Good morning, Saints.
Well, there's a text that we must not
ignore.
It requires to be exposited by a speaker
who is beside himself, for your sake and
for his sake.
The text requires that, and that text is
Ezekiel chapter 37, the Valley of Dry Bones.
A classical text, rich and potent, mighty in
meaning, and it requires that kind of lavish
exposition that only the Spirit of God can
give.
It can never be clinical or dry, and
in fact probably no two speakings about it
or from it would ever be the same.
But there's no way to consider the subject
of Israel and circumvent this text.
So I want to read again from my
seminary Bible, Ezekiel 37.
The hand of the Lord came upon me,
and he brought me out by the Spirit
of the Lord and set me down in
the midst or the middle of a valley.
It was full of bones.
He led me all around them.
There were very many lying in the valley,
and they were very dry.
He said to me, Son of Man, can
these bones live?
I answered, O Lord God, you know.
Then 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,
I will cause breath to enter you, and
you shall live.
I will lay sinews on you, and I
will cause flesh to come upon you and
cover you with skin and put breath in
you, and you shall live, and then you
shall know that I am the Lord.
So I prophesied as I had been commanded,
and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a
noise, a rattling, and the bones came together
bone to bone.
I looked, and 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
breath, prophesy, Son of Man, and say to
the breath, thus says the Lord God, come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
upon these slain that they may live.
I prophesied as he commanded me, and the
breath came into them, and they lived, and
they stood on their feet a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, Son of Man,
these bones are the whole house of Israel.
They themselves say, our bones are dried up,
and our hope is lost.
We are cut off completely.
Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says
the Lord God, I am going to open
your graves and bring you up from your
graves, O my people, and I will bring
you back to the land of Israel, and
you shall know that I am the Lord
when I open your graves and bring you
up from your graves, O my people.
I will put my Spirit within you, and
you shall live, and I will place you
on your own soil.
Then you shall know that I, the Lord
God, I, the Lord, have spoken and will
act, says the Lord.
Amen.
So, precious God, breathe upon these bones and
upon your congregation that expression, my God, of
the Spirit of life that enables us even
to consider a text as potent as this.
And draw out from it, my God, what
you will, and sink it deep into our
hearing and into our foundations, into our whole
understanding of the mystery of Israel, the Church,
the last days, all those things that are
intrinsic to the comprehension of the Church that
is called not merely to observe and not
merely to participate, but to be the agent
of this restoration as the Son of Man,
a prophetical company that can be commanded.
So we thank you and give you praise,
my God.
Come and open this remarkable text in the
way that it pleases you this morning and
receive now our gratitude for the privilege of
it, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, certain preliminary observations that God is the
causative agent exclusively and that the situation is
so bereft of any hope from man that
even the prophet himself must stagger when God
raises the question, Can these bones live?
That Israel is reduced to such a place
that there's no prospect whatever of recovery from
any source other than God himself.
And that's why the reiteration of the phrase,
I will, I will, I will, I will
raise you up out of your grave.
I will put my spirit.
I will bring you into the land.
So we mustn't lose note that this takes
place outside the land.
And, in fact, we're told that these are
the slain in the nations and then a
resurrection and then a return to the land.
So, evidently, this is a little conflict with
the usual assumption that the state of Israel
is already the dry bones coming together and
it's more a progressive work and that subsequently
flesh will be added and then finally the
spirit and Israel will be the hope for
prophetic fulfillment.
But this is a much more apocalyptic scenario.
This implies violence and devastation.
This implies expulsion.
This implies that the profound act of God
toward Israel is not in the land but
outside it and in the nations.
And then the return after the remarkable supernatural
work on a nation that has been reduced
to the total finality of death and death
in so uttermost a form that it becomes
dry bones.
Well, I'm fanatical enough in times past when
I've spoken from this text.
I used to carry a bone with me
and circulate it as I'm speaking, starting with
the first one in the first row, and
they would hand it on and go through
the usually small congregations.
And by the time it finished passing from
hand to hand, there was hardly anything left
of the bone because it turns to dust
even in your hands.
Dry bones, they granulate, they dissolve in powder.
And so I just wanted to impact the
congregation that when God says dry, he really
means dry and that there is every reason
to reduce Israel to that condition because Israel
is a metaphor.
Israel is the quintessence of man in his
own hope, in his own prowess, in his
own ability, in his own sap, his own
juice, to perform and to establish his own
destiny, his own will.
We are the personification of man, man in
his own excellence, in his own ability.
And therefore, for that reason and an instruction
to the world, God has got to take
the witness nation and reduce it until it
is incapable of anything in itself.
What a remarkable contrast to the establishment of
the present state of Israel, which though it
took place under the, what's the word, I
always forget it, the oversight of God, the
providence, who said that?
Oh, praise the Lord.
Under the providence of God is not the
same as the explicit will that pertains to
Israel's final restoration.
It's a providence, it's an approval, it's a
necessary step toward that fulfillment, but it is
not the thing in itself.
So it doesn't take place despite God or
when his back is turned.
It is serving his purposes, but it is
largely the work of man himself.
