Ezekiel 37:1-14
(for a pretty good dramatization of this text:
(for a pretty good dramatization of this text:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB9lIPCssos
Before we get to the actual text for today’s message, I want to let you in on the fact that today I am beginning a new sermon series on the work of evangelism, to include some practical ideas that encourage us all to do this work. You know that I am studying for the ordination exams this fall and I was delighted to find in your denomination’s documents something about the reason why a congregation should even exist. And here it is: “The church's first duty is to evangelize, and the fruit of faith will be ministry to those in need.”
In spite of the urgency and priority placed on evangelism by the denomination, I think it safe to say that evangelism is not everybody’s favorite pass time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The work of an evangelist is really the most exciting part about what it means to be a Christian! In evangelistic work, we are partnering with God to be involved in miraculous transformations!
I’m picturing what it may have been like after the feeding of the 5,000, when the disciples picked up twelve basketsful of leftovers. What did they do with all that food? There was no refrigeration. I imagine that they had fun in the next town they got to, handing out bread and fish to anyone they could find who would take some. That could have been a lot of fun! And to me, that’s evangelism. All we are doing is looking for people who might like to get some good food from our miraculously full basket of goodies!
So today, I am beginning a series of teachings about evangelism. I really believe that along the way we will be led by God to rethink what we think evangelism really is and find out that we can all do it in some form or other and actually have fun doing it the way that fits our gifts and personalities! But the best place to start, is to become more aware of and grateful for the power of God at work behind the scenes of our work in the world. So now, listen to this dramatic reading of Ezekiel 37:1-14.
The ending there kind of disappoints me when only one guy stands up to represent what is supposed to be a vast army. Oh well, chalk it up to budget limitations.
But now I want to talk about Ezekiel. There he was in the middle of a grotesque scene of the aftermath of a war zone. He stood in the midst of a vast collection of dry bones. They covered the floor of the valley as far as he could see. It had been a slaughter. Hundreds of dead Israelites laid out, unburied, their bones picked clean by birds, animals and weather. They must have been dead for quite a while. Now they lay in a hopeless jumble, all disconnected and scattered, like a horrifying jig saw puzzle.
Those bones in that valley lay there in a condition that can be called excarnation. Excarnation is a real word. It’s an old one that describes exactly what we see here. In the ancient war zones, if the king had fallen while he was away from home, his loyal subjects would want to bring him back home for a proper burial. But they didn’t have refrigerator cars to preserve the body from rotting. And they didn’t have airplanes to make it a quick trip.
They came up with a different solution to make the long journey home without having to suffer the shame and dishonor of smelling their beloved king turning into rotten meat. The soldiers deliberately excarnated their king. They would remove all the flesh and everything that could rot and deteriorate and carry home with them just the clean bones and give them a proper burial. Whatever process they used, they called it excarnation, meaning without flesh, or out of the flesh. I am telling you about his word, “excarnation,” for an important reason that will become clear later.
In the valley where Ezekiel stood, excarnation had happened by the natural processes I have already described. There had been no proper burial to honor these war heroes, every one deserving of a purple heart. And there was no one to bring them home. It was a sad and disgraceful scene. If you were standing there, you would probably begin to mourn the loss of all those lives. And if you were there with Ezekiel that day, it probably never would have occurred to you to ask, “Can these bones live?” But God asked Ezekiel to think about that. And Ezekiel didn’t give the normal, natural, immediate answer that you or I might have given if we were there then. He didn’t burst out saying, “Of course not! They are very dead! Absolutely no chance of recovery!”
Ezekiel had already had some experiences with God and he at least knew that nothing is impossible with the God of all creation, so he cautiously admitted his own doubts, or ignorance, while leaving the door open for God to do something wonderful. Can these bones live? “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
It is true that only God knows. It is also true that God could have raised all those dead bones to life without any help from Ezekiel. And since Ezekiel doesn’t know and doesn’t have any power, we may very well wonder why God even asks Ezekiel to do anything. Doesn’t God get more glory if God does the miracle all by himself without any human help? But God doesn’t do something wonderful all by himself. The first wonderful thing God did was to invite Ezekiel to be the agent through whom God does the really wonderful thing. God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. And God is still making the same invitation today. In his sovereign love, he chooses to invite us to partner with him. Even though he doesn’t have to, it is what he wants. That is why this message is a good introduction to the work of evangelism.
“Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 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.’”
So, Ezekiel demonstrates his faith. He had enough faith in God to obey this strange command. “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. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.”
I don’t want us to miss this. Listen again to the way God commanded Ezekiel to speak. “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” It was all there in the first prophesy, that they would come to life. But that’s not what happened first. The bodies are all lying there, miraculously restored to pre-rotting conditions, but still dead. So far, the breath has not yet entered these reconstructed bodies. These dead bodies coming to life will be the final result, after a second round of Ezekiel’s prophesying, or preaching as you might call it.
I believe God announced the end result first so that Ezekiel would get a glimpse to understand why he was being asked to do this, and would not be terribly frightened when he heard the bones rattling and saw them all moving about, bumping into each other, until they all found their correct connections and snapped together. I wonder what it was like for Ezekiel to watch the tendons, muscles and skin appear on all those skeletons. I wonder if they were now lined up in orderly ranks as they lay there, still dead, but re-incarnated. Now, do you remember, excarnation?
Did you know that Christianity has a theology of reincarnation? But it is not that we die and come back as some higher of lower life form. It is that Jesus died and rose again and now he lives in us. The incarnate God is reincarnated in us. We are the body of Christ. A Christian of the 1500’s, Saint Teresa of Ávila put it this way. “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men and women now.”
Then God said to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So, I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.” Now they are resuscitated. Not just air, but breath, the breath of life has filled them, the Spirit of God, has brought each one’s spirit back to its own body. They came alive with that breath and rose to stand before God and before Ezekiel, a vast army.
What has God done? He has raised the dead. What has Ezekiel done? He merely obeyed the Lord and preached the Word. What should we do? Preach the Word! Share the good news and watch God raise the dead in sin to life in Christ! Ezekiel 37:1-14, is a perfect example of how God chooses to work with and through humans. We may normally think of this passage as a promise to the nation of Israel that they will come home from exile and be a nation under God once again and that’s certainly true. However, we can also see how God and man partner together to bring about God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will.”
God began by asking Ezekiel a question here. This is similar to questions that Jesus asked before He performed many of His miracles. He asked one, “Do you want to be healed?” And another, “What do you want me to do for you?” Questions from God invite us to express our faith in Him. Imagine God turning to you and asking, “Beloved, can your loved one come to life in Me?”
Only the Lord really knows. But maybe you know too. If you are willing to admit that you were once dead in your sins and Jesus brought you to life in the Spirit, then maybe you can believe that anyone else you pray for can also come alive in Him. But there is another reason for God asking you the question. It is His invitation to you, to be a part of the life-giving process. It reminds me of the way two guys might stand together looking at a big project in front of them, like that huge wood pile over at Darrold’s house yesterday. The one who owns the project says to his friend, “What do you think? Can we do this?” We get to be God’s partners in ministry. Lets’ get to work.
Remember that the resurrection process in the valley happened in two stages? First came the physical assembly. In our evangelistic ministry, I see this as similar to taking care of a person’s physical needs first. This is why I am so excited about our upcoming opportunities to minister to people through Kid’s Hope and Open Table. We get to meet people and care about people who maybe don’t even go to church, and as time goes on, maybe we get to share the gospel with them and see them come alive in the faith.
Now, these bones have been clothed and fed, and comforted. Their physical needs have been met, but are they really alive? Unbelievers are still spiritually dead no matter how comfortable and healthy their bodies look. However, once the physical needs are taken care of, we can turn to the spiritual. So, back in the Ezekiel passage we notice a shift. In the second part of the preaching, instead of talking to the people, Ezekiel is told to talk with someone else.
First, he prophesied to the bones. He directly addressed the physical beings. Next, he prophesied to the breath, or the Spirit. God basically told Ezekiel to tell God to enter into those physical bodies and make them come to life. Only God can make a dead body come to life. But again, he asks us to ask him to do so. We get to partner with him. Each person needs the Holy Spirit to breathe the life of Christ into them. And what God is doing as he brings more and more people to life in Christ is that he is raising a vast army, a vast host of faithful servants who are devoted to doing the work that we do in God’s Kingdom.
