Preached Sunday, December 16, 2012 from Ezekiel 36:25-28
Theme: This passage shows us what it means to have “salvation—and that from God”.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
This has been a very sad and very dark week. We were only beginning to recover, it seemed, from a dreadful shooting at Clackamas Town Center that had cast a dark shadow over the holiday season for so many; when barely two days later, we heard the news of the staggeringly horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
I was informed about Newtown when I was down the street having coffee. There are a few of us pastors in the area who take our Bibles and our notepads down the street at McDonald’s to sip coffee get ready for the Sunday message. One of these pastor friends came up to my table while I was studying and asked if I had heard the news that he had just heard. I hadn’t yet; and so he told me about the news from Connecticut. As I sat stunned, he said, “This is something we will need to speak about this Sunday, isn’t it?” And before I left that morning, I went over to his table and we prayed together for the people suffering from this horrible tragedy. I’m suspecting that the same thing happened between pastors in coffee shops and fast-food tables around the country Friday.
I had to think about what I would say this morning. Would I need to scrap whatever it was that I was preparing to say? I had been drawn to a passage in Ezekiel 36 over the past week. That’s where I was studying when this pastor friend came up to me. After giving it some thought, I have concluded that the best thing to do was to keep right with what it was that I had originally intended to prepare and preach.
And as I prepared, I began to realize that this passage from Ezekiel deals with just exactly what we should talk about on a Sunday morning such as this.
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In Ezekiel 36, God was speaking through the prophet to His people Israel. They were in captivity in Babylon because of their sinfulness and idolatry.
In the early part of that chapter, God lets His captive people know that He planned to restore them to their land and bless them. But before He—a holy God—could bless such rebellious and disobedient people as He truly wanted to, He would first have to change them.
Look at why God said He wanted to change them. In verses 22-24, God tells Ezekiel;
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord,” says the Lord God, “when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land”‘” (Ezekiel 36:22-24).
And I ask you to pay careful attention to what He goes on to say in verse 25-28; because it’s there that He tells them in what way He would change His poor, unfaithful, fallen people. He says;
“‘”Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God”‘” (vv. 25-28).
What a complete transformation it was that God promised He would bring about in His people. He wouldn’t just call them back to Himself; because, if He did that and nothing more, they would remain the same unfaithful people as before. But neither did He call them back to Himself and urge them to try harder to be a people who are pleasing to Him; because they are utterly fallen and unable to do so. Instead, He promised to bring them back and—by His grace; as an act of His own initiative and of His own doing—to completely transform them from the inside out.
This was something that God had already established as His intention for His people. This is the second time He says in Ezekiel that He would do this wonderful thing. Back in Ezekiel 11:19-20, He said;
Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God (Ezekiel 11:19-20).
And now, in our passage this morning, He affirms once again that this is what He was going to do for His people.
The kind of transformation He speaks of here in Ezekiel 36—a transformation that He brings about of the whole person from the inside out—is nothing less than a description of “salvation”. It’s not the sort of man-made “transformation” that people think that they can bring about for themselves. It’s not a ‘man-made salvation’. Any transformation that fallen people can bring about for themselves is not salvation at all. Rather, this is describing a complete, spiritual transformation that only God can bring about for them.
In the words of the apostle Paul, as he wrote in Philippians 1:28, this is “salvation—and that from God.”
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When we look at the dreadful events of this past week, we can’t help but be shocked at the wicked potential of the depraved human heart. I heard people on the news—people who were not necessarily people of faith—say that there is no other way to describe what happened than “pure evil”. And what was perhaps most shocking of all was that these horrible acts of evil were done by people that no one ever expected would do such a thing.
Now; as Christians, we have an explanation for such surprising and staggering manifestations of evil. We believe what the Bible teaches us about the fallen nature of the human family. We believe that our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned against God’s command in the garden. As a result of their disobedience, they fell from the perfect state of being in which God had made them; and they spread their fallenness to every other member of the human race that came after them. The human race is broken because of sin. Praise God that our fallen nature doesn’t manifest itself to such a horrible degree very often. But the fallenness is there nevertheless.
And if we looked at such evil acts—and the fallenness from which they spring—from a strictly human level, it would seem hopeless. Government leaders are promising to do something to prevent such things from happening again; and of course, they should do all they reasonably can. But the truth is that there’s nothing that governments—or any other human institution—can do to change the fallen nature of the human heart. With all the socializing, with all the psychoanalyzing, with all the philosophizing, with all the educating, with all the laws and regulations and controls, and even with all the ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ that we can apply to ourselves, we still can’t rid ourselves of this horrible inner fallenness that sometimes springs up and terrifies us with its evil potential. Humanly speaking, we’re truly helpless to free ourselves from our fallenness—and from the evil it produces.