Human prowess, Zionist ability, Jewish finance, political connections,
and the fortunes of history and time that
God himself breathes upon to establish it, not
that it should succeed or even survive, but
to set in motion the process of consternation
and aggravation on the part of neighbors and
other nations that finally reaches a crescendo of
violence, of expulsion, that brings the whole house
of Israel into its graves.
So this is a remarkable text that has
components and suggestions of that which is literal,
that which is metaphoric, that is allegorical, that
is symbolic, and it's a whole remarkable composition
that we need to thread our way through
and unfold.
But we must take note that these are
the whole house of Israel and that they
are slain and that they are in their
graves, implying a violence against Jews worldwide and
in the nations from which they must be
raised by the action of God himself, and
that he would employ an agent called the
Son of Man is something that needs to
occupy our attention because I take the prophetic
liberty to suggest that that is a symbolic
picture of the church in its prophetic constituency
in the last days that will be the
agent of Israel's restoration, which is completely in
keeping with the whole mystery of Israel and
the church, as is expressed by Paul in
the book of Romans, that through your mercy
they may obtain mercy, that the function of
your salvation is not to be consumed upon
yourself, but to move them to jealousy, that
from the very first stroke, the whole advent
and the rising up of a church of
Gentiles by the grace of God to be
brought into the salvation, which was exclusively Israel's,
is largely for Israel's own sake.
Have they stumbled that they should fall?
God forbid, Paul says, speaking to the Roman
church, but through their fall salvation has come
to you so as to move them to
jealousy.
Right from the first, Paul strikes the note
of the reciprocity, the reciprocal relationship between Israel
and this new entity called the church, that
the one without the other is incomplete and
cannot even come to the completion of God's
intention except in the reciprocal relationship that God
in his wisdom has ordained.
The church that is not related to Israel
and has that nation's restoration as its principal
focus loses the whole purpose of its own
being, its own cosmic theocratic purpose and of
necessity, therefore, must have its life and activity
in another kind of context that is less
than other than God's intention.
And therefore the church falls into either being
an institution or a culture, a Sunday supplement,
but it loses its apostolic reality, its apostolic
purpose for being if it does not take
into its consideration the purpose for which God
had ordained it from the first, to move
them to jealousy and in the end to
extend mercy that they may obtain mercy, in
the process of which, in the requirement of
which, we're called out from ourselves and into
a larger place, as I hope to show
you from this text, that requires our own
resurrection.
We cannot fulfill our obligation to that people
out of mere evangelical obligation or charismatic sentimentality
or any other kind of human thing from
us.
Don't you understand that this whole text implies
the remarkable supernaturalness of God and that Israel
is reduced to the state of complete inertness.
Whatever happens to something of dry bones has
got to come from outside it and not
from it itself.
Because the issue at hand is the issue
of humanism.
It's the issue of man.
It's the issue of human presumption and arrogance
to think that it can and it will
and it shall perform and establish, even so
much as a state, let alone the nation
that is to be the prophetic glory and
bless all the families of the earth.
That can never be the issue of any
human accomplishment, even by Jews.
I want to underline that because you think
that we have some kind of magical endowment
and some superior enablement humanly.
Well, it's true that there's a remarkable brightness
to be found in that people and they
are estimable in their human attainments and that's
exactly why they must be brought into the
place of death and death of such a
kind that God is not fishing for an
extravagant metaphor when he says dry bones.
In fact, the key verse in the entire
text is verse 11.
When they themselves say we are cut off,
we are without hope, then God acts.
Our bones are dried up.
Our hope is lost.
We are cut off completely.
It waits for the acknowledgement of the nation
itself that it is incapable of nothing.
And I ask you, students of history, can
you show me any instance, even in the
recent past of the Nazi Holocaust and the
decimation of six million Jews, that this acknowledgement
has ever come forth nationally?
Has there ever been a moment in the
history of the people of Israel?
And in modern times, even in the debacle
of the Holocaust itself in which the nation
has ever made this confession for which God
yet waits.
I think he's not only waiting for it
from Israel, he's waiting for it from the
church when we ourselves will say we are
cut off.
We are as dry bones.
Not that we can't perform services and establish
programs and provide a modicum of blessing, but
in terms of the calling of God and
the apostolic and prophetic requirement of the church.
It's like Abraham being, was it 99 years
old, and looking at his body as good
as dead.
Have you ever felt that sense of inadequacy?
Have you ever said with Paul, who is
sufficient for these things?
I know you haven't because you've never had
the occasion that would require it until you
took the mystery of Israel to your heart
seriously and began to realize what is the
magnitude of our calling as the church to
be the salvific agent of God for Israel's
redemption.
For if Israel remains a pile of dry
bones, how shall the thing that Paul spoke
in Romans 11 be fulfilled?
What shall their return be but life from
the dead?
We cannot even begin to estimate what it
will mean for the nations, their ecology and
spirituality, their morality, when a nation of priests
comes into their midst and that the law
shall go forth out of their Zion.
How will it affect the whole tenor and
composition of life when that nation is restored
from the dead?
Paul says it's nothing less nor other than
life from the dead.
If their falling away has brought blessing to
the Gentiles, what shall their return be but
life from the dead?
But they've got to return, and they've got
to come out of death themselves in order
to bring that life.
