Restoration of God's People

We've been working through the book of Ezekiel. We are up to number five out of six. And so far, obviously, then we've dealt with four sections. We haven't been able to take the book of Ezekiel chapter by chapter. That would have taken a long time.

So we've dealt with sections and the book of Ezekiel, more than most books in the Bible, is very systematic. Huge chunks of chapters that really form a theme. And so we've been able to work effectively through all the major themes, the progression of the story of Ezekiel. And I hope and I trust it's been a blessing to you guys. So maybe just a bit of a recap.

So far, we looked at these four themes in the book of Ezekiel. Firstly, chapter one through to chapter three: the calling of Ezekiel. Then 21 chapters on judgment of Israel itself, God's people. Then a few chapters on judgment of the nations who laughed and revelled in the destruction of Jerusalem. We saw the hinge where Jerusalem itself falls and the people see that God is serious.

God has been serious all along. Jerusalem and the temple is destroyed. And today, we come to the promise of restoration, and there's five beautiful chapters in so many different ways, so many different metaphors in chapters between chapter 34 to 39. But this morning, we come into this chapter, and having celebrated on Friday International Women's Day, you may know that.

But you'll also know that in the same week we heard about the heartbreaking murder of Miss Preeti Reddy, a Sydney dentist murdered seemingly by her ex-boyfriend who committed suicide. You may also know that we're only in March, three months into the new year, and so far 11 women have been killed by partners in domestic situations. Three children as well. Also jarring about the death of Miss Reddy is that we're not talking about another low socioeconomic situation. It was not a situation with ongoing generational violence, sort of just the lifestyle of a certain demographic in our society.

We're not talking about low education levels. We're talking about educated, two highly educated people, highly paid people. The motive seems the same, however.

If I can't have you, no one else will. Someone takes life for that purpose. And I wish it wasn't so, but the church is not immune. It breaks my heart to say this, but we saw in the week before that the conviction of Catholic Cardinal George Pell and we saw his sexual violence against two innocent boys.

People think that it's a case of celibacy in the priesthood, and it's a case that's wrong within the Catholic church, but we know of happily married men convicted of the same things. Violence and abuse are an issue of power, of dominance. And in these two things, and they are massive things, I mean, the world and the media stopped to think about them and to reflect on them and to try and pick apart where it comes from and what the solutions are. Everyone is scrambling for a solution. Politicians and lobby groups, social workers, everyone is trying to find a silver bullet to educate us out of this.

To manipulate or guilt us into a newly uncovered morality. And what is the solution? Has anyone found anything? Is telling people to just stop it going to do the trick? Will TV ads run by government help?

Will another press conference from the NRL be good enough as they deal with just another sex scandal? Can a year 10 teacher really teach disinterested boys how to have soft hearts, how to control the sinful tendencies of their nature? Who wants that job? I think the history of humanity shows trying to educate people out of sin is a hopeless endeavour.

And that is what Ezekiel has been showing us up until this point. We just keep beating around the bush. And in Ezekiel, we find a sharp and painful investigation. We find a spotlight on a people. Now this is a special people.

This is a people who have been told that the living God will be their God. The holy and moral God of justice is their God. But Ezekiel shows us how morally bankrupt they are. And the same God, through the prophet Ezekiel, accuses them of things like rape, of child sacrifice, of murder, of greed, of empty worship and blasphemy.

And so as we work through Ezekiel only, but through the Bible, the question hangs in the air like it does again today this week: who can restore us? Who can save us? Who can redeem this mess that we are in? Can anyone really do anything about this? Because we realise our trouble.

We realise our brokenness. Well, let's have a look at Ezekiel 37. And we start seeing a decidedly more hopeful note from the prophet after he has put that spotlight on the people of Israel. Ezekiel 37. And we're going to read the whole chapter until verse 28.

The hand of the Lord, Ezekiel says, was upon me, and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, oh Lord God, you know.

Then he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus the Lord God says to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live. And you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded.

And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then God said to me, prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on the slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off. Therefore, prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel.

And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord. The word of the Lord came to me: son of man, take a stick and write on it for Judah and the people of Israel associated with him.

