Dead Things Come to Life

Transcript

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[0:00] Well, our sermon text is Ezekiel 37, and I'm going to just give a few words of introduction here. Thinking about the prophet Ezekiel himself, I just want to give you a little background. It's just a mini biography. It's likely that he was born in Jerusalem around the mid-500s BC, but that meant that he was just in his 20s maybe, 20s or 30s, when Jerusalem was surrounded by the Babylonian army and sacked, and ultimately most of it was destroyed. The temple was destroyed. The walls were knocked down. At the end of this very long siege, a lot of people had already died inside the walls. A lot of people had starved to death. And then once they got into the city, the Babylonians, of course, killed all sorts of people. And then what they also did was they gathered up thousands and thousands of people, anybody that they could find that was of a certain sort of section of society, and they didn't put them in a limousine or anything, but they marched them to Babylon, which you can understand that along the way many people must have died too, because if you have to walk 500 miles, then you could walk 500 more. But you have to walk 500 miles through the desert. Not everybody's going to make it all the way there.

[1:25] And so, and Ezekiel was one of these who walked. You know, he walked from Jerusalem to Babylon, and he saw death all along. He saw death when the city fell. He saw death along the way. And then what happened was this small remnant of this whole country was gathered here by the shores of the river, by the side of the river, and saying to themselves, we're barely alive. You know, we've got nothing. We're exiled. We're basically prisoners in this land. We are not allowed to go back. Now, they were allowed to live and kind of form their own culture. And as it turns out, this was a very fruitful and fertile time in the life of the people of Israel, because that's when a lot of the Old Testament, as we have it, was committed to writing. Before that, a lot of it was oral tradition. And so this is, and they learned how to worship God without the temple, which was an important sort of innovation.

[2:31] But it was this really difficult time for the people. They had seen all this death and destruction, and they're living in exile. And the empire, the Babylonian empire, was still a violent place. And there was no promise that they'd ever get to go back, not from the Babylonians. And this is how empires, long ago and probably still today, what they do is to pacify a land. They take the original inhabitants out of it, and then they move other people into it that they can control. And so moving people around like chess pieces, groups of people around like chess pieces, has always been sort of a strategy of empires to sort of subdue peoples and lands.

[3:20] I mean, one quick example is if you look at Crimea, there was a sort of an indigenous group of people in Crimea called the Tatars. And the Soviets moved them out. They moved them out, and a lot of them died. And when the Soviet Union broke up, a lot of them returned to Crimea. But many of them died along the way. But the other thing that the Soviets did is they moved a bunch of Russians into Crimea to kind of take all those houses and all those spots. So the Tatars came back. And then when the Soviets, when the Russians came back, they moved a bunch of Russians into Crimea. And then when the Russians took Crimea back in 2014, they did it all over again. They've moved a lot of Tatars, Tartars, Tatars, Tatars?

[3:57] Tatars or Tartars? Okay. Should have looked that one up. Anyway, I think they're Tatars. Anyway, that's the same idea. So the hope is that when, if Ukraine ever retains, gets Crimea back, that the Tatars will be given their homes back. And I guess the Russians that have been living there for the last 13 years will be evicted. Is that a good solution? There's no good, there's no good outcomes here when you're moving people around like that. But that's what was, that's what had happened to the people of Israel. They got uprooted from their land and moved to Babylon with no hope that they'd ever come back. Now, as Victoria said, Ezekiel is a book of dreams or is a book of visions. And there's several really interesting dreams in them. And the first one in chapter one is this vision of the cherubim where there's these, these really trippy descriptions of chariots and creatures and wheels. And it looks like a drug trip. It looks like an LSD induced dream. And I can only imagine that what Ezekiel saw was just so amazing that words could not really describe it. So when you actually read chapter one of Ezekiel, you're like, this makes no sense. And all I can imagine it was his very best attempt to put down on a

[5:18] paper what he actually saw. But it was so sublime and so intricate and so amazing that it reads to us as a very strange. But it was sort of a testament to the power of God and to the amazingness of his creation in the angelic realm, which is just a whole nother thing.

