A Word in Season: Preaching to the Bones (Ezekiel 37:4)

Ezekiel’s Vision of Dry Bones and the Preacher’s Task

The evangelist knocks on the door of a house and it creaks slowly open and a skeleton falls out. What is he to do? The preacher stands up in the pulpit and looks out at the congregation, only to find dry bones on every seat, skeletons slumped there, utterly dead.

The preacher goes out onto the street to make known Jesus Christ as crucified and he sees nothing but dead bodies lying around him. How ought he to respond? If under those circumstances that preacher and teacher began to make known the word of Jesus Christ and to exhort these skeletons to live, to stand, to serve, then you would think he was absolutely insane.

And yet there is something in that very much like what a true preacher must do when he brings the good news of God to sinners dead in their sins. It's like what happened to Ezekiel in chapter 37 of that prophet's history, when the hand of the Lord came upon him and brought him out in the spirit of the Lord to a valley that was full of bones.

And the historian there, the prophet, emphasizes that these bones were very dry. They were well and truly and long time dead. And the question is raised, can these bones live? And the prophet, shocked and humbled, simply says, O Lord God, you know.

And the Lord God gives Ezekiel a task, prophesy to these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live.

I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. And so Ezekiel begins to speak. And there's a great noise, a rattling and the bones come together and the bones are clothed with sinews and flesh and skin, but still no breath.

So the prophet speaks again, prophesy to the breath, says the Lord, 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 may live.

And so he speaks as commanded and breath comes into them and they live and they stand upon their feet an exceedingly great army. And God himself makes explicit that this is a picture of what's happening in the house of Israel in Ezekiel's day.

There's no hope. There's no prospect of life. And yet the word of God is coming to the people. And there's the parallel. When the preacher today looks out, he may see nothing but dry bones before him.

When we go out and take the gospel onto the streets of our homes and our towns and our villages, we're preaching to those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. And we might say it's a pointless task.

How can I say to the dead, live? And it is by the same virtue that Ezekiel spoke. We are commanded by God to bring his good news to those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. And we do so in dependence upon the spirit of God who is able to bring life from death.

We preach a crucified Christ, he who died but rose again for our justification. And the same power that was at work in him is at work in those whom God raises from the dead. The Holy Spirit brings life from death so that those who are dead in their trespasses and sins under the word of God and by his power are made alive together with Jesus Christ.

And so the preacher's task is not a hopeless one. He may sometimes feel it is difficult, but he needs that faith, that conviction, that certainty that the message he brings is God's word of life. And that if he preaches that word in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, then God by his great power is able to bring those who are dead to life in Christ and to make them an army to serve their God and their King.

The Power of God’s Word and Spirit to Give Life

Now is this not the energy? Is this not the life? Is this not the blessing, the heavenly miracle that we desire when we preach? That though we go as to dry bones, though we go as to dead men and women, that nevertheless, because of the God who sends us, because of the Christ that we preach, and because of the Spirit upon whose power we depend, we may speak to those who are dead and by God's grace may see life come.