Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we open with a valley vision and a stick sign act.

Ezekiel's vision in the valley of dry bones is probably his 20 minutes of fame.

This is what he's most known for.

In fact, I've heard probably half a dozen sermons preached on this,

using it to illustrate a variety of different things, like God making dead people into a powerful army,

or how people have the power to speak life into things, but lots of them

have nothing to do with what the text is actually teaching here and some of them are even

biblically inaccurate.

So today we're going to make sure we keep our eyes on the text and the context to see what God is actually communicating to us about himself and his plan.

Ezekiel has a vision of a bunch of dry bones in a valley.

As far as the eye can see, there's nothing but femurs and

fibulous. Then through Ezekiel, God commands the bones to live. This is God's

command, not Ezekiel's. We can hear it in verses 4 through 6 where God says,

prophecy over 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

...