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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

From Dry Bones to an Army: How to Thrive in 2021

Start by saying Happy New Year to everyone.

And as relieved as everyone is that the last year is over, this 1 has already started out to be kind of a doozy itself.

But God is working us through some things, and I think it's more than ever a time of preparation for God's church.

I think that is what is, what really is being impressed upon the people of God, that we are to be preparing for what is coming upon the earth, because there are a lot who will be shaken out as these movements continue to happen.

A scripture reading is taken from Ezekiel 37, verses 11 and 12.

Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

Behold, they say our bones are dried and our hope is lost.

Verse 12 says, Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel.

O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled From Dry Bones to an Army.

From Dry Bones to an Army, How to Thrive in 2021.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

Lord, I ask for an extra outpouring of your Holy Spirit right now.

I pray in a special way right now, Lord, for angels that excel in wisdom and strength to be given charge over this place.

Bind the enemy, remove the distractions, break the yokes that are upon your people.

Father God, as your word is preached, our hearts and minds would be fertile soil for the truth of your word.

Now make me once again, Lord, a simple nail upon the wall.

Upon that nail, Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard now, Father.

Instead, Lord, allow us to hear a word from the throne room of grace.

We're going to come from the book of Ezekiel today 1 of the most interesting books in the Bible in my opinion 1 are to describe an author has a book I'm trying to remember the exact title, I was doing the research, basically calling Ezekiel the book of the weird and the absurd.

Here's a man that doesn't give, he's not like Jesus that gives a parable, he acts it out.

He goes and lies down next to ants' nests and does all kinds of strange things in this book.

He doesn't have normal prophecies like four-faced beasts appear and then wheels inside of wheels.

To this day, the people in Area 57 looking for aliens still say that Ezekiel saw a spaceship.

It is an interesting book, but it is a powerful and timely book.

Ezekiel 1 sets the stage and I'm gonna give you some backdrop before we get into the part of the book that I really wanna highlight so that we get to know Ezekiel a little bit better.

In Ezekiel 1, in verse 1 it says, now it came to pass in the 13th year, in the fourth month, and the fifth day of the month.

This gives us, most scholars believe, Ezekiel's age.

He says, as I was among the captives by the river Kebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.

In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of King Jehoiakim's captivity.

So you would remember that in the second wave, I'll show you a diagram of this in a second, in the second wave of captives being taken from Judah, Jehoiakim the king, after only reigning for 3 months, is taken captive.

And he does not like Daniel, who goes probably around 10 years earlier.

He goes when they're looking for people to work.

And so some believe that Ezekiel, actually, the river that he's gonna, this river Kibar that he mentions, is 1 of the canals and tributaries designed by the Babylonians outside the wall of the city where they grew in a very fertile place, grew their food.

And Ezekiel, who was a priest in the house of God, is now lowered to the level probably of 1 who simply lives to dig and maintain canals.

But as he is there, don't miss this church, as he is there working by the canal, the Bible says that the heavens open up.

And while Ezekiel is doing the monotonous, demeaning work of a slave, he sees a vision of God.

He gives us the timing there, and in verse 3, He says, the word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, the land of the Chaldeans by the river Kibar, and the hand, look at this last part here, and the hand of the Lord was there upon him.

See, some of you think that you have not climbed high enough in life to be used by God.

You think that you have to have some exalted position or some long years of education in order to be a tool fit for God.

Now, obviously we believe in education and we know that many of the folk in the scripture are quite well-educated like Paul.

But I wanna submit to you that even if life has left you digging canals by the river Kebar, God's hand can be placed on you.

Here, Ezekiel, beaten and downtrodden, surrounded by 10, 000 other captives who are longing for home.

Here they are, and as Ezekiel is wondering what their fate would be, would they ever see Jerusalem or Zion again, my Bible tells me that God opens the heaven.

I don't care how dark the day is for you, God still can open the heavens to show you what he has in store for you.

So, just to give you some more background, I love this stuff.

Here is the story of the life, in a sense, of Ezekiel.

And about 597, he's a part of the second deportation to Babylon.

The first deportation is when Daniel went.

So Daniel went a few years earlier, 7 years according to this chart, some say 10 years, but just, he went earlier.

They were very much contemporaries, and I have to believe that Daniel and Ezekiel would have known each other quite well in a sense.

There's no way that Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys would have been elevated to the top of the kingdom the way they were by the time Ezekiel is brought in captivity and not Recognized that the man of God was working where he was working.

I believe they probably knew each other But as you can see From Josiah where would a light where Jeremiah?

There was a plethora of prophets There's so many warning Israel warning Judah of what was to come yet The people would not listen and you can see I love this diagram.

You can see Jeremiah's life here and You can see all of the years, the 7 years the Jews are in exile.

These are really their ministries, not their life.

And you can see that these guys all at the same time are preaching for the people.

During the 10 years between Daniel's captivity and Ezekiel's captivity, there arose among those in Jerusalem many, many false prophets.

All of whom were saying, don't worry, God is not gonna allow this to last long.

In fact 1 false prophet says it's only gonna be 2 years and God kills the false prophet.

Here they are All preaching a warning that Judah and Jerusalem must repent for their sins.

If you read the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and even the prayer Daniel gives of repentance, you start to see that there is a pattern of sins that really caused the fall of the people of God.

1 of them is they began to worship the idols of the nations that surrounded them.

The other, if you look at Ezekiel 16, is that they began to get proud and neglect the poor and the needy where they were.

In fact, the Bible gives us the story of this captivity.

In 2 Kings 24, verse 8, Jehoadshin was 18 years old when he began to reign.

His mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of El Nathan of Jerusalem.

And this king again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all his fathers had done.

At the time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem and the city was besieged.

The Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city and his servants did besiege it.

And Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, went out to the king of Babylon, he and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers.

And the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign.

And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the Lord, as the Lord had said.

And he carried away all Jerusalem, look at this, and all the princes and all the mighty men of valor, even 10, 000 captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths, none remained who was left in Jerusalem.

The Bible says the poorest sort of the people of the land.

It's interesting, the sins of Jerusalem was, 1 of the big sins was, they neglected the poor.

They vaunted themselves against the poor.

They committed usury against them and abused the poor.

And when captivity came, the captives must have liked the clothes that the people that weren't poor were wearing.

They must have liked the way that they did their hair and kept their skin looking fresh.

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From Dry Bones to an Army: How to Thrive in 2021

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