As I read the Bible, I’m constantly amazed at how God uses some very common objects to demonstrate deep spiritual truths. It’s as if God uses a consistent dose of simple “In the Bag” object lessons in order to help us understand that which He wants us to apply in our lives.
This morning we’ll look at one of those object lessons, which is found in Ezekiel 37. So go ahead and turn to that passage in your Bibles and follow along as I read the first 14 verses.
1 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 middle of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
7 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. 8 And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. 9 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.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
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.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
Ezekiel 37:1-14 (ESV)
Background
Ezekiel helps us to put his ministry into the proper historical context at the beginning of his book:
In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.
Ezekiel 1:1-3 (ESV)
The “thirtieth year” appears to be a reference to Ezekiel’s age when he begins his prophetic ministry. It is in the fifth day of the fourth month in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin, which would have been 593 BC. Ezekiel had been taken into captivity five years earlier along with Jehoiachin and several thousand of the leading citizens of Jerusalem. Ezekiel’s final recorded vision occurs twenty years later (Ezekiel 40:1).
Ezekiel’s message can be divided into three distinct sections that correspond to what was occurring in Jerusalem:
• Chapters 1-24 – God’s Word to Jews in exile before the fall of Jerusalem – focuses on God’s coming judgment on Judah
• Chapters 25-32 – God’s Word to the Gentile nations during the siege of Jerusalem – focuses on judgment against those who scoff at Jerusalem
• Chapters 33-48 – God’s Word of hope to His people after the fall of Jerusalem – focuses on future restoration
The visions that we’ll look at over these next two week in Ezekiel 37 fall into that third section of Ezekiel. That section serves a function that is not altogether different than what we saw in Daniel. The Jews, who are in exile in a foreign land, learn of the destruction of their city and their Temple and the natural tendency was for them to begin to question whether God had forsaken them. But God sends prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel to His people in exile to assure them that this isn’t the end of the story. God is still faithful and sovereign and His purposes, plans and ways will ultimately prevail.
This morning, I’m going to take a completely different approach to this passage than I did with Daniel 9 last week. The message last week was long on information and short on application, but this week just the opposite will be true. That’s because the vision in this passage is relatively straight forward and easy to understand. At the same time, it is rich with application, not only for the people of Ezekiel’s day, but for us as well.
Let’s begin by taking a brief look at the vision itself:
The Vision
The key to understanding the vision is found in verse 11:
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.
This makes it very clear right up front that this vision is not to be taken literally, but rather it is a picture of what God is going to do for Israel. Obviously the bones aren’t literally the whole house of Israel. But they are to be an illustration of the fact that God is not done with Israel yet and that he hasn’t forgotten them.
Let’s quickly summarize what we can learn from the vision:
• The vision applies to the house of Israel – all 12 tribes
We’ll develop this idea further next week, but this is certainly consistent with what we’ve observed in the other Old Testament prophets as well. After the reign of King Solomon, Israel was divided into the northern ten tribes of Israel and the southern two tribes of Judah. The northern kingdom was conquered by Assyria in 722 BC and the people were scattered into the surrounding nations, never to return to their land. Even to this day, the descendants of those ten tribes have not returned to the land in any significant numbers.
Then Judah was conquered by the Babylonians, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 587 BC. Although some people did later return to the land and restore the city and the Temple under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah, that proved to be only temporary and the city and the Temple were destroyed again, this time by the Romans, around AD 70.
But when the Messiah, Jesus, returns, God is going to reconcile those two kingdoms and …
• God is going to bring Israel back into their own land
God makes an interesting promise in verse 14, when He assures the people that He will bring them back to their “own land”. Quite a few commentators have tried to connect this promise with the establishment of the nation of Israel in 1948. While that could possibly the beginning of a process that ultimately results in this prophecy being fulfilled, it falls far short of what God has promised here.
We have several passages that describe the area of land that God promised to His people. The first was made to Abram and recorded in Genesis 15:
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
Genesis15:18 (ESV)
God gives an even more detailed description to Joshua as the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land:
Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.
Joshua 1:3, 4 (ESV)
The land promised to Israel includes the entire current nation of Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza, which is currently in the hands of the Palestinians, all of Jordan and portions of Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. That is the land that God described here as “your own land.” Obviously Israel now only controls a small portion of this territory, making it clear that this prophecy is yet to be fulfilled.
But God is not just going to restore the land…
• God is going to restore Israel spiritually
In verse 14, God promises to put His Spirit within the people of Israel. We saw a similar promise in Joel that was partially fulfilled at the day of Pentecost, but won’t be fulfilled completely for Israel until the Messiah, Jesus, returns. This would be a whole new phase in the spiritual life of Israel. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was present but He would only come upon a specific person for a specific period of time for a specific task. But the idea of the Holy Spirit dwelling permanently in the life of a believer was a new and exciting revelation for Israel.
