Collierville First Baptist Church

Dr. Chuck Herring | Ezekiel 37:1-14

Interesting things happen in cemeteries.  Tonight, I want us to take a trip with the prophet Ezekiel to a very unusual one to say the least.  Keep in mind that He is writing to God’s covenant people who are in exile in Babylon.  They’ve been there for several years, and they are incredibly discouraged even bordering on sheer hopelessness (37:11).  

Is there a future for Israel?  Some say, “No, for all these OT prophecies must be applied spiritually to the church.”  Wait.  These prophecies are too detailed to be “spiritualized” and applied only to the church today.  Jesus taught a future for the Jews (Luke 22:29-30); so did Paul (Rom. 11); and so did John (Rev. 7:4-8, 14:1-5).[1]

Ezekiel 37 easily may be divided into two sections by the introductory phrases “the hand of the Lord was upon me” in v. 1 and “the word of the Lord came again to me” in v. 15.  This chapter illustrates Israel’s failed past, frustrated present, and future hope.  With that in mind, let’s focus on an unusual vision that has often been referred to as…

Ezekiel 37:1–3… The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. 2 He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.” 

(1) The hand of the LORD came upon me: Ezekiel’s remarkable prophetic experience is not specifically called a vision, but it certainly has all the markings of a vision.  Notice how the Scripture emphasizes that “He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD.”  

 

(1) In the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones: This was truly Death Valley; the floor of the valley was covered with human bones. The people represented by these bones were Jews and they were not only dead; they were also disgraced.  (In the thinking of ancient Israel, an unburied corpse with exposed remains was a shocking disgrace to the dead.) 

 

(2) They were very dry: These dry bones are not only dead; they have been dead for a long time.  When something or someone has been dead for so long, we give up hope that it will ever live again.  It was a picture of utter defeat and desolation.  What a vivid description of the Jewish people! [2]

(3) Can these bones live?  Here’s the crux of the issue.  Can a dead and impotent nation in exile and under the control of a godless nation be resurrected and become a living, thriving kingdom once again?

One might hope that a recently dead corpse might somehow be resuscitated.  However, no one hopes that scattered, detached bones might live.  Ezekiel responded to God’s question the only way he could, saying “O Lord GOD, You know.”

§  Ezekiel had no hope for the bones, but he did have hope in God.
§  Ezekiel did not presume to know what God wanted to do with the bones.
§  Ezekiel was confident that God did know.

Ezekiel 37:4–6… Again 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 that you may come to life. 6 ‘I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the Lord.’ ” 

(4) Prophesy to these bones: In the previous verse, Ezekiel deliberately left the matter with God, to His power and wisdom.  In turn, God gave the prophet something to do. God commanded him to speak, to prophesy, to preach to the dry, dead bones.  By all outward observation this was a vain and foolish act.

 

(4) O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD: Ezekiel could only preach this message by faith—faith in God’s ability to do the impossible.  knew God’s word had supernatural power.

 

(5) Behold I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life: God promised to fill the dry bones with breath—the breath of life. 

 

(6) I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive: God promised to raise the Jewish people to life again.  This was not the creation of life from nothing; it was the restoration of life to something that had been long dead.

The word for “breath” means wind or spirit.  Here is a promise that God would one day give the Holy Spirit to His covenant people under the blessings of the New Covenant…

Ezekiel 36:24–28… “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. 25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. 28 “You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God. 

Refer to Acts 2:1-4.

Ezekiel 37:7–8… So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them. 

(7) So I prophesied as I was commanded: If Ezekiel had any doubts, he put them away and did what God commanded him to do. To human perception this proclamation of the word of God was foolish, yet Ezekiel obeyed.

 

(7) And as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone: As Ezekiel prophesied, there was first a noise among the bones, a rattling.  As he continued, the bones began to assemble themselves into skeletons.

 

(8) And I looked, and behold, a rattling; sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them: After the bones were assembled, muscles and tissue came upon the bones. The bones were full of activity, yet still did not yet have the breath of life in them. The reviving of the dry bones clearly happened in stages.

§  Stirring of the bones.
§  Assembly of the bones.
§  Sinews and flesh upon the bones.
§  Skin upon the tissues covering the bones.
§  Awaiting the breath of God.

So here were men in skin, with flesh, sinews, bones; but, they were like Adam before God breathed into him the breath of life.

Ezekiel 37:9–10… 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 come to life.” ’ ” 10 So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. 

(9) Prophesy to the breath: The previous verse left the valley full of revived, activated bodies that yet lacked breath.  Now Ezekiel was told to call upon the breath (spirit, wind), praying the breath/spirit would come on these who were in a sense the walking dead, so that they may live.

