The toe bone connected to the foot bone.......

The old song about "Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones" was popular during my early childhood such that it's nonsensical anatomy lesson still rattles around in my head: "The toe bone connected to the foot bone, the foot bone connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone connected to...." But it was later in life that I was able to make that most vital connection: that this is a spiritual song about conquering that "last great enemy."

The song is based on a story from the 37th chapter of Ezekiel in which the prophet is transported in a vision to a valley filled with dry bones and is caused to walk among them. The sight seems to have unnerved the prophet a bit. When God, his tour guide, asks "Son of man, can these bones live?" he meekly replies "Oh Lord God, you know." Whereupon God gives His preacher a peculiar command, "Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD...." Many is the preacher, I'm sure, who has felt he was preaching to the cemetery, but in this case the word evokes a stirring reaction:

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them.... and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. - Ezekiel 37:7-8, 10

As eerie and macabre as all this may sound it is actually a message of bright future hope in stark contrast to present despair. The prophet is at the time a captive dwelling in the land of Babylon. That mighty empire was even then crushing the nation of Israel under its heel such that the people lamented "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off." It is in this context that God ushers His prophet into a valley of dry bones for an audio-visual demonstration of His power. But where are this place? The prophet does does not say.

Ezekiel probably does not identify his location because he expected his fellow captives to remember an event that had taken place in recent time, of which he may have been an eye witness. About the time the prophet would have been twelve years old, King Josiah, a pious reformer who sought to bring his apostate nation back to faith, lead the army of Israel in battle against the King of Egypt. It was a notably unsuccessful campaign: "Pharaoh Neco killed him at Megiddo as soon as he saw him. (2 Kings 23:29)" Brief as this snippet of history is, it contains the clues we need. Megiddo is a valley in northwestern Palestine, thus this must have been that "exceedingly great army" whose defeat would have marked the end of Israel's hope. But, as the prophet learns, even death is not final:

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 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 am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD. - Ezekiel 37:12-14

Though the nation of Israel had been slain by Babylon and even then lay in the grave of exile, God promised, in one of the rare Old Testament images of resurrection, to overturn that power of death and restore His nation. By this word we, too, can hope:

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.... When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

"Death is swallowed up in victory."
"O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?"

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. - 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54-57

AMEN!

Pressly