Scripture: Ezekiel 37:1-14
We all know the expression from Star Wars, “May the force be with you.”
Did you know that “Star Wars Day” is fast approaching on the calendar? Do you know the date of “Star Wars Day”? Of course you do: It’s May the Fourth—as in “May the Fourth be with you.” I know… that’s a really corny pun. But Star Wars fans apparently love it.
Anyway, in the Star Wars universe, certain people—like Luke Skywalker, like his father, Anakin, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, and like his sister, Princess Leia… they are all born with “the Force.”
And the Holy Spirit, I suppose, is at least a little bit like the Force. George Lucas grew up as a Methodist, of all things; so it stands to reason that his childhood faith played at least a small role in influencing the Star Wars universe that he created.
But… unlike with Luke, Leia, and Obi-Wan—and all these other “Jedis” who have the Force—we Christians aren’t bornwith the Holy Spirit; we are “born again” with the Holy Spirit. In my childhood of the ’70s and ’80s, it used to be commonplace for some followers of Jesus to describe themselves as “born again” Christians… I think it was because of a bestselling book called Born Again, by one of Nixon’s aides, Charles Colson, who got converted in prison after Watergate. The expression, however, comes from Jesus’ words in John chapter 3, where he tells Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”[1]
And poor Nicodemus is confused by Jesus’ words… but he shouldn’t have been. Because he should have known—among other things—what the prophet Ezekiel writes in today’s scripture.
In a moment, I’m going to describe what’s happening in today’s scripture…
And as we look at this passage, I want to show you three things about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives:
First, the Spirit gives us new life. Second, the Spirit assures us of God’s love. And third, the Spirit changes us from the inside out.
Bur first, Point Number One: the Spirit gives us new life…
I know you Clemson fans have nicknamed your stadium “Death Valley,” but it’s hardly been dead for the past 15 years. Unfortunately for fans of my alma mater, it’s mostly been a place of life… of happiness, joy, and glory… for Clemson fans.
But that’s the exact opposite of what Ezekiel describes in this strange vision. This is “Death Valley” in the truest sense. The prophet goes out of his way to emphasize that these bones are really, truly dead. The bodies have long since decomposed. All that’s left are bones—“very dry” bones, he says in verse 2—meaning they’ve been there a long time. Picked over by scavengers. Bleached in the sun. Maybe for years.
And these bones represent the people of Israel. From a human perspective, all hope is lost. The people are dead, dead, dead… And honestly, for most of the first 36 chapters of Ezekiel, God hasn’t given much reason to think they deserve anything different. They worshiped idols in the temple. They practiced child sacrifice. They were greedy, sexually immoral, and hard-hearted, stubbornly refusing to repent despite repeated warnings from prophets like Ezekiel.
So God allowed the Babylonians to conquer them. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Many of the people—including Ezekiel—were taken into exile, and many others were killed.
Israel is finished as a nation… or so it seemed.
So when God asks Ezekiel in verse 3, “Can these bones live?” the answer seems obvious: “No way.”
But Ezekiel, to his credit, leaves the question in God’s hands: “O Lord God, you know.” In other words, “If you want to give life to those who are dead, you can… but why would you want to, after all their sin?”
And of course, as with all the scriptures I’m preaching on in this series, today’s scripture is not simply about ancient Israel and its sin… It’s about us in our modern world and our sin, too!
Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2 that apart from Christ we are “dead in our trespasses”—spiritually dead—and “children of wrath.” In other words, God is justifiably angry with our sin, and we deserve judgment. We are as incapable of saving ourselves as Lazarus was in the tomb… or these dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision.
If we’re going to be saved from death and hell, it will take a miracle from almighty God. It won’t depend on anything we can do—it will depend entirely on God.
That’s exactly what we see in verses 9 and 10: God commands the breath to come, and the slain live again—an exceedingly great army. And that word for “breath” is the same Hebrew word for “spirit.”
Which means the Spirit alone gives new life. Our salvation doesn’t depend on what we do… but on what God does, as we repent and believe in his Son.
Which means, if we’re Christians at all, we are born again Christians. There’s no other kind.
Which means, unlike “the Force” in Star Wars, the Holy Spirit isn’t given to a select few. He’s given to everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus.
And unlike “the Force,” the Holy Spirit is not an impersonal power. He is personal—he is God, the third person of the Trinity—and he lives within us. That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who once dwelled in the temple now dwells in us because of what Christ accomplished on the cross.
But there is one important similarity with “the Force” of the Star Wars universe: we have power. Jesus said in Acts 1:8,“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.”
But make no mistake: while Luke Skywalker can blow up the Death Star using the Force… the power we receive from the Holy Spirit is infinitely greater.
It’s not even close.
I’ll talk more about the Spirit’s power in a few weeks on Pentecost Sunday and beyond. For now, that’s Point Number One… the Spirit gives us new life.
Point Number Two: the Spirit assures us of God’s love…
Let’s look at Romans 8, verses 15 and 16:
So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.[2]
The Spirit is not only the means by which we’re adopted by our heavenly Father into his family; he is the means throughwhich we know—really know, deep down—that the very Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is also our loving Father. We experience the Father’s love through the Spirit living within us! Because of the Spirit, we can know God not merely as “Father,” which feels very formal and even stuffy to our modern ears… But no, we know God as “Abba,” the very word by which Jesus himself knows his Father.
