Can these bones live? A question asked of God to Ezekiel in a great valley which represented all of Israel (Ezek 37) What great valley stretches our before us in our day? Christendom lies motionless in the valley of death, mere bones glistening in the sun. Yet in Ezekiel, these bones speak. There is enough life in them to cry out to God, according to God. “Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.” Oh to God that Christendom would have enough life left in them to cry out the very same thing.
H.Bonar, in the 19th century made four basic observations as it applied in his day from Ezekiel 37. 1. Our creed may be sound and yet we may not be Christians. 2. Our religion may be externally complete and yet we may not be Christians. 3. Our good works may be numerous and praiseworthy, yet we may not be Christians. 4. Our lives may be exemplary but we may not be Christians. ” By religion I mean everything that pertains to the private or public worship and service of God;our praises, our prayers, our sanctuary services, our family worship. What are all these without the inward breath? What is routine without life? Mechanical religion may be all right for the gods of Greece and Rome, but not for the living and true God…..Your sanctuary attendance may be regular and reverent, but what if there is no breath in it? Will God accept that?”
Men have built up great armies in our day. Vast denominations and smaller little kingdoms. They all shelter under the banner of God. Yet, without the breath of life from God these armies are but dry bones. Some may be better put together than others. Bone may have come to bone. Some may have flesh and sinews, some may even be covered in skin and have taken on the appearance of having life, but without the breath of God they are all equally dead. Men boast about how well put together their “followers,” are yet it is God alone who breathes life. And without this life we are dead and buried in the valley just as sure as the dead are buried in the cemetery.
So, can these dry bones speak? According to God they can. They can cry out. And if they cry out then God has some promises for them. He says that He will bring them out of their graves. He will do that by breathing life into them. He will cause them to rise up, just as surely as Lazarus rose up from his own grave. He will put His Spirit in them and they shall live. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is life itself and without this life, without this breath, we can do nothing. We can surely go about our routines and our dry works and be no different than the dry bones in Ezekiel’s valley. Yet, if we want to rise up in the power of God, a radiant army who marches upon its knees, we must have the breath of God in us. The valley of dry bones that is today’s Christendom desperately needs the breath of life.
Trouble came knocking at my door And a voice inside said don't let it in I opened it And it knocked me to the floor I got backup on my feet And it knocked me down once more
Chorus Jesus pick me up so I can stand again Jesus pick me up, I so dearly need you friend You are my Lord of Lords and King of Kings The man of many sorrows If you do not pick me up today Then there will be no tomorrows
I came to a bridge over troubled waters But the bridge was swept away I went down into the waters And in the darkness I heard Him say I will be with you as you pass on through And suddenly the waters withdrew
Then I came upon a mountain high To scale it I would surely die I asked the Lord to remove this thing So that I could rejoice and praise my King No My son, ask of me to give you power To climb every mountain and to scale every tower
Bridge
I'll be with you as you pass on through I'll be with you in all that you do.
Trouble came knocking at my door And a voice inside said don't let it in I opened it And it knocked me to the floor I got backup on my feet And it knocked me down once more
Chorus Jesus pick me up so I can stand again Jesus pick me up, I so dearly need you friend You are my Lord of Lords and King of Kings The man of many sorrows If you do not pick me up today Then there will be no tomorrows
I came to a bridge over troubled waters But the bridge was swept away I went down into the waters And in the darkness I heard Him say I will be with you as you pass on through And suddenly the waters withdrew
Then I came upon a mountain high To scale it I would surely die I asked the Lord to remove this thing So that I could rejoice and praise my King No My son, ask of me to give you power To climb every mountain and to scale every tower
Bridge
I'll be with you as you pass on through I'll be with you in all that you do.
By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope makes us not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.(Rom 5:2-5)
The opening verse to this chapter reads “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. And through Him we can rejoice in hope and the glory of God. Yet we are told that we do not just glory in God, we glory in our tribulations. Imagine that, glorying in our trials and our tribulations, in our sufferings. You will not hear that preached in Charismatic circles. Like Job’s friends they would accuse a suffering saint of sin, or lack of faith. They have tried to turn faith into a weapon that destroys and nullifies suffering and trials and tribulations. Yet faith is what gives us access to grace. By trusting in God we glory in His unmerited favor. By trusting in His Son, the Lord Jesus and His work on Calvary we enter into the glory.
In order to flesh out this blessed hope, we have to learn from suffering and tribulations. We learn patience and trust which leads to hope. Therefore tribulations is the birthplace of hope. By patiently enduring our cross, we begin to see how much the flesh dominates us. As we stand there in the fire, the flesh begins to burn away. And yes, if one were to peer into your trials and tribulations they would see the Son of man standing there with you. And this hope that is forged in the fires of trial and tribulation causes us to be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. We are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for we know it is the power of God unto salvation.
