“And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.” (Ezekiel 37:4 KJV)
“…Very dry…” When we study this chapter it’s common to rush onto an analogy of some partially dead or very weak area of our life so that we might be encouraged that whatever it is will not be the end of us. I think we may be rushing on too fast. Think for a second about what “dry” much less “very dry” actually means. When a person passes, it takes quite a while for the body to decompose. Not just to get a significant percentage along the way in that process, but to get all the way to absolutely nothing but the bone left. We’re talking for more than decades. So, not only has each person been gone a while, but even the memory of them. Perhaps even the history accounts of them. Compound that with “valley”. We may be talking about how the whole society has been gone for a while. We might think of our will or the inheritance that we leave to those behind us, but in this case all that may be gone by now too. Almost like coming upon an archeological find of dinosaur remains from a past age. This goes way beyond a past bankruptcy or a past divorce or a past prison sentence. This is so dead and gone that everything that was associated with it has long since vanished.
This is the state that Ezekiel arrives at that he might see what God means by a resurrection. Not a state of repairing a part of the body or the reversal of a cancer, but a total resurrection from a totally dead and long since past state. Verse fourteen begins to make better sense in this context. Because there is sin, we must die, but when he puts his Spirit in us we know, both as a down payment now and eternally later, that life is in Him. He is Lord with such power that he is that author and sustainer of life. It goes way beyond a repair or a mere healing. It is a full resurrection!
“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2 KJV)