Can These Dry Bones Live?

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Matilda Rice
5 years ago
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2 Can These Dry Bones Live? A question from God can be the greatest experience you ever had! A right response to Him can change our lives. A prophet called Ezekiel found himself in a valley full of dry bones. It paints a picture of many people's lives today and the amazing experience he enjoyed can echo in our lives if we follow the same principles that God showed Him. Often our experiences feel so dry and our surroundings lack anything that resembles life and our lives lack that confidence and feeling of satisfaction that everyone craves. - A valley experience indeed, with a panorama around us of wall to wall death. If left to ourselves we would simply conform to the example of our surroundings and dry up to the extent that the outcome for us too would be soon be drought and ensuing death. Without any intervention, the surroundings that we have, will become the principles that influence us most and without our rejecting those negative principles, the downhill trend would continue until the inevitable takes place and we resign ourselves to the end. The position of everyone in this world once was to be surrounded with a death - inducing environment, not only on the outside but also on the inside of their beings. Sin reigned without and also within. And that's the way it

3 would have stayed if God had not intervened. But I have news for everyone in this world, As soon as sin, the negative, death promoting principle abounded in peoples lives, God's grace much more abounded. If you are not familiar with the nature of God, then be prepared for a new vision! If you thought that God was negative, think again! He is a being that IS LIFE, one that exudes life and all those things that work towards life, that works towards health and works towards promoting everything that is good. There are so many wrong accounts out there about God and what He is and that the vision of Him has become clouded and hardly recognisable. To confirm what our God is interested in, just look at the fist question he asks Ezekiel, son of man, can these bones live? God wants to talk about LIFE! It's always that way with Him, it's what he talks about, because it's what He is! I want to take you on Ezekiel's journey into a valley full of dry bones and in it show you a vision of this God and what He is. Sometimes we need a picture to show us what can be, if we hear what God is saying, if we understand that nothing is too difficult for him. But it doesn't always enter our heads and be part of our thinking without a demonstration. We are not all believers immediately, sometimes we need the miracle to make us believers. The entrance of the valley in question is, like all valleys, easy to access. Mountain tops are difficult to reach but valleys are almost always easy to enter. There's no climbing and normally you are in the shade all the time. The valley that we are going to visit however is not the picturesque type but one where the river has long since dried up and is broad with no shade from the mercilessly hot sun. There are no Oasis' to be found either and the place is deserted and devoid of life, the only inhabitants of the valley being dry bones. God took His prophet Ezekiel into such a place and set him down in the middle of such a valley. One full of dry bones, basically a grave yard minus the dignity of graves. You know, sometimes God needs to show us a picture to convey a special message to us. The valley was full of these dry bones and God gave him a conducted tour of them. There were two main things he came to understand from his tour. One, there were very many bones and two, they were very dry! We need to see our lives without God, we need to appreciate the deadness that is all

4 around and the dryness of everything. By contrast, God's creation is green, well-watered and fertile, teeming with life and pleasant. God was not showing Ezekiel a land that He had designed! This was a land where presumably fighting had taken place and that had resulted in death all around. Lack of love does that. It takes away harmony, destroys friendship and creates a discord that brings hatred which continues on and on until degradation and damage to life is complete and ends in death. So many civilisations have lived this way and what they believe and the laws and principles they live by, are clearly evident in the way they exist. Their lives fail to hit the mark of decency, they are always at strife among themselves and with their neighbours and their economies are poor and weak. Lots of people in the world believe that their poor standard of living is because of their difficult surroundings. In fact they lack a vision of life and their mean outlook on life and the misery that is inbuilt in their lives reigns in everything they do and everything they say. If we have not come to know the true and living God (notice His title TRUE AND LIVING GOD ) then we only know a totally different god and the one we live our lives under is poor and has to resort to trying to make his 'kingdom' seem alive and seem useful, by lying and filling people's eyes full of deceptions and garish fantasies. If we have come to know the true and living God, then perhaps like Ezekiel, we still need the same vision so that we can go on to realise so much more about Him and enter into His vision of how things can be if we conform to His ways. We need to answer the question that Ezekiel was asked, SON OF MAN, CAN THESE BONES LIVE? Our answers could be many and varied: Are you kidding? They're DEAD! That's it! Well Lord, the bones are so dry! Well Lord they have laid here for so long! Well Lord they probably got that way by fighting, they had it coming! Well Lord the wages of sin is death, they made their choices, surely that was their fate!. They were going to die anyway, it just came sooner than normal for them... We all have to die sometime... Maybe it was disease that took them. I'm only human, it's no good asking me.