[5:36] In another dream, God commissions Ezekiel and instructs him to eat a scroll, basically to eat his words, eat God's words. And that scroll was a message to the rebellious house of Israel. So there's always a word. There's always in these prophetic books, there's always a word of judgment on a prophetic word of judgment on their mistakes. And then in chapters eight through eleven, Ezekiel has a dream where he is transported to Jerusalem and he witnesses various forms of idolatry in the in the temple. So like he witnesses idolatrous acts happening inside this holy place. That God had set aside just for himself. And in that in that dream, he sees the presence of God basically lift itself up from the temple and go into the air and float away. And that was sort of representative of God taking away his hand of protection over the people of Judah, the people of Jerusalem. And then today we're going to get the dream of the Valley of Dry Bones. That's in chapter thirty seven. And then in chapters forty through forty eight. He has a dream of a new temple and a new Jerusalem. So there's this dream of hope about this sort of resurrected land, this resurrected city where people will come back. And that there's this river of life flowing from the temple to heal the land.

[7:03] That's in his dream, which I love. And that's one we could look at again some other day. We'll maybe have to we'll have to look at that dream. But today we only have time for this dream. So today we're looking at this vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. And after we read it, we'll look at it. We'll look at what it meant for the people around Ezekiel then. And we'll look at what it means for us now. So let's go to our reading. Ezekiel 37, one through fourteen. And it's from the New Living Translation.

[7:28] It reads like this. The Lord, this is Ezekiel speaking, the Lord took hold of me and I was carried away by the spear of the Lord to a valley filled with bones. He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were scattered everywhere across the ground. And were completely dried out.

[7:50] Then he asked me, Son of man, can these bones become living people again? Oh, sovereign Lord, I replied, you alone know the answer to that. Then he said to me, speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord says. Look, I am going to put breath into you and make you live again. I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

[8:33] So I spoke this message just as he told me. Suddenly as I spoke, there was a rattling noise all across the valley. The bones of each body came together and attached themselves. As complete skeletons. Then as I watched, muscles and flesh formed over the bones. Then skin formed to cover their bodies. But they still had no breath in them.

[9:01] Then he said to me, speak a prophetic message to the winds, Son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, this is what the sovereign Lord says. Come, oh breath, from the four winds. Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.

[9:22] So I spoke the message as he commanded me. And breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet. A great army, or as the NRSV has it, a vast multitude. Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, we have become old, dry bones. All hope is gone. Our nation is finished.

[9:55] Therefore, prophesy to them and say, this is what the sovereign Lord says, oh my people. I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. When this happens, oh my people, you will know that I am the Lord. I will put my spirit in you. And you will live again. And return home to your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken. And I have done what I said. Yes, the Lord has spoken. Let's pray.

[10:31] Heavenly Father, thank you for this dream, this word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, here's a few elements I want to cover in this. First, how dreams work in the scriptures, but also specifically in this scripture. This is an important idea. Second, the nature of the spirit that breathes life in this particular passage. And finally, the results then for God's people. Then and actually for us now. So first, let's look at dreams. And this, like we said, this is just one of the several dreams in Ezekiel. And if you look at Ezekiel this way, and you look at these dreams, you see that they function a little bit like parables do in the New Testament. Because they're describing something else. They're sort of telling a story. And they leave you with this question, well, now what does that dream mean? In this case, God, and as sometimes happens in parables, God interprets the dream for Ezekiel. So that's very nice. And sometimes Jesus interprets parables. But sometimes Jesus just tells a parable and he sort of asks you to engage with it. And that's a really good teaching tool. So, we have to say, let's say that this was a dream. First off, we say this was a dream. There wasn't an actual valley filled with actual bones.

[11:49] Like that didn't actually happen. But the dream happened. So you get that? We're not talking about an actual event that happened. If we were, that would have been very interesting and very cool. You know, that they would have come upon a valley of dry bones. Perhaps of some of the people that had died on the way from Jerusalem to Babylon. And they had just been left there for animals to pick over. And there's piles of bones and skulls everywhere. And that would be very cool if that had actually happened. But this is just a dream. God is describing something. And he's telling Ezekiel, tell them this dream that I'm giving you. You know?

