Serving These Bones!

The church has become an unusal place, and is full of unusal bones. The church has become so lost until we have strange requirements for our pastors to reach for us to even consider them as our pastor. If you don’t believe me a take glimpse at our baptsit state paper. They often have churchs seeking a pastor, and you will hear things like; they must be married, they must be family oriented, they must be willing to relocate in the general area, they must understand that we want them to teach, preach and relate to all segments of the church. Then at the end of all that they would have the gaul to put salary is negotiable. The church has become a place of unusual bones, these bones are so lost until they feel like to make it to the deacon board I don’t need to be saved, all I need to do is pay money and know how to pray in the public with that Mississippi hoop and that Alabama squeezle.

In the time of our text this a story told metaphorically about the conditions of Isarael. I would like to give you a brief background synopsis of what brought Ezekiel to this point. About 596 B.C. there was a capture of Israel by the Babylonians, they were going to take those intellegent prohpets and they were going to enslave them. They were going to enslave them for seventy years, they took men like Shadracc, Meshacc, and Abendego, they took men like Daniel, those powerful leaders of Israel. Now about 586 ten years later Ezeikel was standing on the banks of the river Sheba, and he had an apocolyptic experinece. He gazed into the heaven and he beheld some wheels, now these wheels were turning all around. These wheels were symbloic of time, they were letting you know that time was moving on. Now the Bible says that he looked again at the nucelus and he saw another wheel. Now where ever that wheel went the other wheels would follow. That was letting you know that where ever you went time was moving. Ezeikel said Lord what do you want me to do? God said go down into that valley and tell my people that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is etenal life. Then God said Ezekiel if you refuse to tell them the blood is on your hands, but if you tell them and they don’t listen the blood is on their hands. So Ezekiel went down into that valley and he saw all those dry bones. God came to Ezekiel and said look at what you got in the church.

Look at what you have in the Amen, do you see what’s over there? Them bones are clawing trying to climb trees, and they can not hear you preach because they are trying to climb trees. Everyone those bones want to be chairman, and they can not praise God, because they are concerned about being chairman.

Look at them bones in the pulpit, them bones want pick up the Bible, want pray, want study, want seek training, but want somebody to turn them a loose with the keys to the church.

Look at them bones at the door, they are dressed in thier white gliding gracefully around the church. They are opening up doors for worshipers on Sunday morning, and opening up club doors on Saturday night.