Then take another stick and write on it for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and all of the house of Israel associated with him. And join them one to another into one stick that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, will you not tell us what you mean by these? Say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I'm about to take the stick of Joseph that is in the hand of Ephraim and the tribes associated with him, and I will join with it the stick of Judah and make them one stick that they may be one in my hand.

When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone and will gather them from all around and bring them to their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all. And they shall be no longer two nations, no longer divided into two kingdoms. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things or with any of their transgressions.

But I will save them from all their backslidings in which they have sinned, and I will cleanse them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever.

And David, my servant, shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore. So far our reading. Three points in this passage which is, you know, again, of significance, full of meaning. The first thing we see is the lostness, the total depravity of Israel, the situation, I guess, that we've been building up for these 36 chapters.

The way in which the question at the start in verse three is couched: can these bones live? Ezekiel sees this valley. It's dry. It is there's bones on the ground.

It's like a big slaughter has happened. An army has died in the desert, and they haven't even had time to bury these people. They are just corpses, skeletons everywhere, everywhere. And it says they are very dry.

Very dry. Verse two. And the way it's couched, God sort of asked Ezekiel this: can these bones live? Indicates the expected answer is no, they cannot. Surely.

However, the fact that the question comes from God, and Ezekiel has been around a little while to see how God works, Ezekiel is a little bit wise, and he doesn't say no. He says, Lord, you know. Up until this point, Ezekiel has started to see and understand God's ability. But the situation still looks so bleak. And so he doesn't have any hope really to make any wild statements like, yes, of course, Lord.

Of course, these dry bones can live. He says, you know. The bones are very dry. The people are very dead. And verse 11 tells us that these bones represent the nation of Israel, God's chosen people.

And because of the judgment that they had experienced, then we saw the hinge: Jerusalem is destroyed in chapter 33. Because of their rebellion, we know that they've been taken into exile. We know that they've lost Jerusalem, that the temple of God, the sanctuary, the dwelling place of God, has been destroyed. And they say in verse 11, the people of Israel say, our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost.

We are indeed cut off. The penny has dropped, but this is exactly where God wants them to be. The realisation that they are incapable of saving themselves. All these years, they've had reliance on themselves, a reliance on idols to provide the lifestyles that they wanted. But now they have seen the hopelessness of their situation.

They have seen the hopelessness of their idolatry, the hopelessness of their self-reliance. Oh God, our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost. Why does God need them to realise this? Because if they can't realise it, and if they realise that they can't save themselves, then their salvation that is to come, if they don't realise it, then they won't realise that the salvation coming, the restoration coming, would be all of God and none of them.

They needed to know that they are hopeless before God would save them. And this highlights one of the foundational understandings of soteriology, the theology of salvation. In Calvinism or reformed theology, we have five fundamental interconnected beliefs about how we are saved. And that acronym, some of you may know, is TULIP. Number one, T stands for total depravity.

Ezekiel 37 points out exactly this idea that humanity is in sin, and in sin, humanity is dead. Not just 90% dead, 10% alive. These bones are dry. There are no sinews.

There are no skins left. There's no organs. These bones are dead. Dead. Every part of humanity, therefore, we must understand every part of our humanity, our thoughts, our emotions, our passions, our consciences, everything in us is touched by, influenced by, depraved by sin.

And why is this important for us to know? For the exact same reason as Ezekiel 37. Our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost. If salvation is to come, it can only be a salvation that is all God and none of me. And this is what we see as the passage continues.

God needs to do something altogether mind-blowing, life-changing. Ligaments and sinews start reattaching. Muscle and skin start growing over bone. Vital organs start beating with life.

But this doesn't come through self-determination. No skeleton says to the other, pull yourself up. And this is what we are to know about our salvation. First and foremostly, if we could save ourselves by choosing God, it is a self-salvation. It is a self-determined hope, and that is not the reality.

You never chose God. And I know there are Christians that will say that this is true, but you never chose God. He chose you. If you could choose God, it would be like putting a life-giving potion next to a coffin and telling the dead corpse that they need to simply reach out, take it, unscrew the top, and drink it. And we know no matter how magical and how powerful that potion is, and it doesn't matter how much you yell at the corpse, it doesn't matter how close you can move that coffin next to the potion, a corpse doesn't have any power in and of itself to reach out and drink it.

