The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 231: The Valley of Dry Bones (2022)

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Fr. Mike explains the significance behind the mention of bones in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In Jeremiah, we learn that the bones of God's people are scattered because of their worship of false gods. In Ezekiel, we see the prophet prophesy over the valley of dry bones and the Lord’s Spirit restoring and moving within them. Today’s readings are Jeremiah 8, Ezekiel 37-38, and Proverbs 14:33-35. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation. Discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today, it is day 231. We're reading today from Jeremiah chapter 8, Ezekiel chapters 37 and 38, and Proverbs chapter 14 verses 33 through 35. As always, the Bible translation

that I'm reading from is the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible into your reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. You can also subscribe to this podcast by clicking on subscribe and you receive daily episodes and updates and all those fun things. Speaking of days, it is day two, three, one, which is the opposite of one, two, three, not really, but we're reading Jeremiah chapter eight. And as I mentioned, Ezekiel 37 and 38, the dry bones, the valley of dry bones, the sticks, the prophecy about Gog. If you've ever heard of that guy, well, you will today and Proverbs 14, 33 through 35. The book of the prophet Jeremiah, chapter eight, a lament

for Judah. At that time, says the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its princes, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs, and they shall be spread before the sun and the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs, and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the hosts of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have gone after, and which they have sought and worshipped. And they shall not be gathered or buried. They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, says the Lord of hosts. You shall say to them,

thus says the Lord, when men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return? Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit. They refuse to return. I have given heed and listened, but they have not spoken rightly. No man repents of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? Everyone turns to his own course like a horse plunging headlong into battle. Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtle dove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming, but my people know not the ordinance of the Lord. How can you say we are wise and the law of the Lord is with us? But behold, the false pen of

the scribes has made it into a lie. The wise men shall be put to shame. They shall be dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord and what wisdom is in them. Therefore, I will give their wives to others, and their fields to conquerors, because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain. From prophet to priest everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed. They did not know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among the fallen.

When I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord. When I would gather them, says the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree. Even the leaves are withered. And what I gave them has passed away from them. Why do we sit still, gather together, let us go into the fortified cities and perish there? For the Lord our God has doomed us to perish and has given us poisoned water to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord. We looked for peace, but no good came,

for a time of healing, but behold, terror. The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan. At the sound of the neighing of their stallions, the whole land quakes. They come and devour the land and all that fills it, the city and those who dwell in it. For behold, I am sending you among serpents, adders which cannot be charmed, and they shall bite you, says the Lord. My grief is beyond healing. My heart is sick within me. Listen, the cry of the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land. Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her king not in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images and with their foreign idols? The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the wound of the daughter of my people, my heart is wounded. I mourn, and dismay has taken

hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? The book of the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 37, the valley of dry bones. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley. It was full of bones, and he led me round among them. And behold, there were very many upon the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, you know. Again he said to me, Prophesy to 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.

And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together bone to its bone, and as I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no spirit in them. Then he said to me, Prophesy to the Spirit, prophesy, son of man, and say to the Spirit, Thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O spirit, and breathe

upon these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the spirit came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet an exceedingly great host. Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost. We are clean cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God. Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you home into the land of Israel.

And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, says the Lord. The Two Sticks The word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, take a stick and write on it for Judah and the children of Israel associated with him. Then take another stick and write upon it

for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and all the house of Israel associated with him. And join them together into one stick that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, will you not show us what you mean by these? Say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join

with it the stick of Judah and make them one stick that they may be one in my hand. When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will take the sons of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all sides, and bring them to their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king over them all. And they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. They shall not defile themselves any more with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions, but I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes. They shall dwell in the land where your fathers dwelt, that I gave to my servant Jacob. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will bless them and multiply them,

and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I, the Lord, sanctify Israel when my sanctuary is in the nations will know that I, the Lord, sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary is in the midst of them forevermore. Chapter 38. Prophecy against Gog. The word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog,

the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you forth and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great company, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords. Persia, Cush, and Put are with them, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords. Persia, Cush, and Put are with them, all of them with shield and helmet. Gomer and all his hordes, Bet-Togarmah from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes, many peoples are with you. Be ready and keep ready, you and all the hosts that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them. After many

days you will be mustered. In the latter years you will go against the land that is restored from war, the land where people were gathered from many nations upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste. Its people were brought out from the nations and now dwell securely, all of them. You will advance, coming on like a storm. You will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your hordes, and many peoples with you. Thus says the Lord God, On that day, thoughts will come into your mind,

and you will devise an evil scheme, and say, I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates, to seize, spoil, and carry off plunder, to assail the waste places which are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations who have gotten cattle and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth. Sheba and Adan and the merchants of Tarshish and all its villages will say to you, Have you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your hosts to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to to seize spoil? Have you assembled your hosts to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold,

to take away cattle and goods, to seize great spoil? Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog, thus says the Lord God, On that day, when my people Israel are dwelling securely, you will bestir yourself and come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great host, a mighty army.