 

(9) Come from the four winds, O breath: In this vision, Ezekiel had already proclaimed God’s word to the dead and dry bones, and had seen a remarkable work done. Yet it was not enough. There also needed to be a work by the Holy Spirit.  Spurgeon commented…

(10) So I prophesied as He commanded me: Perhaps this was, humanly speaking, an easier message for Ezekiel to preach. He had the encouragement of seeing the beginning of a supernatural work with the activation of the dry bones. Now he prophesied and prayed for the work to be completed.

 

(10) And the breath came into them and they came to life and stood on their feet: After Ezekiel’s faithful proclamation of God’s message, the work of reviving the dry bones was completed. The breath of God came into the reanimated bodies, and they stood upon their feet.

 

(10) An exceedingly great army: The bones were not revived to become a group of spectators or to live for their own comfort. They became an army, and an exceedingly great one. They lived to act under the orders of the one who gave them life.

How do these bones live again?  Derek Thomas said that God uses three means to accomplish His purpose.

Ezekiel is told to ‘prophesy’ (37:4; literally: ‘preach God’s Word’), and he does as he is told (37:7).

God urges Ezekiel to call upon the ‘breath’ to come and breathe into the slain (37:9).

These are the ingredients of any great work of God.

Ezekiel 37:11… 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 has perished. We are completely cut off.’” 

Okay, what does all this mean?  As our Lord and God often does, He explains what He means for us to understand about His Word.

These bones are the whole house of Israel: We might have supposed that Ezekiel understood that the bones in his vision represented the exiled people from Judah.  It might have surprised him when God revealed they represented the whole house of Israel. The restoration would include those from the northern kingdom of Israel that fell to the Assyrians some 150 years earlier.

 

Our bones are dried up, our hope has perished. We are completely cut off: The house of Israel had reason to say this, both those from the south and the north. Their only hope for life and restoration was God.

Ezekiel 37:12… “Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel.” 

Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people: Instead of the bones being exposed, here they are buried in graves. The effect is the same; life is brought to that which was dead.

And I will Bring you into the land of Israel: As promised many times in other places (Ezekiel 36:24 and 36:28), this revival of Israel also included their restoration to the land.  This is a political and a spiritual restoration!

Ezekiel 37:13… “Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people.” 

Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come out of your graves, My people: God would powerfully reveal Himself to Israel through this great work of revival and restoration to the land.

Ezekiel 37:14… “I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,” declares the Lord.’ ” 

I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land:breath in the revived bones was more than the breath of human life; it was the Spirit of the living God. This is another way of expressing the great promise found in the previous chapter (Ezekiel 36:27).

Undeniably, Ezekiel 37:1-14 is about God’s promised restoration of Israel in the last days.  This pictures the future revival of the nation, when the Jews will be brought up out of the “graves” of the Gentile nations where they have been scattered.  

Politically, this took place May 14, 1948, when the modern nation of Israel entered the family of nations again. Of course, the nation is dead spiritually; but one day when Christ returns, the nation will be born in a day and be saved.[3]

1.      Great Britain, in fact, controlled that region of the Middle East until she grew tired of governing the volatile area and asked the UN to decide what to do with it.

2.      Before Great Britain was tasked with administrating the region after WWI, the Turks had controlled it since the early 1500s. Turks are not Arabs.

3.      In fact, Palestine has never been the name of any country!

1.      The Romans!

2.      In an effort to rid Judea of its Jewishness, the Romans renamed the area Filistia (Palestine) in the mid-130s CE. They were tired of pesky Jewish uprisings (70 CE, 132 CE) and so decided to deport the Jews and change the name. The name came from the ancient Philistines, who have no connection to present-day Arabs. The Philistines were wiped out in 600 BCE by the Babylonians.

3.      It was a region and never a nation. There has never been a president of the state of Palestine or a government. It could be compared to New England, which is a region in America and has no government.

4.      Furthermore, the region of Palestine never had any connection with an Arab ethnicity. 

 

1.      The Arabs rejected "Partition." They could have had their own nation in 1948, but they said no.

2.      The Jews accepted "Partition," and on May 14th, 1948, Israel was re-birthed.

3.      The Arabs in the West Bank became part of Jordan, and in Gaza, they became part of Egypt.

4.      The Arabs declared war on Israel the day after the UN vote. Five Arab nations, plus the local population, attacked the new Jewish state and lost. 

5.      Again, they could have had peace and their own Arab nation but chose war.

5.  When the PLO was created, Jordan controlled the West Bank.

 

1.      The goal of the PLO was to liberate Palestine. However, the West Bank was already in Arab hands. Jordan controlled it. And Egypt controlled Gaza.

2.      The "Palestine" they wanted to liberate was Israel proper.

3.      In other words, if their goal was to create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, then they should’ve been fighting Jordan and Egypt, not Israel!

