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Awaken The Dead-Ezekiel 37:1-14

By Charlie Vensel | June 14, 2008

NOTE: This sermon is based on one by Rev. John Holland at New Covenant Church in Oviedo, FL.

In May of 1990, Cable television mogul Ted Turner criticized Christianity and said Jesus probably would “be sick at his stomach” over the way his ideas have been “twisted,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Turner made his remarks at a banquet in Orlando, Florida, where he was given an award by the American Humanist Association for his work on behalf of the environment and world peace. Turner said he had a strict Christian upbringing and at one time considered becoming a missionary, “I was saved seven or eight times,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. But he said he became disenchanted with Christianity after his sister died, despite his prayers. Turner said, “the more I strayed from my faith, the better I felt.”

Turner’s remarks seem to sum up the attitude of the Israelites at the time of Ezekiel. God’s people are in exile at the hands of the Babylonians, about 600 years before Jesus, for Ted Turner type of living. Israel’s deplorable condition is spiritual and physical, widespread and severe (v. 2).

How bad was it? The people of Judah had used prosperity to justify slavery. The well-to-do had gotten rich from taking advantage of the less fortunate. In an attempt to be tolerant and open-minded, the practice of fertility cults and the worship of other gods were permitted throughout the country! They had definitely strayed from the faith, and felt pretty good doing it.

Early in the exile, many of the people held out hope because the city of Jerusalem and the Temple had been spared, but Ezekiel spoke only words of judgment against them in his early ministry. The people still living in Jerusalem had not changed their ways, neither had the exiles. Even while in exile, they continued to stray.

Ezekiel, “the watchman,” announced that the worst was yet to come. And it did! In 586 B.C. Jerusalem was demolished. The Temple of Yahweh God, already stripped of its gold for tribute money to Babylon, was burned to the ground. The worship of God by means of animal sacrifice ceased; there was no atonement. Hopelessness struck the hearts of most Jews, as it did for Ezekiel. Death and decay were everywhere.

It is in this context that Ezekiel is led into the valley of dry bones; he has to walk among the bones of Israel. How do we get our heads around such an encounter?

Recently, I watched some footage from PBS’ Frontline Documentary, Ghosts of Rwanda showing the carnage from the genocide. I was shocked at the graphic footage of corpses and the bones of the victims, and very embarrassed that we did nothing to intervene.

While I could not download any clips from the film, I was able to find some photographs that tell the story of the nearly 800,000 people who lost their lives in about 100 days. I think they are fitting to help us understand Ezekiel’s surroundings:

Slide 1:

• This is a picture of the remains of several hundred Tutsi civilians who were massacred during the country’s 1994 genocide.

• Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan children died as a result of genocide and war. Those who survived have lived through unspeakable atrocities.

Slide 2:

• Jeb Sharp, a reporter visits the genocide memorial, and writes: “At first I don’t see individual bodies, just shapes. Then my eyes begin to focus. It’s not the skeletal remains that are shocking. It’s the stories that are written on those remains. You can see where machetes have sliced off limbs, where clubs have smashed skulls. You can see faces screaming in pain, upper bodies twisted in flight, hands contorted in anguish. …”

Ezekiel is walking among Israel’s bones, bones of moms and dads, bones of children, friends, and neighbors, cut down by pagan swords and devoured by wild animals. These were God’s people and the bones were abandoned. They had died, and no one had cared for them. They should have been buried! They should never have died!

Q: What happened? Why would God allow such horrible evil, such suffering for his people?

A: Israel has been cut off from God’s covenant because of their centuries of wickedness (v. 11) and the wages of sin is death. They got their just reward.

How do we connect to this sense of physical death and spiritual despondency? What are we supposed to learn from Ezekiel’s walk in the valley of dry bones?

I. First, I think we are supposed to see that God raises us for his service.

We are supposed to see ourselves in those pictures; we are supposed to see our bones. We are supposed to see the bones of our unbelieving family, friends, and neighbors. We are supposed to see sinfulness and total depravity, the state of humans apart from God. We are supposed to see it in such stark and even graphic terms. Ezekiel did and God still does.

In our New Testament reading this morning, Paul connects these same dots for us, “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” (Romans 8:6-8 NIV)

All humans, apart from God’s grace in Christ, are spiritually dead and fully submitted to sin. Happily we wear the chains of sin, as if it were fine clothing, as if we were showing off. We come home at the end of our life-long party of serving self, only to realize that the end of our life of servitude to wickedness is death. Welcome to the bone-yard!

We wear those chains of sin in the name of freedom. Like Ted Turner and Israel, we think we don’t need some God telling us what to do. We choose our own way, but we are never free.

In 1979, Bob Dylan wrote his hit song, You’re Gonna Serve Somebody…

You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame,
You may be living in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a construction worker working on a home,
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome,
You might own guns and you might even own tanks,
You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,
You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Dylan is right, you’re gonna have to serve somebody; you will be a slave. The question is, “Whom will you serve?”

God made us subordinate creatures. He is King and we are his subjects, or he is the General, and we are his soldiers.

