Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Date: May 23, 2021
Event: The Day of Pentecost, Year B
Ezekiel 37:1-14 (EHV)
The hand of the Lord was upon me. He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley, which was full of bones. 2He had me pass through them and go all over among them. There were very many on the valley floor, and they were very dry.
3He said to me, “Son of man, can these dry bones live?” I answered, “Lord God, you know.” 4Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’”
5This is what the Lord God says to these bones.
I am about to make breath enter you so that you will live. 6I will attach tendons to you. I will put flesh back on you. I will cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you will live. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
7So I prophesied as I had been commanded, and as I was prophesying there was a noise, a rattling, as the bones came together, one bone connecting to another. 8As I watched, tendons were attached to them, then flesh grew over them, and skin covered them. But there was no breath in them.
9Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the wind. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind that this is what the Lord God says. From the four winds, come, O wind, and breathe into these slain so that they may live.”
10So I prophesied as he commanded me. Breath entered them, and they came back to life. They stood on their feet, a very, very large army.
11Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They are saying, ‘Our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost. We have been completely cut off.’ 12Therefore, prophesy and say to them that this is what the Lord God says. My people, I am going to open your graves and raise you up from your graves and bring you back to the soil of Israel. 13Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you up from your graves, O my people. 14I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. I will settle you on your own land, and you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”
Peace Comes from God Alone
Have you noticed an uptick in anxiousness in yourself and other people lately? In the last year and a half we’ve had to transition from ignorance to knowledge about a pandemic, which produced anxiousness in wondering what we didn’t know about this disease and its short-term and long-term effects. We also then didn’t clearly understand the harm those who would deny what we did know would cause. There was anxiousness about the best way to protect others and to protect yourself. And now, we seem to be entering a period of anxiousness surrounding how to properly, safely, and responsibly transition in the tail end of the pandemic. Perhaps you’re anxious to see no more masks around you; perhaps the sight of someone without a mask makes you anxious.
Being anxious means you’re on edge, you feel like you could snap at a moment’s notice, that peace and calm are generally not in your heart. It’s not a good feeling. It’s almost like you drank too much coffee—but it doesn’t go away. And for you, it might not be the pandemic that does it to you. Maybe it’s state, national, or global politics and conflict. Maybe it’s concern about the overall health, well-being, and futures of the members of your family. Maybe it’s your own decisions and plans about what’s ahead, challenges both known and unknown. Very likely, there’s some special personal cocktail of bits of all of these things that swirl around in your heart.
No matter what causes anxiousness in your heart, I think there’s probably the universal desire that it just go away. This is not a feeling we cherish or enjoy. It’s not something that we want to keep around. It’s not useful. We want to replace anxiety with peace. This morning, as we celebrate the fact that Jesus kept his promise to send the Holy Spirit to his people and send them on an evangelism effort that continues to this day, we are reminded that real, lasting, even eternal peace comes from God alone.
Our First Lesson this morning takes us to the time that the southern kingdom of Judah is in exile in Babylon, in the 500s BC. They were regularly unfaithful to God. They ignored his commands; they worshiped other gods. God called to them, warned them over and over and over again. But his people did not listen. They continued to do what they wanted rather than what God wanted. This people didn’t even change course when their brothers in the northern kingdom of Israel were exiled by Assyria for the same reason a couple hundred years before this. Judah had a few bright spots but generally continued down the path of unfaithfulness.
So now, as Ezekiel lives and works, the nation of Judah is in exile in Babylon. Think they were feeling anxious? Separated from their homes, knowing they were undergoing this trouble because of their action and inaction, it might have felt hopeless. And really, on their own, it was hopeless. They couldn’t topple the Babylonian empire; they couldn’t get themselves home.
But God had promised through the prophet Jeremiah, even before they were carried off into captivity, that this would be temporary. It would last around 70 years, then God would bring them back. But in the middle of that time, those promises would’ve been hard to see, hard to remember, hard to trust. So God, in his mercy, sent reinforcements to those promises through Ezekiel and other messengers. God had promised them peace from their exile and he was going to follow through.
