Sermon Illustrations for Lent 5 (2014)
Illustration
Object:
Ezekiel 37:1-14
"Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones..."
They're forty feet long and thirteen feet tall, with a mouth longer than your arm and filled with serrated, six-inch long fangs, yet nearly everyone can walk right up to one without any fear at all. Tyrannosaurus Rex makes a great white shark look about as threatening as a goldfish, but there is nothing scary about T-Rex now. They're just bones. With flesh and nerves and muscles, it would be a different matter to be sure, but not much different. Life is more than nerves and muscles and bones.
"Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones... hear the word of the Lord!"
Scott B.
Ezekiel 37:1-14
I always think of that old spiritual "Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, now hear the word of the Lord." Ezekiel receives a word from the Lord. Notice that the Lord has Ezekiel pronounce the words of resurrection for those bones. I'm not sure I would even obey if I heard a voice telling me to do that. I would more likely ask, "Who are you really?" But Ezekiel obeys and the Lord performs one of his greatest miracles. It was probably at the time of the Chaldean uprising. The people were understandably in despair. That is when the Lord can seem closest to us. The publication of the edict of Cyrus told of the return of Israel to their own land.
We wish he were in Iraq or Afghanistan and would raise our fallen on those battlefields for the sake of their families. This is just another example of the Lord not being predictable. Never read or write a book on how to make the Lord obey your requests. It would be useless.
The text says that when the bodies were all put together, they still did not breathe. The words "breath" or "wind" both mean Spirit! After God created Adam, it says he breathed the breath of life into Adam. That means he put his Spirit into him. It was not just mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. God and man could not communicate until we have God's Spirit.
In one respect the bones of our battles do live. They live with the Lord. We must remember that.
This passage is also a precursor of the New Testament resurrection of our Lord! It shows that the Lord has the power to raise the dead -- and especially his only Son. This passage may also allude to the general resurrection referred to by Jesus in John 5.
The first thing we have to remember is that we should wait until we hear the command of the Lord. Don't just run off and do something because you think it will help our cause. Especially don't try to do something as impossible as raising the dead. I had a friend who visited Asia and reported that someone had raised a person from the dead in addition to doing a lot of healings! I never confirmed it, but I do know that it created problems with the Muslim neighbors who didn't want to lose their people!
The last promise in the text is that they will all go back home. It is hard to imagine how the people must have felt -- both those who were raised and their families! Maybe that is one way to win those of other faiths. We still have to remember that we must wait for the Lord to call us, no matter how much we would like to solve all the world's problems by doing something so dramatic. Wait on the Lord.
Bob O.
Romans 8:6-11
Sigmund Freud was correct about life apart from Christ: "The goal of all life is death." Or as Leonardo da Vinci put it: "While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." Karl Barth made the fear we all live with very personal and real: "Someday we shall be buried. Some day a company of men will proceed out to a churchyard and lower a coffin and everyone will go home; but one will not come back, and that will be me" (Dogmatics in Outline, p. 117).
With death on the horizon like it is, we are likely to view life as Shakespeare did in Macbeth: "Life... is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing."
It would all be so meaningless if we were not in the Spirit, wrapped up in Christ and his victory over death. As John Calvin once put it: "[The Spirit] quickens us by his power, until at length, having destroyed the mortal flesh, he perfectly renews us" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XIX/2, p. 291).
Famed New Testament scholar of the last century Rudolf Bultmann also provides a profound vision of how God's word frees us from this life that seems to be bound by death:
The word of God addresses man in his personal existence and thereby it gives him freedom from the world and from the sorrow and anxiety which overwhelm him when he forgets the beyond... To believe in the word of God means to abandon all merely human security and thus to overcome the despair which arises from the attempt to find security, an attempt which is always vain.
(Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 40)
These insights and the appreciation of the promise of eternal life testified to in the lesson allow us to affirm with Edgar Allen Poe, who once said that "even in the grave, all is not lost."
