SPEAKER_00: Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry at Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_01: If you will, turn with me in your Bibles to Ezekiel chapter 37, and I want to talk to you about the God of Hope.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as I was looking at Ezekiel and as we're reading through Ezekiel, we started last week and we'll be reading this week.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's one of those books that's a little bit hard to read at times because it's a collection of messages and places.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's hard it you have to know the context in places.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to encourage you, as we read through the Bible chronologically, if you're not making use of the podcast, the Bible recap podcast, man, it's a great tool.
SPEAKER_01: And especially when you're in a hard book like this, it's a little harder to read.
SPEAKER_01: Uh man, it's a great payoff.
SPEAKER_01: You read those chapters and then you let her walk you through some of that and add some more context as you're reading it.
SPEAKER_01: It's really a great blessing, and I want to encourage you with that.
SPEAKER_01: This particular passage is a very famous passage of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: This is Ezekiel and the dry bones.
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, sometimes people will talk about that, they'll use that image of that, and it's just a quick sort of reference to it that we don't spend a lot of time in at times.
SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things, there's a line in one of the songs we sing sometimes about these are the days of Ezekiel and the dry bones coming to life or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know that we spend a lot of time digging into the chapter to find out what it actually means and what's going on there, because it is a deeply profound and incredible passage of Scripture here in Ezekiel chapter 37.
SPEAKER_01: So here's where we are.
SPEAKER_01: We find ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: So who is Ezekiel?
SPEAKER_01: Ezekiel was a Jewish man slated to be a prophet.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then, as we've seen with these other prophets, Jeremiah and all of that, their contemporaries, um, they've been telling uh the people, God has pronounced his judgment for your sin.
SPEAKER_01: You've been worshiping these false gods so long and had these problems for so long, and all of that, that God's going to pronounce judgment.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna use the nation of Babylon to come and to conquer you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, they actually live in what we refer to as Judah.
SPEAKER_01: If you remember, as we were reading chronologically, there was a civil war.
SPEAKER_01: The twelve tribes of Israel were split into two nations: Israel, the ten tribes, Judah, the other two tribes.
SPEAKER_01: Israel's already been conquered.
SPEAKER_01: Judah is now about to be conquered by Babylon.
SPEAKER_01: Ezekiel lived at the time of Daniel and names like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: And actually, when Babylon is attacking Israel and they're having this war with Israel, there were numbers of times that they would come and take captives from Israel and transport them to Babylon.
SPEAKER_01: Ezekiel was probably in that first group of captives, along with Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
SPEAKER_01: There's some question.
SPEAKER_01: Some people think maybe he was in the second group of captives, but he was in one of those early groups of captives.
SPEAKER_01: He is transported there.
SPEAKER_01: He can't be a priest because he can't serve in the temple and all that, so he becomes now a prophet, uh, speaking to the children of Israel, those from Judah, the southern tribes, the two tribes that are there.
SPEAKER_01: As he is there over time, there are multiple of these times where Babylon brings an army, they besiege Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: We talked about that in Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: They took off captives.
SPEAKER_01: And at one point, uh, right before this chapter, another group of captives have come and they tell Ezekiel that Jerusalem, the walls have fallen, the city has been ransacked, and the temple has been really treated horribly.
SPEAKER_01: They sacrifice to false gods, they defile the temple, and then they actually destroy much of the temple.
SPEAKER_01: And so here he is with all these people who are in this place of desolation.
SPEAKER_01: Man, we have messed up.
SPEAKER_01: We are, Israel is ruined, Jerusalem is ruined, God has left us here in judgment, and they've lost this hope.
SPEAKER_01: And so now you have this chapter, Ezekiel 37, where God steps into Ezekiel's life, and he's going to show him just what it means, how profound it is that God is the God of hope.
SPEAKER_01: So I want you to read with me here, beginning in Ezekiel 37, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by his spirit and set me down in the middle of the valley.
SPEAKER_01: It was full of bones.
SPEAKER_01: Now, most scholars think that this is a vision.
SPEAKER_01: It says the Holy is in the Holy Spirit and all that.
SPEAKER_01: Could have been a real place.
SPEAKER_01: God could do it how he wants to, but God is painting a picture for Ezekiel in this moment.
SPEAKER_01: I love the first verse of that song that sets up that Jessica's saying where it talks about words can't describe, and I don't have the words to describe how majestic God is.
