Good News for Dry Bones

Providence Baptist Church

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Well, two weeks ago, two weeks and seven years ago,

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I should say. So, two weeks ago, it was my seventh anniversary at Perryville Second Baptist Church.

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And if the Lord is willing, one day, hopefully in more like four or five decades, but I'll just die behind this pulpit, and you can just bear me out back somewhere, right?

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I think you need a permit for that, so do that, remember. But seven years ago,

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June 26, 2016, I began my pastorate here, and the first sermon that I preached as pastor of this church was from Ezekiel chapter 37, so I invite you to turn in your

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Bibles to Ezekiel chapter 37. And the title of that sermon is also the title of this morning's sermon,

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Good News for Dry Bones. Good News for Dry Bones.

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Now, I listened to this sermon on our way down to Port Arthur.

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I think Abigail and Stephanie and Ella were all asleep, but I really listened to this message.

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I didn't realize that seven years ago, my voice was so high -pitched. But what

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I said seven years ago, I still believe today. Yet I can tell you this, in seven years,

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I've learned some. I've learned a lot, actually. And God's way of working in our church has been certainly different than what

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I prayed for and expected. Nevertheless, what I want you to see again, seven years later, from this text,

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I want you to see hope today. God is working in our midst, and there is hope today for our church.

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There's hope today for personal revival. There's hope today for conversion, for regeneration.

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There's hope for spiritual growth. There's hope for our community. There's a hope for the spiritual resurrection of men and women and boys and girls, and even in this room and in our country and in our town and our county.

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And so that's what I want to see today from Ezekiel 37, good news for dry bones.

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Let's take it up and read together. Would you stand as we honor the reading of God's Word? I'm seven years, hopefully, wiser.

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I am seven years older. I'm reminded of that every time I look in the mirror. Hopefully, I'm seven years wiser as we re -examine this text.

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Hear the Word of the Lord. The hand of Yahweh was upon me. He brought me out in the

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Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones, and He led me around among them.

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

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And He said to me, son of man, can these bones live?

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And I answered, O Lord God, you know. And then He said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them,

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O dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold,

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I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the

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Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a 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, but there was no breath in them.

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Then He said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the

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

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So I prophesied as He commanded, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

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Let's pray. Father, would You bless the preaching of Your Word today. Blow Your resurrecting winds upon this place in the spirit of holiness, and pray that Christ would be exalted.

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Let us glean from this text the hope that You have for Your church, and let us march forward in boldness, consistency, faithfulness, knowing that all that we have comes from You.

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Bless us as only You can. We know that we come before You not deserving of these things.

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We don't ask for our merits to be blessed. We ask that we be blessed based on what Christ has done for us, and then help us in our feeble attempts to live out what

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You have called us to, for the glory of Christ. And we pray that He would be lifted high in this church, in this town, in this state, in this country, and among the nations.

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And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Point number one.

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A word about bones. Number one, a word about bones.

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The text says that Ezekiel was brought by the hand of the Lord, and he was set down in the middle of a valley, verse 1, and it was full of bones.

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Now, these bones in their immediate context represent Israel. You say, boy, that's deep insight.

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How did you get that? Well, it's because it's in verse 11. Look at verse 11. Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

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Pretty plain, right? Behold, they say, our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off.

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Therefore, prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you up from your graves,

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O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. So Ezekiel was a prophet of God whom the

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Lord spoke to in a special way and gave him this vision for Israel.

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The Reformation Study Bible notes, the vision gives a specific and immediate hope to the exiles longing to be restored to their own country.

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So you remember they're exiled in the land of Babylon, and so this is a text in its immediate context that gives hope to Israel.

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That is, if God can resurrect bones in a valley, then he can bring his people back from Babylon and he can restore them to their own country.

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Now look at verse 2. Verse 2 says, he led me around among them.

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That is, think about this for just a moment. The Spirit of God leads Ezekiel around among these dry bones to observe some things about them, and that's what

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I want to do for a moment. I want to observe three things about these bones. Number one, they were deserted.

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These bones were deserted. Verse one, the hand of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out in the

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Spirit of the Lord and he set me down in the middle of the valley and it was full of bones. These bones weren't in the middle of town.

