Role of the Holy Spirit: The Power of the Gospel to the Nations

00:23:21.820 | I'm very excited to announce to you that registrations for the conference that you've just seen on the video, upcoming conference, October 3 and 4, in this sanctuary, is now open.

00:23:41.820 | As of this afternoon.

00:23:43.820 | The second The Puritan Conference that's been offered in America.

00:23:50.820 | We're working together with Reformation Heritage Books and Grace Community Church and their gifted conference team.

00:23:59.820 | So it's my dream come true to introduce many, many people at one time to the riches of these giants of the faith.

00:24:10.820 | The last one was in October of three years ago.

00:24:16.820 | And there was so much joy at this conference, so much insight, so many books bought.

00:24:25.820 | So it was so alive that I went back to John MacArthur and said, "We're getting so many requests. Can we do it again?"

00:24:33.820 | And he said, "Yes."

00:24:35.820 | And so we've been working with the team and David Woolen on my side, and it's scheduled now for October 3 and 4, 2025.

00:24:45.820 | Speakers are going to be the Lord willing, John MacArthur, Michael Reeves, Sinclair Ferguson, Chad Van Dicksorn, Derek Thomas, myself, and then others in breakout sessions.

00:24:58.820 | Talks will be on the Puritans as pastors.

00:25:03.820 | The Puritans on the new birth, the Puritans on communion with God, the Puritans on guidance or providence,

00:25:11.820 | the Puritans on the third use of the law, the Puritans on perseverance, and the Puritans on heaven and on hell.

00:25:20.820 | Wonderful thing about this conference is you can bring your wives, or your wife.

00:25:39.820 | You really could do it either way, couldn't you?

00:25:43.820 | And your children.

00:25:45.820 | So we want children here too to be influenced.

00:25:47.820 | I myself started reading the Puritans when I was nine, and started reading them in earnest when I was 14.

00:25:55.820 | And we'd love to get your children reading these great books, especially now since they will be available in very simple language that children can read and profit from.

00:26:07.820 | So this is simply a conference you don't want to miss.

00:26:11.820 | And Grace Community has been very gracious here.

00:26:14.820 | They're offering a special rate of $199 starting tonight until the end of this week.

00:26:25.820 | And there's a limited capacity, so we anticipate it will be completely filled soon.

00:26:33.820 | So we advise you to register very soon as possible.

00:26:37.820 | Go to Puritanconference.org, Puritanconference.org, and try to bring a number of your parishioners with you.

00:26:46.820 | That would be wonderful if you'd come make it a church thing and bring a number of people with you.

00:26:52.820 | And pray that God will bless it greatly as he's blessing this conference greatly.

00:27:00.820 | So turn with me, please, to Ezekiel 37.

00:27:05.820 | Ezekiel 37, verses 1 through 10.

00:27:11.820 | I also want to read the first five verses of 1 Corinthians, chapter 2.

00:27:17.820 | "Hear the word of God. 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.

00:27:33.820 | And behold, there were very many in the open valley, and lo, they were very dry.

00:27:41.820 | And he said unto me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered, 'O Lord God, thou knowest.'

00:27:54.820 | Again he said unto me, 'Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.'

00:28:05.820 | Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.

00:28:15.820 | And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that I am the Lord.'

00:28:29.820 | So I prophesied as I was commanded.

00:28:36.820 | And as I prophesied, as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them.

00:29:01.820 | Then said he unto me, 'Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, 'Thus saith the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.'

00:29:19.820 | So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet in exceeding great army.'"

00:29:34.820 | Praise be to God.

00:29:36.820 | 1 Corinthians 2, "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

00:29:48.820 | For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.

00:29:55.820 | And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

00:30:01.820 | And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

00:30:20.820 | Let's pray.

00:30:24.820 | Lord God, we thank thee for each of thy divine persons.

00:30:32.820 | And we say with Samuel Rutherford, "I know not which divine person I love the most, but this I know.

00:30:40.820 | I love each of them, and I need them all."

00:30:45.820 | Fill us in this hour with the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, that we may need him in our personal lives, in our preaching, every day.

00:31:00.820 | So that we may live, and that we may proclaim the Word of God, and that the people who hear us will live also.

00:31:12.820 | Lord, we pray earnestly for those who do not yet know thee savingly.

00:31:18.820 | Perhaps some in our midst, but certainly many in our congregations.

00:31:24.820 | Spirit of God, Holy Spirit, convince men and women, teenagers, boys and girls, of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

00:31:37.820 | Especially convince the souls of our hearers of the grave and dangerous sin of not believing in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation.

00:31:53.820 | Help them, Lord, to see that this is the highest act of enmity against thee.

00:32:01.820 | For this is the most serious rejection of thyself as Heavenly Father, that we could ever commit to reject thy own Son.

00:32:11.820 | O that the sin of unbelief may cause many under our preaching to cry out, "Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief."

00:32:24.820 | And that under our preaching, many may be convicted of righteousness, the only righteousness that can stand them in good stead,

00:32:34.820 | the righteousness of Jesus Christ on the great day of judgment.

00:32:40.820 | And set before our hearers also, Lord, through our preaching, judgment to come.

00:32:47.820 | Let them tremble at the thought that the judgment day is near at hand, when rebels against thee and thy Son will be punished forever.

00:32:57.820 | O bring every sinner we preach to, who is now estranged to thee, to his or her knees.

00:33:05.820 | And bring every conscience to conviction of sin, to repentance, to faith in Christ.

00:33:13.820 | And reveal Spirit of God, Jesus Christ, to the troubled heart, giving the peace of God through saving faith that passes all understanding.

00:33:25.820 | Raise the dead to life. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

00:33:33.820 | Well, you probably are well aware that for decades, scientists have been trying to create life in a lab.

00:33:48.820 | Although some have succeeded in fabricating artificial bacteria, no scientist has ever produced the feeling, thinking, conscious life possessed by humans.

00:34:02.820 | Not to mention the life of the soul that God has implanted in humans alone as his image bearers.

00:34:11.820 | There's something mysterious and beautiful about what life truly is.

00:34:18.820 | And God is the differentiating factor between life and non-life.

00:34:23.820 | The life principle, the animating source of vitality and energy, comes from the Holy Spirit, both physically and spiritually.

00:34:37.820 | Psalm 104 verse 30 tells us, "No scientist can create consciousness. No scientist can create the soul."

00:34:48.820 | Well, if this is true for physical life, much more for spiritual life.

00:34:54.820 | Only the God who created everything out of nothing can give spiritual life to a lost human soul by recreating it into the image of Christ.

00:35:06.820 | And the staggering thing that we've been hearing all weekend, all week, is that the Holy Spirit does this through human instruments like you and me.

00:35:19.820 | When we proclaim his word and unreservedly proclaim the doctrine of sovereign election as well as commanded invitation.

00:35:34.820 | As we heard last hour at the same time.

00:35:38.820 | And that's exactly what we have before us.

00:35:42.820 | In Ezekiel 37, prophesied by Ezekiel 2,500 years ago.

00:35:51.820 | Ezekiel ministered during the early part of the Babylonian captivity, 592 to 570 BC.

00:35:59.820 | A dark time. A dark time of divine judgment.

00:36:04.820 | But in the midst of judgment, God provides these glimmers of hope to his chosen people.

00:36:10.820 | And one of these in Ezekiel is chapter 37.

00:36:18.820 | In the context of such salvation oracles as these, God provides Israel with a message of hope through a valley full of dry bones.

00:36:32.820 | A vision.

00:36:34.820 | Although this vision describes the restoration literally of Israel to her land, verses 11 through 14.

00:36:43.820 | Our passage, 1 through 10, has much to say about God's redemptive power in Christ mediated through the Holy Spirit.

00:36:53.820 | In raising spiritually dead sinners to life by regeneration through the means of evangelism and gospel preaching.

