Life for Dry Bones (Easter Service)
Notes
Transcript
Scripture Intro:
Scripture Intro:
Scripture Reading (“Please stand…”)
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.
And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones:
Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them.
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.”
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel.
And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people.
And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
Pray...
Intro:
Intro:
In the city of Cateura in the country of Paraguay,
there is a community that is build on a landfill.
More than 1500 tons of trash gets dumped into the landfill every day.
About 1,000 residents make their living by picking through the trash
with long hooks called ganchos.
As a result, these people are called gancheros.
When a young professional and musician, Favio Chavez,
saw the desperate poverty and dire health conditions at the landfill,
he opened a tiny music school.
At first Chavez loaned out the five instruments that he owned,
but he quickly had far more students than instrucments.
So he asked one of the men who picked through the trash
to make some instruments from recycled materials.
Eventually the students learned to play a small orchestra
of miraculously redeemed instruments:
a cello made out of an oil can and old cooking tools,
a flute made from tin cans,
a drum set that uses X-rays as the skins,
a saxophone bottle caps that serve as the keys,
a double bass constructed out of chemical cans, and
a violin made from a battered aluminum salad bowl and strings tuned with forks.
The "Recycled Orchestra" plays classical music and all sorts of other types of music.
Their music is on YouTube,
and a documentary was made about them in 2016...
affectionately named, The Landfill Harmonic.
This giant pill of trash...
rotting, smelly, disgusting...
Yet, out of that morass of things that people left for dead...
arises a collection of beautiful music made from reconstructed instruments.
It’s somewhat similar to the vision that Ezekiel saw in our chapter.
An entire valley of dead, dry bones.
Coming back together and being made alive.
B/c how would you feel if you lived in a landfill...
probably like there no way out...
life will never get better.
Their hope is completely lost.
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’
So this passage comes as...
Hope for the Hopeless
Hope for the Hopeless
(Timer: 18-20 minutes left)
“these bones are the whole house of Israel.”
This is very important to actually understanding what this is talking about.
The bones are an illustration of the God’s people, Israel.
And they say,
“Our bones are dried up,
and our hope is lost.
we are cut off.”
They are in exile in Babylon.
Jerusalem (the city of God) is destroyed.
The temple is in ruins.
“our hope is lost!!”
“Exile in the pagan, enemy land of Babylon was a living death”
That matches what Ezekiel sees in (v. 2)
And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.
Bone is a living, vascular organ containing channels for blood and bone marrow.
It has blood vessels.
It is also the place in the body that makes new blood cells and platelets are made.
Liiving bones feel wet and a little soft.
They are also slightly flexible, so they can absorb pressure.
So when someone dies,
Their bones are NOT dry.
So for bones to become dry...
they need to sit lifeless for a long time.
Flesh and ligaments decompose.
After that, Bones can take years to dry up.
These bones are "very dry".
They have been here for a long time.
There is no life in this valley.
There is no life in these bones.
This is a valley of death.
Prophesy to the bones
Preach to my people.
Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
Life for the Lifeless
Life for the Lifeless
(Timer: 10 minutes left)
(v. 3) “Can these bones live?”
Initiated by God
Just like Todd pointed out last week in Ezekiel 36,
who is the primary actor in these verses?
God.
“I will...”
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
“Then...”
Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations.
Here is chapter 37… we see the same pattern.
(v. 5) “I will cause breath to enter you”
(v. 6) “I will cause flesh to come upon you”
(v. 12) ‘I will open your graves… I will raise you from your graves”
“I will bring you into the land of Israel”
(v. 14) “I will put my Spirit within you”
“I will place you in your own land.”
“I will do it”
More later in the chapter as well...
God is one who is active in restoration and salvation.
the verb “to live” appears in vv. 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 14.
Ezekiel’s response leaves the outcome to God’s sovereignty.
The Promise of Restoration
The Promise of Restoration
Back in the Land
(v. 11-14)
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel.
And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land.
Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
ESV Sudy Bible
The vision of new life through the Spirit has a partial fulfillment in the return from exile (37:12). It prefigures the giving of resurrection life through the Spirit of Christ (John 11:25–26; Rom. 8:9–17; Col. 3:1–4).
United Again
(v. 15-22)
Two sticks
Northern and Southern Kingdoms
Israel (Joseph / Ephraim) and Judah
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the people of Israel associated with him’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him.’
And join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not tell us what you mean by these?’
say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand.
When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land.
And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms.
The word ’eḥāḏ (one) occurs eleven times between verses 16 and 24.
God will create for himself
one nation (22a), under one king (22b), who will reign as one shepherd (24).
The Pattern of the Resurrection
The Pattern of the Resurrection
While the immediate understanding of Israel returning to the land...
it is a pattern that foreshadows the resurrection.
Other places in the OT are references to bodily resurrection.
Breath/Spirit
“wind/breath/spirit”
rûah.—human - breath
natural - wind
divine - Spirit
The single total effect of all this activity of rûah. is life out of utter deadness.
Life-Giving Power
The Lord is the Lord of life and death.
wind/breath/spirit that gives life powerfully alludes to God’s creative work in Gen. 2:7. God creates, and God re-creates.
The most significant echo of Ezekiel 37 comes in a locked room on the very evening of Jesus’ resurrection...
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
Christopher Wright:
The Lord of life himself, freshly risen to his feet from where he had lain among the bones of the dead, adopts simultaneously the posture of Ezekiel in summoning the breath of God, and the posture of God himself in commanding the breath of the Spirit to come upon the disciples.
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
App. the truth at the heart of this passage is that the unregenerate man is ‘dead’. He has no more power to effect a change of heart than does a skeleton.
ILL. Dry Bones… illustraiton of salvtion.
The Promise of Eternal Relationship
The Promise of Eternal Relationship
Relationship - “covenant”
“a bond made with blood…” initiated by God.
(v. 23-28)
Our next series after Ezekiel is on Covenant Theology...
and the unity of the Bible.
That God is unfolding his redemptive story...
the bond that he made with his people.
The easiest covenant construct to see in the Bible...
“I will be your God, and you will be my people”
You will see it from Exodus to Revelation.
It shows up twice in this section (v. 23-28)
They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
——
They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
“My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes.
They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever.
I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore.
My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”
the oracle piles up together in a grand climax all the themes we have heard already:
cleansing from all idolatry (23);
righteous rule through the Davidic king (24a);
perfect obedience (24b);
security in God’s land (25);
an everlasting covenant of peace (26a);
growth (26b);
the permanent presence of God in the midst of his people (27);
and the perfection of covenant relationship between God and people (23b, 27b).
there are indications that something far bigger is in store (cf. 34:25–31; 36:33–38). The land is to be a reflection of Eden (36:35).
The New Jerusalem is said to measure 1,500 miles in length, width and height (Rev. 21:16)—a problem for those who see it as a reference to literal Palestine!
Sermon on the Mount: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth’ (Matt. 5:5), it is of this paradise that he speaks.
Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”
Close in Prayer
Close in Prayer
Closing Song:
Closing Song:
“Christ the Lord is Risen Today”
Originally written by Charles Wesley in 1739...
God’s people have been signing it for nearly 300 years...
Proclaiming the truth of Jesus’ resurrection.
And the hope that b/c he rose...
we will rise as well when he returns.
“Made like Him, like Him we rise”
Death is not the end of the story.
It has been swallowed up in victory.
Let’s sing, “Alleluia!!”
Benediction:
Benediction:
Now may the God of peace,
who through the blood of the eternal covenant
brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus,
that great Shepherd of the sheep,
equip you with everything good for doing his will,
and may he work in us what is pleasing to him,
through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
