You know, the Bible has some pretty amazing scenes that are way more awesome and scary than any blockbuster movie. welcome to Thru the Bible, I’m Steve Shwetz, your host, and we’re continuing in our five-year study Thru the Bible in Ezekiel 36 and 37. And I’ll just warn you, there’s a scene in this study that’s so awesome that no CGI special effects could ever really do it justice.
Our scene takes place in the ancient Valley of Dry Bones. Our teacher, Dr. Jay Vernon McGee, likens it to Death Valley. Dismembered skeletons spread across a huge valley.
Can you picture it? And what happens next defies the imagination. Dr. McGee sets the stage with his opening remarks, so let’s listen and then we’ll commit this time to the Lord in prayer.
This is a great chapter that we’re coming to, Chapter 37. It is the Valley of Dead Bones. It’s interesting that we got a great lesson by going to the cemetery, and we see these bones coming alive.
Now that does not have anything to do with the resurrection of believers today. I know that there are great many that spiritualize this passage of Scripture, and you have to spiritualize it because Ezekiel is making it very clear, and he’s very careful. He says here that these bones are the whole house of Israel.
He’s speaking now of the nation. It’s the national resurrection. The resurrection of the nation, Israel is a vital spiritual nation, and that is not the present return because he makes it very clear when he says in the 14th verse of the 37th chapter, he says, I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, saith the Lord.
And he says that I’ll not only place you in that land, but I will place my spirit in you, and shall put my spirit in you. So you couldn’t say that that’s happened today. This is the national resurrection of the nation Israel that a great many even think today is going to go down, and they may, but God will return them to the land in his day.
And they didn’t believe in their day when they were in Babylonian captivity that they could ever return and become a nation. They did, but always a subject nation to one of the great powers of the earth. And it’s been that way ever since, and it is true today.
But this speaks of the future. This is a great chapter we’re coming to.
Let’s pray. Father, give us ears to hear and the will to respond to your word. Revive our spirits, Lord.
As we respond to your faith and your word and your spirit, give us life that we can only have in Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen. Open to Ezekiel 36, as we make our way through the Bible with Dr. J.
Vernon McGee.
Now, this 37th chapter is a vision of the Valley of Dead Bones. And it started off one of the spiritual years ago. I’ve thought about labeling this chapter Dem Bones.
That would be a good subject for the chapter. But the spiritual is not the important one, and that’s really not the interpretation there. What you have here is the future restoration of Israel.
And that has to do with their national entity and also the spiritual revival or restoration, which the Lord had already announced. And the chapter we just concluded last time, the 36th chapter, belongs very vitally to chapter 37. And we have a dramatic and remarkable vision in this chapter here.
And I’d like to make it very clear at the very beginning, we are not talking at all about the resurrection of the dead that are in the church. And this is the great leap. Those who spiritualize all of scripture, all of the Old Testament especially, they say the first part of it is myth, that is the historical section.
And now when we get to the prophetic section, they spiritualize it away. The interesting thing is, all of it is literal. And when you take it like that, it will make sense.
And we’re talking here about the nation, Israel, and we’re not talking about a spiritual resurrection or a physical resurrection. I unfortunately, in my notes, label chapter 37, resurrection of Israel. And I still like it, but it’s misunderstood.
They think that it means beginning with Abraham, the raising of the dead. And frankly, it has no reference to that, only if you want to make an application. But this is definitely to the nation, Israel.
Now let’s drop back in chapter 36 again and see what he’s going to talk about in chapter 37. I’ll begin reading at verse 35, and there’s a great deal more we could read. He’d already said, you remember, that he’s going to give him a new heart, and he’d put his spirit within them.
Now in verse 35, he says, And they shall say, This land that was desolate Is become like the garden of Eden, And the waste and desolate, And ruined cities are become fortified And are inhabited. Then the nations that are left round about You shall know that I, the Lord, Build the ruined places, And plant that which was desolate. I the Lord have spoken it, And I will do it.
Thus saith the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired of By the house of Israel, To do it for them. I will increase them with men like a flock, As the holy flock is the flock of Jerusalem, In her solemn feast. So shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men, And they shall know that I am the Lord.
Now, what we have in this chapter here is, That God now gives to this man, A real living parable, And he takes him to the valley of dead bones. So let’s go there. I’ll begin reading now at chapter 37, verse 1.
Will you listen? The hand of the Lord was upon me, And carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, And set me down in the midst of the valley, Which was full of bones. Now, we saw before that, before Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, Ezekiel was transported to Jerusalem.
And I don’t think God had any difficulty doing that. If man today can make a jet plane that can carry you halfway around the world in half a day, I see no reason why God wouldn’t be able to do something that would be compared, commensurate with who he is. And so I don’t think he had any difficulty getting Ezekiel up and taking him to Jerusalem.
Now I believe that he takes him here literally because it says here and he carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord. I think that what he’s telling us is that the Spirit of the Lord now carries him out to the valley which was full of bones. Let’s take a look at this.
He says here in verse 2, And he caused me to pass by them round about, And behold, there were very many in the open valley, And lo, they were very dry. Now, will you take a good look at this here? You remember the story about Louis Manley and his partner by the name of Rogers back in 1849?