But the last note that we have is
in history to which Israel is presently moving
as the noose tightens both in the land
and outside it of the threat of physical
violence which can hardly be contained and hold
your breath till the next bus explodes or
suicide bomber and that the wall that has
been erected can be bridged in a moment
by tunneling under, going over, or devastating it.
Isn't it remarkable how precarious that nation is
that there's no mountain range to protect it,
no vast body of water, that it's so
close to its enemies that seek its annihilation
that it takes only a few minutes and
not only jet planes and bombers but by
missile seconds to traverse the distance that would
destroy entire cities and the entire land by
germ warfare or gas or atomic, all of
the lethal things, the weapons of mass destruction
cannot be contained.
You cannot build a defense against them.
You can only hope that through the treaty
and negotiation to defuse the enemy, to keep
them from the employment of those devices that
would mean certain death.
I want to say that Israel's geography and
defenselessness is not a geographical accident but a
planned intention of God that the nation must
be defenseless and it must make God its
high tower and its fortress or it is
without defense.
Can you see?
Of necessity, God has so stacked even the
geography of the land and the nature of
last day's technology to make that people absolutely
defenseless except that they are in a relationship
of trust with himself.
So God is no longer just some kind
of a Shabbat Saturday consideration or the issue
of keeping kosher and being fastidious in the
details of the law but is the issue
of survival.
The reality that that's got to be known
as the psalmist set forth God as defense
and high tower and place and refuge is
not the rhetoric of the Bible but the
actuality that God himself can become to those
who are in that kind of relationship by
faith with him that he is actually our
defense and we shall not be moved because
how many Christians are in that relationship that
the psalmists continually reiterate not as a piece
of prose or posy or special kind of
language but as the statement of reality to
which they have come.
So if we're to move them to jealousy
not the least of the means is that
we ourselves will demonstrate that we know God
and have found God as that kind of
refuge and that kind of defense in the
face of a world that is freaking out
and that any moment can bring devastation of
kinds that hot and only a decade ago
could not even have been imagined and yet
there are numbers of Christians who are hoping
for the progressive amelioration of Israel in the
land.
Yes, they're upset and disappointed at certain of
the tendencies that Israel is expressing the use
of torture with a captured Hamas terrorist in
order to extract information that would save Israel
from another unnecessary bombing.
What do you do?
You're just required to employ expediencies to avoid
the catastrophe of wholesale death when you have
a man who may know something about it
and is not going to share it over
a cup of coffee but under the duress
of torture so that the Jerusalem Post and
other publications and periodicals coming out from Israel
and Jewish publications in America are already discussing
the probity, the sanity, the moral necessity for
the employment of torture.
Who could have ever thought that Jews would
be reduced and brought to a place to
take that kind of consideration seriously that even
if there's a degree of efficacy and value
in the employment of torture even to the
issue of the survival of the state by
such a means what does the state itself
become morally?
Can you guys follow that?
There's a point of no return when you
have to employ expediencies of a kind that
bring such an erosion to the moral character
of a nation that even if the crisis
should pass the loss is irrevocable it cannot
again be retained.
God is the author of this predicament you
dear saints and you've got to know it
and understand why it is that the noose
is tightening and why Israel is even now
being brought to a place of irrevocable disaster
and the death and being slain and being
in the grave and being reduced to the
bones that this text describes.
How else shall God's promise to Abraham be
fulfilled that we ought to be a people
who will bless all the families of the
earth notice not impress you would have been
satisfied with that if Israel could have by
progressive amelioration been brought to an improved condition
by which it might have impressed the nations
but God says no my intention is not
to impress but to bless and the issue
this morning and the issue anywhere with God
is the issue of resurrection if this speaking
this morning is not out of that life
if we are not moving in that reality
there's no way that we can raise those
dry bones by anything that we're commanded to
speak to them resurrection is the issue resurrection
is the prime statement of God's glory and
he reduces Israel to a place to which
he had reduced his own son through death
that he would be raised by the glory
of God which is to say his power
out from death and be made to ascend
on high to a place of exaltation even
at the throne of God if that is
the route by which the Lord himself attains
to his exaltation and primacy in the world
by what means shall Israel attain to hers
except by the same route of death and
resurrection and if that's the requirement for Israel
the nation what about the requirement of the
Israel that is the church shall we fulfill
our destiny and come into the fulfillment of
our calling apart from the necessity of resurrection
it's not a doctrine to which God is
asking us to subscribe and to amen its
correctness it's a mode of being to which
he's asking us to live and to fulfill
the remarkable mandate and requirement that is made
of us that cannot be performed out of
our humanity however well meaning resurrection is the
heart of the matter because it's the issue
of God it's the issue of glory it's
the issue of the triumph of God in
supernaturalness over all that is celebrated in the
world that has to do with man so
