Summer Conference Notes--Ezekiel 37:1-14

Two weeks ago I was at RUF's Summer Conference in Panama City, Florida. These are the notes I took at the first night's large group session.

Driving image for the rest of conference: The Word of God is like an untamed, uncaged, fearsome lion, and we need to surrender ourselves to it and quit trying to put it in a cage or act like it's a kitten.

Scripture for the Night: Ezekiel 31:1-14

The Word of God comes in different types of "buckets:" Proposition, story, poetry--each a different mode of revelation.
--Ezekiel's bucket is a visual revelation, or apocalyptic prophesy.

It is important to note that it begins with God, God's hand sweeps Ezekiel off like a barrel over Niagara Falls.

We don't need better quiet times or another great truth to apply to our lives, we need our hearts to be reached.

Ezekiel was taken to a valley, not a mountain. Mountains were traditionally where heaven and earth met, but he valley was desolate, filled with bones.

The answer to God's question "Can these bones live?" is the point of the passage.

In the ancient Middle East, covenants were made between weak and strong nations.
--If the weaker nation broke covenant, they were destroyed and their bodies/bones were tossed into a valley, a symbol of the broken covenant. This was an image Ezekiel's audience would have understood.
-->Likewise, our hearts are dry and cast out, "Our bones are dried up, we are cut off," because of our own pursuit of sinfulness, our own covenant breaking.

Sometimes, this dry-bone-ness is manifested in a sort of depression, sometimes in a pressure, like we are carrying a huge weight on our shoulders: everything: our relationship with God, everything with school, etc.

When we feel left for dead, like dry bones lying in a valley, then the Lion roars the loudest.

Illustration: In the movie Defiance, [which was an excellent movie] Tuvia was crushed under the weight of all those people relying on him.

At the end of yourself, change happens on the spot. God spoke, and immediately the skeletons came together.

God appeared to Ezekiel when he is in Babylon, not Canaan, which means that God went into exile with Israel. God followed his people into an exile that He himself imposed on them.