Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2246
“He said to me, Prophesy unto the wind, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus says the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” Ezekiel 37:9.
ACCORDING to some commentators, this vision in the valley of dry bones may refer to three forms of resurrection. Holy Scripture is so marvelously full of meaning that one interpretation seldom exhausts its message to us. The chapter before us is an excellent example of this fact and supplies an illustration of several Scriptural Truths of God.
Some think they see, here, a parable of the resurrection of the dead. Assuredly, Ezekiel’s vision pictures what will happen in the day when “the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised.” No matter how dry the bones may be, the bodies of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall rise again. That which was sown shall spring up from the grave and, in the case of the children of God, it shall wear a new glory. At the Word of Christ it shall come to pass—“For the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.”
Others see here the resurrection of the almost destroyed host of Israel which had been divided into two companies and carried away captive into Babylon. Plague and pestilence and the sword of the Chaldean had gone far to cut off the chosen nation, but God promised to restore His people, thus mingling mercy with judgment, and again setting in the cloud the bow of His Everlasting Covenant. A partial fulfillment of this promise was given when, for a while, the Lord set up, again, the tribes of Israel at Jerusalem and they had a happy rest before the coming of Christ. But Israel’s full restoration is yet to be accomplished. The people shall be gathered out of the graves in which, as a nation, they have so long lain buried, and shall be placed in their own land—and then will come to pass the Word of Jehovah—“Then shall you know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, says the Lord.”
There are others, who, looking beyond the literal for the spiritual teaching, see, and I think, rightly see, that here is a picture of the recovery of ungodly men from their spiritual death and corruption—a parable of the way in which sinners are brought up from their hopeless, spiritually dead condition and made to live by the power of the Holy Spirit. I shall, at any rate, use the text in this sense, for I am not now aiming at the interpretation of prophesy, nor concerned greatly with what is to happen in the future. Neither do I wish to conduct you into the deep things of God, but I am just now thinking of practical uses to which I can put this incident in order to stir up God’s people to deal with the Holy Spirit as He should be dealt with, and to urge the unconverted to seek the Lord in the hope that some of them, as dead and dry as the bones in the Valley of Vision, may be made to live by His Divine Power.
Nothing gave me greater comfort, this week, than when I received a note from one saying that, last Thursday night, while I was preaching from the text, “Let your soul delight itself in fatness,” she was enabled to lay hold on Christ. I had rather have such tidings than to hear the most glad news of a worldly kind that could be brought to me! Oh, that now, also, some poor heart may find rest in Christ while we are talking of that Divine Spirit who becomes a Comforter to all those to whom He has been first a Quickener! May He come and cause men to live and then, afterwards, make them full of gladness! It is His blessed office first, to bestow life, and then to give light. Living unto God is the earliest experience of the redeemed—afterwards comes joy in God by the Holy Spirit.
I. Now, first, in using this text, as I have said, for practical purposes, I am going to make this remark upon it—WE ARE NOTHING WITHOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT. I now speak, my Brothers, to you who love the souls of men. I know that there are some among you who preach and teach with all earnestness, with broken-hearted love and, for the glory of Christ, you try to bring men to believe in Jesus. In thus endeavoring to save the souls of the lost and ruined men, you are engaged in a noble work. But I dare say that you have often felt what I, also, fully realize, that you have not gone far in your holy service before you are brought face to face with the fact that, in itself, the work you propose to do is an utter impossibility!
We begin our labor according to the Word of the Lord and we prophesy. God helping us, we can do that and, though the burden of the Lord is heavy, yet if we are told to prophesy again, we can, by His Grace, do that, also. We can prophesy to dry bones, or prophesy to the wind according to God’s commandment. We are not afraid of seeming to be foolish since we know that when “the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” But when we preach the Word and, as the result of our preaching expect men to be saved—and so saved that we may know it—we come, all of a sudden, upon an iron-bound coast and can get no further. We find that men are dead—what is needed is that they should be quickened—and we cannot quicken them! There are a great many things we can do—and God forbid that we should leave one of them undone! But when we come to the creation of life, we have reached a mysterious region into which we cannot penetrate—we have entered the realm of miracles where Jehovah reigns supreme!