5 No Lord, they can't live, they're past it! So many Christian believers as well as unbelievers don't face up to the relevant questions that define what might be in their lives. The answer to questions such as the one God asked Ezekiel, Can these bones live?, defines our idea about God. Our answers define whether we believe Him to be capable of changing our lives or not and whether we believe Him to be powerful or not powerful. I want you to notice the response from someone who knew a little about God (Ezekiel). O Lord, You Know! I like that! He didn't have an answer, but he knew that his God did! We should learn this response to situations. We have the life of God in us if we are born again believers and have made Jesus the Lord of our lives. We don't have to struggle with the great debates about faith, we simply need to turn our response towards God. 'I may not have the answer but I know someone who has!' Admission to God of what we are not, is not wrong. To admit our shortcomings to Him and then ask Him to fix our shortcomings is the way forward. When we come to a halt and don't make progress, then we need to find a way forward. Often this is to say plainly to the Lord, I've come to a dead stop Lord, what do I do now? He has an answer for you. Say simply, I may have a limited idea or even no idea of what could happen here in this situation but I know a God who has an infinitely greater repertoire of answers to this problem. His being is full of hope, life, faith, power, initiative and healing for this and every situation. I had an idea as I was listening to what the prophet was saying.... What if God asked us a question.... Son of man, can this body be healed? Or another question... Son of man (or daughter of man), can this pancreas work properly again?... Son of man, can this womb work like a normal womb? Can these legs walk again? What would we answer? I love what Ezekiel said.., Lord, YOU KNOW! He KNOWS! I Can imagine Ezekiel getting excited and saying it over and over perhaps..., You know Lord,... You Know don't you?... I know it made me think that way! If He challenges me with the questions about my needs, I have learnt to

6 respond, Lord, YOU KNOW! We can also take our response further if we get to know Him better and hear what different people have said after going through trials with this God by their side. Job's response to God after his trials and tribulations was, Yea Lord, I know that you can do anything! (and it's significant that all His troubles disappeared after he made this statement God had got the response He wanted from Job). We need to understand that God DOES KNOW! We also need to understand the nature of God and when we do know what He is, and what His attitude to things are, we will then know what He will do in any situation and what He will want us to do in any situation. I would like you to hear the words of God to Ezekiel, SON OF MAN. It's interesting what God calls Ezekiel. Is God calling Him by a finite title to confine Ezekiel to weak, sinful manhood? No God is not like that!, God is addressing Him such that he will seek to elevate the man and increase His faith and power. So, SON OF MAN, don't feel confined by your sinful inheritance, listen to the rest of what God has to say to a valley of dry, dead, bones and what you can (and are allowed) to say, as a son of man, to this dead army. The whole attitude of God to us as sons of men is to try and elevate our position to that of sons of God. Now let's understand God's attitude to Ezekiel. God is saying, YOU SPEAK to the valley of dry bones! God is giving His power to the prophet, and the way it's transferred to Him, is by words! God's Power is conveyed to us by His words too. (Look at Jesus's command to the disciples in Mark 16, Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature and these signs shall follow them that believe... ). Now note this: The power of God is conveyed to the bones by words. The idea of what the bones must do (the concept of resurrection) is also conveyed to them by words. We MUST NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE WORDS OF GOD because they convey a message, a line of command and a concept about what God is all about, what His will is, what He likes doing and what He would like us to realise that we can do. GOD IS NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS! If Ezekiel was given this ability

7 by God, He will give the same ability to us if we believe His words. Now here are some of the principles being shown to Ezekiel here Dead bones can hear! God is the creator of the heavens and earth (who did so with His commands see Genesis 1 etc), so it's no surprise that He can recreate or 'bring again' a life that once was. 2. God points Ezekiel to His own words..., Say to the bones... Oh you dry bones, hear 'the word of the Lord!' God takes Ezekiel and gives him His own words to show Ezekiel that the words will work the same in Ezekiel's mouth. Oh that we could grasp this amazing principle! 3. God shows Ezekiel that the bones will not only hear but gain knowledge of what God wants when God speaks to them. Behold I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. And Further... And I will lay sinews upon you and will bring flesh upon you and cover you with skin... And Further again... And I will put breath in you and you shall live! Why? (For what reason is God doing this?) So that you shall know that I am the Lord! God has had such a problem throughout the centuries in convincing sons (and daughters) that He is the Lord but nevertheless, it's clearly evident that He is THE LORD. EZEKIEL PROPHESIED AS GOD COMMANDED. So did it happen when Ezekiel said it? Or would it only work if God spoke it? NO, IT WORKED WHEN EZEKIEL SPOKE IT, when Ezekiel said what God wanted to happen. SO I PROPHESIED AS I WAS COMMANDED: AND AS I PROPHESIED, THERE WAS A NOISE, AND BEHOLD A SHAKING, AND THE BONES CAME TOGETHER, BONE TO HIS BONE! Now this is significant that God causes us to come together as a whole. No