The result of bringing the people back into their land and putting His Spirit within them is that the people will know that He is the Lord. That is such an important idea that God repeats the phrase “you shall know that I am the Lord” three times in this passage. The word translated “know” in those three verses is the very same word that Ezekiel uses in verse 3 when he answers God by saying “O Lord God, you know.” It is a word that means more than just intellectual knowledge. It is derived from a root word that means to “ascertain by seeing” so it implies that it is knowledge that is gained by experience, primarily through the means of a personal relationship.
God gave this vision to Ezekiel for the specific purpose of bringing hope to His people as they faced what seemed to be a hopeless situation. And while this prophecy uses figurative language to illustrate how God is going to revive and restore His people, there is no doubt that it literally applies to the house of Israel, and not to the church or just to Christians in general. That does not mean, however, that there aren’t some things that we can learn about the character of God and how He works that we can apply in our own lives. And that’s where I’d like to spend the bulk of our time this morning.
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE DRY BONES
1. Nothing is impossible for God
I love Ezekiel’s answer when God asks him, “Son of man, can these bones live?” From a human perspective, the obvious answer was “no”. But Ezekiel was not about to limit the ability of God, so he answers “O Lord God, you know.”
Our whole study of the Old Testament prophets so far has been a testimony to the fact that nothing is impossible for God. So many of the prophecies that we’ve looked at just don’t seem possible from a human perspective. And so there is a tendency on our part to try to just dismiss these prophecies as allegories or to spiritualize them rather than accept them as literal. But if we’re going to profit from our study of the prophets and the Book of Revelation, we must adopt the same mindset that Ezekiel had and say “O Lord God, you know.”
The Bible is filled with examples of people that God could use because they believed that nothing is impossible for God. Certainly a teenage girl name Mary believed that. When the angel Gabriel came to her and told her that she was going to be the mother of the Messiah, he assured her with these words:
For nothing will be impossible with God.
Luke 1:37 ESV)
And Mary immediately replied with these words:
“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
Luke 1:38 (ESV)
God was able to use Mary because she believed that nothing is impossible for God.
If I were to ask this morning how many of you believe that nothing is impossible for God, I’m sure that all of us would raise our hands. But the real proof of whether or not we really believe that is the way that we live our lives. Are we willing to follow God, even when we can’t understand everything? Are we willing to obey Him, even if He asks us to do something as seemingly ridiculous as talking to some dried up bones?
That leads us to the second principle that we can glean from this passage.
2. We need to hear and obey God, not tell God
If we were somehow put in Ezekiel’s shoes in today’s culture and God asked us if the bones could live, I’m convinced that a lot of us would approach that situation something like this.
Oh, yes, God, I believe these bones can live because nothing is impossible with you. And then we would immediately develop a mission statement and a vision statement and a 10 step plan that would describe what we were going to do to give life to the bones. And then maybe we’d write a book about how to bring life to some dead bones. And of course, since we’re spiritual, we’d take our plans to God in prayer and then ask him to bless those plans.
But that is not the approach that Ezekiel took here. Instead, he just answered God’s question and then he waited for God to speak. He didn’t tell God what he was going to do; he just waited and listened for God, heeding the words of the Psalmist:
Be still, and know that I am God…
Psalm 46:10 (ESV)
And God did indeed speak to Ezekiel. Three times in this passage we see the phrase “Thus says the Lord God…” But not only did Ezekiel hear God and listen to what He said he also obeyed God. Twice in this passage, Ezekiel tells us that he prophesied exactly as God had commanded him.
Ezekiel recognized what we often fail to see. God really isn’t interested in our expertise, our knowledge or our wisdom. He doesn’t need to learn from us. We need to learn from Him. God knows what He is planning on doing and our responsibility is to hear Him speak so that we can join Him in the work He is already doing.
Although I’m certainly far from perfecting this principle in my own life, I’m really grateful for the opportunity to have participated on two different occasions in a small group that completed the “Experiencing God” Bible study developed by Henry Blackaby and Claude King. That study is built around this principle. The words that Blackaby writes in Unit 9 are particularly relevant for us this morning:
To experience Him at work in and through you, you must obey Him. When you obey Him, He will accomplish His work through you, and you will come to know Him by experience.
Sounds exactly like what Ezekiel did here, doesn’t it?
3. Spiritual growth is a slow process
The dry bones didn’t come back to life instantaneously. Although we have no idea how long it took, it is clear from the passage that there was a process involved here. First the bones came together. Then they were connected by sinews. Then flesh came upon them and finally they were covered by skin. But there was still no life in the bones. So God instructed Ezekiel to prophesy a second time and God gives breath to the bodies so that they might live. There are certainly some parallels here to the creation account in Genesis where man doesn’t become a living being until God breathes the breath of life into him.
In this world where we have instant everything – even Starbucks now makes instant coffee – we want spiritual growth to come quickly so that we can be done with it and get on to the next item on our to do list. But from cover to cover, the Bible consistently demonstrates that spiritual growth is a long, methodical process that will never end, even beyond the grave.
If there is anyone in history who could have claimed to have finished this process of spiritual growth, it would have to have been Paul. But sometimes when we read the accounts of his life and ministry we don’t see just how long his process of spiritual growth was. From the time he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, it was 12-14 years before he embarked on his first missionary journey. And nearly 20 years later, near the end of his ministry, Paul writes these familiar words from his jail cell.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.
