Hear the Word of the Lorda Sermon by Dr. Amos Jones, Jr.Nashville, TN

No.10103-Inspiration Hear the Word of the Lord A sermon by Dr. Amos Jones, Jr. Nashville, TN

SCRIPTURE: The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Ezekiel 37:1-4

A People In Captivity

The book of Ezekiel is set in the midst of a people who are in captivity. Nebuchadnezzar took the Jews captive in 587 B. C. The book of Ezekiel is, indeed, a historical record of a people taken captive, Judah, the people of God, because they refused to “Hear the word of the Lord.” The book of Ezekiel is not fantasy. It is not a fairy tale. It is fact. The people of God, Judah, in 587 B. C., were taken captive because they refused to “Hear the word of the Lord!” Now, the premise of my sermon is that there is imminent danger that comes to a people when they refused to “Hear the word of the Lord.” Likewise, there is repair and restoration when a people finally “Hear the word of the Lord.” In the book of Ezekiel, we are given a detailed narration of this people in captivity. We are provided such by none other than the prophet himself. The prophet is Ezekiel. He is described in the first chapter as a priest. He is referred to in Ezekiel 1:3 as Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi. In this role, Ezekiel functions in the role of one who speaks to God on behalf of the people. The people in Babylonian Captivity needed a priest, someone who could intercede with God on their behalf. And so, we read in chapter three verse fifteen that Ezekiel “sat where they sat.” The man positioned himself in the predicament of the Jews in Babylonian Captivity and the people were pitiful. He saw this, because he sat where they sat. He heard them murmur:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Psalm 137:1-6.

Then, the Lord called Ezekiel to fulfill the role of a prophet. In that 37th chapter of this venerable book, Ezekiel says, “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones.” What Ezekiel saw was devastating. He heard these bones, representatives of Captive Judah, cry out, “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts.” In other words, they were hopelessly lost and did not know what to do. And, all of this is because Judah refused to hear the word of the Lord. Notice, I said just now that the Lord called on Ezekiel to fulfill the role of the prophet. He is introduced to us in chapter one as a priest. But, here, there is the need of a prophet. There is a difference. The priest speaks to God on behalf of the people, and the prophet speaks to the people on behalf of God. What was needed in that valley was hard work; it called for a prophet. You see, the priest often is born into the priestly family. It is his nature to live off the people and the fat of the land. Quite often, he forgets his real work as a priest and looks only to live off the fat of the land and to live the life of luxury off the backs of the people. Not the prophet! The prophet’s work is dangerous work. He has to be a man to be a prophet. In fact, he has to be called of God. If he is not called of God, he can’t go. But, when he is called of God, he must go. I heard on many say, “Woe is me, if I do not . . .” go! God’s call that goes out to the prophet is itself devastating. It is shocking. It is a shaking experience. When Isaiah was called to be a prophet, in the twentieth chapter of his book, he tells us that he walked naked and barefoot for three years. Jeremiah withdrew from his call to be a prophet. At one point, he sought to resign from his calling because the work was too rough. The going was too tough. Pashur, the son of the priest, put the prophet in stocks for prophesying against Judah. Under such pressure, Jeremiah started to resign his position, because he said the Lord had deceived him. But, about the time he tried to get the words of resignation out of his mouth, a fire started to burn. Something happened to Jeremiah and he said, “It was like ‘fire’ shut up in my bones.” So, here is Ezekiel, a priest called to be a prophet, standing on the edge of a valley that is sprawled with dry bones. The Lord God asks the prophet, “Son of man, can these bones live?” The startling reality was that Judah as dead. Judah had died a terrible death. And, the reason for her death was simply that she refused to hear the word of the Lord. Her devastation! Her desolation! He destruction! Was all because she refused to hear the word of the Lord. Early on in Israel’s experience with God, the Lord brought her out of Egyptian Bondage as on wings of an eagle. He paused in the midst of their sojourn in the Wilderness of Sinai and gave them the Decalogue. God’s visitation atop Sinai was so dramatic awesome that Israel said to Moses, “We cannot stand before God, you stand for us. And, all that the Lord says, that will we do!” In other words, Israel said they would “Hear” the word of the Lord and “obey.” The Lord laid out His Word in graphic clarity. If what He said in the Book of Exodus were not enough, The Lord delineated his Guidelines for Life in the Book of Leviticus. Then in the Book of Deuteronomy 6:4, the Lord before Israel the “Shemah” that said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is One God.” Israel was called on to “hear” and they said to the Lord, “All the Lord says, that will we do.” Well, the history of Israel is that all the Lord said is not what they did. Just as soon as they got in the Land of Promise, Israel began to do their own thing. By the time of the end of the Book of Judges, the record reads, “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” When you read the two books of Kings, with the exception of David and Solomon, each king that came to the throne in Israel and Judah, “Did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.” They refused to hear and obey the word of the Lord. Both Israel and Judah became so ossified in their behavior, so stiff neck and hard head that ultimately God turned them over to their captors. In 722 B. C., Shalmaneser, King of Syria took Israel, the ten tribes to the North, captive. In 587 B. C., King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to Judah and Benjamin captive. God got tired of Israel refusing to hear the word of the Lord.