8 longer divided by sin and death as a person! He takes out of us the divisions that are within us (Satan is a house divided against himself) and makes us united in our beings and loyal to ourselves and to our own parts, destroying the partitions in us and making a cohesive being out of us where there had previously been discord in our members. (Isn't that what Ephesians says?...makes increase of the body unto the edifying of the itself in love. This talks of the church coming together, undivided and united and making a cohesive, edified loving unit, well that's Gods way! And its His nature to bring together and unite and cause love and make peaceable living and loving units of people, combined together by his grace and his mercy and the same principle is reflected and works throughout the Church). And when I beheld, lo the sinews and the flesh came upon them and skin covered them but there was no breath in them Now the first thing God had said was that He would put breath in them and they would live! That was His objective! That was what God would achieve, hence the question, SON OF MAN, CAN THESE BONES LIVE? It is always that God wants us as sons of men to live and has made a way for us to do so. We may think that we have life. But as Jesus (God's spokesman) said, I am come that they might have LIFE and that they might have it MORE abundantly than they have experienced it before. God can move us on and give us all sorts of things extra to what we have at present, to what we have expected in life, whether we need healing, release from fear, prosperity, peace of mind... it's all available from our God! Sometimes we come to a stop in our faith and part of the miracle has happened and we dry up. But we need to see that we can go on... we don't have to stop there, we don't have to be limited, if we turn again to God and ask Him for the next step, He will continue the vision and complete the job. He didn't limit His vision of life to Ezekiel, He continued... Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy son of man, (there it is again, son of man - God is giving to humankind the ability of the Godhead, not belittling him but making him see what a son of man can do if he takes up God's authority, elevating him and raising his authority by allowing Ezekiel to say God's words.

9 Recently I saw a great revelation. In saying, In the name of Jesus, we are really saying, God has told me to tell you! God does not mind us quoting Him, in fact he wants us to accept His authority and use it over unrighteousness. And the words of God continued from Ezekiel's lips..., Come from the four winds oh breath and breathe upon these slain that they may live! We can now see that God knows the background of the bones here. ('These slain!'). God knows all about the situations we are entered into, He has it all in His mind and is making the way plain for us. We may not always know what has transpired in our past and all the details of it but God knows it. These were slain. Just like we were. Before we were born, sin was right there in the middle of our lives. Whether we wanted it or not, it was passed down from our forefathers into our beings, waiting to bring us down at every possible turn of our lives, waiting to deliver us into a dry valley where we would dry up and expire. In principle and in fact, we were already slain by sin. But God! Thank God for the 'BUT GOD' in our lives. But God who is rich in mercy for His great love wherewith He has loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us (enlivened us, resurrected us, brought us to life) together with Christ. Ephesians 2 verse 4,5. He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places! Do you see the authority he transfers to us? All of a sudden those who were once dead in trespasses and sins, become those who are raised to sit together with Him in his throne. We are saved by His grace and given His authority so that we can rule over the problems that Satan causes us. Then Ezekiel speaks the words of the Lord and he says that when he did there was a noise and a shaking and the bones came together, 'bone to his bone', - notice the order that God restores! He is a restoring God and after he has done restoring, he goes further and builds on that. He adds the sinew and the flesh until He can get us to the point where He can get His breath of life into us, that inspirational breath that makes us his children. God can turn dry bones into Living Warriors!

10 The narrative states, they stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army! Ezekiel 37 verses So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, says the LORD. If we need proof of the attitude of God toward us, we need only look at what His words say. We need only look at what He says to His servants in the old testament and what He is saying across the world to ALL that will hear Him. No matter what their nationality, He loves us all, and sent Jesus to dies for us all and to bring life to us all. He has poured out of His Spirit upon ALL flesh, so that we may all come to a knowledge of His love for us. It doesn't matter if we are dry bones and dying in a dry situation with no hope, God has made a way for us not only to live but to live well! If you notice from the verses above, God was aware of His people and made a way for them. That's His attitude to us. All we have to do is ask Him for what we need using HIS WORDS and it will be done. That is His way! It means that we are aligning ourselves with His promises and accepting His gifts. It means that we will get what He wanted for us all along. The Lord Bless you.

Lesson 10 4 October The Valley of Dry Bones. Lesson Scope: Ezekiel 37 Unless otherwise noted all references are from the Book of Ezekiel

Lesson 10 4 October The Valley of Dry Bones. Lesson Scope: Ezekiel 37 Unless otherwise noted all references are from the Book of Ezekiel Lesson 10 4 October 2015 The Valley of Dry Bones Lesson Scope: Ezekiel 37 Unless otherwise noted all references are from the Book of Ezekiel Lesson Focus The vision of the valley of dry bones was given