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They weren't in the middle of Jerusalem. They're out in the wilderness. They're out in the middle of the valley. They had been left alone, seemingly forgotten about.

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Perhaps those who did travel this valley got so used to seeing them that they didn't even think about them anymore.

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You know how when you travel to work and you go like a thousand times and people are like, you know that one tree there with the pretty leaves?

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And you're like, no, I don't remember. Because you've seen it so many times you forget about it. Well, these bones had been forgotten about.

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They're deserted in the valley. Secondly, this is an obvious point, but let's just emphasize it.

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They were dead, right? What do bones do? In the middle of the valley it was full of bones.

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What do bones do? They do nothing, right? They just lie there on the surface of the ground.

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Why? They're lifeless. Humanly speaking, bones in the middle of a valley are essentially useless.

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In and of themselves, they can do nothing. They can be nothing. They are worth nothing.

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And then thirdly, they were dry. So they're deserted. They're dead.

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They're dry. Actually, if you look at verse 2, the text says they were very dry, right?

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Bleached white by the sun. Long since forgotten about.

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Hopeless, helpless, heartless. I mean, literally a skeleton doesn't have a heart, right?

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Doesn't have a brain. It's feeling is gone. It's thinking is really nothing.

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But for our purposes, I'll say it's thinking is irrational, because these deserted, dead, and dry bones signified the current state of Israel.

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Think about it for just a moment. They were deserted, not because God abandoned them, right?

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They had ultimately left God. That's why they're in Babylon.

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Babylon just represents a physical separation, but the spiritual separation had happened long ago.

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They're deserted, not because God had just abandoned them as though he had forgotten his promises, but they had left

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God, and so God cast them into judgment. They were dead in Babylon.

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That is, they were spiritually lifeless. They were dry in Babylon.

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They were without hope. They were fearful. They were doubting the goodness and the promises of God, but God was ready to do a work in them, and God did do a work with them.

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But that's the context that I'm going to leave you with, and what

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I want to do for our sermon today is I want to extend the application of Ezekiel 37 to the church, and specifically to Perryville Second Baptist Church.

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As we consider our ministry here together, I want to be clear that many in our county, many in our surrounding areas, many in our state, many in our country, frankly, even in our county, the majority, can be likened to this valley of dry bones.

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They are deserted. That is, Isaiah says it this way, their sin has made a separation between them and God.

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They are dead. That is, they are spiritually dead, and that's worse, by the way, than the image of these bones.

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Okay, the image of these bones almost appears as though these bones are neutral, and maybe in and of themselves you would say bones are neutral, but actually the imagery we ought to have for the people in our area is beyond neutrality, because if you ask a valley of dry bones, do you want to live, what will the answer be?

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Well, you'll have no answer. If you go to the cemetery today and you say, do you want to live, what will the response be?

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Well, you may get a response of someone calling the police on you, right, and saying this man needs a medical examination, but you'll have no response from a valley of dry bones.

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You'll have no response from anyone in a cemetery, but the condition of our county and community and state is actually a step beyond that, because listen to me, church, it's not neutral.

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It's not a neutral no answer. Rather, it's a defiant rejection of all that God is for us in Christ.

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Let me paint for you an analogy. I'll give you two scenarios.

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Scenario number one, there's a building that's caught fire. There's been an electrical fire.

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A fireman, a heroic fireman, goes into the building, breaks down the door.

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He's heroic. He goes all the way up to the top floor. There's a young lady there in the top floor.

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She's gasping for breath. The firefighter throws her over his shoulder, and he runs her out of the building, and she is saved.

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Now, many of us picture salvation in that way. The world is, as it were, a burning building, and it's a fire, maybe we would say started by Satan or something like that, and everyone in this building is wanting to get out.

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They just don't know how, and they just need an opportunity for God to show them the way out.

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That's the myth of neutrality. Let me give you the analogy of what this really looks like in accordance with the way the

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Bible teaches us. There's a fire in the building. It wasn't started by electricity.

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It wasn't started by Satan. The tenants started the fire themselves. The fireman runs in.

