You can buy them . . .
You can decorate with them?
You can see them staged to look like they are riding bicycles. . .
What comes to mind. . .do you think, “YUCK!”. . .
When you see the white and grey plastic skeletons on display near Halloween?
The Bible has a passage about dead bones that are old, scattered, dry and, of course, lifeless. And something almost like zombies, even?
Ezekiel 37:1-14: Let’s set the scene. Israel had disobeyed God and lived in sin. Their sin led to their being captured and taken into captivity in Babylon. Babylon was famous for their pride, worship of false gods, and their arrogant attitude to God. Sound familiar, America?
After about 15 years the people were discouraged that they would never be free again. Ezekiel, a prophet of God, was given a vision.
Ezekiel says: “The hand of the Lord was on me, and He brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.”
That must have been a sobering scene. But Ezekiel says that God led him walking in these bones—-lots of them! The bones “were very dry.” (2b).
Now God asks him an interesting question: “Son of man, can these bones live?”
What would you say to that question as you stood amid countless bones. Impossible? Not with God!
Ezekiel says to God that “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
God tells him to prophesy to the bones: “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”’
Ezekiel said he heard “a rattling sound” and the bones came together!
The “tendons and flesh” came on them, and “skin covered them.” But they were kind of like the walking dead. . . “No breath” was in them.
But God sent breathe to come into them! When Ezekiel prophesied what God said, “breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—-a vast army.”
God explained that He would bring Israel out of their graves back to Israel and put his Spirit in them. He said, “they would know He had done it.”
Pray America will repent and let God put His breath in each person and we will rise up and live in Him!
Give us a new heart, Lord!
Let us be a vast army for you for your will”