You will come up against my people Israel like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me, when through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. Thus says the Lord God, my wrath will be roused. For in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath, I declare on that day, there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel. The fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the beasts of the field and all creeping things that creep on the ground and all the men that are upon the face of the earth shall quake at my presence and the mountains shall be thrown down and the cliffs shall fall and every wall shall tumble to the ground.

I will summon every kind of terror against Gog, says the Lord God. Every man's sword will be against his brother. With pestilence and bloodshed I will enter into judgment with him. And I will rain upon him and his hordes, and the many peoples that are with him, torrential rains and hailstones, fire and brimstone. So I will show my greatness and my holiness, and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord. The book of Proverbs chapter 14 verses 33 through 35. Wisdom abides in the mind of a man of understanding, but it is not known in the heart of fools. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. A servant who deals

wisely has the king's favor, but his wrath falls on one who acts shamefully. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. You are good. You are our father. You are our dad. We thank you so much. God, you have made your heart known to us and you've called us back to yourself. You who can raise the dead to life. You who conquered death.

And so that death doesn't have power to conquer us. We ask you to send that spirit, the spirit that came upon the dry bones, as Ezekiel prophesied, the spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, the spirit that you gave to the apostles and you give to us, your children now. We ask for that Holy Spirit to bring us to life, especially, Lord, the broken parts of us, the dead parts of us, the parts that seem lost and without hope, the parts of us that disqualify us, we believe they disqualify us. Lord God, let your Holy Spirit come upon us in those parts. Bring us to life. Bring us to you. Bring us home. And we ask this

in Jesus' name, in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen okay bones bones are is the word today because we started out with bones in Jeremiah chapter 8 I mean it talks about the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem the kings of Judah the princes all their bones going to be brought out and that there's something so remarkable about this because what is it what is Jeremiah talking about obviously here's Jeremiah and he's staring down the barrel. He knows what's coming because the word of the Lord keeps speaking to him. Remember, it has not yet happened. This massive destruction of Jerusalem has not yet happened. And Jeremiah is calling

them to brace for impact, right? Now, when we hear Ezekiel, it's already happened. And we're going to get to that in just a second. But Jeremiah, it has yet to happen. And gosh, this is so incredible. Where it talks about the bones, what is going to happen. The bones of the kings of Judah, princes, bones of the priests, prophets, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They should be brought out of their tombs and spread before the sun and moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served. They have sought and worshiped, right? All these false gods that the people of Judah, God's own people, they have gone after foreign gods of foreign peoples in foreign lands.

And so what is God saying? Okay, what's going to happen is you're going to be brought to foreign lands. I mean, essentially, you love the gods of these foreign peoples. Okay, you're going to be brought to them, that you're going to be uprooted from this place. You're going to be taken away from the land that God has given to you, the land that the God has promised to you. You want those things? Okay, you can have them and I'll take you to those places and you will belong to those people as slaves and you'll belong to those false gods as slaves. Because that's what our idols do. Our idols enslave us. We recognize that, gosh, the Lord God, when we belong to him, we don't belong to him as slaves. We actually, scripture says again and again, Jesus makes it possible that we belong to the Lord as sons and

daughters. But the false gods in our lives, we have to serve them, right? We belong to them. We are the slaves of those things that we give our heart to, except God. Because God brings us into this relationship where he raises us up as opposed to the false gods, the idols that drag us down and drag us back. And so here's Jeremiah and he keeps saying, why is this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit and refuse to return. And there's something about this that, you know, Jeremiah uses the example of, you know, even storks, they know the time to fly, turtledove, swallow the crane. They know, I mean, if you've ever been to Israel, you know that it's incredible migratory epicenter. I don't know if that's the right word, but it's a location where you can see

every different species of bird, not literally every, but you don't think they have penguins, but so many species of birds that pass through that land. And here's Jeremiah pointing out, all these birds look up. They know when it's time to migrate. Why don't you know that this is the time to migrate?

