Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-168 (Topical Sermon)

RELEASING THE HOLY SPIRIT IN MY CHURCH (Ezekiel 37)

by Rod Benson

In June 1963 US Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr said, “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” During the great civil rights march on Washington DC in August the same year he spoke these now immortal words:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self- evident: that all men are created equal.’

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character . . . So let freedom ring . . . “

Martin Luther King had a dream, a dream founded on justice and liberty, a dream worth dying for, and a dream for which he ultimately gave his life when he was assassinated.

What is your dream? What is your dream for your life? What is your dream for our church? If you knew God would release his Holy Spirit upon us this year in revival, what would you dream for our church?

It is good to dream, and dreams cost nothing, so dream big dreams. We are God’s new community, birthed at Pentecost, and called by God to receive visions and dream dreams, fulfilling Joel’s prophecy (Joel 2:28-32).

The implication of Acts 2 is that dreaming and envisioning what God will do in our midst is part of the ongoing life of the church of Jesus Christ! No church should be without dreams and dreamers: people able to listen to God and cast a spiritual vision, and set goals and strategies in keeping with the biblical purposes of the church.

DREAMING FOR GOD

God has always had such people, and one of these was a man named Ezekiel. He came from a family of priests, although he is best known to us as a prophet – one who received messages from God and shared them with people.

Ezekiel lived in or near Jerusalem at one of the lowest points in that city’s history, when the king of Babylon conquered the region and forced many of the local people into exile in Babylonia.

Ezekiel was exiled in 597 BC, aged about 25 (cf Ezekiel 33:21; 2 Kings 24:11-16). For the Babylonians exile was not an exercise in sadism but a strategy to minimise ethnic revolutions – not unlike some assimilation policies today.

Five years later God called Ezekiel to serve as a prophet. As well as graphic symbolism and use of the arts, Ezekiel conveyed God’s message through stories and allegories. But he also shared dreams and visions he received from God.

DREAMING OF OLD BONES

In Ezekiel 37, the Holy Spirit takes the prophet to a valley filled with human bones. Ezekiel is struck by the vast number of bones, and their aridity: huge numbers of dead people, and people who have been dead a long time.

Imagine the scene as it would be portrayed by George Miller or Steven Spielberg: two and a half thousand years ago, you’re on the hot, dusty plains of Babylon; Jerusalem and Judah have been destroyed because of the unfaithfulness of their people.

The temple is gone, the people slaughtered, scattered or exiled, their culture crushed, their God seemingly distant and unconcerned.

If you were in Ezekiel’s situation, would you hold out hope for the future? Would you have any dream or vision of renewal and restoration? Or would you believe the end has come?

The Lord asks Ezekiel a seemingly absurd question: “Son of man (that was Ezekiel’s nickname), can these bones live?” (verse 3a).

In the ordinary course of nature, dry bones don’t grow tendons and muscle and skin, and spring to life: the path of degeneration and death is a one-way road.

In the Bible, Jesus brought Lazarus back to life after he had been dead four days (John 11:1-44), and in the Old Testament we read of the lifeless body of a man touching Elisha’s bones, receiving back its spirit, and standing upright (2 Kings 13:21).

But here in Ezekiel 37 there is a vast army of broken up skeletons, their owners long dead. Ezekiel thinks about God’s question, “Can these bones live?” and makes his best response: “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know” (verse 3b).

THE BONES ARE ALIVE

Then God instructs Ezekiel to do two rather unusual things: first, to preach the word of God to the bones (verses 4-6), and second, to call the Holy Spirit to come and breathe life into them (verse 9)!

In the midst of the lifeless desolation, Ezekiel declares God’s word exactly as commanded, and immediately there is a supernatural response:

As I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them (verses 7-8).

Then he calls to the Holy Spirit: “Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live! . . . and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army” (verses 9b-10).

As the word is preached and the Spirit comes, God shows Ezekiel that these dry, scattered, useless bones are reconnected and shaped into a vast, living, reconstituted army, empowered with divine purpose and filled with the Spirit.

Scholars disagree about when this dream was fulfilled in history. Some see it fulfilled by Cyrus, King of Persia (a couple of generations after Ezekiel), who sent the survivors of the exile back to their land.

Others say that although the return from exile is a historical fact, Israel remained in bondage (as lifeless and arid as the bones in Ezekiel’s vision), and that the fulfilment of Ezekiel 37 is best seen in the church from Pentecost on, with the pouring out of the Spirit on all people, and the inauguration of a new covenant, and the creation of a new community.

Still others believe the fulfilment of this passage is neither to be seen in Cyrus’ reforms, nor in the creation of the church, but in the time immediately before Jesus returns, when Israel will be restored as a nation.

Who is right? Which fulfilment is correct? Which option is the one God intended for us to understand?

A WORD FOR TODAY

Perhaps all three interpretations of Ezekiel 37 contain an element of the truth, but tonight I want to focus on one clear and powerful truth expressed in the chapter: when a group of people hear and respond to God’s word (for us, the Bible), and the Holy Spirit is poured out on them, God can take even dry bones and restore them to life and vitality!

What does God view as dry bones in my life, or in my church? Do we need revival? Do we need to hear a fresh word from heaven, and experience the move of the Holy Spirit among us in a new way?

What transformation awaits us as we whole-heartedly obey God’s word, and as we totally surrender as a community to his Spirit?

In the novel The Bridge on the River Kwai, British prisoners-of-war have to construct a bridge to facilitate the movement of enemy troops. To heighten morale among his men, the colonel insists they build a bridge to be proud of. But when a higher command decides to destroy the bridge, the colonel nearly frustrates the scheme: he had lost the whole purpose of the war in his obsession with building a particular structure.

That’s easy for the church to do too. We become so attached to structures – constitutions, buildings, liturgy, history and traditions – that we lose the big picture and become a hindrance to what God is doing. The survival of the institution becomes paramount, and blocks spiritual renewal.

The Reformation of the 16th century is not enough; we need continual reformation. We need to go back again and again to the pure and simple word and Spirit of God for our purpose, motivation and power. The gains in biblical scholarship, missionary endeavour and church growth during our century are perhaps only a foretaste of what lies ahead for the church of Jesus Christ in the 21st century.

Surrender to God’s gracious and sovereign purpose for your life. Surrender to his purpose for our church. Dream great dreams, practise a vital spirituality, immerse yourself in the living Word of God, and be filled with the Holy Spirit! And watch as God transforms and brings life to our hearts, our community and our world!

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E093 Copyright (c) 2002 Rod Benson. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).

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