[12:27] And so, this is a way of God saying, this is what the future can look like or will look like when he has these dreams. This is a vision. This is literally a vision of the future. This is a word picture. Of what could happen. In a symbolic way, of course, right?

[12:48] And that's why this is really a powerful communication tool. It allows the listener to imagine what is happening themselves. And when we were reading this, did you imagine it? A little bit? Did you kind of see the bones rattling and shaking? And maybe like, you know how when you put a bunch of magnets on a table together and they kind of, if they roll close enough to each other, they kind of snap into each other and they kind of form these. Just imagine these bones. These bones just kind of flying together from all sorts of places. And then you got the skeleton just standing there. And then somehow, this part would be kind of gross. All the flesh and the sinews, you know? And then that's gross. But then the skin comes on and you're like, okay, that's good. I don't have to see, you know, all that blood and guts and such. So the skin, that's good. And then, but them just standing there doing nothing. Just sort of lifeless bodies.

[13:42] Intact, but, you know, inert at the same time. And then this rushing wind coming. And each of them going, you know? And there they are. And they're alive. And they're moving. And they're like waking up and going, oh, where have I been, you know? So you imagine it.

[14:05] So you can imagine what's happening yourself. And you don't have to be constrained by actual things you've already done. Because I've never seen anything like this. So this is a fully fantastical, novel thing that I've never seen happen myself. So when you do that, you have this kind of, this freedom as a listener to imagine it. And when you imagine it, you kind of hold onto it a little bit. Do you get that? That's how parables are, too. When you have to work your way through the parable, you kind of own the parable's lesson. Same thing with the dream is you have to kind of imagine it. Then you're kind of attached to this kind of this image that you have. Hopefully it's the right image. So that's why when you think about it, when you think about Martin Luther King, Jr. And he had a speech, famous speech called the I Have a Dream speech, which really wasn't the title of that speech at all. It was not called the I Have a Dream speech. But that's why it's so powerful because he's talking about a dream. He's talking about a possible future vision that could happen. Okay? And by the way, some of you may know this. When he was at the Washington Mall, this was not the first time he gave that particular part of that speech.

[15:09] He had given that speech somewhere else. And he had actually for that day had prepared a different speech. And it didn't have the I Have a Dream part in it at all. That was not the plan. It wasn't in his notes. It wasn't in his prepared comments.

[15:23] But as he was giving his original speech at the Washington Mall there, he was kind of floundering. He kind of got stagnant. He kind of felt stuck. And so the gospel is a little bit different. And so the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson noticed that he really wasn't sort of in the zone. And she yelled out, tell them about the dream, Martin. This actually happened. She said, tell them about the dream. And to his credit, he, oh, yeah, maybe I'll just. And so he shifted gears in the middle of his prepared speech. And he went into the I Have a Dream part, which he had memorized from a previous speech. It wasn't in his notes for that day. And he improvised it. And he started saying I have a dream. And so as an aside, I would say, isn't that being open to the wind of the spirit blowing into a dying speech, right? And saying, you know, you had a plan, but now you need to be flexible, be interruptible, come alive yourself, and be my prophet. So I feel like Martin Luther King, Jr. was open to the spirit in that moment in the voice of somebody else saying, it's not working. Go to your good stuff. You know, go to the good stuff. And he was like, you're right. Okay, I'm going to do the I Have a Dream. I have the dream part.

[16:40] And, you know, hopefully, as a preacher, I can look at you guys and go, this isn't working. You know, I'm not feeling it right now, but some other time I might. And then I'll just have to go, well, there's the other half of the sermon. I can put that over here or, you know, or change. I'm not as quick on my feet as King was. No way. So back to how dreams work. Imagine if King had simply said, we need for our country to be a place where we can live. A place where children are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. That's this prescriptive thing, right? Like, this should happen. And people could go, oh, that's a nice checklist there. Let's check that off someday. You know, it's very, you're telling us what you want. And we can disregard it or you've just given us information. But if he says, I have a dream that someday the world could look like this. Do you see how that's different? It's more powerful. Because then somebody is like, oh, I can see it too. And I'm not sure how we're going to get there.