If you’ve been in church over the past fifty years, you’ve probably heard a preacher say something like this: the word Abba is one of the first words an Aramaic-speaking child would learn. Ah-ba. It sounds like baby talk—like Papa, Da-da, Ma-ma. And so, they say, when Jesus says “Abba,” he doesn’t mean “Father”… he means something like “Papa,” “Daddy” or “Dad”—something warmer, more intimate.
And I get that. A “dad” is someone you can wake up in the middle of the night… someone who comforts you when you’re scared, or gets you a glass of water when you’re thirsty…
Or so I’ve heard… I wouldn’t know from personal experience—when my kids were young, I trained them to wake up their mother in the middle of the night!
Still, “Dad” or “Daddy” or “Papa” feels more personal, more intimate, than “Father.”
But here’s the thing: that interpretation of Abba has fallen out of favor. While it’s true a baby would say Abba, so would an adult child. It was simply the normal word for “father.” So today, many scholars say there’s really no difference between “Abba” and “Father.”
So preachers like me aren’t supposed to make a big deal out of it.
But you know what? I don’t buy it…
Why would Paul, in Romans 8—and again in Galatians 4—use the word Abba at all? His Gentile readers didn’t speak Aramaic. Why use Jesus’ own word for the Father before giving them the Greek word they already knew?
Here’s why: it’s because through the Holy Spirit, we are invited into the same kind of relationship with the Father that Jesus himself enjoys.
The love the Father has for his Son… is the same love he has for you. He loves you exactly as much and in the same way.
Can we even wrap our minds around this?
Listen… My father died 30 years ago. He died of cancer at 62. We had about a year during which we knew that Dad’s cancer was terminal. I was 25 at the time. My relationship with Dad had been rocky up to that point, and God graciously used this last year of Dad’s life for me to appreciate the precious gift that was his life—I learned not to take him for granted. I saw him nearly every day that last year—in the hospital while he was getting chemo, at home—and eventually under hospice care. We went on vacation together twice. I was with him when he died at my parents’ home, under hospice care.
But this experience of facing the end of Dad’s life changed me, and it certainly changed my dad, too.
When I was growing up, for instance, Dad was not overly affectionate. He wasn’t demonstrative in showing love. But now, for the first time in his life, the words, “I love you” and, “I’m proud of you,” flowed freely and easily from his lips. And a part of me was like, “Who are you and what have you done with my father?” But a much larger part of me lovedhearing it. Every time he saw me—or Lisa, or anyone else in the family for that matter—he would make a point of taking us aside and telling us how much he loved us, and how proud he was of us.
One time, during that final year, he explained to me: “I love you, son. You may get tired of hearing it, but I’m not going to get tired of telling you. And I’m going to keep on telling you because it’s true.”
Do you think I got tired of hearing it? Heck, no! I could practically live off of that kind of affirmation… Experiencing my dad’s love for me, his acceptance of me, his affection for me, his pride in me… These emotions were nearly the best things ever!
And so it is with our heavenly Father… If we’re Christians, we don’t simply “know” up here, in our heads, that God loves us… the Bible says that we experience our Father’s love—the same way that Jesus did—in our hearts… we feel our Father’s love… through the Holy Spirit!
[This morning I read Psalm 34, which is all about experiencing God’s love… One of my favorite verses, in fact, is verse 8: “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.” The psalmist doesn’t say, “Oh think really hard about it and see…” “O taste and see…” He’s appealing to our personal experience of God and saying, “You will enjoy him! He will give you pleasure and happiness.” This speaks to me because, for too many years, I thought of the Christian life as one of compromise. Like… You can have happiness… or you can have Jesus… So unfortunately, Jesus asks you to sacrifice happiness in the interest of doing his will. Sorry!
That’s nonsense, of course… Your only way to find lasting happiness is in Christ… as you experience the love of God…]
That’s Point Number Two: the Spirit assures us of God’s love…
Point Number Three: The Spirit changes us from the inside out…
I want to talk about two ways he does this… First, he does so by changing our prayer life… Romans chapter 8 says that the Spirit intercedes for us… that is, the Holy Spirit prays for us… to our heavenly Father… through our own prayers… Let me repeat that: the Holy Spirit prays for us to our heavenly Father through our own prayers.
Paul writes, in Romans 8:26, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”[3]
We probably all know the painful experience of unanswered prayer—of not getting what we pray for…
But do you know whose prayers for us always get answered with a resounding “yes”? God’s prayers for us. And remember, God is one God in three persons. So the Holy Spirit is God, the Third Person of the Trinity—living within us, praying for us… to God the Father. And when God the Spirit prays to the God the Father for us, we can be sure that God the Father always gives God the Spirit what he prays for!
If that’s confusing, it’s supposed to be… As strange as it sounds, in the mystery of the Trinity, because we have the Holy Spirit living within us… you could even say—God prays to God… for us!
