You will be aware, as you look at your television screens day by day at the moment, or as you go shopping, that everyone is trying to compete for your attention; and they are trying to convince you that their merchandise is just what you’ve got to have, and if there is a question of sacrificing one to have the other, then the one that they’re telling you about is worth sacrificing the other for.
It may appear a bit like that here today, with all these screens and notice-boards with all the different mission agencies: my own, Crosslinks, over there in the corner, is just one of a number which appears to be competing for your attention. But there is a difference between what is going on around now, as we come up to Christmas, and what is going on around here in this building today. And that is that actually in essence we have all got the same message. And where people might show an interest in one particular agency and the work that they’re involved in, we should all be rejoicing because actually the one purpose behind all of us would be being achieved.
Well, as I say, I am from Crosslinks, but I’m not here to tell you about that, but rather to try to explain what God, in His Word, the Bible, has to say to us this morning.
Now, with my responsibilities with Crosslinks, I have been travelling quite a bit (not just with Crosslinks, but in other capacities as well), and in my world travels I have, perhaps in the last 18 months to two years, covered many different parts of the world and seen situations of a very varied character – from Paraguay and Chile in Latin America, to France and Ireland (both north and south), to the south of Spain, to Morocco, to Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, Thailand, Singapore, and lots of other places as well. And what has struck me, seeing the different varieties of situation that I’ve come across, is just that: there is tremendous variety and – just taking my most recent tour, to Southern Africa, from the very serious economic and political difficulties in a country like Zimbabwe, with the land issue being very much at the centre of what’s going on there at the moment, to moving on to South Africa itself where the government seems to deny any link between AIDS and human behaviour (and the Church has been called to give some sort of response to that), and other issues which are perhaps not so well-known to us here, such as the immense immigration of peoples from all over Africa – from different language groups – into South Africa in search of work. There is also a great deal of violence in that country at the moment and that is what is causing a lot of people to leave.
So, a tremendous amount of variety, and that’s just a little focus on what I’ve done most recently, but what focus, then, should (if it’s possible) a mission society or a mission agency have? Should it be to help the Church to develop some sort of response to the AIDS pandemic? Should it be to try, in the light of circumstances in Zimbabwe, to be involved in training black Zimbabwean farm workers to be able to work the land and make it as productive as it has been until recently? Or is it to be engaged in environmental work in a place like the south of France, or in Kenya? Or is it in terms of helping the refugee tribes from the political and military difficulties that they experience in Myanmar (what used to be known as Burma)? Or is it to help in camps for teenagers in Ireland, or to help in Muslim countries, particularly at this moment, where it is tough being a Christian? What focus in all that is possible?
Well, fortunately, it doesn’t depend either on me or the staff that I work with, because the agendas, the focus that we as an agency, and the other agencies here represented, should have is the same focus or agenda that the Church has. You don’t have to guess, as a church, what that agenda, that focus, could be: because we’re given it. And it’s God’s agenda, God’s focus, and it’s revealed before us here this morning in God’s Word.
God’s Word is many and varied as well. I’ve picked this morning to speak from the book of the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel is a prophet and is part of that Word of God written, in this case, to a very specific and particular context. Perhaps you will bear with me just a moment while I portray the scene to which Ezekiel is speaking.
The context is this: Ezekiel is not actually present there, but he is speaking about the small insignificant nation of Judah. The last bits of Judah, centred on Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah, are being steadily chewed up by the empire, the superpower of the time, Babylon. We are talking about 6 or 7 centuries before Christ. During Ezekiel’s lifetime there had been a series of defeats both when he was in Judah itself, in 605 BC, when some of his contemporaries like Daniel (whose book is a bit later in the Bible) were taken into exile and then 598-7 BC when Ezekiel himself was carted off with the king of Judah by the king of Babylon into exile some 7-800 miles away further to the east, in what is now modern-day Iraq.
But Jerusalem held out, and stayed on in some weakened capacity for another 11 years before it finally fell during a long siege in 587 and 586 BC. All of the book of Ezekiel is written whilst he is in this exile, but the first part of it is during the time when Jerusalem, the last bastion of the old country of Judah, continued to exist. Meanwhile he is far away on the banks of the river Kebar near the Tigris and Euphrates in modern-day Iraq. And he is speaking to and for his fellow exiles who were carted off with him to distant Babylon. And in chapters 1-33, Ezekiel is telling his fellow exiles to give up hope of a return to Jerusalem – that Jerusalem is doomed. In chapter 33, verse 21, his prophecies come true and news reaches the captives in Babylon that Jerusalem has finally fallen.
But the message of Ezekiel isn’t an interesting but rather quaint ancient history lesson in some obscure part of the world. What Ezekiel is trying to do is actually provide the explanation behind the events. Why was it that things had come to this pass with this tiny country of Judah?
The message that Ezekiel brings is that it is because of the rebelliousness of the people of Judah against the Lord God – that they are being punished by being extracted and taken off into exile. The result is a physical exile, miles away from everything that they had come to know, and not just a physical one, but (he hammers home the point) actually it’s an exile from God’s very presence. And therefore it is even more devastating than a military defeat would have been.