[17:47] But it could happen. Somehow this could happen. And when you have this dream, when you can imagine this thing happening, you'll actually start finding ways for it to happen. Or it will become like a new normal for you. Like this, of course, this is the way things should be in the future. We have to work towards that. And you'll find ways to get there. So that's this really powerful way. When there's a dream, we're sort of invited to dream along and to imagine it ourselves and to internalize it. So that's why it's similar to a parable. We spend time trying to understand it. It stays with us longer. And so the dream leaves open how a thing will happen. We want to get to this better society. We have an idea of what it would look like. And so the people having an idea, this is for the people listening to Ezekiel now. The people have an idea of coming to life. And returning to the land. See, they're in sorry shape. Even God says this is what the people are like. They're like, we feel like a bunch of dry bones. We feel like there's no life in us. They felt that way. Right? They were in exile. So them having this dream, sort of sharing this dream. And the reality is they didn't know how it was going to happen. We have this vision of going back.

[19:02] We have this vision, hopefully, of going back to the temple and not having to go back to the temple. And not having to go back. Not making the same mistakes again. Not using it for idolatrous practices. Right? But for really worshiping God there in truth.

[19:15] We don't know how it's going to happen. But we, I guess God must be able to do it somehow. They must have said to themselves, right? God will see it through. So that's sort of what I like about Ezekiel. Is it has all these dreams. And they function in this kind of great way. Different from other prophets. You know, other prophets have dreams. But really Ezekiel is the prophet of dreams it seems to me. And so that makes this really exciting. Next I want to say a short word about the breath. This is a little shorter. The Hebrew word here for breath is ruach. Ruach. Kind of fun to say. And there's actually three different words in our English translation. We have the word breath. We have the word wind. And we have the word spirit. And I'm going to just give you a brief go back. You don't have to put anything up on the screen there. But verse 5 and 6. It says I'm going to put my breath in you. Right? Verse 9. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the wind.

[20:15] Come, oh breath, from the four winds. He says. And finally in verse 14. It says I will put my spirit into you. So you have the word breath, wind, and spirit. Do you see that? And they're all very similar. Right? Because they have to do with air moving and things like that. But they're all the same word. If you look at the, if you have the Hebrew manuscript of it, it would be the exact same word for breath.

[20:39] As it is for wind. As it is for spirit. Isn't that interesting? Because in English those are, the first two definitely are related concepts. Breath and wind are kind of related. But breath and wind, how are those related to spirit? Right? But back then they were all, I mean for the Hebrew language. They were all the same. They were all the same word. And this is often common in these old languages that have fewer words in them. The English language has between 300,000 and a million words. Depending on how literate you are I guess. You know there's a lot of words. The reason is because we've borrowed so many words and we've created so many new words.

[21:22] Koine Greek has about 30,000 words. Something like that. You know. Hebrew, biblical Hebrew probably same. So one word has to carry the freight of several meanings. And this word ruach carries, it just means breathing. Regular respiration. But it can also mean the wind blowing. That's the same word. And it could also mean the spirit. But what's great about that is it's so much more organic. And it's so much more connected to nature and to God's movement in the world. So you can totally imagine somebody back then sitting outside and watching the wind come. And blow the leaves in the tree. And they go that's the spirit.

[22:08] Not that's the wind. Right? God's at work. God's moving things in this world. And at the same moment they might also go thank you God for allowing me to breathe that air in. That you're keeping me alive and sustaining me with the power of your spirit. You're keeping me alive with the power of your breath. You're keeping me alive with the power of your wind. Do you see how it all works? It all works together. So it's a little more natural, nature based and organic.

[22:37] Unfortunately with the sort of the embarrassment of riches we have in English. We lose connection with these really beautiful things. You know these really beautiful. Like in Norwegian. Norwegian is a little bit better this way. Like the Norwegian word for month is the exact, almost the exact same word as the word for moon. Similar to that. Similar in English but they're so far apart now that nobody thinks month and moon really is the same thing. But for them they'll watch the moon and like oh it's another new moon. Then it's another new month. Time. The word time. And the word tide. Where the waves come in and out of the ocean and the water rises. It's the same word in Norwegian. So for them the earth is always keeping track of the time for you. You don't need a clock on you. You don't need an iWatch or Apple Watch or whatever it is. You just need to pay attention to the world around you and you see time going by. You get that? So there's this kind of connection. Same idea. In these older languages or these languages with fewer words there's these greater connections between these concepts. And so we have breath and wind and spirit are all the same word and all the same concept. But then the challenge for the translator is which one do I pick?

