F4F | Perry Noble: Can These Bones Live?

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith here on YouTube. If you've ever, well, listened to a pastor just kind of do stream of consciousness word association when he should have been exegeting, if you don't know what that means, but you've experienced it, you're not sure if you've experienced it, but it sounds like you may have.

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Yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below. Don't forget to ring the bell because you haven't been rightly taught

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God's word. Now case in point, we're going to be heading over to Second Chance Church in Anderson, South Carolina, where the dismissed from ministry for alcoholism and recently divorced and restored himself to ministry guy,

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Perry Noble. This is where he holds court and he's going to be talking about Ezekiel 37.

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We recently did a whole segment, a YouTube video on Ezekiel 37, where we noted that the actual interpretation of Ezekiel 37 is given in the text.

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It's a picture. Yeah, just read the whole thing of the resurrection. Yeah, it's a prophecy of the resurrection.

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Like everybody rising from the dead, you know, God himself interprets the vision.

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It's just kind of fascinating how that works. Well, Perry Noble does this really weird thing and he's done it for years.

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And not only is he morally not qualified to be a pastor, he is like, well, how do

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I put it? Scripture makes it clear that a pastor is one who must study and show himself approved as a workman who need not blush with embarrassment, who can rightly divide the word of truth.

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But I've never really seen Perry Noble do that. All the years that we've been covering him here at Fighting for the

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Faith. Instead, he kind of does this thing that we'll note here as we listen to his sermon titled

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Healer. Can these bones live? Can these bones live?

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And we'll let him explain and we'll kind of deconstruct this and note that this is not biblical exegesis.

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Yeah, like not even close. But here we go. Hope you're sitting down. The sermon today is going to be from a passage of scripture out of the book of Ezekiel.

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If you want to turn there, you can. If you don't want to, I don't blame you because it's kind of hard to find.

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It's in the Old Testament. He's in there somewhere. A little bit of a note here.

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So I've been an avid student of Christianity since about junior high. Seventh grade is really when

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Christianity became something, you know, my faith that I began taking it seriously. And I happened to attend a private

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Christian school at the time, and in my Bible class in seventh grade, they would, you know, my teacher would make sure that we knew where certain books of the

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Bible were in the old fashioned paper Bibles, because that was the only kind there were today.

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Like nobody has an excuse because the apps that, you know, have

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Bibles on them. It's pretty easy to to find biblical books.

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So you know, I don't know. Yeah. Ezekiel, Old Testament, if you're not sure and you have one of those analog paper

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Bibles, look in the table of contents. Yeah, you know, it's just weird that he would talk that way.

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But we are, again, talking about Perry Noble, you know, Ezekiel. It's got some cool stuff, but it's got some confusing stuff.

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I'm about to read. We're about to go through one of my favorite stories in the book of Ezekiel. It's got so many meanings, but we're just going to talk about one of them today.

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You know, it has so many meanings, but we're only going to talk about one of them today.

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No, it doesn't. You know, think of it, think of it this way. In fact, let's pull up our Bible here before we get to Ezekiel 37.

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Let's take a look at Matthew 13. Matthew 13. I'll give you an example of what

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I'm talking about from the New Testament. You see, when the Bible gives you the interpretation of something, it's not subject to multiple interpretations.

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Like, you know, if God gives you a gives a vision in a particular biblical book and then tells you, here's what the vision means, that's what it means.

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Same with the parables. And so in Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the sower and the different fields or the different soils.

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And let me, let me read it out. So that same day, Jesus went out of the house, sat beside the sea and great crowds gathered about him so that he got into a boat and he sat down and the whole crowd stood on the beach and he told the many things in parables saying a sower went out to sow and he as he sowed some seeds fell along the path, the birds came and devoured them.

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Other seeds fell on the rocky ground where they did not have much soil and immediately they sprang up since they had no depth of soil.

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But when the sun rose, they were scorched and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among the thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them and other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundred fold, some 60, some 30.

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He who has ears, let him hear. And what's funny is that in Matthew 13, this is the first time

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Jesus tells any kind of teaching in parables and you know, things had kind of heated up, you know, between him and the

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Pharisees and they were saying that he healed people via Beelzebub and things like that and saying that he casts out demons by the prince of demons.

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And so Jesus switches it up here and decides rather than teaching openly, he's now going to teach in parables.

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So the disciples like, why are you doing that? So the disciples came to him and says, why do you speak in parables?

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And he answered them. And here's the reason why, by the way, it's not so that people would understand what he's saying.

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It's so that people wouldn't. No kidding. Watch what he says.

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So to you, Jesus says, his disciples, to you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.

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But to them, it has not been given for to one who has more will be given and he will have an abundance.

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But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And this is why

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I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

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Indeed, in their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says, indeed, you will hear, but never understand.