That is the key that unlocks the importance of the book of Ezekiel for us today, many centuries on. Because the Bible makes absolutely clear that by nature all people everywhere – whatever race, whatever tongue, whatever economic status or social position they occupy – by nature are alienated, are distant, from God. And the reason for that is because we tend to live our lives without reference to Him.
So it is that by chapter 37 of Ezekiel the last hope is gone; but we are here reminded that he finds it necessary to repeat the point once more, because the first point that I want to draw our attention to that comes from this passage is the utter hopelessness of people under God’s judgment – not just the people of Judah in exile, to whom he is talking, but actually to us today in modern-day 21st Century Cambridge.
1) A Hopeless Situation
What he says to re-emphasise the point is very stark. Look at the passage. Verse 1: he is taken in this vision to a valley that is full of bones – dead bones that don’t appear to give much hope for life. And then (verse 2) he is led to and fro amongst them, as if he is searching to see if there is a spark of existence anywhere. He tells us that there are a great many bones and they are very dry: there’s no hope. In verse 3 the question comes “Son of man, can these bones live?” Our answer, if we didn’t know what came next, would be, “Of course not!” He’s examined the evidence and he’s in a valley full of very dead and very dry bones.
Move on to verse 11 where we get the identification: these bones, we are told, are the whole house of Israel. That’s through the people of Judah, the whole house of Israel. The exiles say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” They recognised the hopelessness finally. Wherever there was a false security before, there is none now; and they are forced into a stark recognition of their hopelessness. No grounds here, now, for optimism.
Down in the little stand here you’ve got some flower arrangements, and others elsewhere. These flower arrangements come because people have tended and cared for the plants and then have clipped the flowers off the plant and made a decorative arrangement. I am absolutely a disaster with flowers, and I admire those who can make them into that. But I have to say that those flowers are dead, there’s no doubt about it. Although they look very alive and attractive today, if we left them there and came back in a few days time they will have wilted and shown that today they are actually as dead as they could be although they look alive.
That’s a picture of how the Bible sees us from the time of Adam on. Right at the beginning of the Bible Adam and Eve were told, “If you do this, you will surely die.” They do this, and yet he lives hundreds of years more. How is it that he is told that he will surely die, and yet he appears to live far longer than any of us could hope to live?
Well, this is a picture of what we’re seeing here in Ezekiel as well. And in case you think it’s just Israel or Judah at that time, many centuries ago, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament reminds the church in Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey, that all Christians were once without hope and without God in the world. There’s the alienation again. All people are naturally distant from God because of our rebelliousness against Him. And so our natural condition is of hopelessness: as hopeless as Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. If that’s how God sees us, and that’s how God sees people in every part of the world, then we and every person in every part of the world needs to be put in the picture, as we used to say in the army. I was in the Tank Regiment for a while, and they would talk to me in Cockney slang and say, “We need to put you in the Rembrandt” (need to put you in the picture). That’s what part of the remit of a church has and is. That is to put us in the Rembrandt as to our status before God. And it’s not good news: it’s bad news. But we need to be certain. That is far better than to give you some false assurance that all is well when it is not. Because if we need to make clear how God sees humanity now then we may need to look for a solution. And fortunately the other remit of the Church is to point people in the direction of that solution.
2) Firm Grounds for Hope
But there are firm grounds for hope. That’s what Ezekiel gives us: not only hopelessness, mankind alienated from God, but also firm grounds for hope. Look with me at verses 4-6: ‘Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 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.’ ” ’ Ezekiel is called to a remarkable demonstration of obedience. If you’re familiar with this story (it’s been turned into all sorts of songs) you may have lost some of the surprise to come out there of what Ezekiel is actually asked to do. He is asked to prophesy, to preach, to proclaim God’s word in a cemetery!
I travel around quite a bit, speaking in different churches, and I have to say that I have come across groups that are rather like cemeteries in terms of the responsiveness to what is being said. That is probably more my fault than theirs. But if you know the prophet Ezekiel, some of the things he had been asked to do in his lifetime were quite bizarre and daft. He’d had to lie on his side for days at a time, he’d had to chop his beard and cut it up with a great big military sword and toss it into the air and burn other bits and sew other bits into the hem of his garment. He’d been asked to do some weird things, but maybe nothing quite so strange as being told to prophesy in this valley of dry bones.
Ears may have bones, and I’m told they do. But bones certainly don’t have ears. So what’s the point of Ezekiel being asked to do this? Well, verses 7 & 8 show us that the impossible begins to happen. At the word of God through the prophet Ezekiel, a miracle takes place as he prophesied. We hear the rattling as the bones come together, the tendons and flesh appear on them and the skin covers them. A miracle happens.