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He runs to the top floor. He offers to save the young woman, and instead of her saying, yes, save me, she pulls out a knife and tries to stab him.

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Vivid imagery, I understand, but this is the reality of the state of loss. It's beyond just these bones laying on the ground.

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It's beyond just like neutrality, yes or no, no answer, they can't do anything. No, no. Spiritual deadness means, right, they're deserted and they're dead.

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Spiritual deadness does not imply neutrality. No, no, no, no, no. It's not neutrality.

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It's rejection of God. They're not lying there like dry bones. They are actively denying

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God. Unbelief is not a condition so much as it is active rebellion.

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Okay, so they're deserted. Their sin has made a separation between them and God.

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They're spiritually dead. Thirdly, they're dry. Now, I have a unique application here.

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In the early 1800s, the state of New York and the surrounding areas there, evangelistically, it became known as the

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Burned Over District. And what that means is it's in reference to all the man -made revivals that had gone through there and continued to happen.

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There was a true revival during the Great First Great Awakening, but people tried to replicate that, and so there's so much man -made stuff going on that they refer to this area just as the

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Burned Over District. Well, don't even go there because it's just burned over, right? Arminianism at the time was rampant.

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Sinners were told that, hey, you just cooperate with God to bring about your salvation.

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All this man -made revivalism had just burned people out. Connected to this, you have during this time the rise of a man by the name of Joseph Smith and Mormonism.

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And so what happens is people are burned out over false revivalism, men like Charles Finney, and so they were deceived by the false gospel of Mormonism.

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Or similar, you have Ellen G. Weick, some of you recognize that name, and this time Seventh -Day Adventism. The point is this region had become very dry.

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And we see that 200 years later, by the way, if you look at New York's surrounding areas, the condition has only worsened.

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But I think about the Burned Over District and the very dryness of these bones in Ezekiel 37.

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And I cannot help, friends, but think about our context right here in Perryville, Arkansas and the surrounding areas.

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Think about it for just a moment. Man -made religion flourishes here. There are outright heretics like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.

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And then there are a lot of situations where there is the mixing of the truth of Christianity with man -centeredness.

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Arminianism is rampant. A denial of the sovereign and sufficient grace of God in salvation is rampant.

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A misunderstanding of the cross and sin and the Christian life and the church and sound doctrine is rampant.

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It's all over the place. It has infected us like cancer. We are in a very dry situation, spiritually speaking.

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And the sad thing is, so many people are spiritually dry, and they don't even know it.

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They don't even understand it. So what I'm saying to us now is that if the

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Lord were to show us a picture of the spiritual life of our area, it would be similar to this valley of dry bones.

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What we're doing here is like Ezekiel verse 2, and he led me around among them. And behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.

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We're taking a survey, if you will, of our landscape. The point is not to belittle anyone, not to put anyone down.

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The point is to understand a spiritual picture of what a person's life looks like, separated from our

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Lord Jesus Christ. On the outside, we run into people all the time who seem to be okay.

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We would call them, from our perspective, good people, a good family, nice folks, contributors to society.

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They vote right. They vote like we want them to vote. They pay their taxes. They work hard. From our perspective, these are upstanding citizens.

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They may even give various signs of life. They wonder in a church every now and then, or maybe they even attend church regularly.

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But apart from Christ, the Bible tells us that a person is spiritually dead.

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And our passage in Ezekiel gives us an illustration of this. We see here, friends, our great need of God's work.

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We need, verse 12 and following, listen, 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, and you shall know that I am the

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Lord. When I open your graves and raise you from your graves,

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O my people, and I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land, then you shall know that I am the

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Lord. I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord. And we say, yes, Lord, do it.

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Not only thousands of years ago with the people of Israel. Do it. Do it here for the sake of Christ.

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This is what we need. We people don't need medicine. They don't need a shot. They need to be resurrected from their graves.

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And so that's a word about bones. Secondly, a word about God.

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Now, God asked Ezekiel a funny question there in verse 3. And he said to me, imagine the

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Lord asking you this question. You're in a valley of dry bones, bones scattered out. Son of man, can these bones live?