4.      Of course, their goal was Israel’s complete demise. Its original charter called for the liberation of all Palestine. Their maps make no mention of Israel.

 

1.              Why would any Jew name his newspaper after another people group?

2.              Why would any Jew name his paper after an Arab country?

Of course, he would not. The word "Palestinian" never referred to an Arab ethnic group—remember, it came from the Romans. It was an invented narrative. That is why former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich referred to the Palestinians as an "invented people." 

(NOTE: That does not mean that they are bad people. Each one of them was made in the image of God. We're not talking here about their value, which is great before God, but history.)

1.      In other words, you will not find these words in the Koran but in the Hebrew Bible: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. (Ps. 137: 5-6)

2.      The Ottoman Empire ruled over Jerusalem for 400 years. It meant nothing to them, even though they were Muslims.

3.      When Mark Twain visited Palestine under Turkish rule he wrote that it was a "desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds...a silent mournful expanse...We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country." 

4.      It only became important to the Arab and Islamic world, after the Jewish people began to return and redeem the land. 

5.      It should be noted that the Jews purchased the land and did not steal it. How could they? They were under Turkish rule. They started the Jewish National Fund and lawfully purchased land in Palestine. 

In 1919, there were approximately 500,000 Arabs in what is now called Israel. That number mushroomed to about 1.3 million by the time Israel declared independence. In other words, over those 30 years (1919-1948) well over half of the Arabs in Palestine were not born in Palestine. They came as immigrants from all over the Middle East because of the economic opportunities that the Jewish pioneers were creating as they were clearing the land and establishing farms. Once again, this proves that there is no long history of Palestinian culture and that they are just after the city. 

1.      Why didn’t Palestinians demand Jerusalem when Jordan controlled it (1948-1967)?

2.      Why didn’t the Jordanians create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank in 1948? It was certainly within their power. 

The reason is simple. Jordanians made no distinction between Arabs who lived east of the Jordan and those who lived west of the Jordan. 

Jordan's King Hussein believed the false reports from Egyptian President Nasser of Egypt that they were winning the war against Israel. King Hussein, in hopes of getting more land, attacked Israel, and his troops were driven back over the Jordan River in a matter of days. That is how Israel ended up with Jerusalem in 1967. Taking Jerusalem was not one of the military objectives of the Six-Day War. It was a gift from Jordan. 

Israel sent word to the king of Jordan through the United Nations that Israel would not attack their forces if they did not enter the war. Had they heeded that advice, Jerusalem would still be part of Jordan. 

 

Palestinian Arabs speak Arabic like Jordanians, Syrians, and Egyptians.

 

You will not find history books that detail Palestinian culture going back centuries.

I want to continue to be clear. There is nothing wrong with being Arab. We are not arguing any type of racial superiority. That is not of God. We love the Arab peoples and want their best. We are simply making the point that there is no Palestinian Arab ethnicity or history.

1.      Jordan was created in 1922 by Great Britain. They took 80% of ancient Palestine and created Transjordan. She achieved independence in  1946.

2.      The Syrians were under French control until 1946 when they became a nation.

3.      Lebanon achieved independence from France in 1943.

4.      Iraq became an independent nation in 1958.

 

These were nations created after World War I from within the Turkish Ottoman Empire. None of them existed before the San Remo Conference in 1920. The purpose of this conference was to decide which Allied nations would take responsibility for the different regions of the now-defeated Ottoman Empire. 

1.      The Turks, not the Arabs, controlled it.

2.      Every bit of land was paid for by the returning Jews—nothing was stolen! 

3.      Even in 1948, when Israel declared independence, the Arabs were invited to join the new state. Many did, becoming the most liberated Arabs in the Middle East, enjoying freedoms never known in Syria, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. (I regularly see Arab women taking driving lessons!) Israeli Arabs are the only Middle Eastern Arabs with full civil liberties like freedom of speech and religion. 

4.      However, roughly 800,000 Arabs fled Israel, assuming that the five Arab nations would crush the new Jewish state. The gamble didn't pay off, and they became refugees. 

5.      The Arab nations did nothing to help integrate the refugees into their society but kept them in refugee camps until today. 

Until the Jews returned, the land suffered neglect. It was only after the Jews came back and made the land prosperous and fruitful again that the Palestinian Arab narrative was invented. 

 

Jerusalem or Zion appears nearly one thousand times in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, whereas it never appears in the Koran. 

 Again, this is about history, not about any type of superiority or racism against Arabs. God loves the Arabs and made them to love him. He also loves the Jewish people and will not ignore the covenant he made with Abraham and confirmed with Isaac and Jacob.

[1] Warren W. Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1993), Eze 37.
[2] Warren W. Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1993), Eze 37.
[3] Warren W. Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1993), Eze 37.