00:37:05.820 | Now it's easy to ignore or downplay the essential role of the Holy Spirit.

00:37:13.820 | It's easy too for some to say, well, I want to hear that free gospel invitation.

00:37:21.820 | I don't want to hear that the Holy Spirit alone can do the work.

00:37:26.820 | Well, that is a tragedy.

00:37:29.820 | Because you see, the beauty of the gospel is that as willing as the Father is to have and elect people that no man can number.

00:37:37.820 | So willing is the Son to come and die for them.

00:37:41.820 | And so willing is the Holy Spirit to work in all those whom the Father has given the Son.

00:37:48.820 | And if he does not do that, no dead soul will ever live.

00:37:57.820 | And so as we were hearing last hour, really, election is the friend of sinners.

00:38:01.820 | Coming from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, worked out in full grace, salvation.

00:38:11.820 | And so in the text before us, we consider then the role of the Holy Spirit as supplying the power of the gospel to the nations through actually raising dead sinners to life.

00:38:29.820 | And we see three thoughts here.

00:38:31.820 | First, the necessity of the Spirit's power.

00:38:34.820 | Second, the provision of the Spirit's power.

00:38:37.820 | And third, the effect of the Spirit's power.

00:38:42.820 | And do remember that this is the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

00:38:47.820 | And the Spirit of the Father who proceeds from the Father and from the Son.

00:38:56.820 | So the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and his salvific power is as encouraging to us as the doctrine of the cross.

00:39:05.820 | And ought to be as encouraging also as the doctrine of election.

00:39:10.820 | No election, no one would ever be saved.

00:39:15.820 | No cross of Christ, no one would ever be saved.

00:39:20.820 | No work in individual souls by the Holy Spirit of a saving nature, no one would ever be saved.

00:39:30.820 | That's why I quoted that famous quote of Rutherford in my prayer.

00:39:36.820 | "I know not which divine person I need the most, but this I know.

00:39:39.820 | I love the most, but this I know.

00:39:41.820 | I need each of them, and I love them all."

00:39:44.820 | We need to be brothers in the ministry, in our preaching, in our personal lives,

00:39:50.820 | Trinitarian theologians who exalt a triune God and say from him and through him and to him are all things and all the glory.

00:40:03.820 | So let's go to verse 1 of this passage.

00:40:05.820 | Consider the lifeless valley in verse 1 where God sets the scene of death, both physical and spiritual.

00:40:15.820 | In this passage, it's as if the Lord invites us to go for a walk through a cemetery, as it were.

00:40:22.820 | And walking through cemeteries is actually a good thing for our souls.

00:40:28.820 | I've done it often in my life and always found it profitable.

00:40:31.820 | You're reminded about the past, about births and marriages and deaths, with at most a short poem or a text to summarize a life.

00:40:42.820 | But usually the gravestones provide little help for the present or for the future.

00:40:51.820 | But this cemetery walk tonight is different.

00:40:56.820 | It's actually full of profound hope for the future.

00:41:01.820 | So in verse 1 we read Ezekiel's narrative.

00:41:05.820 | "The hand of the Lord was upon me, carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones."

00:41:17.820 | Now Ezekiel's encounter with the valley of dry bones is indeed a vision, for he declares he was in the Spirit.

00:41:27.820 | The same terminology, by the way, the Apostle John used to describe his vision of heaven, Revelation 4 verse 2.

00:41:35.820 | So the hand of God here refers to God's power, particularly as mediated through the Holy Spirit.

00:41:44.820 | But as a vision then, this valley is not a literal, physical place, but symbolic of spiritual realities.

00:41:54.820 | The Lord confirms the vision's symbolic significance in verse 11 when he declares that the valley of dry bones represents the exiled nation of Israel.

00:42:05.820 | They were without hope. They were scattered. Their city lay in ruins.

00:42:10.820 | But God comes. God promises, by his Spirit, to restore his covenant people to the promised land.

00:42:18.820 | And to use the means of directing the heart of King Cyrus to issue an edict allowing the Jews to return to their land in 539 BC.

00:42:28.820 | So the dead bones and the dead bodies of our passage not only represent the lost world, but also a dead church.

00:42:40.820 | The decaying bodies and dry bones represent the hopelessness, the despondency that the church has without the presence and work of the Holy Spirit

00:42:51.820 | taking the things of Christ and revealing them to our soul by the proclamation of the Word.

00:42:59.820 | The vision communicates then vital truths about spiritual death and divine quickening

00:43:08.820 | that are instructive for us as preachers as we press on in our glorious, hard, delightful, beautiful task of evangelistic preaching.

00:43:23.820 | So picture the scene with me.

00:43:26.820 | In a vision, God reveals to Ezekiel this hideous sight of an open valley littered with millions of dry, sun-bleached skulls and bone fragments

00:43:38.820 | all that remained of the victims of a massive slaughter many years before.

00:43:46.820 | So much as touching one of these bones would render any Israelite unclean, according to Numbers 19 verse 16,

00:43:59.820 | we have just a very sombering picture before us.

00:44:05.820 | But God says in verse 2 that Ezekiel was to pass by these bones, the dry bones, round about, literally in the Hebrew, around and around.

00:44:19.820 | God wanted Ezekiel to walk around these bones several times to take a good, hard, long look

00:44:26.820 | to show us the death, the decay, the devastation of sin.

00:44:34.820 | Sin around us, sin within us, before he begins working savingly in us.

00:44:42.820 | So before using us mightily in evangelism, the Lord often crushes our dependence on visible things

00:44:50.820 | showing us that, humanly speaking, there's nothing hopeful about the unbelievers to whom we minister.

00:44:58.820 | Our only confidence is in the promises of His Holy Word as Father, the atoning work of Christ as Redeemer,

00:45:06.820 | and the powerful, life-giving ministry of the Holy Spirit.

00:45:11.820 | Without God, our work, the Triune God, our work is absolutely hopeless.

00:45:20.820 | Now in our tradition, before the minister gets on the pulpit, the congregation stands, or the office bearers stand,

00:45:31.820 | and the minister stands at the bottom of the pulpit with his back to the people and prays before he gets on the pulpit.

00:45:41.820 | If you knew, if you knew how poor my prayers were at that moment,

00:45:48.820 | before I come up on the pulpit to do the impossible, be the mouthpiece of God,

00:45:55.820 | in weakness, in fear, in trembling, yet trusting in the power of the Spirit to do what I cannot do,

00:46:03.820 | and you know what I mean, you know what I mean.

00:46:08.820 | My words are so poor at that moment.

00:46:10.820 | Often I'm just praying, "Spirit, Holy Spirit, give power, give power, give power."

00:46:17.820 | I'm very repetitious.

00:46:21.820 | And I thought to myself, "I just don't dare tell anybody how poor my prayers are at that moment."

00:46:29.820 | I was reading in the diary of George Whitefield, and he said, before he goes on the pulpit, he said,

00:46:36.820 | "My prayers are just so weak and poor. All I can say is, 'Power, Spirit, Spirit of God, give me power,' and I go, 'With you?'"

00:46:43.820 | That's wonderful. Thank you so much, George.

00:46:48.820 | So, this is the beauty of every sermon, no matter how many decades you preach.

00:46:55.820 | You never know how to do it.

00:46:58.820 | You are always dependent on the Holy Spirit.

00:47:01.820 | You can't say, "I've been in this job for 25 years, and I pretty well have it mastered."

00:47:05.820 | No. I mean, certain things are easier with experience, but the task overall is just as impossible.

00:47:13.820 | You're just as needy every time on the Holy Spirit.

00:47:17.820 | And this is for our welfare, but it's also for the welfare of our people.

00:47:22.820 | That's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, "I was before you in weakness and in trembling, but in demonstration of the power of the Spirit."