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What an answer from Ezekiel, right? Maybe he wants to say no, but then he realizes, well, you're not really, shouldn't say no to God.

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What am I going to say? Oh, here's a good answer. I answered, oh Lord God, you know, right?

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You know the answer. And suppose we were walking through the woods and we came across a deer skull.

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And I looked at you and I said, hey, can this thing live again? You'd think I was crazy, right?

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But Ezekiel goes to the right source. He says, Lord God, Adonai Yahweh, you know.

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Can these bones, think about it, live? Not Ezekiel, can you dabble into paleontology and maybe connect these bones together and display them?

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Could you maybe get a skeleton, a full skeleton out of these bones and display it somewhere? That in and of itself would be amazing.

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No, God says, can these bones live? You can't do that, Ezekiel. Not just assembled back together, not put in a museum, but can they live?

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Can they have life? Can they have breath? Can they live again? God knows. Seven years ago,

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I made this statement. I'm going to quote, I've never done this before. I'm going to quote

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Quatro Nelson from June 26th. I guess in one way, I quote myself all the time.

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But Quatro Nelson, June 26th, 2016, quoting the 31 -year -old me, 30 -year -old me, sorry.

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It is very comforting and exciting to me that as we begin this ministry journey together, as we do life together as brothers and sisters in Christ, God knows all that will come of it.

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True statement? Yes. Perhaps I didn't understand how true of statement that was.

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But God knows, and God has worked, and the journey that we've taken in these last seven years has been about His glory so that we may know

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He is the Lord. Everything that's happened in this church for the last seven years, and maybe we could even say the fullness of this church's existence, the last 27 years, everything that has happened the last seven years and beyond has been in God's position for this one great purpose, and that is that we may know that He is

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God. We are not. God is actually the source of all that has happened here in this church and all that will happen here in this church for His glory, just like He's the source of everything that happens in our text.

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Verse 4, Then He said to me, Prophesy over these bones and say to them, O tribones, hear the word of the

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Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.

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And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the

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Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was a sound, I love this, and behold, a rattling, right, because the bones are coming together, bone to its bone, and I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them.

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Then He said to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the

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Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slains, that they may live. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and the breath came upon them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

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This gets me excited as a pastor, and as a preacher, because I'm reminded in this text that salvation is of the

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Lord, and that God is doing a work, God is doing a work all over the world, through in Pechote, and in Tuxla, and in Texas, and Arkansas, even

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Alabama, and Louisiana, and all these places all over the world. God is working, and we can't stop it, the enemy can't stop it, because God is doing a work for the glory of His name.

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This is the glorious God that we serve. So don't read this passage and think to yourself, man,

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I wish I was like Ezekiel. I could make dead people come to life.

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If you read this passage that way, you're reading it wrong. Ezekiel didn't do that.

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Who did Ezekiel bring back to life? Who did he bring back to life? No one.

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This army wasn't Ezekiel's, it's Yahweh's. How many people did the

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Apostle Paul bring back to life? Remember that time, preachers love this story, you remember that time the

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Apostle Paul preached so long that someone died? I've preached some long sermons, but to my knowledge,

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I've never killed anybody. And then Paul goes down, and he lives again.

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It's not Paul that didn't do that, God did that. How many people did

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Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, maybe

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Martin Lord Jones, maybe you're more familiar with Billy Graham, how many people did they bring to life?

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None. What is the point I'm making here? The power of God is our hope.

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You understand when Ezekiel says, oh Lord, you know that we don't merely serve a

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God who is omniscient, right? A God that simply knows everything that's going to happen.

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We serve a God who is sovereign over all. A God who doesn't just know what's going to happen, but has a plan for what's going to happen, and has the power to bring about that plan, and has a power to bring dead souls to life.

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So our hope is not in a preacher. If God forbid, I don't want this to happen, but if God forbid, if I were to step out of this pulpit, trip, fall, break my neck, and die, your hope is not in me.

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It's not in Pastor Jacob. It's not in any other person in this church.

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You think to yourself, well, I want to be careful saying this, because I want to be kind and helpful to you.