Then once all the people in the valley are on their feet and alive, ready to go, they can begin to hear God’s Word for themselves and act on it. What does God want them to know? God told Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ In other words, even the living remnant of Israel felt as powerless as a pile of dead bones.
While they were in exile they thought of their homeland as like a ghost town. Empty and dead. And the people in exile were powerless. They were as good as dead, and thought of themselves as buried away. This miracle of resurrection was not just for the dead people, it was also to encourage the living remnant who felt hopeless and powerless under the oppression of their enemies.
“Therefore,” says God, “prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: 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. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from 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.’”
In the same way, we ought to see ourselves as having life and hope and a mission to accomplish. We also get to share the same life with anyone who will listen and come to life in Christ. We get to prophesy, and speak the Word of God, not to literal dead bones, but to real people who are as good a dead without faith in Jesus. As it says in Romans 10: 17, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” God wants your loved ones to know. And he asks you to tell them, through your ministry to them, that he loves them and values them enough to give them life, real life! We get too play a role in the development of their faith and we get to be there and watch it happen.
Of course, we can’t do this on our own. Ezekiel didn’t come up with his message on his own. Nobody walks into a valley of dry bones and thinks, “I wonder if I could make them all come to life again,” not seriously anyway. We didn’t come up with God’s plan of salvation either. We’re just asked to share it. But if we are faithful, and do share it, amazing things can happen!
It is God who is asking us, commanding us to go and make disciples. This is miracle work! We can’t do it if God isn’t at work behind the scenes making the words he has asked us to preach bear fruit in new lives saved. But that is so encouraging! We should know that we have this power of God working behind the scenes in which we live out our faith and testify of God’s power. It’s that simple, and it is potentially a great deal of fun too! There is no greater joy in life than to help a sinner meet the Lord Jesus for forgiveness and grace, and watch ‘em come alive!
But, if there have been years of no salvations, no baptisms in a congregation, it is easy for the remnant to feel as good as dead, all used up and powerless. Well, let us go ahead and acknowledge that we are indeed powerless. But let us also renew our faith in the God who has all the power to raise the dead. That same power lives in us and bids us to go and preach the gospel!
Before we get to the actual text for today’s message, I want to let you in on the fact that today I am beginning a new sermon series on the work of evangelism, to include some practical ideas that encourage us all to do this work. You know that I am studying for the ordination exams this fall and I was delighted to find in your denomination’s documents something about the reason why a congregation should even exist. And here it is: “The church's first duty is to evangelize, and the fruit of faith will be ministry to those in need.”
In spite of the urgency and priority placed on evangelism by the denomination, I think it safe to say that evangelism is not everybody’s favorite pass time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The work of an evangelist is really the most exciting part about what it means to be a Christian! In evangelistic work, we are partnering with God to be involved in miraculous transformations!
I’m picturing what it may have been like after the feeding of the 5,000, when the disciples picked up twelve basketsful of leftovers. What did they do with all that food? There was no refrigeration. I imagine that they had fun in the next town they got to, handing out bread and fish to anyone they could find who would take some. That could have been a lot of fun! And to me, that’s evangelism. All we are doing is looking for people who might like to get some good food from our miraculously full basket of goodies!
So today, I am beginning a series of teachings about evangelism. I really believe that along the way we will be led by God to rethink what we think evangelism really is and find out that we can all do it in some form or other and actually have fun doing it the way that fits our gifts and personalities! But the best place to start, is to become more aware of and grateful for the power of God at work behind the scenes of our work in the world. So now, listen to this dramatic reading of Ezekiel 37:1-14.
The ending there kind of disappoints me when only one guy stands up to represent what is supposed to be a vast army. Oh well, chalk it up to budget limitations.
But now I want to talk about Ezekiel. There he was in the middle of a grotesque scene of the aftermath of a war zone. He stood in the midst of a vast collection of dry bones. They covered the floor of the valley as far as he could see. It had been a slaughter. Hundreds of dead Israelites laid out, unburied, their bones picked clean by birds, animals and weather. They must have been dead for quite a while. Now they lay in a hopeless jumble, all disconnected and scattered, like a horrifying jig saw puzzle.
