Situation Looks Mighty Bad

Situation Looks Mighty Bad

Ezekiel 37:1-4, 7-10

Delivered at Pleasant Ridge 2001

Rev. Derrick P. Garth

Introduction:

If ever there was a time that we need a breakthrough. If ever there was a time that we need a word from the Lord now is that time. It don’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we are living in some perilous times. Bro and Sis we are living in a land that is full of dry bones that desperately need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Our communities have become a wasteland that is filled with dry bones. Bones that feel as though all is lost. Bones that are caught in a situation that seems to be hopeless. Things don’t look too good. In fact, The situation looks mighty bad.

When ever you see a bone something is usually wrong. Most of the time when we see a bone we quickly associate it with death. Even when eating most of us have since enough to know that when we see the bone its time to get another piece of meat. A bone becomes “a dry” when it has no attachment to life. A bone becomes dry when it has nothing that will provide nourishment. A dry bone has no substance.

A dry bone this evening is anybody that has no spiritual attachment to God. Any body that has a broken fellowship. Anybody that has a wavering fellowship with the Lord is a dry bone. A whole lot of our churches are comatose. There not dead but not all together alive.

A lot of times we look back on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as the example of a evil nation. Twin cities that were full of a whole lot of dry bones. A bunch of hard headed and hard hearted group of folk that rejected the word of God. But, I can’t help but to wonder sometime if we are any better than they were. The only visible thing that separates us is the fact that we are still here. And we dare not get big headed and think that we are here on our own account. We are here because of the fact that God’s grace spared us, and we are able to survive because his mercy sustains us.

I heard Mississippi Mass Choir say Justice thought that I should die but Grace and Mercy said naw I’ve already paid the price.

I. No hope on the horizon

The prophet Ezekiel was a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel exercised their ministries before and during the Babylonian exile. God had a particular mission for Ezekiel. Jeremiah ministered to the children of Israel that were still in Jerusalem. But Ezekiel was carried off with the group that were in captivity by the Babylonians. The name Ezekiel means God will strengthen. Ezekiel was to inspire and strengthen the generation that was born into exile and to remind them that the Lord God almighty was still on their side.

Don’t think that Ezekiel had a easy task. The people that he was ministering to were depressed. They were defeated in battle, removed from their homeland, mocked by the people that conquered them. There was nothing easy about this mission. Trying to provide inspiration to a people that did not want to be inspired. Trying to provide hope for folks that felt all was hopeless. Trying to encourage folks that didn’t wont to be encouraged. In the 137 number of Psalms the children to Israel were so agitated and aggravated that they threw their harps, their instrument so praise the threw them into the trees and they declared How can we sing songs of Zion in a strange Land.

Many of us come to church Sunday after Sunday and we act like we are in a strange . . . .

We are a lot like the Children of Israel when all is well, I well bless the Lord at all time…..

When we’ve go a good job……. I’m gone be like the tree that’s planted by the rivers of waters and honey I shall not be moved.

When money is in the bank…. The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want.

Oh but when the winds of adversity blow our way. When our money is funny and our change is strange we get a case of amnesia.

We forget that Everyday is a day of thanksgiving.

We forget, we forget that all work together for the good of them that love the Lord.

We don’t want to hear the fact that it rains on the just as well as the unjust.

When we fill as though life has dealt us a bad hand. What we really want to know is ELOI, ELOI, Lama Sabathani