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But if you're thinking to yourself, well, well, I have to stay here, because if I leave, the church collapses.

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The only way the doors are still open in this church is because I'm tithing.

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It's because I'm showing up, because I'm helping. Let me politely, and gently, and humbly tell you that you're wrong.

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I want all of you here. And in one sense, I would say as a pastor, I need all of you. I love all of you.

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But you need to understand that the power of God in this church is not upon, is not you.

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It's not me. It's God. God is the one in control of our church, and God is the one that we're dependent upon.

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So our hope is not in a preacher. It's not in a program. It's not in a personality. Our hope is in the power of God through Christ to regenerate dead hearts.

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We survey our mission field, right? We go knocking on doors. We preach to the people at harps.

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We do these things, and we look around, and sometimes we despair. Sometimes we talk to one another, and we're like, man, no one's listening, right?

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These people say the craziest things. Oh, I'm saved, but I never go to church. I never read my Bible, right?

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Oh, I'm saved. What is the gospel? I have no idea what the gospel is, right? How do these people say such foolish and silly things and sometimes outright blasphemous and wicked things, and we look around, and we say, oh,

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God, what have you given us here but a valley of dry bones? It's too vast.

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What could we ever possibly do to revive this place? And the Lord says, in essence, to us, nothing.

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You can do nothing. That's encouraging.

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Pack up and go home. No, no, here's the encouraging part. You can do nothing, but I can.

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Aren't you glad that our hope is in Him and what

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He can do? God, can these bones live? Can these sinners repent?

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Is there hope for the immorality and idolatry that is rampant in our town?

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Oh, God, can the bones live? Oh, Lord, you know. God is our hope, and He is our only hope of bringing dry bones to life.

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This is proven, by the way, in the New Testament when Jesus says, it is the Spirit who gives life,

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John 6, 63. It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all.

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Let's just put that into percentages, right? How much of the flesh gives life? Percentages.

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Zero percent, right? How much does the flesh contribute to our spiritual life?

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John 6, 63, zero percent. How much does the Holy Spirit contribute to our spiritual life?

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John 6, 63, 100 percent. He says,

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Jesus says, the wind will blow where it will. That was in John 3, what we read. So it is everyone who is born of the

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Spirit. By the way, the Hebrew word Ezekiel 37, for wind and breath and Spirit, it is all the same

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Hebrew word. It is the word ruach. The point is, the Holy Spirit saturates Ezekiel 37.

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Without the Spirit of God, these bones don't live, verse 9. He said to me, prophesy to the breath.

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Let me just say the Hebrew word. Prophesy to the ruach. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the ruach, thus says the

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Lord God, come from the four ruach, O ruach, and ruach on these slain that they may live.

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You understand, it is the same word. We have different words so we can kind of understand what is being said there, but it is without question that the

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Bible is pointing us to the work of the Holy Spirit here. That is true of us too. Lazarus doesn't come out of the tomb of his own free will.

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He comes out of the tomb because the Spirit moves upon him first. Lydia, in Acts 16, she doesn't believe

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Paul's message on her own. Acts 16, 14 teaches us that first what happened is

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God opened her heart. The point here, I am trying to just hammer this home to my own heart, to our minds, to our church.

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The point is, we are desperate for the work of the Holy Spirit. No one can, has the ability,

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John 6, 44, no one has the ability to come to Christ unless the Father who sent

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Christ first draws that person. And the way that God draws sinners is through the agency of the

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Holy Spirit. That is why John teaches us that those who are born again are born again not of the will of man, not of the will of the flesh, but of God.

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That is John 1, 13. It is why he tells us that those who believe, 1 John 5, 1, everyone who believes on him has been born of God.

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Now if you go through 1 John, it talks about those who practice righteousness have been born of God. In other words, we don't practice righteousness to be born of God.

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Several things like that. And then when he gets to 1 John 5, 1, he says we believe because we have been born of God.

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Listen, not to be born, but because God has worked in us first.

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That is why 1 Peter 1, 3 says that we are born again according to his great mercy.

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Again, the overarching point here is that we need the Holy Spirit to work or no one gets saved.

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We need him to work in our door -to -door evangelism. We need him to work in our passing out tracts.

