Bible Passage: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: May 19, 2024

Bulletin May 19 (Pentecost), 2024

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

Of all the stories recorded in the Bible, are there any more spectacular and spell-binding than when someone is raised from the dead?  I remember Bible history class when I was a child in school.  I remember how the stories of Jesus raising people to life really captured my attention.  I remember how intensely I listened to the stories of Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter, and raising the widow’s son in the village of Nain, and I remember listening with rapt attention as Jesus stood outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus and called, Lazarus, come forth!  And out came Lazarus alive!  Stories of raising the dead are dramatic, and thrilling, and comforting.

We have another dramatic, thrilling, and comforting account of raising the dead before us this festival morning.  It is an account that shows us that the Son of God is not the only one who raises the dead.  Most fittingly, on this feast day of the Holy Spirit, our text shows us that it is also the work of the Holy Spirit to bring the dead to life.  Our text puts before us The Spirit who Gives Breath to Bones.

We have to set the scene to understand our text.  It is written at the time when the Israelites have been taken into the Babylonian Captivity.  You may recall what this was.  The Israelites had become unfaithful to the Lord.  They had engaged in the worship of the idol gods of the nations around them.  Through the prophets the Lord had called on them to repent and return to him.  They did not.  So the Lord threatened, and finally brought about, their exile in Babylon.  In 586 B.C. the city of Jerusalem, including the Temple, was destroyed by the Babylonians.  The Babylonian army carried many Jews off to Babylon in a series of deportations.

Our text gives us a little window into how the exiles in Babylon were feeling.  In verse 11 the people are quoted as saying, Our bones are dried up!  Our hope is lost!  They were in despair.  They are self-described dried up skeletons.  Lifeless. Hopeless.  After all, what hope is there for dry, bleached bones?

Ezekiel says, The hand of the LORD was upon me.  He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley which was full of bones. (v. 1)  Picture it.  Oftentimes battles were fought in valleys between hills.  Ezekiel stands in such a valley.  The floor of the valley is covered with human bones, like one army had been completely slaughtered in this valley.  Ezekiel walks around, back and forth among the bones.  He assesses what he sees, …they were very dry. (v. 3).  If there was such a thing as dead/deader/deadest, Ezekiel’s point is that these are the “deadest” they can possibly be!

The LORD tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones.  He is to give them the Word.  Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! (v. 4)  Ezekiel is to tell these bones that the LORD is going to cover them with tissue and skin and give them life!  And so Ezekiel preaches to these bones.  What a silly thing to do!  Preach to bones!  But something begins to happen.

Ezekiel hears a rattling and a clattering.  Bones rearranged themselves to form skeletons.  And then Ezekiel sees these skeletons re-strung and reconnected with tendons.  And then muscle and flesh grew over the tendons.  Finally, a new coat of skin covered it.  But that’s where it stopped.  Now it just looked like the valley was filled with dead bodies!  The LORD’s work was not done.  He tells Ezekiel to command the wind to come and enter these bodies as breath.  Ezekiel reports, So I prophesied as he commanded me.  Breath entered them, and they came back to life.  They stood on their feet, a very, very large army. (v. 10)

What did all this mean?  The LORD explains it for us.  My people, I am going to open your graves and raise you up from your graves and bring you back to the soil of Israel. (v. 12)  So first of all, their hopeless, dead existence in Babylon was going to end!  But there was a more significant message.  The LORD said, I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. (v. 14)  The LORD was promising that the Holy Spirit would raise them to spiritual life.

Friends, this is the lesson for us today.  The Holy Spirit is the one who gives breath to bones.  But this whole way of picturing the Spirit’s work allows us to address a very important question.  And that is, just how severely was humanity affected by the Fall into sin?  Most will agree that sin has affected our nature.  But how bad is it?  I mean, do we come into this world with a case of the spiritual sniffles?  Is it worse than that?  Is sin more like a bad infection, spiritual sepsis, or cancer?  By nature are we on life-support?  Friends, it’s worse than that.  We are dead.  The “deadest.”   We do not have any sign of spiritual life whatsoever.  No pulse.  No respiration.  No brain stem activity.  The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians and described the condition this way,  As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. (Ephesians 2:1)  We are all dead, dry bones spiritually.  This “deadness” is perfectly summarized in Luther’s Catechism:  “I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.”  Skeletons cannot think or choose or come to anything.  We do not need “help.”  We need life!

And the Holy Spirit gives breath to bones like us.   He does that through the Word of God.  Jesus once declared, The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.  The Words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life. (John 6:63)  Wherever the gentle breeze of the Gospel blows, wherever the story is told of Jesus’ death and resurrection for sinners, there the Spirit of God is hard at work, breathing the breath of life into dead, dry bones.  That is why we confess in the Nicene Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life.”

Take today’s text very personally.  You were once dry bones in the valley.  Now you are alive through faith in Jesus!  Your faith a gift!  A miracle!  A resurrection to life!  And all praise and glory and credit and honor goes to the Holy Spirit, the one who gives breath to bones!

Amen.