[23:56] Right? And I love it because the translator here picked three different words. But they made sense. Right? Prophesy to the wind. The wind has to blow. I'm going to put my breath in you so that you come to life. Just like Adam was breathed into at the very beginning. And he came to life. And then at the end God's kind of sort of pays it all off and says what I've been talking about all this time.

[24:22] When you talked about the wind. When you talked about the breath. What I've been talking about all this time is my Holy Spirit. I've been talking about what the Spirit is going to do in you and among you. Right? So there's this beautiful thing about the wind, the breath, and the Spirit. So that was the second thing. And then finally this is the third thing I want to talk about.

[24:43] What did this mean for God's people? What did it mean for them? Right? It was a prophecy. It didn't come true right away. God's prophecies don't come true right away. They had to wait. They had to wait years and years. They had to wait another 50, 60 years. A whole couple generations had to go. Before this actually came true. But in the context of Ezekiel the people were living in despair. This is where they were. They were trapped in exile. They felt like they were dead. And they felt like they had no future. So at a minimum this prophetic dream that they were invited to dream with and to imagine themselves was a hope. That God would bring them out of that someday. Maybe not them but maybe their children or their children's children. And somehow. And I think that's the thing to remember. Remember about God's promises.

[25:32] Even some promises I'm thinking about today. They may not happen for me in my lifetime. But they might happen for my children or my children's children. And I'll go and be with the Lord without some of those promises coming true. And I'm okay with that. Do you know what I mean? But this is this generational thing. It's kind of like how, you know, these Gothic cathedrals took 150 years to build. And most of the stone masons working on them never saw them finished. But they worked. They worked on them. They worked on them and they kept on it. And it was, well, I guess they were paid for it. But you hope it was a spiritual exercise for them to help build the cathedral. So this was a hope. God would do it. But it wasn't just a hope. It was a promise. This functions as a promise. God saying, I will take you back. I will give you your land back. I will give you your home back. You're not going to be in this place forever. You're here because I was mad at you. I'm not mad forever. I'm going to forgive you. I'm going to forgive your sins. And I'm going to redeem you. And I'm going to pull you out of captivity and set you free. And God, I will act. And then eventually he did. And it took a while. It took a while. But he did.

[26:40] And so if you want to read Ezra and Nehemiah, you get this really great story of how it was made possible by God to change the minds of one person, you know, the emperor. And he said, OK, let's send them back. And they went back.

[27:00] So that's what it meant for them. It was a word of hope. It was a word of promise. It was a way to sort of swoop in and rescue them out of the doldrums that they were really were in and to say, this is going to happen. God has not forsaken you completely. You know, you're going to go back and he's going to be with you. And in the meantime, the spirit.

[27:23] The spirit is there. The spirit is going to be part of it. Now, what does it mean for God's people now? I think this is really the part we really want to pay attention to is the question is, can we relate to the people who first heard this? I have a dream prophecy from Ezekiel. Can we relate to those people? And I, you know, are we living in exile? Are we living in Babylon? No.

[27:44] But I want us to really understand this part of it. Are we like those people? I think we are. And I want to tell you why. Right. One of the topics that we've had basically in the last year has come up several times. This idea of thinking soberly about how the world is, what the world is really like, and then considering realistically the state of our own lives. And as we've kind of mentioned in the prayer time, our world is broken. Have you noticed? Now, is it more broken than it's ever been? I don't think so. It just feels that way because it's the moment I'm in right now. But the world is messed up. The world's messed up. War. Corruption.

[28:24] Just all sorts of terrible things happening. You know, humans, they think there's more, probably more people who are slaves now than ever have been. Human trafficking is still an issue, you know. And it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking the state that humans have put this world into. Right?

