May 27, 2012
Dear friends in Christ.
Let me take a couple of moments to introduce myself
to you this morning. I am the Prophet
Ezekiel. I was born roughly 2600 years
ago, in the year 623 BC. I was born
about 5 years after the Prophet Jeremiah received his call from the Lord to
proclaim judgment and the impending Babylonian Captivity on the city of
Jerusalem and all the people of Judea.
I was born into the tribe of Levi, and therefore I was a Levite who
lived in and around God’s Temple until my 26th year, and I regularly heard
Jeremiah preaching that the Lord would destroy Jerusalem and his temple. Though I didn’t want to believe it, I saw the
first phase of God’s judgment against his people as King Nebuchadnezzar came,
besieged the city, conquered it, and carried the brightest and the best of
Israel into captivity in Babylon. It was
there, in my 30th year, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, that I
received the Lord’s call to be his prophet to the people of Israel in Babylon. It was there, by the river in the land of the
Babylonians that I saw a vision of the Lord, seated on a sapphire throne,
surrounded by four living creatures. It
was there in Babylon that the Lord commissioned me to be a watchman for the
house of Israel. And it was there in
Babylon, seven years later, that we heard how King Nebuchadnezzar had finally
defeated and destroyed Jerusalem, along with the Lord’s Temple. Yet, even in the midst of this sorrow over
the destruction of the Lord’s Temple and the City of Jerusalem the Lord gave me
the privilege of proclaiming to his people the message that they would indeed
be restored!
Now, when the Lord gave me this great message of
restoration, the people of Israel were feeling that their hope was gone. They were feeling that they had been cut off
from the Lord. They were feeling that
they had died and their very bones had completely dried up. This is why the Lord gave me the vision that
he did. For on that day when the Lord’s
hand was upon me, he brought me out by his Spirit and set me down in the middle
of a valley full of bones, bones that were completely dead and dried out. He led me back and forth among them so that I
might see how dead and dry they were, and then the Lord asked me, “Son of man,
can these bones live?” I tell you, when
the Lord asks you a question like that, you think about your answer. From a human standpoint, there is no way that
these bones could ever live, but when the Almighty God asks you that question,
he must have something in mind, so I answered him: “O Sovereign Lord, you alone
know.” (See Ezekiel 37:1-3)
It was then that the Lord called on me to
prophecy. He called on me to prophecy to
the bones and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these
bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach
tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put
breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the
LORD.’” …As I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the
bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on
them and skin 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 it, ‘This is what
the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into
these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and
breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.”
(Ezekiel 37:5-10)
Oh, I wish you could have seen the vision that the
Lord gave me on that day, because the vision that he gave me was a great
assurance that the Lord himself would restore his people Israel! As the Lord told me, the bones that I saw
represented the whole house of Israel.
The restoration I saw was assurance that the Lord would not only deliver
the people from captivity in Babylon, but he would restore them to their own
land, the land which he had given them.
Not only would he restore them to their own land, but he would restore
them as his faithful people by placing the Holy Spirit in their hearts so that
they might be strengthened in their faith, know that the Lord was their one and
only God, that they might seek to trust in him and follow his ways.
This was a great comfort for me and for the Israelites
as we lived as exiles in the land of the Babylonians. This was great comfort to all of us because
it assured us that even though both Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed
and we had been exiled, the Lord our God had not forsaken us. He had not abandoned us. He would, one day, restore us by returning us
to the Land of Israel, by allowing us to rebuild the Temple, and by calling us
his people, once again. Which is exactly
what happened under the guidance and leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, something
like 40 plus years after the Lord gave me the vision of the dry bones to assure
me that he would restore his People, Israel.
Well in the same way that this message was a comfort
to me in the land of exile, so also this message can be a great comfort to you
as well. It can be a great comfort
because just as the Lord assured us that we would be restored, so also he is
assuring each and every one of you that you too will be restored. Now, I will admit that at first glance this
message might not make all that much sense to Christians living in the 21st
Century. After all, you are not living
in some foreign country where you were dragged after an enemy laid siege to
your city, conquered it, burned it, and completely destroyed it, together with
your church. But even though you might
not find yourself in that type of captivity, the truth is, we have all found
ourselves in some type of captivity at one time or another in our lives.
Just think about it!
