Ezekiel 37:1-14
Dead Bones Together
What we are reading is a prophecy given by Ezekiel that describes the
rebirth of that nation. The majority (3/4’s) of this prophecy was
fulfilled 70 years ago. 1/4 of it still remains to be fulfilled. I
will read more in this message than I normally do because I want us
to see how this is not just my opinion but is a historical fact.
On May 14 of this year, Israel celebrated its 70 birthday. It had
been 70 years (1948) since Israel was granted its land and
sovereignty by the United Nations in accordance with U. N. General
Assembly Resolution 181, signed on November 29, 1947. Israel declared
itself a sovereign nation on May 14, 1948 and on the very next day,
was plunged into a 9 month war. When the dust settled, Israel had
lost 4,000 soldiers and 2,400 civilians. The Arabs had lost 20,000.
http://enm.ibjm.org/issue/201804-2a8d6ee539a68f540074cb4be4d6603c/
mobile/index.html#p=4
In addition, in that war the Arab’s lost nearly 60% of the area
originally allocated to them for a proposed Arab state, including
Jaffa, the Lydda and Ramle areas, Galilee, some parts of the Negev, a
wide strip along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, and some territories in
the West Bank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestine_war
To give you some understanding of what has happened, let me give you
a very general time table.
1. Moses lived around 1500 BC.
2. David lived around 1000 BC.
3. Ezekiel lived around 600 BC.
4. The Old Testament closed around 400 BC.
5. Jesus was born around 0.
6. Israel ceased to be a nation in 135 AD.
Ezekiel saw the rebirth of Israel as a nation 2500 years before it
happened. In fact, Ezekiel saw it more than 700 years before Israel
ever ceased to be a nation. But that is not all that Ezekiel saw.
Let us spend a few moments looking at the prophecies in this vision.
I. \\#1-2\\ Ezekiel saw Israel as a valley of dried, dead, scattered
bones.
A. What do the scattered bones represent? They represent Israel.
1. \\#5\\ "I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye
shall live. " - The "you" is not Ezekiel but Ezekiel’s
people.
2. Notice verse 11.
Eze 37:11 Then he said unto me, Son of man,
these bones are the whole house of Israel:
behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and
our hope is lost: we are cut off for our
parts.
B. Why did God chose to illustrate the Jews as a valley of
scattered bones? The bones speak of:
1. Dead - No one ever did mouth to mouth and chest
compressions on a skeleton. When you see dried bones, you
know that is dead.
2. Violent Dead - Maybe not with animals. There are stories
of some animals going to a specific place to die and the
place of their death being covered with hundreds of bones,
but people don’t do that. If you come across a place of
scattered bones—outside of a cemetery—know that a
violent event happened to them all.
3. Long Dead - These were dried bones. They were sunbaked
from years of laying in the valley.
4. This valley of bones described what the nation of Israel
would be when God brought them back into the land.
a. Dead
b. Violently dead
c. Dead for a long time
C. Israel has had many defeats in its history.
1. I know of no Biblical neighbor that has not conquered and
controlled the land at one time or another.
2. In addition, many of their distant neighbors have ruled
over them, including the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the
Babylonians, Greece, Rome, and Persian.
3. Some were more cruel than others but all defeated,
devastated, and destroyed Israel.
D. But let’s just consider their last exile from the land.
1. It occurred in 135 AD under the Roman Emperor Hadrian.
2. Hadrian was against what he termed "foreign religion."
a. He took the temple from the Jews to build a temple to
the Roman God, Jupiter, renamed Jerusalem after
himself and Jupiter, and forbade some of the Jewish
customs.
b. The Jews rebelled in 132 AD and were very successful
for several years, but the Romans cut off their food
supply, waited for the Jews to weaken, and then
attacked in large numbers.
c. The final battle was at Betar, a fortified city south
of Jerusalem.
(1) It was inhabited by perhaps as many as 2,000
Jews including the Sanhedrin who relocated
there.
(2) When conquered, Hadrian killed every Jew in the
city and would not allow them to be buried for
6 days.
(3) He plowed the city of Jerusalem with oxen and
completed his plans to rename it after his god
and build a temple there.
(4) He changed the name of Israel to Syria Palestina.
That is why it is referred to Palestine by some
today.
(5) He forbade the Jews to enter Jerusalem and sold
many of the people into slavery.
(6) That began a period for the Jews called the
Dispersal which lasted for 2,000—until 1948.
(7) For 2,000 years, the Jews were scatted without a
homeland.
(8) Even worse, hatred for the Jews followed them
so that they were persecuted and attacked where
ever they settled.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-bar-kokhba-revolt-132-135-ce
http://www.thetower.org/article/remembering-hadrian-destroyer-of-
the-jews/
d. The best example of that is the Holocaust.
(1) The Holocaust was conducted from 1941 through
1945—while the Jews were dispersed.
(2) But Hitler still managed to find and kill an
estimated 6 million Jews by some of the most
horrific means, building huge gas chambers to
cruelly kill them, mass shooting, in addition to
the abuse and starvation he inflicted upon them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
D. Is there any wonder that God referred to Israel as a valley
or dried, dead bones.