[28:45] And I'm generally happy and joyful and even optimistic about a lot of things. I'm less optimistic than I used to be. But I'm seeing the world more and more for what it is than any time in my life. And that's kind of a bummer, but I would rather know. I would rather have a sober, realistic view of how the world actually is. Because if you can't really describe the world as it actually is, any ideas you have about solving any of the problems won't work because you're not actually addressing the reality at play there. You know what I mean? You could fix it. Right?

[29:20] I know there was another church that was thinking about selling its building and closing its doors. And somebody said, we shouldn't close the church. We should just start serving pancakes every Saturday morning.

[29:37] You know. And that was a nice idea, but it wasn't a good idea. I mean, because nobody was going to come eat the pancakes but the people in the church. Nobody would. Do you want to go to some strange place on a Saturday morning and eat pancakes that's not a restaurant? You don't want to do that. Oh, you do? Okay. You like pancakes. Well, that's fine.

[29:55] Well, you're always up for pancakes. Okay. But you're a church person. But a non-church person is like, I'm not going to go in there and eat pancakes. I don't want that. But it's like, here's something that we can do. The world needs more pancakes on Saturday morning. No. No. That's not going to solve this problem. We have to do something else. You know. So if we don't really know what the world is like, we're not going to come up with any solutions that are actually going to help it. And if we don't know what we're actually like, it's the same thing. Right? We have to be sober and realistic about our own brokenness. And so I would say the whole human race is in exile and in captivity to sin and captivity to death and captivity to the devil. And that's no understatement at all. The world is broken because human beings are broken. Human beings are in the world and human beings are helplessly broken except for by the grace of God. And so the world is in dire straits. And it always has been. But we have to start there. The world is broken. And we have to see that our own sinful nature, which is our appetites and our grand plans and our small and petty personalities are the things that are making the world this way.

[31:04] So if we say the world is a horrible place, the next thing we have to say is because we make it that way. You. Me. I mean, you're all nice people, but you're all rotten sinners too. And so am I. We are making the world the way it is. This is our contribution to it. Right?

[31:23] So the dream is not just that someday there will be redemption from this bondage, but that we will be changed. Any change that has to come out in the world, we have to start with ourselves. Okay? We have to. And the only way to change yourself is to actually have a sober view of who you actually are in the first place. Right? So the differences between a lifeless being just standing there intact, but inert, powerless, and that being coming to life and living in hope and moving with God is just one thing. As it says in the scriptures, the spirit.

[32:01] Dead things stay dead. They stay in their ways. Only the spirit can animate somebody into life itself. Only the spirit coming in. So that's the spirit coming into the church. That's the spirit coming into us. The spirit that says, change your speech in the middle of the speech, you know, and make it memorable. Right? Or the spirit that says, you see somebody in need, stop and help them. You know? Or the spirit that says, go talk to that person. Or the spirit that says, take a risk. Put it all on the line. Be obedient. You know? Go out into this world and speak a prophetic word. That's the spirit. Those are the sorts of things the spirit does. Right? And just being open to the spirit is in a way for us to say to God, we're willing to be changed. We're willing to be pulled out of this bondage and this brokenness. So this is our dream. This is our dream. Even though it seems like it's a very specific dream about going from Babylon back to Judah, this is our dream. This is the promise. Right? This is the promise. We are the dry bones. We could put ourselves back together in some form or another, but without the spirit bringing us to life, we're just going to stand there and do nothing. So that's, this is our word.

[33:21] The spirit, okay. Here's a dream maybe that the spirit could give us that, think of it this way. Try to close your eyes. Okay? This is the dream. In this dream, the prisoners will be set free. Darkness will be overcome with light. The devil will be defeated. I wonder what that looks like. Sins will be forgiven.

[33:53] Broken relationships will be reconciled. Nations will stop going to war. Spears will be turned into pruning hooks and swords will be turned into plowshares. Okay? The world will change. The dead will come back to life and God will welcome His people home.

[34:14] That's the dream. That's what this is for. Let's pray. Father, thank You again for this word. Thank You for Your promise. Thank You for this dream. Amen.