Ezekiel 37:1-14. "How God Uses Death to Deal With Sin."

Ezekiel 37 presents, the vision of dry bones, where God shows Ezekiel a valley of bones, representing the spiritual death of the Israelites. These people were killed by God as a punishment for their sins, including idolatry and oppression. The vision is a metaphor for the spiritual desolation of the exiled Israelites, who felt abandoned and without hope.

God's punishment for sin is death, which can seem harsh, but it stems from human rejection of God. This rejection leads to various sins, from gossip to mass murder, showing how sin escalates from disregarding God’s commands. Tim underscores that God’s ultimate answer to sin is death, but not just physical death. It points to the death of Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of humanity.

The vision also highlights God’s mercy, as he allows the spiritually dead to live, aiming to raise them back to life through repentance and faith. This message presents that the Holy Spirit revives believers through God's Word, bringing them to repentance and faith in Jesus. The ultimate hope is the promise of eternal life and the end of death and suffering, as revealed in the book of Revelation. 

This Sunday sermon, based on Ezekiel 37 verses 1-14, was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on May 19, 2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Our services are at 9:30am every Sunday morning, at our campus in Dix Hills on Long Island. Visit our website for more information, at www.graceofgod.church 

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)         

Transcript

May God the Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, comfort and strengthen you daily through God’s Word, friends. Amen.

Who killed all these people? Who made these heaps and heaps of dead, dry bones in this valley which we read about in our first reading? These people didn’t die of natural causes. We’re not seeing a neat graveyard, with tombstones and flowers on the mounds. This isn’t the result of a natural disaster, like the earthquakes in Turkey last year, where the authorities had to use mass graves to deal with fifty-five thousand bodies. Notice what God says in verse nine. He tells the prophet Ezekiel to say, “Come, breath, from the four winds, and breathe into these slain.” These bones belonged to people who had been slain. Killed. Who killed them?

God did. God killed all these people, God made the heaps of bones which Ezekiel sees lying on that valley floor. These bones belonged to the people of Israel; the nation God had chosen to live in Canaan and to bring forth the Messiah. We’re reading from chapter Ezekiel thirty-seven; in thirty-six, God tells the prophet, “Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. So I poured out my wrath on them.” These bones were heaped up by God himself.

The man who saw this vision, Ezekiel, had been born in Judah, in the land of Israel. He had lived in Jerusalem. He had served in God’s temple as a priest. But then, in 597 BC - two thousand, six hundred and twenty years ago - the Babylonian empire invaded Judah. They captured Jerusalem. They took Ezekiel captive, along with many other leaders, and carried them off to Babylon, where they made these former leaders work on farms and ranches. Priests and nobles were made to plow fields and feed animals.

Because the Babylonians were more interested in taking captives than in destruction, though, there was not actually that much death. Some people did die, certainly. But that invasion was not a terribly bloody conflict by ancient standards. It certainly didn’t yield heaps and heaps of bones such as those which God showed Ezekiel in the vision. God was showing Ezekiel a vision portraying spiritual death. He explains that to Ezekiel at the end of our text. “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” 

The Israelites who had been taken into exile felt crushed and humiliated. They saw no hope of ever returning to Israel. God had cut them off. God had removed them from their land, God had rejected them. They despaired. God did that to them.

Why? Why did God crush his people? And why did he walk his prophet around among these bones that represented Ezekiel himself, and all his fellow captives, in their despair? What kind of weird monster is God? Is he a serial killer, giving his new victim a tour of his trophies?

As I read earlier, God crushed his people because they had sinned. They had sinned against him. They worshiped new gods, idols which they had made from gold and silver, even in God’s own temple! They also sinned against one another. The leaders had oppressed the people by stealing from the poor and needy. The princes and priests even conspired to steal people’s property through outright murder. They killed men, seized their property, and left women as widows, and children without fathers. 

What should God do about sin? We all know the right answer to that question. When we see someone driving badly, dangerously, we look around hoping to see red and blue lights come on. When our children are bullied at school, we raise the issue with the teacher. When our work supervisors are unfair, unkind, to us, we file a complaint with HR. We do these things because we know that the right answer is, sin should be dealt with! Justice should be served! God should do something!

God does do something. What God does about sin is kill. God’s answer to sin is death.

Well - oof - I don’t know. Death? I don’t want the death penalty for a driver who cut me off. I don’t want my boss marched to a firing squad just because they’ve treated me unfairly. 

The way God frames sin in the prophet Ezekiel’s book is important. In Ezekiel, we hear about the ways that God’s people sinned against one another, harmed one another. But in his dialogues with Ezekiel, God focuses on the ways that his people have sinned against him, have dishonored and rejected him.

This is not not egotistical of God. Because in truth, human rejection of God as God is what leads to sin against other humans. Rejection of God as God leads to the “termination of unwanted pregnancies” - the murder of children in the womb. Rejection of God as God leads to six million dead in gas chambers. Rejection of God as God leads to tens of millions of kidnapped people sold as property. 

