The Valley Of Dry Bones
The Valley Of Dry Bones : [Ezek.37:1-14]. We have come to call this place “The Valley of Dry Bones” when we tell this story. It is horrible not simply because of its ghastly, visual images. It is horrible because it reminds us of our own mortality. Standing in the Valley of Dry Bones we have nowhere to rest our eyes. Every single inch of it reminds us that we will someday die. It is a place where we cannot lie to ourselves.
And standing beside us is Ezekiel, a man who should be used to this sort of thing. Ezekiel was the sort of person that we in the MidwestWe would say "Man that Ezekiel has alot of “character.” Ezekiel had the habit of doing strange, and very dramatic, very public things to draw people’s attention to the radical nature of God’s message. He walked around Jerusalem carrying suitcases to let people know that soon they would be exiled. He publicly cooked his food over a fire of human excrement to warn people – as vividly as possible – that they would soon be eating among the unclean Gentiles. As you can imagine, this did not endear him to his neighbors. “Quirky” and “eccentric” probably wouldn’t be strong enough to describe him. Saying that he would have fit in well at East Side Baptist Church might come close.
Nevertheless, as odd as Ezekiel’s methods were, he was proven right. He watched as a foreign army trampled God’s holy city and God’s holy temple. He watched as the leaders of God’s chosen people were dragged into exile. In a few short years, Ezekiel watched as every last glimmer of hope for his nation, God’s chosen, was extinguished. With no temple, and surrounded by uncleanliness, worship had become all but impossible . All of the hope and potential first given life by God’s covenant with Abraham seem dead and empty. The dream has become a nightmare. All is lost.
And so, in the midst of this dark time, Ezekiel feels the touch of God and finds himself in the Valley of Dry Bones. One commentator [Katheryn Pfisterer Darr New Interp. Bible 1503-4] suggests that, at the end of our story, Ezekiel finally gets to see the world through God’s eyes. That is certainly true, but Ezekiel starts seeing with divine insight at the very moment we find him standing, stunned surrounded on all sides by the grisly reality of death.
In fact, he may not have even left his own living room. The dry bones are all around us; if we look with eyes focused on the eternal instead of the here-and-now. My family death is enough for me in seeing there own human mortality, In seeing them in one's own coffin that would eventually would turn to bones in that coffin as they would be held by God in him knowing whom it is lying in death as He was holding dry bones. For me is that inner knowing that one day ot will be me but for now as we look at people whom may enter in churches all across this land that they will be taking ones place just as my family has already done in knowing the scriptures that could take place as this word of the "Valley of Dry Bones" comes into my mind today. But in a sence we will be resurrected into the celestial bodies it's that kind of a difference in between our earthly bodies going into our spiritual body as I've read (1 Cor.15:35-50).
They’re everywhere, if we ignore our instinct to overlook them. Around the world – in fact, around the corner – stand the empty shells of churches. They were once places where Almighty God was worshipped with power, celebration, joy. They had been centers of transformation for their communities, where the sick found aid and the weak found strength. Now they are being turned into loft apartments and concert halls. Dry bones.
They’re everywhere. Most of us have pockets full of them. Each year, there are a few more things we realize we’re never going to do. Unfulfilled dreams become the ballast that, if we didn’t pitch a few of them over the side, would weigh us down so heavily that we could not get out of bed in the morning. They are dry bones, and with Ezekiel we stand in a valley full of them.
God takes Ezekiel for a tour of the valley. Ezekiel has two comments. There are very, very many bones and they are very, very dry.
God asks a question, “Mortal, can these bones live?”
Can they live? What kind of question is that. Of course not. Could my dead family member's rise from the grave and finish those tiles? Are people, perfectly content with all of their comfortable lives, going to suddenly start rushing to feel empty pews in churches that seem to have no relevance in our world? Are we going to miraculously find the time to do the things we really want to do instead of the things we have to do? Can dead bones come alive?
The obvious answer is “No!” No, no, and no! But Ezekiel is a prophet, and he doesn’t give an obvious answer. Instead, he replies, “Lord God, only you know if they can live.”
