[AI translation] The majestic vision of Ezekiel, the great prophet of the Jews in captivity in Babylonia, is described in the passage just read. He is convinced that God is indeed not the God of the dead but of the living, that His Spirit is a quickening Spirit, a life-giving Spirit. Where God's Spirit is all-pervading, there life springs up even from the most horrible death. The mysterious work of God's Holy Spirit, which He does in the hidden world of the human heart, in the hidden world of the soul, is always to give life, to quicken. It does this to the unbeliever and it does it to the believer. The quickening by the Spirit has two successive moments. This twofold moment of the outpouring of the quickening Spirit is very clearly seen here in Ezekiel's vision.1) The first moment of the quickening is that the Holy Spirit of God raises up a living faith in the heart of the unbeliever. A sad sight first appears before the prophet: a great valley full of bones. Once they were southern soldiers, now a dead army. Long dead. Not only had the spirit gone out of them, but the flesh had been stripped from the bones, the dried bones had fallen apart, it was no longer possible to tell which bones had once belonged together. The whole valley is a terrible graveyard, where everything proclaims the hopeless reign of death. And when the prophet is almost horrified at what he sees, God says to the prophet, "And he said to me: Son of man! These carcasses are the whole house of Israel." (Ezek 37:11) Isn't this an exaggeration? After all, it is a miserable thing for a people to be in captivity, but to compare them to dried bones and decaying carcasses is perhaps too much. Well, nothing in God's Word is exaggerated. When pointing to the carcasses, the Lord says, "These are you, O house of Israel," He is expressing the very sad reality that a people or people who have turned away from God are so hopelessly dead in spirit.
In other words, without living faith, every soul is so dead. It is hard for a living person to imagine being as spiritually dead as those corpses. And the Word of God says this very often: "Thy name is called, Thou livest, and art dead" (Rev 3:20(, that is, alive in body, but dead in spirit. Unbelief is a state of death, the unbelieving man is spiritually dead, and the unbeliever can no more become a believer in his own strength than those corpses can come to life of their own accord. It is often said that this or that church is a dead church and the other is a living church. It is not just a figurative expression, but a very real one. Sometimes a whole congregation can be spiritually dead, which means that there are no living, born-again, converted souls in it.
I read a strange story the other day about an American pastor who was assigned to pastor such a completely dead congregation. When he went to preach his first sermon in the church, the church was empty. When he visited the members of his congregation house by house, he was met with total indifference. This pastor, in his utter despair and desperation, had the strange idea of publishing an announcement of a death in the newspaper. In it, he openly announced the death of his congregation and invited the members of the congregation to a funeral service to be held the following Sunday in the church. The sensational news filled the church to capacity the following Sunday. A coffin was laid out in front of the pews, and the pastor invited the congregation to march in a line past the coffin and bid farewell to the dead congregant with a look into the coffin. Everyone waited with great suspense to see how the pastor could have represented the dead congregation in the coffin, but they were really amazed and shone their eyes when they saw nothing in the coffin but a mirror and themselves in it.
I don't know who among us is dead and who is alive, but I do know that there are dead and there are living. And I also know from the Word that all are dead who have been born but once, that is, who have been born from earthly parents, in the flesh - no matter how much fervour they may have, no matter how much they may pray every day, no matter how religious they may be. His soul is dead, his prayer is dead, his fervour is dead, his psalm-singing is dead, even his faith is dead - for there is such a thing: dead faith. For all this to come to life, to become alive, he must be born anew of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You must be born again, for unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (John 3:3-7) It is not our zeal that lifts us out of our state of death, not our suffering, not our good works, not our prayer, not even our faith, but the quickening power of God's Holy Spirit alone.
Let us see, how did the reassembly of the scattered corpses take place? Thus said the Lord, "Prophesy over these carcasses and say to them: (Ezek 37:4) So it was by hearing the word of the Lord that the miracle took place. Even today, a dead soul is quickened when the Holy Spirit of God hears with it the word of the Lord, the gracious word of the Lord that all your sins are forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. That God so loved you that He gave His only begotten Son for you, that you should not perish but have eternal life. (cf. Jn3,16) I was quickened when I heard with my heart what I had heard with my ears so many times before, that Jesus Christ died for me. From that moment on I have been spiritually alive. From that moment I know that I have passed from death to life. And it is not of my own doing, not of my own merit, not of my own making or effort: it is God who has convinced me by His Holy Spirit that Jesus is my Saviour, that His death is the price of my sin, that His resurrection is the assurance of my justification and eternal life.
This is what the Holy Spirit does. That is, He makes the dead to be alive, the unbeliever to be a believer, the dead faith to be a living faith, the dead prayer to be a living prayer, the dead service and zeal to be a living service, the singing of the Psalms to be a truly God-glorifying worship, the dead letter of the Bible to be a living Word... The dead soul itself does not know how it happened, how it happened, but only experiences that what was before a dead ritual, a lifeless rehearsal, is now renewed, revived, made real, true - everything is renewed "of its own accord", the whole man is reborn.
