Dry Bones and the Army of God 1985

I'd like to read today, from Ezekiel chapter 37, a very familiar passage, Ezekiel 37, and it's fairly lengthy, 14 verses, bear with me as we read this. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of a valley that was full of bones. And he led me round among them, and behold, there were very many upon the valley, and lo, they were very dry.

And he said to me, Son of Man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said to me, prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath, or spirit, to enter you, and you shall live.

And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come up upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And as I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, prophesy to the Spirit, prophesy, Son of Man, and say to the Spirit, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the Spirit came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet an exceedingly great army. Then he said to me, Son of Man, these bones are the whole house of Israel, behold, they say, our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, we are clean cut off, therefore prophesy, and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you home into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, 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, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, says the Lord.

This vision was given to Ezekiel, when he was one of the Jewish captives in the city of Babylon, and in the kingdom of Babylon, at a time when Israel's bones were dry, its hope was lost, and its land was desolate. And it was a vision given as a promise that God would restore Israel, gather it from all the places where it was scattered, bring it together upon its land, restore it as a nation, and then fill it with His Spirit. But there is a second application of this vision of Ezekiel.

This vision also applies to the new Israel, the kingdom of God. And when we apply it to the new Israel, we have to see then that Babylon is not just a city which was located by the Tigris River over in what is now Iraq, but Babylon is now the entire world, the whole world system. And the people of the new Israel, in many, many ways, for a long, long time, have been held captive in this system of Babylon.

But now, and of course, this has been going on for 20 centuries, but there are waves of this, there are convulsions, and we're at least in the beginning of one right now. There's a stirring, there's a moving, there's a shaking. The bones, in some way, are coming together, and the people of the new Israel are being gathered, and they're being quickened, and they're being delivered from their captivity in Babylon, and they're being placed in their own land, meaning that they're being brought into a place of liberty and power and joy.

There is a shifting and a shaking and a quaking and a moving and a sifting and an upheaval going on in the body of Christ worldwide which has to be seen as the awakening of the bones under the impact of the living Word of God. We have to see that at this moment, all over the earth, four things are taking place in the body of Christ worldwide. First of all, people are being raised up by the power of the spoken Word, raised up out of their graves of self and flesh and dead works.

So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And as these bones come together, these people are drawn together. It doesn't happen smoothly and easily and well organized and comfortably, but it happens in a loud, jarring, and disturbing, upsetting way.

All kinds of crazy things are going on. All kinds of abrasiveness between person and person and group and group. All kinds of rocking, but it's happening.

The bones in the middle of all this are coming together. This is happening all over the earth. It's also happening here.

Secondly, under the impact of the living Word of God, the bones are being formed into a functioning body. So we read in the next verse of this passage, as I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. And so the individual bone all by itself is pretty useless.

It can't accomplish very much. But when this bone is joined to the bones it belongs to, and then sinews and flesh and skin cover them, and we have a body, now at least we have the potential for things accomplished through this body that can never be done by the individual bone. This is happening all over the earth, and it's also happening here.

There is a third thing that's going on. Under the impact of the spoken living Word of God, the bones brought together and formed into a body are being raised by the Spirit into an army for the Kingdom of Heaven. Then He said to me, Prophesy to the Spirit, prophesy, son of man, and say to the Spirit, Thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.

So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the Spirit came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet an exceedingly great army. Now it's true that the Holy Spirit does indwell the individual believer, no question about that, but the true, the living, the burning, the glorious, the full dwelling place of the Spirit of God is the body, not the individual believer. The body of believers, the assembly drawn together and functioning together.

Together we are to be a temple for the Spirit of the living God. And something happens in the power of the Holy Spirit when we draw together and function together and move and work and obey together that can't possibly take place individually. And we need to see this.

And this is happening. There is a drawing together, there is a forming and a quickening, and when the body experiences and receives the Spirit, we're lifted by the resurrection power of the Lord off our seats and up onto our feet, and we begin to move, and we begin now to be able corporately to accomplish things we could never do alone. Finally, again under the impact of the Word, this army of people who have been formed now into a body begins to take territory from Satan, begins to take the land that Babylon held captive for so long, and begins to establish the reign of the Kingdom of God on this earth.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He's talking about very specific things. Things which our eyes can see and our hands can touch.

Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you home into the land of Israel. You shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, 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, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, says the Lord.

No longer driven about by every wind of circumstance, no longer lying dormant in the grave of flesh and self and fear and unbelief, but alive and moving and acting and accomplishing something and taking territory, conquering, not just sitting there, doing something and getting results. Now this is something which is happening all over the earth, and it's also happening here. And we need to see that we are really in no way causing it to happen.

We don't make it happen. It happens as God speaks through the Son of Man. It happens under the hand of God.

It happens without any help at all from us. As we read in Mark chapter 4, verse 20, Jesus said, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.

But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come. And just as the seed sprouts by itself, grows by itself, bears fruit by itself, so the bones come together by themselves, drawn as they respond to the word that speaks to them. We don't make this happen, God makes it happen, and there's not a man or woman on this earth who can stop it from happening.

The issue for us is, am I part of this? Am I one of the dry bones being raised up out of my grave, out of this valley of death, to become part of this army of the living God? It's true that Jesus says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. All whom the Father has given me will come to me. It almost sounds as if we have nothing to do with it, and yet he also looks us in the eye and says, If anyone, first, let him come to me and drink.

Come. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone, if anyone, open the door. Hear my voice and open the door. I will come in and eat with him and he with me.

