Bible Passage: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: May 23, 2021

Bulletin May 23, 2021

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of Jesus,

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.” (Nicene Creed)  You recognize those words, don’t you?  Those words are from the Nicene Creed.  We confess them together each week.  We stand shoulder-to-shoulder and we confess to each other and to the world that we believe that the Holy Spirit of God is “the giver of life.”

I don’t know if those words grab you by the lapels and get your attention, but I will confess, those words do not always get my attention.  If we think it no big deal to confess that the Holy Spirit is the “giver of life,” welcome to Ezekiel 37!  In this chapter God vividly teaches what it means to be “the giver of life.”  Some might say this chapter reads like a horror novel!  It’s got bones and skeletons and corpses!  But more than that, it is the story of life from the dead!  It is the story of the “Giver of life.”  It helps us appreciate on this Pentecost Day, on this feast day for the Holy Spirit, that he is The Giver of Life to Dry Bones.

 To make sense of this chapter of the Bible, we have to spend a moment reviewing who Ezekiel is.  Ezekiel was a Jew and a priest who had been taken away into exile in Babylon in the year 597 B.C.  In Babylon, Ezekiel spent the first portion of his ministry prophesying about the coming fall of Jerusalem that finally took place in 586 B.C.  After the fall of Jerusalem, the Lord used Ezekiel to bring the exiles the message that their exile would end and they would return to their homeland and their beloved Jerusalem.  Our text, chapter 37, is a part of this second half of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

Right away in our text we see the activity of the Spirit of God as Ezekiel records:  He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley (v. 1).  This means this was another of the visions given to Ezekiel.  In this vision, Ezekiel is in the middle of a valley.  As Ezekiel surveys the valley he sees that it is full of bones, human bones!  Ezekiel walks all around the valley and the bones are everywhere!  And they were completely dried out.  What’s the point of emphasizing the dryness of the bones?  Think of it this way:  dead, deader, and deadest.  These bones are “deadest.”

The LORD asks Ezekiel:  Son of man, can these dry bones live? (v. 3)  The predictable answer is, “No, bones can’t come back to life.”  But Ezekiel is smart enough to realize that the LORD is at work here:  LORD God, you know.” (v. 3)  The LORD did know!  He had a plan!  “Ezekiel, preach to these bones!  Tell them the Lord God says, ‘I am going to re-string you with tendons and refit you with muscle and tissue and skin.  And I am going to make breath enter you so you will live!”

 So what does Ezekiel do?  He preaches the Word of the Lord to a congregation of dead, dry bones.  And the Word works!  There is rattling and a clattering across the valley floor.  Bones seem to be magnetically drawn together.  The hip bone connected to the thigh bone, and all that. Complete skeletons come together!  Ezekiel then watches as connective tissue and flesh somehow generate and cover the skeletons!  But that’s where things stopped, for the moment.  The valley now was a valley of corpses.

“Preach, Ezekiel!  Preach!  Tell the breath to come from the four winds and fill the lungs of these slain!”  So Ezekiel preached to the breath.  And it came.  And it entered all those dead bodies.  They began breathing, and they stood up on their feet.  Now a huge, living army stands before Ezekiel!

This vision was a very special message for the exiles with Ezekiel in Babylon.  At the end of our text, we are told how they were feeling. They were saying, “We’re dead.  Babylon is our grave.  Our hopes are dead.  Our dreams are dead.  Our future is dead.”  With this vision the Lord God was revealing to them what he was going to do.  He was going to bring them out of their “grave.”  They were going to live again.  The Lord tells them they will live as “my people.” (v. 12 and 13)  They were going to have a life again back home, as the Lord says, on the soil of Israel (v. 12).  But most importantly, the Lord promised them life that is truly life, I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. (v. 14)  The LORD promised them spiritual life because it is life given by the Holy Spirit.  The Lord gave them this vision so that those exiles might say, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.”

Though this chapter had a very specific message for a very specific people at a very specific time, it has a message for us, too.  First of all, this chapter reminds us not to underestimate man’s true nature since the Fall.  There is a tendency today to downplay, to minimize the damage sin has done to the nature of man.  To think we’re bent and dented a little, but not broken.  Some will say, “Oh, we’re damaged because of sin, but not that bad.  We still retain some spiritual powers, some spiritual energies, we can use to move ourselves closer to God.  If God makes the first move, we can respond with our decision or our submission.” If we think humanity is slightly damaged or only mildly impaired, we need to look at the valley of bones again.  Would you say to those dry, bleached bones, “Hey, Bones,  pull yourselves together!  You’re only slightly dead!  It’ll be okay, you’re only mildly dead”?  There is no such condition as mildly or slightly dead.  Dead is dead. And the Bible says that we are by nature dead in…transgressions and sins. (Ephesians 2:1)  We’re bones.

The second lesson will flow naturally if we learn the first.  If we come to grips with our natural “deadness” then the work of the Holy Spirit will naturally snap into perspective.  If we are dead, the Holy Spirit doesn’t simply “help” us, or “nudge” us, or “assist” us, or “coax” us.  He is not our “therapist” who helps us with a little rehab.  No!  He does a miracle requiring nothing short of the omnipotence of God!   He breathes into you the breath of life, and dead bones live!   And it still happens just like it did in the Valley of the Bones.  Dead bones need the Word of the Lord.  The Spirit works through the Word of the Lord.  This is God’s way.  No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3)  That is faith!  And Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)  So dead bones need to hear the good news about Jesus’ life, death on the cross for sin, and glorious resurrection from the dead.  And through that good news, the Holy Spirit brings bone to bone, attaches ligaments and tissue, and breathes life into them.  This is God’s way.

As we look out into the world, it can look a lot like a valley of dry bones.  We say that not with glee or self-righteousness, but with pity and compassion.  Without Christ, man is but bones.  And to us comes the question, “Can these bones live?”  We know they can!  We confess it every week!  “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.”  The Giver of life, even to dry bones!

Amen.

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-716390. All rights reserved.

If you would like to give an offering after today’s worship, click here.