00:47:33.820 | That's what Ezekiel needs here. That's what Paul needed. That's what you and I need.

00:47:38.820 | In that mindset, you see, we then evangelize in utter dependence on Christ's strength.

00:47:49.820 | You know, a minority of our theological students, when they preach and they come back, I'm always asking them, "How did it go?"

00:47:57.820 | "Oh, yeah. I was really helped. Wonderfully helped."

00:48:01.820 | Ask them three weeks later, "How did it go?"

00:48:04.820 | "Oh, wonderfully helped. God was with me. It's just wonderful."

00:48:08.820 | And they say that every time.

00:48:12.820 | I start feeling scared.

00:48:15.820 | You see, because if you think the Lord helps you wonderfully through every sermon every time,

00:48:20.820 | you're going to plateau in your preaching, and you're going to think you're a pretty good preacher.

00:48:24.820 | And as soon as you come to that point, you're going to go downhill.

00:48:33.820 | Sometimes people ask ministers, "You've had this question too, I'm sure. When do you preach best?"

00:48:40.820 | I'm not quite sure how to answer that.

00:48:43.820 | But I usually answer it this way, "Just after I preach the worst."

00:48:48.820 | Because when your sermon flops, what happens that week?

00:48:56.820 | You are so needy.

00:48:59.820 | Because you know you can't do this. You can't do this without the Holy Spirit.

00:49:05.820 | So I don't know how you do it, but I get in the car, I look over at my wife, I say, "Well, how do you think it went?"

00:49:14.820 | [laughter]

00:49:18.820 | And she says, "Well..."

00:49:23.820 | [laughter]

00:49:25.820 | My wife is pretty mild. I'm a kind of tender guy.

00:49:29.820 | It would be hard for me to be married to a wife who just beats her husband up.

00:49:34.820 | So she says, "Not every sermon can be your best."

00:49:39.820 | [laughter]

00:49:45.820 | At that point, I know it's pretty bad.

00:49:49.820 | And my fears are confirmed.

00:49:53.820 | Of course, I'm gentle on her too, so when she makes a new meal...

00:49:58.820 | [laughter]

00:50:05.820 | How does it taste? Well...

00:50:09.820 | [laughter]

00:50:12.820 | Not every meal can be your best.

00:50:16.820 | You can make it every other year or so.

00:50:21.820 | Now...

00:50:24.820 | But then there are times, are there not? There are times.

00:50:28.820 | When you walk around the Valley of Dry Bones.

00:50:32.820 | But you also preach to those who are alive.

00:50:37.820 | And you evangelize, as Calvin would say, both the believer and the unbeliever,

00:50:42.820 | because the believer needs to be reminded of the basics of the gospel again and again too,

00:50:46.820 | because they can easily backslide from it.

00:50:48.820 | And you preach with such freedom and such anointing of the Spirit...

00:50:54.820 | that you get in the car, you don't have to ask your wife.

00:50:59.820 | It happens to me, I don't know how often to you, but maybe half a dozen times a year, average.

00:51:04.820 | I don't have to ask her, because I know.

00:51:08.820 | I know the Holy Spirit anointed me throughout that sermon.

00:51:14.820 | And brother, I'm sure you can identify with this.

00:51:17.820 | You can take a lot of criticism from a lot of people and go through a lot of trials in the ministry

00:51:24.820 | for one such experience like that.

00:51:28.820 | That you know the Holy Spirit spoke through you with power.

00:51:33.820 | Not just for a minute or two in the sermon.

00:51:36.820 | But that you could hardly keep up with Him throughout the sermon.

00:51:39.820 | And that you felt from beginning to end, you were anointed as His servant.

00:51:46.820 | Now, it can be that that flopped sermon God used for the conversion of someone.

00:51:52.820 | Absolutely.

00:51:55.820 | I had a sermon 48 years ago.

00:52:00.820 | I was a theological student.

00:52:02.820 | And I preached it in our denomination from the East Coast to the West Coast.

00:52:06.820 | And my professor said, "Sermons are like horses. You can use them again...

00:52:14.820 | as long as they can walk.

00:52:17.820 | But if they can't walk anymore, you have to shoot them."

00:52:22.820 | So I got all the way on the West Coast and it flopped so badly that I shot it.

00:52:29.820 | And I wrote on the top of my notes, "Never preach again."

00:52:35.820 | Well, about four years later I came back to that same congregation.

00:52:40.820 | And a lady walked up to me and she said, "You know that sermon you preached on Simeon here?"

00:52:44.820 | I said, "Yeah, oh yeah."

00:52:48.820 | And she goes, "God used that for my conversion."

00:52:52.820 | I said, "Are you kidding me?"

00:52:55.820 | You see, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is what we need.

00:53:01.820 | And He can do things far above and beyond what we ever could think or imagine.

00:53:07.820 | But we are entirely dependent upon Him.

00:53:12.820 | So now you have a very hopeless situation in one way, don't you?

00:53:16.820 | The minister is hopeless without the Holy Spirit.

00:53:20.820 | And this minister, Ezekiel, is preaching to very dry bones.

00:53:28.820 | Verse 2 says, "There were very many in the open valley, and behold they were very dry."

00:53:34.820 | Very many and very dry. Do the math here.

00:53:38.820 | Very many plus very dry equals very hopeless.

00:53:43.820 | This is a hopeless scene.

00:53:46.820 | The bones are very dry. The hope of resurrection is gone.

00:53:50.820 | It's a tragic scene. There was such potential here in this open valley.

00:53:54.820 | Once there were thousands of strong men. They're lying dead in heaps of bones.

00:54:01.820 | Now spiritually we look around us.

00:54:05.820 | We look at some people in our church.

00:54:07.820 | We look at some boys and girls, some teenagers who don't know the Lord.

00:54:10.820 | Some adults as well.

00:54:12.820 | We see the dry bones of spiritual death.

00:54:14.820 | We pray for them.

00:54:16.820 | We preach to win them to Christ.

00:54:21.820 | But we see no fruit year after year after year.

00:54:27.820 | I've been 38 years in my church.

00:54:29.820 | I still see some people that were there from the beginning who are not saved.

00:54:34.820 | My wife and I are praying for them constantly.

00:54:38.820 | We pray for them by name.

00:54:41.820 | Oh God, blow up on this valley of dry bones.

00:54:46.820 | And bring this person, that person to life.

00:54:53.820 | But also we need to pray that way for our entire congregation as a whole.

00:54:58.820 | Because we all need in our churches revival.

00:55:03.820 | We need greater measures of this spirit.

00:55:06.820 | One of my prayers in the last few years, I feel like the Lord laid it upon me actually.

00:55:11.820 | And I just keep praying it over and over again.

00:55:13.820 | Lord, send us.

00:55:15.820 | Send us in America.

00:55:17.820 | Send us in our churches.

00:55:18.820 | Send us around the world.

00:55:20.820 | Fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord from sea to sea.

00:55:23.820 | Give us a great awakening greater than the original great awakening.

00:55:27.820 | We need revival.

00:55:30.820 | We live in the midst of a valley of dry, dead bones.

00:55:38.820 | But then we turn to verses 3 through 7a.

00:55:41.820 | And we see that the spirit can transform the dry bones into a mighty army.

00:55:51.820 | Let me give you four or five thoughts here.

00:55:54.820 | The first is the conundrum before the prophecy.

00:56:00.820 | Before the prophesying of Ezekiel.

00:56:02.820 | Look at verse 3.

00:56:05.820 | He said unto me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"

00:56:11.820 | And I answered, "O Lord God, thou knowest."

00:56:14.820 | Notice first of all here, how the Lord calls Ezekiel the son of man.

00:56:20.820 | In colloquial terms, he's calling him creature of the dust.

00:56:25.820 | The Hebrew word for man here is adam.

00:56:29.820 | It conveys the lowliness of mankind.