The very spirit of our first parents’ sin was independence from God, a lack of submission to him. The attempt to be free, self-willing apart from God is a futile effort. Adam and Eve’s vain attempt at freedom only led to slavery; only it was service to death. The Israelites’ vain attempt at freedom only led to slavery; only it was service to death.

Our condition is desperate apart from God’s grace; it is death. Our end is as horrific as the valley of dry bones; so brittle from decay they shatter to dust, so shocking as to decompose into the very ground that God intended to be our blessing and source of life.

But this is not God’s intention for us; nor will he abandon his people to such an end. There is the other option, to serve God, to serve the Lord and find life in the end. This was Ezekiel’s hope and call, because it was God’s call to us. God raises us from death into life for his service.

II. But God has also raised us to have resurrection hope in that service.

Can you hear the clanking of the bones? Ezekiel prophesied for resurrection, for the bones to be reassembled, to grow flesh, to receive the breath of the Spirit, to rise as a vast army. Ezekiel’s vision is for Israel’s return after exile (v. 12-14). At last, they will have rest in re-creation!

Consider these images of re-creation in our text:

• Ezekiel is in a barren valley, like the desolate wasteland before God spoke.

• God’s Spirit organizes the bones, like the Spirit bringing order out of the pre-creation chaos, something out of nothing.

• The breath of God brings life to the bones, like God breathes into Adam and Eve and they live. The Spirit is all over this passage.

Paul captures this aspect of resurrection, or re-creation in Ephesians 2. In verses 1-10, he tells us:

• That the plight of Israel in the exile is the condition of all humanity
• Living in the world’s patterns
• Living in submission to the devil,
• Living in slavery to our sinful cravings.
• That we are dead in our sins and children of wrath – deserving God’s punishment.

But what does our God do? What does he do? But God, praise him for those two precious words, “But God, who is abundant in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. By grace you are saved!” (Ephesians 2:4-5 HCSB)

Why? Why is the “But God” there? It is there because of his love, because of his great love with which he loved us.

And this love and hope is for the whole world. In Ephesians 11-21, Paul says it was not enough for God to save Israel.

• His love is for the world, for all his people.
• That those who were cut off from God’s covenant, both Jews and Gentiles are now alike made the people of God in Christ to be the renewed temple by the Spirit.
• This is exactly the love and hope Ezekiel sees in chapter 40 onward.

When we are staring at the bones of our own lives, the lives of our loved ones, or the life of the world, we can have hope. Our God is the God who raises the dead. Our Jesus is the Lord who calls, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43 NIV) The Spirit is the one who breathes life into corpses and they stand, a vast army of re-creation.

This is God’s heart, that all would know that he is Lord, that all would be resurrected. Let us hope in his love for his creation and in his power to do something about it. Let us hope that as we have been re-created, those we care for so deeply that do not know Christ, will also be re-created.

But biblical hope is not just wishful thinking. We have a responsibility to it.

III. It is in that, that we see that God raises us to raise others.

The Spirit does not resurrect zombies. We are not emerging from the paths of the dead as a shadowing army only to disintegrate into the wind. He raises us to life, to be the witness to the world of riches of his great love and mercy, of his intention to rescue the world, or his promise to remake Eden. This is the great Easter promise: He is risen, we are risen, and we are to go and raise the dead.

How do we raise the dead? We do this by living in his love, by living in the world-to-come now, and by living like Jesus. The world lies to us that the way of sin is freedom, saying, “God did not say you would surely die. Taste. Eat. This is life.” No! Righteousness, God’s path, the way of Jesus is life. Patterning your life after his is God’s gift to you by the Spirit. It is new life, an awakening from the dead ourselves. What better people to raise the dead than those that were once dead themselves?

The day for waking the dead has arrived. It is interesting that Ezekiel has to prophesy twice: “Then he said to me, “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…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.’” (Ezekiel 37:4-10 NIV)

The Word must be proclaimed in the power of the Spirit. The prophecy, the prayer really, is for the Spirit to come and enliven. There is great intensity in the call to prophesy to the wind (v. 9). We must pray for the Spirit in our life, our words, and in our paths.

IV. But, we are not left alone in this task. God equips us to raise others.

Only the Spirit can awaken the dead, but only we can trumpet his breath. The prophet and the Spirit work together. The Lord has called us all to be prophets in this regard and he has given us his Spirit for this task. We are the resurrected calling forth the resurrection of others by the power of the Spirit.

V. And the call to awaken the dead is now.

Now is the time to awaken the dead, in Littleton, in Aurora, in Centennial, in Denver, in Lakewood, and in Highlands Ranch. How often we will hear the rattling sound like Ezekiel?

Will you prophesy to the wind? Will you pray for the lost? Will you pray for your own repentance when you are living more like them than like the soldier you’ve been called to be?

Will you prophesy to the dry bones? Will you carry the Spirit’s witness to those that do not know Christ? Will you speak God’s words of hope to yourself when you think all hope is lost?

Can these bones live? Do not answer like Ezekiel. Truly the Lord knows, but so do we.

Arise resurrection army of God and awaken the dead, that they may know he is the Lord, that they may have hope, and will stand to worship him for all that he is.

Topics: Ezekiel |

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