Ezekiel Sitting in the Valley of Dry BonesBible World
37:3Ezekiel 37:3
And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.
The question confesses that no human power can put life into the dead, leaving the answer with God alone who knows whether the bones can live, and thereby lays bare the utter hopelessness of the valley apart from divine power. In answer God has the bones joined together and built up into bodies and then made alive by His own breath given through prophesying to the wind, until the slain stand up as an exceeding great army. The figure was given to show that no work of restoration is too hard for God to do, so that none who trust in Him need ever say their hope is lost.
The dry bones are the house of Israel and His professed people today, the church and backslidden believers, spiritually dead whom the Lord cannot use until He breathes His Spirit and life into them. That death is the want of the deep moving of the Spirit upon the heart, so that without His life-giving influence truth becomes a dead letter in them. Though professing to believe the truth they have no experimental knowledge of Christ as the world's Redeemer and of truth's vitalizing and sanctifying power, but only form and ceremony and a merely legal religion in place of power, as icy hearts shut in by prejudice and unbelief and darkness where simplicity is lost in a round of ceremonies. They are asleep and at ease while the end steals near stealthily and noiselessly as the tread of a thief in the night to surprise unready sleepers suddenly, and they must be aroused by a straight testimony no longer to sleep as others but to watch and be sober.
The promised life comes by receiving the needed light and knowledge and by believing and obeying the word of the Lord, forsaking self-chosen ways and counsel, humbling the soul before God, drawing near to Him, and changing purposes to become Christlike. It requires earnest work and prayer to bring that life-giving message to a hearing, yielding the will as clay into the hands of the potter and cooperating with God while He works in to will and to do of His good pleasure, becoming passive and susceptible to divine impressions and standing in the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness. Thus purity and meekness and lowliness of Christ and grace are brought into the work and no earthly or selfish motive is suffered to live, renewing them in the divine image as vessels molded unto honor. That life is given through presenting the Bible subject of sin and atonement that reveals Christ and His righteousness and the better things provided for them, which brings them spiritual life and equips those revived to help gather others to God. Christian love works that inbreathing of Spirit and life as the grandest of all miracles, since even to reproduce miraculous works before the impenitent would not add conviction or turn them to repentance.
God will also answer the question literally by calling forth the dead in His own time, giving again the breath of life and bidding the dry bones live. Those who live keep the same personal identity and the character kept with God, coming forth in the same form with the same individuality of features so that friend will recognize friend, but free from disease and every defect. The living body is not made from the same identical particles of matter that went into the grave, but God gives a new body of much finer material as He pleases, a new creation and a new birth.
The question confesses that no human power can put life into the dead, leaving the answer with God alone who knows whether the bones can live, and thereby lays bare the utter hopelessness of the valley apart from divine power. In answer God has the bones joined together and built up into bodies and then made alive by His own breath given through prophesying to the wind, until the slain stand up as an exceeding great army. The figure was given to show that no work of restoration is too hard for God to do, so that none who trust in Him need ever say their hope is lost.
The dry bones are the house of Israel and His professed people today, the church and backslidden believers, spiritually dead whom the Lord cannot use until He breathes His Spirit and life into them. That death is the want of the deep moving of the Spirit upon the heart, so that without His life-giving influence truth becomes a dead letter in them. Though professing to believe the truth they have no experimental knowledge of Christ as the world's Redeemer and of truth's vitalizing and sanctifying power, but only form and ceremony and a merely legal religion in place of power, as icy hearts shut in by prejudice and unbelief and darkness where simplicity is lost in a round of ceremonies. They are asleep and at ease while the end steals near stealthily and noiselessly as the tread of a thief in the night to surprise unready sleepers suddenly, and they must be aroused by a straight testimony no longer to sleep as others but to watch and be sober.
The promised life comes by receiving the needed light and knowledge and by believing and obeying the word of the Lord, forsaking self-chosen ways and counsel, humbling the soul before God, drawing near to Him, and changing purposes to become Christlike. It requires earnest work and prayer to bring that life-giving message to a hearing, yielding the will as clay into the hands of the potter and cooperating with God while He works in to will and to do of His good pleasure, becoming passive and susceptible to divine impressions and standing in the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness. Thus purity and meekness and lowliness of Christ and grace are brought into the work and no earthly or selfish motive is suffered to live, renewing them in the divine image as vessels molded unto honor. That life is given through presenting the Bible subject of sin and atonement that reveals Christ and His righteousness and the better things provided for them, which brings them spiritual life and equips those revived to help gather others to God. Christian love works that inbreathing of Spirit and life as the grandest of all miracles, since even to reproduce miraculous works before the impenitent would not add conviction or turn them to repentance.
God will also answer the question literally by calling forth the dead in His own time, giving again the breath of life and bidding the dry bones live. Those who live keep the same personal identity and the character kept with God, coming forth in the same form with the same individuality of features so that friend will recognize friend, but free from disease and every defect. The living body is not made from the same identical particles of matter that went into the grave, but God gives a new body of much finer material as He pleases, a new creation and a new birth.