Philippians 3:12-15 (ESV)
Even after nearly 30 years of studying, preaching, planting churches and writing letters that would become a significant portion of our New Testament, Paul understood that he still hadn’t arrived. And if that is true of Paul’s life, then just think of how far we all still have to go in our spiritual journey.
4. Only God can produce spiritual life
If you go back and read through our passage carefully, you will notice that it is God who is doing all the work here in order to bring these bones back to life. He gives the vision in which He brings Ezekiel to the valley; He leads Ezekiel among the dry bones, and He initiates the conversation with Ezekiel. And then seven different times in this passage, God speaks the words “I will” to indicate the action that He is going to take to bring the bones back to life. It is God’s work from beginning to end.
Spiritually all of us were just like those dry bones at one point in our lives, as Paul describes in his letter to the church at Ephesus:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Ephesians 2:1-3 (ESV)
Spiritually we were all dead, and just like the rest of mankind, subject to the wrath of God. And because we were dead, we couldn’t do anything to bring ourselves back to life. That would be like a person who was physically dead trying to perform CPR on himself or herself – it’s just not possible.
But fortunately for us, that’s not the end of the story. Paul goes on to describe what happened next:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved
Ephesians 2:4, 5 (ESV)
Because God loved us, even while we were dead in our sins, He made us alive through the shed blood of His Son, Jesus. From beginning to end the process of producing spiritual life in us was totally and completely God’s work. Spiritually God has given us life by breathing His breath into us.
Unfortunately, however, we live in a world of hopelessness and despair and one of the main causes is that there are so many people trying to do everything they can to create their own spiritual life. Some of these people are good, moral people who are doing everything that they can to live a life that will earn them favor with God. But ultimately that’s a very frustrating way to live because we can never be sure that we’ve done enough. In actuality, the Bible is clear that we can never do enough. Let’s continue a couple of verses later in Ephesians 2:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8, 9 (ESV)
Ezekiel demonstrates this principle quite well. He didn’t have to try to develop some kind of clever plan to bring the bones back to life. He merely had to believe God and trust in Him and follow God’s instructions. And if we truly want to have spiritual life, then we need to do the very same thing.
There is only one way to spiritual life and that is the way that God has determined. As Paul makes clear here in this passage, the only way to obtain spiritual life is through faith in Jesus Christ. We must believe that he died on the cross for our sins, that He rose from the grave and that he is alive today, seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding on our behalf. And then we must trust in that finished work alone as the means by which we might receive spiritual life. If we’re trying to obtain spiritual life in any other way, it is going to be a frustrating and hopeless exercise.
That leads us to our fifth and final principle this morning.
5. True hope comes from God alone
The people of Ezekiel’s day had tried to find their hope and their security in many different people and things. Some of them had trusted in their king, but he had been deposed and taken into captivity in Babylon. Some had trusted in the city that they called their “holy city” – Jerusalem. But that city was lying in ruins. Some of them had trusted in the system of sacrificing animals to deal with their sin. But the Temple had been ransacked and all the items needed for worship had been removed, so there was no longer any way for them to make those sacrifices.
So God gives Ezekiel this vision to let the people know that there is still a source of hope and security in their lives – God Himself. He has not forgotten them; He has not forsaken them; He is not finished with them. Frankly, because of their sin, that’s exactly what they deserved, but God, in His mercy and grace, reveals that He is sovereign over everything that is going on and that one day He is going to restore Israel to her land and, even more importantly, restore them spiritually. If they will trust in Him, they can have hope right now, even in the midst of circumstances that look completely hopeless.
Another major cause of hopelessness and despair in this world is that people, sometimes even those in the church, are trying to find their hope and security in all the wrong places.
Some of us are relying on other people for our hope, but, unfortunately, one day, because they are human, other people are going to disappoint us. Just look at Tiger Woods. From all appearances, he seemed to be not only a great golfer, but a model citizen. That’s certainly no longer the case. Maybe others won’t fall to that degree, but the fact is that every human will disappoint us if we’re trying to find our hope in them.
Some people look to the government for their hope and security. But right now governments at every level all around the world are facing huge financial problems that are eventually going to limit what they can afford to do.
Some people try to find hope and security in their jobs, their money and their possessions. But with unemployment at 10%, foreclosures at an all time high and the stock market in the tank, that doesn’t seem to be the place where we want to try and find our security and hope.
But God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. His plans cannot be thwarted. So if we want to truly have hope, we need to heed the words of Moses and put our trust in God alone.
Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
Deuteronomy 31:6 (ESV)
If we’re honest, we’d all have to admit that we go through dry times in our lives. Perhaps, you’re even in the midst of one of those times right now. But the good news is that a God who can bring some old dry bones back to life can breathe life into us, no matter how dry we might be right now. But in order for Him to do that, we must trust in Him alone and allow Him to breathe life into us through a lifelong process that is focused on hearing and obeying Him and allowing Him to do the impossible in our lives.