SPEAKER_01: And that's true, and so God is going to give Ezekiel an image and a picture to try to convey how profoundly true it is that God is the God of hope, and we're never without hope.
SPEAKER_01: It says in verse 2, He led me all around these bones.
SPEAKER_01: There was a great many of them on the surface of the valley, and they were very dry.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is really a picture that these words aren't giving us enough to understand.
SPEAKER_01: He shows up in this valley, and it is this a vast valley, and there are piles and piles of human bones, skeletons, and it's not even remains.
SPEAKER_01: They've been there so long, and they are so dead.
SPEAKER_01: There's no flesh or anything else, and the bones are dried up and even calcifying, if you think about that.
SPEAKER_01: It is this horrible picture of the remains of death, and it's as far as Ezekiel can see, and this great many means that there were tons of them.
SPEAKER_01: So picture an ancient battlefield that's just strewn with bodies that have decayed to the point that they're just these dry bones.
SPEAKER_01: It is as desolate a picture as God can paint for Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says to Ezekiel, God says to Ezekiel, Son of Man, can these bones live?
SPEAKER_01: Now that's a great phrase.
SPEAKER_01: You've heard it related to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus was trying to explain who he was, and they had all these images that were all messed up and these prophecies they didn't understand, Jesus went and captured this name that's used at times to try to illustrate his humanity, that he was the Savior come to die on the cross for our sins.
SPEAKER_01: And it comes from a passage like this.
SPEAKER_01: So God tells Ezekiel, Son of man, you're just human, you're just a man.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to ask you this question, looking at all these dead bones.
SPEAKER_01: Son of man, can these bones live?
SPEAKER_01: That's a rhetorical question.
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's no way.
SPEAKER_01: And Ezekiel doesn't understand what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: So he says in verse 3, Lord God, only you know.
SPEAKER_01: Like this is your there's no way a human could ever say that they could live again.
SPEAKER_01: And so God says to Ezekiel, Prophesy concerning these bones and say to them, in other words, I'm gonna have you preach to these dry bones, preach to them dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord God says to these bones.
SPEAKER_01: Now, can you imagine?
SPEAKER_01: Like here you are, and God says, I want you preach to all these bones.
SPEAKER_01: Now I just want to thank you for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: It's a whole lot more fun to preach to y'all than it was for Ezekiel to preach to these dry bones.
SPEAKER_01: You guys are awesome.
SPEAKER_01: I love you.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for being who you are.
SPEAKER_01: So he says, I will cause breath to enter you the bones, and you the bones will live.
SPEAKER_01: I, God, will put tendons on you, the bones, make flesh grow on you, cover you with skin.
SPEAKER_01: I will put breath in you so that you come to life, and then you will know that I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So I prophesied as I had been commanded.
SPEAKER_01: Ezekiel says, I preached to him just like God said.
SPEAKER_01: And while I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you got to get this picture, right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, all these people make these movies of scripture and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't somebody make this movie?
SPEAKER_01: Like, I want to see this right here.
SPEAKER_01: All these bones, and the bones came together bone to bone.
SPEAKER_01: Now remember, this is not just a simple thing.
SPEAKER_01: This is this huge, massive filled with all of these dead bones, and they all start to rattle, and they all start to come together, and there's this movement, and I just picture this cacophony of sound.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's this almost like a roar where all this is going on, and all these bones are coming together, and all of a sudden, this vast number of skeletons start to stand up in the middle of this.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says, As I looked, tendons appeared on them, flesh grew, and skin covered them.
SPEAKER_01: So all of a sudden, they're people again.
SPEAKER_01: But there was no breath in them.
SPEAKER_01: They were not alive yet.
SPEAKER_01: So God said to me, Prophesy to the breath.
SPEAKER_01: Prophesy, son of man, say to the breath, This is what the Lord God says breath come from the four winds, and breathe into these slain, so that they may live.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he's saying, the four winds and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: He's making it clear, you are praying to me that I will send my breath.
SPEAKER_01: This is the same picture in the Garden of Eden when the Bible says that he formed Adam out of dust of the ground, and he breathed his breath of life to him.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's calling him to pray, in essence.
SPEAKER_01: He's called him to preach the truth of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Now he's telling him, I want you to pray that the Holy Spirit will come and breathe life into them.
SPEAKER_01: So I prophesied as he commanded, verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: The breath entered them, and they came to life and stood on their feet a vast army.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, at that point, I'm either shouting or fainting one or the other.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, look at this image of this.
