Text Eze 37:1-14
How many here this morning have ever felt like an old dry bone? All your marrow gone and youv'e been gnawed by the dog. If you have, then you can identify with the Isrealites. Nebuchnezzer had swept through Israel, conquered them, tore down the temple, demolished their towns and taken them into captivity. Everything they had was gone and God had seemingly turned his back on them. But then God took Ezekiel and in a vision plopped him smack in the middle of a valley with nothing there but old dried up bones. Not a shred of flesh or a sinew left on them. Then God asked a seemingly redundant question; Son of Man can these bones live?" A question that should have had the answer "no". But you have to credit Ezekiel because he said "Oh Sovereign Lord, only you know." He knew that the Lord could do anything He desired.
Sometimes through our own sin, or through circumstances beyond our control our lives are stripped to the bare bone. Everything that we value is taken away from us. We stop praying, stop reading the Bible, start trying to take things into our own hands and slowly but surely we dry up spiritually. We become another skeleton in that valley. Our hope that we will once again be a living and vital person is non existent. After a time we think that God dosn't care. Our trials become all consuming and we start to lose our faith. We suffer and we make sure that everyone around us knows it. We negelct our family, our friends, our jobs, our health and God. Our life becomes stale and dried out and it's only with great difficulty that we make ourselves go through the motions of a faith that has become empty and lifeless. But God has so much more in store for us than we can see from where we are now.
If we read a little further in the chapter we see something miraculous taking place. We hear God saying to Ezekiel
Eze 37:4 "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD !
Eze 37:5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.
Eze 37:7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.
Eze 37:8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
Eze 37:9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' "
Eze 37:10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet-a vast army.
Can you imagine Ezekial's astonishment when those skeletons started rattling and coming together? Suddenly flesh appeared on them yet they were still dead. But then God tells Ezekiel, Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' " Suddenly a wind or breath from God blows over these corpses and they come to life. God renews their Spirit in them and they live!
We see that no matter how miserable our condition has become there is hope. He has gracious designs for us. He wants to bless us. He longs to clothe us in flesh and breath His Spirit into us. To make us new and living again. He wants us to have a life that is able to be lived to the full. He wants us to come back to Him for healing.
If we look further into history we see that God restored the Isrealites to their homes, the temple was rebuilt and God himself came in the flesh to dwell among us and to give us his life restoring Spirit and at the end in that great resurrection He will come and raise us from the dead and clothe us with eternal life
When the future looks dim we can still hold onto hope. We don't need to become a dry bone. When those times come we need to be" a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither", not an old dry bone.
@ linchen! 