Those bones in that valley lay there in a condition that can be called excarnation. Excarnation is a real word. It’s an old one that describes exactly what we see here. In the ancient war zones, if the king had fallen while he was away from home, his loyal subjects would want to bring him back home for a proper burial. But they didn’t have refrigerator cars to preserve the body from rotting. And they didn’t have airplanes to make it a quick trip.
They came up with a different solution to make the long journey home without having to suffer the shame and dishonor of smelling their beloved king turning into rotten meat. The soldiers deliberately excarnated their king. They would remove all the flesh and everything that could rot and deteriorate and carry home with them just the clean bones and give them a proper burial. Whatever process they used, they called it excarnation, meaning without flesh, or out of the flesh. I am telling you about his word, “excarnation,” for an important reason that will become clear later.
In the valley where Ezekiel stood, excarnation had happened by the natural processes I have already described. There had been no proper burial to honor these war heroes, every one deserving of a purple heart. And there was no one to bring them home. It was a sad and disgraceful scene. If you were standing there, you would probably begin to mourn the loss of all those lives. And if you were there with Ezekiel that day, it probably never would have occurred to you to ask, “Can these bones live?” But God asked Ezekiel to think about that. And Ezekiel didn’t give the normal, natural, immediate answer that you or I might have given if we were there then. He didn’t burst out saying, “Of course not! They are very dead! Absolutely no chance of recovery!”
Ezekiel had already had some experiences with God and he at least knew that nothing is impossible with the God of all creation, so he cautiously admitted his own doubts, or ignorance, while leaving the door open for God to do something wonderful. Can these bones live? “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
It is true that only God knows. It is also true that God could have raised all those dead bones to life without any help from Ezekiel. And since Ezekiel doesn’t know and doesn’t have any power, we may very well wonder why God even asks Ezekiel to do anything. Doesn’t God get more glory if God does the miracle all by himself without any human help? But God doesn’t do something wonderful all by himself. The first wonderful thing God did was to invite Ezekiel to be the agent through whom God does the really wonderful thing. God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. And God is still making the same invitation today. In his sovereign love, he chooses to invite us to partner with him. Even though he doesn’t have to, it is what he wants. That is why this message is a good introduction to the work of evangelism.
“Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 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.’”
So, Ezekiel demonstrates his faith. He had enough faith in God to obey this strange command. “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. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.”
I don’t want us to miss this. Listen again to the way God commanded Ezekiel to speak. “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” It was all there in the first prophesy, that they would come to life. But that’s not what happened first. The bodies are all lying there, miraculously restored to pre-rotting conditions, but still dead. So far, the breath has not yet entered these reconstructed bodies. These dead bodies coming to life will be the final result, after a second round of Ezekiel’s prophesying, or preaching as you might call it.
I believe God announced the end result first so that Ezekiel would get a glimpse to understand why he was being asked to do this, and would not be terribly frightened when he heard the bones rattling and saw them all moving about, bumping into each other, until they all found their correct connections and snapped together. I wonder what it was like for Ezekiel to watch the tendons, muscles and skin appear on all those skeletons. I wonder if they were now lined up in orderly ranks as they lay there, still dead, but re-incarnated. Now, do you remember, excarnation?
Did you know that Christianity has a theology of reincarnation? But it is not that we die and come back as some higher of lower life form. It is that Jesus died and rose again and now he lives in us. The incarnate God is reincarnated in us. We are the body of Christ. A Christian of the 1500’s, Saint Teresa of Ávila put it this way. “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men and women now.”
Then God said to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So, I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.” Now they are resuscitated. Not just air, but breath, the breath of life has filled them, the Spirit of God, has brought each one’s spirit back to its own body. They came alive with that breath and rose to stand before God and before Ezekiel, a vast army.
What has God done? He has raised the dead. What has Ezekiel done? He merely obeyed the Lord and preached the Word. What should we do? Preach the Word! Share the good news and watch God raise the dead in sin to life in Christ! Ezekiel 37:1-14, is a perfect example of how God chooses to work with and through humans. We may normally think of this passage as a promise to the nation of Israel that they will come home from exile and be a nation under God once again and that’s certainly true. However, we can also see how God and man partner together to bring about God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will.”