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You will indeed see, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes have been closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, in turn, and I would heal them.

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So yeah, so when some guy, you know, one of the guys in the big box -seeker driven churches says, well, you know, the reason why we do movie sermons and stuff, this is the reason why they claim, is because, you know,

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Jesus was the greatest storyteller ever. And he would tell stories in parables and, you know, make allusions to things that people were familiar with in the time.

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Yeah, that guy doesn't understand why Jesus told parables. He told parables so that people would not understand. So you know, so at this point, the disciples are going to need to crash course in how to understand the parables.

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So Jesus then goes on to say, blessed are your ears, O you disciples of mine, for they see in your ears, for they hear.

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For truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people long to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

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So then hear then the parable of the sower. So Jesus gives us his inspired interpretation of the parable of the sower, right?

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So this is what it means. It's not subject to multiple interpretations, like not at all.

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So hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

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So you get the idea. The seed then is the preaching of the word of God. This is what was sown along the path.

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As for what was sown on the rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself but endures for a while, and then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, he immediately falls away.

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As for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, they choke the word and it proves unfruitful.

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As for what was sown on the good soil, this is the one who hears the word, understands it, he indeed bears fruit, and yields in one case a hundredfold and another a sixty and another thirty.

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So there you go. So this is an example, right? So Jesus is teaching his disciples how to understand the parables, and so the first one he tells the parable of the sower, he gives his inspired interpretation, which means that particular parable for sure is not subject to multiple interpretations.

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Same by the way with the story of Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones. So let me explain here.

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Ezekiel 37 .11, so if you read that, you know, prior, earlier in the chapter, you'll see that, you know, here you've got the vision of the dry bones, and he tells them to prophesy the bones and all this kind of stuff, and they come together and turn into a great multitude and a great army, and then it says,

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Ezekiel 37 .11, then he said to me, God said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

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Behold, they say our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are indeed cut off, therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the

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Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves,

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O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am Yahweh when I open your graves and raise you from your graves.

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You see, it's a vision, a prophecy, if you would, of the resurrection of the dead.

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See 1 Corinthians 15 for further details. But you get the idea. That being the case, when

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God tells you what it means, it's not subject to multiple interpretations or even debate.

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I mean, that's the best way I can put it. So already, Perry Noble is off the rails, but then again,

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I wouldn't even think that he was on the rails, just saying. So let me back this up so you can hear again what he said.

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We've got some confusing stuff. I'm about to read, we're about to go through one of my favorite stories in the book of Ezekiel, and it's got so many meanings, but we're just going to talk about one of them today.

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Ezekiel chapter... No, it doesn't have so many meanings. God gives you the meaning.

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37 verse 1, the Bible says this, the hand of the Lord was on me.

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Let me stop real quick. Let me stop real quick. I know some of y 'all are like, you can't even read a verse without making a comment.

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That's my life. And I'm ADD, and my meds are wearing off. That's not a joke, by the way.

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I don't think it is. I'm 15, I was way more focused.

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If the hand of the Lord is on you, then naturally you think you're going somewhere great, right?

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Yeah. Okay. When you prepare a sermon, and you're going to engage in exegesis, you're going to tell us what the passage says and what it really means, you're going to need to do a little bit of research, consult a good commentary, several good commentaries, translate it from the original languages,

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Greek and Hebrew, as necessary for pastors to properly get a sense of what's going on.

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But then when you have something come up like a phrase or an idiom, hand of the Lord, it's best to do some cross -referencing.

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And today's Bible tools, you know, like Logos and Accordance, they provide ample opportunities for doing such things.

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So I did a little bit of a word search prior to this segment, and so it just typed into Accordance and looked in the

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Old Testament, hand of the Lord. And notice the Peri -Nobel says, so if you hear the phrase hand of the

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Lord, you think that something great's going to happen to you. Yeah, I would note that there are many instances in the

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Old Testament when the phrase hand of the Lord is the thing that precedes something bad.

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Yeah, let me let me explain. Ezekiel, sorry, not Ezekiel, Exodus 9, 3, Behold, the hand of the

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Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses and the donkeys and the camels and the herds and the flocks.

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Sounds like Moses talking to Pharaoh, right? Exodus 16, 3, The people of Israel said to them,

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Oh, would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy 2, 15,

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For indeed, the hand of the Lord was against them to destroy them from the camp until they had perished.

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You see what I'm saying? So just because the phrase hand of the Lord comes up, you should not presume that that's necessarily a good thing.

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So what. Perry Noble is doing here is demonstrating that his sermon prep doesn't include the right things.

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Let me back this up just a smidge again. Here we go. And I'm ADD and my meds are wearing off.

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Um, that's not a joke, by the way. Yeah, 915, I was way more focused. If the hand of the

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Lord is on you, then naturally you think you're going somewhere great, right? If somebody says the hand of the

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Lord was on me, I don't even have a proper phrase to describe what it is we are listening to.