00:56:32.820 | First, because it comes from the Hebrew word for earth or soil,

00:56:35.820 | reminding us of our humble origins from the dust of the ground.

00:56:38.820 | And second, because it reminds us of the first Adam who sinfully rebelled

00:56:43.820 | against his gracious creator in paradise.

00:56:46.820 | So through this title, God is reminding Ezekiel of his finite created humanity.

00:56:55.820 | So Ezekiel responds, "O Lord God, thou knowest."

00:57:04.820 | What a response.

00:57:06.820 | He calls him the Lord God, literally Adonai Yahweh, Lord Jehovah.

00:57:13.820 | Jehovah, conveying God's self-existence and covenant loyalty,

00:57:17.820 | love and faithfulness to his people.

00:57:19.820 | Adonai, referring to his sovereignty and power and dominion over the universe.

00:57:24.820 | In other words, Ezekiel brings these two wonderful names of God together

00:57:33.820 | to give hope in a hopeless situation in the triune God

00:57:40.820 | through Jesus Christ, the Messiah to come.

00:57:44.820 | And so the conundrum here is,

00:57:47.820 | how could this great, almighty, loyal, loving, faithful I am,

00:57:53.820 | that I am sovereign and powerful and almighty,

00:57:57.820 | how can he use our weak evangelistic efforts as Son of Man?

00:58:04.820 | Can we change the dead, dry bones?

00:58:09.820 | Of course we cannot.

00:58:11.820 | And so Ezekiel comes into this conundrum.

00:58:15.820 | "O Lord God, thou knowest."

00:58:20.820 | In other words, I have no confidence in my own power to create life,

00:58:24.820 | but I have confidence in thee.

00:58:27.820 | And that's the way to preach.

00:58:30.820 | You see, that double conundrum.

00:58:34.820 | All my confidence is in the Holy Spirit.

00:58:37.820 | And no confidence in myself.

00:58:42.820 | That's Paul's spirit in 1 Corinthians 2.

00:58:46.820 | I got up before you, weakness, trembling.

00:58:50.820 | My words are not powerful words like some of the other false Corinthian preachers.

00:58:58.820 | But I get up with the hope of the Holy Spirit.

00:59:02.820 | I get up thinking of the promise of God that his word will never return to him void.

00:59:07.820 | Holy Spirit of God, let these bones live.

00:59:12.820 | That's our hope.

00:59:14.820 | And what a hope that is.

00:59:18.820 | Second, you see the command to prophesy into this seemingly hopeless situation.

00:59:24.820 | Verse 4, "Prophesy upon these bones and say unto them, 'O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.'"

00:59:36.820 | God is saying to Ezekiel, "Be my herald.

00:59:40.820 | Be my preacher. Be my proclaimer of my word.

00:59:44.820 | I'm simply communicating to you, Ezekiel, what you are to say to dead, dry bones."

00:59:51.820 | And through that divine word, my spirit will bring life out of death.

01:00:00.820 | The Holy Spirit is the agent of new creation.

01:00:03.820 | He works salvation through the written and spoken word of the Lord.

01:00:08.820 | "Hear the word of the Lord, ye dry bones."

01:00:13.820 | Verse 4 goes on to say, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye dry bones."

01:00:20.820 | So the word of the Lord is the source of life.

01:00:23.820 | The Spirit is the means to bring life to sinners through faith in Jesus Christ,

01:00:31.820 | through the hearing of the word of God.

01:00:36.820 | So it's already been said a few times in this conference,

01:00:39.820 | the beauty of God's electing grace, His cross-centered grace, His spirit-working grace,

01:00:47.820 | is that the Spirit uses means to affect the almighty work that God alone can do.

01:00:56.820 | And that's why Paul cries out, "Through the foolishness of preaching, He saves them that believe."

01:01:01.820 | Who can believe this?

01:01:02.820 | Whoever could have imagined such an incredible thing?

01:01:06.820 | That someone who's dead, dry bones in himself, but made alive by the Spirit,

01:01:11.820 | can be used to preach to dead, dry bones,

01:01:15.820 | and that the Holy Spirit could bring dead, dry sinners to life.

01:01:22.820 | Well, that is the most encouraging thing for preachers that you can possibly imagine.

01:01:28.820 | And what that says to every one of us is, "Go on, brother, preach the gospel.

01:01:33.820 | These dead, dry bones shall hear the word of the Lord by the Spirit of God."

01:01:42.820 | And that brings us to the third thought here, the content of the prophecy.

01:01:46.820 | "Thus saith the Lord God."

01:01:51.820 | The Adonai.

01:01:54.820 | God declares that He will cause breath, ruach in Hebrew, to enter the dry bones.

01:02:01.820 | He tells Ezekiel.

01:02:03.820 | And it's translated, of course, in three different ways, as you well know, in English.

01:02:08.820 | Spirit, wind, and breath.

01:02:12.820 | So ruach refers to the invisible principle of life and activity.

01:02:17.820 | Sometimes it refers to breath, sometimes to wind, sometimes to human spirits,

01:02:21.820 | sometimes to the Spirit of God.

01:02:24.820 | But what connects all these concepts together is that breath is the evidence

01:02:28.820 | that the life principle, the life principle, is present.

01:02:33.820 | We do not live because we breathe.

01:02:36.820 | We breathe because we live.

01:02:38.820 | So the wind is powerful and effective.

01:02:41.820 | We can't see it, but we see its effects.

01:02:43.820 | Similarly, spiritual beings are invisible, but we know their existence through their effects.

01:02:49.820 | We cannot see the invisible God, for example, because He's a spiritual being.

01:02:54.820 | We heard about that already as well.

01:02:56.820 | But we are aware of His existence because His effects are evident in the visible world.

01:03:03.820 | And if we're born again, in our own soul as well.

01:03:08.820 | So spirit, wind, breath, they share the notions of movement, activity, and life.

01:03:15.820 | And the emphasis here is that life comes into the dead, dry bones from without.

01:03:22.820 | So the Spirit of God is like the wind, is like breath,

01:03:26.820 | who's the animating agent in both physical and spiritual life.

01:03:33.820 | So just as we cannot control our existence, the source of our breath,

01:03:37.820 | nor can we control the wind,

01:03:39.820 | neither can we control the Spirit of God who causes breath to enter us or our hearers,

01:03:45.820 | animating us with the life principle in spiritual life.

01:03:52.820 | And we get evidence of that all the time as preachers, don't we?

01:03:55.820 | The very people that we often think God is going to convert very soon.

01:04:00.820 | Isn't it true? He doesn't seem to convert.

01:04:03.820 | And sometimes the most unlikely choices in our church, He converts.

01:04:10.820 | God takes the unexpected.

01:04:13.820 | God is a surprising God.

01:04:17.820 | He chooses not firstborn Cain, but secondborn Abel, Esau, Jacob.

01:04:24.820 | He chooses small little Israel.

01:04:27.820 | God is a surprising God.

01:04:29.820 | But the powerful life-giving Holy Spirit, the wind and breath of God, that's the point,

01:04:35.820 | can and does and will, to the end of time, change human hearts.

01:04:41.820 | So we get up on the pulpit and preach with confidence because of the power of the Holy Spirit.

01:04:50.820 | And notice that God doesn't say, "You and I will cause breath to enter into them."

01:04:55.820 | It's, "I, I will cause breath to enter into you," verse 5, "and you shall live."

01:05:03.820 | And yet the emphasis is on both divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

01:05:08.820 | It's true that the bones are dead.

01:05:10.820 | It's true that only the powerful work of God Himself can raise the bones into a living armor.

01:05:14.820 | But it's also true that Ezekiel must preach to the bones as though they could hear and respond.

01:05:22.820 | He may not have known what would happen next, but God had spoken and Ezekiel must obey.

