Sermon: "From Deadness To Dancing"

Delivered May 22, 2005 by Rev. John Schmidt.

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Sermon Notes are at the end.

Well, as soon as the picnic is over, maybe before it's over, but sometime during the picnic Debbie and I are going to get in the car and we are going to head off on our vacation. We are starting a two-week vacation! Folks, this has been the first time since August of September of last year that we haven't had to take a vacation for a wedding or a funeral. So it will be nice to go and take a vacation to vacate, to relax. So we are looking forward to that. But one of the things that is already on my schedule for the vacation is that we together as a family, as soon as we get down to New Orleans are going to gather together the kids and we are going to see the new Star Wars episode three, "The Revenge of the Sith". I am a bit of a fan of science fiction movies. I love special effects and you know to have the x-fighters and the ty-fighters and the battle cruisers and all, I just get a real kick out of that. I like fantasy movies too. Lord of the Rings, the beauty of Rivendale, the incredible picture of what its like to be in elfin beauty or in the same movie the desolation that's Mordor, the evil desolation that's pictured on the screen. I am just awed at the power of a visual image like that. And this prophet Ezekiel is a prophet that has a lot of these big images, these images that would fit into a high budget, special effects movie. And we are going to read one of those passages, a passage that deals with a valley full of dry bones. It's in Ezekiel 37 and as I read it turn on your visual imagination and imagine how this would be done in one of these movies that we enjoy.

Ezekiel 37. I am going to begin at verse 1 and go through verse 14.

"The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I said, "O Sovereign Lord, you alone know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.' "

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin 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 it, 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' " So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet-a vast army.

Then he said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.' Therefore prophesy and say to them:'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord. "

Let's pray: God this is your word and we pray that through your spirit you will bring to life whatever we need to hear and understand, for we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The vision here is a vision of a valley full of dry bones. It says in this text that they are very dry. Ezekiel is hammering into us just how dry and hopeless this is. Bones are scattered and not even assembled the way they should be. Dry, desolate, totally dead, hopeless sort of landscape. And in the middle of all of this desolation as God has Ezekiel walk back and forth through these bones a question comes and God says to Ezekiel, "Ezekiel, can these bones live? Can life be restored to this desolation?" God often does that with us. When there is something going on in our life and God wants to act in it sometimes he asks for our appraisal of the situation. And so when we look at some of these trouble areas of our lives, some of the dry areas, and the desolation, what kind of answer do we give to God to that question, can these bones live? Sometimes we think it is beyond remedy, that it is really hopeless, but is it? Is it really hopeless?

Well, I like Ezekiel's answer in verse 3. "Oh Sovereign Lord you alone know." I like this answer because it's not a flip answer. You know, the flip theological answer is "Oh, of course God, you are omnipotent. You can do anything." You know that's the kind of answer we can give, if we are just talking theology with a friend or if we are giving advice to somebody, but when its us on the line, when its our future, our lives and God says, "Can this live?" There is a certain soberness that comes over us. We realize that we are not just playing with ideas; we are playing with life and death. We are playing with reality and God is there. And so I like the fact that he holds back from a flip, quick answer and says to God, "You know this is a big deal. You God, know." I also like the answer because it's not a faithless answer, because a faithless answer would look at those bones and say, "My goodness, they are not only dry, they are bones, they are dry, they are scattered all over. This is desolation. There is no hope here." But Ezekiel doesn't answer that way. He doesn't look at it just from a human perspective. "Oh Sovereign Lord, you know." He recognized that it was humanly impossible, but maybe it wasn't impossible with God. Now Ezekiel doesn't know the meaning of the vision until all of the events happen. But I would like us to look at verse 11 for a moment and get a sense for what this basic picture means, because it says in verse 11, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.'

This picture of desolation is a picture of the spiritual reality that was Israel at this point. Israel had disobeyed God. There was a distance between them and God and they were cut off, dried out, cut off from their land, and not only distant from God, but they are physically distant because they have been sent in to exile, and Ezekiel is actually having this vision while he is in exile in Babylon. Dried up, without hope, cut off, dead bones. Now the reason there was dry, dead bones was because of disobedience. This comes out repeatedly in the Book of Ezekiel, but in just the prior chapter, verse 18 is says this: "I poured out my wrath on them because they had shed blood in the land and because they had defiled it with their idols." Israel's sin was serious and Israel's sin had consequences. There was idolatry in the land. There was violence and injustice and God's anger rose up against that, and the distance increased between God and his people. Their disobedience created a relational distance between them. And this distance led to a dryness and a death. They rebelled and were estranged from God, and that lack of fellowship led to a spiritual dryness in death in their own lives.