God knows what comes after he’s been rejected. He’s watched it happen countless times throughout history. He watches it happen in our lives, when first his Word regarding marriage is rejected - “You shall not commit adultery” - then the affair unfolds. First his Word is rejected - “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” - then we pass along rumors, gossip, about a classmate.

Sin always begins with rejection of God as God, and His Word as setting the rule and standard for life. Gossip and mass murder both stem from rejecting God. And because they all stem from the same root, there’s not that much distance between any one sin and another. God recognizes this. God recognizes how dangerous sin is, how quickly humans can move from one “small” act to the next, “bigger” action. So the only fitting solution for sin is for it to be stopped right away.

So then - why doesn’t God do that? Why doesn’t the reckless driver die of a heart attack as soon as they cut you off? They’re putting other people in danger, aren’t they? Well, I can answer that question in two ways. First: When should God kill sinners? Before they sin? Seems unfair, would be unfair. While they’re sinning? Well, if he’d kill the reckless driver there in the car, God would put the other drivers in even worse danger. So, after their sin? That’s exactly what God does. The very last thing that happens to any of us sinners is that we die. God does answer sin - our sin - with death.

The other way I can answer that question is to point to the same thing Peter points to, in his Pentecost sermon. We heard in our second reading, “Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him. He was handed over to you” - to Peter’s audience, the worshipers gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival - “handed over by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men” - the Roman authorities - “you put Jesus to death by nailing him to the cross.”

There’s my other answer to the question, “Why doesn’t God answer sin with death?” Again, he does. He did. The death of God himself, the Son of God who is true God from true God. Notice how Jesus affirms that he is God in our Gospel reading. He tells us that the world’s understanding of sin is wrong because the world refuses to believe in him, in Jesus. God all throughout Ezekiel tells us that sin is rooted in rejection of him as God; Jesus affirms that he is that God in whom all people should believe, rejection of whom leads to all sin. 

And there, too, we have an answer to the person who says God is egomaniacal in claiming that the worst sin, the root of all sin, is not believing in him. Well, here’s a very self-centered God, huh? Dying for sinners who had rejected him. Sending Peter and the other apostles to the very crowds who had rejected him and called for his execution! To proclaim to them mercy and forgiveness. You can’t imagine a less egomaniacal God. God is merciful.

That’s what we see in the circumstances of Ezekiel’s fellow captives. They’re mercifully allowed to live. Spiritually dead, though. Spiritually crushed; nothing but dry bones left. When our sin causes us to suffer, that’s the result. God allows it so that he can raise us back up.

What can cure us? What can put the pep back in our step when we’ve been crushed by our guilt? That’s the question the Pentecost crowds asked Peter, because they were crushed by their guilt. “What shall we do?” The captives could have asked Ezekiel the same question. In fact, in Ezekiel chapter fourteen, a few people did exactly that. They came to Ezekiel, wanting to hear what they should do to appease God, who was punishing them. God’s response? “Believe in me!” Then God revealed to Ezekiel that even in exile, these people who came to the prophet were still secretly worshiping idols! They rejected God as God, and yet expected there was something they could do to make him happy! No!

Likewise, Peter tells the crowds, the only answer is to have faith in Jesus. “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” “Repent” means, “turn.” These were good Jewish believers. They had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem! Peter calls on them to “repent.” We hear that word sometimes and hear it only in terms of obvious, outward sin. “Repent from drunkenness.” “Repent from sexual immorality.” Yes, certainly! But the most pious, self-controlled, disciplined person who believes not in Christ needs repentance as well. To repent is, first, to acknowledge that God is God, that Jesus Christ is Lord, and then it’s to see our sin as sin, whatever it is, and turn from it.

God makes that happen - God makes repentance happen - through his Word. God gives Ezekiel a Word for the dry bones, and they come back to life. The Word which Ezekiel is given brings the Spirit, the Spirit of God, with it. Every time you read the word “breath” in that reading from Ezekiel, in Hebrew the word “breath” and “spirit” are the same word, ru’ach. God gives life through his Spirit, who comes through the Word, and the vast army stands up before Ezekiel. Peter shared the Word about Jesus, the message of sin and grace, Law and Gospel, and the Spirit raised up an army that day; three thousand newly baptized believers. 

God’s Holy Spirit, at work in through his Word, brings us to life. He shows us our sin, against God and against one another. He shows us our Savior, Christ our God, who gave himself to win forgiveness and life forever for us and for our children and for all whom God will call to faith in the waters of baptism. And the Spirit reminds us, when our sin and the sin of others crushes us, that Jesus will return. He will wipe away the tears from every eye. He will dwell with us forever, as he promised through Ezekiel. “I will settle you in your own land,” he tells Ezekiel to say. This is what John was shown in his Revelation, chapter twenty-one: “I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’ I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne” - that is Christ our Lord, who ascended and rules at God’s right hand -  “he said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said” to John, “‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”

No more death. It will no longer be needed to answer sin. God has answered sin, once and for all. He has reconciled you to him. May God’s Spirit comfort us with such promises day by day. Amen.