01:05:28.820 | He must be faithful to his office and commission as a prophet.

01:05:34.820 | And so must we.

01:05:35.820 | We never know.

01:05:37.820 | We never know when God will use a sermon for the conversion of one or two or ten.

01:05:43.820 | We don't know.

01:05:45.820 | We must preach with such a passion, such a desire, such a love for the souls of sinners

01:05:51.820 | that it may seem to the hearers that we think we could save them,

01:05:56.820 | but at the same time we know internally that if the Holy Spirit doesn't bless it, no one will be saved.

01:06:07.820 | So we must call sinners to respond to the gospel.

01:06:11.820 | We must call them to repentance.

01:06:13.820 | We must call them to faith in Jesus Christ.

01:06:15.820 | We must call them to take hold of the Messiah and to plead on the promises of God.

01:06:22.820 | So there's a glorious intersection here in Ezekiel 37

01:06:27.820 | between both the divine and the human that we also heard last hour

01:06:31.820 | about election and responsibility and invitation.

01:06:35.820 | Here it is.

01:06:37.820 | "We must preach with a passion of unpleading as though the convincing were up to us as evangelists

01:06:42.820 | and the decision were up to the sinner, and yet pray with total dependence upon and submission to

01:06:48.820 | the very sovereign electing God we heard about so eloquently last lecture."

01:06:57.820 | And so we preach, prophesy to dead bones, knowing that the dead are everywhere,

01:07:07.820 | but knowing that they do have a mind.

01:07:12.820 | So we do have words.

01:07:14.820 | They're not stocks and blocks, in that sense they're not like dead bones.

01:07:17.820 | They do have minds that are approachable with the gospel.

01:07:20.820 | We can bring it to the ear.

01:07:22.820 | The Holy Spirit needs to bring it to the heart.

01:07:26.820 | They are thinking, feeling souls.

01:07:30.820 | But the Holy Spirit has to do the saving work and make them willing in the day of God's power.

01:07:37.820 | And so we offer the gospel freely to sinners, knowing He can touch their hearts,

01:07:42.820 | knowing He can change their wills, even in a twinkling of an eye.

01:07:48.820 | So we obey the Lord's command and we prophesy.

01:07:52.820 | That is, we preach the gospel, the full gospel that we've been hearing about the last two days

01:07:59.820 | of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

01:08:03.820 | This is it.

01:08:05.820 | Proclaiming God's promises about the bones to the bones.

01:08:10.820 | O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

01:08:14.820 | We talk to them about their death and Adam.

01:08:16.820 | We talk to them about their sad state and sin.

01:08:18.820 | We talk to them about the glory of the gospel, that they could have everything valuable

01:08:23.820 | and everything good in this life by the grace of God.

01:08:28.820 | Not in terms of health and wealth gospel, but in terms of having their sins washed away

01:08:33.820 | and being made ready for life eternal.

01:08:38.820 | Spurgeon puts it so beautifully.

01:08:41.820 | Let me just read. It's a fairly long quote, but let me read it.

01:08:43.820 | How shall we preach the gospel?

01:08:45.820 | "Was Ezekiel to do what some of my hyper-Calvinist brethren say preachers ought to do,

01:08:50.820 | to warn the sinner, but then never to invite him?

01:08:53.820 | Was Ezekiel to go and talk to these bones, but never to say a word to them by way of command?

01:08:59.820 | Was he to explain the way of salvation, but never bid them walk in it?

01:09:03.820 | No, no.

01:09:05.820 | After he had declared covenant purposes, he was to say, 'Thus saith the Lord,

01:09:10.820 | "Ye dry bones, live."'"

01:09:15.820 | And so the message of the gospel minister when he's declared the purposes of divine grace

01:09:19.820 | is to say to sinners, "Thus saith the Lord, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation.

01:09:24.820 | Trust in him alone, and you are saved.

01:09:28.820 | Whoever you may be, trust Christ alone, and you will be saved.'"

01:09:34.820 | You're seeing the power, you see, and the greatness of this gospel.

01:09:41.820 | Spurgeon goes on to say, "Say to the dry bones, 'Withered arm, be outstretched.

01:09:48.820 | Lame man, leap. Blind eyes, see.

01:09:52.820 | You dead, dry bones, live.'"

01:09:55.820 | This is the way to preach.

01:09:57.820 | Tell them to lay hold on eternal life, even when they cannot do so.

01:10:04.820 | And you see, then you have the Messiah, or the Christ of the prophecy,

01:10:09.820 | in verse 6b and 7a, and the compliance of Ezekiel.

01:10:16.820 | "And ye shall know," isn't that interesting?

01:10:19.820 | "Ye shall know that I am the Lord."

01:10:21.820 | God's saying, "I'm going to do something."

01:10:23.820 | As you preach the gospel, as you preach of Jesus Christ and him crucified,

01:10:28.820 | I will honor that preaching because as you preach faithfully my word,

01:10:33.820 | your preaching becomes my word by the grace of God, as Calvin would put it,

01:10:39.820 | so that I will receive the glory through the resurrection of the dead,

01:10:44.820 | and there will be a powerful divine word that will go forth and do wondrous things.

01:10:54.820 | And so our task is to preach Christ to dead, dry bones,

01:11:00.820 | to preach the whole counsel, the whole Christ to the whole man

01:11:04.820 | as a central overriding theme of Scripture.

01:11:08.820 | The centerpiece of Scripture is Jesus Christ.

01:11:10.820 | The Bible is a Christocentric book.

01:11:13.820 | Paul says, "I'm determined to know nothing among you

01:11:18.820 | except Jesus Christ and him crucified."

01:11:22.820 | Now, that doesn't mean he preached only literally about the cross,

01:11:26.820 | but it's a synecdochal statement.

01:11:28.820 | I preach all things about Christ, but the heart of it is the cross.

01:11:32.820 | I preach him in his incarnation.

01:11:34.820 | I preach him in his sufferings.

01:11:37.820 | I preach him in all the steps of humiliation, all the steps of exaltation.

01:11:41.820 | I preach him in his names, his persons, his offices, his work.

01:11:45.820 | I preach Jesus Christ and him crucified.

01:11:48.820 | Apart from Christ crucified, there is nothing for me to say.

01:11:56.820 | Now, today in systematic theology, we divide it up nicely

01:11:59.820 | to cover all the doctrines of the Bible, and there's a place for that.

01:12:02.820 | We do prolegomena in theology proper, in anthropology, Christology,

01:12:06.820 | soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology.

01:12:11.820 | But Pauline doctrine is that Christology is the fulcrum

01:12:17.820 | from which everything hangs.

01:12:19.820 | Everything's connected to Christology.

01:12:21.820 | All the doctrines of the Bible really flow out of

01:12:25.820 | and are connected to the Lord Jesus Christ.

01:12:29.820 | Just as all the work of the Spirit in the soul,

01:12:32.820 | the entire Ordo of Salutas, the Order of Salvation,

01:12:37.820 | every single aspect of it is connected to Jesus Christ.

01:12:45.820 | And particularly, faith.

01:12:48.820 | William Perkins has this wonderful chart of the Order of Salvation

01:12:52.820 | from eternity past to eternity future.

01:12:54.820 | The center column is Jesus Christ and all his different aspects

01:12:57.820 | of his person and work.

01:12:59.820 | And then next to it is the Order of Salutas,

01:13:01.820 | and there's arrows going everywhere connecting the two.

01:13:05.820 | And faith is connected to every single one of them.

01:13:09.820 | You see, the intimate connection between Christ

01:13:14.820 | and the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit,

01:13:18.820 | is something we don't often ponder enough, as we should.

01:13:23.820 | And so Paul says, "Everything I preach is really connected to Christ."

01:13:28.820 | He deals with church's problems.

01:13:30.820 | The answer to all seven problems, if you study 1 Corinthians,

01:13:34.820 | is Jesus Christ.