The same is true for us. Disobedience leads to distance in our relationship with God, and that distance leads to a spiritual dryness. This pattern happens over and over in the life of Israel. It happens over and over in our own lives that when we disobey God, it puts a barrier between us and that barrier and that distance ends up drying us out and something inside of us begins to die. Now, I am not talking, when I talk about this dryness I am not talking about these momentary dry points in our lives. We live in a life where we are up some days and we are down some days. That's a natural thing and there are moments when something happens to us that overwhelms us and we lose joy and lose perspective for a moment. Those things happen. What we are talking about here is that day after day after day dryness. Now, there are periods and seasons that are even longer that saints call the dark night of the soul. And those times come and we don't always no why, but so often when we are living in a pattern of continual dryness in our lives and that's our normal state, it's because there is something wrong inside. So if God gave a vision of your inner life right now, what would it look like? What would that vision be like?

Now the Bible talks a lot about joy. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. That's because the quality of joy is intended to be a regular part of our experience. Spiritual rejoice is an intended to be more of the norm that dryness in our lives. That's the way God wants it to be. There are supposed to be all kinds of times in our lives when our spirits can dance; when there is that much joy inside. So if there is very little celebration inside, if dryness and not dancing is the pattern of your life, dryness is normal, dancing is the exception; if that sort of thing is there then probably there is a distance between us and God, and that distance is due to disobedience. Now the dryness of Israel had to do with their disobedience of idolatry. It might have not looked it immediately from the outside because their whole religious life was running normally on the surface. They were coming to temple. They were giving the offerings at the temple. The problem was in their homes and on the hilltops they were worshipping other gods. And so, even though there was a pattern of religion, the relationship with God was violated because God could see that they were not loyal to him. He could see that they were looking to other idols for the deepest needs in their lives. Some superficial religion was going on, but not the deeper relationship. And that disobedience led to distance and that distance to dryness.

Now I don't think we should be that surprised at that because there are some times the same pattern that comes into our own lives. Think about America. We've got churches all over this country. We've got conferences, Christian conferences happening all of the time. I get about four brochures a week for conferences. I could spend the whole church budget traveling around going to conferences. We have Christian CDs for music. We've got teaching CDs, teaching DVDs, Christian radio, Christian TV, Christian books, Christian websites and yet despite all of this religious activity, so many of us are dry and so many of us are spiritually flat and maybe that's because there is an idol somewhere. Tony Evans, a really great preacher and writer says this about idolatry. "Idolatry, when you look in any direction besides God in order to get what only God can give you." Let me read that again. "When you look in any direction besides God, in order to get what only God can give you." It can be money. It can be sex. It can be power. It can be relationships. It can even be self-sufficiency. There is all kinds of things in our lives that can take the place of God. It's any time we push God away in order to get something that we really want no matter what. And so when we do something like that we dry out just a little bit. And when we dry out and we have that sense of longing and incompleteness in our souls, then there is that desire to fill it and so often we go back to that idol or to another one in order to get it filled and the whole situation gets worse. The distance between us and God gets even greater and the dryness gets deeper and deeper inside of us. That's what happened in the life of Israel.

But God didn't leave Israel in that state. God takes action. He does something miraculous and he uses Ezekiel to do it. In verse 4 he tells Ezekiel to speak his word. Prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones hear the word of the Lord. Speak God's word. Verse 5 and 6 gives us a promise and God promises to these dry bones every possible thing they need to live. They will be reassembled. The tendons will be there. The flesh will be there. The skin will be there and the breath will be there. They will come again to life. Everything they need, they need to supply nothing. This is a sovereign moment when God is going to work and he is going to do something in them they could never ever do for themselves, not even in part. So in verse 7 Ezekiel says it. Ezekiel speaks, "So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and all of a sudden these bones that I have buried all over the landscape start to reassemble themselves and tendons appear on them and flesh over that and skin over that and soon the whole landscape is no longer filled with bones, but with bodies. But there is no breath in them. It's incomplete. Verse 8 tells us they were not alive because there was no breath yet in them. Something more is needed and that something more is the action of God's spirit. In verse 9 a Hebrew word "____" is used there four times. It's a word that means breath, wind or spirit. It means any of those three. And it comes up four times in verse 9 because its in verse 9 that God completes what the Lord has done by filling these bodies with life. And so now they are alive and they stand up and they are now a vast army ready to serve God. Now in verses 11 to 14 God explains the vision and it turns out that this entire vision is a promise; this is a promise to the nation of Israel. A promise that God is going to give life for death, a promise that the distance is going to be taken away, the spiritual distance is going to be taken away and the distance from their country. He is going to bring them back to their land and God is going to give them his spirit and they will live spiritually.

