|
|
That Valley of Dry Bones
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, September 4, 2005
Most of you know that this last summer several of us we put
a group together and were privileged to go to England to celebrate the 100th
anniversary of the Baptist World Alliance – 200 countries represented over
12,000 people and all under the same roof. It was a thrilling time and we
toured a little bit before and after.
Shirley and I had two of our grandchildren with us. Leah
is 13 and Jesse is 9. Jesse never, ever, heard of an adventure she would not
like to take. Leah never heard of one she wouldn’t like to think about for a
while. It was a wonderful trip and we were coming back and were somewhere over
the Atlantic Ocean and I turned to Shirley and I said, “You know, this has been
just a marvelous, just wonderful, there’s not anything about it I would change,
but it will be so good to get home and to sleep in our own bed, to walk through
our own house, and to know where everything, well at least where it’s supposed
to be.”
Have you ever been there? You’ve been on a vacation and
you’ve been on a trip, it’s been wonderful, you wouldn’t change anything about
it, oh, but it’s so good to get home. But what if you, what if you didn’t have
any home to go to? You left and the home was there and now it isn’t. And of
course that’s what’s happened to hundreds and thousands along the Gulf Coast
area. And you know, it’s just kind of hard to embrace, to put our arms around to
realize what it would be like not to have a home to go to anymore.
That’s exactly where Ezekiel was. Five ninety-seven BC, he
and 10,000 others had been carried off into Babylon. It was the first Exodus
you might say. He had been there about ten years when the word came. He had
lived for the time he could go home. This man whose mind worked in graphics, in
pictures is waiting for the time when in his mind homestead is there in front of
his eyes again and then the word came – Jerusalem is no more, gone! They have
leveled everything. The homes are gone, the temple is gone, the walls have been
torn down, it is a deserted place, and only wild animals live there anymore.
Big time grief!
We don’t know how long it was between when the announcement
was made and when God came to Ezekiel in the 37th chapter. But God
came and gave him another vision and in that vision he pictured a valley of dry
bones. Let’s read, “The hand of the Lord was upon me and He brought me out by
the Spirit of the Lord and He set me in the middle of a valley and it was full
of bones and 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 and He asked me, Son of man,
can these bones live? And I said, oh Sovereign Lord, you alone know. Then He
said, Prophecy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the
Lord, this is what the Sovereign Lord says; I will make breath to enter you and
you will come to life.
Look in verse 7; as I was prophesying there was a noise, a
rattling sound. The bones came together, bone to bone. Go down to verse 11;
Son of Man, these bones are the whole House of Israel and they say, our bones
are dried up. Our hope is gone. We are cut off. Oh my people! I am going to
open your graves and bring you back up from them and I will bring you back to
the land of Israel.” This is the word of the Lord and keep your eye on it as we
move through it.
As God came to Ezekiel and announced that He wanted him to
look at a valley, a valley of dry bones. Stop here for a minute. Our minds of
course are images of water, but there’s a feeling that something has died. Not
only for those who are without homes and some without hope, but something has
happened, I think, that will affect all of our nation. We have had to look at
ourselves and see the needy underbelly of our affluence.
Something like this can happen to any of us – a valley of
dry bones; a death in the family, a divorce, the loss of a job, a critical
illness, dreams once so vital, so alive, now dead. God comes to Ezekiel and
says, can these bones live again? If you’re going through a very difficult time
God comes to you this morning and if you’re like Ezekiel, you might want to
answer that in a very wise way – oh Lord, only you know.
Notice how God responds. God doesn’t respond by saying,
Son of Man, you finally caught on, I’m in charge, watch! No. Nor does he step
on the balcony end of heaven and say, Zeke my friend, watch as I wave my magic
wand and all of these bones come together and live. He doesn’t do that. You
know what He does? He does to Ezekiel the exact same thing He does to us; He
calls us into service.
You see God provides the power and the Spirit, but we’re
the doers. Jesus said it so well in John 15, “I am the vine and you are the
branches. And He says to the branches, without me you can’t do anything.” But
He also reminds us that we’re the fruit bearers. We’re the ones who do the work
and God calls to Ezekiel and says, Son of Man, I want you to prophecy to that
valley of dry bones. Preach to that bunch of dry bones.
