Ezekiel 37 is a powerful biblical passage detailing the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. It serves as a prophecy of God’s restoration of the nation of Israel and a symbol of spiritual resurrection and hope for all believers.
Ezekiel chapter 37. The Lord is going to begin giving Ezekiel visions dealing with the nation of Israel, and specifically with the future of Israel. And it’s way beyond the time of Ezekiel, that Ezekiel is going to see these things happening.
And actually these things happened and began to happen in our lifetime. And the amazing thing today is, you’ve got a lot of Christians that will totally ignore the prophecies dealing with Israel, and specifically, it’s like they’ve just cut out chapter 37 of Ezekiel out of the Bible. Because chapter 37 of Ezekiel talks about the restoration of the nation of Israel, and it reveals how God is going to do this.
Let’s just read Ezekiel chapter 37:1-14 and then we’ll look at it. It says,
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, 2 and caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. 3 And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.
4 Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: 6 and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. 8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. 9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 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 up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
11 Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts. 12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, 14 and shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Dear Holy Fathers, we come before you this evening.
Lord, help us to understand, you have prophesied concerning the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that they would inherit the land, and that the land would be their descendants. And Father, this word is brought as a word of prophecy through the mouth of Ezekiel to reveal that this would happen.
And we’ve seen it happen in our day. And Lord, may we realize that you are the Lord. And Father, may we worship and praise you, because you can deliver upon your word.
And are in the midst of fulfilling this promise, and fulfilling this prophecy, and we are able to see it. Help us to understand and see it, and to proclaim this to others that may doubt it. And this we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen. One of the great things that Satan is trying to do is get people discouraged, and turn against the nation of Israel, and against the Jewish people, and say, they’re really not Jews, it’s really not Israel, it’s really not their land. And the sad thing is, it’s not just the Muslim community that’s doing this, it’s not just the unbelieving community that’s doing this, but it’s many people in the church are doing this.
As you look at this particular portion of the passage, and on Sunday afternoon we’ll get into the second half of this, which is even more revealing about what God has done, even in our day, in fulfillment of these words. I want you to first realize the circumstances of the people that Ezekiel was prophesying to. They really felt like they were dead.
Even though they had breath and were living, they were in the land of Babylon. Or there were those from the northern kingdom of Israel that had been taken into Assyria, and scattered amongst other nations in the Middle East. And they no longer had their land.
They no longer had the temple. They no longer had the worship and the sacrifice for their sins that God had established, all pointing to the coming promised Messiah, and it had all been taken from them. And as they sit in the land of Babylon, those that are there, and you can go to the psalm that speaks of this, where it talks about the fact that the Babylonians came and asked the Jews for a song.
And if you’ve ever seen Jewish music, it’s full of life, and it’s very, very happy, and it’s very fun to listen to. And if you’ve ever seen any of the music that you can go on the internet and ask for Jewish music, it’s uplifting and inspiring. And so they came and asked them, play your harps and play a song.
And it says that they took their harps and they hung them on the trees, and they wept. Why did they weep? They had nothing to sing about. Their land had been taken.
The worship that God had established for them had been destroyed. And as they looked at the situation, they saw no hope. And so Ezekiel is speaking to these people, and God prophesies to Ezekiel and tells him to say these words, Look, O son of man, and what do you see? And he sees a valley filled with bones.
And it’s not just ordinary bones, but he says very dry bones. Now, what is the significance of that? Dry bones have no expression of life at all. It’s interesting if you have followed ICR at all, you’ll know that they published some articles that talked about dinosaur bones, and they found some dinosaur bones that actually, when they were examined, the bones were called fresh bones, because they were able to look at the marrow inside the dinosaur bones, and it wasn’t all dry.
There was still marrow there, and they said, This proves that the dinosaurs didn’t die out millions of years ago because we got fresh bones. Well, when Ezekiel says these are dry bones, he means there’s no life left in them. There’s no signs of life left in them.
And if you look at the nation of Israel at this time, there were very few people who trusted and believed in God. The vast majority of them had turned and worshipped idols and worshipped false gods and been influenced by the world around them, and they trusted in the world instead of the Lord. They looked kings to deliver them instead of calling upon the name of God.