Those who patiently endure and overcome shall stand in that day, unashamed of our Lord, for He has walked with us, every step of the way, through the high mountain passes and in the depths of the valleys. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts for our Lord for He has been our companion through it all. He has stuck closer than a brother. He has been so faithful to us and therefore we could never deny Him. This is our strength. This is our glory, the glory of the God that dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our closest companion, the lover of our souls and the one who has never left us not forsaken us. This knowledge, lived out in our lives, is the hope and the glory.
The sands of time are running low
Yet the river still continues to flow
It flows for you and it flows for me
And it still flows from Calvary
His Blood cries out and still it saves
It pulls men out from stormy waves
His Blood shall never ever fail
In the shadow of the Almighty we shall prevail
Who shall stand in the final hour
Who is held by His great power
Who shall rise above the flood
Those who are covered by His precious Blood
His Blood is still a mystery
It echos down through history
Those who are dying they fail to see
That victory was nailed to a Bloody tree
And from that tree it flows still yet
For you and for me and for our debt
We surely owed what we could not pay
Yet our sins were surely washed away
Washed and delivered I know not why
Yet the Son of God He came to die
And on that cross He took our place
Our sins were forgiven, were surely erased
And now I stand high above the flood
Washed and redeemed and covered by His Blood
Who shall take me out of His hand
There is none there is none for In Him I stand.
Thank you Jesus, for you died for me
Thank you Jesus for you set me free
Thank God in heaven that He sent His only Son
Thank you Father in heaven for victory won.
Luk 6:32 For if you love them which love you, what credit is that to you? For sinners also love those that love them.
It is said about free speech that it only really counts when you tolerate speech that is extremely offensive to you. That is actual free speech. If you only tolerated speech that you like, then you are actually devoid of toleration and you are a totalitarian. You are headed down the road of dictatorship, the same road that Mussolini went down, the same road that Hitler and Stalin went down, the same road that every tyrant went down and all of them ended in pure hatred and destruction of whole groups of people. When I first came to America, it was liberals who defended neo-nazi groups and the argument went something like this “I hate what they are saying, but I will die defending their rights to say it.” It was liberals who had the saying “live and let live,” meaning let everyone do their own thing, lets not compel anyone to be something they are not. You do not have to major in political science to know just how much that has turned around in 30 years, the former guardians of free speech have now traded places with those who would have suppressed it. So, only tolerating speech you like is no toleration at all but rather it is the opposite, it is fascism.
For if you love them which love you, what credit is that to you? For sinners also love those that love them(Luk 6:32) Jesus is saying, in effect, “so you love those who love you, big deal, everybody does that.” True love, Jesus love, is measured by how much we love those who do not love us. How do we react to those who do not like us? To those who hate us? To those who reject us. To those who cheat us and harm us? Are we just like the world or do we have something supernatural inside of us, Jesus, that has changed our very disposition? Too often brothers and sisters we are just like the world, it should not be so. The world only tolerates those who agree with them, they do not have love they have hate. How about us? Do we love even when we are not tolerated? Do we render evil for evil? Imagine if God the Father had rendered evil for evil? We would all be dead and rotting in an eternity separated from our Creator.
If we can recognize the truth of what free speech means, then surely we must recognize the truth of what true love is? It blossoms not on decadent beds of roses that we ourselves made, no, it blossoms in the fire and the dungeon and the heat of hatred. True love finds its expression when it is reviled. True love finds its expression in the arms of forgiveness. It is cradled in a cot of mercy. When it is attacked it has the opportunity to render its attacker of their true power, the power they have over you. True love stands alone atop the highest mountain for all to see. It is unsullied by the rage of human emotions and is grounded in the will of man surrendered to the heart of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. As the days darken, true love, the love of God, will be assaulted on every side and if we respond correctly then God shall be filled glorified around the world “for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.” Let us glorify God in this manner.
Many evangelical churches and most pentecostal or charismatic churches you go into today, raise their hands in worship. Like everything else in Christendom, there can be the mechanical act of doing something because it is supposed to be done, or there can be the true living dynamic response to the very presence of the Living God. Every single aspect of the natural worship of Christianity can be reduced to some dusty empty ritual that has long since replaced the living reality of God’s manifest presence. It is interesting when you watch secular concerts that you see arms aloft all over the stadium or concert hall, swaying to the rhythm of the song. Good music entertains us and can move us, Gods manifest presence invades every part of who we are and never leaves us the same. It creates in us a thirst that can never be quenched by anything other than His presence. It tears down and builds up, it raises us up from the dark valley floor to the lofty heights of His glory.
