Dry Bones

We try to lie to ourselves about it, but we know that it's true. That the past is gone. We can memorialize it, we can celebrate it, but we can't bring it back. And it's when we realize that that we ask the question that Ezekiel asks, is there a future?

And it was there that God asked him a daunting question, Son of Man, can these bones live again? Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday. I'm Lee Webb. You and I are faced with a daunting question as well. What lies beyond the limited number of days we have on earth?

Dr. R.C. Sproul helps us find the hope-filled answer to that question, and he begins by sharing a very personal story. It was in November, the afternoon, the year of our Lord, 1956. I was 17 years old. And on that afternoon, I was standing in front of an open grave. On my right side was my mother, and on my left side was my sister. And I noticed to the left of my sister at the head of the open grave, the minister was standing and reading from that little black book, leather-bound, that was called the Book of Common Worship. He was reading the ritual of the service of burial. But I wasn't listening to what he said because my eyes were fixed on how he was holding his right hand.

He held the Book of Common Worship in his left hand as he read the service, and he kept his right hand clenched in this fashion as he read. And finally he came to the final words of the funeral service, and as he began to read them, he stretched forth his arm over the metallic coffin, and he began to slightly open his fist and allow a trail of sand to escape, which fell upon the casket, and he made the sign of the cross as he said, Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. This was the grave of my father. And as the minister spoke those final words, he then closed the book and turned and came over and took my mother's arm and escorted her back to the waiting funeral limousine. Ladies and gentlemen, I will never forget that day.

No 17-year-old boy can ever forget the funeral of his father. I remember that as I walked away from that cemetery on that afternoon, I was confused, I was bewildered, I was hurt, and most of all, I was angry. I didn't even know if there was a God, but if there was a God, I knew that I didn't like Him very much, because on that afternoon, for the first time in my young life, I had experienced the human emotion of absolute hopelessness.

For the first time, I had encountered something that could not be fixed, something that was final. We go back to the days of antiquity when the prophet Ezekiel, as a young man, saw not only his personal hope be shattered, but he saw the hope of his entire people. He saw all of the dreams, all of the glory of his own nation be wiped out by what we now refer to as the first Holocaust, and all of the promises that God had given these people were now left in the dust. There is no more Jerusalem, there is no more Israel, and the prophet Ezekiel was a man without hope for the future. The Scriptures tell us, as we read this morning, that as Ezekiel struggled over these things, the hand of the Lord came upon him and brought him out in the Spirit of the Lord. We see the hand of God sweeping down on the plain and picking up Ezekiel in the hollow of God's hand, and God transports the prophet into this valley.

And behold, as Ezekiel comes into this valley and God sets him in this place, he looks, and all around the valley he sees stacked in mounds upon mounds nothing but the skeletal remains of human being. Oh, how vividly I remember 1965 when we were living in Western Europe and much of the information that had remained classified after World War II was finally released to the general public, including volumes of photographs taken by American soldiers as they liberated the death camps of Dachau, of Auschwitz, of Bergen-Belsen, and others. And for the first time, the general public was able to see actual photographic evidence of the atrocities committed during World War II.

And I remember as I looked at those photographs, the things that caught my eye. In one photograph, there was a mound as big as a three-story house of artificial limbs. Another one had a mountain of eyeglasses, spectacles taken off the faces of Jewish people before they were sent to their death. And then, of course, the most macabre of all was a veritable mountain of the bones of those who had been killed. That's what I see in my mind when I read this account from the Bible, when Ezekiel went into this valley and he saw a valley filled with bones. Not with corpses, with flesh and clothing, but corpses after the scavengers and the vultures and the parasites have finished with their work, after they have been picked clean and have been exposed to the rays of the noonday sun for months and perhaps for years, and so that the bones are now not only very dry, but they have been bleached by the sun. And as was in the case in the death camps of World War II, these bones were heaped together in such a chaotic fashion that one could not identify a particular skeletal frame.

