The restoration of Israel as a nation in 1948 fulfilled the first part of God’s prophecy through Ezekiel, but a second step follows the just previous restoration of them to their original land of the Old Testament. This remains yet to happen – their spiritual awakening. Just as God acted to restore physical Israel as told in Ezekiel chapters 36 and 37, then He has a second action as Chapters 37 and 38 describe a day when He will breathe spiritual life into their ‘dry bones’. He can and will bring about spiritual revival to the nation. They won’t stop being Jewish, but they will become Christians. The Jewish people’s future conversion to Christ will come through a time of crisis, when nations from the north attack Israel. This pattern of the Holy Spirit’s awakening work – bringing conviction of sin followed by spiritual life – applies not only to Israel but to all peoples and individuals who come under conviction to turn to God. There can be a “personal awakening” in the individual or “national awakening” as a nation to God. The threat of invasion from the North by a team of enemy nations will cause the Israeli people to repent of their sinful ways and cry out to God.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] My thoughts are often influenced by what’s being said on the news, and particularly in the politics, the voting, what’s happening in America, what’s happening over in the Middle East. And about Israel has really been on my heart during this week. And although we’re going through passages in the morning services about the Second Coming, and about the wrapping up of the times, the times we’re in at the moment are very dangerous times where we don’t know what’s going to happen in Israel and whether or not another war, large war, involving many nations will happen. The Bible, in its prophecies, does speak about events that sound very similar to what could be about to transpire right now. And in the book of Ezekiel there’s talk about the Israeli people and about the nation Israel and about their coming back together again and coming back to their homeland, and then there being the contesting with all the nations around there as to who really should be in the land.

[00:01:18] And so I thought it was appropriate for us to get a bit of perspective as to maybe how close we could be to those end times right now. We could never say for sure, but I think we can. Jesus told us that we’re meant to learn how to recognize the times, we do it with the weather he said, can we not discern that there’s something that might be about to happen. And so in Ezekiel in chapter 37, I think we’ve got chapter 36, that’s right, yeah, chapter 36, 19 to 36, we do have the scriptures speaking on events that are going to happen for the people of Israel. I scatter them among the nations and they were dispersed through the countries. In accordance with their ways and their deeds I judge them. We’ve been recently going through about the judgments of God. And one of my points I wanted to make is that there is a final judgment at the end of time.

[00:02:20] But God also judges in this time, here and now, for actions that he brings upon our heads the consequences of our not doing what he wants. And he also, in the opposite, looks after us even through the difficulties we have so that we can get to participate in the events that he does want us to be involved in. This is a talk about the people of the Jewish people and the Nation of Israel and exactly how that happened under his hand, a disbursement through the countries in accordance with their ways, because of how they rebelled against God, the Jewish people, and had not lived as he wanted them to. He judged them. And this is another example of the fact that when we talk about judgement don’t always think about the final judgement. But think about the fact that God is in the business of bringing upon people the consequence of their actions. Interestingly, he doesn’t do it immediately. Sometimes he delays such personal judgments to give opportunity for our repentance.

[00:03:31] But then in the case of the nation of Israel, it fell upon them badly and they were scattered amongst the nations. So when they came to the nations, whenever they came, they profound my holy name and the way they lived, when they were dispersed away from the home country or from the religious rites of the temple, etc., that they didn’t live very well. In that the people said of them, these are the people of the Lord and yet they’ve had to go out of His land. And the whole world recognised how much under oppression the Jewish people were. But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.

[00:04:24] I think the same happens with us as Christians, because we can have a time of being right with God and walking with Him, but there are times when we get away from Him. And in those times we profane His name. And there is a parallel to how God sees us when we don’t walk with God, with how He saw the Israelites, and He’s concerned for His holy name as well as He’s concerned for us. Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God, It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I’m about to act. But for the sake of my holy name, Which you have profaned amongst the nations to which you came, and I’ll vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned amongst the nations, and which you have profaned among them, and the nations will know that

[00:05:24] I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be cleaned from your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I’ll put within you, and I’ll remove the heart of stone from the flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I’ll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways.” Now that’s a very, very, very strong statement that God is making to the Israeli people. Do you know, of course, that that prophecy from the Book of Ezekiel came true after 2,000 years