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We need him to work in our street preaching. And the theological term, if you must know, that I'm teaching here is monergism.

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Monergism comes from two Greek words. Mono, meaning alone. Ergon, we get words like energy from that word.

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So mono, alone. Ergon, work. So what we're saying here is that monergism refers to a solo work.

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That regeneration, the resurrection of dry bones is not the bones and God work together to bring about the resurrection, right?

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What would that be like? What if God told Ezekiel, figure out a way to encourage these bones to work with me so I don't violate their will.

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They can work with me and then we'll bring about the resurrection. What would have happened? No resurrection, right?

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That's because regeneration is monergistic. That is, it is God's work alone.

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It is God's work alone upon a lost sinner rather than the sinner and God working together to create life that's illustrated in verse 10.

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

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This is the teaching of the Bible, friends. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Jonah 2 .9. John Bunyan once preached, to be saved by grace alone supposeth that God hath taken the salvation of our souls into his own hand and to be sure it is safer in God's hand than ours.

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Who will be saved in Perryville? Whosoever God is pleased to say.

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But leaving salvation in the hands of our sovereign and gracious God is far better than trying to put salvation in our hands.

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It's safer in the hands of God, Bunyan said, than it is in the hands of men.

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We need the Holy Spirit to work upon sinners lives. We also need him to work in the church too.

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We need him to work right now in the preaching of the word, in our discipleship, in our families.

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We desperately depend upon the sovereign work of God, but we serve a God of hope, of resurrection, of restoration, of life.

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Listen just a second. We're going to move to the last point, but let me just pause. Are you trusting this great

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God? Probably most of us in here, and I'm pointing the fingers at myself, most of us in here need to be constantly aware that we need to expand our understanding and view and adoration and awe of our great and holy

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God. Who are we that we go about our lives as though we've got God figured out?

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We are to come to the scriptures every day and say, God, I want more of you. Show me more of you.

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Expand my mind. Expand my heart. Here's my hands. Here's my feet.

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Here's everything. Take me. Do with me as you will for your glory.

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We need the Spirit's work. But thirdly, let me say this. We have a word about bones, a word about God, finally a word for us.

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Now I think it's very interesting the links that churches will go to sometimes in trying to grow numerically.

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Now listen, I want to state this unequivocally as your pastor. I want to grow numerically.

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Some of you who pray with me, you know that. I've expressed it to you. I want to grow numerically.

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I want to see these chairs filled. I want to see the necessity of building a bigger building.

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I want to see us grow numerically, but I refuse to practice any sort of underhanded or conniving ways.

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I'm giving it all to God. Jacob and I are giving it all to God.

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We'll plant, we'll water, we'll do those things, but we'll trust God alone to give the increase.

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What I want us to see here is that God is sovereign and in His sovereignty He has ordained a particular means in bringing the dead back to life.

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Look at verse 4. Then He said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them,

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O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

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Now God could have just resurrected these bones in His own sovereign prerogative. He could have done that, but what

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He has chosen instead is to resurrect these bones with a particular means.

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The means of proclamation. The means of preaching

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His word. Hear the word of Yahweh. The only means by which

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God brings the dead to life is through the proclamation of His word.

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Ezekiel heard what God preached and then think about, wow, this is innovative.

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Listen to this. Ezekiel heard what God preached, understood what

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He was commanded to do, and then turned and preached what he heard. Would to God that preachers in our churches today would model this practice.

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Here's the Bible. Here's what it says. I'm going to tell you what the book says, right?

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I'm not going to read the Bible and then come up with some sort of crazy idea that I came up with my own self and sprinkle it around like Rick Warren with Bible verses.

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Instead, I'm going to open the Bible. Brother Jacob's going to open the Bible. We're going to turn to the passage.

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We're going to read the verse and we're going to say, thus sayeth the Lord, because the power for the church is not in these men.

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It is in the preaching as it is attended by the Holy Spirit of God. This is the way

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God works. We must preach the word in dependence on the Holy Spirit. John Gill writes, if ever ministers preach to purpose, it must be with a view to the

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Spirit of God, both to assist them in their work and to make their ministrations effectual, without which how many formal professors so ever may be made, not one dead sinner will be quickened.

