Ezekiel 37:1-5 “The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.’”

When Ezekiel wrote the words of the 37^th chapter of his book, the people of Israel had reached that point where they were ready to abandon hope for themselves. For almost a thousand years this nation had been “God’s chosen people.” The idea that he would use this nation for the salvation of the entire world was woven into their national identity.

But then their special role and special relationship with God began to unravel. As individuals, more and more people couldn’t care less about their special role or relationship with God. They didn’t like all the restrictions of being his chosen people. The idol religions of their neighbors were less demanding, more exciting, and, frankly, sometimes just more down to earth. They were less focused on some distant Savior and some distant life in heaven. They were more focused on having a good harvest, enjoying a successful business, and building a big, happy family. Gods like Baal and Asherah didn’t so much call people to repent as they promised them pleasure and success. More and more people went through the motions of keeping up the ceremonies and the sacrifices that supported the old religion. They still liked to celebrate the holidays. But each generation saw more and more defections to other gods and other faiths.

The Lord didn’t sit back and let his people slip away without “fighting for this marriage.” As a nation, he let them feel the consequences of their unfaithfulness. Crops failed more often and the weather was less cooperative. National security became an issue. It became more and more difficult to keep foreign invaders out. Their military weakened. Their borders shrank. Their country was divided in two. If only they would turn back to God for help! But for most, that day never came. A little over a hundred years before Ezekiel the Lord let the northern three fourths of the nation fall to the Assyrians. Most of the population was forced to relocate to places hundreds and even thousands away from their homeland. Within a generation or two they had simply vanished as a distinct people.

Now the same thing was happening to the little group left in the south. This time the Empire of Babylon came and resettled the people in other countries. To the little group who remained faithful to the Lord, it looked like hope was lost. They had seen this before. It didn’t end well. “Our bones are dried up,” they said, “and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” As a nation, we are dead. We have lost our land, our king, our institutions. And as a faith, we are dead. Our hearts are empty. Almost no one believes the old promises and keeps the old practices anymore.

So God sent the Prophet Ezekiel and he gave them this vision, this story, about the dry bones coming back to life again. In these verses the Lord’s message is clear. Even though they felt their nation and their faith were a lost cause, God promised help for the hopeless. The nation would survive. Better yet, their faith, and the promises that faith held onto, would survive. Here was hope.

The future often looks bleak for God’s people today. Everywhere it seems like the churches are shrinking. Faith is dying. The Christian hope is coming to an end.

Don’t give up! God’s word has lost none of its power. The promise of forgiveness still brings people from spiritual death to life. It did for us. There never has been much reason to expect good things from the dead or dying people God makes his own. But we don’t rest our faith in these “dry bones.” We place our trust in the one who can make an entire universe out of nothing, who still creates life where there is only death, and one day will restore the dust of our dead bodies to life that never ends. These bones can live!