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This is not exegesis. This is presumption. You know, back then to say, and I got better.

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The hand of the Lord was on me and the business deal went through. The hand of the Lord was on me and I felt great.

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The hand of the Lord just read passages. Hand of the Lord equals bad, you know, severe plagues and stuff fall on me and he took me to a great place.

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But this gets a little weird because Ezekiel starts out and he says, the hand of the Lord was on me and he brought me.

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If you had just checked the cross references, there would be nothing weird about this.

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Out by the spirit. This is great. The hand of the Lord is on me. The spirit is working in me.

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Tell me more about it, Zeke. Great. Out by the spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley and it was full of bones.

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Now, hold on a second. I don't do scary places. I don't do scary movies.

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I don't do scary anything. Somebody's like, what does it matter if you do scary anything?

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You're not in this text. This text isn't about you. This text is a vision of the resurrection.

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God said so. Read the rest of the chapter. So why, whether or not you do scary movies and stuff, does that have anything to do with this text?

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I think I'm going to scare you sometimes. I'm like, I have a CWP. That's all you need to know. That's all you need to know. It's all you need to know.

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I'm not joking. I didn't laugh. Notice I'm not laughing at all. Yes, CWP is concealed weapons permit, right?

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In North Dakota, we don't need to actually have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. We have constitutional carry here.

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Just say it. Play that game. But did you know that sometimes

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God will lead you to scary places? This kind of blows up that whole mentality of God's always going to lead you to the land of rainbows and unicorns where you eat

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Lucky Charms and they have no calories. Who says that? I cover and have been covering for more than 10 years the worst preaching out there, you know, from every kind of group, from like the secret driven guys, general evangelicals, you know, the whole charismatic new apostolic reformation people, every wacker doodle you can possibly put out there.

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And I have yet to hear a sermon from anybody talking about how everything's going to be coming up roses and unicorns and Lucky Charms without calories for Christians.

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This is what we call a straw man argument. Nobody preaches or teaches this, right?

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God led Ezekiel to a valley full of bones. And he goes on to say, he led me back and forth among them, which,

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God, you only got to show it to me one time. But he keeps showing Ezekiel these bones. And he says, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley.

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Bones that were very dry. It's huge. That's very important.

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Now, if the hand of the Lord, why, why was it important that they were dry?

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I'd like to know the reason. Beyond me, I would prefer for him to take me to Costa Rica.

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I would prefer for him to take me to a five star resort or Paris or London or Rome. I don't want to go to a valley full of dry bones.

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Dry bones mean, do you think that this was some kind of alternative vacation that God was taking

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Ezekiel on? Even your sermon illustration doesn't make any sense.

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They had been there a long time and the flesh and the skin and the tendons had all rotted off.

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Now, we've got to ask the question, why were the bones there? I've done a little bit of research on this because that's kind of.

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Does it matter? The text doesn't actually say why they're there.

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What I do. And a lot of people have speculated. He's done a lot of research. A lot of research. But yet he didn't know that the phrase hand of the

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Lord. Many instances in the Old Testament. That's the phrase that precedes something bad.

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He does a lot of research, though, but he didn't know that part. Most people, most scholars believe it was some sort of army.

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They were going out to battle and they they obviously lost the fight.

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So you got a couple of options on why the bones were there. The option number one is because of something they did.

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In other words, they they made it. What about the option that this was a vision and this wasn't a real valley and these were just, you know, visionary bones because notice they came to life.

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Yeah, that that's part of this this particular vision. Yeah. Let me explain.

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So the hand of the Lord, the hand of Yahweh was upon me and he brought me out in the spirit of Yahweh and set me down in the middle of the valley was full of bones and he led me around among them.

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And behold, there were many, very many on the surface of the valley. Behold, they were very dry.

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And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, oh, Yahweh God, you know.

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And then he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, oh, dry bones.

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Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says Yahweh God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.

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Now, remember, we know the interpretation because we read the interpretation earlier. And I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am

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Yahweh. So I prophesied as I was commanded and I prophesied and there was a sound of behold rattling and the bones came together, bone to its bone.

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And I looked and behold, there were sinews on them and flesh had come upon them and skin had covered them.

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But there was no breath in them. And then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, say to the breath, thus says

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Yahweh God, come from the four winds, oh, breath and breathe on these slain that they may live.

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So I prophesied as he commanded me and breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet and exceedingly great army.

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Mm hmm. Now, I point that out because, well, let's say for a second, this was the

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Amalekites or this was an Amalekite army that they were slain because of something they had done right.

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Well, they're sworn enemies of Israel and now Ezekiel's raised them from the dead because God told him to prophesy over them.

