Life-Giving Breath

Introduction

Ezekiel 37:1–14 ESV

1 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. 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. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 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.” 7 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. 8 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. 9 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.” 10 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. 11 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.’ 12 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. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 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.”

Ezekiel was a priest who was called by God to be His prophet while he lived in exile in Babylon. Babylon was located in Mesopotamia (the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates (sometimes called “the Great River” in the Bible)), in what we know today as Iraq.

King Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem three times before finally overthrowing it (587/586 BC), and each time he took back with him exiles. Among those exiles in the first deportation (ca. 605 BC) were Daniel, Hananiah (Shadrach), Mishael (Meshach), Azariah (Abed-nego).

records the vision that God gave to the prophet Ezekiel. This passage is commonly known as “The Valley of the Dry Bones.”

Ezekiel was exiled in the second of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasions and deportations, in about 597 B.C.

In 587/586 B.C., King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded the southern kingdom of Judah for the third time and succeed in besieging Jerusalem and he destroyed the temple built by King Solomon, son of King David.

Ezekiel was exiled in the second of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasions and deportations, in about 597 B.C.

records the vision that God gave to the prophet Ezekiel. This passage is commonly known as “The Valley of the Dry Bones.”

Our passage for today is perhaps a well-known one – certainly one of the best known passages from the book of Ezekiel, the prophet and priest of God. Before we get there, a little background is needed.

In about 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, invaded Jerusalem for the first time and took the best of those in Jerusalem back to Babylon in exile. It was at this time that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah–those last three known better to us as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.

King Nebuchadnezzar came again to Jerusalem in about 597 BC and took more exiles. One of those taken this time to Babylon in exile was the prophet Ezekiel, who was also a priest. And so Ezekiel lived in Babylon and ministered as a prophet of God to the Jewish exiles there.

King Nebuchadnezzar came back a final time in 587/586 BC and destroyed Jerusalem, taking more captives and leaving the people of Israel landless and destitute.

God had warned the people of Israel back when they were about to enter the promised land that if they departed from the covenant that he established with them at Sinai the land would vomit them out just as it was about to do with the current inhabitants at the time.

God removed the people living in the land of Canaan as judgment upon them for their sin and wickedness and he had warned the Israelites that the same would happen with them if they forsook God’s ways and commandments.

And that is exactly what happened. Israel was repeatedly disobedient to God and broke faith with him numerous times.

As a result God often sent disaster their way and they would repent for a time and God would grant them relief and then they would again go and break faith with God.

This went on for years and years. The Exodus from Egypt was in the year 1446 BC and Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC…860 years. God was patient with his rebellious people and often sent his prophets to point out their sins and call them back to God in repentance and faith.

The Northern Kingdom of Israel was a wicked kingdom and God brought their end in 722 BC by the hand of the Assyrians.

In his grace and in faithfulness to his promise, God preserved the Southern Kingdom of Judah for a while longer and gave them some faithful kings who feared God.

But eventually because of continued disobedience God brought an end to that kingdom as well and allowed Nebuchadnezzar to destroy the temple in Jerusalem and take the Jewish people into exile in Babylon.

God’s warning of judgment came to pass. The people of Israel were vomited out of the land just as the people they had dispossessed were before them.

Israel was in shambles. Broken and beaten down. Their land laid waste; their temple destroyed, and they no longer lived in the land that God had given to them.

It looked to all the world that Israel was done and gone. Defeated. All of its former glory gone and done away with. Just one more nation among countless that fell to a stronger nation.

Yet even in what seems to be defeat, God is still God and he is still working out his redemptive plan for fallen humanity. He had not forgotten the promises he gave to Adam and Eve of the seed who would crush the serpent’s head. He had not forgotten the promises given to Abraham concerning the coming Messiah.

Though Israel was defeated, God certainly was not.

: The Valley of the Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37:1–14 ESV

1 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. 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. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 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.” 7 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. 8 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. 9 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.” 10 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. 11 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.’ 12 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. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 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.”

Ezekiel

This vision is received by Ezekiel sometime after 586/585 BC (after the fall of Jerusalem to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon

Even in exile, God was working and sent his prophets to the people of Israel – sometimes with a message to point out their sin and call them to repentance and faith in the one true God and other times with messages of comfort and reassurance that God had not abandoned or forgotten them and that a remnant would still return to Jerusalem and that his Messiah would come to save fallen humanity from their sins.

