Can These Dry Bones Live?
Download MP3If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to the book of Ezekiel chapter 37. If you don't know where Ezekiel is, that's okay. Few people do. If the person on your left or right does, it just means they've been probably going to redeem her for the last couple of months, and that's where we have been. This book is roughly 2,600 years old.
Joel Brooks:It's filled with a lot of strange visions, bizarre prophecies. And because of this, Ezekiel is not one of the more familiar books of the Bible. You know, the Gospel of John or Mark or Romans gets all the press. Ezekiel's just kinda left behind. I've never once in all my years been invited to a bible study on Ezekiel.
Joel Brooks:So maybe this is your first time in this book. But if you have any familiarity at all with it, it is likely with the chapter we are about to read in which Ezekiel has this vision of the dry bones. And so we'll read the first fourteen verses of Ezekiel thirty seven. The hand of the Lord was upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones.
Joel Brooks: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. And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, 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.
Joel Brooks:And I will lay sinews upon you, and I 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. 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.
Joel Brooks: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. 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 as he commanded me, and the breath came into them. And they lived, and they stood on their feet an exceedingly great army.
Joel Brooks:And 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. Therefore, prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and I will raise you from the graves, o my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, oh my people.
Joel Brooks:And I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. And then you shall know that I am the Lord. I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. You would pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Father, I pray that now that we have heard the proclamation of your word, now you would send your spirit and use that word to breathe life into us. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, your words would remain, and they would change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:It's a nice coincidence, isn't it, that our study of Ezekiel leads us to a text on the resurrection on Easter. Almost seems planned. If you're unfamiliar with Ezekiel, he was a priest by trade, by training. He actually never got to go into the priesthood because when he turned 25 years old, he was ripped away from Jerusalem and from the temple where he was to serve. And he was forced to walk 700 miles to Babylon, where he would live in exile.
Joel Brooks:It was there in Babylon by the Canal Of The Chabar that he had his first vision at the age of 30. And he had been serving as Israel's Prophet in exile ever since. By the time we get to this vision, he is close to 50 years old. So he has been in exile for a long time. I think it's safe to say his life, it didn't turn out like he thought it would or hoped it would.
Joel Brooks:Here we read that the hand of the Lord was on Ezekiel, and the spirit brought him to the middle of a valley. Probably like Paul, he didn't know whether this was, you know, in the spirit or if it was out of body or in the spirit. He he doesn't know. He just knows that it was real to him. The spirit took him to a valley, and it was full of bones.
Joel Brooks:It was a valley of death. Perhaps it was it was the valley that Ezekiel would have been led out of Jerusalem that leading him into exile. Perhaps it was that valley where there was the great battle and it was Israel's Soldiers that laid slain. Possibly, there were friends, family among those dead. We're not sure.
Joel Brooks:The point is just that there were many, many bones, and the bones were very dry. The Lord, he takes them through a tour of these bones. He wants to make sure he walks around and sees all of these bones, and just how many, and just how dry they were. And then the Lord asked Ezekiel this question. Son of man, can these bones live?
Joel Brooks:Now, Ezekiel would have been familiar with some of the stories of the older prophets, prophets like Elijah or Elisha. They got actually raised, Each of them raised someone from the dead. But that was almost immediately after the person died. Not like this. This valley here, this this it's not full of carcasses.
Joel Brooks:No. These are people who had died long ago. By this point, their bones have been picked clean by the vultures, bleached by the sun. In other words, they weren't just dead, they were dead dead. Ezekiel, can these bones live?
Joel Brooks:Ezekiel answers, oh Lord, you know. It's a great answer. It's not a no, and it's not a yes. It recognizes that whatever happens is in the hands of the Lord. The Lord can do this.
Joel Brooks:He just doesn't know if the Lord will do this. That's how a lot of our prayers are. Lord, I know you can do this. Will you? The Lord then tells Ezekiel to prophesy over these bones.