And so we see that their lives were empty, and really, spiritually, they were dead. And they were as dead men. If you look at the world today, and one of the things you need to understand, people are out there walking around.
They may appear that they have life, and they may appear that they’re involved in all kinds of activities, and they may appear that they’re doing things that they’re filled with enjoyment, but the Bible tells us, unless they know the Lord, and unless God lives in their heart, they’re dead men walking. They are dead men just waiting for their day of judgment and their time of final speaking of the judgment of a spiritual death that will be eternal. Well, the nation of Israel felt that way.
These people felt they had no hope. Everything had been taken from them. And now Ezekiel comes and he says, there’s this valley of dry bones, and God asks Ezekiel an amazing question.
He says, can these bones live? And Ezekiel doesn’t go, yeah, Lord, they can. No, instead he says, you know, Lord, if they can. You see, God looks out and He looks at the spiritually dead in our world and is there hope for them? Was there hope for the nation of Israel at this time in history? Was there hope for the nation of Israel during World War II when Hitler and those that were in allegiance with him were trying to kill all the Jews in the world and wipe out the Jews? And really it was demonic spirits that were inspiring to do that because in Satan’s mind, if every Jew was killed, God wouldn’t be able to fulfill the promises that He’s revealing to us in Ezekiel.
We wouldn’t see the land of Israel today. And today, even though God is beginning to fulfill this promise in a marvelous way and we’re going to see it completely fulfilled as they come back to the land in our lifetime. And if the Lord tarries and doesn’t rapture the church, we will continue to see Jews going back to Israel more and more.
As God says in His Word, He will call them, He will hiss, and they will come. He whistles and they will come. He will place on their heart a desire to go back there.
And so this land will begin to be filled with people, but it’s beginning to be filled with people and the vast majority of them are what? Spiritually dead. They’re not coming back to Israel loving God. Most of them are coming back to Israel because they have no place else to go and they’re coming back to Israel because of fear of death in the world and persecution as they see anti-Semitism rising.
And God is bringing them back to a place, but really He’s calling them back to Himself. And He says, I’m going to bring them back and there’s going to be a valley of dry bones. There’s going to appear to be no life in them.
But when they come back, there’s going to begin to be a transformation. And you’re already beginning to see some of that transformation. As I mentioned in the prayer time, we support ministries to Israel.
One of the amazing things that these ministries report is that because of the recent wars that have been going on, they said even though the young people of Israel in the past were very secular. And if you go to Tel Aviv, it’s a very secular city. They have every wicked thing in Tel Aviv that you find in New York or LA or San Francisco you find in Tel Aviv.
But He said something interesting is happening. In Israel, everybody has to serve in the army. It doesn’t matter who your parents are.
The only people that don’t serve in the army are the ultra-Orthodox. They’ve been given an exemption. But everybody else, all the young people have to serve in the army and they have to put in their time.
And they’re going to war. And I shared with you before, I remember the last time we were in Israel, we stopped for a cup of coffee at a coffee shop on Ben-Huda Street in New Jerusalem. And our waiter was a young man.
And I began to talk to him. And I asked him the question. I said, do you ever think about death? And he said, all the time.
Now why would a young person, and he looked like he was a handsome young kid. He looked like he was full of life. He was very congenial and friendly and happy when he was waiting on us.
But I asked him that question. He said, all the time. Why do you think all the time? Well, his friends, like him, had to be in serving the army.
Now this was way before October. I forget the date. 27th? October, yeah.
And it was before that happened, long before that happened, years before that happened. And he still said, I think about death all the time. Because in Israel, your enemies are always around you and they all want you dead.
You see that on the paper. When they’re interviewing the Muslim groups that are around them, they say, we want to wipe out the Jews. We’ve got to get rid of the Jews.
We’ve got to get them out of the land. And so he said, all the time. And I talked to him and I shared a little bit about the Lord with him.
But the thing is, we need to understand they’re going there. But when they get there, they don’t have the hope of Jesus in their heart, the vast majority of them. But they’re also really receptive to hear answers.
Where does our hope lie? Yeah, they trust they’ve come to Israel from all over the world because they’ve come there because it’s the safest place in the world for them. Because they know the government there is going to attempt to protect them. And they will be prevented from the things that could happen.