So the word, the living word, the word that Ezekiel was to proclaim, and the word that the true and ultimate Son of Man in fact proclaimed, that word comes to us. It comes to us and speaks to us. And as we respond to that word which we recognize as coming from him, we are drawn into the vision of Ezekiel.

We're made part of it. But we have to move. We have to respond.

If we don't respond, nothing happens. And so there are four questions. First, as the Son of Man speaks to the dry bones and the bones start coming together, am I willing to be lifted up out of my grave and become part of this thing? John 5, verse 25, Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear shall live.

The bones hear the word. But there are two ways of hearing the word. One way is you hear it, it goes by you, and the other way you hear it and you respond to it.

Those that hear shall live. Those who respond, the bones that respond to this call, they come to life. Things begin to happen.

But the bones have to act. They have to respond. And there are lots of bones that don't.

Say, you know, I like being a dry bone. You know, I'm comfortable here in this dry valley. Don't bother me.

Don't wake me up. I'm comfortable. And they don't want to move.

Sure, we'll have a little religion, all the religion you like, as long as it doesn't disrupt my lifestyle. As long as it doesn't bring any radical change in the way I think or act. Just let me sleep on here.

You know, and there are bones like that that are going to be lying in the valley of the dry bones until judgment day. And they may think they're alive. You know, they may feel that they're eating off the bottom of the land.

But they're dead. They're not listening. They're asleep.

The bones that respond to the word as it calls them are going to be disrupted. They're going to be inconvenienced. They're going to be finding themselves doing things they never thought they would ever do.

Making changes they never wanted to make. But they live. Second question.

As the son of man speaks to the dry bones, and the bones come together, am I willing to be linked to the bones that he chooses for me? Whatever bones, whatever sinew, whatever flesh, whatever skin, he decides to put me together with. Am I willing to be linked to these bones, even if they're not exactly the kind of bones I want to be linked to? I mean, they're low-class bones. Reading from 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 20.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly, the foolishness of what we preach, to save those who believe. For the Jews demand signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the wisdom of God is stronger than men. And so what happens is the bones are awakened by the strange gospel of a crucified lamb, and the bones that hear that gospel and respond to it wake up and they begin to move. And of course, you know, there are religious bones that find that very offensive, and there are intellectual bones that find that very stupid.

But the bones that listen and respond begin to move. But now here comes the part that we find hard to accept. When the bones begin to move, they are joined to low-class bones.

And this is what we read in this passage, exactly followed in, and it bears exactly on where you and I are in this fellowship and in the things that God is trying to do with us right now. For consider your call, brethren. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. Am I willing to be joined to the rejects or the marginals or whatever kind of person God chooses for me, but one that I'm not accustomed to being with? Or do I insist, Lord, okay, I'll allow you to fit me together in the body, but wait a minute, I have to have something to say about who you're going to link me to.

Not that bone. I don't find that wrong kind. You know, this guy doesn't have a clue.

You know, don't join him to me. I can't stand her. Oh, Lord, put her with some other bones.

Am I willing to be linked together as God ordains and chooses with whatever bones he chooses and let him call the shots on that? Question number three, as the spirit of God, under the impact of the spoken word from the son of man, begins to quicken this army and raise it on its feet. Am I in fact willing that that Holy Spirit should have dominion over my life? Am I willing that the spirit of God should be my life? See, when the spirit raised these slain and they stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army, the first thing they did, you can be sure, was worship the God who raised them from the dead. It began with worship.

It continued with worship, and it goes on with worship. Worship, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of worship. And if I obey the spirit, there's not a thing that I can do but open my heart and worship God.

If I live in the spirit, I will have to present my body as a living sacrifice to God, which is my spiritual worship, and be renewed in the spirit of my mind. Worship, you know, and so it's easy enough to say this theoretically, but am I willing to just stop fighting it and truly just give myself to the worship of God in the body? And all the time, day and night, all the time, see my life as worship. Everything is worship, beginning here and going on.

Worship, worship. Finally, as the spirit of the Lord speaks to this army, which has now been raised and the Son of God sends it forth to conquer from Babylon, am I willing to be engaged in conflict? Am I ready for battle? Because there will be a battle. They conquered by the, conquered him, Satan, by the blood of the land and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives, even unto death.

The body of Christ is not a hospital for wounded egos, where people find their lost self-esteem. You know, the Christian bookstores are just loaded with these books. Find your lost self-esteem.

And so everybody gazes at his navel, looking for it, and it's not there. You know, the more you look at the self, the sicker you become. The body of Christ is an army of men and women who have died for themselves and are being raised out of their graves into the purpose of God.

And when they do that, they have all the self-esteem they need. They know who they are and they're free. They conquered him by the blood of the land and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives, even unto death.

They weren't sitting around trying to find out who they are. So I prophesied, as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling.

How upset. Especially in our... And the bones came together, bone to its bone. And as I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

And he said to me, prophesy to the Spirit. Prophesy, Son of Man. Say to the Spirit, Thus says the Lord God.

Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe upon these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the Spirit came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet an exceedingly great army. Never in our lifetimes has this vision of Ezekiel been unfolding and fulfilling itself with more power, more speed, more disruption, more noise, more trouble, more pain, more joy, and more glory than now.

The bones are coming together. They're being fit together. They're being raised on their feet, and they're being sent forth.

And the word of the Lord, which is doing this, is in our midst, calling us to rise up with them, stand with them, march with them, and conquer with them. The hour is coming, and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear, who hear, who hear, shall live. Let's just wait upon the Lord in quiet for a minute.