01:13:36.820 | You see, everything he wants to advise us is connected to Christ.

01:13:42.820 | How are you to live as a husband? As Christ loved his church.

01:13:46.820 | How are you to live, how are women to live as wives to their husbands?

01:13:50.820 | Well, as the church lives, to Jesus Christ.

01:13:53.820 | How are you to forgive each other?

01:13:55.820 | Even as Christ has forgiven you.

01:13:59.820 | Everything is connected with Christ.

01:14:03.820 | "I'm determined to know nothing else," he says.

01:14:05.820 | When he exhorts us to be generous in our giving,

01:14:07.820 | he reminds us of Christ who gave so much for us.

01:14:10.820 | When he exhorts us to humility, he tells us to put on the mind of Christ.

01:14:15.820 | When he exhorts us to everyday holiness, it's on the ground we're crucified

01:14:18.820 | and risen with Christ to find new life in him.

01:14:21.820 | Paul is saying Christ is the answer to every human problem,

01:14:24.820 | to the lost and to the saved.

01:14:26.820 | Christ is the answer. He's all I preach.

01:14:28.820 | He's the sum and substance of my ministry.

01:14:32.820 | He is our only hope.

01:14:34.820 | Yes, he's more.

01:14:36.820 | He's even our highest incentive to holiness as well.

01:14:42.820 | I'm determined to know nothing else.

01:14:45.820 | And the only way you, my hearer, can know nothing else

01:14:49.820 | is by the Holy Spirit taking the words I proclaim to you,

01:14:53.820 | taking the things of Christ I preach to you,

01:14:56.820 | and bringing them home to your hearts.

01:14:59.820 | One old Puritan said the Holy Spirit is taking the Word of God as you preach it.

01:15:06.820 | He's putting it in a bow and he's shooting it out like arrows over the congregation,

01:15:10.820 | directing every arrow to each heart according to each heart's needs.

01:15:17.820 | Some need warning, some need comfort, some need encouragement.

01:15:21.820 | But he's the second minister, as Calvin said.

01:15:25.820 | You are the external minister. The Holy Spirit is the internal minister.

01:15:28.820 | And he takes that Word and shoots it out and directs it.

01:15:32.820 | He who reads the hearts that you cannot read fully,

01:15:36.820 | he directs it to the heart according to each heart need.

01:15:39.820 | That is incredibly comforting.

01:15:43.820 | And the beauty of that, the beauty of that,

01:15:47.820 | is that when you get to that part of your sermon

01:15:52.820 | where you actually start preaching explicitly about Christ,

01:15:57.820 | this old Puritan divine says the Holy Spirit then gets extraordinarily active

01:16:03.820 | and starts sending out arrows everywhere

01:16:06.820 | because he loves to take the things of Christ that you're saying

01:16:11.820 | and to apply them to dead bones and to living souls,

01:16:16.820 | believers and unbelievers alike.

01:16:21.820 | And so, the effect of the Spirit,

01:16:26.820 | the effect of the Spirit's power, our last thought,

01:16:30.820 | which really begins in verse 7b, is twofold.

01:16:34.820 | First, it's a breathless army, a breathless army.

01:16:39.820 | Look at the end of verse 7 and 8.

01:16:41.820 | "I prophesied there was a noise, a shaking.

01:16:44.820 | The bones came together, bone to his bone.

01:16:47.820 | I beheld, the sinews in the flesh came up upon them,

01:16:50.820 | the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them."

01:16:56.820 | An obvious allusion here to the creation of Adam

01:16:59.820 | where we read that God fills these bodies with his breath in physical creation.

01:17:06.820 | And so, the imagery here that God is conveying to Ezekiel is

01:17:11.820 | I must do something parallel when it comes to spiritual recreation.

01:17:18.820 | So, with the power of God's Word, there's the sound of shaking and rattling,

01:17:23.820 | and the sinner is brought to hear the Word of God,

01:17:27.820 | brought under conviction of the Word of God,

01:17:29.820 | brought to feel his need for Jesus Christ.

01:17:32.820 | It's like an earthquake in the Hebrew word, a rattling or a shaking,

01:17:38.820 | as the Spirit reassembles the bones into bodies

01:17:42.820 | and then turns the breathless army, secondly, into a breathing army.

01:17:50.820 | Verses 9 and 10, "Prophesy, prophesy unto the wind, Ezekiel.

01:17:56.820 | Son of man, say to the wind, 'Thus saith the Lord God,

01:17:59.820 | come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.'

01:18:06.820 | So I prophesied as he commanded me, and a breath came into them,

01:18:11.820 | and they lived and stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army."

01:18:17.820 | The wind, the wind was the life-giving Spirit of God.

01:18:24.820 | No other wind could impart this kind of life.

01:18:27.820 | And so Ezekiel speaks to a living, conscious being now.

01:18:32.820 | The sinner he's speaking to is born again,

01:18:36.820 | and Christ compares the Spirit to the wind, mysterious in its operations,

01:18:41.820 | known in its effects in John 3,

01:18:44.820 | in a New Testament parallel moment to this Ezekiel 37 chapter.

01:18:52.820 | And the point is that God can raise a spiritual army with His Word in a moment.

01:18:57.820 | He can send revival under one sermon.

01:19:00.820 | It's happened before, where hundreds were saved under one sermon,

01:19:06.820 | an exceeding great army.

01:19:10.820 | So God, God the Holy Ghost, has the power to translate the very many

01:19:17.820 | and the very dry bones into a massive army, actually in Hebrew,

01:19:23.820 | a very, very great army.

01:19:27.820 | And the soldiers that this resurrected army produces stand upon their feet.

01:19:33.820 | This is vital activity. This is life.

01:19:36.820 | They're not just passive recipients of divine grace.

01:19:39.820 | They become active participants, carrying out their divine calling.

01:19:45.820 | They produce fruit.

01:19:48.820 | We know they're alive because they become active.

01:19:52.820 | "By their fruit ye shall know them," Jesus said.

01:19:54.820 | Living people are active people, growing people, dynamic people.

01:20:00.820 | By the powering, the overpowering grace of the Holy Spirit,

01:20:04.820 | the powerless become the powerful, breathing army.

01:20:11.820 | What a blessing.

01:20:16.820 | You know, yesterday I tried to stammer a few words about the Great Commission

01:20:21.820 | that Jesus gave to 11 apostles.

01:20:27.820 | We sit and stand here tonight as 5,000 ambassadors of Christ.

01:20:35.820 | What an army is at this conference.

01:20:39.820 | How we ought to pray for one another.

01:20:41.820 | How we ought to pray that every faithful minister in this nation

01:20:44.820 | and all the nations represented here

01:20:48.820 | would have the Holy Spirit as he preaches,

01:20:51.820 | and that God would raise up a living, powerful, innumerable army

01:20:57.820 | to serve him in accord with his sovereign election

01:21:00.820 | that no man can number all around the world,

01:21:03.820 | and that we would see greater, better days than we've seen to this point.

01:21:10.820 | Nothing is impossible for God.

01:21:13.820 | Let's pray for fruit, fruit on our preaching,

01:21:16.820 | 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold, massive, experiential fruit

01:21:22.820 | to the glory of God as this kingdom expands around the world.

01:21:27.820 | And pray that he'll raise up more faithful soldiers

01:21:30.820 | to stand on their feet and to prophesy to dead, dry bones.

01:21:37.820 | You see, it's a powerful, energetic indwelling of the Holy Spirit

01:21:41.820 | that effectively produces life in obedience.

01:21:45.820 | Our weapons are not carnal or physical, Paul says,

01:21:49.820 | but through spiritual warfare we engage in warfare

01:21:52.820 | by the weapons of purity, knowledge, patience, kindness,

01:21:55.820 | the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech,

01:21:58.820 | by the power of God, with the weapons of righteousness

01:22:01.820 | for the right hand and for the left.

