March 17, 2002 Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin 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 it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’”
Some of you might be familiar with the game called “Ghost in the Graveyard.” If I remember it correctly, one person played the ghost, and then the other kids would go out and try not to be caught by the ghost. When I was in grade school, we used to love playing this game. What even made it more exciting, was that I had a friend who used to live right next to an old graveyard out in the country. When it would get dark out, sometimes late at night, we would run down the hill, run across highway 26, and find ourselves seeking refuge behind tombstones that were centuries old in the dark of night.
It was scary for me as a child to go running around in a graveyard after dark. Imagine, then, what a scary sight it would have been for Ezekiel in today’s text. The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. God picked Ezekiel up and teleported him to the MIDDLE of a valley - not just full of gravestones, but full of exposed and dry bones. What an eerie feeling this must have been! He recalls his vision with us this morning, and urges us to -
Go to the Graveyard!
I. When things seem impossible!
Graveyards are sometimes sad places to visit. When I walk through them today, my imagination races as I try to envision what these people were once like. The especially sad ones are the gravestones of young children. Sometimes doing funerals can also be very sad and depressing. Nowhere is the message of God’s condemnation of sin declared more clearly, “the wages of sin is death.” The graveyard is full of people who were designed to live forever, but whose lives were cut short - separated from their souls all due to the fall of mankind after creation. When you look at a gravestone, you realize that you will never see your loved one again on this side of heaven.
What a sad view this must have been for Ezekiel as well. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. These were not just bodies that had recently passed away that could be revived with CPR. These were completely dead and rotted bodies without an ounce of life in them. And what was worse, was that God said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. From this, we can tell that God was giving Ezekiel a vision of the SPIRITUAL lives of Israel.
In 586 BC Jerusalem was totally ruined by Nebuchadnezzer and his great Babylonian army. Solomon’s Temple, which had been the pride and glory of Israel for almost 400 years was reduced to ashes; all the inhabitants of Jerusalem had been taken either to Chaldea or to Babylon in captivity, including Mattaniah, last king of Judah who was blinded and taken in chains to Babylon. Although they had been warned repeatedly by God through His prophets, including Ezekiel, they had turned a deaf ear! Now they were spiritually dead. They were saying, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ They had come to complete despair in their Babylonian Captivity. They thought that God would never take them back. Since they had no hope, they also had completely lost their faith in God.
That’s the way that God describes EVERY unbeliever. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. (Ephesians 2:1) The mind of sinful man is HOSTILE to God. (Romans 8:7) Life would seem a lot easier if people were at least amicable to the LORD - if we at least has some glimmer of hope. But when describes the world as dead in sins, there isn’t much room for hope. And Jesus only predicted that it would get worse - if that’s possible! Matthew 24 states, Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. . . . false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible.
So when God presented Ezekiel with this graveyard and asked him, “Son of man, can these bones live?” What did Ezekiel say? “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” He honestly said, “I don’t know.” He knew God was almighty, and he wanted to believe it, but how could they?
When you stand in the middle of this graveyard, don’t you often have the same question? Are you also living in a graveyard of finances? Does there seem there is no way out of debt? Are you living in a graveyard of dead love in your marriage? Does it seem hopeless? When I see how paganistic America has become - where it has accepted the pluralistic religion which says we all go to the same place, I wonder, “can these bones live?” When I turn on the TV and see children at 12 years old having sex and kids in college boasting about the drugs and sex they’re having, I wonder to myself, “can these dry and dead bones live?” It doesn’t seem like anyone wants to hear what God has to say anymore. And when I think about what kind of pressures my children will have to face, with “safe sex” and evolution being preached everywhere they go, I wonder to myself, “can these living spiritual bodies continue to live?” Or will their faith go dry? It certainly seems hopeless doesn’t it? Like Ezekiel we also say, “Lord, you alone know!”
II. God’s Word brings life!
Most of you may remember the story of Lazarus. John 11 says,
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” 4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.