So in the despair of being in exile, being cut off from their land, cut off from their promises, cut off from God, in their despair, God comes with a sovereign. You notice how many times that word sovereign comes up? An absolute totally in control promise in the middle of their despair that I, God, will not leave you that way forever. God enacts a supernatural turnaround by his word and by the spirit. Verse 4 talks about the word. Verse 9 talks about the spirit. And that's how God always works in these spiritual turnarounds. Whether it's on an individual level, church level, or a national level, God will always work by his word, his truth, the guidance He gives through his Word, the commands He gives, the promises that God holds out to us through his Word. God always uses that. But then God always accompanies that with the power of his Spirit,His presence inside of us. His power at work in us so that from the inside out the realties of what He wants to do with us will be lived out. Word and Spirit, they are never in conflict. And when God works through his Spirit and God works through His Word what happens is that God can do things that humanly are impossible.

So are you looking for relief, are you looking for change? Are you looking for an end to the dryness? Then don't look to the idols because the idols can't satisfy. Look to the Word, to the promises of God, to the commands of God, to the life that God calls us to and the truth he holds out to us. Look to that and then ask for the Spirit to make that real, to make real the presence of God, and make real the power of God in our lives. So if we are dry, let's not give up. These dead bones can live again. These dead bones can rejoice again. They can dance again, because God holds out a promise to us. It's right here. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live. That's what Pentecost is all about. It's what we celebrated last week when George preached to us. That's what the church is all about. We live in an era where God is at work through his Word and through his Spirit together transforming people, transforming churches, transforming whole societies. It says in this passage, I will open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.

Let's pray together that this will happen in all the dry places of our lives and in the world around us. Let's pray.

Gracious God, we come before you for a few moments of prayer. Lord we first begin with ourselves recognizing that we are dry and empty sometimes and maybe for some of us we have been dry for a long time, and we hold this dryness before you and pray that you do something in us sovereignly that will give us life again. Help us to cast aside the idols, the things that charm us and keep us from following you. Heavenly Father we pray for the whole household of God, not just this church, but for your church all over the world. We pray that every church that is known by your name where people declare Jesus Christ and believe in him. We pray that in each place you will fill them with your power, that you will guide them by your Word, that you will bring life. Lord, we pray for the leaders in all of these churches and in our church for wisdom, for spiritual discernment, for faith, for a willingness to obey, and Lord we know that your kingdom is above all nationalities and cultures; your authority is above every authority and in your hands is our personal destiny and the destiny of every nation.

And so as we recognize that you are the king and the sovereign Lord, we pray for our nations, particularly for our nation. We pray for our leaders no matter where they are in government. We pray that among them there will be those who honestly seek you, honestly desire to seek justice and peace, mercy, fairness and righteousness. Lord, we pray for a willingness of our leaders to work together. We pray for wisdom again and again in their minds. Lord we pray for those who serve in the military and who are in the way of danger. We pray for your protection over them and we pray that those who know you among them will proclaim the gospel faithfully and will love others and we always do want protection over them. We pray for those who are in our body here and who need the special encouragement of your spirit right now; maybe encouragement to persevere if they are sick and unable to be in fellowship, dealing with physical infirmity. Lord we pray for faith, for those who are facing battles that just don't seem to change or problems that don't seem to move. We pray for wisdom, for people who are trying to handle difficult circumstances in their lives and they need to know which way to go; they need to know what their path is in life. We pray for relationships to be reconciled in this our body. There are all kinds of things Lord going on. There are all kinds of needs that we have and so remembering that we are a church of the word, a church of the spirit, we invite you God to sovereignly do what we can't do for you and thanksgiving and praise be to you because Jesus our Lord, risen and ascended, intercedes for us right now and in that joy and in that security we raise up our own prayers in his name. Amen.

There can be dancing where there was just dryness and death. Because this is a promise that God made to Israel and it comes to us too. I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them then you my people will know that I am the Lord. I will put my spirit in you and you will live. We go out to serve a God that can do the impossible in us. Blessed be his name. Amen.

Sermon Outline Notes:

• Maybe we've concluded that it's hopeless.
    But is it?
• What is humanly impossible is not impossible with God.
• Disobedience-Distance-Dryness
• What would it be like if we had a vision of our own inner lives?
• Idolatry: When you look in any direction besides God in order to get what only God can give you.
• Supernatural Turnarounds
    Word and Spirit

© 2005, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org