Once at a Bible study I was asked whether it’s okay to risk praying so-called “selfish” prayers. Or how can we know whether or not our prayers are too selfish? And this person even told me that they have a friend who’s afraid to pray for any personal need because they’re afraid they’re being selfish. They pray for other people, not for themselves—which I think is awful… and unbiblical.
And I told this parishioner, “You don’t have to worry about praying ‘selfish’ prayers. As Paul says, ‘We don’t know what God wants us to pray for.’ And Jesus teaches us to pray for our ‘daily bread,’ for things we think we need, which includes personal needs.”
So my advice to this person in the Bible study was, “Just pray for what you think you need. The Holy Spirit can sort out what you really need. One pastor said that the Holy Spirit hears the prayer “underneath the prayer”—in other words, even when we’re not praying for the right thing, the Spirit hears the deeper prayer; he hears the deeper need that we’re asking our Father to satisfy… and that prayer, the Bible says… that prayer will always gets answered with a resounding yes.
So the Spirit changes our prayer life…
How else does the Spirit change us from the inside out?
By producing within us the “fruit of the Spirit.” Galatians 5:22 and 23:
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.[4]
I’ve said plenty of times before that literally everyone in the world wants one thing more than anything else: They want to be happy… or even better, they want to possess a kind of happiness that no circumstance in their lives can take away from them—that’s precisely what joy is: a happiness that doesn’t depend on circumstances.
But look what this verse is saying: the Holy Spirit is transforming our hearts such that we will experience what everyone in the world wants more than anything else: We will experience lasting happiness… We will experience joy! The Spirit is making us joyful people. The Spirit is giving us joy… among these other wonderful virtues.
And listen, I’m well aware that I haven’t even talked about one of the most important things the Holy Spirit does—which is to give us power to fulfill the Great Commission… to make disciples of all nations… to be witnesses for Christ.
Again… I’ll say more about that in a few weeks… on Pentecost Sunday.
For now, let me just ask this question…
What does the world need right now more than anything… in order to be convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ… so that they too will repent and believe in Jesus?
I believe that the world—including our little corner of it here in Simpsonville—desperately needs to see Christians like you and me showing forth the fruit of the Spirit… They need to see that our character has been so transformed by the the Lord that our lives naturally demonstrate the virtues of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. They need to see—not just hear about—but see in our lives that being happy in Jesus is better than anything else!
When we bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, people will notice… and God will get the glory!
Notice the refrain in today’s scripture. It shows up three times, in verses 6, 13, and 14: “and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
I was at the early Wednesday morning men’s Bible study this past week. Randall Bentley said, “Y’all know the four Gospels… Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? There’s a fifth gospel. Do you know what it is? It’s you.”
And of course, he didn’t mean we’re adding something to Scripture… he meant this: for a lot of people, our lives may be the closest they will ever come to reading the Gospels.
If so, what does your life say about the gospel?
How often, for instance, do our lives say something like this: “The gospel of Jesus Christ is really good news, by all means… but not as good as that new promotion at work… or my relationship with my spouse or significant other… or success in the lives of my children… or the achievement of my personal fitness and weight-loss goals… or the accumulation of houses, cars, and other status symbols… or the recognition and praise of others… or the victory of my favorite sports team… or the election of my favorite politician—or the defeat of that politician I can’t stand… or the approval of my classmates… or getting accepted into the right college… Or safety, security, and a long life… or good health… You name it.”
Too many people “read our lives” and think the gospel is good news, but not the best news.
By contrast, when the gospel takes hold of our lives, so that it’s clear to everyone that it’s not merely good news, but the best news of all, people will stand up and take notice.
People took notice in Acts 4, for instance, when the religious leaders looked at Peter and John—ordinary, uneducated men who were now fearless in telling others about Jesus, even if it meant getting killed. The Bible says people were astonished… and everyone could see the difference Jesus made in their lives!
People took notice in Luke 19, when Zacchaeus didn’t just say he had changed—he proved it, by giving away half of his possessions, when before he was so covetous, so greedy, that he was willing to be rich, even at the expense of having no friends! So everyone could see the difference Jesus made in his life!
People took notice in Acts 19 in Ephesus—when a large number of citizens turned from their idols to the living God; and they did so so decisively that they brought out their books related to magic and the occult and burned them in public—Luke says the value was fifty thousand pieces of silver. And it disrupted the whole city, because the craftsmen who made idols realized they were losing business… because of the increasing number of people who were turning in faith to Jesus! So they saw the difference that Jesus made in people’s lives!
In other words, the gospel wasn’t just something people heard… it was something they saw.
And when they saw it, they had to reckon with it.
That’s what it looks like when God keeps his promise: “Then you shall know that I am the Lord.”
Imagine people seeing changes in our lives that they can’t explain… except by saying, “God must have done that.”
When people can’t explain us… apart from our relationship with God…?
Well…
Let’s be the kind of people who can’t be explained apart from him—and may the Holy Spirit make it so.
Amen.
[1] John 3:3 ESV
[2] Romans 8:15-16 NLT
[3] Romans 8:26 NLT
[4] Galatians 5:22-23a NLT