The bones of women were mixed together with the bones of men, and the bones of the elderly were heaped on top of the bones of infants. If ever a scene reveals the finality of death, it was the valley of dry bones, and it was in this place that God asked Ezekiel the question. God showed him these bones, and He said, Ezekiel, here's my question, son of man, can these bones live again? I know what I would have said when I was walking away from my father's casket if God would have appeared in a burning bush and said to me, or say, can that corpse live again?

I would have turned to the Almighty and said, don't mock me with a question like that. I don't really understand Ezekiel's reply, and sometimes the Scripture lets us down because it doesn't tell us how words are spoken. I don't know what the expression on his face was.

I don't know what his tone of voice was. All that we know are the words that Ezekiel used, words that could very well have been evasive in their response to God. When God said, son of man, can these bones live again? Ezekiel simply said, oh God, you know it.

How did he say it? Did he say, it beats me whether these bones can rise? I don't know whether these bones can rise again. You know it, and you're the only one who knows whether these bones can rise.

Maybe that's what he meant. Or maybe already Ezekiel had been convinced of the power of God, and when God said, Ezekiel, can these bones rise again? Ezekiel looked at God and he said, you know these bones can rise again.

I tend to think it was the former rather than the latter, but take your pick. God goes on and said, here's what I want you to do Ezekiel. I want you to prophesy to these bones and say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Well, every minister knows what it's like to preach to a difficult congregation, and one of the most difficult tasks in all of preaching is to preach to a congregation at 8.30 in the morning. People are hardly awake yet. They've just come out of their beds, and it's so difficult to get a response from people at this hour in the day, but God has never asked me to preach in a cemetery.

Sometimes it seems like it, but I've never really had to do that. Imagine having to go into a cemetery at God's command and to begin to preach. In fact, this isn't even a cemetery.

This is a valley. The only thing there are bones, not a living creature, but God tells Ezekiel to go to the valley of the dry bones and preach here to skeletons. And he said, I want you to go there Ezekiel, and you say to those skeletons, hear the word of the Lord.

How ridiculous. A skeleton doesn't even have ears anymore. And yet God says, hear the word of the Lord. And so the prophet responded to God as God said, I will cause breath to enter into these bones and say to these bones, you will live, I will put sinews on you, bring flesh upon you, I'll cover you with skin, and you will know that I am the Lord. And so Ezekiel says, I prophesied.

I did as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a noise. I was preaching. I was preaching to a valley of death.

I was preaching to no human being. I was preaching in a place where no human sound had ever been heard for months and perhaps years. And as I preached, there was a sound. I heard a rattle, and I looked, and behold, I saw bones starting to move. I witnessed the dance of the skeletons as these bones rose up and they came together bone to bone, that that woman's hip bone that was over here was brought over here and connected, and all of a sudden we hear Fred wearing in the background.

The knee bone connected to the thigh bone. Now hear the word of the Lord. I'd heard that song as a child.

I never understood what that song was saying. That these bones came together. They were reassembled, and a person's frame was constituted afresh. And then as Ezekiel preached, sinew, tissue, flesh began to cover these skeletons, and they took upon the recognizable shape of human beings, but one thing was lacking. Even after the bones were knit together and flesh covered the bones, still all we had was a valley of cadavers who were still dead. And God said, Ezekiel, now I want you to preach to the wind, and call upon the wind, and call upon the four winds to bring their breath and to move over these corpses, and I will make them live.

And so He called to the north wind, and He called to the south wind, He shouted for the east wind, He screamed at the west wind, and the wind began to blow, and it came and blew across these bodies, and like the Holy Spirit hovered over the primordial waters on the day of creation, the Spirit of life came back into these people, and they came alive again, and they stood up, and Ezekiel saw and behold an army of people. Did you ever wonder whether you had a future? Did you ever wonder if there was anything left to look forward to?

