I recorded this message and uploaded it to YouTube at this link: https://youtu.be/VruF_CgW4WQ If more convenient, you can read the text below. It is in two parts. You can find part two (and part one) on my blog at this link:
Dry Bones and the Resurrection
Today is the 5th Sunday of Lent. Lent, as many of you know, is that season in the church calendar during which many Christians remind ourselves afresh of the reason Jesus permitted Himself to be crucified on that cross. He did so to offer Himself to God as an atoning sacrifice – atoning not for His sins, but for your sins. And mine.
As Isaiah prophesied 700 years before Jesus was born: “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Isaiah 53:5-6
I suspect many people who observe Lent are looking at the season differently this year than in the past. The coronavirus is reminding us all of our mortality – and with thoughts of our mortality, many are forced to consider – and I hope – wisely prepare for their eternal destiny.
It is also my hope that what I am about to share with you will clearly explain how to wisely prepare for our eternal destiny.
So, another week of Lent has passed during which Christians have had opportunity to draw ever closer to Jesus and reflect more purposefully on the final events of His life that brought forgiveness to those who follow Him in obedience.
Those events, of course, are Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Good Friday is the day on which our savior died in our place, and Resurrection Sunday when Jesus rose physically from death. As St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Christians at Rome: “[Jesus] . . . was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification.” (Romans 4:25).
I will build my message today around themes found in the liturgical readings for today from Ezekiel 37, Romans 8, and John 11.
Let’s turn first to Ezekiel 37. Many know this text as the ‘Dry Bones’ chapter. It’s a long one, so I will quickly summarize it. I hope you will take some time to read the entire chapter yourself.
God brought Ezekiel in a vision to a valley full of dry bones. There were probably thousands and thousands of them. As far as the eye could see. And God said to the prophet: “Prophesy over these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’ Thus says the Lord God to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the Lord.’”
When Ezekiel did as God commanded, the bones all came together. Muscles, tendons, and flesh then covered the bones. But they had no life. God said again to Ezekiel: “Prophesy to the breath . . . Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.”’” When Ezekiel spoke again, the bodies came to life and stood on their feet – a massive army.
Then God explained the meaning of the dry bones to Ezekiel: “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves . . . I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life . . . .”
I want to make sure you caught the image God painted for us in this 37th chapter of Ezekiel. The people were dead. Not partially dead. Not to varying degrees of dead. They were completely, totally, utterly dead. They were nothing but bones drying on the ground.
Let me pause a moment and tell you a true story that will illustrate this important message of hope and of exhortation from Ezekiel’s vision.
I still remember that hot and muggy August day years ago in San Diego. As I jogged around the neighborhood, my sweat-soaked shirt clung like a second skin. Waves of heat rippled above the asphalt. The humidity was so high, I thought I was breathing water.
That suffocating combination of heat and humidity is probably why I smelled the cat before I saw it. I rounded the corner and spotted its decaying body in weeds by the curb. Its lifeless lips tightened into a grotesque grin. Sun-bleached ribs peeked through putrefying flesh. I held my breath and picked up the pace to move past the odor.
Over the years, I’ve passed dozens of dead animals during my exercise routine, and I always ignored them. But this time my thoughts wandered back to the cat. And this question dropped into my thoughts.
“What if someone dressed the dead cat in a silk suit and tie?” For a moment, the image startled me. And then I wondered, “What if someone draped a gold chain around its neck and splashed expensive cologne on its face?”
Well, I assure you, a gallon of cologne couldn’t have masked the odor of death, nor could the most expensive clothes disguise its hideous appearance. Nothing short of God’s supernatural intervention could breathe the fragrance of life into that corpse.
Scripture repeats the message so often, we miss it only because we CHOOSE to miss it. Without Christ, we are all spiritually dead in our sins. That’s the point of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel’s vision. Without God’s intervention the Dry Bones would have turned to dust in that valley.
That’s also the message the Holy Spirit tried to impress on those in Ephesus, to whom the apostle Paul wrote: You were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). The Greek word the apostle used to emphasize what their condition was before God made them alive in Christ (v. 4) is nekros. It’s the same word from which English speakers get necrotic. It means lifeless.
In other words, before God’s intervention through Christ, they were DEAD. Not partially dead. Not to a degree dead. They were – and without Christ WE are – without spiritual life in the smallest iota.
And so, I say it again for emphasis. Please don’t miss this: We are not, as some like to say, ‘diamonds covered with mud.” We are not dead to ‘varying degrees.” God tells us we are necrotic – “Dead in our trespasses and sins.” And without God’s intervention we are all without hope and without God in the world.
It doesn’t matter who we are, or what we have – religious titles, academic degrees, church affiliation, hefty bank accounts, political power, or accolades from the rich and powerful. Without Christ, we stink (Isaiah 64:6; 2 Corinthians 2:15,16), and God can smell us on the other side of the universe.
And nothing short of His supernatural power, exercised only through His Son, gives us life. In His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus called it being, “born from above” (John 3). In his first epistle, St. Peter called it being ‘born again’ (1 Peter 1).
Comparing myself to a dead animal or to bones bleaching in the sun is not the thing you like to discuss over coffee. But those images DO give me a glimpse of God’s wondrously amazing mercy. Why? Because regardless of the depth and frequency of our sins, God’s grace will cleanse us. By our faith in and obedience to Christ, God clothes us in glistening robes and breathes life into our necrotic corpse (Isaiah 61:10).
No one smells so badly that Jesus’ blood cannot transform the necrotic odor of death into the sweet fragrance of eternal life. We have Scripture’s promise about it.
But we also have Scripture’s warning: Jesus is not the best way to heaven. He is not the best way to have spiritual life. He is the only way. Without Him, we are dead to God.
Which brings us to the second reading for today, Romans 8:6-10, 14. I continue this message in part two.
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