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Week 3 — Leader's Guide Ezekiel 37:1-14 – the Giver Of WEEK 3 — LEADER’S GUIDE EZEKIEL 37:1-14 – THE GIVER OF LIFE CONTEXT & HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The Book of Ezekiel falls into the prophetic genre. Part of the difficulty of reading the Old Testament is that the books as listed do not correspond to the chronology of Israel’s history. In general the Old Testament has four major sections: The Law (Genesis-Deuteronomy), History (Joshua-Nehemiah), Wisdom Literature/Poetry (Job-Song of Songs), and Prophets (Isaiah-Malachi). ​Within​ each of the groups the books run roughly in chronological order, but writings of different genres written contemporaneously are divided. For example, David wrote the Psalms during the time period recorded in 2 Samuel, even though the two books aren’t printed next to each other in our Bibles. Ezekiel was a prophet of the Lord in the mid-600s B.C., actually around the same time as the prophet Jeremiah. Ezekiel prophesied in Babylon while Jeremiah prophesied in Jerusalem during and after the reign of King Josiah. You can read about Josiah in 2 Kings 22-23 and 2 Chronicles 34-35. Before his reign, God’s people in the promised land formed two kingdoms: Israel (in the north) and Judah (in the south). Judah ended up under the thumb of one of the most powerful ancient empires, the Assyrians. Around King Josiah’s time, they asserted their independence again, and began religious reforms. Ezekiel would have been a young boy at this time. He grew up only to see the new Babylonian Empire conquer Judah and carry off the young men of Judah to Babylon (including Daniel; see Daniel 1:1-7). Ezekiel was among them (Ezekiel 1:3). Ezekiel spent the first five years of his ministry prophesying that God would destroy Jerusalem because God’s people had abandoned Him (see Ezekiel 16 for an extremely poignant description). Not listening to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, God’s people witnessed the foretold destruction when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar razed Jerusalem in 587 B.C. (see Ezekiel 33, 2 Kings 25, 2 Chronicles 36). Following this Ezekiel was tasked with bringing a message of hope to Israel. In this week of curriculum we’ll explore our relationship with the Holy Spirit as “The Giver of Life,” a powerful image played out in Ezekiel 37. We’ll talk about who the Holy Spirit is, and what he does as we enter into a relationship with him. RELATED PASSAGES Romans 8 – ​The role of the Spirit in regeneration as explicitly outlined by Paul in the New Testament. Galatians 5​ – The work of the Spirit as manifested in those being regenerated: The freedom of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit. As a practical application, Galatians 5 can be a basis for the examen. KEY TERMS ● Breath: ​In Hebrew this word is ​ruah​, which means “breath” or “wind,” but it also means “spirit.” In the Greek the word ​pneuma​ carries the same range of meanings. This word was chosen for the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and it is the same word used when Jesus says, “​Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit [​pneuma​].” In verse Ezekiel 37:1 and 14 in the text clearly establishes this meaning. ● Son of Man: ​A term in the New Testament that Christ takes for himself, based largely on prophecies from the Book of Daniel. When a Christian sees this phrase she is invited to consider the ways it points to Christ. Here Ezekiel can be seen as a type of Christ: He proclaims the message of YHWH to the dead, sending the Spirit of God upon them. ● The Lord: ​The term here is YHWH, which most English translations translate as “LORD” with small-capitals to distinguish it from other divine names like ​Adonai (often translated as Lord). While there are certainly times the New Testament associates the Son with the Old Testament YHWH, the New Testament also identifies the Father this way. Partly this points to the fact that both the Son and the Father are fully divine, and so the divine name YHWH applies to both. In Ezekiel 37 we can read YHWH to point toward the Father, who sends for the Son of Man to preach to the bones. In doing so we can see deep echoes of the Trinity in this Old Testament passage. HERMENEUTICS: HOW TO READ THE OLD TESTAMENT The Trinity in Ezekiel: ​The Spirit is released by the Word at the direction of YHWH. Here we have an Old Testament icon of the Trinity which is mirrored throughout the rest of Scripture. Jesus, the Word (John 