Like, for example, in London just recently, where a Jewish man was walking to synagogue and was accosted on the street and beaten simply because he was Jewish on his way to synagogue. They are having their places, just like it was in World War II, desecrated. And synagogues and their homes desecrated with paint and wicked sayings on them.
And people saying that the Jews have no place in their nation. And so people are going back and they’re coming back for a sense of safety. But they still don’t have spiritual hope.
And they don’t have a hope to trust in God, the vast majority of them, as their Deliverer. Now it’s interesting, you are hearing… I just listened to a man who spoke at the Jewish News Services, JNS. They have a conference every year.
And he was one of the speakers at this conference. And he is the son of one of the founders of Hamas, who became a believer in Jesus Christ. He loves Israel.
He supports Israel. And he was talking about Israel. And he says, Hamas and all of these evil organizations want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
But I want to tell you, they will not be able to do it. And he says, you want to know why? He says, I don’t want to use the term God, but he really believes in God. He says, people, God can be conjured up as anything in their mind.
But he said, their Creator and the One who is over all, which is the Lord. We know it’s the Lord Jesus Christ and He did too. And he said, He is there and He will protect them.
And they will never be able to kill them and destroy them all. And there is hope. And so he who was one of their enemies and raised to hate them, now loves them and offers them hope in that their Creator is there to be their protector.
And the amazing thing is, Ezekiel says, God is going to raise up these dead bones and He is going to begin to put flesh on these bones. He is going to begin to reconstruct them as living beings. And finally, he says, He is going to call upon them and breathe the breath of life into them.
And they shall live once again. Now, we don’t have time tonight to go over the next half, because I didn’t want to keep you here until 8.30 or quarter to nine, because it will probably take a half hour or 45 minutes to go over the next portion of this chapter. But it talks about how that’s going to happen.
And it talks about how it actually happened in our lifetime. Today you are seeing the miracle of the dry bones coming back to Israel. That is, the Jewish people coming back to Israel in total unbelief.
The first people that formed the nation of Israel weren’t Christians, and the majority of them didn’t even believe in God. And yet, they came back as dry bones. And God is beginning to form them and put flesh on them.
And you are seeing a transformation occur before your eyes in your lifetime of these bones coming to life. Now, the sad thing is, many people in the church deny this whole chapter. They deny that God could bring these people back in unbelief.
And they mock the Jewish people because they say, Who are they? They don’t believe in their own God that they claim. But the thing is, God will fulfill His word. And it’s dangerous, especially if you claim to be a Christian, to say God isn’t working in Israel.
Because you are denying His word and the power of His word to fulfill His prophetic utterances that He gave to Ezekiel and the prophecies that Ezekiel made under the inspiration of God’s Spirit. And you are saying, well, that’s a lie. And if you are saying that’s a lie, then how can we be assured that God can save us? Because why wouldn’t that be a lie too? And you know the sad thing is, many people begin to go down the road of denying the fact that God is working in the Jewish people and that Israel is a real nation for today and that God is working in them as He said in His word.
When you begin to deny that, oftentimes many of those people go down a road where they begin to doubt their own salvation. Why? Because God cannot deliver on His word. That’s what they are saying.
We need to understand, not only is God delivering on His word, we are seeing it delivered upon even in the day in which we live. And we need to be thankful and praise the Lord that He has allowed us to see that. You realize, many Christians that even lived when I was a young child never thought they’d see what Ezekiel is talking about.
They didn’t know how it could happen. And yet, we are seeing it. And we better not deny it as God’s people.
Let’s just close in prayer. Lord, I pray that You would just help us to understand You are at work doing exactly what You said and You are going to breathe life into these bones. You are going to cause them to come spiritually alive.
The book of Revelation tells us that in one moment one third of the nation of Israel shall be redeemed and they shall look upon You whom they pierced and they will weep and say that You are their Messiah. And they will call upon Your name. Lord, we thank You that You are working in the hearts of even Jews and Arabs in the Middle East today, in the nation of Israel today.
We thank You for those Christian ministries that are there to proclaim the truth of Your word. Bless them. Bless One for Israel.
Bless Friends of Israel. Bless other ministries that are there to work amongst the Jewish people and proclaim the Gospel message. May Your Spirit work powerfully in and through them.
And Father, may many people come to know You as their Lord and Savior. And may they have Your breath breathed into them. This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.