Or have you come to the place in your life where what joy you're able to squeeze out of living is accomplished by nostalgia, by memories, by looking back? A month ago, Vess and I had the opportunity to return to Pennsylvania and to visit our childhood home. I drove out to our old baseball field, Maury Park, and as I entered Maury Park, I noticed that there was a monument built out of stone, and on the monument was chiseled the date of the dedication of this baseball field. It said May 30, 1955, and then it had underneath it the names of the city commissioners who had been there for the dedication of that baseball field, and ladies and gentlemen, I saw that. I went nuts because I remembered May 30, 1955. I played in the first baseball game that took place on that field. We started out at the Stefano Drug Store, and we were in our baseball uniforms, and we marched in the parade with the fire trucks and the bands, and we marched two miles out the road and came into the entrance of Maury Park. I'll never forget it, but this day as I went back to Maury Park, there wasn't anybody there. Nobody. Nobody on the field, nobody in the stands, nobody in the dugouts.

Not even a maintenance man in sight. So while I knew no one could see me, I walked out on the field, and I stood in my old position where I had so many memories, and I stood there and all of a sudden I felt like I could do it again. And then I thought, this was 31 years ago, and then the thought came to me, and 31 pounds ago.

And then I checked that thought again, and I thought, no, it's more than 31 pounds ago. But as I lived with the ghosts of my friends and my teammates there on the field, and then walked off the field again, I realized this, that there's no going back. I can dream about it, and I can remember it, and I can savor those memories, but I can't go back. What is past is over.

And we all understand that. We try to lie to ourselves about it, but we know that it's true, that the past is gone. We can memorialize it, we can celebrate it, but we can't bring it back. And it's when we realize that that we ask the question that Ezekiel asks, is there a future? Obviously, this passage of Scripture is not talking about the resurrection of the dead, of individual people. God Himself says to Ezekiel this, He said to me, Son of Man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

They indeed say our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. Now, I don't want to get into a large discourse on eschatology and the differing views that we have in the church about the future promises of God. But I remember 1967 when I was on my porch in Boston, Massachusetts, and I turned on the television set, and I saw Jewish soldiers rushing into the square of Jerusalem, and while the firefight was still going on, they were throwing their guns down and running over to the wailing wall and weeping there.

Because for 1897 years they had been saying to each other, next year in Jerusalem, and it finally happened. There is a future for the people of God, and the promises of God go well beyond the promises that God gives here to Ezekiel about the Jewish people. The promises in the New Testament say to us that we shall not all perish, but that when Christ returns in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as the trumpet is sound and our Lord appears in Shekinah glory, in an instant the graves of our loved ones will be opened, and there will be new life. My Father will live again. You will see your loved ones again, because the God we are assembled here this morning to worship is the God who is the author of life. He is the one who holds the keys of death. He is the one and the only one who has the power and the ability to bring something out of nothing and to bring life out of death. And my dear friends, He has promised categorically and immutably that the dead in Christ shall rise. But when the dead in Christ shall rise, they will return to life without disease, without pain, without disfigurement, for they will be created anew.

What a wonderful hope that is. What joy and what comfort it provides. Through his nearly five decades of ministry, Dr. R.C. Sproul focused on great theological truths like this. And this week on Renewing Your Mind, we are pleased to go back through the decades to feature some hidden gems. Today's message from the 1980s, and it really underscores what is true about biblical teaching.

It's timeless. This was a priority for Dr. Sproul, and it's the principle that Ligetier Ministries is built upon. R.C. was a pastor, theologian, and trusted teacher, and our resource offered today will help you get to know R.C.

the man. Ligetier teaching fellow Dr. Stephen Nichols spent many months researching Dr. Sproul's life and ministry. He knew R.C.

well, and that really comes through in the pages of the biography that he's authored. It's titled R.C. Sproul, A Life. We've just released it, and we'd like for you to have a copy. You can request it today with your donation of any amount online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. We are a listener-supported ministry. Your gifts truly do make a difference. They help people around the world have access to clear biblical teaching like we heard today, so thank you. Tomorrow we continue through the decades with Dr. Sproul and we'll step into the 90s with a message titled, Here I Stand. I hope to see you right back here Thursday for Renewing Your Mind. .