There is the presence of God to be found in glorious, enthusiastic and energetic worship, the kind of worship that lifts your spirit. It can lift up the head and invigorate the heart and fill you full of joy and you leave strengthened. This is good worship. Yet there is another kind of presence of God in worship, the kind of presence that there seems to be such a famine of throughout the land. The first kind of presence we spoke of lifts your heart, the second kind of presence invades every part of who you are. It falls from heaven like a heavy dew, heads are lowered and hands are raised. All becomes quiet, one barely breathes as the Spirit of God slowly penetrates our very being and the ground upon which we stand becomes Holy ground. It saturates our very DNA.
The first kind of presence uplifts us, the second changes us fundamentally. As living waters pour into us then it rises up like a great river that is so full that it overflows its banks. The banks themselves begin to crumble and fall into this river of pure life as it swells up and floods every part of who we are. The landscape is being changed by this flood, the very topography of our lives is being altered by its powers and everything that is not securely rooted to Godly foundations are simply swept away. Changed forever. And when the flood recedes we are left with a glorious afterglow. As the deer pants for the water-brooks, I wonder, do our hearts pant after this kind of encounter.
The Lord Himself does not need professional worship teams. He does not need people to encourage us to stand up, jump up and down and raise our hands. In the Welsh revival two young women singing either acapella or simply backed by a piano typically sang “Here is love, vast as the ocean.” And there was love, in the very midst of them, vast as the ocean, flooding the hearts and minds of all who attended. Brothers and sisters, in all our modernity, what have we lost? In the program of churches and the professional class of worshiper leaders and pastors we have lost the simplicity of it all. And in the losing of it we now have to entertain the people. Spirit led worship is exactly that, it is Spirit led.
In work we have a routine. In life we have a routine. Prisoners in prison have a routine. Oftentimes we are slaves to the routine, it is what gets us through life. Yet, there is nothing routine about the Holy Spirit of the Living God. He is dynamic and you can never know what way the wind will blow next. Have we sold our souls for a routine? Routine in the home, routine at work, routine at church. Routine people do not change the world. Routine people do not do wage war on the battle-fields of life. The Spirit of God is dynamic and those filled with His “dynamis,” change the environment around them because the environment inside them has been filled to capacity and is overflowing its banks. Lord fill us again to overflowing with the kind of presence that invades every part of who we are.
Now in the days of Gideon, a time of judgement, the Midianites and the Amikalites oppressed the children of God. No matter what the Israelites planted, they never got to see the fruits of their labor. The Midianites and the Amakilites would come in like locusts and devour and take everything. And so, Israel was greatly impoverished. Can I suggest that we face the same landscape and problems in Christendom today? We are impoverished spiritually and financially and no matter the work done, it is consumed by the idols and the enemy which seems to be all around us like locusts.
Now, in their distress, the children of Israel cried out to God for a deliverer, and the Lord sent them a prophet. The prophet reminded them of God’s faithfulness and how they had rejected Him (Jud 6:8-10) Now, at God’s appointed time, when all is desolate, He speaks to Gideon who was threshing wheat in the wine-press in an effort to hide his activities from their oppressors.(6-11) “The Lord is with you mighty man of valor.” You see how God is calling what is not as it would be. Hiding from your enemies in a defunct wine=press in an effort to get some bread is hardly the stuff of valor. Brothers and sisters, I want you to see Gideon as a type of the Remnant God is in the process of raising up right now. Do not focus on the 300 as of yet, for that is still a ways off. We as people are not ready yet. Listen to what Gideon says to the Lord.
Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye that sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves-blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do ( see Philippians 2:13) (Tozer)
Have you ever been broken down? Have you ever been totally defeated in this life? It could have been before coming to Christ, it could have happened to you after coming to Christ, but whenever it happened it left you for dead, it left you weeping. It robbed you of your song in the night, it silenced your praise, it left you hopeless for a time. It left you feeling that there was no way ahead, that everything that you ever had was lost? Inside you seemed to feel nothing.
“Our Saviors love would render the deepest ocean to but a single tear from the Masters eye. The sun that blazes brilliantly in the sky, but a spark compared to our Lords burning passion. The universe and all others combined, smaller than the smallest chamber of His heart. This is the God we serve; this is the Jesus of the Gospels; this is Jesus, God amongst us.” Read the rest of this entry »
You have gathered here today in defiance of darkness and tyranny. You have come here to fight as free men and free men you are, for it is I that gave you that very freedom. So you see with your eyes that you are few and they are many, you see that you are vastly outnumbered. Will you fight today? Read the rest of this entry »
In the Old Testament, God poured out fire from heaven and we were touched by His presence. Two thousand years ago, He sent an all consuming fire to walk the earth. And although our Lord Jesus returned to His rightful place at the right hand of our Heavenly Father, the fire of our life came and dwelt in the very midst of our new hearts Read the rest of this entry »
A Call To The Remnant 