[00:06:22] of them being away, and one date that is significant in that return to Israel is May 14, 1948, when the people of Israel came back, were brought back by the nations because of the sympathy of the League of Nations to the Jewish people, given what happened during World War II, and they allowed them to come and set up again in Israel. And that date, May 14, 1948, most of us were not born then, but May 14, 1948, that prophecy happened, and the Jewish nation was formed again. Now when you’re a Christian, and you read your scriptures, and you see this occurring, it has a very big impact on how you interpret the Bible, because prior to the Jews getting back to their homeland, because these prophecies existed, a lot of Christian people seeking to interpret what the Bible says would find some interpretation that was metaphorical, or something not literal, because they clearly could look around and see the Jews were scattered

[00:07:32] among the nations, but they weren’t back in their homeland. And then suddenly it happened, And this going back of the Jewish people to Israel really gave a kick to theological interpretation about the end times and as a consequence of that people began to say we should take the Bible more literally, more actually, factually, it means what it says, look they’re sitting there back and drew in Israel. And they came about what was called a miracle of languages when they adopted their original Hebrew as the official language and sure there were some modern words that got added in like you know motor car or refrigerator. So it wasn’t exactly the same as the original Hebrew of the Bible but it’s pretty similar. So similar that when I failed my Hebrew exam when I was going through college, Baptist College, I looked up some way to do some extra training and I got myself in a course that was teaching

[00:08:42] how to speak Hebrew and doing well in it that helped me in my learning Hebrew for the eventual passing at the college until I suddenly realized that I wasn’t in an ancient Hebrew course. I was in a modern Hebrew course and the people teaching me were teaching me what they’re speaking in Jerusalem right now. The only differences between back then and right now were extra words that had to accommodate the modernity of the culture we’re in today. And I was tagged and I passed my Hebrew as a result. I discovered there was a man who had a ministry to Jewish folk in which he made a big deal of this. He called it a miracle of languages that the language that was used so long ago had not been forgotten or corrupted or whatever but it’s been revived again. And there are lots of other prophecies about what Israel was going to look like even in its geography and even if it’s agriculture where there were barren places.

[00:09:49] And this fellow wrote a book, I can’t remember his name but he was a friend of my father and he wrote a book about what was happening in Israel and not only the miracle of languages but the miracle of prophecies in the Scriptures coming true with regard to some of the fruits and some of the agriculture that was bringing up. God is a God who makes his prophecies come true, and this is one. Now interestingly as you journey through the scriptures in chapter 36 it’s followed by chapter 37 of the book of Ezekiel. It’s fascinating how different people’s interpretation of end times and what theories they hold to explaining things, what they have to do with these passages, but if we were to turn to chapter 37 and go to chapter 37 and we’ve got on the screen there for you to look at versus 1-14 for a start. The hand of the Lord was upon me. Now this is Ezekiel the prophet back a long long time ago being told things

[00:10:58] by the Lord which were mysterious and him having visions and seeing all sorts of amazing things but which have an application to what was happening then in 1948 and is yet to happen amongst the people of Israel. The hand of the Lord was upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and he sent me down in the middle of the valley and it was full of bones. And he led me around amongst them and behold they were very many on the surface of the valley and behold they were very dry. O Lord God, O no God spoke to him, and he He said to me, son of man, can these bones live? And following 1948, if you had gone over to Israel and seen what was this miracle of a country that once existed in Bible times springing up and existing again, one of the things you’d notice that spiritually they were all dead.

[00:11:54] Well, not all of them. I’m sorry. I exaggerate it. But mostly they were not theistic even. Many of them were atheistic. Even today if you went to Jerusalem, you would find a lot of people there who are not necessarily wanting to be religious. Sure, there are those who are the Orthodox who are wearing the right clothes and who are going along to worship regularly in their synagogues or wherever and holding fast to the ancient religion as they understand it.