SPEAKER_01: This is incredible what he has witnessed happen.
SPEAKER_01: And now God's going to explain to him why he did this picture, why he painted this picture.
SPEAKER_01: Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: This is where they are now as a nation.
SPEAKER_01: Look how they say, the nation of Israel says, Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished.
SPEAKER_01: We are cut off.
SPEAKER_01: This is a picture of hopelessness.
SPEAKER_01: These are the people of God saying, He has left us and we're done.
SPEAKER_01: We have lost hope.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what God teaches.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, prophesy to the people.
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to build in Ezekiel as a prophet and a preacher an understanding of who God is.
SPEAKER_01: So when he preaches, he can preach from a place of God is hope, and he has seen this incredible lesson that God has told him of this is how powerful I am as the God of hope.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to preach to them.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord God says.
SPEAKER_01: I, God, am going to open your graves and bring you up from them, my people, and lead you into the land of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: You will know that I am the Lord, my people, when I open your graves and I bring you up from them.
SPEAKER_01: If they think they're dead, God is going to say, I'm going to bring you back to life.
SPEAKER_01: And this is an Old Testament prophecy of the end times when God will restore the nation of Israel as his people, not the government that we see of Israel, but the people of Israel and the promises of God that he's given them, and he will restore them.
SPEAKER_01: And he is making that clear to Ezekiel, so Ezekiel can give a message of hope to his people.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, You will know that I am the Lord my people.
SPEAKER_01: When I open your graves and I bring you up from them, I will put my spirit into you, and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, I will restore you as my people to the land I have given you.
SPEAKER_01: Then you will know that I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I have spoken and I will do it.
SPEAKER_01: This is the declaration of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And he makes it clear, this is my promise, and I've just shown you I have the ability to fulfill my promise by bringing this entire army of people back to life.
SPEAKER_01: It's an incredible picture of God as the God of hope beyond all death and desolation that you can imagine.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's talk a minute about hope.
SPEAKER_01: What causes us to lose hope?
SPEAKER_01: Again, God is addressing this feeling, this sense, this emotion that the children of Israel have.
SPEAKER_01: These bones are them, and Ezekiel, look how they say, our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished.
SPEAKER_01: He is addressing this loss of hope in his people.
SPEAKER_01: What causes a loss of hope from us?
SPEAKER_01: When we serve the God of hope, how do we lose hope?
SPEAKER_01: Well, when we lose control of our circumstances, we are wired to want to be in control, and as long as we're in control, then we can see a path, we can create a path, we can convince ourselves that we can get through this.
SPEAKER_01: And when we have lost all sense of control, man, then there's a loss of hope.
SPEAKER_01: And we love to control our circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: I love my Sunday morning routine.
SPEAKER_01: I love being a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: I love waking up.
SPEAKER_01: I have I start my cup of coffee.
SPEAKER_01: This morning was great.
SPEAKER_01: I started with Cafe Dumont, brand coffee with chicory.
SPEAKER_01: If you love Jesus, you love coffee.
SPEAKER_01: We've talked about that before.
SPEAKER_01: And I have this Cafe DuMont from New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: I'm drinking that, I'm doing it, it's great.
SPEAKER_01: I'm having a great morning.
SPEAKER_01: I'm praying for y'all.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going over my sermon notes.
SPEAKER_01: I love Sunday mornings like that.
SPEAKER_01: And then I go to get ready, and this Sunday morning I lost control.
SPEAKER_01: So last night I'm making a sandwich.
SPEAKER_01: Janet makes homemade bread.
SPEAKER_01: It's fabulous, it's incredible.
SPEAKER_01: And so you have to have a big bread knife, right?
SPEAKER_01: That serrated bread knife, because you can't maul the bread.
SPEAKER_01: You got to cut through it.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm holding the loaf and I'm cutting through that.
SPEAKER_01: And I cut deep into my finger and I'm bleeding.
SPEAKER_01: Now, praise the Lord, I didn't breathe bleed on the homemade bread.
SPEAKER_01: You can live without a finger.
SPEAKER_01: You can't live without Janet's homemade bread.
SPEAKER_01: And so this morning, though, as I'm getting ready, I opened up that cut and I'm bleeding everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm here standing in bloody pants because I thought I'm not going to skip church for a cut finger, and I can't control this, and I've already been through two outfits and bled on them, so y'all are just going to have lived with the clothes I bled on this morning, right?
SPEAKER_01: Loss of control.