01:22:04.820 | So it's not just preaching, although it's preeminently preaching,

01:22:10.820 | but it's also our lives.

01:22:13.820 | It's not only doing preaching evangelism,

01:22:15.820 | it's doing friendship evangelism, getting close to people,

01:22:20.820 | getting to know them, working with them one by one,

01:22:26.820 | talking to them, opening doors of conversation.

01:22:30.820 | You know, this morning, my wife and I were having breakfast

01:22:33.820 | in the hotel, and a lady evangelized me.

01:22:40.820 | It was wonderful. It was wonderful.

01:22:44.820 | We were standing by some fruit, beautiful fruit,

01:22:47.820 | raspberries, blackberries, and I just said to her,

01:22:50.820 | I just said to her, "That fruit really looks beautiful, doesn't it?"

01:22:55.820 | "Oh," she said, "God is so good to give it to us, isn't He?"

01:23:02.820 | "Wow, that's a really good open line."

01:23:07.820 | So I said, "Amen."

01:23:10.820 | She said, "Do you know Him too?"

01:23:13.820 | I said, "Yes, ma'am."

01:23:17.820 | She said, "If you know Him too, we're soon going to be together up there,

01:23:22.820 | and we'll be able to talk forever about the goodness of God."

01:23:25.820 | I said, "Yes, indeed."

01:23:29.820 | So I asked her her name, and she said, "One of your wives."

01:23:41.820 | "You trained your wife well. Estelle."

01:23:45.820 | Anybody have Estelle's wife here?

01:23:49.820 | You probably don't want to put your hand up. Okay.

01:23:55.820 | But also, there are other ways we need to work at evangelizing people.

01:24:03.820 | Do you have organization in your church of various Bible studies,

01:24:10.820 | small group Bible studies, bringing people in from the neighborhood?

01:24:14.820 | I love what Mark Johnson did many years ago in London.

01:24:17.820 | His church was dying. It was down to like 15 people when he came there.

01:24:22.820 | And he started neighborhood evangelism.

01:24:25.820 | What a great idea it was.

01:24:27.820 | He actually built a church up through that by the grace of God.

01:24:31.820 | What he just said was, "Every single member,

01:24:35.820 | if you will invite everyone in your city block to a barbecue of sorts,

01:24:42.820 | maybe hamburgers, whatever, bratwurst."

01:24:46.820 | And the minister will come over, or an evangelist,

01:24:49.820 | someone who's really gifted at evangelism in the church,

01:24:51.820 | or maybe an elder, or a couple of them.

01:24:54.820 | And we'll just meet together, and we'll talk about real things.

01:24:58.820 | That's all the same, the invitation.

01:25:01.820 | And half or two-thirds of the neighborhood would come over for a free meal,

01:25:04.820 | and neighbors get to know one another, and they get to talking.

01:25:09.820 | And then they would say, "What's your life all about?" and so on.

01:25:14.820 | And then they would start talking about, "Well, we're going to open a study.

01:25:18.820 | We're going to study the Bible here in this neighborhood.

01:25:22.820 | Would you just come to the first meeting?

01:25:24.820 | We'll have some good food. We'll have some good fellowship."

01:25:27.820 | And a number of the people would come.

01:25:30.820 | And they'd go several times and start getting interested.

01:25:34.820 | And when they got interested enough, they'd say,

01:25:36.820 | "Why don't you come to church with me once?"

01:25:39.820 | And he started assimilating the people into the church.

01:25:42.820 | Friendship evangelism in the neighborhood.

01:25:45.820 | Be creative.

01:25:47.820 | You don't have to do all the work.

01:25:49.820 | But you, with your excitement from the pulpit for the winning of souls,

01:25:53.820 | with the model that you're using for evangelism

01:25:56.820 | in preaching Christ and Him crucified,

01:25:58.820 | you're actually teaching your people how to go out and do evangelism.

01:26:02.820 | And it would be great if you get together, if you don't already have it,

01:26:05.820 | an evangelism committee, and they can brainstorm about ways

01:26:09.820 | how to reach your neighborhood and how to reach others

01:26:12.820 | through friendship or Bible study evangelism.

01:26:19.820 | So evangelism should naturally flow from the preacher, from the pulpit,

01:26:28.820 | but it should also be strategic.

01:26:31.820 | Given significant technological and demographic trends in our century,

01:26:36.820 | we should consider adapting the medium of our evangelism

01:26:40.820 | while remaining tenacious to the message of our evangelism

01:26:44.820 | to ask, "Is there not more ways we can reach more people

01:26:48.820 | with the faithful gospel?"

01:26:52.820 | So I want to close with this illustration.

01:26:55.820 | Oscar Coleman was a French-born Lutheran theologian

01:26:59.820 | who lived through World War II.

01:27:02.820 | As Coleman observed the inauguration of the kingdom of God in our world

01:27:05.820 | through the first coming of Christ,

01:27:07.820 | it's something like the Battle of Normandy.

01:27:10.820 | The initial victory on the French beaches in June 1944

01:27:13.820 | secured the final victory, but there was still much fighting left.

01:27:18.820 | He wrote this, "The hope of the final victory is so much more vivid

01:27:23.820 | because of the unshakably firm conviction

01:27:26.820 | that the battle that decides the victory has already taken place."

01:27:31.820 | As Anthony Hoekema summarizes Coleman's argument,

01:27:35.820 | D-Day was the first coming of Christ when the enemy was decisively defeated.

01:27:40.820 | V-Day is the second coming of Christ when the enemy shall totally and finally surrender.

01:27:48.820 | So tell your people, preach often about heaven and the glories of their future.

01:27:53.820 | We don't preach enough about heaven.

01:27:55.820 | About the V-Day, about the everlasting future of the children of God.

01:28:02.820 | We had a lady--give me one more quick illustration.

01:28:06.820 | We had a lady in our church whose brother died.

01:28:09.820 | She was in the '90s, he was in the '90s.

01:28:12.820 | When I was a boy shooting hoops out in the driveway,

01:28:15.820 | my dad would be sitting at the other end of the driveway,

01:28:17.820 | very often with this man in the car.

01:28:19.820 | Our home was so small, there was no room to counsel people.

01:28:22.820 | My dad did a lot of counseling in the car.

01:28:24.820 | And I know this man was struggling with assurance of faith for years.

01:28:28.820 | And I had lost track of him.

01:28:31.820 | So when she called me up and told me--because he's not a member of our church, but she is--

01:28:36.820 | that her brother died, I said, "Oh, I remember him as a boy.

01:28:40.820 | I remember him as a boy.

01:28:43.820 | Did he ever find the Lord?"

01:28:47.820 | And she said, "Well, let me just tell you this story.

01:28:50.820 | The night that he died, the night that he died,

01:28:54.820 | a nurse came into his room and said,

01:28:58.820 | 'Mr. Ventile, I need to give you some more blood.'

01:29:03.820 | And he said back to her, just before he died,

01:29:08.820 | 'No need for that. All the blood I've needed has been shed 2,000 years ago.'"

01:29:13.820 | So I knew he found assurance of faith.

01:29:16.820 | God has a way, sometimes of working quickly, bringing people to assurance quickly.

01:29:21.820 | Sometimes it takes a long time.

01:29:23.820 | You keep preaching. You keep teaching.

01:29:26.820 | Keep having your people do Bible studies.

01:29:28.820 | Be an evangelizing church and tell them about D-Day,

01:29:33.820 | but also tell them about The Day,

01:29:36.820 | and stir them up by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

01:29:41.820 | Abound in the work of the Lord,

01:29:44.820 | knowing that your labors shall not be in vain in the Lord,

01:29:49.820 | because our God is faithful, His Spirit is almighty,

01:29:53.820 | and is as willing to work as Christ is to die, as the Father is to elect,

01:29:57.820 | and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church of God.