Mark E.
Romans 8:6-11
An illustration concerning the Holy Spirit caught my attention as I was reading an old illustration book. The author wrote that he had been to one of the modern operating rooms in "an up-to-date" hospital, where the operating instruments were kept in a solution that kept them germ-free.
He equated germs to sin; "... the only way to be kept free from the germs of sin is to dwell in the presence of the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is a perfect antiseptic against sin." When we grieve the Holy Spirit and wander away from him, sin has an opportunity to work its deadly action in our lives. We want to dwell where we can be safe... in the presence of the Holy Spirit!
Derl K.
Romans 8:6-11
Evagrius Ponticus, also known as Evagrius the Solitary, was a Christian monk and ascetic who resided in a monastery in the Egyptian desert. Concerned with the temptations that besought people the most, in the year 375 he compiled a list of the eight terrible thoughts, also referred to as the eight evil temptations. The eight patterns of evil thought are gluttony, greed, sloth, sorrow, lust, anger, vainglory, and pride. The list was not to be one of condemnation; rather, it was to raise awareness to our most compelling temptations so that we would be self-disciplined enough to avert our attention from them. Almost two centuries later, in the year 590, Pope Gregory I, also known as Pope Gregory the Great, revisited the list and refined it to seven by combining two and adding two more of his own. Gregory's list is more commonly known as the Seven Deadly Sins, which are: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust.
Application: The church from its earliest beginnings has always understood what it means "to set the mind on the flesh."
Ron L.
John 11:1-45
There is a play called Lazarus Laughed. He was laughing when he saw other Christians going to their death for their faith. He laughed because he had been there -- he had died -- and he knew what a wonderful reward awaited them.
A man died about six years after his wife and went to meet her in heaven. She showed him around and the beauty was taking his breath away, but then the man's wife looked at him and he was scowling. "What's wrong with you?" she asked. He answered her, "If you hadn't given me all those vitamins and health food and made me stop smoking, I would have been up here long ago!"
Why do we hang onto life as long as we can if heaven is such a fantastic place?
We know what it is like for people to die. We see it every day in the paper and we have all buried dear friends and family, but Jesus says that if we believe in him we will never die. He must mean that our spirits will immediately be transferred to their home in heaven. It is hard to imagine, but all we have to do is believe. Don't you wish we could come back and reassure our family that we are well and happy? But our Lord tells us just to believe in him.
Notice that Jesus waits a couple days to make sure Lazarus is really dead. He often tells others that their loved ones are only sleeping, even though they know they are dead. Jesus really loves that whole family. Why is he waiting? Why does he let them suffer? It seems like Martha is the only one who believes that Jesus can still do something for Lazarus.
When we hear Jesus promise that we shall rise again, we too are thinking of an earthly solution. We do not know what it is, but all we can do is trust in the Lord. It is easier for us to believe in a healing. Most Israelites had seen Jesus heal people. Even today I have seen healings but to raise someone from the dead brings it to another level.
The resurrection is not some future event, Jesus is saying. He tells Martha that he is the resurrection. He is our resurrection now also.
Even though Jesus was going to raise Lazarus shortly, he is still moved deeply as in mourning. He asks to see the tomb. When he asks them to role away the stone, they worried that it would stink. Some non-believers will say that because it didn't stink, that Lazarus was not really dead, but was only sleeping as Jesus said. It is so hard even for solid Christians to believe in miracles, especially those about raising the dead.
God is always testing our faith to see if it is in him or in science and tradition.
Bob O.
John 11:1-45
There are certain voices you just can't ignore: your mother calling you to dinner, your first love whispering your name, a stranger shouting "fire!" or "duck!" or "look out below!" No matter how busy, no matter how distracted, no matter how indifferent you might imagine yourself to be, there are voices that manage to get through.
Jesus calls us in love. Jesus whispers our name.
When the voice of Jesus called into the tomb, even Lazarus, no matter how dead, had no choice but to listen.