SPEAKER_01: You got it?
SPEAKER_01: We lose control.
SPEAKER_01: And we just, it's frustrating.
SPEAKER_01: And eventually, if it gets bad enough, we lose hope.
SPEAKER_01: Like fundamental life threats.
SPEAKER_01: Report from the doctor.
SPEAKER_01: My job was eliminated.
SPEAKER_01: My family, I can't control them and figure this out.
SPEAKER_01: And when we face those things and we're in that moment and we know we're not in control and we wonder about life, it causes us to struggle with hopelessness.
SPEAKER_01: A failure that seems total.
SPEAKER_01: Professional failure, a failure of life, whatever, and we fail in that and we think, I don't know how the future's gonna go.
SPEAKER_01: I I'm so grateful for our church in so many ways.
SPEAKER_01: Um and one of those, I had a just a professional, I don't talk about it a lot, but a professional failure I found myself in and in a ministry and wasn't any my control.
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_01: It was a runaway train, and it was awful, and it fell apart, and it was like I'm thinking I'm gonna get stained forever, and this is a failure I can't fix.
SPEAKER_01: And how am I ever gonna get to be a pastor or ministry again?
SPEAKER_01: And then y'all called and called us as a family here, and so I am grateful to be here in so many ways, but I'm grateful because God used you to create hope in a failure that I thought was gonna be hopeless.
SPEAKER_01: Isolation.
SPEAKER_01: So many times we get in a difficult circumstance and we climb down in a bunker and we just sort of hunker down, and the more we sit in that spot and churn over that and hide and are isolated, the more hopelessness sets in.
SPEAKER_01: That's why it's so important to be in church.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that COVID created that's so devastating is people think it's okay to not come to church.
SPEAKER_01: And listen, we desperately need each other.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says in the book of Proverbs, a man who isolates himself rages against all wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: How scary is that?
SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons is when we isolate ourselves, hopelessness sets in and we lose perspective.
SPEAKER_01: Hopelessness is a perspective for a Christian because we're never without hope.
SPEAKER_01: But when we think we're without hope, it's because all these things have happened and it takes our eyes off of Jesus, and we we miss the understanding of the depth of what it means that we have Jesus and hope in him.
SPEAKER_01: And so often what happens is we just need a perspective change to be rooted back into the biblical foundation of what it means to be a Christian and what's happening there.
SPEAKER_01: The circumstances may not change, but the truth doesn't change either, that in Jesus we always have hope.
SPEAKER_01: And so what is hope?
SPEAKER_01: What is biblical hope?
SPEAKER_01: In this circumstance, this is such a powerful story, here when he says, in when they when he when he recognizes what his people are struggling with, and in verse 11, when he says, listen to how the people are saying, our hope has perished.
SPEAKER_01: The word hope there is a unique word.
SPEAKER_01: In the original language in Hebrew, it means something that is going to happen, and we are looking forward to it happening.
SPEAKER_01: Because we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is happening.
SPEAKER_01: And these are the people of God, and they have the promises of God, and they believe in those promises, and yet when they walk away from Him, and now they experience judgment, they think there's no more hope, and what we believed was going to happen, we think now is not going to happen.
SPEAKER_01: And it is a deeply profound statement when he says, My people think that the promises I have given them can no longer happen, and therefore this devastating loss of hope happens.
SPEAKER_01: In the New Testament, the word is translated in the same way.
SPEAKER_01: When you go to the New Testament language, the word there means confirmation of a beautiful thing that will happen.
SPEAKER_01: That will happen.
SPEAKER_01: In America, we use the word hope.
SPEAKER_01: We've started football season, and everybody is hopeful at the beginning of the season.
SPEAKER_01: Two weeks ago, I have a nephew that works for the governor, and so he got us tickets to go to a football opening tailgate thing at the governor's mansion, and it was a picnic out in the yard, and they were calling it undefeated, undefeated, and we're like, yeah, it's great.
SPEAKER_01: You hadn't played any games yet.
SPEAKER_01: Like everybody's undefeated before we start the first game.
SPEAKER_01: And so we hope that the Razorbacks are gonna be good this year, right?
SPEAKER_01: We hope so.
SPEAKER_01: And we have reason to hope.
SPEAKER_01: The coach came from Memphis and they won last night, and they have a good program, and we think we hope he's gonna do that, but we have no idea what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: We hope they're gonna win, but we don't know.
SPEAKER_01: We know Jesus is going to come back.
