By Roy Hamer
Have you ever watched a Horror movie? You know, I’m not big on horror movies, in fact most movies I get a little bored. It’s easy for me to go to bed midway through a movie if I don’t like it. If it’s a Horror movie if I don’t go to bed I’m sure to leave the room once or twice during it. Jo and I once went to the drive in with some friends and we managed to sit so low in the car that when the scary bits came on we couldn’t actually see the movie, it was just too scary. Even before that when I was younger my older brother use to watch a show called Deadly Ernest. Some of you might remember the show on Friday nights. By today’s standards it wasn’t that scary but he used to come and ask me to get up and watch them with him. I’d usually fall back to sleep. But for me the worst of those movies were the ones about Zombies, the walking dead. Boy would they scare me! Anything with death and dying would scare me.
I guess this led to me being very scared of dying in my teens. Partly because I couldn’t see myself living past my 21st; some might say that the way I was living, that was pretty realistic. Death was one of the things that drove me to think about my life: where it was heading and it was around then I met a guy who had no fear of death. In fact for him it was like it couldn’t come quick enough. He was a Christian and whilst he loved life, death meant meeting Jesus and he actually looked forward to death.
What I didn’t realize around that time was that in effect I was already dead, the one thing in horror movies I had dreaded the most I had become.
Let me explain by looking at today’s reading in Ezekiel 37 and Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. For me it’s a bit like a scene from a horror movie, Ezekiel arrives at this valley - we don’t know if he is actually taken there or if it’s a vision - whatever it is isn’t important. But the scene and what happened must have really disturbed Ezekiel.
You see at the time Ezekiel was a captive with the rest of his people Israel in far away Babylon. Israel and Judah had been completely destroyed; the land that God had promised is now populated by foreigners. Even the temple Solomon had built to honor God, the God Israel had rebelled against, was ruined. It was all gone; everything. Israel had been crushed beyond repair, and everyone knew it; the Israelites, the Babylonians, the foreigners (later to be known as "Samaritans"), the Egyptians, and everyone else in the ancient world. Israel was gone for good.
Even Ezekiel probably thought his nation was dead. Remember that in this part of history we read of nations that have died: The Canaanites, the Midianites, the Philistines, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, these nations that no longer exist. Sure Ezekiel must have been thinking that Israel was going to face a similar fate?
Well God had a message for Ezekiel in the form of this vision. Imagine for a moment how Ezekiel would have felt being placed in such a gruesome valley, surrounded by this scene of death. Notice the description of the dead: their bones were very dry (v2). These are bones of a people who have been dead for some time and he’s asked: ’can these bones live?’ My response would be an emphatic ’Nope’. But a lot of things have happened to Ezekiel and so he has a bit each way with "you alone know". Ezekiel is told to prophesy over the bones, encouraging them to "Hear the word of the Lord."
What’s the significance of all this? Is God just trying to scare Ezekiel out of his wits? I don’t think so! There is a reason for all this, and it goes beyond merely teaching about God’s power to raise the dead.
Notice what happens: the bones rattle and join up; the sinew forms then they’re covered with skin they’re rebuilt, put back together, but it’s only a physical body. It is only after the bodies are reformed that breath is put into them. What is the point? Is God pointing to a two stage return to His plan to make a people for himself? First a physical return, then a spiritual return?
Lets look at Ezekiel and compare it to how the history of Israel panned out. In verse 7 Ezekiel prophesies and the bones rattle back together and sinew forms and skin covers the body. Well history tells us that in 538 BC a small group returns to Jerusalem. They’re given back their land and they start rebuilding the temple. The people of God are physically back, remade complete but there was no real spiritual life.
More is required. The second time Ezekiel is told to prophesy, this time for breath ’Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath upon the slain, that they may live.’
This sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
A few weeks ago! Where else have we heard this? Genesis! This is like the first creation story. There Adam was brought up out of the dust and God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7) It was the breath of God by which Adam became alive. But the breath of God is used in other senses. For example Paul in 2 Timothy says: It was the breath of God which inspired men to prophesy and to write the words which we now have as Scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16 ’All scripture is God breathed’.
Here, in Ezekiel God promises to put the breath of life back into these long dead bones. The important thing in this case is that it’s God’s breath that brings life to these bones.
Now this isn’t just a vision about dry bones or even a dead army being revived.
