Resurrected and Reunified

Ezekiel 37:13-14 Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves. I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it,” says the Lord.’”

The Holy Bible (all 66 books, written over a period of roughly 2,000 years by 40 different authors from three continents, who wrote in three different languages) has a common thread of Jesus Christ running through it. I was reading a study of the book of Ezekiel that exposed a piece of this thread and brought it into plain view for examination.

It started that from the opening chapters of Genesis, a close connection is made between life and dwelling before God in the land of His blessed presence. Adam and Eve enjoyed intimacy with the Lord and life before Him while they lived in Eden. But when they broke the covenant, they were cast out of God’s presence and subjected to death (Genesis 1–3). Israel’s punishment for breaking the covenant was exile—being kicked out of the Promised Land where the Lord granted life to His people and sent among the Gentiles to experience slavery, suffering, and death (Deuteronomy 28:64–68). Paul spoke of life outside of the “covenants of promise” as life “having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians. 2:12).

Consequently, the ancient Jews who lived in Babylon understood themselves to be

essentially dead. This notion of “death in exile” forms the backdrop against which we can better understand this opening passage . God takes Ezekiel out to a valley and shows the prophet a mass of exposed bones (Ezekiel 37:1–2). Ancient Near Eastern peoples viewed unburied human bodies with particular horror, so the sense conveyed by the image is the old covenant people of God as dead and unclean in their sin. Moreover, the fact that Ezekiel sees only bones conveys the fact that the nation is really and truly dead. It is not going to be able to bring itself back to life. These are not bodies that have only been lying there a few minutes, and so it is possible that they might not really be dead. No, these bodies have been there a long time and have almost fully decomposed. Only God can help them.

The writer points out that the Lord promises that He will bring these bodies—(the nation of Israel)—back to life by His sovereign act. Moreover, He says the proclamation of His Word will accomplish their resurrection. God has Ezekiel prophesy over the bones, and at that point they are restored to life and given the Holy Spirit. The Lord is saying that He will restore His people through the foolishness of preaching. As part of this restoration, Israel and Judah will be reunited as one nation in God’s hand under David, namely, the Messiah.

Christ Jesus fulfills the teaching of today’s passage. Resurrection was central to His

ministry. He began His work in Galilee, the former northern kingdom of Israel, gathering in the descendants of that kingdom along with the descendants of Judah in Judea. Finally, He decrees that the proclamation of the Apostolic gospel is the means of bringing dead sinners back to life.

Matthew 28:18-20 Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always,  even to the end of the age.” Amen.

Under the fuller revelation of the new covenant, we see that the resurrection of Israel finds its fullest realization in the resurrection of the saints in the new heaven and the new earth. As Christians, we are the Israel of God, the one community of believers united by faith in Jesus Christ that is made up of believing Jew and believing Gentile alike. Our resurrection and inheritance of the restored creation—through the resurrection of Christ—fulfills Ezekiel.

Blessings