the redemption of Israel in the land can
never be a humanly achieved proposition but by
its very nature requires a total divine enablement
tantamount to creation itself out of hopeless chaos
isn't it a remarkable parallel what's the word
a paradigm that the very reality by which
the cosmos came into being God brooding over
the chaos and moving by his spirit and
speaking brings forth creation out of death, destitution
and chaos and that the same God who
was the creator at the inception of the
universe is the same God that will establish
Israel by precisely that means again because the
issue is not Israel's success but the glory
of God as creator, redeemer redemption is recreation
out of destitution out of chaos, out of
collapse out of death which is no prospect
of human fulfillment at all that's the way
I felt yesterday morning and to some degree
this morning and that's the way any man
who's called to speak from the holy pulpit
feels when he has to open his mouth
and standing before God's people in behalf of
God and to commence speaking it's an awareness
of total human inability it's death again and
someone wisely said every true preaching is another
resurrection and another raising of the dead in
fact this word today, this morning is not
intended for your edification and understanding although it
has that aspect but for your resurrection it's
a word that must first bring you into
death and then raise you that's what a
true holy ghost spirit inspired word of resurrection
power is that must be characterized in our
own proclamation and preaching if one day and
soon we have to speak a word that
will raise them which if that crisis was
upon us now however precious you are and
heads and shoulders above many you're not yet
capable of addressing the dry bones in fact
some of you are not even capable of
seeing the dry bones or be willing to
see Israel reduced to that condition because your
own human sentimentality and desire for an easier
solution to the predicament of Israel that would
not require death prevents you you're not yet
taken up with the jealousy for God's glory
that can only be fulfilled and demonstrated out
of death and resurrection you would much prefer
a solution for Israel that does not require
so severe an alternative so there's a death
waiting for you in that area of your
own humanism because that's what that attitude is
it's humanistic it is self-sparing the identification
with Israel to avoid being reduced to that
place is really the extension of yourself you
yourself don't want to face such calamity such
eventuality either personally or congregationally you would rather
succeed and yet retain your humanity than be
brought to death in it to move into
a transcendent realm beyond anything that can be
affected by man in his well-meaning attention
aided and abetted by the Holy Spirit to
be brought into being a resurrection phenomenon a
son of man company that can be commanded
to speak and to address those bones though
you balk that's why the whole statement begins
with the hand of the Lord coming upon
me he brought me down and out and
into the valley of dry bones by the
Spirit of the Lord and set me in
the midst of the valley that was full
of bones and led me all around them
and there were very many lying in the
valley and they were very dry to be
prophetic is first not to speak for God
but to see as God the prophets were
called seers before they were nabi before they
were proclaimers you can't proclaim in any contradiction
with what you're not first willing to see
as truth prophetic seeing is a remarkable kind
of perception that most of the church knows
little about and I've just come from an
episode at our own place at the conclusion
of a convocation where I was required to
make a final address based on a perception
of a reality brought by another speaker who
preceded me who was the co-author of
one of my books and a Jewish brother
and one with whom I've been in a
relationship more than a quarter of a century
and make him the object of my final
statement and critique at the cost of his
embarrassment and humiliation because it was necessary for
the edification of the church who was impressed
with the outward and external mastery of this
man in his teaching and proclamation from the
book of Romans to show them that though
the content was impressive the delivery was not
out of the life of God but out
of the life of man and out of
the realm of soul that however much it
has impressed you it is facetious and is
not the ground upon which God would establish
his church and call for its use in
the last days and out of his life
and not out of the church's soul it
was an expensive presentation and I'm still paying
the price and I will continue which is
another aspect of propheticness is the reproach that
the man of God bears because what he
sees is so unique and what is required
to address is so unusual that the best
of saints especially because they are best will
be offended by that obedience and I'm saying
these things not because there may be here
and there a sprinkling of men called to
this calling but because the church itself has
this calling the church itself is called to
propheticness its constituency its knit the fabric, the
makeup the density, the quality of its life
must be prophetic or it's not the church
it's got to be a son of man
company and the heck of it is this
it's not some individual virtue also that God
is going to summon to address the bones
it's going to be a corporate statement of
a people who are in agreement who see
as God sees and can be commanded to
speak when God requires it and speak not
out of well-wishing I hope it works
out of human effort but out of resurrection
authority and power itself because they have been
dealt with in the areas of their own
lingering humanisms especially as it hides itself in
the attitudes with regard to Israel itself for
their sentimentality humanism, idealism insinuate themselves in a
way that we can hardly identify and recognize
it in fact we will be applauded for
it because it seems to be so commendable
that you have this affinity for Israel yes,
but whose affinity is it?