They crossed Death Valley here in California to bring back supplies to the Bennett Arcane Party that was stranded. You see, this party wandered in the Death Valley, actually by mistake, and they shouldn’t have been there, and they would have all have perished had not these men crossed. Well, this tenderfoot from Vermont and his partner, they actually were the first white men to cross and to gaze upon the grandest scene of desolation and death that any two men had seen with the exception of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel, 2,500 years before them and preceding them, he was given a vision of another Death Valley. More desolate, more fearsome and awesome than Death Valley here in California. Now, the valley that Ezekiel saw was filled with dead bones, and the thing about them had characterized them.
They were very dry and they were scattered. They were all over the place. Now, will you notice what he says here?
And he caused me to pass by them round about, and behold, there were very many in the open valley, and they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.
Now, this is a group of bones here, scattered all over the place. They’re human bones. And the question that’s put to this man, Ezekiel, is, can these bones live?
And actually, the answer of Ezekiel is, O Lord God, thou knowest. In other words, he said, I don’t see how they could. It’s beyond me.
You alone know whether these dead bones can live or not. And now notice what he says. Again, he said unto me, prophesy upon these bones and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
Now, there’s something rather, well, I’d say, ironical and I would also like to add humorous. I’ve said again and again, God has a sense of humor. This seems to me to be an instance of one.
If you don’t see that which is funny, well then you just pass by it. It’s all right. And all you’ll see is just a bunch of dead bones.
But will you notice Ezekiel there? God says to him, prophesy on these bones. And you start out by saying, Oh ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
And I have a notion of Ezekiel says, Lord, you don’t mean for me to start talking to these dry bones here. The man with the white coat and net will be looking for me if I start speaking to these old dry bones. And by the way, that’s not a good introduction.
You know, you wouldn’t, no preacher begin to sign the morning saying to his congregation, oh ye dry bones. And a friend of mine who also has a good sense of humor, he said to me, he says, you know, I have a church. And he says, I’d like to begin like Ezekiel did.
But he said, I dare not, because he says the bones I speak to are just about as dry as Ezekiel’s were. Actually, here he’s looking out in a valley filled with these dry bones. And he’s to speak to them.
And gracious alive, what a picture that you got here. This man is saying that. But did you know that every preacher that’s speaking today to a congregation, there are the saved and the unsaved, and those that are saved, they may have ears to hear but don’t hear.
And the ones that are not saved, they’re dead in trespasses and sins. They haven’t been redeemed yet. And he’s just about as helpless as Ezekiel.
Any preacher that knows the real state and condition of the laws recognizes his helplessness. And so this man, Ezekiel, here, he’s to say to the dry bones, I want you to hear what God has to say. Verse 5, thus saith the Lord God under these bones, behold, I’ll cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live, and I will lay sinuous upon you, and I’ll bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that I’m the Lord.
Now, God says, I want you to speak to them, and I’ll be the one that will give them life. And that’s our condition today. If God doesn’t move, I’ve shared several letters with you, where folk have said, you saved me.
I remember one woman, that’s the way she began her letter. You saved me. Well, friends, I saved no one.
I just speak to dry bones, that’s all. And try to give the word of God. Now, the spirit of God has to bring life, and that’s the only way life could come.
Now, that to me is the application here. Now, it’s going to have a tremendous interpretation. Now, will you listen to it?
Verse 7, So I prophesied, as I was commanded. This man, Ezekiel, he bears God, you see. And as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together.
Bone to its bone. And here’s where that spiritual really gets with it, when these bones start coming together. And I’m of the opinion, Ezekiel had a rather funny feeling down in that valley, when all these bones came together.
Then you have here verse 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. Now, you have here a method, and I want you to notice the method. Number one, we see here, that these bones were scattered, and they were dry and dead.
That’s the first state. And then they began to come together gradually, and there was a process. The sinews and the flesh came upon them.
That’s verse 8 here. And it was not instantaneous at all. And then notice what happened, but all you have is a corpse.
You just have an undertaking, an establishment. You have a group of bodies, no longer bones, but bodies with flesh on them. They look like human beings, and they are, but they don’t have any life in them.
Verse 9. Then said he unto me, Prophecy unto the wind. Prophecy, son of man, say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath upon these slain, that they may live.
So I prophesied, as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army. Now, that’s the picture that you have here. And the thing that he did here was to speak, and that came life in.
Now that is a picture that resembles the creation of man at the very beginning. You remember, God took man of the dust of the earth. Ezekiel started with bone.
God started with just the dirt, and the dust of the earth. And then he breathed life in. Now here you have three stages.
And the three stages are scattered bone, dead, oh, just dead as they could be. Then you have the second stage. They’ve come together, flesh has come upon them, skins come upon them, they’re bodies, but they’re dead bodies.
Then the third stage is they’re made alive. Now I believe here that you find the key to prophecy. This, I think, is the backbone of prophecy.
Verse 11, will you listen? Then he said unto me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Now, friends, we’re not talking about a church.
We’re talking about the house of Israel. The whole, they say, our bones are dried. Our hope is lost.