Joel Brooks:And now throughout the book of Ezekiel, he's been asked to do some really strange things. I mean, at one point, he was he was made mute by the Lord, so he couldn't speak. He was told to then lay down on his right side for three hundred and ninety days and to get a brick, write the name Jerusalem to it, and lay siege to the brick for the three hundred and ninety days. When that was over, the Lord said, okay, now turn to your other side, do the same thing. He's the kind of guy, if you saw him, you know, downtown on the street, you you want to avoid him.
Joel Brooks:This is why a few scholars have even tossed out the idea that he was mentally ill, perhaps schizophrenic. I think they were probably just grad students looking for a fun dissertation. That said, Ezekiel did some really strange, strange things, but I think this one takes the cake. He's being asked to preach a sermon to a bunch of dead people. And when I read that, my first thought was, Ezekiel, I can relate.
Joel Brooks:There have been times it's actually why I preach. Trust me. I don't preach because I like hearing my own voice or that I I enjoy the preparation or getting up here. Not at all. I I preach in the hopes that God's word through his spirit causes dead people to come to life.
Joel Brooks:So Ezekiel preaches. And we read that when he preaches, bones begin to rattle. I mean, can you imagine that? Thousands upon thousands of bones. And kind of sound like wind chimes, just all rattling together.
Joel Brooks:And then they begin moving, and each bone joining to the bone it should be attached to, until where you have a bunch of skeletons. And then tendons and muscle grew. Finally, the skin. It's a surreal scene. But these skeletons, now with flesh, now fully in human form, they weren't alive.
Joel Brooks:It's actually a it's actually a little creepy at this moment. It's it's essentially an army of zombies standing before Ezekiel. So the lord says they need breath. Keep preaching. Keep preaching.
Joel Brooks:And so Ezekiel, he keeps preaching, but this time he doesn't preach to the bones, he actually preaches to the spirit. He preaches to the breath. The word for spirit or breath or wind, it's all the same word in Hebrew. It's the word ruach. It sounds like the wind, doesn't it?
Joel Brooks:Ruah. So he he begins preaching to the spirit, asking it to come and to bring life into these corpses, and the spirit comes. We read that breath entered into their bodies, and they came alive, and they stood on their feet. If this story sounds even a little familiar to you, it's because we read something very similar in one of the first pages of the Bible. It's how God creates Adam.
Joel Brooks:He he forms Adam from the dust of the ground and he fashions him into his human form, but Adam was yet to be alive. God then breathed his spirit into Adam, and he came alive. So this is a pretty incredible story. It's an incredible vision. It'd make a great scene in a movie.
Joel Brooks:I'd I'd love to see the the CGI of all the bones coming together and and them coming to life. But what does it mean for us? What did it mean for them? Well, the lord explains the vision. He says to Ezekiel, it's about the exile.
Joel Brooks:The Israelites living in exile, this is how they feel. They feel like a pile of dry bones. They've lost all hope. They feel dead. He uses the word they've been like they've been cut off.
Joel Brooks:That's a covenant term, that they have been cut off from the benefits of the covenant of God. Cut off from his promises. They know that God God was punishing them for their disobedience. You know, God had once given Israel absolutely everything. Everything.
Joel Brooks:I mean, from one person, Abraham. He said, I'm gonna bless you. I'm gonna bless the world through you. I'm gonna make you into a great nation. And sure enough, Abraham's descendants grew into a great nation.
Joel Brooks:When they became enslaved by the Egyptians, God freed them. And he took them into a land flowing with milk and honey. Not because of anything they had done, but just because he's a gracious, good God. He gave them everything. And in return to God's grace, they didn't obey him.
Joel Brooks:They rebelled against him. And so God cut them off. They knew it. God has cut us off, and he has sent us into exile. That's what this vision is about.