It was, apparently, the right answer. God continues, “Then prophesy to these bones.” “Prophesy?” It’s a word that has perhaps in our day been misappropriated, calling to mind images of sweating and shouting. But at its most basic level, to prophesy is to speak with the authority of God in a way that transforms the world or at least how people see it. When faced with an arid valley of death, God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy. God tells the prophet, here is what you say, “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord God to you. I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will give you muscle and tissue, skin and breath, and you shall live and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
That’s it. God says it’s simple. Just tell the stupid bones that they aren’t going to be bones any more. God said so.
Ezekiel does just that, and it works…mostly. He speaks to the bones as God commanded him, and all across the immense valley the bones start to tremble. With a great, rattling sound they fly together, forming skeletons. Then muscles and flesh and skin cover the skeletons; and where once there had only been the litter of countless fragments there stands an army of whole bodies.
But they had no breath, no spirit in them. God has more work for Ezekiel. The prophet is told, “Mortal, prophesy to the spirit, to their very breath.” Ezekiel does, and the Spirit of God, a great wind, gusts into the valley and fills the lungs of the empty bodies. They are alive.
Mortal, can these dry bones live? It’s a trick question. “No!”, because we are mortal. But if we, in turn, ask God, the answer’s easy. God is the bringer of life.
Have no doubt, we stand surrounded by dry bones. There are so many of them that if we only had ears to hear we would notice them crunching under foot when we walk. Our entire world is the valley of broken dreams, the valley of unfulfilled potential, the valley where death ultimately wins and we all try to pretend otherwise…the Valley of Dry Bones.
That’s just the way the world works, and over time we learn to accept that. Ezekiel, though, never learned that lesson. He traded his realism for faith. Not just simple, cursory belief; but faith. Faith that God really does have the power to work miracles.
I’m not sure that, as modern-day believers, we really have that kind of faith. I fear that someday God will take each of us to a point looking over a valley much like Ezekiel’s and God will say, “Mortal, here are the bones of your life. They are what could have been. Could they have lived?”
I’m sure I’ll say something like, “God, there was nothing I could do. You know how the world is – you made it that way. No good deed goes unpunished, and there was only so much time. What could I have done?”
And the part that breaks my heart is that God will say, “Nothing. You could have done nothing. Of course, if you had asked Me, I could have done everything.”
What are we missing out on, what miracles will we never see because we think that all we can count on is ourselves? Have “common sense” and “practicality” so numbed us that the fire of God would have to consume us before we would notice it? The world stands dry and parched, not because it has to be that way but because we, the children of God, have forgotten that we serve a God of miraculous life.
In our text, God turns to Ezekiel and says that this valley is the final resting place of the children of God – the house of Israel. As it so happens, the lifeless bones at the feet of God are not just our potential, they are us. Their cry, our cry, is that “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are cut off completely.”
This one time of year we face, like it or not, the real, inevitable, inarguable fact that we will die. You will die. I will die. There will someday be nothing left of the bodies we’ve come to love and hate. We must first accept that to hear the next part, and it is the key to the whole story.
God responds, “Thus says the Lord God, I will open your graves and bring you out of them and bring you back to the promised land. You will know that I am the LORD, and then you shall truly live with my spirit inside you.”
Even if we believe that God can miraculously change the world, this last part seems a little far fetched. Bringing dead bones to life is fine as a metaphor for putting our priorities in the right place and trusting God; but literally bringing people back from the dead, bringing us back from the dead, seems a little too good to be true.
It turns out that there’s more to it than that, and in the next two weeks we’ll see it all. We’ll see God in the flesh – Jesus – who, having taught us how to live will now teach us also how to die. And we’ll see Him resurrected and alive.
Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Where God is, there is life. There will be life. If we will answer to the voice of God, the sunburnt desert will become the Garden again; and once again God will lean down and with a gentle brush against our lips breathe into us the miraculous spirit of life. This time, for good.
catcmo2006 Thank You for stopping in this site it's about Jesus Christ first and prayers, intecessory prayer's and at other times about this vast world we live in today which this old world as we all know it is slowly departing to be reaching our home in glory.
posted by Remnant WaitingOn His Eternal Kingdom @ 1:42 PM
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