Ezekiel is one of those places in the Old Testament where the gospel themes are not hard to find. I would call Ezekiel, "Resurrecting Grace."
Maybe the big questions of Ezekiel are: "Where do you look? What do you think? How do you act when life makes no sense? When the things that you depend on have crumbled?" Maybe that's your job that you thought you would have forever. Maybe that's a marriage that has broken up--it's unthinkable to you. Maybe it's physical sickness that's robbed you of your strength. Maybe it's a church that you thought would be a place of refuge and now is in horrible controversy. Maybe it's your family of origin that's just a place of controversy and division. When life is hard, when it doesn't seem to make sense, where do you run? Where do you hide? That's the world of Ezekiel.
It's a broken world. It's a world that looks like death is reigning and life is dead. And in that moment, it's tempting to question God's promises; it's tempting to question His power; it's tempting to doubt His presence; it's tempting to bring God into the court of our judgment and to question His faithfulness and His love.
On the surface, Ezekiel seems to be a portion of Scripture that you should not read if you're depressed already because it seems very depressing. But there is this moment in Ezekiel that's hope-given, so beautiful. It's that valley of dry bones; this word picture is just amazing. Dry bones as far as you can see, and the ultimate question of the whole biblical story is asked in that moment, "Can life come out of death?"
The reason that question so important is if the answer isn't, "Yes!" then we're doomed. And the answer is, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" God has that power and God has that willingness, and you can't look at life coming into those dry bones in Ezekiel without thinking of Ephesians where we're told that, "We who were once dead in sin are made alive in Christ."
You see apart from God's resurrecting life-giving grace, we're all just dry bones, we're just dead people walking. Out of death and destruction, God brings life! That's the story of Jesus. He who died conquered death so that we could experience new life in Him. In the darkest of moments, the gospel shines the brightest!
I am persuaded, and this will surprise some of you, that hopelessness is the doorway to hope because it's only when you give up on finding life anywhere else that you will seek life where it can only ever be found. When you look around and say, "There's death all around me, death inside of me, I can't look this way, and I can't look this way for hope," then you are ready to find the hope that can only be found in the person and work of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.