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That is, I can come up with crazy sermons and catchy and witty sermons and we could get these pews filled, but we can't get people born again unless the

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Spirit of God is in it through the right preaching of his word. Give us men resolved to preach in God's power and not their own.

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Too many preachers think too highly of their sermons and what we need, what we're in desperate need of is the

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Spirit of God to attend our preaching. There are deserted people in our county.

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There are spiritually dead people in our county. There are spiritually dry people in our county. Maybe some of that or maybe all of that actually applies to you in this room, but I'm saying the only source for them outside, the only source for any of you inside, the only hope that you have is a word from God and you need the word of God attended by the

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Holy Spirit of God. Now Ezekiel had a specific word, hear and live, and I would actually say that our proclamation is not all that different.

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If you remember, we won't turn to it, but just the previous chapter Ezekiel 36, 25 through 27, you have this great passage about regeneration, but our message is essentially the same.

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We preach to the people, look and live, look to the Son of God, be made new, be made whole, be forgiven.

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The people of our county are hopeless and helpless and heartless. They're separated from God in their sins and they do not seek the remedy.

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They stand at enmity with God, the Bible says, and they deserve His wrath. Perhaps it describes someone in this room, but what is the good news then?

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But God, 2 ,000 years ago, God remedied this situation through the death of Christ.

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Jesus died on the cross bearing the wrath of God so that in Christ you can have life.

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But you say, I could never stop this sin. I love it too much. I could never clean myself up.

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I could never stop doing this and start loving God. And the reality is you're right.

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You're right. But God is in the heart transplant business. You go to the doctor and you say to the doctor, my heart, my heart is feeling funny.

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And the doctor does some tests and says, look, your heart is bad. And you say, oh, doctor,

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I guess I'll just go home and die because there's nothing I can do to take out this bad heart and replace it with a good heart.

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The doctor stops it, stops you and looks at you crazy and says, well, of course you can't do that, but I can.

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Friends, God will give you a new heart.

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He will give you His spirit. He will walk with you. He will cause you to walk in His ways.

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And all of this is His own sovereign prerogative. What it is that you're called to do and what it is all of Perryville is called to do is to repent of your sins, turn from them, hate them, leave them, believe the gospel.

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Those who do not do that are left to their own personal and volitional unwillingness. There is no one that's wanting to come to God, but God says, no, no, no, you can't come.

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No, those who reject God are left to their own unwillingness. But the call to you, the call to all of Perry County is to repent and believe the gospel.

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Some of you need to consider is the spirit of God at work in you today. You may be bleached white by the sun.

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But through the power of God, you can be bleached white by the sun.

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You can be clothed in his righteousness. Let me hammer this home.

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What is the means by which God brought these deserted, dead, dry bones to life?

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What would you have said? Wouldn't it be interesting in our text if it said, Ezekiel, go buy some bowling pins, set them on fire and juggle them in front of the dry bones.

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And let's just see what happens. No, friends, he's called to preach. Now, listen, here's what some churches have learned to do, and we better be careful so we don't learn to do this, too.

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Too many churches have learned how to construct skeletons. They have learned how to walk out in the valley of dry bones and to pick up the bones and to duct tape them together and to set them in pews and to put them on committees and to let them serve as deacons and to even call them as pastors to just assemble these dry bones together, wrap some duct tape about around them and just pretend that they're going to church.

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That is too many churches today are just basically boneyards. And the only difference between them and a cemetery is that the church building has air conditioning.

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But what I'm saying here is that the church is not a museum.

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It's not a place to come in and say, wow, look at all these great skeletons you have.

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Churches have done too good of a job trying to just entertain dry bones. It's why you have some of the silliest things going on in churches today.

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Let's get a cloud and let's dance and let's do all that. Let's get fog machine and laser lights and let's just do all this crazy.

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Why is this going on? It's because you're trying to entertain dry bones, not living souls.

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And then we have these wars among churches. You have this church over here that comes up with a new thing.