does it issue out of the heart of
God out of a love that cannot be
offended against that is ultimate that requires nothing
for itself in return or is there some
symbiotic kind of a thing going on an
affection and esteem for that people by which
somehow your own esteem is linked and joined
and that you derive a benefit from this
kind of symbiotic relationship with Israel that you
can't even recognize and for which you will
be applauded especially by Jews and yet, ironically
it is that persistent human thing however impressive
and attractive that keeps us from the totality
and the reality of God and the life
of God, which is the power of God
that alone can raise those bones from the
dead you'll not hear this from another thousand
speakers we are the enemy not in our
carnality in our spirituality not in our indifference
to Israel in our identification with Israel but
it's an identification that issues out of our
humanity out of our sentimentality out of idealism
and not out of a union with God
and his love for that people which is
altogether different than other than what issues for
man out of their own humanity can you
understand that even if we could get ourselves
together to be commanded by God to address
the bones in the moment that he requires
it I can tell you that when that
moment comes you're not going to feel like
it I can't think of any moment to
which I have been called in the service
of God in 40 years that I've ever
felt like it including coming here including beginning
here including this morning it's a remarkable conundrum
that is not at all accidental that the
greatest requirements of God come not when we
feel like it but when we feel less
like it when we're not feeling spiritual when
we're not inspired when the spiritual adrenaline is
not flowing then God requires the obedience because
he doesn't want to be in any way
beholden to you or anything that issues from
you or from me as a requisite for
his expression we have got to be dead
even in the thing that we covet and
desire we want to be fitted and we
want to feel that sap flowing and the
excitement and the inward thing that would give
us a little flourish a little take-off
but to begin from ground zero as stone
-cold dead not an iota of inward excitement
or inspiration and to begin and open your
mouth as I've done this morning it's a
re-enactment of the central drama of the
indisputable and irrevocable nexus of reality the principle
of God himself death and resurrection again and
again and again to as many as will
and there's not many who will that's why
we have a whole generation of men with
the gift of gab and the anointing of
human personality that know how to do it
and can perform it at will I'm always
suspicious of any man who runs to the
platform and is ready to go and is
just Mr. Poisonality in the moment rather than
coming as a snail reluctant and unwilling feeling
like you're nothing but the embodiment of death
itself and capable of nothing we've got to
taste death, saints not just once but frequently
if not continually and that's why our whole
community after ten years of the greatest struggle
in northern Minnesota living beneath the poverty level
with fifty-five or more souls dependent upon
God and forbidden by him to make our
need known anywhere at the very generation and
time when the prosperity message was at its
height and glass cathedrals were being built everywhere
we were languishing and our tongues were sticking
out for the merest subsistence for life in
sub-arctic northern Minnesota where winter is nine
months of the year twenty below zero ten
years of that struggle and just when we're
beginning to succeed and see daylight at the
end of the tunnel God requires the death
of the community the dissolution of the entire
thing ministry and all and to vacate the
property the hundred and sixty acre farm that
God had given and to be dispersed to
wherever the Lord would direct and allow that
property to languish and be accessible to the
vandals and to the weather without any explanation
for the requirement of our expulsion which heightens
the death can you understand the divine logic
that requires it from prophetic men and prophetic
community has got in itself in some measure
to experience the kind of thing that is
yet to be the experience of the nation
itself of expulsion and exile so that when
we shall speak to it of restoration and
recovery as we now can these many years
later after three years in the grave we
do not speak out of a sense of
academia or abstract principle but out of the
reality of having been brought both through expulsion
and restoration death and resurrection and every day
is another enactment in one measure or another
including now you're not going to come to
this in a final moment if you're not
consistently in this reality in all your moments
if you're unaccustomed to death and resurrection and
have shunned it and continue to live and
act and serve God out of your impressive
humanity when that moment comes you'll be totally
unable to meet it because however well meaning
your intention and however impressive your speaking those
bones will not budge until they hear a
word of resurrection, authority and power itself by
a faith that believes for that for when
the prophet himself was taken up, down and
out and into those bones and circulated among
them to get the grit of that death
into his eyeballs and into his innards the
Lord mocked him and tempted him and said,
son of man why do we hear this
so frequently in this text son of man,
son of man you sweating, palpitating piece of
humanity you charismatic darling that woos them by
the thousands can you now believe that those
bones could live Lord thou knowest this is
beyond my charismatic faith this is beyond even
my New Testament prophetic ability that so many
have lauded and applauded which serves the purposes
of charismatica beautifully you can have all kinds
of conferences and maybe even receive a personal
word of prophecy but when you face the
issue of Israel as dead and dry and
hopeless and inert in that moment you'll recognize
how fraudulent how shallow how deceptive was your
own assumption of your propheticness that served the
purpose of your charismatic culture but cannot serve
the purpose of this apocalyptic destiny got the
picture?
and maybe God gave the charismatic thing not
that it should continue or be embellished like
flaying a dead horse but that it should
be brought to death and not clutched and
that we would be afraid to let go
and isn't that the history of the church?
everything that God has given is clutched so
that when the next wave comes it's resented
and resisted by that people who have received
the previous blessing and don't want to relinquish
that to go on to this relinquishing is
dying not that it was not good not
that it was not given but it wasn't
given to be maintained and held it was
given to yield and to relinquish and give
up and die to it even though it
has now become so familiar and you want
to retain it and God says if you
don't let go with that sentimentality that disposition,
that attitude which does something for you it's
a subtle form of self-exaltation it attests
to your spirituality that you have this regard
for that nation and that people when others
are just increasingly hostile and anti-semitic you
don't want to let go you would want
to clutch that sentimentality which is the greatest
obstruction to the receiving of the life of
God which is love and I'll tell you
what if you can even summon the faith
to speak to those bones but it's not
a faith that works without, with love they'll
not move see the requirement?