Through the vision of the dry bones, God informed Ezekiel, and through him the captive nation, that God can restore life to even long dead, dry bones; in fact he’s planning to do it to the nation of Israel. "Therefore prophesy, and say to them, ’Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you to the land of Israel" (vs. 12). The grave here is captivity. How can they be a people of God while in exile. Remember God’s covenant with Abraham, a promise of a People, a Nation in a Land. This can’t be achieved while in exile. While in exile they were starting to be absorbed into the culture of their captors. They were marrying outside their culture, they were adopting the customs and practices of their surroundings. They were in fact losing their identity. They would soon be so assimilated into that culture that the people of God, Israel would be gone.
But Ezekiel’s prophecy is clear. Israel will again be a nation. Could you imagine what this prophesy would sound like to the people of Israel, could you imagine the sense of expectation; of Hope? God hadn’t forgotten them!
I suspect that part of the essence of their hope is in what Ezekiel says about this restored nation to come. He specifically says in verse 21 that it will be restored on the same territory as it had occupied previously. It was. He also specifies in verse 22 that it will be no longer two nations, but one. You see during the reign of Rehoboam the nation had split in two; north (Israel) and south (Judah). It’s foretold here that when Israel would be restored, it would again be one nation. It was. Also, though idolatry had been such a recurring problem in the past, the Lord says it will not be so in the future (vs. 23). It wasn’t. Never again did Israel succumb to idol worship as a nation.
But let’s not forget their death was also a spiritual one. … they needed spiritual reformation as a nation.
The sign that they never fully recovered spiritually is that they didn’t manage to stay committed to God, as we read later in Haggai and Zechariah where they urge the people to complete building the temple and in Malachi who reminds them of their need to bring their full tithe to the Temple. I think it is significant for what unfolds in the New Testament that Malachi ends with a curse. The people of God never quite made it to the life God had planned for them.
Again and again in our journey through the Old Testament we read of God’s restoration project. We read of God creating a nation to become His special people.
We started weeks ago with the beginning, the world was formless. The Spirit is over the waters and God speaks and the world is formed. You’ll remember God tells Abraham and Sarah that in their nineties they’re going to be fruitful and through their line a great nation will be formed. God calls Moses and Moses objects that he’s slow of speech, but God promises to be with him and so the Exodus takes place. He chooses David the shepherd boy, the youngest in a family and makes him a great King. Again and again we see people, insignificant people, even people past what we might call their prime, doing amazing things.
And now we have Ezekiel with a message of hope for those in exile telling of the restoration of the people of God back Jerusalem and the Temple.
But what does this story tell us today? What are the people of our world captive to, how do they live life? Are they living life (like the walking dead) or are they LIVING LIFE? and what does it mean to live life?
I want you to firstly think back to Adam. How did Adam come to life? God breathed his breath into him. Now hear what Jesus said to his disciples in John 20:22 He breathed on them and said to them "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them they are not forgiven." What makes us dead? Sin. What’s the remedy? Receiving the Spirit of God.
Paul in Ephesians (2:1) put it this way: "You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the world". Sound familiar? Alive but dead. Death in these passages is a little ambiguous. What is death? Paul goes on to say that it’s following the way of the world rather than the ways of God. In a sense it’s two things: firstly we don’t seek God, and secondly when God comes to seek us, we don’t answer, we don’t respond to his call, we give no signs of life. Sin is nothing other than renouncing, abandoning God’s fellowship, turning away from Him and choosing our own way.
So what is life? When it comes to living life I think scripture is very clear and I think Ezekiel is a great place for us to think about life. To have life and to live it, life must be filled with and by the Holy Spirit.
So what can we do?
We can start by bringing the things in our lives that hold us in the grave to God in prayer, and ask that the breath of God will blow them away.
You have heard the saying that you need to stop and smell the roses. I would like us to stop and breathe in the breath of God; seek to fill your life with the Holy Spirit, because that is when real life starts.
Pray for the Spirit to continue to breathe God’s life into you – and work your hardest to listen to what the Spirit says. The more we listen the more the voice becomes familiar.
I mentioned at the start that in my teens I had a real fear of death but in fact I was already dead. Life without the Holy Spirit is just physical, just bones sinew and skin. Without God, without accepting Jesus, without the Holy Spirit in my life I was a Zombie. I was walking dead. Yes physically alive, in fact I was in the best shape I’d ever be in, but spiritual dead and decaying.
Do you like horror movies? Next time you’re talking to someone about your faith, think about the way they’re like the walking dead. Without Jesus in their lives they’re not able to connect with God. So pray for the Spirit to work in their hearts so they to can be brought to new life in the Spirit.
Real life, spiritual life, is the result of God’s Spirit at work within us. Pray that the Spirit would work within you. Work on letting the Spirit lead you and empower you. Pray for those around you that they too might experience the Spirit’s life-giving power in their life.
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