How can you say, here's verse eight, we are wise and the law of the Lord is with us. But behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. And remember, Jeremiah is going to be talking about those false prophets that keep on saying, he repeats himself. In fact, from chapters before in verse 11, they have healed the wound of my people lightly. Remember that kiss the boo-boo kind of a situation where it's a compound fracture saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed. They did not know how to blush. And so what God is saying is I have to, I'm going to have to, I'm going to let them fall

because they continue to be of two minds and they continue to not repent perpetual backsliding. And it's just so, so awful and devastating because we recognize that that can be us we can give our hearts as well to these false gods that promise everything and deliver nothing they promise everything and they take everything that's just such a difficult word but the encouraging word of course is in chapter 37 of Ezekiel. Remember that Jeremiah is preaching ahead of the fall of destruction of Jerusalem, but Ezekiel is preaching after the fall, the destruction, and where there's no home anymore. There's no Judah anymore. There's no Jerusalem, essentially, anymore. It's been destroyed. The temple has been destroyed, and it is dead. It is done. It is over.

And that's where you have this incredible, incredible vision, this incredible action in chapter 37 in the valley of the dry bones, because what does God say? Here's a valley of dry bones. All there is is just, it's just death. If you see a bunch of bones, there's no future for the bones. There's only past, right? It's over with. And yet God says, prophesy, speak the word of God, my words, he says, over these bones and they all come together and then continue to speak them,

the Holy Spirit and the breath of life comes into them and this whole massive host, it says, and they lived, the spirit came into them and they lived and stood upon their feet an exceedingly great host. Now, he says, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are clean cut off. And that's what, I mean, honestly, the people who are living in Babylon at this point, yeah, there's no way to

go home. There is no home to go back to. It's done, just like a bunch of bones. And yet, here's God who says, I promise I'll put my spirit within you and you shall live and I will place you in your own land. And then you shall know that I, the Lord have spoken and I have done it, says the Lord. Remember, God has used Babylon not to destroy his people, but to call his people back to him. God has used what looks like complete destruction to convert their hearts so that they can know that we can know that he is the Lord God truly and forever. And so that's what the image of the dried bones is. That's what the image of the two

sticks are, right? Here is not just Judah, but also Israel, those two nations. And here's Ezekiel holding those two sticks in one hand, making them one stick saying, I will restore all of the nations and I will bring back King David. Remember that why were people waiting for the Messiah? They're waiting for the Messiah for many reasons. This is one of them. In chapter 37, but verse 24, it says, my servant David shall be king over them and they shall all have one shepherd. Remember that when we look forward to the Messiah, when they look forward to the Messiah, when they look forward to the Messiah, when they look forward to the Christ, which is the same thing, right?

It means anointed one. They're looking for this promise here in chapter 37 and in other places of that future king in the line of David, who would be the anointed one, who would be the one shepherd of the one people, the one king of the one kingdom. And we're going to hit the next messianic checkpoint in a few weeks, I guess, a couple weeks from now. But we're going to hear in Matthew's gospel so clearly how Matthew completely sees Jesus and he understands that Jesus truly is the fulfillment of this promise. That Jesus is the Messiah. He is the King who has come to restore the kingdom. Remember, this is the promise that yeah, there's that one nation, right? Remember the people of the North, the kingdom of Israel that was gone. It's destroyed, right? It's never

to be found again. And yet it will be in Jesus Christ, reestablishing the kingdom with himself as the king, as the anointed one, as the perpetual David forever. He is able to bring all peoples to himself and restore the kingdom of Israel in its fulfillment in Christianity. And that's just such an incredible, incredible thing. One last note that we're going to hear about Gog tomorrow as well, the prophecy against Gog today, and tomorrow, the fall of Gog. And we ask, well, who's Gog? And the answer is, it's a mystery. It's a mystery. It is, yeah, not a lot of information when it comes to who Gog is. It could be, he could be Nebuchadnezzar, Magog, the land of Magog, it could be Babylon. That could be the case. But in this case, it's just a mystery. I'm going to leave it at that. If you want to do some extra research on that, that'd be great. But I want to say we're kind of running out of time today. And so if I

don't have anything wise to say about Gog of the land of Magog, that I might have to, you know, call it for the day. Man, what a gift, honestly, you know, to be in God's word. Sometimes it's clear. Sometimes it's not clear. Sometimes we say later on, oh my gosh, I see that now. Sometimes when it comes to chapter 38, we're thinking Magog and Gog. I don't know. I still don't know. Maybe you know, in which case you can share your knowledge with all of us. Above all, let's share God's grace with all of us. That Ezekiel spoke, he preached, he prophesied, and the Spirit of God came upon dry bones. We ask the Lord in the power and the name of Jesus Christ to send his Holy Spirit into the

dry bone areas of our lives, where we think that we're done, we think that it's over, we think that there's no hope. There is hope wherever the Lord is present. There is always, always hope. And the Lord is present in your life and in my life. And so there's hope. That's why I'm praying for you. And I ask you, please pray for me. We all need it, don't we? My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.