We’re cut off on our part. Now, you see, they went from one extreme to another. As long as Jerusalem stood, and the false prophets said they were going back, that was a hope, a false hope.
Now that Jerusalem is destroyed, they go to the other extreme. They have what the psychologists would call manic-depressive psychosis. They’re in a bad state.
They were up high one day. Now they’ve hit the very depths. They’re at the bottom.
And they say, we have no hope. And this vision is given to let them know that they have a hope. It’s about the house of Israel.
Now, how are we going to interpret it? Verse 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 out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. Now, somebody is going to say, but wait a minute, I think you must have missed it a moment ago.
You said this was not physical resurrection. I still say it. And on what basis?
Now, I’m going to drop down to verse 21. And say unto them, thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations into which they are gone, and I will gather them on every side and bring them into their own land. Now, that’s what God meant by bringing them up out of their graves.
They are buried in the nations of the world, and they are to be brought back and become a nation. I want to say something rather carefully now. Three stages that you have here, if there is any place you have fulfilled prophecy, this is it.
And as many of you know, I don’t go for the fact that I believe that we’re seeing prophecy fulfilled. But I’ll go this far, that the nation Israel was buried and scattered in the nations of the world, and dead to God, dead to the things of God. Now, they have come back as a nation, but over there today, it’s a corpse.
Oh, they got a flag, they got a constitution, they have a prime minister, they have a parliament, they have police, they have an army, they are a nation, they even have Jerusalem today. They have all of that. They have everything except spiritual life.
I want to say this, but say it kindly. When you cross over out of old Jerusalem, the Arab section where you are with the Moslem and come over into the other section of Israel, there is no spiritual life. As far as I’m concerned, there is as much deadness on one side as the other.
Now there’s a great deal more of that which is materialistic, that which is intellectual, that which denotes civilization on the Israel side, but no spiritual life whatsoever. Now, in this section here, he mentions two sticks. I’m not going to detail.
One stick is Israel, one is Judah. Now they’re going to be put back together again. Now that’s the thing that is important for us to see here.
And he also says that he’s going to put David on the throne. Let’s read that now. And by the way, that must mean that there were never ten lost tribes.
If they are, God knows where they are. And I’m confident it won’t be Great Britain that’s going to be joined to them in that land. Let me read here.
Verse 22, And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel. One king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations. Verse 24, And David my servant shall be king over them, and they all shall have one shepherd.
Now, that one shepherd is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. When he came, he came, born in the line of David. Read the first chapter of Matthew.
He came into that line. The angel said to Mary, and read Dr. Luke, the first and second chapters. Very carefully, we’re told, he came in the line of David.
Now, we’re told here that the one that came in that line is the shepherd. He’s to rule over them. I personally believe that God will raise up David to reign over them, either in the millennium or in the eternal kingdom, when the millennium is just going to usher in the eternal kingdom, in one or the other.
And I know there’s some that believe one and some believe the other. And this is one place where I go with both. I’m of the opinion he’ll be the vicegerent of the Lord Jesus Christ down here.
Now God says that’s going to come to pass. It has not come to pass yet. Now, verse 28.
And the nations shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them forevermore. There will be a millennial temple, and there will be an eternal temple down here. Somebody says, but it says in Revelation, there will be no temple there.
That’s where the church is, in the New Jerusalem. You see, you get into hopeless confusion. Unless you let the word of God say what it wants to say.
We’re going to leave off right there, and pick up next time, and I believe we’re going to see Russia in prophecy. Until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
You know, one thing I always appreciate about Dr. McGee is that he didn’t mind admitting he wished the Bible said things differently than it does at times, but he never twisted it to say what he wanted. And that’s the mark of a true Bible teacher, isn’t it? He practiced what he preached when he said, that’s what God says, I believe it, and that settles it.
I appreciate that about Dr. McGee. And even more so as I’ve explored the many resources that he developed to help us dig deeper into God’s Word, including his foundational series, Guidelines for Understanding Scripture. These messages are available in a digital booklet, How to Understand the Bible.
And whether you’re new to God’s Word, or you’ve been studying for decades, you’ll want to check out the seven basic guidelines that he says each of us should follow as we approach the Word of God and glean advice on how to study the Bible as a whole, as well as each chapter on its own. How to Understand the Bible. It’s available for you to download anytime at ttb.org/booklets.
Again, How to Understand the Bible is just one of more than 100 digital booklets available for free download over at ttb.org. Or if you want a little help in finding a Bible study resource by Dr. McGee on a particular topic, just give us a call 1-800-65-BIBLES-THE-NUMBER. And when you contact us, be sure to tell us how you listen to Thru the Bible.
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This little bit of information really does help us make big decisions as we seek to be good stewards of the resources that God has so faithfully provided through Friends IQ. So, I hope that you have the opportunity to hop on the Bible bus next time as we round your corner at this same time. We’ll be in Ezekiel 38 and 39.
Read ahead if you get a chance. It’s going to be a great study. Until then, I’m Steve Shwetz, praying the Lord will bless you as you seek him every day in His Word.
Thank you for your faithful prayer and financial support. Where will God’s Word go today?
