Lent: Can These Dry Bones Live? | Associate Pastor: Matt Armstrong

Today is the fifth Sunday in Lent.

That may be old hat to some of you, it may be new, unfamiliar to some.

Lent is a time of preparation in the Christian calendar leading up to Easter.

It's 40 days long.

It begins with Ash Wednesday.

And Easter is the seventh Sunday after Ash Wednesday.

And so it uh has held a lot of meaning and importance in the history of the church.

It's a time to reflect.

It's a time to ask questions.

It's a time to ponder our relationship with the Lord, to set aside time to think about our relationship with God, to ask questions, questions like these.

What are my characteristic sins and how can I work and pray for change?

What idols have captured my imagination and my heart, and how can I uh so that my love for the Lord has grown cold?

Some of us need time set aside so that we can reflect and realize that our love for the Lord has grown cold.

Lent is often seen as a time of self-denial.

Um I grew up in the Catholic Church, maybe you did too, uh, where traditionally you fasted every uh Friday through Lent.

It's a time uh when we give things up uh in more recent times in kind of Protestant circles, uh, we give up things like chocolate or podcasts or something, something other than uh fasting, you know, who likes that?

Um but the purpose of that is not self-uh, it's not that self-denial makes us more holy or more lovable to God.

It doesn't do any of those things.

But uh in the history of the church, there's been a wisdom that says when we deny certain appetites, our hunger for the Lord is reawakened.

And that's really the purpose of Lent, is that we would enter into Easter season with a renewed sense of joy and thanksgiving and the embrace of God.

So, in light of that, I've chosen for this morning that we would look at Ezekiel 37 for our sermon this morning.

It's a beautiful Lenten passage.

This is one of Ezekiel's most famous prophecies.

If you know little about Ezekiel, you may have heard the passage that was just read for us, the vision of the valley of dry bones.

Now, Ezekiel was a priest.

You may not have known that.

He was obviously a prophet of Israel, but first he was called as a priest.

And so he was very familiar with the sins and the shortcomings of Israel.

He was likely about 25 years old when uh the nation of Israel was sacked by the kingdom of Babylon, and many of the elite, the aristocracy, the powerful, the learned, they were taken into exile to the kingdom of Babylon.

And if you're familiar with the book of Daniel, it describes a lot of that.

Daniel was one of those exiles.

Um Ezekiel's probably about 25 years old at the time of the exile when the temple of God was destroyed, and he probably died in exile as well.

If you're familiar with Old Testament prophets, their main job was not to predict the future, which is what we often think about as prophecy or prophets, but the main job of the prophet was to call, was to plead, was to cry out to God's people on behalf of God and say, come back.

Because the people of God were fickle, and they were prone to wander from their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to chase after other gods, other national deities they thought might be more powerful or more favorable towards them.

That's why they call it, we call it idolatry.

They worshiped other gods or other powers, right?

They, uh, if you're familiar again with the Old Testament, they often would run to Egypt because they had one of the most powerful armies in the region.

And so rather than putting their faith in God, they would put their faith in other gods or in the earthly powers around them.

And through the prophets, God's people uh knew and understood well why they were in exile.

They were in exile because they put their faith and their trust in other gods and other powers, and those powers had failed them.

And so Israel found themselves in exile.

Psalm 137 is a beautiful picture that captures Israel's lament.

They realized, ah, we're here because we left our God, not that he left us.

They longed to return to the Lord.

They longed to return to the land.

And it's into that context that God came to Ezekiel and gave him this beautiful vision that we're gonna look at this morning.

So that brings us to our first point.

This vision of the valley of dry bones captures our true spiritual condition apart from God's, the Lord's intervention.

So let's look at verses one and two again.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me in the middle of the valley.

It was full of bones.

And he led me around among them, and behold, there, uh, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.

The scriptures teach us that we, uh, as human beings are not morally wounded.

We don't merely struggle to do good or to follow after God, but that we are actually dead in our trespasses and our sins.

And this image, this is what makes the prophets so compelling and so fascinating.

This vision uh captures it vividly.

Imagine a valley full of bones.