[00:12:29] But the majority of the people who are the Jewish folk who’ve gone back didn’t do that because of some religious motivation. Some of you have heard my story when I was studying psychology and getting in the trouble of one of my lecturers because he said, you’re too certain of everything, Jim. And he got annoyed at me because I had strong beliefs. I had an assignment late so I had to deliver to his office and when I got there he wasn’t present but his wife was. And she took my essay but she also was talkative. And she turned out, he told me the information, he hadn’t bothered to tell me that they were both Jews.

[00:13:10] And what’s more, they’re going back to Israel. I didn’t know why, I had the joy of saying but I know, from the scriptures. This is what’s happening, that the restoral of the peoples of the land of Israel was going to be in two steps. One that took the people back but they’re still like dead bones. And a second one when some revivalistic thing happens. Let’s go on reading. The bones were very dry, verse 3, and he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, you know, that he said to me, prophesy over these bones And they and say to them, O dry bones, Hear the Word of the Lord.

[00:13:56] Thus saith the Lord God to these bones Behold, I’ll cause breath to enter you And you shall live And I will lay sinews upon you And will cause flesh to come upon you And cover you with skin And put breath in you And you shall live And you shall know that I am the Lord. a vision. I don’t know whether I’ve had dreams where it was real while I was in the dream and then I woke up and found it was only a dream. He must have been like that because he’s lucky, he’s in the valley and he’s sort of doing things but it’s a vision. So I prophesied as I was commanded and as I prophesied there was a sound and behold a rattling and the bones came together. Bone to its bone and I looked and behold them. They were sinews

[00:14:47] on them and flesh came upon them. That must have been a sight to see flesh leaping onto the bones. Normally it’s the other way round, we must have an accident. But there was no breath in them, skin covered them but there was no breath in them. And then he said to me, prophesy to the breath. prophesy, Son of man and say to the breath, that’s the God come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on thee slain, that they may live. So I prophesied, as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and they stood on their feet, and exceeding the great army, that he said to me, Son of Man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.” Now interestingly, that doesn’t register much meaning to us, but because of the history of there being a northern sector, and a southern sector, and a southern sector used to fight

[00:15:46] against each other, and they got separately taken off into pernishment by God, and so they were never going to get back together, and they didn’t all in the Old Testament times. But this prophecy was for the future of the writing of the Bible, that there would be one nation of Israel. A whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus saith the Lord, God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I’ll bring you into the land of Israel and you shall know that I’m the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from the graves, O my people, I will put my spirit within you and you shall

[00:16:43] live, and I’ll place you in your own land, then you shall know that I am the Lord. I have spoken and I will do it.’ Declares the Lord. You need to know that whatever God says he does. He is a person who always fulfills his word and he has spoken to the nation Israel not only to return them to the place that’s happened, 1948, but that there’ll be a time when he’ll put his spirit within them and they’ll be spiritual, they’ll be alive, they’ll be his. That is something that’s yet to happen. And although amongst the Jewish people there are always some that come to Christ and so there’s a remnant if you like of people who become Christians and most of us probably know amongst the different churches that we may go to that there are people who are Jews and who love the Lord, they are not the majority and there’s an awful lot of the people in Jerusalem today,

[00:18:00] tonight isn’t over there I’m not sure, who do not profess to believe in God but their day that they will is coming and it’s still yet future the conversion of Israel. They will then be Christians, they’ll still be Jews. Do you know that when the day of Pentecost happens something if you read the book of Acts and how Christianity had its beginning in the foundation of the church by getting people to be in the church, I don’t mean in the building, I mean to be of the body of Christ, it happened at Peter’s first Pentecost sermon when the Holy Spirit came on the disciples, the apostles and the ones with them and the Holy Spirit caused that miracle of Pentecost to happen which included Peter’s great sermon at the end of which he called on folk to repent and put their trust in the Savior. As many as the Lord our God shall call he worded it, he called on them to save yourself from this wicked generation and the record is that