Jesus purposely stayed away from Bethany for two days, to give Lazarus’ body time to start decaying. He wanted to make the situation totally hopeless - completely impossible. God loves these kinds of situations. And so he showed Ezekiel a valley of dead and dry of bones. It was seemingly hopeless. But not with the LORD of hosts!
Ezekiel knew that God could bring life into these bones, but he seemed hesitant to say, “YES - they can live.” So it’s interesting to see how God renewed Ezekiel’s faith in this time of doubt. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. As the song goes - Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, Your foot bone connected to your ankle bone. . .
But God wasn’t done with Ezekiel yet. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army. What an awesome feeling that must have been for Ezekiel. Here he had preaching to the Israelites for years and years, and they weren’t listening and weren’t listening and weren’t listening. He must have thought to himself, “what am I doing here?” But when God gave him this experience, allowing Ezekiel to speak HIS words and bring life through his voice - what a rush that must have been! Ezekiel would have then realized, “there is hope for the Israelites! All I have to do is preach the Word!”
This is the way God has continually worked throughout history. When Lazarus body lay dead in the grave for four days, it was beginning to decompose. It couldn’t hear. It couldn’t move. It was dead. But what did Jesus do? Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Lazarus resurrection had nothing to do with anything that HE did. He was dead. But with his powerful Word - Jesus was able to put life into Lazarus’ decaying bones and breath back in his lungs. Just as in creation, God created life where there was none.
So when Ezekiel conveyed this vision to the Israelites who were living under captivity - it gave them hope! God promised them, I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD. God had not given up on them. He was going to take them back to the promised land! And it just so happened that God did exactly that. A remnant was brought back to the Promised Land under the guidance of people like Ezra and Nehemiah. And through that remnant the Savior was eventually born. The Israelites were resurrected to spiritual life.
If you’ve been living in the middle of a graveyard, what’s the news for you, then? There’s hope! If God could bring a graveyard of dead bones to life, then he can breathe life into your situation! No matter what the situation, there is hope for a resurrection! If you’ve given up on your neighbor, thinking, “he’ll never come to faith,” think again! If you think that our church will never grow, don’t give up! Why? The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
Believe me, I need this sermon as much as any of us does! The last two visitors we have had ended up leaving the service early. And I couldn’t help but think to myself, “what are we doing wrong? We’re preaching the Word. We’re singing praises to Jesus. What more can we do?” It’s easy to think in those situations, “the Word isn’t working.” It’s easy to think, “maybe we should try something else.”
I see so many congregations drawing corpses into their churches with a nice basketball league, or a good daycare, or a fancy building. They do an excellent job at bringing people in. But the sad thing is, that once they bring them in, they are afraid of offending these prospects with God’s law or specific doctrine. They have watered down the Word so the Ten Commandments are just ten suggestions. The threat of eternal hell is never mentioned. The promise of forgiveness through baptism is never laid out. And so if these prospects only hear funny stories during sermon, what good does it do them? It’s like taking a dead corpse and trying to put nice clothing on it. It still stinks on the inside if that’s all you do.
The encouragement for Ezekiel is the same for us - “JUST STICK TO THE WORD! It works!” It convicts and damns with the LAW, and then renews and brings to life with the promise of forgiveness and eternal life through the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what brings life from death. That’s what works faith. That’s it! So just keep preaching it preacher! Remember that with your friends and neighbors and family as well. All you can do is tell them what God’s Word says. The ONLY thing that will give life from death is the Word of Christ. If they don’t like it, then let them stay dead. Don’t waste your effort on dressing up a dead corpse.
If you had to choose between going to a wedding and a funeral, which would you choose? Ecclesiasties 7 says, It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. It may not be pretty going to a funeral or a graveyard, but it opens your eyes to the wages of sin. I enjoy preaching at funerals much more than weddings. When people are faced with death, they want to know if there’s hope! So Ezekiel says today, “go to the graveyard! See the dead and dry bones! Look at the filth! And then, listen to the Word - and speak the Word - and watch the dead come back to life!” What a miraculous sight it is! What a powerful weapon we have in the Word! Amen.