Where do these bones come from and why are they left upon the surface of the earth?

These are a bunch of dead bodies, and later in the passage, these are called the slain.

It's it's painting before us a battlefield where the people of Israel went out into battle and they were wiped out.

And their dead bodies, these corpses, were left strewn upon the battlefield of the valley, and they were left to rot.

And the animals came and they picked the bones clean, and the sun bleached them and they became dry.

This is not just a picture of death and destruction, but death long in the past.

Death that is irrevocable, unchangeable.

And on top of that, it was well known in the surrounding culture, but also within the nation of Israel, that to leave a dead body unburied was a sign of a curse.

And so not only are these bodies of the Israelites dead, but they have a curse upon them.

We like to say each week, as Zach did just a few minutes ago, we are far worse, far more broken than we thought.

But we are far more loved than we could have imagined.

This passage begins to capture for us what we mean when we say we are far more broken than we thought.

Because we ourselves, we like to think, well, I could try a little bit harder, or uh, you know, with a little bit of help and another self-help book or a new diet, you know, I can be all that I was meant to be.

But in reality, the scriptures teach us here but throughout that this is our true spiritual condition, that we are dead, not merely sick.

And when we come to hear the scriptures uh transition from the old to the new testament, this was not something unique to Israel, but it was the condition, this is the condition of every human heart.

And it's the realization of our condition that is the first step to God's rescue plan for us.

And that brings us to our second point: that at times the Lord brings us through suffering to expose wounds and sin in our hearts, that he wants to heal.

Now, as Ezekiel stands in this grotesque scene, the Lord asks him a provocative question.

He says, Son of man, you may recognize that from the New Testament.

This is the way Jesus spoke about himself.

This is the phrase God addressed to Ezekiel.

A son of man, he said, Can these bones live?

I love that God asks Ezekiel this question.

What was Ezekiel thinking as he saw this vision?

What did he understand to be happening?

And God comes to him and asks the question.

And in doing so, he draws Ezekiel into the story.

He's not just there to observe, he's there to participate.

And this question provokes Ezekiel's imagination to imagine and to ponder what's possible for these bones.

You see, uh, resurrection, which this this passage is often talked about around Easter, and we rightly so we see in it the seeds of future resurrection, but at this time, the idea of a fully full bodily resurrection for the dead was not in the mind of the Israelites.

Now, sure, there were uh um examples of the dead being uh um resurrected, uh, but usually kind of right after death.

There's stories of Elijah and Elisha reviving uh some dead back to life.

But these were hours or at most days dead.

It was completely out of the question that those who were long dead and those who are in tombs would be reconstituted, right?

Bodies and sinews and muscles re-grafted together to make living human beings.

In verse 11, the Lord lets us in on what is happening in the hearts of his people through the metaphor of this vision.

He says, Then he said to me, Son of man, these are the bones of the whole house of Israel.

Behold, they say, Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are indeed cut off.

Now, this is another time and another context, but can you relate to these statements?

Even as a follower of Jesus Christ, a child of God, have you ever felt these feelings or said these words?

I feel hopeless.

Has God cut me off?

If you've felt those things, if you've said those things, maybe in just in the quiet recesses of your own heart, I want you to know that you're in good company.

And the Lord does the same with us.

He brings us to places where we ask these questions.

The pastor and author Pete Cazero calls this the wall.

Saint John of the Cross calls it the dark night of the soul, and secular pop culture calls it a midlife crisis.

But the truth is that the Lord repeatedly throughout our lives leads us to hard places to ask us, to lead us to ask hard questions.

These are the places where faith falters, where things don't work the way they used to work.

And again, we are led to ask questions, perhaps quietly, and then maybe more loudly.

Why do I feel dead inside?

Why do I feel hopeless?

Is the Lord really there?

What is good?

What is what good is my faith anyway?

God, have you cut me off?

Is God real?

Why is my life turned out this way?

Have you ever asked those questions?

What I love about Redeemer, and I'm still, me and my family, we're pretty new to this place, but I love that this is a place where these questions are fair game.

Too often in the church, these questions are frowned upon or they're taboo.