We have refused to hear the Word

O, my brothers and sisters, the Lord has done so much for African Americans, but we refused to hear the word of the Lord. I visited Louisville, Georgia a few months ago. In the town square is a historical marker that tells that in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s white slave masters sold the Negro just as he did his cows, mules, and cotton. We were to them as property, chattel. For two hundred fifty years, we were driven like cattle to make cotton king, to build bridges and roads, to build America, what W. E. B. DuBois called “The Land of the Thief and the Home of the Slave.” But the Lord delivered us from our own kind of Egyptian Bondage. In 1865, he made a reluctant president sign the Emancipation Proclamation to set the captive free. God raised us up to be statesmen, businessmen, preachers, teachers and the like. As A. C. Ware used to say, God brought us “from cotton sacks to Cadillacs.” God has brought us from the “outhouse to the doorstep of the Whitehouse.” The African American makes $800 billion a year. We live in some of the nation’s finest houses. We are a multitudinous people. We are executives. We are the Secretary of State of this nation. We are a great people. But, we look at our people sure enough; we are a valley of dry bones. We make $800 billion a year, but a year since Hurricane Katrina New Orleans is still in ruins and Black people are scattered. When I was in Chicago, I learned that 95% to 99% of the population of Cook County Jail is African American. That statistic repeats itself in almost every major city in America. Our children are not doing well in school. Of a class of 1000 that begin a class as freshmen, only 50% graduate from high school four years later. Our boys are bent in incarceration rather than education. They would rather throw a ball, hit a ball, or run with a ball than to have something on the intellectual ball. Young boys are wearing their hats backward, with that pants below their buttocks. They have a prison mentality. Gangs and violence rule our communities. We are addicted to drink and strung out on drugs. We are a valley of dry bones.

Ears Stopped Up

All this has come about because we refuse to hear the word of the Lord. One little girl came to my church and she stopped up her ears with her fingers so she could not hear the singing of the songs of Zion or hear the word of God preached by the preacher. She is symptomatic of a people who stop up their ears to the Gospel of God. My people are perishing for the lack of knowledge of the word of Lord. Ezekiel was totally devastated as he stood on the edge of the valley peering upon the valley strewn with dry bones. He was so devastated that when the Lord asked him If the bones could live, he could only respond, “O Lord God, thou knowest.” Only God knows how the African American will come out in this present situation. Only the Lord God knows “if” the African American will come out of this present situation. President Bush does not know how we are going to come out. He does not know how we are going to get out of Iraq. Social scientists do not have the answer to our dilemma. Politicians are busy getting caught in the Tennessee Waltz and FBI stings. They don’t have the answer. Preachers and priests don’t have the answer for they are busy building megachurches and crying out, “I see money coming!”

The Lord Knows Our Problems

The prophet concedes ignorance to the solution of Judah’s resurrection. He says, “O Lord God, thou knowest.” The Lord turns to Ezekiel and says to him; now that my people have suffered for their sin they will come to know that the problem is the solution. They refused to hear the word of the Lord! Now that they have been taken captive! Now that they have been removed from their homeland and Jerusalem is only memory! Now that I have whipped them till they have cried, they will come to know that the problem of them refusing to hear the word of the Lord is the solution. Tell them, Ezekiel, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” You know sometimes the Lord has to whip you to get your attention and to get you to hear what He is saying. When I was a boy, my father and my mother would whip me when I misbehaved. While they were whipping me, they’d say to me “You better hear me boy!” They were saying that I’d better do what they say. God whipped Judah. Now she needed to do what he says, “Hear the word of the Lord!” Ezekiel said, “I prophesied as I was commanded.” Ezekiel stepped to the edge of the valley. He took his text and lifted his voice and cried out, “O ye, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” You know, my brothers and sisters, some of us who have been called to preach have preached every Sunday to dry bones. Nothing happens. The people keep sinning. Liars keep lying. Whoremongers keep whoremongering. Backsliders keep backsliding. But, we keep on preaching. Ezekiel kept on preaching. He cried, “O ye, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” Suddenly, something began to happen in the valley. Ezekiel kept on preaching, and he began to hear a shaking and a rattling in the valley. He saw bone coming together to bone in the valley. He saw: . . .the head bone was connected to the neck bone . . .the neck bone was connected to the shoulder bone . . .the shoulder bone was connected to the backbone . . .the backbone was connected to the hipbone . . .the hipbone was connected to the leg bone . . .the leg bone was connected to the anklebone . . .the anklebone was connected to the foot bone. Ezekiel kept on preaching, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” As he kept on preaching, flesh and sinews came on the bones. Then the Lord told the prophet to preach to the wind and tell the wind to blow upon the bones that they might have breath in them. So, the prophet preached to the wind. Then, the whole house of Israel stood up like a mighty army. Well, my brothers and sisters, it looks bad for our people in America. We have refused to hear the word of the Lord. But, I tell you, the problem is the solution. We like Ezekiel must preach to the dry bones and tell them “O ye, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” In God’s own time, He will bring our people together. Preach to the bones and say, “O ye dry bones, O ye dry bones, O ye dry bones, hear ye the word of the Lord.”