ICS Daily Devotions
God Restores His People
Ezekiel 37:1-10 “The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. Then He caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley; and indeed they were very dry. And He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
Have you had a friend who is feeling spiritually dry, away from the Lord or hasn’t had the chance to come into the Kingdom of God? There will be at least one person in our lives that we know is in this situation. Perhaps, we are that person who is spiritually dry and worn out. Sometimes, we might have someone who is very resistant to the Gospel and we wonder whether this person can be saved or even turned around, and be fired up for the Lord! There is good news. It is a possibility!
If we would look at the big picture, God has chosen the Jews to bring forth the Messiah, and that Messiah is Jesus Christ who has redeemed mankind and commissioned the Church to bring the harvest of souls into the Kingdom. At this present moment, the Church is waiting for the second coming of Christ. Therefore, this should cause an urgency to get busy with the work of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, not all of us are living a purposeful life for the Kingdom, but rather occupy ourselves with personal agenda rather than kingdom purpose.
There is a way to learn from the passage regarding how God always works through a person to restore or to awaken the dry bones in another.
It can be seen in the prophet Ezekiel that it was not easy for him to witness the state of the people of Israel. Their history was filled with problems. As we read the story of God bringing the Israelites out of captivity from Egypt into the promised land, we see God’s deliverance, yet the people rebelled against God. Therefore, as a consequence they were exiled from the land and led into captivity by the Babylonians. It looked like a hopeless situation. God had abandoned the people of Israel, His people. As impossible as the situation seemed, however, God gave His people hope in many ways, because He honoured the covenant that He had established with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!
This can be applied to the state of the church and the life of each individual, because we have an everlasting covenant with God established through the blood of Jesus Christ. While it is important to know that God has chosen a nation, being the Jewish people, He has every person in this world no matter background or belief in His heart. He cares deeply for those who are perishing without Christ, because that was the very intent to establish a covenant with Abraham.
It says in Ezekiel 37:26: “Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore.”
There is good news. All of us have an everlasting covenant with God. There are many who have denied this opportunity to enter into the covenant and many times we won’t cry out to God until we come to the end of our human strength and ability. But, praise be to God that it is written in the Bible that God always remembers the covenant that He has made with His chosen people and now His church! It is an impossible situation for the dead people or dry bones to live if we are to look in the natural. But let’s believe that God can cause anything to come alive as He has done many times in the past! He is faithful.
Sermon Series: Can the Dry Bone Live?