Ezekiel 37 shows God sending His spirit into the hearts of people to bring the dead back to life. And Jesus sums this up in John 6:63. This is a wonderful statement. He says, it is the Spirit who gives life. It is the Spirit who gives life.

The flesh is no help at all. The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life. At its lowest point, at its lowest point, Israel realises that all throughout their history, they have tried to remain faithful. They have tried to choose God. At times, it looked okay, and there was a good generation here and there, but for the most, they failed.

And they finally, finally realise that they need help that no one else but God can provide. Why do we have the Old Testament? In part to promise Jesus, but in part to show how useless we are without the power of God to save. So firstly, we see the total depravity of Israel, and you can say us. Secondly, we see the breath of God that gives life. There's a beautiful artistry, and all the Hebrew scholars, they just giggle like girls at this whole passage.

But there's a subtle poetry taking place here, using the word ruach, which is a Hebrew word for breath or wind or spirit. In this chapter, the three different meanings are all used. The word spirit and they're all translated in different ways. The same Hebrew word, but they're translated in the context differently. The word spirit is translated in verse one:

the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord. Verse 14, we see the spirit being translated there again: and I will put my spirit within you. My will be in you. But then the same word is translated in verses 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 as breath.

And then the word wind is used in verse 9. Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord, come from the four winds, O breath. Come from the four ruach and breathe into them. And so you can see all these nerdy Hebrew scholars just thinking this is amazing.

We're seeing a poetry taking place here, a powerful play on words. And if you start highlighting in your Bible the number of times the spirit, the wind, or the breath is used, you'll notice that it is everywhere. In other words, if you thought that this dominant theme is about skeletons and sticks, you're wrong. It's about spirit, wind, breath. Now this is also an allusion to a theologically significant part in scripture, which is Genesis 2.

Right? Where God creates Adam and Eve, and He breathes into their nostrils. It says, the breath of life. Ruach. And so this is a powerful link back to the first creation, but this is a recreation.

This is a recreation that is happening, but in the same power, in the same way. But there is something spiritual happening here. This is not a physical thing that is taking place. And we go to the New Testament for further explanation on this because the same word, the play on words—breath, wind, spirit—happens elsewhere when Jesus teaches. And he's teaching in John 3.

Again, that very significant place in theology, in New Testament theology, of being born again. Nicodemus, remember that passage? Nicodemus comes to him in the middle of the night to try and discover who this Jesus is. Is he just a really good teacher? Is he something else?

And Jesus says to him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born from above, or, again, a play on words, born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus then says, unless someone is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And again, this time, the New Testament written in Greek, not Hebrew, uses the same word pneuma to refer to wind and spirit in the same breath. But then in a similar way to Ezekiel 37, Jesus adds in verse 8 of John 3. Listen to this:

the wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the spirit. Both the words wind and spirit translated in the same sentence. And what Jesus is teaching here is the very significant passage of regeneration of the heart, which is a process, like a pre-step to salvation.

Pre-step to being born, or being saved rather, means to be born again or made alive again. Without regeneration, Jesus says, no one can see and no one can enter the kingdom of God. Unless they are made alive again, in the spirit, through the spirit, in their spirits, they will never realise their need of God. They will not have the desire for His kingdom. So how is someone born again?

Jesus says, through the wind of the spirit. Nicodemus then asked the obvious question: how can someone be born again when they are fully grown and they live physically? And the answer is, it is a spiritual new birth. Ezekiel 37 talks about a spiritual awakening for the people of Israel, a new spiritual sensitivity to God that will make them alive to God, that will make them sensitive to God.

A chapter earlier, remember in Ezekiel 36, also a famous passage in Ezekiel, God says, I will take their hearts of stone and I will give them hearts of flesh. That's regeneration. And so that is what inspired our little graphic. You can't really see it in our Ezekiel series. Hearts, stony, cold, dead hearts coming back to life again.

And this is all tied with regeneration. Now what the doctrine of regeneration does, it does two things at least, and I'm sure there's more. Two things. The first thing is it makes us realise again about that very earliest moment when we were saved. We realised we never chose our hearts to warm up to God.

We didn't think one day, I really should enter the kingdom of God. I really should desire to follow God. But there is a moment where we become aware. There's a moment where we have the tinge of guilt, and maybe we don't have this life quite right. Right.