[00:19:14] 3,000 of those Jewish people got in the door that one day, they got baptized, I don’t know where that happened but they had a big ceremony or down at the river but that was the birth of the church because do you understand that the gospel message that is at the heart of the church which is that Jesus Christ came and taking on humanity the God-man, he obeyed the Jewish law and qualified as sinless, he might then go to the cross and pay on the cross the death of our sins and when he bore our sins there was this mighty terrible happening coming to him that he cried out remember he’s Jesus the God-man so in his humanity he says my God my God he’s the God-man but he’s crying the son to the father why have you forsaken me because bearing our sins he took the punishment for our sins which was what was necessary for someone to come and triumph and do and Jesus did it and Peter announces to the folk that they can have the forgiveness of sins that’s the announcement

[00:20:30] of the gospel if they’ll just repent and believe and do as many as received him John’s gospel tells us they were given the right to be the children of God that’s becoming a Christian but they were all Jews at first. Jews by religion that is, because some of them were from foreign nations who’d become Jews by religion. But being a Jew got to be a part of the Old Testament time, where your following the Jewish religion was your best route for salvation. But now, in the New Covenant time, this time of the announcement of the Gospel, a person gets into what is the Jewish New Covenant. It’s not another different one for us. It’s their new covenant that had always been promised, a promise that when you come and had the forgiveness of sins you received the gift of the Holy Spirit into your life, made you a Christian, made you someone right with God, the Jewish people got into it first, which is what our New Testament

[00:21:35] tells us to the Jews first and then to the others, the Gentiles. And we’re a part of the Jewish New Covenant. That didn’t get rid of the fact that there are people who are Jews, but did get rid of there being any distinction in terms of how you get to know God. So now in Christ there’s neither Jew nor Gentile, well there are Jews and they’re in Jerusalem and they’re elsewhere, but there’s no difference between them and us, or at least it will be the case when they come to Christ as well. And that’s a part of a future moment where the Holy Spirit will come. I’m preserving for myself, I’ve got another message which is following on the next chapters of Ezekiels, which is about the future of Russia. We’ve been talking about the future of Israel. That future was begun when in 1948 they went back to the Promised Land and will be culminated at some time, maybe close to now, when some event will happen that will cause them to cry out in prayer

[00:22:46] to God and the event that will happen, that I’ll get onto next time we’re on this topic, was an invasion from the north and the city to the north, exactly straight north from Jerusalem is Moscow, and a gathering of other nations around Israel are going to attack Israel and in what happens with their backs against the wall nationally and militarily, they cry out to God and he helps them. And a part of what he does is also going to come because they get converted to Christ. There is a conversion going to happen to the Jewish people in Israel and they’ll become a Christian nation. And this is some of the things that our scriptures teach and you have to go on to the next chapter of Ezekiel to see a bit more about that warfare and the people from the north coming down. It’s interesting when you see some of the words that are used for the different national groups that join in this attack and when you track back where they are then there’s a familiar ring

[00:24:00] to the list of them all around Israel, like Iran and like those other nations, led by Russia, they are going to attack Israel and when they have got nothing, no way to have any hope, They cry out to God, and a spirit of prayer and repentance comes on them. They will become alive as the scripture is promising, as prophesying, and they will become a mighty army. Now in these last weeks I’ve been feeling led to speak a lot on what is called an awakening. An awakening is when the work of the Holy Spirit comes very strongly, either on an individual or on a district or on a people, and they recognise their sinfulness and their need to come to Christian conversion. An awakening is that which happens when Jesus had said, and in our home group on the Friday

[00:25:04] night we went through how Jesus said, this is expedient for you, the disciples, that I go away, going back to heaven, for if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit will not come. But when He comes, He will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and judgement. That is what an awakening is, when people who regularly think they’re fine suddenly get a conviction that they’re not as fine as they previously thought. When people have been patting themselves on the back for the holiness they have because of their good religion or because of their nice living or because of their capacities to do good things, and I think Australians can be people who could be proud of themselves many times for how we step in and help the ones who are downtrodden. I really like our nation and the way that we’ll step in and we have less problems here

[00:26:00] than a lot of other places. Believe me, when you go overseas, it’s one of the things when you come back home to Australia, you realise we have been very granted a privilege to have a country with so much opportunity for peaceful living. And we, like the Jewish people, are turning aside from a lot of the heritage that we gained of believing in God and going to church regularly and listening to the commandments of the Bible. We turn our backs on that and we are people that need also to have an awakening. We need to have a time when God’s Spirit comes on us nationally and we recognise some of the stupid things our parliaments put through. Some of the ways that they put aside a history of trust in God, the ways they encourage people

