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For May 3

Sermon: Revival of Dry Bones

Intro: Graveyards can be somewhat depressing. Standing among the remains of those once living, now lying lifeless beneath markers, their lives summarized by a few etched dates on the markers. But each life had a story to tell. Some filled with happiness, some marked by tragedy. Even more depressing, though are unmarked graves that are found to contain the skeletons of unidentified people, like the Native American children buried on the grounds of former mission schools in Pennsylvania, or the mass grave of the unidentified black persons found in the Lodi cemetery. And even more depressing would have been standing in a valley of dry bones, unidentified skeletons, like Ezekiel did in our OT reading this morning.

I. Ezekiel 37:1-14

A. Like the Apostle John in the Book of Revelation, this could have been a vision, or Ezekiel actually having been transported by the Holy Spirit to such a site, apparently the remains of a defeated army that had been left unburied, an ultimate dishonor. The actual circumstance, however, does not diminish God’s intended message to the Israelites exiled in Babylon.

B. Ezekiel was a 25 year old priest when he, along with King Zedekiah and 10,000 Jews were taken as exiles to Babylon in 598 BC. Five years later, in 593 BC, still in exile, God called him to be a prophet. His prophecy of The Valley of the Dry Bones is God speaking to the nation of Israel, who He sees as a dead nation, symbolized by the dry dead bones spread over the valley floor. Valleys are used to portray a desolate time, like David, in his 23rd Psalm talks about as going through the valley of the shadow of death. The valley floor, the lowest point of the valley, symbolized the depth of Israelites’ despair.

C. Israel had once been a proud nation during the golden years of King David. They knew God’s Presence among them, and under King Solomon by the magnificent Temple. They were living in the land God had promised to Abraham and his descendants, and had led them in battle after battle to conquer that land. They were the chosen people God intended for the Messiah to be born into who would more fully reveal Himself, Yahweh, the living, all powerful and only God, to the world. But Israel began to worship other gods, and failed to obey the will of God, slipping deeper and deeper into the valley of sin, despite many cycles of warnings against sin, repentance, and forgiveness. Finally, God chose to discipline His people, allowing the Babylonians to invade, tear down Jerusalem’s strong walls, and destroy the Temple before taking a large portion of the population into exile in Babylon. Babylonians were also sent to Jerusalem to repopulate the city with the Israelites allowed to remain.