Ezekiel 37:14 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. 

      His name means, “whom God makes strong.”  He lived during the Babylonian exile of the kingdom of Judah, he himself a part of that exile, living at the Kebar River, a canal of the mighty Euphrates.  The time is around 600 BC

      I’m talking about the man Ezekiel.  Ezekiel was a prophet of God.  His task was to be the spokesman of God.  His specific duties were to teach the exiled Jews the truth of God.  He was to tell them about the obedience and submission to the will and commands of God.  He was to plead for their repentance and return to faith.  He was to preach about the deliverance of Judah from this captivity and the spiritual one they were in.  Finally he was to lead his people to grasp the glory of God’s grace in what was yet to come.

      His prophecies are unique.  Almost everything in the book of Ezekiel is found in the form of a vision, in images and living pictures that symbolized the message that God had for his people.  Sometimes the visions were easy to grasp.  Sometimes they were hard to grasp.  Yet the message of each vision was important, twelve major visions, each vision portraying an aspect of what was for these people and what was to be for people yet to come.

      Our text for this morning is the Eleventh major vision of Ezekiel.  It is a vision of wonder and awe that laid out for the people of Ezekiel’s day a message of what was to come for them and also a message of what would be for all.  Please note, what this vision portrayed has already come to pass partially and so please note that this vision still holds a message for us.  This morning let’s consider these words of Ezekiel under the theme: GOD’S PROMISE OF LIFE.  1^st. God’s call to life.  2^nd. God’s call to faith.  3^rd. God’s call to us.

      The vision before us starts by telling us of a valley that was full of bones.  Our text says, “I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.”  The picture that is given here is very pointed.  It is a picture of death, death in the extreme.  Not just bodies of the dead but the bones of the dead, dry bones, scattered bones, bones with no hope or semblance of life.  It is a picture of death, not in the physical sense but rather in the spiritual sense.  There is a reason given for this vision.

      The reason for this vision is actually found in verse 11.  God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.  They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’  Here is just the problem God’s people had.  They have been a people in captivity brought to that captivity by their own lack of faith and their own denial of God’s sovereign power.  Yet God does not abandon them.  God had promised to bring them home, bring them back to the land of Israel after 70 years.  The time was coming when they would go home, but the people did not believe.  They were too down.  Too depressed.  They were hopeless.  All of this because they failed in one simple point.  They failed to trust and believe in God!

      And so God shows this vision of a valley of dry bones, a vision showing what these people believed.  They believed they were helpless, useless and worthless.  They believed that God had forgotten them and God would not carry out his promises of blessings and life.  They believed in failure, that God had failed them and that God could do nothing for them.

      That despair, that unbelief and hopelessness is pictured in the bones.  There is nothing a bone can do on its own except lay there and become dry and brittle.  Bones are helpless, useless and worthless.  Bones can’t make any decisions for themselves or even decide to decide on a decision.  Bones are the best picture of death there is.  It is a picture of Judah’s spiritual condition and even of a picture of the way the world really is.  Because of sin man is helpless, useless and worthless before the almighty God.  There is nothing he can spiritually do for himself, for such is the very nature of something that is dead.  That is why one of Scriptures favorite terms for sinful man is that of someone dead.  Colossians speaks of our being dead in sin.  Romans declares, “the wages of sin is death.”

      Dear people, despair is so easy to fall into especially in this world of ours.  We are surrounded by a world that attacks the very tenants of morality we hold dear.  Every time we turn around our Savior is being slapped in the face and ridiculed in our media.  We face the battle of trying to keep our kids on the straight and narrow in a world that doesn’t care about the straight and narrow.  Worse, yet the Bible and the truths the Bible reveals are called fake, false, figments of pious imaginations.  Christian churches around the country are abandoning and forsaking the truth of God all in the name of changing with the times or all in the name of “effective” ministry.  That’s but the beginning of our problems.

      Immorality is at an all time high and we defend it in the name of freedom.  Children are killed in the name of freedom.  The justice system is more often than not guilty of defending the criminal and forgetting the victims, all in the name of human rights and wisdom.  And in all of this we get swept up into the negativism and selfishness.  “This is bad, that stinks, I don’t have this and I want that, how am I ever going to make it!”

      Are we in danger of forgetting God’s power?  Do we think the word doesn’t matter any more?  Do we find our faith growing weak under the onslaught of those who despise and hate our Savior?  Are we ready to compromise God’s Word to be hip and cool rather than faithful and righteous?  Are we in danger of becoming what the people of Ezekiel’s day had become…a valley of dry bones, bones dead to the power, majesty and glory of God?