[00:26:59] to live away from God and break his laws and yet that’s okay. Way that we have parades in which all sorts of terrible things are illustrated as being to be done, latest craze, the way that we turn against the church or we turn against having scriptures taught in schools. And we need today, desperately, an awakening. We need that the Holy Spirit, that Jesus promised that when he comes he will convict the world of sin. We need there to come. Do you know in some revivals in history, in different places, in the Northern Hemisphere mainly, but not totally, there have been times when the Holy Spirit came and the whole District

[00:27:48] had a sense of being convicted of sin. Some of the little islands that are near us, oh then some of them are not little, but like the Solomon Islands they’ve had a history of regular times where revivals have come and and the great masses or they went a little big masses but the great majority of the people living there came under conviction of sin and there was what was called a revival of religion or a revival of Christianity that happened because an awakening happened. This is why in my heart God has placed that I should call out and cry out that we need to have the Holy Spirit convict us with the nation. We need for there to be people in politics who will stand for Christ and speak up even though they’ll get persecuted at

[00:28:43] first. We need for there to be something to happen in our nation and there be an awakenings that we realize the depths of our sin and then we’ll understand the gravity of the gospel and the call to come and know the forgiveness of sins. Sometimes in our personal lives we do experience it a time when God gets through to us and we suddenly understand that we’ve never really done business with Jesus as the Savior because we’ve never fully understood the depth of us being sinners. And that’s a gracious happening. If that happens to you and you’re at home and you’re thinking through your life and you begin to become aware that God is pricking you about your need of the once and for all forgiveness of sins, please get on the telephone and give me a ring. I’d be very happy to come and help you get through to God and know that

[00:29:50] sweet forgiveness of when you not only get by the spirit a conviction of sin but he reveals to you the righteousness that is to be found in Jesus. That gift of righteousness that the gospel tells of and brings that when a person answers they find the Lord and they can walk with him and there’s nothing greater than knowing that you have found Jesus. He is the answer and the Holy Spirit is the one who will lead you to him. And that’s called an awakening sometimes at an individual level and sometimes in a group of people or sometimes in a whole nation. And I think we have very little, I know I have very little eyesight what would be the word and I’ve always thought about a few little things happening in our church. Why can’t we believe God will do it for the nation? He doesn’t need us to be special, it just needs him to keep his word. And as Jesus told his disciples it’s expedient for you that I go away. If I didn’t go away to heaven the Holy Spirit wouldn’t come but

[00:31:09] when he comes he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. You can probably hear that’s why what I get to be preaching on recently, I can’t let it go. The topic I mean, sin, conviction of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. For it’s a gracious act of the Holy Spirit that lets us get right with God. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father we thank you this morning for the future of Israel. That partially it’s already happened since 1948 and that miracle of nations really that a people that existed there centuries previous come back to the same land and occupy it. That a people begin to speak the same language that the Old Testament was written in. So much so that when you learn modern Hebrew you can read the Old Testament Hebrew in the Bible. Just a bit of vocab difference. Lord the miracle of a countryside that’s going to be eventually one that will be a blazon with crops and flowers and freshness. But it’s been quite much not that in

[00:32:46] the past. Father we thank you for the prophecies of Ezekiel and what you have as the future for Israel. We also recognize those other nations around about which are sinful because all the nations are sinful unless you get them to be Christian Father. These nations will be jealous and come against Israel. Not understand that you’ve given the land to them through Israel. Lord we see that evidenced in the persecution of the Jews all the way across history. We see it in our politics and how people don’t understand that this is the Holy Land God’s given to his people. Help us Lord to stay on side with you and to back your cause and help us to pray for the Jewish people they will be converted that moment of them becoming not just dry bones dead corpses lying there but they’ll become spiritually enlivened and come to know you. May that happen soon Father we pray and help us to to be awakened to walk with you we ask in Jesus name. Amen.