’s impossible, think about what God has already done for the nation of Israel. They are now one nation when for centuries they had been two.
For Uwe Holmer, a German pastor, the question wasn’t simple. But it was clear.
The one-time East German dictator Erich Honecker was asking for his help. Honecker had long been an enemy of the church, who had also personally harried and harassed Holmer’s own family for years.
But now the Communist leader had been pushed from power, driven from his home, turned out of a hospital onto the street—and he was asking the Lutheran church to take him in.
Holmer had to decide what he believed. He knew what the answer was.
“Jesus says to love your enemies,” he explained to his neighbors at the time. “When we pray, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us—“we must take these commands seriously.”
The evangelical minister accepted the deposed dictator into his home in January 1990 and cared for him and his wife Margot for two and a half months. The action shocked Germans, East and West. The 40-year division of the country had just collapsed, and as the Cold War came to a surprising end, the German people didn’t know how they should treat those on the other side.
The until-then unknown pastor offered one bold answer: forgiveness and hospitality. Bitterness, Holmer said, is “not a good starting point for a new beginning among our people.”
When protestors arrived to yell at the minister and demand punishment for Honecker, Pastor Holmer reminded them of the Lord’s Prayer, asking God to forgive them as they forgave others (Daniel Silliman, "Died: Uwe Holmer, Pastor Who Forgave a Communist Dictator," Christianity Today, 10-2-23; www.PreachingToday.com).
God forgave you from an old rugged cross—you, whose sins put Him there. Let that motivate and empower you to forgive your enemy. Who knows? God may turn him or her into a friend someday.
If you’re wondering, “Is there any hope for me?” 1st, trust God to revive you. Then 2nd, trust God to unite you with your enemies. Trust God to turn your despair into praise.
William McRaven, who was commander of US Special Forces Command, gave an oft-quoted speech at a university graduation in Texas in 2014. In that speech, he spoke of his training to become a US Navy SEAL. Specifically, he described Hell Week at his Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training (otherwise known as BUDS).
It is the ninth week of SEAL training, and it is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment, and one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana marshes—a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you. You paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing-cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure from the instructors to quit.
As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, McRaven’s training class was ordered into the mud. The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but their heads. The instructors told us them they could leave the mud if only five men would quit—just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold.
Looking around the mud flat, it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up—eight more hours of bone-chilling cold. The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything. And then, one voice began to echo through the night—one voice raised in song.
The song was terribly out of tune but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two, and two became three, and before long everyone in the class was singing.
They knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well. The instructors threatened them with more time in the mud if they kept up the singing—but the singing persisted. And somehow, the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away (Wes Brendenhof blog, When You’re Up to Your Neck in Mud –Sing! 8-9-22; www.PreachingToday.com).
If you find yourself neck deep in the mud these days, then sing! Look to the Lord, and by faith, praise Him! It will make your situation seem a little less hopeless especially when you realize that God delights in doing the impossible.