This passage in Ezekiel is one of those passages of comfort and reassurance to the exiles. It is one that speaks of the power of God to raise the dead and bring a nation back from exile…to bring them out once again from the midst of another people as he had through the Exodus from Egypt.

Ezekiel receives a vision from God. He says that the hand of Yahweh, the Lord, was upon him and he was brought out in the Spirit of Yahweh and set down in the middle of the valley…and this valley was full of bones.

God led Ezekiel around among the bones and Ezekiel comments on how there were very many on the surface of the valley and they were very dry.

This is an interesting detail that Ezekiel includes. The bones are very dry. Let’s think about that for a minute.

When a person dies, their flesh is still on their bones. After some time passes, their flesh will decay and fall off the bones and dry up and rot away.

Yet there is still moisture in the bones themselves…they are still “wet.” After a long time passes, even that moisture will evaporate and the bones will be very dry.

This is what Ezekiel sees. He sees bones of corpses that had been dead for so long the bones were very dry.

God asks Ezekiel if these dry bones can live. Ezekiel’s answer is one of simple deference to one more knowledgeable than himself. He says, “O Lord Yahweh, you know.” This is very similar to what the Apostle John does in Revelation when he is asked by God what some of those visions mean.

This is not a cop out. Certainly Ezekiel doesn’t know the answer to the question. Had it been another human being asking the question, it would have been a ridiculous question. But since God is the questioner all Ezekiel can do is defer and plead human ignorance. Only God knows if dead, dry bones can live.

It is important to note here that the concept of the resurrection of the body makes an appearance.

It is unclear how much Ezekiel or believing Israel knew at this time about the resurrection of the body. But Ezekiel certainly does not dismiss the idea. It is clearly set forth in the Old Testament that God, the Creator of life is also the Lord of death, even though nothing explicit is mentioned about how one is related to the other.

Though it is unclear how much Ezekiel would have known about this, we can certainly note and observe that the concept of the resurrection of the body shows up here in the Old Testament and would be further explained and demonstrated in the New Testament. But for now Ezekiel simply directs the question back to God.

Ezekiel is then instructed to prophesy to the dry bones. Most often when we hear the word “prophesy,” we think of telling future events before they happen. That’s what we think of primarily when we hear about “prophets.”

This is certainly the view of those who style themselves as prophets of God in our day. They claim to be speaking new things of God and predicting events that will come to pass in the future.

And they show themselves to be frauds simply because they aren’t 100% correct in their predictions of the future and the prophet of God, as God said in Deuteronomy, who predicts the future is never wrong because he actually did receive a revelation from God and God brings to pass the things he says will happen.

The self-styled prophets of our day also miss the fact, it seems, that the primary sense of the word prophesy is to speak the word or message that the Lord has given to that person…they become the Lord’s mouthpiece.

And that is what Ezekiel is doing here with the dry bones. He speaks the word that God gave to him, at the command of God.

God speaks to Ezekiel and says,

Ezekiel 37:4–6 ESV

4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 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.”

Ezekiel 37:

Ezekiel does as he was commanded and the bones came together and formed complete skeletons. And not only that but sinews came back on them and flesh as well and skin covered the bones once again.

It is important for us to notice that Ezekiel was to speak to these bones the word of the Lord as if he was speaking to a living audience. Though it may seem silly to do so, it is through the power of the word of God that life is brought where there is death.

And so at the word of God, these bones came together and sinews and flesh on them. But there was not yet breath in them. They were still corpses.

Ezekiel is then instructed to prophesy again. This time to the wind. “Prophesy to the wind; prophesy, son of man and say to the wind, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.”

Ezekiel does so and breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

We should notice here the similarity to Genesis chapter one and the creation of man. God formed Adam from the dust of the ground but he did not become a living being until God breathed his breath of life into Adam.

God then explains to Ezekiel what all of this means. He says:

Ezekiel 37:11–14 ESV

11 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.’ 12 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. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 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.”

“‘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. And you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.’”

The dead, dry bones were a picture of the whole house of Israel. Israel was captivity. Their despair is captured in the lament of their bones being dried up, their hope lost and their being cut off.

They are languishing under the curse and punishment of God for their sins. But in his grace and mercy, God will restore to them life and land. In response to their lament, God gives a promise: he will open their graves and raise them from their graves and he will bring them into the land of Israel.

And this indeed happened. The exile came to an end and the remnant of Israelites did indeed return to the land of Israel.

But there is more going on here than what may appear to our eyes. Though physical Israel did return to their physical land, that isn’t the primary purpose of what God is doing here. There is something more going on, behind the scenes, as it were.