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And now you're going to collect all the dry bones and the rattling. They all come over here. They're not living, but they're skeletons.

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And then later on, this church comes up with an idea. Oh, we're going to do this. And then you have all these dry bones come over there and they just shift around from church to church to church to church.

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But you just have a museum of skeletons. And what's happening, we're offering programs and lattes and positivity and encouragement only one day to bury these dry bones and send them off to hell.

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Church, what I'm saying to us this morning is this is not our mission. This is not our calling.

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You know what an osteologist is? It's someone who puts skeletons back together.

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Osteology falls under the broader category of paleontology. Okay, we need churches less interested in paleontology and more interested in prophecy.

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We don't need to put together the dry bones. We need to preach to them. And we're not after bags of bones.

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We're after life. Then he said to me, prophesy, verse nine to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the

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Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live. We're not interested in putting skeletons back together.

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We're interested in seeing dead hearts born again, regenerated, brought to life.

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We're not after how many skeletons we can collect. That's what churches are doing today. How many of you running over there?

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Well, I got about 14 bags of bones. Who cares about that?

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We're after dead hearts coming to life, the transformation of the entire center by the power of God in the gospel of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And remember, friends, Christ is worthy to be proclaimed. Even if God were to say something in this, audibly speak to us and say, all your preaching, all your evangelism, all your track handling out, not one person is going to come to Christ.

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Even if we knew that was the case, Christ is still worthy to be preached. He's still worthy of us to proclaim

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His name. Even if we knew that not a single person was going to come to Christ, then Christ is still worthy of proclamation.

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But here is the hope. God is still in the saving business. How do I know? Because Christ hasn't returned.

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Listen to me, church. I believe with all my heart that God is going to save people in our city.

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He's going to say, it's like, what if I told you, hey, I know this great pond and there's great fish in this pond, man.

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And you sit and you think to yourself, boy, there's great fish in that pond. I can't wait to eat one of those fish.

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You sit around, you sit around, you sit around, you sit around. I'm like, have you eaten any fish? No, not one fish is showing up on my plate.

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Have you been fishing? Well, no, but you said there's a lot of fish in the pond. Well, foolish would that man be?

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Listen, I'm telling you, there's a lot of fish in the pond. I believe this with all my heart, but we must be faithful to the calling.

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We must preach the word of God. We must stand upon the truth of God. We must proclaim Christ and we trust

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God with the increase. There is good news for dry bones and the spirit of God is still at work today.

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I believe it with all my heart. And I want you to believe it, too. Calling us back today to remember there's good news for dry bones.

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And that good news comes in the form of a proclamation about what the son of God has done for us.

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So that we might be reconciled to the father and the spirit of God applies this great truth to our lives.

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There's no hope for Perryville in just an abundance of games or entertainment.

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There's no hope for you and I apart from this message. It's only through the good news about Jesus.

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By the sovereign work of the spirit that God brings dry bones to life.

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The spirit of God works through the message of God. To bring centers under the lordship, the glad lordship of the son of God.

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And just close by asking this question to our church. I will tell you this first.

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Never trust a preacher when he says we're going to close. Seven years later.

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I still believe this. If God would have told me the journey seven years ago,

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I probably would have been rather timid. And if he were to show me the journey for the next seven years, we'd probably all be rather timid.

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But I say to you unequivocally, unapologetically and unambiguously, I still believe this message.

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Frankly, I believe it even stronger today by God's grace than I did seven years ago.

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And so here's the question we end with. Where is your hope today?

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Some of you, maybe children, maybe adults, some of you, your hope is in your works. Your hope is in your being here.

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Your hope is in the wrong place. You need to repent. You don't need to waste another second. You need to repent of your sins and believe the gospel church.

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You need to remember today that your hope is not in your pastors. Your hope is not in any kind of programs. Your hope is not in any people at all.

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Your hope is in the power of God, in the proclamation of his gospel.

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Amen. Father, we pray that you would bless the preaching of your word. We pray that we would remember this good news for dry bones.

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We'd rest in your sovereign work. We'd walk in your ways for the glory of Christ.

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We plead with you that you would work in a way in this church that we would see the fruit of the labor.