New Life for Old Bones
A restoration for the lost and lifeless Christian.
Based on Ezekiel 37:1-14
Bones give us the creeps. I don't mean leftover chicken bones or the part of your T-bone steak you give to your dog. I mean the hip socket bone you find in the woods behind your backyard; or the skeletal remains of the bird your cat captured and ate; or the human skull your tenth grade biology teacher made you touch. There's just something about them as the remains of what was once a living creature now sapped of all life.
The Spirit of God transported his hand-picked prophet Ezekiel into the middle of a long, deep valley. Perhaps it was a mass graveyard or an old battleground that had yet to be cleared. Because there were bones scattered everywhere. Back and forth, forth and back they went, Spirit and prophet, peering at, stepping gingerly around, inspecting up close the leftovers lying on the valley floor.
To these dead, dry bones Ezekiel is instructed to preach, "This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: ‘I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life ... Then you will know that I am the Lord’." Talk about a difficult sermon. Perhaps it's like standing in front of a congregation that didn't quite support its budget in one year and telling them that the budget will increase next year. It's like asking a husband and wife who "don't love each other anymore" to stay married. It's like looking in the mirror and seeing someone who loves Jesus but hasn't lived much like it, and saying, "From now on people will know I'm a Christian by what I say and how I act." But Ezekiel knew what God could do, and tells us, "So I prophesied as I was commanded."
As much as skeletons give people the creeps, you may look at your life and see how much you'd like to do but haven't done, how positive and full of faith you'd like to be but haven't been, how faithful to every command of God you'd like to live but haven't lived.
These bones in the valley were more than just a field full of leftovers. They symbolized the nation of Israel in her spiritually dead condition. The former spiritual life and liveliness active in her forefathers had gasped its last breath. The Israelites, though physically living, had spiritually died and decayed. Today God knows that his special believers lose spiritual life and liveliness at times, too. He knows how our hearts can begin to decay, or become depressed with no hope, or become disinterested in spiritual things. And he knows we find it scary, like skeletons of dry bones scattered around our feet. So he shows us what he can do.
Shhh! Did you hear it? There it is again, and again, it's getting louder. Ka-chuk, ka-chuk, ka-chuk. What a clatter, what a commotion, what clamor as those dead, dry bones around Ezekiel rattle together. "I prophesied as he commanded me," the prophet excitedly explains, "and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet - a vast army."
What a transformation! What an awesome display of the Lord's boundless power! Old, dead bones now quakin' and shaken and taken over by the Spirit of the Lord ... jumping into formation, if not jumping for joy! A restoration of lost and lifeless Israel, and a restoration for the lost and lifeless Christian today. God wants his people to trust in his power implicitly like the prophet Ezekiel and they can expect wonderful things to happen! Call it revival, call it renewal, call it rejuvenation. It's new life for old bones.
PRAYER: Dear Spirit of Life, true God of might and Lord of mercy, I need a new life beginning today. I confess that I have killed so much of what you have already given to me, and I pray that, for the sake of Jesus Christ, you forgive me. Fill me once more with your breath of spiritual life and the power of Christ’s resurrection, for I am born again. Kindle my love with new life, that I might burn with love for others. Amen.