God began by asking Ezekiel a question here. This is similar to questions that Jesus asked before He performed many of His miracles. He asked one, “Do you want to be healed?” And another, “What do you want me to do for you?” Questions from God invite us to express our faith in Him. Imagine God turning to you and asking, “Beloved, can your loved one come to life in Me?”
Only the Lord really knows. But maybe you know too. If you are willing to admit that you were once dead in your sins and Jesus brought you to life in the Spirit, then maybe you can believe that anyone else you pray for can also come alive in Him. But there is another reason for God asking you the question. It is His invitation to you, to be a part of the life-giving process. It reminds me of the way two guys might stand together looking at a big project in front of them, like that huge wood pile over at Darrold’s house yesterday. The one who owns the project says to his friend, “What do you think? Can we do this?” We get to be God’s partners in ministry. Lets’ get to work.
Remember that the resurrection process in the valley happened in two stages? First came the physical assembly. In our evangelistic ministry, I see this as similar to taking care of a person’s physical needs first. This is why I am so excited about our upcoming opportunities to minister to people through Kid’s Hope and Open Table. We get to meet people and care about people who maybe don’t even go to church, and as time goes on, maybe we get to share the gospel with them and see them come alive in the faith.
Now, these bones have been clothed and fed, and comforted. Their physical needs have been met, but are they really alive? Unbelievers are still spiritually dead no matter how comfortable and healthy their bodies look. However, once the physical needs are taken care of, we can turn to the spiritual. So, back in the Ezekiel passage we notice a shift. In the second part of the preaching, instead of talking to the people, Ezekiel is told to talk with someone else.
First, he prophesied to the bones. He directly addressed the physical beings. Next, he prophesied to the breath, or the Spirit. God basically told Ezekiel to tell God to enter into those physical bodies and make them come to life. Only God can make a dead body come to life. But again, he asks us to ask him to do so. We get to partner with him. Each person needs the Holy Spirit to breathe the life of Christ into them. And what God is doing as he brings more and more people to life in Christ is that he is raising a vast army, a vast host of faithful servants who are devoted to doing the work that we do in God’s Kingdom.
Then once all the people in the valley are on their feet and alive, ready to go, they can begin to hear God’s Word for themselves and act on it. What does God want them to know? God told Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ In other words, even the living remnant of Israel felt as powerless as a pile of dead bones.
While they were in exile they thought of their homeland as like a ghost town. Empty and dead. And the people in exile were powerless. They were as good as dead, and thought of themselves as buried away. This miracle of resurrection was not just for the dead people, it was also to encourage the living remnant who felt hopeless and powerless under the oppression of their enemies.
“Therefore,” says God, “prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: 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. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from 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.’”
In the same way, we ought to see ourselves as having life and hope and a mission to accomplish. We also get to share the same life with anyone who will listen and come to life in Christ. We get to prophesy, and speak the Word of God, not to literal dead bones, but to real people who are as good a dead without faith in Jesus. As it says in Romans 10: 17, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” God wants your loved ones to know. And he asks you to tell them, through your ministry to them, that he loves them and values them enough to give them life, real life! We get too play a role in the development of their faith and we get to be there and watch it happen.
Of course, we can’t do this on our own. Ezekiel didn’t come up with his message on his own. Nobody walks into a valley of dry bones and thinks, “I wonder if I could make them all come to life again,” not seriously anyway. We didn’t come up with God’s plan of salvation either. We’re just asked to share it. But if we are faithful, and do share it, amazing things can happen!
It is God who is asking us, commanding us to go and make disciples. This is miracle work! We can’t do it if God isn’t at work behind the scenes making the words he has asked us to preach bear fruit in new lives saved. But that is so encouraging! We should know that we have this power of God working behind the scenes in which we live out our faith and testify of God’s power. It’s that simple, and it is potentially a great deal of fun too! There is no greater joy in life than to help a sinner meet the Lord Jesus for forgiveness and grace, and watch ‘em come alive!
But, if there have been years of no salvations, no baptisms in a congregation, it is easy for the remnant to feel as good as dead, all used up and powerless. Well, let us go ahead and acknowledge that we are indeed powerless. But let us also renew our faith in the God who has all the power to raise the dead. That same power lives in us and bids us to go and preach the gospel!
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