I have a riding lawn mower that has often given me problems in the past. I would go out to mow my lawn, sit down on the mower, turn the key, and nothing would happen. No revs, no clicks, nothing. Just silence.  I went through a couple of mowing seasons when I was perplexed by this. I changed the battery, changed the spark plugs, changed the starter. Nothing seemed to work. My riding mower would just sit there quite dead and quite useless. Perhaps you have little sympathy for me and my first-world problems of mowing my modest middle Tennessee yard. That would be understandable. But if you have ever had this happen when you got into a car—especially if you were away from your home—you might be somewhat more sympathetic. Sure, that too is a first-world problem, but one that is somewhat more weighty than needing to push mow my yard.

The Problem

The last few sessions we have seen that God’s people had quite a problem—exponentially greater than my lawnmower or even a dead car battery. Because of their sin, God’s people had been taken into captivity by foreign nations. But even that was not their greatest problem. That would be their sin problem—the root cause of the captivity they were now experiencing. As we saw through the prophet Jeremiah, God’s people had defective hearts—hearts incapable of loving and obeying God. Because of this, they were dead in their sins—vividly pictured by how they also appeared to be dead as a nation. My riding mower has been dead at times, but nothing like God’s people were in Ezekiel’s day. They were dead and hopeless. They were not merely sick. Things did not merely look challenging for them. Things were impossible for them.

The Solution

What do you do when something is hopeless? When something is dead and lifeless? Well, if it is a riding mower, you might look into getting a new one. Dead things don’t come back to life. At least not in our economy. But God’s ways are not our ways. Dead things are no problem for Him. This is the point of the illustration in Ezekiel 37. God takes His prophet to a valley full of dry bones in which there is no life. For us, it is a scene of despair and hopelessness. But then God does what only He can do—He provides a different solution to the dilemma, a greater solution.  He brings life from death—He restores those dry bones into living, breathing soldiers. This is a picture of what God would do with His people. They may have been dead as a nation. They may have been dead spiritually. But that does not limit what God can do. We serve a God who brings life from death. It’s not hard to see why this illustration matters so much for us, is it? This is the story of the gospel! We were dead in our sin, and yet God was able to bring life from that death, and He did so by bringing life from another death—Jesus’. The bones do not just picture ancient Israel, they picture us before we trusted in Christ. We were dead and hopeless. We needed God to intervene, and boy did He.

The Reason

But why? Why did God choose this path and not another? Why not cast aside dead Israel and choose some other people? Two reasons. One, He had promised to do this for Israel (remember Jeremiah’s words and the covenant God had made with Abraham). But there is another reason, tied together with this one:

Then you will know that I am the Lord. I have spoken, and I will do it. This is the declaration of the Lord. (Ezekiel 37:14 CSB)

God will act on behalf of His people for their good, but there is a greater reason—His own glory. God bringing life from death would be a signpost of who He is and His faithful character. And the same is true of God giving us life through Christ. Yes, we benefit from it. Yes, God loves us. But we are not the greatest reason He acts. He is. This is not just a theological issue; it is quite practical as well. When we remember this, it frames how we live and the story we tell. We don’t live for ourselves or to tell the story of who we are or what we have done. Rather, we live for God and tell the story of what He has done so that we might point others to His glory and His power to bring life from death, even from a bunch of dry bones.

The Bible reveals a God who, long before it even occurs to man to turn to him, while man is still lost in darkness and sunk in sin, takes the initiative, rises from his throne, lays aside his glory, and stoops to seek until he finds him.” — John Stott [1]

Preschool Tip: If you believe your little ones may not respond the best to talking about bones, keep the discussion generalized: God will restore his people even when they seem to be beyond hope. He can make dead things alive. Kids Tip: Ezekiel’s vision is memorable because of the vividness of the illustration. Keep in mind that it is highly unlikely that any of your kids are not familiar with bones and skeletons by this age. So it is probably not necessary to shy away from the vivid picture God painted in this chapter. While you don’t need to belabor it, the clearer your kids see it, the more likely they are to grasp God’s point behind it. [1] John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1971), 11. https://vimeo.com/344887785