Now every preacher knows what it is to preach to a sleepy
congregation and every congregation knows what it is to listen to a sleepy
preacher, but a valley of dry bones? Do you remember the Negro Spiritual –
“Them bones, them bones gonna rise again.” What was God telling Ezekiel about
them bones rising again? You know how it happens? We almost never can predict
it. You see, when God says to Ezekiel, you prophecy to these bones, He wasn’t
saying, tell them their future. Prophecy in English means that, but in the
Hebrew and in the Greek, in the Bible languages, it means not fortune telling,
but forth telling. It is a spokesman and that spokesman is Ezekiel. The
spokesman says you’re going to rise again, but he doesn’t say how. How did it
happen?
There were some ingredients – one patience, secondly,
surprise, and thirdly, the help is going to come from an unexpected place for
afar. Look at the patience part; it would be 50 years; 50 years later. The
first group left from Babylon and went home to rebuild Jerusalem. The leader of
that group of Zerubbabel. Isn’t that a great name? Zerubbabel. It has such a
good bouncy name to it. A middle-linebacker, wouldn’t that great?
That was a trip that was just full of amazement to the ones
who made it and there was a Psalm that was written during that time. It’s Psalm
126 and in your pew Bible it’s 967, 126, Psalm 126, turn over there, because
there’s some verses at the bottom of that little chapter, Psalm 126. Listen as
I read, “When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion we were like men who
dreamed and our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of
joy. Restore our fortunes O Lord, like streams in the desert.” Listen to
verses 5 and 6, “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who
goes out weeping carrying seed to sow will return with songs of joy carrying
sheaves with him.”
The surprise? The surprise is who allowed it to happen in
the first place. It was Cyrus, the Persian King. You see, by then Persia had
conquered Babylon. Cyrus not a believer, not a Jewish person and yet in Isaiah
44, Cyrus is called the Servant of the Lord. And Isaiah says, even if he
doesn’t know you, he is your servant O Lord. God will use anything and anybody
in order to reach you. Do you realize that? Keep your eyes open. Keep your
ears tuned. It is likely to be somebody you do not know and may never see
again.
As you think about your own life and its ups and its down,
you might also want to know that there’s some carry-over. One hundred years
later, a man by the name of Nehemiah is sent to rebuild the walls. The story is
told in the book that bears his name in the Old Testament, Nehemiah, by the way,
you might be interested to know that over a span of a little more than 100
years, four men lived who changed world history; Confucius in China, Buddha in
India, Socrates in Greece and Nehemiah. You say Nehemiah is in league with
those three? You betcha!
If you want to understand the Judaism of Jesus day look
what Nehemiah did. This was one of the great men who ever walks across the
pages of the Old Testament. He hears that the walls of Jerusalem aren’t and
without those walls there’s no city! It’s just like without levy’s New Orleans
isn’t. He weeps. He goes to the king and he says can I go and he not only gets
his blessing, but he gets a decree. He goes back and it is in shambles.
This man Nehemiah had not only the organizational ability,
the vision and the understanding of how to put it together, but he could
motivate the people and he understood that everybody had to have a part and so
he put everybody to building right around where they lived because you see there
were a number who had come back during Zerubbabel’s day and do you know that it
took 52 days. It had been 150 years since they were first torn down. One
hundred and fifty years and he does it in 52 days, oh the difference leadership
makes!
When that was all done, he came back a second time and he
put in place the faith that had almost gotten lost. One more word – walk out of
here with it and the word comes from afar and it is a surprise but God is in
it. The word comes from afar, but it is a surprise. It is a surprise the way
it happens, but God is in it and in my mind’s eye there was a time when God
walked to the balcony of heaven itself and He saw that somehow or another his
purpose for the world had gotten bottled up in the Middle East and He said, I’ve
got to get the message out that it’s the whole world I love, every nation, every
language, every color. And it is as if quoting from Isaiah, whom shall I send
and whom will go for me and our Lord Jesus said, here am I let me go. It’s the
further distance imaginable from heaven.
Here’s the way Paul described it, Philippians 2, “He did
not think heaven something to be grasped but made himself no reputation and took
upon himself the form of a servant made in the likeness of man, humbled himself
and became obedient unto death; even the death of the cross.” He did that for
you, for me, for you.
No wonder on this day we take the bread and we bless it and
we say, O Lord, thank you, thank you, and thank you. And on the night that He
was betrayed, He took the bread and He broke it and He said, this is my body,
which is broken for you. And He took the cup and HE said, this is my blood,
which is poured out for you for the remission of your sins. Pray with me will
you? O Lord God, it is a time now when it is my privilege in your behalf just
as you did through Nehemiah so long ago to call these people to confession and
worship. O Lord during these next minutes, help us to look at ourselves, to
spend time with you, to confess our sins, and to lift up our hearts in worship;
through Christ our Lord, Amen.
|