SPEAKER_01: And the hope that is in the person of Jesus is a confidence that's going to happen.
SPEAKER_01: And God is saying, look, their perspective, they've lost a biblical understanding and standing on the promise of God that I will do this, and God is saying, I need to restore their hope because I am the God of hope, and I'm going to restore the promises so that they see if I can raise this army from the dead of dry bones, then I can accomplish what I've promised.
SPEAKER_01: And so what we understand in the New Testament is that that hope is realized in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He is the creator God of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: He is, as he said, the resurrection and the life.
SPEAKER_01: He brings life to pass.
SPEAKER_01: And in Jesus we always have hope, whatever the circumstances may be.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible teaches that all throughout.
SPEAKER_01: It gives us this image in Ezekiel about how powerful he is in a very tangible way.
SPEAKER_01: And then he tells us theologically in the New Testament how that is true.
SPEAKER_01: Just look at a couple of verses.
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter 15.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says this.
SPEAKER_01: Now the God of hope, in all the ways that uh Paul could have explained who God is, he refers to him as the God of hope.
SPEAKER_01: And here's his prayer for them.
SPEAKER_01: Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in Jesus, so that you may overflow with hope.
SPEAKER_01: That's who God is, and that's what he wants us to experience in life.
SPEAKER_01: Overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what does that look like, Greg?
SPEAKER_01: Well, you go to Ezekiel and you see how God works.
SPEAKER_01: And he takes this body of dry bones and he brings it back to life, and he breathes his breath of life into him.
SPEAKER_01: That's the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That's literally the power.
SPEAKER_01: Picture of the Holy Spirit breathing in life.
SPEAKER_01: And when you think, in this circumstance, how can I overflow with hope?
SPEAKER_01: It's by the power of the Holy Spirit who literally breathed life into an army of dry bones.
SPEAKER_01: He is the author of life.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the magnitude of who God is and the hope that he brings into our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the next verse.
SPEAKER_01: He makes it clear that this is through Jesus, 1 Peter chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: We know that this letter is specifically written to Christians who were persecuted and run out of Jerusalem and out of Israel, and they are living out in other places where they have run to escape the persecution that is in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: And Peter says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: He's referring to salvation.
SPEAKER_01: We are dead in our sins.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says the wages of sin is death.
SPEAKER_01: All of us have sinned and come short of God's glory.
SPEAKER_01: Why does all this mess happen to us in life?
SPEAKER_01: It happens because sin entered into the world and broke it.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus stepped out of heaven, went to the cross, and there he died in our place.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus would never have any death attached to him.
SPEAKER_01: The wages of sin is death for us, but Jesus never sinned, so he has no bill to pay.
SPEAKER_01: And he went to the cross, and there he died a death that had no judgment attached to it.
SPEAKER_01: He rose again, conquering death and sin, so I can bring my death to him, and I can place my faith in him, and I can place my trust in him and ask for his forgiveness and give him my life, and he takes my death and pays the price for it on the cross, and he gives me his life in return.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we say born again.
SPEAKER_01: We are born again.
SPEAKER_01: We are made new in our lives and we are saved.
SPEAKER_01: We are literally resurrected.
SPEAKER_01: When we baptize folks, we say you are buried with him in the likeness of his death, and what?
SPEAKER_01: You are raised in the likeness of his resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: We are made new.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, listen, when you know Christ because of his mercy and saving us and created salvation, you are born again and you are given a living hope.
SPEAKER_01: Your life can never be taken from you because even when it ends in this life, it only begins for an eternity with him in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And we can have confidence in that because if Jesus can conquer death and sin and was raised from the dead, there's no other circumstance that he can't defeat.
SPEAKER_01: And then in Colossians 1, it just makes it as clear as you can get.
SPEAKER_01: God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, and that's the salvation he's referring to, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
SPEAKER_01: And in Jesus we always have hope.
SPEAKER_01: Let me show you just three things out of this picture here that God is trying to convey to us through Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_01: There is always hope.
SPEAKER_01: Even in desolation, there is always hope.
SPEAKER_01: He puts them in the most horrific picture of desolation that he can create.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Listen, Ezekiel, you see all of this, and my people think there's no hope.
SPEAKER_01: Their hope has perished.
SPEAKER_01: And when he brings them to life, he says, I want you to know I can do this with my people too.
SPEAKER_01: I am going to do this with my people too.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: They're in that desolate place because of their sin they have not yet repented of.