We may not be saved at that moment, but that is a crack in the stony heart. And so this is a crucial point for us to remember. We are made alive again through the power of the spirit. But then secondly, as Christians, we also understand and we must keep remembering this: that now, as Christians, saved and redeemed, we live a morality. We read Ephesians 5 and we say, yes, I want to be a good husband.

I want to be a good wife. I want to be good children to my parents. My heart is alive again to God's kingdom. But we trip up again and again in thinking non-Christians should just understand that they should just get it, that these morals are good. And we get so angry.

We get so angry. We get so upset, and we try really hard at arguing them into it. We fight on abortion. We fight on sexual promiscuity, but the reality is, friends, no one can even see the kingdom of God unless the heart is being regenerated. I'm reading a book by author Greg Sheridan called God Is Good For You.

Has anyone heard of that book? It's fairly well known now. It's called God Is Good For You, a defence of Christianity in troubled times. And Greg Sheridan is a foreign affairs editor for The Australian. Really great journalist.

I really respect him as a journalist. But he writes this book, you know, in troubled times, to try and give people, the Australian public, a reason to protect Christianity. And he gives, you know, great examples of how good Christianity has been for society and all that, but the whole time, I'm just thinking to myself, this means nothing. Without the spirit of God, no one believes God is good for them. So someone needs to be praying that people believe that.

Wasting our time writing these books, maybe it's not a waste. But imagine if he was praying for all those people instead. And this is perhaps why we see the two stages in our passage. And I don't know if you realise this. The skeletons come alive in two stages.

It doesn't just happen in one. First, Ezekiel must prophesy to the bones. Do you notice that? He sees the bones coming together when he does this, but they are still without life. There's skin, there's muscle, there's organs, but they are just bodies.

A second stage happens in verse 9. Ezekiel must prophesy to the wind. And commentators point out that this is essentially prayer. First, you find preaching. You find the gospel coming, bringing these bones back, but then you find, then we find prayer.

Ezekiel praying to the spirit to give life. And these two things must happen together in regeneration. The gospel must be proclaimed. Jesus Christ and the message of salvation must be heard, but it is only the Holy Spirit that makes it true for them. And so we must pray first and foremostly.

And I know we pray. We say, God, please help them understand how terrible abortion is. Must pray, God, save them. Save them so that they will know. We must pray for the work of God to make alive again.

And then we come to the third and the final point, and we see that this restoration, it's amazing. It's wonderful. Verse 10 says these bones come back to life, and Ezekiel sees an exceedingly great army, it says. Verse 10. It's not just a tribe.

It's not just a family. It's not even called a nation. It is an army that stands up there in the valley. Why? Because these people are people that are being mobilised.

They are people that will be active. These are people that will be dynamic. They're not going to be like Israel anymore in their little corner of the world and hoping that people will somehow know God just through their existence. These are people that have a purpose and a mission. This is the people that Christ gives a commission to in Matthew 28.

Remember that? Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them and teaching them. And we get a fuller idea of exactly how these people will come about from the second half of chapter 37. The oracle, the prophecy of these two sticks that are joined together.

God tells Ezekiel to take one stick and write the name Judah on it. Take another stick and write the name Ephraim on it. Now you'll know perhaps that Judah is the representative of the southern kingdom. Ephraim is the representative of the 10 northern tribes of Israel that had broken away. There was Northern Israel and there was a Southern Israel.

They were two independent nations. And God says, take these two sticks, put them together in your hand and bind them up, and they become one stick in your hand. This is what will happen when new life comes to Israel. But here's the clincher. Not only will there be a new nation, but right at the end of the passage in verse 27, God says that they will be fully restored back to God again, not just to one another, but to God again.

God says, they shall be my people and I shall be their God. This is the covenant promise again, isn't it? Remember that? It's just repeated over and over again in scripture. I want to be your God.

I want you to be my people. That is a covenant agreement in the Old Testament. And it means that after this restoration, this army nation will not just be reunited with one another again in some happy village or something like that. They will be united to God again. And through this process of being born again, these people become a billboard to the saving power of God.

