On Sunday we closed out our Easter sermon series – Resurrection Reality – Really Living. The prophet Ezekiel is shown a vision of a valley full of dry bones. These are not people who are mostly dead. They are completely spiritually dead!
The landscape of Christianity today isn’t much difference. Over the past decade just under 1/3 of our society reports their religious affiliation as “none” – 28%. People are scratching their heads wondering why they are leaving Christianity, really leaving everything that has to do with religion for… nothing. God doesn’t address the why here in Ezekiel, but the apostle Paul touches on the topic in his second letter to a young pastor named Timothy (4:3-4). For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
It’s not that these folks are necessarily hostile to religion and God. They just don’t need him. They are content with their lives. Religion can be divisive. There is plenty of entertainment available to fill their lives. Their existence may be empty, it doesn’t offer answers or solutions to the questions and troubles of our sinful world, but they aren’t interested. They are part of the walking spiritual dead. Again, if we think we are immune to these temptations, we would be wrong. Satan doesn’t have to make us guilty of some great sin. All he has to do is lull us to sleep in apathy. We have just joined the walking dead.
“Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” Or using our frog illustration from the beginning of the sermon. Are they goona make it? That frog is important because that is how it looks. We read from the prophet Ezekiel and God oozes with confidence, do we? Do you walk up to friends, neighbors, and family with the same spiritual swagger knowing that we are heralds of the ascended Lord of the Universe? Let’s see what our God does when we share his word and unleash his Spirit.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from Ezekiel 37 Resurrection Reality – Really Living.
Book(s): Ezekiel
Series: Resurrection Reality
Tag(s): Holy Spirit
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg