You know, in April 1945, American soldiers from the sixth armored division liberated Buchian Wald concentration camp in Nazi Germany. But what they found was something unspeakable. You know, I've lived in Germany and I've been to Deca concentration camp. Just the sight of the camp even now after several decades makes you feel so numb. But what they found was piles and piles of emassiated bodies and mass graves and the stench of death hanging in the air. What they witnessed was 21,000 dead bodies scattered lying around. It was literally hell on earth. A field of dead ends. A place where human dignity had been unhilated. But amid the horror, a story emerged. One of the survivors, Elely Weasel, who resembled a dead body, was not dead. He was alive. And he was not just alive. when when the sixth armored division American soldiers went in, he was able to raise together a few friends and actually save a small group of people from that concentration camp. And he didn't just stop there. He would go on to become a voice for the voiceless. And he was a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1980s uh as a defender of truth and memory. His life became a living testimony that even in places where death reigned, grace was not totally absent, restoration and freedom was still possible. His book is titled Night and it's a great read. This is to remind us that God is not completely absent in places of rain. He's the God who walks into death camps, into valleys of dry bones, into the wreckage of our worst choices and breathes life. You know, your story today may feel like you're in a dead end. You've hit the end of your road, but grace has a voice that is louder than death. So, I've titled my sermon today as dead ends and divine grace from grave to glory. That's exactly what we're going to look at. We're going to look at some dead ends. We're going to look at how divine grace can be experienced in our dead ends. And finally, how that grace enables us to move from grave to glory. You know the Ezekiel um is a prophet who was in Babylon in the land of exile. Now as we're tracing the history of what's happened to this people, this covenant people and why were these people now in Babylon? Well, God had originally given the Israelites absolutely everything they needed. When God brought them together, he said, "Everything I'm giving you is a gift. I'm giving you your land, your national identity, your freedom. I give it to you. But if you turn away from me and my sustaining hand, you will lose everything. And they did turn away from him. And they did lose everything. They were invaded by the Babylonians and they were taken into exile. And there in exile, they had no hope for a future. And yet even in that exile, God sends them a prophet Ezekiel. He gives them a picture of resurrection in this chapter that we read. There was not only a source of hope and strength for them, but it is for us as well. So this chapter begins with a vision, a prophecy that God is leading Ezekiel to see and to tell that looks like the dead end of dead ends. Verse one, it says, "The hand of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the valley in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones." You know, this chapter opens with something like straight out of the Nazi Germany history books. It's a very startling glooms day scenario, a a vision that God shows Ezekiel. You know, this is the last major prophet and he is set down. God takes him into a valley, middle of a valley, a valley of death full of bones. And more striking details follow in the next verses says and he led me among around among them and behold there were very many on the surface of the valley and behold they were very dry. He didn't just get a drone view of what was happening but he was led around to see up close and God wanted him to see it. Behold, it says what did he see? He saw that there were many and they were all on the surface. So whatever happened was not something that happened too long ago. Must have been quite recent. But they were dry. It means it didn't it wasn't that fresh either. So the question arises, what could these be? What were these bones that were lying around? And just from the location, knowing that it was in a valley and the number and the nature of them, historians suggest that it was probably an army that was defeated in battle and the bodies were just left to the wild to be devoured by wild animals and the elements of nature. You know in those days when real wars were fought instead of drones they were fought in valleys. And one of the customs or battle customs was that when a king or a kingdom wanted to leave a stark message to their enemies, it was to leave the dead soldiers and the entire armies open to the elements to assert their dominance to strike fear in the hearts of other enemies who might even that they will not even dare to think of attacking them. And that could have been what Ezekiel was witnessing. But what was why was God showing Ezekiel these things? And why did he want Ezekiel to tell these to the Israelites? Was it to tell them, "Hey, you're going to be like this, that someone's going to come after you. You I called you my people, but it looks like you're going to end up in a situation like this." And God tells Ezekiel, "Go and preach to these dead bones." Why did God want Ezekiel to preach to dead bones? You know, preachers know a little bit of this experience of preaching. You know, my first time preaching, I've shared um my story was trained by a missionary called Betty Shelton, a British missionary and new to the faith. She taught me to read the Bible in Greek and um took a few classes in preaching and she said I want you to have a practical exercise and took me to a small village and said you need to start in the streets and to go and start preaching in a small village with just two streets. Never done that in my life and walked in and opened the Bible and I preached. There was nobody like zero p people who came to hear and then there was these rumbling of footsteps that I heard in the distance and some small uh and some dust rising. Um these were cows and buffaloos that had gone to the fields came running. This was their home and I'm standing at the center. They came running straight to me and I was terrified that I'm going to be gored by some cow buffalo. But they slowed down and stood for a second. That was my first audience preaching to buffaloos. No reaction, no responses. And then they slowly went and walked into their homes and the farmers came after that. I thought she was pulling a prank on me and I told Betty after that, I will never ever do this in my life. Please don't make me do this, you know. But subsequently, I've had the joy of preaching in different churches all around the world. And and the experiences are very mixed. Um, you know, the most vibrant churches are African-American churches. You know, like Pastor Bernard, um, and others. When I preach, there is life in the church. When I start a sentence, somebody else will finish it for me. I will have a lot of amen brother and hallelujah. And I know there is the spirit of God moving in this room. And we've, you've seen me preaching when we've partnered with, you know, Community and done those joint surf services. It's loud out there. You know they are louder than me when I preach. So I have to speak even more louder and then I preach at spectrum and all I see I'm not saying you're dead bones but all of you if you come here and look at yourself you have the same expression. It's like this nothing changes. So then I think are they listening? Are they thinking about something else or are they agreeing, disagreeing? Am I making sense? Is this even like going into you? You know, it was hard. I have to say that Ezekiel was worse. So, it's literally preaching to dead bones, you know. But we have to look at the scripture to interpret what's going on. What is happening here? You know, now Ezekiel was probably view he viewed the present scene as an evidence of the fulfillment of Yahweh's own covenant curse which he declared all the way back in Deuteronomy chapter 28. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Deuteronomy 28 25- 26. It says, "Yahweh will put you to route before your enemies. You will march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads. You will become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses will become food for all the birds of the sky and all the beasts of the earth with none to frighten them off. Indeed, his contemporary Jeremiah whom we saw last week had predicted its fulfillment in Jeremiah chapter 34 17 to 20. He says, "I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. I will make the men who violated my covenant, who did not fulfill the terms of the covenant which they made before me, like the calf which they cut in two, so as to pass between the halves, the officers of Judah and Jerusalem, the officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the halves of the calf will be handed over to their enemies. To those who seek to kill them, their carasses will become food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth. This was God saying this is what will happen to covenant breakers. And what Ezekiel is seeing is the end result of the cumulative effect pursuit of people's hearts and lives over centuries since God intervened and covenantally brought them out of slavery. History kept repeating itself. You know the trajectory of the covenant people of God, their hearts was always moving or drifting away from God till the extent that they kept breaking his covenant again and again and again. And now there were all these nations, the Azurans and the Babylonians, they were devouring them, leaving their bodies like this in exile and they are literally at a dead end. And why did they keep going away from God? What were they pursuing instead of the love of this covenantal God who created them and redeemed them? They were always attracted to other gods. The god of rain and thunder because the god of rain and thunder meant prosperity because it was the agricultural economy. They went after what will make what they thought will make their life better. A little more money would be better. You know, the next job will make me better. Or the goddess of pleasure where they forgot the love of their covenantal god Yahweh. And what they thought will happen never happened. Their life did not get better. In fact, it became worse. They did not have more pleasure. Their life only became more sorrowful and they were repenting. And that's a classic illustration of what happens even today to you and me of anyone who tries to live their lives apart from God and tries to find satisfaction, purpose, meaning and pleasure in either your work or or or other things, you will end up like dead bones. We will have nothing. There will be no life. We will be like dead men walking however shiny things look externally. We can drive shiny cars, live in big homes, throw big parties, be influencers on social media. You know, recently there was a news of a social media influencer chasing after fame. And some of them are daring to do whatever it takes to just get spread more influence. Met with a horrible accident by falling into a valley of an active volcano and remained there. Couldn't be rescued and was dead by the time they went after 3 days. She literally had a dead end pursuing influence which she thought is going to give her what she needed. or Silicon Valley has some giants who may look very successful outside and you know Steve Jobs is one of them. The founder of Apple who openly denied in any belief in the existence of God. He he created a great company and has great products that even now we use. But he had a dead end in his life and that was his relationship with his children especially his daughter Lisa Brennan Jobs. She wrote a memoir called Small Fry where she talked about how Steve Jobs towards the end of his life was striving to win her love back and failed. Now this week I read of someone who worked for 23 years in one of the big five companies and was laid off. Didn't know how to take it. His life was a dead end. He kept going back to work every day after that because he didn't know what else to do but to do what he has always been doing. His life was in a dead end. See, whenever we pursue anything other than God and make that put that in the place of God, it will lead you to a dead end. And life without God will always be like a living dead. And recently um I went fishing with a friend and there was another friend who was helping us and we had a great day on the water and at the end I asked him uh he was telling us how people come to the lake for fishing to relieve anxiety and stress and PTSD and war veterans and all of that. And when I finally asked him he knew that I'm a pastor. I said can I pray for you? What can I pray for you? I looked him in the eye. He took a minute and paused and heaved a sigh and said, "Can you pray for my anxiety? Here is a guy who's helping others relieve their anxiety and he himself strives with this." You know, for God's covenant people, chasing other things, left them in this situation, exiled, about to be devoured through wars, and they thought it's over. But the exile wasn't new. It didn't just happen to the people of Israel. You know, Israel's exile was just a graphic picture of the human exile which happened all the way back in Genesis. In Genesis, we are told Adam and Eve sinned and the entire human race including you and I whom they represented was put in exile from the Garden of Eden. They were sent away from there. And how did their exile happen? What really contributed to their exile? When they were walking with God himself, they were communing with God was because they gave into a simple temptation that Satan put in front of them of fruit. You know, Genesis, if you have your Bibles, read Genesis 3:6. Say, "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate." Same thing. It is always a visual appeal to our senses. She saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes and it is these false promises the shining glittering promises that draw us and as a deeper promise beneath it it says it says that the tree was desired to make one wise. What was the temptation was you're not just going to get pleasure, you're going to have the same omniscience of God himself and basically you can become like God and you will be like God and that's what Silicon Valley promises that you can create technology with your hands that will give you tremendous amount of power on your fingertips whether it's through through those apps or through creating big data or AI, you will have global dominance. You will know all thing. That's what artificial intelligence is all about, isn't it? You can actually be like God. You do not need God. It's the same. It's nothing new that we tend to fall for. And they went for it. And what did that separate them from? Says it separated them from the tree of life. And that is how death entered the world. And since then, you and I, the Bible says, we are born dead spiritually cut off from God. And so we only have our physical senses which keep falling for false pressures, false things that do not satisfy us and end up worshiping them. And that's why the more we chase, the more elusive it gets. and we never get satisfied. And that was a situation. Finally, the covenant people formed themselves and they had lost hope. And just as when they thought it was all over, the grace of God comes through. What happens when God speaks? We're going to talk about divine grace. How divine grace comes at the end of a dead end. Verse three says, "And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live?" And I said, "Oh Lord God, you know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy over these bones and say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord, thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live, and I will lay senus 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. He wants the people in exile to know that it is not over. That that dead end is really not a dead end. God does the unthinkable. God is telling Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones that he's going to cause breath to enter and they will live. This again reminds of something that God did in Genesis not in chapter 3 but in chapter 1 where God blows his breath into Adam formed from the dust of the ground. You know c the curse says from dust you came and to dust you shall return. But grace comes through and says well God is going to recreate something when he blows life into you. The dead ends, the dead zones, the dead spots of your life will have a new life. You shall live. Grace is going to come through. But that's not even the main goal to have you new life. Says the new the reason he's going to breathe and give you new life is so that you shall know that I am the Lord. what they were unable to do that he is their covenantal God who loves them and he is now saying you were not able to fulfill the covenant from your side I'm going to unilaterally do it and if you read the chapter before this Ezekiel chapter 36 26 he says I will remove from you your heart of stone and put in you a heart of flesh I will put my spirit within you and I will move you to follow my decree increase. And that's the grace of God. He knows that you and I are incapable of changing our lives around. And the grace of God, he says, I'm going to breathe my spirit into you. We are spiritually dead and and we need to be saved by the unilateral move of God and that is by sheer grace. There is absolutely no way we can possibly merit or earn this salvation. There is nothing we can do. We have to receive it as a free gift. And this is where we connect this chapter to Ephesians 2 where it says we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And the first part of believing the gospel is to admit that that we are dead and we need someone to breathe life and we need the grace of God. And when we come to that place is where something remarkable happens. While we are thinking we are dead and we are in the grave, his glory breaks through. And that's what we're going to look at in the rest of the chapter. how God moves us from our grave to glory. And he says in verse 7 onwards, 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 there were senus on them and flesh had come upon them and skin had covered them but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live." So I prophesied, and as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. Imagine that. God raises an army from dead bones. That is what being born again does. This is exactly what Jesus refers to when Nicodemus who is this high ranking official, a very religious person comes to Jesus in the night and asks him this question, how shall I inherit eternal life? And Jesus looks at him and uses this analogy and he says that well Nicodemus. The wind blows wherever it pleases. No one knows where it comes from or where it goes. But you can know from what it touches and the things that move that it has moved. You need to be born again. And that is what needs to happen in all of our lives, in our children's lives. The miracle of new birth that is entirely done by God. Though it is entirely done by God, he uses there are two things that God uses to accomplish this. Whether it is that one time first moment of breathing life into us or it is the time where we feel his deadness the deadness in our life and we are stuck and we are unable to move and we need God's spirit to come and breathe life. It always happens first by hearing his word and second through the move of his holy spirit. You know, he says in verse 11, "Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off." You know, that is where you need to come first. If you want to experience the miracle of new birth, the miracle of truly really being born again, you need to first come and reckon with the fact that you are dead and dead dead. And that is where they were. They said, "Our bones are dried up." You know they were he's being given a vision of dried bones and they are saying our bones are dried up. We are done. We have no more hope. We are not even going to try. Have you come to that place in your life? My dear friends, until you come there, you cannot experience the miracle of new birth and they realized he says they are cut off. The word cut off is a is a word that symbolizes the breaching of covenant. And then God says, "Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, oh my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel." You know, the way that God gives them this new birth comes through his word. You know, here we see Ezekiel. He's prophesying first to the bones, then he's prophesying to the wind, and now he's prophesying to the people of Israel. It is always God's word that has to be heard that can kindle new birth. Never underestimate the power of the word of God. The Bible says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." You know, when I was growing up, um, my mom's here, she's celebrating her birthday today. She was a very, very strict mom. Now, every week after church, we have to go and memorize a part of scripture and it's not even in English in our mother tongue. That's Tamil. And I have to recite it with punctuations. Um, otherwise, she won't feed us food after that. I'd memorize scripture like that. But just memorizing scripture has no magic in and of itself. I didn't understand anything because I still didn't hear it. It was later when I was in college when someone helped me understand the gospel and I heard it, I could experience this new birth. And it was a joy for me to lead my own mom to Christ several years later. You know, when I first made a career transition to become a pastor, this was a passage one of my friends sent to me as an encouragement that when you preach, God will breathe life in people's life. And I have seen that in my own life first, God has breathed his life in areas where I realized I feel dead and can unable to move spiritually or emotionally or physically even. But I've also seen this in our church though you look give me the same look week after week year after year I know God is working in your heart and I have seen how you all have grown and moved in your understanding of the gospel and that is such a joy and encouragement to me and and that should encourage you as well. And what is it that we need to hear? We need to hear the good news of the gospel. What Jesus did for you. What did Jesus do for us? How does this exile point us to Jesus? What happened? What did Jesus come to do? You know, we read in the same great prophets that he is indeed the great suffering servant depicted in Isaiah 53. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Isaiah 53:8. It says, "He was cut off from the land of the living." You know, it was fair for the covenant people to be cut off, but it was absolutely not fair for Jesus to be cut off. But he came and he was cut off in our place so we can be received. That's the good news of the gospel. Do you believe that the resurrection is a tremendous supernatural feat? There not many depictions of the resurrection in the Old Testament. This is one rare isolated moment. It's a terrific miracle, but you have to see what it points to. points to the fact that Jesus died in your place and my place. He was cut off from the land of the living for you. He was exiled from God's presence. And if you see he did that and that moves you and that amazes you and that's the basis of God accepting you by the free grace, you will receive hope. You need to hear the good news of the gospel. It's not just enough to say, "I believe," but you need to understand it. And and and as you hear, he sends his spirit. His spirit comes in and he resets our heart. That's the secret of being born again. He illuminates our heart. He shows us that this path that we are pursuing adamantly sometimes like the covenant people again and again and again will lead to a dead end. And what we are trying to get in this path is not true and will point us back to Jesus the light of the world in whom are all pleasures and delights. That's how you receive it. If you feel you are stuck and you are in a dead end in your life, then this is where you begin. It always starts with the word of God. Not just reading God's word. You need to study it. You need to learn it. And and that is where it comes. Not just you learning it. God has given his church preachers, teachers, and other ministers who are here to help this word of God become real in your life and my life. You know, a few years ago after my brother-in-law passed away and I was trying to do um some triathlon races, first time I did, I overexerted myself and um and injured myself. I I got a tendinitis. So I decided to get a coach for myself and I found a wonderful coach. He was a good Christian coach from Texas. Um and he was amazing. He he would send me training plans every week. Um he would coach me step by step and have a talk before my race to prepare and he held me accountable. Um, and all of that helped me cross the finish line in three halfiron man races. A couple of years ago, after I started going back to seminary to study, I stopped uh training and that slowly meant that I now have no one to help me, coach me, hold me accountable. Um, and uh and and and guess what happened? You can you don't have to guess. You can see what happened. I put on 20, 25 pounds because there was no one checking after me. There was no one telling me what to do and how to do and I need to work out and all of that. You see, you and I need someone to come alongside in our life to make God's word come alive and and spiritually too. It's because it will show up. If you are not intentionally letting God's word and his spirit breathe life into you, you're not going to just be flat. It will only scale back. And that's one of the reasons in our church, you know, I'm very excited this fall we are launching uh small disciplehip groups and there are people who are praying for you and it is a great privilege if someone approaches you and says hey can I disciple you for free I'm willing to invest five to six hours of my time in a week to disciple you to mentor you to be your coach to hold you accountable you should be jumping up and down because God is telling you you don't have to be stuck in your dead end I am going to breathe life into you not through the way he was doing with Ezekiel but through human beings and if you have that that kind of an opportunity I would encourage you my dear brothers and sisters don't give reasons oh I sometimes it's sometimes I feel We like being in dead ends, you know, and I I know this physically too. Usually at the end of the day when my sugar levels are down and I'm tired, I like sitting in the couch. I don't like to get up and go and, you know, even get water from the kitchen. Just feels sort of nice, isn't it, to wallow in that uh zone of deadness. Nothing's going to change. Why bother? Well, that's exactly why you need someone in your life to pull you out. So if God brings somebody like that, please take that seriously. That's not them calling you. That is God giving you an opportunity. You reject it at your own peril. You can choose to live in exile and stay in exile. And that's fine. But the question is, do you want to stay in exile or do you want to pull you out of your dead end? And secondly, it's not just enough for us to receive this. You need to boldly declare God's word to those who need it with love. You need to study it. You need to get discipled and you need to disciple others. Who is God calling you to breathe life into? You know, our friends, our co-workers, our colleagues, our neighbors who are hurting, they don't need our ideas, our suggestions for better life to solve their current physical problems. They need the gospel. They need the word of God. We can give them something far better, not now, but for eternity. And what they get to see here is God raising an army when we do that from graves. You know Daniel and this chapter are the two places where we hear that and and his promise he says I will bring you back to your land. There was an immediate fulfillment. There was a remnant who went back so they can believe but also the eventual fulfillment where God is going to bring us all back into his presence. You know there is an old story it tells of a water bearer in India who carried two pots. He had to go fetch water from a well farther away and then walk back to his field. He carried two pots on a pole. Some of you may have seen this. It still happens in some villages. And the story is, it's a story. One pot was perfect. It held the water all the time, but the other pot had a crack and it was leaking water the whole way back. After years in the story, the cracked pot apologized for its failure. But the man smiled and said, "Did you notice the flowers growing on only one side of the path? I planted seeds on both sides and every day you leak your leak watered them." My dear friends, you may feel cracked, forgotten. in a dead zone. But in God's hands, even your leaks have a purpose. Even your dead zones have a purpose. Because grace turns brokenness into beauty. And God can use that to breathe