We're not really allowed to express our doubts or our questions because we think maybe in doing so we show ourselves to be unfaithful to God.

Or maybe we think we we would make a bad witness to non-Christians if they would see that we ourselves experience a doubt.

Except the truth is that we all experience doubt.

And far from being something that God frowns upon, the opposite is actually true.

The Lord is actively at work in your life and in my life to draw these questions out.

Because like Ezekiel, he wants to draw you into his story to show you his true heart toward you.

A heart of love and affection, reconciliation and healing.

That brings us to point three.

The Lord's heart towards you, towards us, is to bring full healing and life and renewal.

His beloved child.

A few years ago, um our original worship leader at our church in Atlanta uh had moved on.

He'd taken a role at another church, and we were in the search for a new worship leader.

And Stacy, my wife, uh, put her name in the hat and she interviewed, and um it was a long process, long and drawn out, and I intentionally kind of you know stayed back, right?

I don't want to taint the process, but I was very hopeful and excited for her to perhaps uh get the position and to work together in the church.

And she ultimately did not get the position, and uh something very unexpected happened inside of me, and that is that I I had this existential crisis of identity, that I saw my wife hurting uh for for not getting this job, and I felt like a failure as a husband.

Right?

I had intentionally stepped back out of the process, um, but then I felt like why didn't I use my position and my influence uh to stop her from experiencing this this pain, this disappointment?

And I realized uh questions were coming to mind that that I had never actively asked before.

Who am I if I'm not a good husband?

Who am I if I'm not a husband and a father who provides for my family and shelters them from disappointment and pain?

And Stacy was incredibly gracious.

She never made me feel those things, but I was actually shocked at the level at which I was experiencing uh shame and disappointment in myself.

And it was in asking those questions that the Lord uh said, you know, it's a good thing to be a good husband.

But sometimes being a good husband can be more important to you than being my son.

I had never had that thought before in my life.

And yet it was through walking through this difficult time and asking very hard, emotionally-filled questions, that the Lord spoke a blessing over me.

That my identity is in my sonship and his love for me above all other things.

And it was an incredible gift, and this is what the Lord continues to do in and for us over and over in our lives.

Why does the Lord allow suffering in our lives and the lives of the people we love?

Well, I don't fully know the answer to that question, though the scriptures um definitely confirm it over and over again that He does bring suffering into our lives.

But I am convinced that one of the reasons is because suffering is one of the only ways that we let go of the idols in our lives, those things that we hold on to to give us identity, meaning, purpose, and safety.

So be it money, sex, or power, our fallen hearts are prone to doubt God, to distrust him, and to run after other things that we feel like we can control, hold on to, and that will give us those deep desires of our hearts.

I'll be happy if I have enough money in the bank, if I marry the right person, if I attain the right title.

Now we say those things in much more sophisticated ways, but they're basically the same.

Yet the Lord in his loving patience works to bring us to himself in order to let us trust him.

Listen to what the Lord says in verses four through six of our passage.

Then he said to me, Prophesy over these bones.

Say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live.

I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.

This is what the Lord longs to do in you and for you.

You recognize these words.

The Lord binds up the brokenhearted.

A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick, he will not quench.

All of God's promises were fulfilled in Jesus and his coming.

This is what Jesus said.

This is why he came, that they might have life and have it in abundance.

Later he said, This is eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.

This is what God is doing in your life.

This is how God is redeeming the suffering in your life.

This is what it means to have fellowship in the sufferings of Christ.

God is drawing you to himself, to abandon, to confess, and to repent of those empty and powerless idols that let you down again and again and to come to him for life.

Because he loves you.

And so, beloved, during this time of Lent, this time of reflection, honest appraisal, confession, and most of all, a time to be embraced by the God who loves you, gave himself up for you, and will resurrect you on the last day.

I invite you to run to him even this morning.

Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Lord, we rarely understand your ways.

You say they are higher than the heavens, farther from the east or from the west.

And yet your love for us is even greater.

Lord, thank you for Lent.

Thank you for Easter.

Thank you for your love for us.

Thank you for our forgiveness in Christ.

We worship you.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.