Scott B.
"Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones..."
They're forty feet long and thirteen feet tall, with a mouth longer than your arm and filled with serrated, six-inch long fangs, yet nearly everyone can walk right up to one without any fear at all. Tyrannosaurus Rex makes a great white shark look about as threatening as a goldfish, but there is nothing scary about T-Rex now. They're just bones. With flesh and nerves and muscles, it would be a different matter to be sure, but not much different. Life is more than nerves and muscles and bones.
"Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones... hear the word of the Lord!"
Scott B.
Ezekiel 37:1-14
I always think of that old spiritual "Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, now hear the word of the Lord." Ezekiel receives a word from the Lord. Notice that the Lord has Ezekiel pronounce the words of resurrection for those bones. I'm not sure I would even obey if I heard a voice telling me to do that. I would more likely ask, "Who are you really?" But Ezekiel obeys and the Lord performs one of his greatest miracles. It was probably at the time of the Chaldean uprising. The people were understandably in despair. That is when the Lord can seem closest to us. The publication of the edict of Cyrus told of the return of Israel to their own land.
We wish he were in Iraq or Afghanistan and would raise our fallen on those battlefields for the sake of their families. This is just another example of the Lord not being predictable. Never read or write a book on how to make the Lord obey your requests. It would be useless.
The text says that when the bodies were all put together, they still did not breathe. The words "breath" or "wind" both mean Spirit! After God created Adam, it says he breathed the breath of life into Adam. That means he put his Spirit into him. It was not just mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. God and man could not communicate until we have God's Spirit.
In one respect the bones of our battles do live. They live with the Lord. We must remember that.
This passage is also a precursor of the New Testament resurrection of our Lord! It shows that the Lord has the power to raise the dead -- and especially his only Son. This passage may also allude to the general resurrection referred to by Jesus in John 5.
The first thing we have to remember is that we should wait until we hear the command of the Lord. Don't just run off and do something because you think it will help our cause. Especially don't try to do something as impossible as raising the dead. I had a friend who visited Asia and reported that someone had raised a person from the dead in addition to doing a lot of healings! I never confirmed it, but I do know that it created problems with the Muslim neighbors who didn't want to lose their people!
The last promise in the text is that they will all go back home. It is hard to imagine how the people must have felt -- both those who were raised and their families! Maybe that is one way to win those of other faiths. We still have to remember that we must wait for the Lord to call us, no matter how much we would like to solve all the world's problems by doing something so dramatic. Wait on the Lord.
Bob O.
Romans 8:6-11
Sigmund Freud was correct about life apart from Christ: "The goal of all life is death." Or as Leonardo da Vinci put it: "While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." Karl Barth made the fear we all live with very personal and real: "Someday we shall be buried. Some day a company of men will proceed out to a churchyard and lower a coffin and everyone will go home; but one will not come back, and that will be me" (Dogmatics in Outline, p. 117).
With death on the horizon like it is, we are likely to view life as Shakespeare did in Macbeth: "Life... is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing."
It would all be so meaningless if we were not in the Spirit, wrapped up in Christ and his victory over death. As John Calvin once put it: "[The Spirit] quickens us by his power, until at length, having destroyed the mortal flesh, he perfectly renews us" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XIX/2, p. 291).
Famed New Testament scholar of the last century Rudolf Bultmann also provides a profound vision of how God's word frees us from this life that seems to be bound by death:
The word of God addresses man in his personal existence and thereby it gives him freedom from the world and from the sorrow and anxiety which overwhelm him when he forgets the beyond... To believe in the word of God means to abandon all merely human security and thus to overcome the despair which arises from the attempt to find security, an attempt which is always vain.
(Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 40)
These insights and the appreciation of the promise of eternal life testified to in the lesson allow us to affirm with Edgar Allen Poe, who once said that "even in the grave, all is not lost."
Mark E.