01:30:02.820 | This gives us the assurance of victory

01:30:06.820 | as we evangelize for the great day to come.

01:30:10.820 | So don't take the short view.

01:30:12.820 | Don't get depressed. I've done this too often.

01:30:14.820 | When you don't see any new conversions for a few months,

01:30:17.820 | take the long view and look around after 5 years, 10 years, 15 years of ministry,

01:30:24.820 | and look at the elders, look at the deacons

01:30:27.820 | who were saved under your ministry by the grace of God.

01:30:31.820 | Don't despair, but press on and pray on for revival.

01:30:37.820 | Keep prophesying to the dead bones.

01:30:41.820 | The Holy Spirit will do the work to the glory of God.

01:30:46.820 | Amen.

01:30:47.820 | Let's pray.

01:30:49.820 | Great God of heaven, encourage us to press on in prophesying to dead bones,

01:30:56.820 | as well as thy living people,

01:30:59.820 | and that we might see thy children grow in grace and grow in full assurance

01:31:04.820 | and see the dead brought to life.

01:31:06.820 | Oh God, Holy Spirit of God, anoint every minister in this place with thy Spirit.

01:31:12.820 | Fill them with love for their people.

01:31:14.820 | May they love their people so much that when their people walk out of church,

01:31:20.820 | they might turn to someone else and say,

01:31:22.820 | "I think that minister loves my soul more than I do."

01:31:27.820 | Help us to feel the burden of souls,

01:31:29.820 | but to be confident that that burden is in thy hands, Holy Spirit,

01:31:34.820 | and that thou will bring every single one of the elect to saving faith

01:31:42.820 | to the glory of thy name.

01:31:45.820 | We pray in Jesus' name.

01:31:47.820 | Amen.

01:31:48.820 | [applause]

01:31:54.820 | Just give me three minutes here as I show you a couple of books here.

01:31:59.820 | John Brown of Edinburgh compiled this Christian Pastor's Manual.

01:32:03.820 | It's the best book of collected articles I've ever read in my life for ministers.

01:32:08.820 | It will also teach you how to preach to the hearts of your people.

01:32:12.820 | The Christian Pastor's Manual by John Brown.

01:32:15.820 | These are at the Reformation Heritage Books table.

01:32:18.820 | Also, there's a number of good Puritan books that we still have on the table.

01:32:23.820 | One of these I want to mention to you, but look them all over.

01:32:25.820 | They're all very good.

01:32:27.820 | The Wells of Salvation Opened by William Spurstill.

01:32:30.820 | By far the best book I've ever read in my life on the promises of God.

01:32:35.820 | This book will be a godsend to you and encouragement in your ministry.

01:32:40.820 | The Wells of Salvation Opened.

01:32:42.820 | You should be writing these down, by the way, because the bookstore is closed,

01:32:45.820 | so you need to remember it until tomorrow morning.

01:32:47.820 | Lectio Continua.

01:32:49.820 | There's a series.

01:32:51.820 | What we're doing is we're publishing a whole series of sermons

01:32:54.820 | going through every book in the New Testament.

01:32:57.820 | There's about 12 of them there.

01:33:00.820 | You know how I feel?

01:33:02.820 | I've got so many commentaries.

01:33:04.820 | I don't need any more commentaries.

01:33:06.820 | But books of sermons going through the Bible by ministers,

01:33:11.820 | I really appreciate their ministry.

01:33:12.820 | This one's by John Fesco on Romans.

01:33:15.820 | It can be so helpful for ideas and thoughts that you can assimilate.

01:33:20.820 | The Decades of Henry Bollinger.

01:33:22.820 | Bollinger was just as famous as Calvin in the days of the Reformation.

01:33:26.820 | We know that the Decades of Bollinger outsold Calvin's Institutes 3 to 1.

01:33:31.820 | It's 50 sermons, hence decades,

01:33:35.820 | walking from prolegomena through eschatology

01:33:38.820 | without all the polemical controversies,

01:33:41.820 | just taking the Word of God.

01:33:43.820 | This is a masterful set of books.

01:33:45.820 | The Decades of Henry Bollinger in two volumes.

01:33:49.820 | Conrad Mbewe, speaking at this conference,

01:33:52.820 | we just published one of his books that is really selling well,

01:33:55.820 | Cultivating Spiritual Growth, Striving for Maturity in Christ.

01:33:59.820 | This is so helpful, easy to read,

01:34:02.820 | good to hand out to your people.

01:34:04.820 | I would say buy them for your whole church and hand them out

01:34:07.820 | and do a book study.

01:34:09.820 | Cultivating Spiritual Growth.

01:34:11.820 | We just came out with a brand new daily devotional,

01:34:14.820 | Our Great Redeemer, 365 Days with JC Ryle.

01:34:19.820 | Reads easily and well.

01:34:21.820 | And then there's two volumes of nine

01:34:24.820 | that are out now on daily family worships

01:34:28.820 | for young children, 4 to 9 years of age.

01:34:32.820 | This is called Beginning.

01:34:34.820 | It's the book of Genesis.

01:34:36.820 | The book of Exodus through Deuteronomy is out.

01:34:40.820 | Three more volumes are written.

01:34:42.820 | One more will come out this year, two more next year.

01:34:44.820 | Within two or three years we'll have all nine volumes out.

01:34:47.820 | It will take you through the whole Bible

01:34:49.820 | with your young children.

01:34:51.820 | There's a few review questions from yesterday,

01:34:53.820 | a scripture to read, a couple questions on that,

01:34:56.820 | a reflection that relates to their daily life

01:34:59.820 | about the reading, a few questions on that,

01:35:02.820 | and then a prayer point.

01:35:04.820 | It takes about five minutes to go through with your young ones.

01:35:07.820 | If you want help doing family worship with your young children,

01:35:11.820 | get these two books and I'm sure you'll get the rest.

01:35:15.820 | And then finally, when they come out.

01:35:17.820 | Finally, Reformed Systematic Theology

01:35:20.820 | with Paul Smalley and myself.

01:35:22.820 | The fourth volume has come out, but it's sold out.

01:35:25.820 | So they've got sheets out by the Crossway table now.

01:35:28.820 | You can get them at our table as well.

01:35:30.820 | But Crossway is doing a real special.

01:35:32.820 | You can sign up for it,

01:35:34.820 | and you don't even have to take them with you.

01:35:36.820 | They'll mail them to you postpaid,

01:35:38.820 | and it's 50% discount, $112 for the whole set.

01:35:43.820 | And what this four volume Systematic Theology does,

01:35:47.820 | it treats every doctrine in the Bible

01:35:49.820 | by first telling you what the Bible says,

01:35:51.820 | then telling you what church history says, pro and con,

01:35:54.820 | then telling you how the Christian experiences

01:35:58.820 | this doctrine in his soul,

01:36:00.820 | and then telling you three to five practical effects

01:36:04.820 | of this doctrine in the outworkings of your Christian life,

01:36:07.820 | and then each chapter ends in doxology with a poem or a hymn

01:36:11.820 | so that you will never say or your people will never say

01:36:14.820 | about any doctrine, "This is boring."

01:36:17.820 | Every doctrine is exciting in the Bible

01:36:20.820 | because it's full of practical experiential truth

01:36:24.820 | to the glory of God.

01:36:26.820 | So help your fathers, your elders,

01:36:29.820 | each family to get a set of this Systematic Theology

01:36:32.820 | and to use it, and may it be a blessing to you.

01:36:35.820 | God bless you all. Thank you so much.

01:36:37.820 | [applause]

01:36:43.820 | (audience applauding)

01:36:46.980 | you

Role of the Holy Spirit: The Power of the Gospel to the Nations - Joel Beeke