Look at verse 28. So much so, as a billboard to God, all nations, it says, will know that I am the Lord because of what I have done in you guys. That God can take dead bones, bring them back to life again, and unite them together in His kingdom. This is nothing less than what Jesus then says in Matthew 5, where He says to all believers, remember this: you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. I will save you so radically that you will live these extraordinarily, extraordinarily different lives, so that people see you and don't praise you, they praise God for what He's done in you. But historically, even with these promises, we know that the northern and the southern tribes never got restored. And today, there is no restored tribe of Israel. Not even after the Babylonian exile was over.

Not even after the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls and the temple itself. So does God fail? No. Because He has made a nation far greater than Israel. It is the church of God, which has filled the whole earth.

He's pointing again to a spiritual reality. And we see in the book of Acts that Paul and Barnabas and those apostles, living out that mission of Matthew 28, go out into the world and they reach the Jews that have not lived their entire lives in the nation of Judea. They're living in Athens. They're living in Ephesus.

And they go to those Jews and they say, Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and they come to faith. But they don't stop there. They go to the Gentiles and they say, listen, Gentiles, there is a great salvation, and we must explain to you this Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Paul quotes the prophet Hosea when he says in Romans 9, those who were not my people, I will call my people.

And her who was not beloved, I will call my beloved. God's kingdom is now far greater than Israel. All of mankind are able to see and be saved. And in the preaching of the gospel throughout the world through the book of Acts, we see Jews all over, but we see Gentiles coming in as well. And all of them are the exact same thing: skeletons coming back to life.

Why? How do we know this is true? Well, this is the reality that's shown to us in verse 23 of Ezekiel. This is the new nature. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and with their detestable things or with any of their transgressions, but I will save them from all their backsliding in which they have sinned, and I will cleanse them.

I will cleanse them. And then verse 24 adds, my servant David will be the king over them, and they shall have one shepherd. I will cleanse them and they will have David over them. And again, as we read this and we know our Bible history, we know that David has been long dead, hundreds of years.

What is God talking about here? Who is this David? Who is this king who will not reign for a generation? He will reign a kingdom that lasts forever. It was Jesus, wasn't it?

Jesus Himself, who says in John 10:14, I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and they know me. And I'm the good shepherd because, unlike the weak and human shepherds of Israel, the kings who came before me, I will lay down my life for these sheep to save them. Ezekiel 37 says, there will be a king, David, who will shepherd the sheep. Jesus says, I am that shepherd.

And so in Ezekiel 37, as we close, God says, I will cleanse them. And in Christ's death and resurrection, God says, you are cleansed. In Ezekiel 37, promises forgiveness and redemption in Christ. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:7, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

Our salvation, friends, is grace from beginning to end. He called us. He chose us. He made us aware of Him without any of us, without any part of us desiring it, warranting it. And so the problem with us, coming back to the problem of domestic violence and all of Australia's social issues, the problem with all of us is not a system that needs correcting.

Correcting. It is not a political thing. It is not a patriarchy that needs to be overthrown. It is sinful, bone-dry hearts that need the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to bring life. As much as humanly possible, and I'll tell this to anyone, I will tell every man to treat their wives and their girlfriends and their daughters and their coworkers with respect.

We don't have any tolerance of abuse in our church. But I know beyond a doubt that we cannot save ourselves from self-destruction. We cannot save ourselves from the self-destructive natures that we inhabit. Only an external force can do that, and He did. So our hope, friends, rests in taking hold of that rescue.

Taking, turning back from our dead. Heavenly Father, we come this morning again to acknowledge that this great salvation is great because it hasn't come from us. The salvation is great because we were so, so hopeless. So, so lost. Our well-educated, comfortable middle-class natures mean nothing. And so Lord, we thank you for this incredible vision, this incredible metaphor we see as you preached to your people Israel.

And we know, Lord, that these things were fully and finally achieved in Jesus Christ, who can breathe life into stone-cold hearts. Father, we commend our lives to you again. We pray for those we know that are so lost. And Lord, in whatever way we can, we will try and explain. We will try and encourage, and we will share the gospel with them.

But, oh Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit, will you empower our words? Holy Spirit, will you crack open those hearts of stone for our friends, for our coworkers, for our family members? Oh God, for our nation. Thank you for this restoration begun in Jesus Christ, and we look forward to that final victory, that final restoration, when your kingdom is fully established here on earth. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.