SPEAKER_01: And they're in judgment because of that sin, and yet God is still not done with them, and there is still hope, and there is still hope of forgiveness, and there is still hope for the future, and the promises of God that apply to them eternally are still in play, and God says, I will make, I will do this.
SPEAKER_01: This is the declaration of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: There is always hope.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, Jesus is the creator and the resurrected Savior, and He is using this picture to tell us why we know we never lose hope.
SPEAKER_01: Because if He is the God of resurrection, He is the God over everything.
SPEAKER_01: You think about this for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: God's up in heaven, and He's looking at His people, and He's saying, My people are without hope.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter that in Jeremiah He's already told them, I have a plan for you, a plan for a future and a hope.
SPEAKER_01: He's tried to repeat that.
SPEAKER_01: One day I will restore.
SPEAKER_01: This ultimately, at one level, is that promise of a renewed and restored Israel.
SPEAKER_01: But he's given that message already.
SPEAKER_01: He gave it through Jeremiah, he gave it through Micah.
SPEAKER_01: We've made reference to it a couple of times.
SPEAKER_01: It's all in here.
SPEAKER_01: The message is there, but as people have lost the message, that's why their hope has perished.
SPEAKER_01: And so God is in heaven and he's thinking, how do I illustrate to them that I'm the God of hope?
SPEAKER_01: And there's still hope.
SPEAKER_01: Of all the ways God could have painted a picture, of all the settings that he could have put Ezekiel in, of all the movies that he could have created for Ezekiel to give him this image, he chose the setting and image of resurrection to create the picture of hope.
SPEAKER_01: Of all the ways he could have explained this, he took him and he showed him dead people brought back to life.
SPEAKER_01: He is trying to create an understanding in Ezekiel and through Ezekiel to us, listen, if I conquer death and sin, I have got you and where you are.
SPEAKER_01: I've got it.
SPEAKER_01: There's no greater power than resurrection power.
SPEAKER_01: There's no greater moment in human history than when Jesus rose from the dead conquering death and sin.
SPEAKER_01: In eternity, when we get to heaven, what we're going to see, and it's going to be very clear to us, is a resurrected Savior.
SPEAKER_01: As we are worshiping Jesus for being victorious and being the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and being the name, the only name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.
SPEAKER_01: When we are celebrating the name of Jesus as the greatest name that is above all other names, when we are celebrating that, it will be clear to us infinitely and permanently and consistently and always that we are worshiping a resurrected Savior who conquered death and sin.
SPEAKER_01: Again, I've shared it with you before.
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite verses in all of Scripture is in John chapter 1, when he begins to talk to John, and Jesus appears to John, and John falls like at his face.
SPEAKER_01: He can't even see this incredible image of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And when Jesus picks him up and speaks to him to tell him, listen, I am the Jesus that you know, John, what does he say to him?
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say, I created the universe.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say I'm omnipotent and all that.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't tell John, look at all these angels I'm in charge of.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say any of that.
SPEAKER_01: What he tells John is this I am the Alpha and the Omega.
SPEAKER_01: I was once dead and now I am alive and I hold the keys to death and hell.
SPEAKER_01: You write down what I'm about to tell you because I'm telling you, as the Alpha and the Omega, the once who was dead and now is alive and the resurrected Savior.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the resurrected Savior, and it is the greatest power that he has, and the greatest exercise of his power for all of us is to conquer death and sin and offer us salvation through his resurrection so we can go from death to life.
SPEAKER_01: We can step out of the judgment that we're going to spend an eternity in hell and step into a relationship with him when we are forgiven and he is our savior, and we know for a fact that whatever happens to us in this life, Jesus is going to walk with us through it all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Every promise he's ever made was sealed in his blood on the cross, and you know that you know that you know you're gonna spend an eternity in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the Savior, and so when he's trying to tell him, I am the God of hope, and I can bring hope in whatever circumstance my people find themselves, the best way to illustrate himself as the God of hope is to show he's the God of resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: He's the God of resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: And as we are walking through life, the most important fact that we will ever cling to is that we serve a risen Savior.
SPEAKER_01: We serve a risen Savior.
SPEAKER_01: In 1 Corinthians, uh when Paul is writing to the church there, and he writes and opens his letter and he goes, Hey man, I just want y'all to know what happened.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Listen, we were under persecution and we were the point of death, and we'd given up all hope and we just knew we were going to die for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Listen, that was okay with us because we serve the God who raises from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says, through your prayers, God miraculously saved us this time, but it was okay with us.