Joel Brooks:Israel's now been in exile for over twenty years. To make things worse, they just received word a few years earlier that their beloved city Jerusalem, with its temple, has finally been destroyed. So now, even that tiniest little sliver of hope that they probably denied they had, but that was still deep within them, maybe someday we could go back home, back home to Jerusalem, back home to the temple. Now even those things are gone, their hopes are completely dashed. They are cut off.
Joel Brooks:They are dead. God, through his prophet Ezekiel, says, I can raise the dead. I'm gonna raise the dead. I'm gonna breathe my spirit into you, and I'm going to take you home. It's it's a glorious promise that God makes to his people.
Joel Brooks:It seems too good to be true, but it's exactly what the Lord did. After seventy years in exile, the Lord brought them back home. He allowed them to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, to rebuild the temple itself. However, there was still one major problem. They might have returned home, but they were still living in exile.
Joel Brooks:You see, the exile of Israel to Babylon was really just a picture of the much greater exile that every person is a part of. It's a picture of the exile that happened to the entire human race when Adam rebelled against God and he was exiled from the garden. After God created Adam and Eve, he placed them in the Garden Of Eden. And like Israel, he gave them everything, even more so. I mean, he placed them in the middle of paradise.
Joel Brooks:He gave them food, meaningful work, glory, dominion, perfect relationships with one another, and perfect relationships with God. They also had free access to the tree of life, which means they were to live forever. All they had to do was obey this generous, gracious God who had given them life, obey this one command, and they didn't do it. They rebelled against their creator instead. And so now, because of their sin, they're exiles.
Joel Brooks:God removed them from the Garden of Eden, and as a result, they were going to die because they no longer had access to the tree of life. So it was through their sin, death had now entered into their body. Do you see from the very start of scripture that humans were not meant to die? You know, anybody who's been around death knows this. I know we're a fairly young congregation, but if you've been around death, you know it.
Joel Brooks:I don't have to convince you of that. You know that you were not meant to die. Every time I'm at a funeral, I I just I have this overwhelming feeling, this isn't right. It's not supposed to be this way. And I bet you have that feeling too.
Joel Brooks:And death is not natural. Death has come to us because of sin, because we've been exiled. Now I know that there are some others out there who will try to convince you otherwise, and they'll say, no. No. Death that's it's natural.
Joel Brooks:It it you know, in some ways, you can maybe even think of it as beautiful. You know, maybe they'll tell you about the whole circle of life. You know, the the grass grows up, and it feeds the gazelle. The gazelle eats the grass and grows up, then becomes food for the lion. The lion then dies and becomes fertilizer, feeding the grass.
Joel Brooks:And then it goes on and on and on. And and some people might say, oh, that's beautiful, isn't it? No. It's not beautiful at all. There's absolutely nothing beautiful about watching somebody who should live forever take their last breath.
Joel Brooks:Disney is no comfort you're confronted with death. So there's nothing natural about death. It came and entered into the human race because we rebelled against the one who gave us life. If you rebel against the one who gives you life, you will no longer have access to that life. Because of this, we were exiled.
Joel Brooks:So when you read this vision of the valley of the dry bones, you need to see that the valley of the dry bones is us. The apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians two, we're dead. We're dead in our sins. So the question that was asked to Ezekiel is the question we need to hear. Can these dry bones live?
Joel Brooks:Can they? Can these dry bones live? Can anyone breathe life into us? Well, it's the reason we've gathered here together to celebrate this day, Resurrection Day. There's a curious story in the Gospel of John in John 20.
Joel Brooks:It actually picks up right after where we left off our opening scripture. But there you have the resurrected Jesus, and he gathers his disciples together. He appears to them. He says, look at my hands. See my side.
Joel Brooks:He wants to give them the full proof and evidence. It's really me. Then he gathers them close, and we read these strange words. We read that he breathed on them. And he said, receive the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:What is that about? It's about Ezekiel thirty seven. Jesus, he's the Lord that was in the valley. He's the one who can breathe life into us. He's the one who who breathed life into his disciples.