II. Ezekiel saw Israel’s despair.
Eze 37:11 Then he said unto me, Son of man,
these bones are the whole house of Israel:
behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and
our hope is lost: we are cut off for our
parts.
A. It was not just Israel’s death that Ezekiel was prophesying. It
was their despair.
B. Not many of us were alive to witness the despair that the Jews
must have felt through the entire 2,000 years, but especially
during years of the Holocaust.
1. If you were alive, perhaps you can tell us something about
it.
2. If not, we will have to take Ezekiel’s word for it.
C. The despair has certainly ended.
In the Everlasting Nation, a Jewish magazine published by
the International Board of Jewish Missions, Allen Lord
wrote:
Like in every other city in Israel, our city of
Holon got ready for the big celebration. Street
lights were strung-up in the downtown center.
Billboards proclaimed the message that beginning
6:00 PM, April 18, 2018, Israel would celebrate
its 70th birthday! (The) Israeli Culture
Minister… promised "a massive party" of what
she called "70 Hours of Celebrations, which began
on Wednesday evening, April 18, and ended
Saturday evening, April 21.
D. That in itself tells us that this prophesy has now been
fulfilled.
1. The days of despair are over.
2. Why? Because the bones have come together already.
III. Ezekiel saw Israel come together.
A. \\#7\\ The bones coming together would be the scattered people
coming back into the land.
Eze 27:7 So I prophesied as I was commanded:
and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and
behold a shaking, and the bones came together,
bone to his bone.
Eze 37:12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I
will open your graves, and cause you to come up
out of your graves, and bring you into the land
of Israel.
B. \\#8-9\\ The sinews and flesh coming upon them would be Israel
becoming functional as a living nation again.
Eze 37:8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and
the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered
them above: but there was no breath in them.
9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind,
prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus
saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O
breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they
may live.
1. Between November 1947 and May 1948, Israel created from
nothing a government with elected officials.
2. They had to create a defense and they created a good one.
a. I have already mentioned the first war Israel was
forced to fight the day after its inception.
b. Since that time, Israel had fought 8 recognized wars,
2 intifadas, and a series of armed conflicts.
http://enm.ibjm.org/issue/201804-2a8d6ee539a68f540074cb4be4d6603c/
mobile/index.html#p=4
c. As of June 20th, over 130 missiles have been fired
into Israel from surrounding enemies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_
Israel,_2018
d. but that is a low number. Once source said since
2005, more than 11,000 rockets have been fired into
the small country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn6t_qiZrDw
3. They had to create an infrastructure and they created a
good one.
Is 35:1 The wilderness and the solitary place
shall be glad for them; and the desert shall
rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
a. Israel, although largely without water today, has
flourished into one of the greatest agricultural
wonders of the world.
b. Israel not only grows enough food to feed itself, but
it also feeds many of the Arabs—some of whom are
their own enemies!
c. If you go to Israel today, you will find it much like
America with modern transportation, housing, hotels,
and all of the comforts of home.
4. But even with all of these things, they needed life. They
needed their own language. In anticipation of the day
when Israel would become a nation, a Jew by the name of
Ben Yehudah researched to rediscover the dead Hebrew
language. That was not easy as Hebrew had not been
spoken in almost 2 millennials and existed only in a few
preserved documents. Born in 1840, 19 years of age, he
sensed his life’s work. He started to build the first
modern-day Hebrew lexicon. He searched through ancient
manuscripts and documents—most the Old Testament—and
found 7,701 Hebrews words, but he did not know how to
pronounce them. He researched to learn what he could and
created sounds for the others. In 1881, he and his wife
moved to Israel. They committed to speak only the
Hebrew language—although no one knew the language but
them. Yehudad had to create words for words that did not
exist. Eventually, his dictionary grew to over 100,000
words. He started a Hebrew newspaper and schools to
teach the language to the children. Class after class,
year after year, generation after generation, interest
grew until on the day of Israel’s independence, their
Declaration of Independence was written in other
languages, but it was also written in Hebrew. It was
read and announced in other languages, but it was also
read and announced in the Hebrew language. Perhaps more
than anything else, the revival of the Hebrew language
has breathed life into the dead bones of Israel!
http://enm.ibjm.org/issue/201804-2a8d6ee539a68f540074cb4be4d6603c/
mobile/index.html#p=11
IV. Ezekiel saw Israel with God’s Spirit Again
Eze 37:14 And shall put my spirit in you, and
ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own
land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have
spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.
A. But this is the one prophecy of this vision which has still
not come to pass. It is not even begun to come to pass.
B. Israel is alive with connected bones and muscles and flesh,
but it has no spirit.
1. Spiritually, it is dead.
2. They are dead because they have not turned to Christ.
3. As I mentioned just last week, that will not happen until
until the middle of the tribulation—but it will happen.
C. As surely as the dead bones have assembled and are alive,
they will have a living spirit.
1. I hope you are not here to see that because it will mean
that you are lost and missed the rapture of the church.
2. Today, if that is you, please trust Jesus as your Savior.
<OutlineIndex>
<Close Window>