1:1), releases the Spirit (John 16:7) to accomplish the purposes of the Father (John 5:19-21). The language in the “Key Terms” section further fleshes out the trinitarian reading of Ezekiel 37. Learning to see the activity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament helps us to read the Old Testament better ​as Christians​. Every page of Scripture points to the revelation of God in Christ. The Church in Ezekiel​: Part of what makes reading Ezekiel 37 great for discussing the ongoing​ role of the Holy Spirit is how it forces us to engage with Scripture in a deeper way. The chapter itself shows Ezekiel given an image, and that image is a metaphor for Israel, as revealed in Ezekiel 37:11: Israel is the dead army, and God will restore them to Babylon. While this story is literally and directly about God, Israel, Babylon, and Jerusalem, it’s even ​more so​ a story about God, the Church, the City of Man, and the City of God. If Christ’s church represents true Israel (9:8), God’s interactions with Israel in the Old Testament can be read to apply metaphorically to God’s relationship with his church. There are limits to this: the church isn’t a nation-state led by a human monarch in possession of a physical land whose enemy is another nation-state. But the church is a holy nation (1 Peter 1:29) who looks to the promised land of God’s spiritual kingdom (John 18:36), led by the King of Kings (1 Timothy 6:15) against our final enemy, death (1 Corinthians 15:26). Ezekiel 37 can be read in the same allegorical way. KEY THEMES The Breath of Life: ​In relation to the Holy Spirit, the whole of Ezekiel’s vision seems to point to one dominant role: the Holy Spirit comes to bring life to God’s people. When one looks throughout Scripture one sees that the opposition of life and death is a (if not the​) predominant theme in Scripture. Paul calls Death the final enemy (1 Cor. 15:36); Christ came to remove the fear of death by defeating the master of death (Heb. 2:14-18); knowing God is eternal life (John 17:3). This death introduced in Genesis not only affects us bodily, but spiritually as well, producing disorder, disintegration, anxiety, and corruption in our minds, hearts, bodies, relationships, and loves. The image of dead bodies carries through to the New Testament. In Ephesians 2 Paul calls us “dead in our transgressions and sins.” We are the dead bodies in the valley of dry bones. Ezekiel 37 illustrates in a beautiful way how God deals with this reign of death in our lives. What brings the bones to life? The breath. This Holy Spirit is the ​Giver of Life​. In Genesis 2:17 God breathed and man was made alive. In John 20:20 Christ breathed on his disciples, and new life was given to them, the ​re-​creation of man. New life comes through the Holy Spirit, the breath of God. This process of coming spiritually alive is called regeneration. The Holy Spirit is beginning the work of regeneration even before we recognize his activity: he comes into the world to convict us and draw us to Christ (John 16:8). There’s an invitation here: God always wants to bring us to life and proclaims this desire in Ezekiel. Ezekiel 37 also shows us exactly what the Holy Spirit does in the life of the believer who hears that proclamation and accepts it: he gives makes us “come to life and [stand] on [our] feet;” he “sets us free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). We experience this at our conversion and baptism, what the New Testament calls being baptized with the Spirit. But Ezekiel 37’s most obviously points to the final resurrection of our bodies. Our bodies, at the end of history, will be raised, just as the dry bones in Ezekiel 37. This doctrine is central to the Christian gospel. The Sustainer of Life​. In addition to ​giving​ life, the Spirit ​sustains​ human life. The Holy Spirit doesn’t stop giving life at our conversion. We’re invited into more and more life. Jesus calls the Spirit our helper (​parakletos​). The Holy Spirit does a number of things in the life of the Christian. First, the Holy Spirit is our source of God’s ongoing presence in our lives, fulfilling Christ’s promise, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” The Holy Spirit works in us and grows us. This is called sanctification. The process is not always easy or fun. The Spirit convicts us and refines us. But in doing so the Spirit heals us, producing more life. This work in us by the Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit, listed by Paul in Galatians 5:22-23.
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