Ezekiel is second only to the Book of Revelation in its ability to make you shake your head in confused amazement as it unfolds one spectacular vision after another. But that’s not all, some chapters will never ever be made into children’s storybooks and others would have to be censored before they were taught in youth class. By the time you reach chapter 37 you will have read enough to know that God reigns sovereign over everything. He knows all and sees all. Righteousness is rewarded, and sin is punished. That’s that! You will have to forgive me for planting the song, ‘Dem Bones,’ in your head for the next couple of days, but that song is taken from Ezekiel 37. It is God’s illustration to inform Ezekiel that God will restore Israel to life. Ezekiel’s vision, coupled with the rest of the chapter, is Messianic—Ezekiel is seeing God’s vision of the coming church. The spiritually dead will live again. Spiritual life will be breathed into believers and they will be gathered together as one nation under God, resettled in their own land and be ruled by ‘David my servant’—the scriptural name for the Messiah, Jesus. But this great nation, formerly dead, scattered, dry and hopeless, will (1) be given the Holy Spirit, (2) know that YHWH is Lord, and (3) through them all “the nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever” (Ezekiel 37:28). You and I were ‘Dem Bones, Dem dry bones…hear the word of the Lord,’
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