God speaks specifically of the giving of his Spirit to these resurrected people. Just as the wind came and brought the breath of life to the corpses in the valley, so God’s breath, his Spirit will be given to spiritual corpses and raise them to life. And they will know that God is Yahweh–the one who brought salvation through taking Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

God doesn’t give his Holy Spirit to just anyone. One who is spiritually dead does not have the Holy Spirit and so we cannot understand this passage as ultimately describing physical Israel and a physical land. Rather, this remnant that returns, these ones that are given the Spirit of God, are a picture to us of the Church.

The Church consists of spiritual corpses that have been raised to life through the breath/Spirit/Word of God. The land which we will eventually have is the new heavens and new earth…shown to us in picture form in the land of Israel.

Application/What we can learn from

The dry bones give us a stark and graphic picture of ourselves as sinners: we are just as dead as those bones ()

Just as the Spirit of God through the Word of God breathed life into those corpses, so the Spirit of God through His Word of the Gospel breathes life into dead sinners and raises them to life.

So what does all of this mean? What can we learn from what Ezekiel saw and experienced and prophesied?

Some rather silly applications have been suggested. There are those who take this passage and try to make it about the “dry times in your life” when things just aren’t going your way. And you are supposed to “prophesy” over the dry times in your life so that times of blessing and restoration will come.

This is utter nonsense and it is quite sad that this kind of ridiculousness passes in the church as sound exegesis and handling of Scripture. Those who approach this passage in this way ought to shudder and tremble at such trivialization and misrepresentation and mishandling of the Word of God.

Instead, Ezekiel gives us a really good picture of fallen humanity: a pile of dead, dry bones in a heap in a valley. This is who we are in ourselves: spiritual corpses with not a trace of life in us. This fits perfectly with what the Apostle Paul teaches us in : We were dead in trespasses and sins.

Dead. It’s that bleak. This is Scripture’s clear testimony of our condition. And yet, so often in the church we treat unbelievers as if they are alive.

We appeal to them to make a decision for Jesus and so to be saved. We tell them all the good things that will happen to them if they would just choose Jesus.

But think about it for a moment. What if you went to a cemetery, exhumed the bones of someone long dead, and proceeded to implore the bones to make a decision for Jesus. You tell the bones all the good things that could be theirs if they would just choose Jesus.

Or you warn them of all the dangers and fires of hell (which are real) and then you tell them that if they just decide to allow Jesus into their life they can be saved from eternal torment?

That would be pretty silly, would it not? Imagine it. What would you think if you saw someone doing that? But that’s what we do so often in the church when we appeal to dead, dry corpses to exercise their will and choose Jesus.

Just as we saw in Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, only the Word/Breath/Spirit of God has the power to raise the dead. And the corpses in the valley only came together and came to life when the Word of God was spoken to them.

So imagine this scene: Pews filled with corpses – dead, dry bones. And the pastor (God’s “prophet” who speaks the Words God has given him to speak (the Gospel, Holy Scripture) preaches the Word of God, namely the Gospel of a bleeding and dying Savior who shed his blood for the sins of the world and who rose to life again, to all of these dead people as if they are alive.

Still seems silly, does it not? But the difference is that this time it is the Word of God being proclaimed…not the will being appealed to. God’s Word is powerful…man’s will is not.

And so there is a certain foolishness to preaching a crucified and risen Savior to a bunch of dead people…but that very proclamation has the power of God to raise them to life.

By nature, you and I are like these dry, dead bones in our passage today. There is no life in us. Sin separates us from God. And apart from God we die. And all that awaits us is eternal death and hell. And that is what we deserve.

But. That isn’t the end of the story. Though exiled from the presence of God because of your connection to our father Adam and his sin, God has not abandoned you to death and hell and rotting in the grave.

He sent his Son, the Word of God become flesh, Jesus Christ, to bleed and die for you. Jesus shed his blood on the cross to pay for your sins and wash them away. And Jesus lived a perfect life for you.

And through this Word of God, you are raised to life. Your sins are gone, covered in the blood of Christ and you wear the robe of righteousness earned by Christ and given to you as a gift.

And the promise of God for you is that he has put his Spirit in you and that on the last day at the resurrection of the dead, he will open your grave and raise you to life everlasting…along with the vast multitude of corpses raised to life through the Word of God–the Church Triumphant–and you will dwell in the new heavens and new earth with Christ forever.

This is the promise of God to you. This is your hope. This is your peace.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior.

Amen.