      It is at this point that the Lord’s speaks to Ezekiel.  He asks Ezekiel if these bones can live and Ezekiel properly responds by referring to the power of God.  Then God says to Ezekiel, “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.’

      What we find is that when Ezekiel speaks the bones do just as God says.  There is a rattling sound and the bones come together to form skeletons.  They develop tendons and flesh.  In essence these dry, brittle bones now become beings, creatures that might live and flourish.  God has called them to this state.  God has displayed his power.  And yet there is more. 

      If there is one thing that stands forth in this vision it is this.  When Ezekiel first spoke to the bones and they became as living, that is exactly the way it is in the world without the true God and faith in God.  One might call them the standing dead, the physically living but spiritually dead.  Such is what is revealed in our text.  For the text says of these bones that now have tendons, muscle and flesh “but there was no breath of life in them.”

      It is then that God again speaks to Ezekiel.  “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. 

      One only needs a little Hebrew to understand what is being said here.  It is extremely helpful for you to know that the Hebrew word for breath is the Hebrew word for “spirit.”  God tells his prophet to speak his Word that these people might receive His Spirit and thus be given the wonder and joy of spiritual life, the wonder and joy of living a life with and to God.

      Isn’t that the Lord’s desire for the world?  The Lord desires that people hear the truth of his salvation.  The Lord desires that all people be His people.  A people who know his power!  A people who grasp his grace and mercy!  People who understand that God is not against us but rather is for us.  God so loves us that He sent His Son to be our Savior.  God so loves us that he sent His Holy Spirit that we might be his true children by faith in His Son.  God wants us and all people, yes even the people of Ezekiel’s day to hear His Word and come to life.  God wants us to believe his promises, cling to his hopes and comforts, and be filled with His joy and wonder.

      The problem with the people of Ezekiel’s time was that they had forgotten the fact that God is the author and preserver of life.  They had forgotten that their life was the result of God’s power and grace.  They had even forgotten that what happened in their life was the result of God’s power.  The sad thing about all of this was that they had come to believe that God could do nothing about what was.  In other words, they were there, looking alive but they had no breath.  They existed but they had rejected the true life that was in and of the Lord.  They had turned away from God rather than all the more turning to God.  They had no faith!

      Yet God in grace and mercy gave them this vision that showed where their strength, power and hope were to be found.  By this vision God is saying, “Trust me!  Trust what my word says.  Trust the promises that I have given.  Trust that I am what I say, the Living and Almighty God who moves and acts for the good of his people and the salvation of their souls.  Know that my promises and my love are true and for you!

      This trust is called faith.  Faith that clings to what God has revealed.  Faith that knows the Bible is God’s Word, every jot and tittle of it.  Faith filled with the joy of salvation because of Jesus our Savior.  Faith that grasps that God will not give us more than we can bear and that He will walk with us and uphold us by His righteous love and mercy.  That’s why God sent His Holy Spirit.  So that we might have true life in our God and Savior Jesus.

      Of course, let’s not miss the lesson that is found for us in this vision of God.  I mean a lesson found directly for us.  Verse 13 says this, “Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.”  Here is the gist of what is said.

      First, as these people of Judah saw that God’s promises would be fulfilled they would then know that their God was the true God.  When they return to the land of Israel and establish their homes once again it would be a reminder of God’s power and their need of faith and confidence in that power.  The fulfilling of said history would also remind us that God’s Words and promises are always kept, always true.

      Second, God then throws in the verse before us.  He makes a reference to opening graves and bringing people back to life.  Following that verse he then says, “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.”  Could we be so blind as to miss the obvious reference and promises given here?

      We would especially know the true God when Jesus is raised from the dead.  Think of it.  Not only was Jesus raised but at the time of his death others were raised from the dead and returned to their homes.  Now add the events of Pentecost when God’s Spirit is unleashed that we might have faith and the eternal life it brings and you will then understand the full measure of this vision.  God has the power of life.  God is going to use that power not just to rule this world but to prepare the next world for each of us.  God is going to bring each of us by grace through faith into his eternal and everlasting kingdom.  God in His Judgment Day resurrection is going to cause all who believe to live with Him forever and ever.  The promise of Jesus is here.  The promise of eternal life and salvation by the power and majesty of God.  The promise of our deliverance from death by the Lord.

      We have been the valley of dry bones.  We have been called by the power of God to come to life.  Not just an empty life as might be found in this world, but a life filled with the goodness and mercy of God.  A life of joy and wonder in God’s power.  A life filled with God’s Spirit and the faith the Spirit brings.  A life that clings to the hopes, comforts and promises of God.  A life that will never end because God has promised and given it in Jesus.  Amen.