see the ultimacy of the crisis that Israel
in her death presents to the church called
to be a son of man company that
is to say that the pockets of opinion
and differences between us which we can overlook
if it doesn't agitate and cause strife will
impede our speaking with one voice in the
moment that God will require it there has
got to be an agreement that is more
than ceremonial or compelled we have got to
agree with God as well as see with
God so that our personal opinions that are
in any way at odds one with another
and with Him will prevent that one speaking
alone that raises the dead talk about the
unity of the body of Christ talk about
ecumenism talk about all of the queasy shallow
attempts at outward and superficial external harmony bear
hugs and back slaps on the platforms with
priests and turn around collars as if that
represents the reality for which God waits I
want to tell you this dear saints and
I'm not expecting you to understand it in
the hearing but you'll have the tape to
consider the unity for which God waits that
makes the one word that He shall command
a word that will raise the dead will
not be obtained without suffering that agreement that
coming eye to eye that being of one
mind and one heart and soul that characterized
the church is the issue of the cross
and I'm speaking out of 30 years of
community experience and I've heard more scripture quoted
in people supporting their opinion and validating their
view than I can begin to say and
yet someone else equally has another opinion in
which he can find scripture to fortify and
there's the church with its variable and diverse
opinions but not of one mind one heart
and one soul God is not going to
stamp us out off of a production line
He's waiting for and seeking and working to
obtain an agreement of mind and heart and
will by which opinion and differences and the
uniquenesses of our individuality have got to be
submitted to the cross there's a process of
death that must come to the church if
we are to be the agent by which
life will come to Israel can I say
it any more clearly and it's got to
be a willing death God has found us
out and cut us off at the pass
what we profess to be concerned for Israel
and the Jew then are you willing to
allow me my dealings with you of a
kind and in areas that you would not
have suspected even existed let alone need to
be identified and met in the power of
the cross which never is pleasant at any
moment and yet required and where is the
greatest working out of this depth of sanctifying
process it's in the church as community not
in the church that is the mere amalgam
of souls who will come together for the
purpose of a service and sit alongside one
another but not be with one another got
the picture can you see it community is
not a little ideal alternative to church it
is church and there the friction, the intensification
of life the issues that arise are stupefying
you spit your guts out you didn't know
that the finest Christians can be such a
vexation so long as you met them only
on Sunday and midweek service but when you
live with them continually as a community of
believers my God what a shock of the
truth of their condition and the worst and
most horrible is the revelation of your own
so I don't believe that a son of
man company is going to emerge out of
the framework of our contemporary church that even
because of its numbers must be essentially impersonal
and deny the Lord his opportunity for the
sanctifying work that only takes place with the
frequency of relationship in the intensification of life
that community is and the great obligation of
the leaders of the church today in my
opinion is to move it from its present
configuration however much the services are enjoyable into
that framework of life for the want of
a better word core community where this sanctifying
work of dealing with our privatistic impulses and
opinions and individuality and all the kinds of
things that impede that oneness that God waits
for as a son of man company will
be obtained where the death can work that
life can go forth the issue of Israel
is not Israel the issue of Israel will
be inert dry bones incapable of anything and
acknowledging for the first time in its history
that we are cut off we are without
hope even though our national anthem is Hatikvah
the hope but it's not a hope in
God and every false hope that is essentially
rooted in man, rooted in state rooted in
institutions rooted in tradition rooted in whatever needs
to be brought into death and that's what
Israel represents as a demonstration of God's awesome
cosmic principle by which all nations must be
instructed at Israel's expense as well as Israel
herself for she is the epitome of man
in his self-sufficiency and ability even in
the generation of his own false hopes so
there's a word that follows Ezekiel 37 11
and that word is therefore the moment that
God hears the acknowledgement from the nation we
are without hope we are cut off then
God turns to the son of man and
says now prophesy to these bones so I
prophesied as I had been commanded and we're
not accustomed to being commanded it's not part
of our American charismatic Christian culture to be
commanded and so if we're offended and cannot
bring ourselves to be obedient to command we
may falter at that very moment the prophet
prophesied as he was commanded and so must
we also and I want to say unless
we are being brought into a place of
obedience to commandment we'll not find it in
that moment when that moment shall come and
that's why this text is given now to
prepare and fit us to be the agent
of Israel's restoration even as in the same
moment historically the nation is being fitted for
the death to which it must come and
the glory of God be revealed when those
bones are raised up out of their graves
and be brought back to the land and
then you shall know that I am the
Lord when I open your graves and bring
you up from your graves oh my people
unless Israel knows that I am is the
Lord what is the purpose of Israel and
how can there be a fulfillment of its
own calling to the nation nations unless it
knows that I am is the Lord it's
not a superficial knowledge it's not a rabbinical
knowledge it's not a theological knowledge it's the
knowledge of the God who raises the dead
who makes those things to be which were
not until the nation knows that God in
that way how can it bless all the
families of the earth in that day you
will know that I am the Lord who
has spoken these things raised you up out
of your graves by a word and will
put my spirit within you and you shall
live and I will place you in your
own soil then you shall know that I
the Lord have spoken and will act as
the Lord you'll be able to compare and
I will place you in the land as
against your own attempt to establish yourself you'll
see the difference when God himself is glorified
in the remarkable supernaturalness of establishing his people
in his land by his own power through