Romans 8:6-11
An illustration concerning the Holy Spirit caught my attention as I was reading an old illustration book. The author wrote that he had been to one of the modern operating rooms in "an up-to-date" hospital, where the operating instruments were kept in a solution that kept them germ-free.
He equated germs to sin; "... the only way to be kept free from the germs of sin is to dwell in the presence of the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is a perfect antiseptic against sin." When we grieve the Holy Spirit and wander away from him, sin has an opportunity to work its deadly action in our lives. We want to dwell where we can be safe... in the presence of the Holy Spirit!
Derl K.
Romans 8:6-11
Evagrius Ponticus, also known as Evagrius the Solitary, was a Christian monk and ascetic who resided in a monastery in the Egyptian desert. Concerned with the temptations that besought people the most, in the year 375 he compiled a list of the eight terrible thoughts, also referred to as the eight evil temptations. The eight patterns of evil thought are gluttony, greed, sloth, sorrow, lust, anger, vainglory, and pride. The list was not to be one of condemnation; rather, it was to raise awareness to our most compelling temptations so that we would be self-disciplined enough to avert our attention from them. Almost two centuries later, in the year 590, Pope Gregory I, also known as Pope Gregory the Great, revisited the list and refined it to seven by combining two and adding two more of his own. Gregory's list is more commonly known as the Seven Deadly Sins, which are: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust.
Application: The church from its earliest beginnings has always understood what it means "to set the mind on the flesh."
Ron L.
John 11:1-45
There is a play called Lazarus Laughed. He was laughing when he saw other Christians going to their death for their faith. He laughed because he had been there -- he had died -- and he knew what a wonderful reward awaited them.
A man died about six years after his wife and went to meet her in heaven. She showed him around and the beauty was taking his breath away, but then the man's wife looked at him and he was scowling. "What's wrong with you?" she asked. He answered her, "If you hadn't given me all those vitamins and health food and made me stop smoking, I would have been up here long ago!"
Why do we hang onto life as long as we can if heaven is such a fantastic place?
We know what it is like for people to die. We see it every day in the paper and we have all buried dear friends and family, but Jesus says that if we believe in him we will never die. He must mean that our spirits will immediately be transferred to their home in heaven. It is hard to imagine, but all we have to do is believe. Don't you wish we could come back and reassure our family that we are well and happy? But our Lord tells us just to believe in him.
Notice that Jesus waits a couple days to make sure Lazarus is really dead. He often tells others that their loved ones are only sleeping, even though they know they are dead. Jesus really loves that whole family. Why is he waiting? Why does he let them suffer? It seems like Martha is the only one who believes that Jesus can still do something for Lazarus.
When we hear Jesus promise that we shall rise again, we too are thinking of an earthly solution. We do not know what it is, but all we can do is trust in the Lord. It is easier for us to believe in a healing. Most Israelites had seen Jesus heal people. Even today I have seen healings but to raise someone from the dead brings it to another level.
The resurrection is not some future event, Jesus is saying. He tells Martha that he is the resurrection. He is our resurrection now also.
Even though Jesus was going to raise Lazarus shortly, he is still moved deeply as in mourning. He asks to see the tomb. When he asks them to role away the stone, they worried that it would stink. Some non-believers will say that because it didn't stink, that Lazarus was not really dead, but was only sleeping as Jesus said. It is so hard even for solid Christians to believe in miracles, especially those about raising the dead.
God is always testing our faith to see if it is in him or in science and tradition.
Bob O.
John 11:1-45
There are certain voices you just can't ignore: your mother calling you to dinner, your first love whispering your name, a stranger shouting "fire!" or "duck!" or "look out below!" No matter how busy, no matter how distracted, no matter how indifferent you might imagine yourself to be, there are voices that manage to get through.
Jesus calls us in love. Jesus whispers our name.
When the voice of Jesus called into the tomb, even Lazarus, no matter how dead, had no choice but to listen.
Scott B.