2) All this is only the first stage of the Spirit's work of quickening, to be followed by the second stage. This is how this double moment is described in our Word:
- First, "And I prophesied as I was commanded. And when I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rumbling, and the carcasses were gathered together, every carcass to his carcass. And I saw, and behold, they had sinews upon them, and flesh grew, and skin covered them; but there was no spirit yet in them." (Ezk 37,7-8)
- Second mosaic: "And he said to me: 'Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, son of man, and say to the spirit, 'This is what the Lord God says: 'From the four winds come forth a spirit, and breathe into these slain, that they may live. And he prophesied as he commanded. And the spirit came into them, and they revived, and stood upon their feet, and a very great host stood upon them." (Ez 37,9-10)
So, in the second stage of the Spirit's work, the dead army is not only revived, but it becomes an army ready for battle, a fighting army of armed men, ready to be raised up into battle array. In other words, the Holy Spirit of God not only makes the unbeliever a believer (this is only the first stage, where no man of faith should stop), but also strengthens, arms, equips, equips, puts in battle, uses in the spreading of his kingdom, in the fight against sin, in the victory of his victories.
"Be strong, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth", says the Lord Jesus to his disciples before Pentecost (Acts 1,8). For example, in the life of the Apostle Peter. Through the illuminating power of the Spirit he confessed Jesus as the Son of God, Christ. This was almost the visible witness of Peter's coming to a living faith and being born again. And yet, this born-again, this believer, this converted Peter, is so empowered by the Spirit at Pentecost that three thousand are converted at his word, and the sick are healed at the touch of his hand. So Peter, the disciple, becomes at Pentecost the apostle of Peter, the warrior of Jesus, the powerful witness of Jesus.
This is the first moment of the Spirit's work for me: he makes Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour, a living reality for me. And the second moment is that it makes Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the living Son of God, the Son of God, the living Son of God, the Son of God, the living God of God, the Son of God. I come to a living faith when I know and accept that Christ died for me, because of me and in my place, but the Holy Spirit wants to work more than that: he wants Christ who died for me, because of me and in my place to live in me and to work through me.
It may have happened in the Netherlands, after a violent bomb attack, that in one town, the population also cleared debris from a heavily damaged Roman Catholic chapel. The marble statue of Christ fell from the altar and was smashed to pieces. The pieces were picked up, neatly reassembled and put back on the pedestal. The statue was almost more beautiful than before, except that the two hands were not found among the rubble. Then they inscribed on the pedestal of the statue of the handless Saviour these words, "All that is left for me are your hands!" Dogmatically, perhaps, one could find fault with this, yet it expresses a great truth. It is that Jesus Christ offers help here on earth with the hands (e.g. bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty) that those who believe in him place at his disposal. He speaks, invites, blesses, covers or comforts with the mouth that a disciple has dedicated to Him, with the heart that has been offered to Him in thanksgiving for the forgiveness of sins, with the heart that feels compassion, joy and radiates love. He serves the glory of God with the money that someone has entrusted to Him.
This is how the Holy Spirit brings Christ to life in the believer. This is what you believers will be empowered to do when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. What do we receive power for by the Spirit? For what we cannot do in our own strength. To love, to joy, to peace, to patience, to gentleness, to witness, to victory over sin, to endurance of suffering - to the Christian life working for the extension of the kingdom of God. All the weaknesses of the Christian life come from the lack of the Holy Spirit. The life of believers is unfruitful, filled with defeat and failure, not because they lack some extraordinary ability or aptitude, but because they have not been empowered by the filling of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost must become as much a personal experience in the life of every believer as Good Friday and Easter were. Sadly, we so rarely get from Good Friday to Pentecost, from the joyful acceptance of salvation to the filling of the Holy Spirit! Yet there is all the wanderings, the toils, the failures and the fruitlessness of the wilderness wanderings in the lives of believers.
The great comforting message of Ezekiel was: "And I will put my Spirit within you, that you may live" (Ezek 37,14a). The Holy Spirit has already been poured out on earth, He is here, He is present, given by God. But how can one come under the influence of the Spirit? How did the miracle in the prophetic vision happen? The Lord said to Ezekiel, "Prophesy over these dead bodies and say to them: (Ezekiel 37:4) And the prophet prophesied as the Lord commanded him. And at this time the bones were moved. (Ezek 37:9b) And in answer to prayer the Spirit was moved, and so the dead were raised.
So it was to the Word of God and humble prayer that the Spirit appeared and began to work. It is always like this: wherever someone listens to the Word of God and prayerfully asks for the coming of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit appears today and creates all things anew. God communicates His Holy Spirit to us in His Word, and the Spirit breathes the Spirit of God through prayer. Therefore we can never do without the Word and prayer. Behold, I preach the Word: "I will put my Spirit within you, that ye may live, saith the Lord God" (Ez 37,14).
With humble supplication, let us respond to the Word in a prayer sung in song: 'Come, Lord God, Holy Spirit'!
Come, Lord God the Holy Spirit,
Fill our hearts with your love,
With heavenly gifts,
With holy fervour of heart,
Whose holy power
Tongues to one faith
Has united many peoples,
Who, saying, so sing:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
(Canto 370, verse 1)
Amen
Date: 28 May 1950 Pentecost.
Lesson
Ez 37,1-14