his own spoken word and the issue of
his spirit as against the attempt of men
humanly politically and militarily to establish themselves it's
an expensive lesson but it's needful in view
of the millennium and the eternity to which
Israel shall be a statement to the nations
of the reality of that God by which
they were allowed to be brought into death
having been given the room to seek to
establish their own reality and exacerbate their neighbors
and bring about the forces of resentment and
opposition and violence that finally pursues them into
the grave at which time God himself when
they come to the point of destitution and
hopelessness will raise up an answer by a
people that Israel would never have suspected would
have been the agent of their restoration a
gentile church why does God need a son
of man after all why doesn't he directly
speak to those bones as he directly addressed
the chaos and creation wouldn't he have then
received the eternal acclamation of the nation as
being their deliverer why does he need a
son of man to fulfill a mystery of
the church and Israel that Israel will be
eternally indebted to a gentile people to have
been the agent of their restoration where they
would have least expected it in the mystery
of God because they would know that this
was not some technical act that God required
of that which is called the church that
they could perform at their convenience it's an
act of uttermost sacrifice it's the result of
the deaths to which they were willing themselves
to be submitted which would not have been
required except for the fulfillment of this mystery
they would have been satisfied to have been
a church of a lesser kind sufficient for
their own services and conduct and programs but
for Israel's sake that it might bless all
the families of the earth and be the
blessing of which Paul speaks and as life
from the dead this is a people willing
to experience multiple deaths in the area of
their own life to be that one people
that son of man company that can be
commanded and to receive a faith beyond its
own ability to believe that a word that
is spoken can raise the dead all the
more because it beggars and stretches faith to
the breaking because the word has to proceed
from our mouths we have to speak it
and that it's the word that we speak
in union and agreement that will raise that
dead it's the faith beyond our faith that
has got to be imparted and given when
we ourselves come to the place of destitution
and say Lord thou knowest and it's not
a faith that will work except by love
and it's God's love which is so much
other than our own to which we have
died to the substitutes that it might fill
us and that faith might work by love
to obtain that restoration and after the bones
are joined and the flesh is added there's
one final requirement speak to the breath and
command the breath to come in for even
flesh and bones being come together is still
not adequate until the life of God which
is the spirit of God and the breath
of God is admitted command the breath you
dear saints why is that given as a
separate command and a final and ultimate requirement
because that's exactly where you're likely to baulk
it's one thing to address bones and flesh
and command but to command breath is to
command God for God himself is the Ruach
and the breath and the spirit of life
and many of us will then draw the
line and say no Lord this far but
not that further who am I to command
you to command the breath is to command
you and my spirituality will not allow that
it's impolite I'm offended that you would require
that of me I cannot I have too
much respect for your deity I cannot tell
you God says unless you tell me unless
you command me you have no part with
me because your spirituality now is the final
obstruction to the ultimate obedience by which Israel
shall be delivered you are willing to have
your carnality dealt with and your humanity but
are you willing to have your spirituality dealt
with for to command the breath of God
is death can you understand the deeps of
that where many will draw back and will
not be willing to go that far though
God himself requires it because our spirituality is
the final idol is the last thing that
needs to fall it's the last thing that
we're willing to relinquish because look what we
have invested to obtain it we've spent a
lifetime in attaining that spirituality and God says
now bring it to death in the act
that I'm commanding you to command my breath
though it violates the deepest sensibility and what
you think would be a transgression against me
is really the last hiding place of your
own ego your own vanity your own personality
your own individuality that has taken as its
last refuge as it always will when it
can no longer hide in carnality or intellectuality
it will hide in spirituality and it needs
to be brought to death now in what
I'm commanding you to do command my breath
to come into them the issue of Israel
which is the issue of the nations is
the issue of the church that has finally
come to this ultimate place to which it
can only be brought by the crisis of
Israel itself and if we had the time
and I invite you to do it at
your own leisure and look at what follows
in chapter 37 is the restoration of the
kingdom to this people who have been raised
and verse 24 my servant David shall be
king over them they shall have one shepherd
they shall follow my ordinances be careful to
observe my statutes they shall live in the
land that I gave to my servant Jacob
in which your ancestors lived and their children
shall live there forever and my servant David
shall be their prince forever this is the
eschatological climax this is the end of the
age this is the restored nation this is
the established kingdom this is the greater David
ruling and reigning from the holy hill of
Zion forever and I will make a covenant
of peace with them it shall be an
everlasting covenant with them and I will bless
them and multiply them and will set my
sanctuary among them forevermore my dwelling place shall
be with them and I will be their
God and they shall be my people this
is the remarkable climax of all the ages
for Israel through an everlasting covenant that shall
not again be broken with the people who
are famous for covenant failure covenantal failure will
have an everlasting covenant and he will bless
them and multiply them and honor them and
by setting his sanctuary among them forevermore, my
dwelling place shall be with them I will
be their God, they shall be my people
then the nation shall know that I the
Lord sanctify Israel when my sanctuary is among
them forevermore Israel shall know that I am
the Lord when I shall raise them from
the dead and bring them out of the
graves and restore them to the land and
give them my spirit and the nation shall
know when I have made Israel my sanctuary
and sanctified them forevermore Lord I'm dissatisfied I'm
not happy with this presentation I don't know
