“And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.’”(Ezekiel 37:3-5)
This passage is quite familiar to most people due to the intense image of the valley of dry bones. These bones are symbolic of the spiritual death of all Israel, indeed of all people because, without Christ, we are all dead in sin. The Lord showed Ezekiel this image to convey the hideous nature of sinfulness. Israel had become as useless, dead, defiled and unclean as a skeleton, worse even because the valley contained multiple numbers of these unclean bones.
The bones also convey the state of those who do not have faith in Christ, who have rejected His grace. They are nothing but dead and dry, spiritually useless and dead. Nothing they do matters, no matter how good or noble it seems, even if society honors and praises it. They cannot even help themselves.
The good news is that these bones can live, people can be raised from the deadness of sin. How? These bones are restored to life by the word of God spoken through the prophet by the Holy Spirit. This demonstrates to us that God alone has the power to create spiritual life out of what is spiritually dead. Spiritual life is accomplished only by the word of God, the revelation of the good news of Jesus spoken through the prophets, apostles, and the church by the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit of God. So we see that before faith our position was in the valley of death as dry useless bones. But now we who have been given faith are alive in Christ. Our place is with Ezekiel and Jesus Christ. And like them, The Lord calls us to speak the truth of God’s word so that He may raise others to eternal life with us.