Joel Brooks:His spirit brought to life those who were dead and their sins. You see, just like Israel and just like us, Jesus too, at one point, was cut off from the covenant promises of God, but to an even greater degree. We read about it in one of the most famous passages in scripture in Isaiah 53 when we read that he was cut off from the land of the living. He was stricken for the sins of His people. In other words, Jesus went through the ultimate exile for us.
Joel Brooks:Although Jesus never sinned, he chose to be treated like a sinner and to be judged for our sins. He chose to be crucified and buried for us. But the grave did not have the power to keep Jesus. That's why we've gathered here together today. Jesus rose from the dead, and he now offers us a return from our exile.
Joel Brooks:We no longer have to be separated from God. We no longer have to fear death. Hear these words. It's in your worship guide in Romans chapter eight verse 11. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.
Joel Brooks:Did you get that? Did you hear it? Paul tells us it was the spirit of God that raised up Jesus from the dead. And that if you actually have Jesus's spirit in you, then someday you will be raised from the dead. In other words, those who are spiritually resurrected now through the spirit will be physically resurrected later through the spirit.
Joel Brooks:How does that come to us? The same way it came to that valley of the dry bones. It comes to us through the proclamation of God's word. Many of you, you've experienced this yourself. We just heard Jake talking about how he experienced this.
Joel Brooks:Or maybe you've heard the word of God being proclaimed your whole life, but it was just words, words. And then one time, the Spirit came and turned those words of God into power. And new life entered into your body. Finally, for the first time, the gospel clicked. You understood that Jesus didn't just die.
Joel Brooks:He died for you. He didn't just rise from the grave. He rose for you that you might have new life. And so you believed and the spirit of God came into you. And so many of you, I am sure you've heard that gospel message proclaimed to you, and you were dry bones turned to life.
Joel Brooks:You were spiritually resurrected. And now Jesus promises you, now that you have his spirit, you need not fear death. Because just as my spirit resurrected you now, my spirit will resurrect you bodily labor. It's an incredible hope. For those of you who have never heard that message, today is the day for you to hear it.
Joel Brooks:You know, you don't have to keep living in exile. I don't think I have to convince you that you feel homeless. You you look around and and and you you see everything that's going on in this world. You see everything that's going on in you and you think it's not right. You feel dead.
Joel Brooks:It's because you are dead in your sins, but you don't have to be a dead man walking. Can you hear God calling you? If so, trust him and receive the new life that he offers. I was gonna end right here, but the I think the spirit prompted me to say one additional thing before we close. And it was because I was looking around this morning, and I and I look around here, and I can actually see a number of people who I know have gone through intense suffering over this past year.
Joel Brooks:And we've we've as a people, there's been a lot of suffering at Redeemer. I want you to see how the Lord ends this vision. He tells Ezekiel, I'm gonna return you back from exile to your homeland, fill you with my spirit. Then he says, then you will know that I am the Lord. Now didn't they already know he was the Lord?
Joel Brooks:Yes. I mean, to some degree, yes. They already knew he was the Lord. So what does he mean that, no, it's when you return from exile, then you're gonna know that I am the Lord. What he's what he's teaching us here is there's something about suffering.
Joel Brooks:Something about suffering. And Jake talked to that, that decade of suffering. There's something about suffering. When you go through suffering and the Lord pulls you out the other side, you know Him even more. And this could be suffering as a result of others or suffering as a result of your own sin.
Joel Brooks:Paul tells us in two Corinthians four that all of these sufferings, they're actually just a light momentary affliction, preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. So for those of you who have suffered this past year, hear this. Jesus kept his scars. He forever kept his scars because his scars actually became part of his glory, and someday they will become part of your glory too. Let's pray to him.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, once again, through the proclamation of your word and now through the power of your spirit, would you blow among us. Lord, would you cause dead people to come to life. Thank you for the new life that you have given so many of us. And, if there's anybody who does not know that life, may they right now hear your voice calling them. We pray this in the sweet name of Jesus, our present and our future king.
Joel Brooks:Amen.