SPEAKER_01: It was fine to go to the cross and die for him because we serve the God who raises from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: There is no greater truth or power that we have than we know the risen Savior who conquered death and sin.
SPEAKER_01: And in our minds, when we take our minds off of our circumstances and we change that perspective of hopelessness by clinging to the Jesus who was raised from the dead, it restores our understanding that our hope has not perished and it was not lost.
SPEAKER_01: It was not lost.
SPEAKER_01: So whatever circumstance we're in, whatever struggle we're in, the most important step of faith as we come back to this picture, just like God encouraged his people to understand and told Ezekiel, you tell them this and you preach with this belief in your heart, it is that God raises from the dead, and we serve a risen Savior.
SPEAKER_01: And then we know whatever this is, it ain't gonna take away my hope in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And truth number three.
SPEAKER_01: What this means is, since our hope is based in resurrection, that means it is far beyond our circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: It is supernatural, it is eternal, it is powerful, it is powerful beyond our belief.
SPEAKER_01: It is powerful enough to raise our spirits to hope regardless of the circumstances, and it turns our eyes to heaven to know that whatever goes on doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is still in charge, and I'm gonna get to be with him.
SPEAKER_01: It's what Paul said when he wrote Philippians, the letter to the churches in Philippians in chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: He's in prison.
SPEAKER_01: He knows he's probably headed to be, you know, put to death in Rome or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: And in the middle of that, he says, Listen, it's okay, man.
SPEAKER_01: I love Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: To live is Christ and to die is gain, it's all the same.
SPEAKER_01: And then he said, I'm hard pressed.
SPEAKER_01: I'm really struggling with this, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Listen, man, I can see heaven from here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm hard pressed.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But you people need me to encourage and serve you.
SPEAKER_01: And there's Jesus in that serving, but there's Jesus in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I'm good with both.
SPEAKER_01: It's great.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's all rooted in Jesus and the supernatural truth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when we talk about hope, often what we think is, our hope is that God is going to hurry up and remove these circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: I had a guy tell me one time, man, when you're in the middle of a struggle and you're in a lesson, man, the best prayer you can pray is, God make me a fast learner so this will end.
SPEAKER_01: Let me graduate from this class.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be here anymore.
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes the circumstances don't change.
SPEAKER_01: Or sometimes they don't change the way we think they ought to.
SPEAKER_01: Or sometimes they don't change as fast as we want them to.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.
SPEAKER_01: You don't ever get away from the fact that we live in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_01: Like we live in a world where stuff happens and it's bad and there's a struggle in it, and it's all crazy, and we're surrounded by crazy people.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We're surrounded by, even Christians, we're surrounded by people that, you know, like, why did you do that?
SPEAKER_01: You're supposed to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're all in this journey.
SPEAKER_01: We get saved, and God begins this process of transforming us to be like Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But listen, it's two steps forward, one step back.
SPEAKER_01: We're working back and forth.
SPEAKER_01: It's not an elegant journey.
SPEAKER_01: We make mistakes, and God uses those to teach us, and we're working through that, and none of us are perfect.
SPEAKER_01: And this is, I told the Chaffee campus this morning, I hate, there's some things that I'm pretty easygoing, but some things are just pet peeves.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you invite somebody to church and they go, Well, that church is just filled with hypocrites?
SPEAKER_01: Like we hear that all the time, right?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, one of two things are happening.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, you're just not honest.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's not true, and you don't want to go to church.
SPEAKER_01: Just tell me you don't want to go to church.
SPEAKER_01: Don't make up some stupid lie about church that's not true.
SPEAKER_01: You just say you don't want to come to church.
SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I invited you.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to go.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to go, just say I don't really want to go.
SPEAKER_01: Fine.
SPEAKER_01: Don't make up lies about my church, because that's not true.
SPEAKER_01: Or they don't know what church is, and they think that because they assume that church people are perfect, and if a church person makes a mistake, they act like somehow that's hypocritical.
SPEAKER_01: That's not true.
SPEAKER_01: What is a church?
SPEAKER_01: A church is made up of people who confess their sin before God and trusted in his grace to save us because we literally couldn't fix ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: So we gave our lives to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And then we acknowledge that we're in this journey of, even after I get saved, I still look a lot more like Lost Greg than I do like Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm in this journey of him putting things out and taking things in, and that's not an elegant journey.
