Preach to the spiritually dead...

Yesterday was such a special Sunday for both preacher and congregation. God showed us the way from living in emotional and spiritual graves to living in the joy of his presence!

We heard about a vision in Ezekiel 37, where the prophet is put in the middle of a valley full of human bones baked white and dry on the desert floor. The people in despondency because they are in exile in Babylon, identify themselves with dry, white bones. They say to one another: "Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off" (Ezek 37:11).

As Ezekiel investigates this scene, God asks him: "Son of man, can these bones live?" (vs 3) And Ezekiel says, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know" (vs 3). Ezekiel knows that God can do what seems impossible to us. And in the vision God dramatically shows Ezekiel his power over life and death.

Firstly, God tells Ezekiel to preach to the bones. Ezekiel listens to God and the results are amazing. The scattered bones started to clank and rattle. They move toward each other and are joined together, and muscles and flesh and skin are fitted to each skeleton, but they are still dead.
Secondly, God commands Ezekiel to speak to the wind. And the prophet calls for the "breath of God" to blow over the bodies and give them life. As he speaks, it happens. The bodies stand up alive, an army ready for battle, where moments before had been dry, bleached bones of the dead.

Notice how God brings life: by the Holy Spirit and through the preaching of the Word. The prophet preaches and the Spirit blows and enters - and the dry, white bones come to life.

Ezekiel is describing how we are renewed, how we come to faith and to repentance and true life.

No person has come to faith by any other way than this strategy of God: it was and always is the Spirit creating faith by means of the preaching and proclamation of the Word. Something divine happens when we come under the Word: the Spirit produces and strengthens faith and makes us new people who are alive for God.

God's people must always and under all circumstances place themselves under the Word. They must come to worship. They must be Bible students. They must set aside a regular time for private devotions.
This is God’s strategy to renew us and to give us true life again.
This is how God calls us from living in graves to living in the light and joy of his Kingdom and Church.

May God fill every empty pew, claiming every heart as his temple and instil his life and will in all of us.