what it takes my God but some exercise
of your own life to invest these words
and that text with a power that breaks
through into our deeps that the issue of
Israel is the issue of the nations that
this remarkable last days restoration out from death
through a son of man company that is
essentially gentile and should have no reason for
the willingness for sacrifice to bear deaths of
a multiple kind in order to be able
to be commanded and to speak in the
power of your life through your faith and
your love to address those bones it's a
mystery it's ultimate, it's staggering and the end
of it is not only Israel's restoration but
that the nations shall know a kingdom is
established a David is set over this restored
people and your dwelling in their midst and
your sanctuary in their midst is the statement
to all nations that you alone are God
it's the eschatological climax, it is the end
of the end of the ages and it
is a death and resurrection that brings it
into being first ours and through ours then
theirs and through theirs a statement to the
nations for which Israel was intended at the
first as a witness that their God alone
is God Lord, I'm praying you can join
me unless you imbue this text and this
hearing with the power of your life it
will be as dry dust, it will be
academic it will be just a little splatter
of words that bounce off so I'm appealing
to you for mercy because in the end
it's your mercy that is revealed in the
restoration of Israel, not because of their deserving,
but because of what you are in yourself
this whole phenomenon, this whole restoration, the whole
bringing into death of the humanism of Israel,
which is the model and the statement for
all the world to emulate, which is contrary
to God, has got to be brought into
death, that you might through it, show to
the world and to the nations what is
the central principle of reality the life of
God, to which all are invited through the
same means by which Jesus himself was raised
so Lord I'm asking a little minuscule death
and resurrection enactment even now to whatever degree
this word this morning was in your sovereign
will to get at the heart of this
mystery and its ultimate final fulfillment through a
church of an ultimate kind whose life is
not its own, who can be commanded at
your will in an obedience to which we
are presently unfitted in our own individuality and
be able to speak in your authority in
your faith, through your love, words that affect
the bones in a way that nothing less
or other can for their speaking is your
speaking and that's why you say at the
end of this text you will know in
that day that I the Lord have spoken
and performed this come on Lord, how can
you say that when you've spent all this
time to tell us it's the Son of
Man who speaks it what are you trying
to say now I have spoken and performed
it are you saying that we'll be brought
to a place where you cannot say where
we end and you begin, that it's no
longer a Christianity where we exist as entities
and you help us to serve you, that
we're brought into a transcendent place beyond that,
where there's such a union with you, that
you cannot tell where the Son of Man
ends and God begins that our speaking is
your thinking our thought is your thought our
love is your love our seeing is your
seeing and that by such a means you
have a union and a bride for the
bridegroom who shares the glory of God and
is adorned for the bridegroom because she's one
with him in such union, is that what
you're saying and that the only way that
this bride is to be obtained is through
the crisis to the church that is represented
by Israel's death and could not be obtained
in any other way, that all these mysteries
come together in conclusion Israel's restoration, a bride
for the bridegroom, by the same process the
same requirement, the same death, the same resurrection,
is that what you're saying then Lord we're
as good as dead to think that we're
able in any way to fulfill such a
destiny as that and when we will acknowledge
that death and cast ourselves upon your life,
then there's hope, that is hope, come my
God and hear from the church what you've
not heard in modern times that was continually
on the lips of the great apostle, who
is sufficient for these things we have no
stomach for community, we don't want the suffering
and the embarrassment and the humiliation, the frictions
and tensions of life in that intensity we
prefer the casual amalgam of saints for the
purposes of services and go back again to
our unmolested and unharassed privacy we don't want
suffering in relationship that makes the church the
church, but for your namesake, for your glory,
for the coming of your kingdom and your
rule for the restoration of a nation that
you will make your sanctuary that the nations
might know that you are God, we are
willing, so Lord your blessing I pray upon
these children and you know what dear saints
you can make a little consecration right now
where you sit or kneel and tell the
Lord that you're willing to be part of
the son of man company, that is the
agent of Israel's restoration no matter what it
costs, no matter what it requires you're willing
for those deaths and you know that they're
needful, that there are areas in your life
that are privatistic, selfish, vain, ambitious opinionated you
know that you'll have to experience multiple deaths
to be at a place where you can
be commanded in union with others who themselves
have opened themselves to those deaths that he
might have a company that he can command
who can speak in his authority and in
his faith with his love to bring about
that restoration you can transact with God now
because it's not for everyone and he will
not compel it, it's altogether free willing and
voluntary so I just invite you on your
knees, on your chair standing, sitting transact with
this God that you're willing to be part
of that formation and give him leave and
liberty and you'll be astonished how quickly he
will avail himself and what areas he will
touch that you would never have suspected that
is the operation of death through the cross
but the commencement of life, union with him,
so Lord transact with this people what is
the purpose of your speaking if it is
not transaction if it is not event how
is the church to come to that formidable
condition by which Israel is to be restored
if it languishes and remains in its present
state enjoying its services, enjoying its individuality, enjoying
its sentimental affinities but keeping itself from the
death that brings it to the place that
is needful and alone through which you will
work Israel's redemption listen dear saints, we're not
playing, I'm not looking for alter call, it
has nothing to do with my gratification this
is a moment in time that, whose time
has come, there's a historic something that is
requiring an acknowledgement and a transaction for which
God waits that is voluntary and I'm inviting
you to make it