SPEAKER_01: And so when somebody at church makes a mistake or does something, it doesn't mean they're not Christian, it doesn't mean they don't love Jesus, and it doesn't mean they're a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_01: It just means they still got a lot to learn.
SPEAKER_01: Well, welcome to the family.
SPEAKER_01: We're all there.
SPEAKER_01: We all have things to learn.
SPEAKER_01: And we're here.
SPEAKER_01: And then you go back to make up these excuses that are not true.
SPEAKER_01: Satan made up that lie about hypocrites and all that.
SPEAKER_01: That's not true.
SPEAKER_01: Because he knows when we're in isolation, we tend to get hopeless.
SPEAKER_01: And we sure aren't working from a perspective that all of life is defined by the eternal supernatural salvation of Jesus, and no one can ever pluck me from his hand, and no circumstance is so great that God can't use it for our good and his glory.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the Bible says in Romans 8, all things work together for good to those who love God, called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_01: All things, all things.
SPEAKER_01: In all those things, how do we know that?
SPEAKER_01: It's because we have hope in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And that nothing can touch us or impact us or take away our relationship with him or his walking through these journeys with us.
SPEAKER_01: We ask this question: this is not fair.
SPEAKER_01: Why does God allow that to happen?
SPEAKER_01: All that.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, God didn't allow us to happen.
SPEAKER_01: God made the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: We broke it.
SPEAKER_01: It's our fault.
SPEAKER_01: And God stepped into the middle of it despite our sin and rejection of him.
SPEAKER_01: And he brought hope and he brought forgiveness and he brought salvation and he brought himself and put himself in our life so that we can be filled, as it says in Romans 15.
SPEAKER_01: We can overflow with hope and we can have all joy and all peace that comes through Jesus, regardless of what we're going through.
SPEAKER_01: He steps in the middle of this and goes through all of this with us, knowing that whatever it is can never separate me from the love of God which is found in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And so I always have hope.
SPEAKER_01: We don't spend enough time thinking about eternity.
SPEAKER_01: We don't spend enough time developing a picture of salvation and Jesus that we could say, like Paul said in Philippians 1, I'm hard pressed between the two.
SPEAKER_01: I've told you this before.
SPEAKER_01: Pastor where I grew up used to tell us all the time listen, if I ever get sick, don't y'all dare waste your time praying to keep me out of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: You need to spend that time and energy praying for more people to go.
SPEAKER_01: And as church people, we all don't mean to, but we spend more time praying for people to be healed than we do praying for people to be saved.
SPEAKER_01: Because I think we lose sight of the perspective that heaven is real.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus saved us for more than just an easier life here.
SPEAKER_01: And in those circumstances, when they don't change and we're going through that journey, there are people around us going through that journey.
SPEAKER_01: And when God steps in and we show that there is hope, regardless of what we're going through, there is no greater testimony of the hope that is in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And he allows these things because he steps in with hope.
SPEAKER_01: And we give the message of hope to people who need it.
SPEAKER_01: And this message, maybe some of you have been through that journey.
SPEAKER_01: You're just coming out of it, or you may be about to go in it, and God used this for you.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have family that's going through this or friends that are going through this, and God had you here with this to equip you to be that encouragement of hope to them.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, I pray that God seals this picture of resurrected armies from dry bones to give us the picture of God as hope.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to bow your heads as we clothe.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, if you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, man, God painted as beautiful a picture of the power of resurrection and the meaning of hope in this passage of Scripture than any of us could ever bring.
SPEAKER_01: If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, in a moment I'm going to pray, or people are going to stand and sing a testimony that they believe the truth of what we have read this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to accept Christ as your Savior, you come.
SPEAKER_01: You come.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, if you're in a deal and you want somebody to pray with you, you can come here and pray with us at the aisle.
SPEAKER_01: I'll be out in the lobby after it's over.
SPEAKER_01: I'll be glad to pray with you out there.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, we don't isolate.
SPEAKER_01: We're here to go through this together and encourage one another.
SPEAKER_01: But if you've never been saved, I want to invite you to give your life to Jesus and be born again by the God of resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we love you.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you.
SPEAKER_01: We come to you now grateful for you as the God of hope.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray if there's folks that need to be encouraged, they'll be encouraged.
SPEAKER_01: And if there are folks that need to be saved, they'll be saved.
SPEAKER_00: The saving name of Jesus, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody said, We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.