How often haven’t we been held captive by our own sorrow, able only to
focus on the bad things in life, and completely unable to find joy in
anything? How often haven’t we been held
captive by depression, finding that we have lost all interest in doing the
things that we love, or being with the people we love? How often haven’t we been held captive by our
jobs, feeling that we aren’t able to take any time off because we are so badly
needed? Or feeling that we are so busy
that we barely have any time for our friends, our family, or even for the
Lord? How often haven’t we been taken
captive by our hobbies, vacations, or other recreation to the point where we
are so busy having fun that we completely ignore the time the Lord has given us
to gather in worship? How often haven’t
we been taken captive by the feeling that the church either has nothing to give
us, or the feeling that we have nothing to contribute to the Church? How often haven’t we stood in the middle of
the narthex just to see if someone would come and talk to us, wondering if
anyone would even notice if we just stopped coming to church? How often haven’t we been held captive by our
fears, afraid to be hurt, or mocked, or ridiculed? How often haven’t we been held captive by our
sins, feeling that we simply cannot be forgiven for the evil we have done? How
often hasn’t the guilt of something that we have done or left undone weighed so
heavily upon us that even though the sin that caused the guilt happened years
ago, and we know that we’ve been forgiven, we simply cannot forgive
ourselves? Or how often hasn’t it
happened that we’ve found ourselves neglecting worship and Holy Communion
because we’ve felt that we must first get our lives in order before we even
think about approaching God for forgiveness?
Sadly, we, like the People Israel have been held
captive at one time or another, by one thing or another, during our lives! But even though our enemy, the devil, seeks
to hold us in that captivity, it is the Lord who sent me to assure you that you
will be restored! You will be restored,
and you have been restored, by the Lord your God who loves you and cares for
you. You have been restored by the Lord
your God who sent his one and only Son into this world to suffer the righteous
anger our God had over our sins; who sent his Son to spill his blood and give
up his innocent life as a payment for our sins.
You have been restored by the Lord our God who sent the Holy Spirit into
our hearts and made us children of our heavenly Father. This is how you have been restored! For when the Holy Spirit entered our hearts
on the day of our baptism, he entered that scarlet chamber, which was filled to
bursting with all of our sins, and he emptied those sins into the Portable On
Demand Storage container—the PODS of our Gods Grace. He swept out every nook and cranny of our
hearts with the Shop-Vac of forgiveness, and whitewashed the floors, ceilings
and walls of our hearts with the blood of our Savior.
It is through this sending of the Holy Spirit into
our hearts, that we have been restored to a right relationship with the Lord
our God. Now, just like the Israelites
in my day were looking forward to the promise that they would be restored to
their own land, we are looking forward to the day when the Lord will restore us
to the Promised Land of Heaven.
Though we may still face sorrows, troubles, or
hardships in this life, we can be assured that the Lord will carry us through
them because the Holy Spirit has restored us, by creating faith in our hearts.
Though we may still face depression in this life, and find ourselves stuck in
the painful cycle that depression has, we can find joy in the fact that we
belong to the Lord, our Savior, who rose again to assure us that we will live
with him forever in heaven. Though we
may still feel that our jobs have us so busy that we can’t possibly find time
for family, friends, or even worship, when we are reminded how the Lord has
restored us, it is the Holy Spirit who works in our hearts and gives us the
desire to change whatever we can so that we can make time for what is most
important. Though there may still be
times when we find ourselves feeling that we don’t belong at Grace, or there is
nothing more the church can offer us, or we even feel guilty that we are not
able to accomplish everything we would like for the Lord and his Church, in
those times especially, it is the Holy Spirit who reminds us that in worship,
we have the finest meal of God’s Word set before us on a weekly basis. Each week we drink in the pure, clean, and
refreshing waters of his truth from the wellspring of salvation. Though there
will still be times when our sins and guilt make us feel that we are cut off
from the Lord and that our very bones have dried up, it is the Holy Spirit who
assures us that our loving Father has already given life to our dried up bones,
our loving Savior has already knit our bodies back together with the
forgiveness that he won for us on the cross, and it is the Comforter, the Holy
Spirit, who has breathed into us the breath of life and made us heirs of heaven
through Jesus Christ our Savior.
What greater assurance could the Lord give us than
this! For He who restored the house of
Israel and brought them back from captivity so that they might continue as the
nation from which the Savior would come; He is the one who has restored us to
himself, brought us out of the very things that have held us captive, washing
us clean with the blood of his Son, and giving us the absolute assurance of
deliverance to life everlasting. Though
I lived some 500 years before our Savior walked the earth, I was privileged to
proclaim God’s message of restoration to the Israelites, and again to you
today; for just as the Lord restored his people Israel to their own land, he
will one day restore you and me to the heavenly land where we will live with
him forever. This is our comfort and our
assurance. Continue to look forward to
that day when the Lord will bring you to his full and complete restoration
forever in haven.
Amen.
Pastor
David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