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These probably are not real bones. This is a vision. That's a vision of the valley of the dry bones.

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And so note, then he says, God says that son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

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You see, it's it this is a vision, a prophecy about the resurrection.

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That's what this is about. But of course, you know, he's been he does a lot of research and stuff because that's what he does.

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Yeah. Military mistake. They made a military miscalculation.

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They thought, hey, this is where we need to go. This is what we need to do. Wrong answer. They made a mistake.

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They screwed up. They messed it up. However, whatever tiger language you want to put on that, they made a mistake. Or second option is because of something that was done to them.

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So the bones could have been there because they were going through this valley on their way to the fight and they got ambushed by the enemy.

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And when the enemy comes in and ambushes you, I mean, you just didn't see it coming.

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You didn't notice here. Now we've switched.

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So one of the other options is because something somebody did to them. So they got ambushed.

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Have you ever felt ambushed in your life? What is this time to react before they knew it?

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They lost their life. Oh, no. Now, when you're looking at this text, ask yourself the question.

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How did the bones feel? Now, I know bones don't have feelings, but like this is absurd.

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How did the bones feel? I don't know. They didn't have any nerves.

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They were really dry and stuff. Let's pretend if the bones had feelings, how did they feel?

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Well, the first thing they probably felt was forgotten. Yeah, I am.

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This is a sermon. What is this? You can't blame them, right?

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No, I mean, you would figure that somebody would have at least had the honor to come and bury the dead.

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Yeah, but they were out fighting for someone or something. We don't know what, but all of a sudden they're out in the middle.

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Like nobody even came and buried these bones. They felt forgotten by people. Yeah, they didn't get any military honors.

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And we're buried in Arlington. Nobody played taps for them. It's just it's horrible, man.

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It's a vision, Perry. Yeah, we felt forgotten by God.

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The second thing that I think that the bones probably felt are useless because at the end.

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Oh, you can see this train heading towards the end of the tracks. And it's going to go over the ravine, man.

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It's going to be Clint Eastwood ravine when this is all over. It's just a total train wreck.

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There's no way to stop it, man. You pass the point of no return. You're going over the cliff, dude.

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Yeah, these bones fell, feel forgotten and useless. You can see it coming. Have you ever felt forgotten and useless of the day?

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What can a pile of draw bones accomplish? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

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Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Why in the world are we talking about this?

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Because some people here today, whether you're in the room or whether you're watching online, you feel like those draw bones spiritually.

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Oh, man, what has happened to the church? So remember, he said, let's pretend.

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And so we're pretending that these bones have feelings, and now we're pretending they feel forgotten and useless.

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And now, based upon these pretending things that we're doing, you feel just like those bones, or at least the way we pretend that they're feeling.

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This has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with properly understanding what

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Ezekiel 37 says and means. And it's so helpful that God told us what it means.

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And it doesn't mean anything about feeling forgotten or useless. You're wounded and you're hurt.

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You're carrying with you. And maybe it's because of something you did. Because, listen, everybody in this room.

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Oh, man, I mean, are we watching a sermon belly flop contest?

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I mean, if so, he's winning, man, by a landslide. Done stupid.

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Everybody. There's not a person sitting here that's not completely jacked up.

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Everybody here. In fact, ladies, if you got a purse, I'd pull a little bit closer because I'm looking around this and there's some sketch people in this place.

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Mostly staff. But there's some messed up people in this room.

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They're every one of us have regrets. It may be it may be last week. It may be spring break.

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It may be. What does this text have to do with anybody's regrets from spring break?

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Season in our life. But every one of us carries some sort of spiritual regret. And that spiritual regret, if we're not careful, can keep us pushed down and pressed down until ultimately it robs the life out of us and leaves us feeling like we're dry bones.

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Man, I I have to stop. I'm going to hurt myself. I what are the most absurd?

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I hear a lot of absurd things. I just say it's and we bring them here, you know, to fight for the faith for your all's review.

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But I mean, as far as like major absurdity, that's off the chain right there.

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I don't know what happened. But that's no proper way of handling

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Ezekiel 37 and what it says or means. That's just bizarre.

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Anyway, yeah, it's presumption and just pretending and stuff. Pretend to Jesus. We're just going to pretend and then make points and applications based upon what we're pretending.

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Yeah, that's not how you find out what God's word says or means. This is an exercise in utter futility.

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Perry Noble is not qualified to be a pastor on multiple counts, especially the one that says study and show yourself approved as a workman who need not blush with embarrassment, but who can rightly handle rightly divide the word of truth.

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He clearly is not somebody who's capable of doing that. Now, if you found this helpful, all the information on how to share this video with others is down below in the description and all the share of things that YouTube puts up there.

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Of course, also the information on how you can support us financially. That's all down below in the description as well.

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We truly can't do what we're doing without your support. So until next time, may

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God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.