Taken from a sermon preached in January 2026

A new year always carries a quiet question beneath the celebrations: Can things really be different this time? We talk about new beginnings, fresh starts, and renewed commitments, but deep down many of us wonder whether change is possible—or whether we are standing once again on dry ground.

I learned something about dry ground years ago when my family moved to California. I decided to plant a garden, confident that hard work and good intentions would be enough. I tilled the soil, planted seeds, and watered faithfully. But almost nothing grew. The ground was dry—far drier than I realized. I hadn’t prepared the soil, and I hadn’t understood the environment. Only one thing thrived: a sunflower I planted almost by accident. Everything else withered.

That experience mirrors a deeper spiritual reality. In Ezekiel 37, the prophet is brought by God into a valley filled with bones—very dry bones. They had been dead a long time. God asks Ezekiel a haunting question: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel wisely answers, “O Lord God, you know.”

What follows is not a lesson in human effort, but divine power. God commands Ezekiel to proclaim the word of the Lord, and as he does, the bones come together. Sinews form. Flesh appears. Yet there is still no life—until God breathes His Spirit into them. Only then do they live and stand on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

God explains the vision plainly: the bones represent His people—cut off, hopeless, spiritually dry. And to them He makes a promise: “I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live.” This is not about self-repair or moral improvement. Dry bones cannot resurrect themselves. Only God can give life.

That promise reaches its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. When Jesus speaks with Nicodemus, a religious leader, He tells him plainly: “You must be born again.” Knowledge, heritage, and religious activity are not enough. New life requires new birth—a work of the Spirit.

Jesus makes this unmistakably clear at the tomb of Lazarus. Standing before death itself, He declares, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” Lazarus had been dead for days. His situation was beyond repair. And that is precisely the point. Jesus does not arrive early to prevent death; He arrives to defeat it.

This is the hope of the gospel. No matter how dry the ground, no matter how long the bones have been dead, Christ still raises the dead. He does not ask us to impress Him or fix ourselves. He asks us to come broken, empty-handed, and honest.

If there is a resolution worth making, it is this: to come to Jesus and trust Him fully. Because when He breathes life, dry bones live—and they live forever.