Ezekiel 37:11-13 “Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is gone, we are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.’”

Israel’s situation was grave, literally. As a nation and as a faith, these people were like dry bones in a grave. They hadn’t stopped breathing momentarily. They hadn’t just flatlined on the heart monitor. They weren’t even like a corpse with rigor mortis, waiting to be buried. They were so dead the flesh was gone, and the bones were dry. The Lord himself agreed. That’s a medical lost cause. Humanly speaking, it is hopeless.

Why should we care? Our country isn’t God’s chosen nation like Israel was–never has been, never will be. The Lord can manage his plan to save souls with our country or without it. But with Old Testament Israel, this is one of those places where God’s promise to send us a Savior appears to be a razor’s edge away from failing. Those promises were bound together with that people living on that piece of geography. If you understand what was at stake here, even for your own eternity, then there is some tension in the story here for you and me. You and I were this close to never knowing the God of our salvation.

The Christian church, as a body of people, does have more in common with ancient Israel. We are basically the same faith in the same Savior on opposite sides of his coming. We see similarities and parallels between the decline of faith among these people and the decline of Bible-believing, gospel-preaching Christianity in our own time. We know family members, friends, and neighbors who have defected from faith in Jesus. They have defected to the gods of pleasure, or do-it-my-own-way, or popular opinion, or skeptical atheism. They show no signs of life. They have become dry bones.

But God can raise the dead. Ezekiel’s vision was not a promise that the Lord would raise dead bodies from their graves literally. However, it is connected to that promise.

Have you been at the grave side ceremony following a funeral? Did you listen to the pastor carefully? At some point before he speaks the final blessing, he says something like this: “We now commit this body to the ground –earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust – in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

At our funerals, we profess our faith that Jesus has the power to bring bodies back to life even after they have been reduced to nothing but dust for many years. That’s even farther gone than dry bones: nothing but powder. We have this this confidence because Jesus himself died for our sins and was buried. But he did not turn to dust. He was raised three days later. Now we worship the God who gives life to bodies dead for hundreds and even thousands of years.

It’s enough to make us rethink your definition of a “lost cause.” If God can take the skeleton hanging in your high school or college science lab, wrap it in flesh, and then make it Mr. or Mrs. Smith again, it is a small thing for him to gather people who are scattered a thousand miles from home and resettle them in their own country.

If God can take prehistoric people powder, add some water and spirit, and produce fully functional human beings again, then it is no big deal for him to put his Spirit into us who are already alive and renew our faith. No matter the size of the challenges we face, they are not too big for the God who raises the dead. There are no lost causes with him.