The valley of the dry bones is a vivid depiction of God keeping that promise. The nation was dead, dry, dusty—powerless. But what does God do? He, through the proclamation of the prophet, brings life to these bones that were beyond hope. Tendons, flesh, skin, breath—they all return. But God is clear how this all happened: I am about to make breath enter you so that you will live. I will attach tendons to you. I will put flesh back on you. I will cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you will live. Then you will know that I am the Lord…. My people, I am going to open your graves and raise you up from your graves and bring you back to the soil of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. I will settle you on your own land, and you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”
I, I, I, I, I. God leaves no room for doubt or misapplied credit. This would not be Ezekiel’s doing, or any secular leader’s accomplishment. Everything that was going to happen to bring them out of exile and return them to their homes was going to be God’s work for them, not their work for themselves. He was going to keep those promises. He was going to bring them peace and rest from the upheaval of exile.
But why? Why is God promising these things? After all, these people had made clear how little they respected or loved him. They were in exile because they had largely chosen to ignore God. Why does he even waste his time, his breath, the work of his prophet on these miserable, fickle people? Couldn’t there possibly be other people who would be more faithful, more deserving of God’s time and attention?
God continues on because he loves them, despite their hard hearts. God continues on because he is faithful, despite their faithlessness. But more to the point, God continues on because he has other, greater promises to fulfill. He has other, greater peace to bring. The reason the Israelites were God’s chosen people, the reason God initially plucked Abraham out of the mass of the world’s population and made him his special family, was because he had a global promise to fulfill. From the fall into sin, God promised a Savior for all people. The purpose of God’s special relationship, the singular reason he promised to bring them back from exile and put them back in their land, was so that he could keep these other promises. The reason Judah would be rescued from their exile and return to their homes was so that through them God could bring forth the Champion, the Messiah, the Savior so long-promised.
Because, really, sin is the chief of all anxieties, right? We have done things and said things and thought things that fly in the face of God’s requirements of perfection. We’ve sinned this week. We’ve sinned this morning. We’ve probably in some way sinned since our worship service started. We are far more similar to faithless and flounder Judah than we would ever like to admit. And our sin leaves us anxiety-stricken and hopeless. We know that hell is the only destination for one with even a single sin hanging on them, and you and I can do nothing to change that. We are, spiritually, very similar to that pile of dry bones in the desert.
But what is God’s promise? “I’ll do it. I’ll fix it. I’ll make this right. You can’t, but I can and will.” And so Jesus took our place under the law’s condemnation. God brings us peace through the perfect life and the innocent death of our Savior Jesus. Jesus’ resurrection solidifies that he has done away with sin and eternal death in hell. We need not be anxious about anything for eternity because God has done it all for us. He keeps his promise. He, alone, brings peace to us.
And God’s faithfulness to these promises just continues to be clear as we move past Jesus’ ascension to the first Christian Pentecost day. Jesus had promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to his disciples in special measure to help them be his messengers. In the sound of a violent wind and tongues of fire, in special gifts like the ability to speak in languages they had not studied and in a Spirit-given boldness especially seen in Peter’s preaching, we see God being faithful to that promise. Jesus did send the Holy Spirit. He is with his people like he promised. And the good news of sins forgiven in Jesus, the results of all of God’s patience and hope-providing for the children of Abraham, continues to be a blessing even to this day.
We are celebrating a birthday of sorts today: the beginning of the Christian church. But it’s not just the founding of an organization. It’s the beginning of God bringing peace to the whole world through the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s a message of events that the Israelites looked forward to, even in exile. It’s a message of reality that Peter and the others of his day lived through and were privileged to share. It’s a message of results that continues to be for you and me. The anxiousness brought by our guilt is gone because our sin is gone. Jesus gives us eternal peace, peace only God could provide.
May the comfort that Jesus promised and gave to his disciples be yours forever: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid” (John 14:27). Amen.