Mission agencies, just like Crosslinks my own, are being constantly challenged about the validity of the verbal proclamation (which is what we are talking about) of the Lord Jesus Christ, a Jew who lived 2000 years ago – and what on earth is the relevance of teaching and preaching about Him today in 21st Century Europe or South Africa or South America or wherever? God’s world around us, as I said at the beginning, seems to have so much need which seem to be pretty well all of a higher priority than the needs of Bible teaching and proclaiming the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. That seems to be a luxury that maybe churches in the rich West can afford (although our security is being shaken quite a bit at the moment), but you can’t seriously expect to go to places where there is no wealth, where the human needs are so desperate, and to take that as your number one priority. I’m told sometimes that empty stomachs don’t have ears.
Well, we’re told perhaps by some that we must fill those stomachs first, and then maybe we’ll win the chance of a hearing later. But my experience, and the Biblical experience, is that actually full stomachs are probably deafer than empty stomachs. Therefore you don’t do something (and it’s actually a bit of a deceit) to try to win people’s hearing by feeding them first.
No, I’m challenged afresh by this passage this morning to consider the importance of the apparently irrelevant verbal proclamation of the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, that’s got to be accompanied by an involvement and an engagement in the very real issues around our world. That is part and parcel of what being a Christian is. But we mustn’t lose sight of the importance of that verbal proclamation.
I’ve been talking about verbal proclamation, and I appreciate that obviously from here we’re not given a lot of the content of what that verbal proclamation is. But what I am doing is absolutely in line with what others have been saying up here all this morning: that it is the proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ, died, risen and ascended, as the Lord of all Creation. That is what we’ve got to proclaim, and it’s worth it despite it appearing to be absolutely what people don’t need at the moment.
But it is only part of the answer, because otherwise we would think, well, that’s the magic wand that’s going to change the world, so all we’ve go to do is to do that and then things will happen. But actually the last part of verse 8 tells us that there was no breath, no life in them. Verses 5 and 10 show us that the breath (or spirit – they come from the same word in the original) there was no life, no wind. And it’s repeated time and time again – the missing ingredient is the breath: “I will make breath [spirit] enter you, and you will come to life” (v. 5); “ …. I will put breath [life] into you ….”; “…. tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them” (vv. 6-8). That was the problem, there were no live bodies, they were corpses still in the desert.
And then verses 9 and 10: ‘…. “Prophesy to the breath [to the Spirit]; prophesy …” ’; ‘So I prophesied … and breath entered them; and they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army.’ Finally, in verse 14: “I will put my Spirit [my breath, my wind] in you …” So what is the missing ingredient without which they remain dead bodies? – the vultures are circling overhead once more, having gorged themselves once on these bodies all over the floor of the valley, they’re circling again for a second helping, because they’re still corpses. Well, the missing ingredient is the life.
God’s word must be proclaimed but the Holy Spirit of God is also indispensable, because without Him there is no life.
The Holy Spirit of God, though, is not something that, like perhaps with the word of God, we can’t automatically turn Him on according to our will. He is Sovereign (as Ezekiel recognises in verse 3), and Sovereign means free to do as He pleases. In the New Testament we are told the Holy Spirit blows wherever He pleases. And we, little mortals that we are, cannot turn the Holy God on on tap. “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know [whether these bones can come to life]” (v. 3).
So, I must be gossiping God’s word, that word whose main content is the Lord Jesus Christ. And I must be doing that to my non-Christian neighbour in New Malden, where I currently live. And I must also, if I’m a Christian, be involved in ensuring that that word (both the good news as well as the bad) is proclaimed in all the world. But I must also, in deference, recognise that it’s not up to me to make the conversion. I can’t do anything, only God changes people and changes hearts, and that’s what is needed. And so it is that I must be praying that God will give life to the dead. Because only if He chooses to do that and He does in His mercy choose to do it, accompanying the proclaimed word of the Lord Jesus Christ, that through that, life will come – not automatically, and I can’t say exactly who will respond. But we must show our dependence upon Him as we pray to Him.
In conclusion we’ve seen the utter hopelessness of all people everywhere of whatever nation, race, language they are – but also of whatever wealth and status they have. And that actually the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ needs to be known as much in well-to-do Cambridge, as in the township of Cape Town that I was preaching in about three or four weeks ago, where people seemed to have absolutely nothing. It's needed there, but it's needed in plush and wealthy Cambridge as well.
So we need to make sure that people know that those without God are under judgment, and that that means that they are spiritually dead (as dead as those flowers are) and that one day that reality will show itself. And that secondly that we need to point people in the direction of the only sure hope: the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we get involved in that work through the word and through the Spirit. That means through proclaiming God’s word and praying our socks off – the two ‘P’s: proclamation and prayer.
And so, a mission agency’s agenda is to ensure that God’s word is taken to God’s world; and to pray our socks off that God will give life to the dead.
That’s always been so, it’s not changed. It’s not different now that we live in the 21st Century. And it’s the same agenda that the Church should be following as well.
I will finish by asking you if that is your passion – to make the Lord Jesus Christ known to those who don’t know? And is that your passion here in Cambridge?