But that’s why this morning’s passage is so important. It describes a “salvation—and that from God” that does change the fallen human heart. It’s a passage that reminds us of what it looks like when God does what only He can do to truly transforms people. It’s the message of how God Himself—by grace—completely changes fallen human beings. It’s not something that God merely passes on to fallen institutions of mankind and says, “Here; use these basic principles, follow these simple steps, and make yourselves better.” Rather, it’s something by which He calls people to Himself individually, and graciously transforms them from the inside out—thus transforming fallen humanity one fallen sinner at a time.
The apostle Paul once wrote,
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:16-17).
What a hope it is that we offer to this fallen world! What a great need the gospel meets! How faithfully we should be to proclaim it!
Please look with me, then, at Ezekiel 36:45-48; and see what it means to experience “salvation—and that from God”.
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Notice first that . . .
1. IT MEANS BEING CLEANSED BY GOD FROM ALL SIN (v. 25).
That’s something that every child of Adam and Eve in this fallen world needs—complete cleansing from sin.
Sometimes people think that they can bring that about by mere personal “reformation”—the idea that, even though they had lived sinfully before, they can ‘reform their ways’ by their own efforts and ‘do better’. They try to ‘turn over a new leaf’. But even if fallen human beings could reform themselves, they can never cleanse themselves of all the guilt for all the sins that they had already committed before a holy God.
God doesn’t settle for mere “reform” in the lives of the people that He saves. He accepts for nothing less than the complete cleansing from all sin in our lives—past, present and future. Nothing other than that can make a sinner welcomed in His sight; and make them sound and healed in their soul. Anything less than that would not be salvation. And so, in Ezekiel 36:25, He says, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.”
God has provided for the complete keeping of this promise—the complete cleansing from all sin—through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross. As it says in Hebrews 9:13-14;
For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:13-14).
We absolutely need that cleansing in order to live before God as we should. And it’s something that only God Himself can do for us. That cleansing is ours through faith in Jesus and in the sacrifice He made for us. 1 John 1:5-9 says;
This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:5-9).
I appreciate what one dear brother pointed out to me the other day; that God here says that He not only cleanses us of the filth of our sin, but also cleanses us of our idols. It was our love for something other than Him that got us in trouble in the first place. But He takes away even our idols. He so utterly transforms us that we no longer go to sinful things in order to get our needs met. We go to Him instead.
This is what it means to be truly saved by God—that is, to be washed by Him with pure water; to be without spot or blemish in His sight; to be completely cleansed by Him of all sin, so that we can enter into full fellowship with the One who made us for Himself.
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Notice next that . . .
2. IT MEANS BEING GIVEN A NEW HEART BY GOD (v. 26).
Because of the fall of Adam, we are born with a spiritual “heart problem”. Apart from God’s grace, our heart—the very central dynamic of our inner being—is inclined toward rebellion against Him. As it says in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” If we’re honest about it, the sinful potential of our own hearts surprises even us! People often try to make-up for a bad heart through “religion”. But God doesn’t accept that. In Isaiah 29:13 He says,
. . . these people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men” (Isaiah 29:13).
Mere man-made “religion” on the outside—with a fallen and rebellious heart still in operation on the inside— changes nothing. Jesus Himself once spoke of external acts of ‘religious ritualism’ and said,
“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man . . .” (Matthew 15:19-20a).
The outside of someone may look “religious” and “spiritual”; but the inside can still be rebellious against God, and stubborn in its own ways, and hard toward God’s commands. We follow the inclinations of our heart—and if our heart remains unchanged, so do our sinful inclinations.
God doesn’t settle for the same old heart in us. Nor does He accept it when we try to make the same old hard heart a little more “religious”. He accepts nothing but a complete “heart transplant”—an utterly new dynamic in operation in the inner man. In Ezekiel 36:26, He tells His people; “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh”—a heart that is no longer hard toward Him; a heart that is no longer inclined to evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and blasphemies.
This is what it means, then, to have “salvation—and that from God”. It means being given a brand new heart by God.
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But it’s still not enough to be given a new heart—to have a new inclination in the inner man to live as God commands. True salvation from God means more than even that. And so, as we go on to read verse 27, we find that . . .
3. IT MEANS BEING EMPOWERED BY GOD TO LIVE A LIFE
THAT PLEASES HIM (v. 27).
In Ezekiel 36:27, He tells His people, “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
Sometimes, people “resolve” to live as God wants them to live. In the power of their own abilities, they make up their mind to live a better life. But our own abilities are unreliable; and any “resolve” in the power of our own efforts will only lead to failure. As the Bible tells us in Jeremiah 10:23;
“O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).
But in true salvation “and that from God”, God does not trust us to our own efforts to live the life that pleases Him. He doesn’t leave us to our own abilities to live in accordance with His commandments. He doesn’t depend on our “resolve” to live a holy life before Him. True salvation from God means that He not only washes us clean from our sins, and even changes the inner inclination of our being, but also places into us the very power both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
The apostle Paul puts it this way;
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:1-4).
True salvation—and that from God—means that God causes the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, to dwell permanently in those He saves; so that He empowers them from then on to live as He desires, and causes them, by the Holy Spirit’s enabling, to walk in accordance with His word.
Complete life-transformation that is translated into action—and all by God’s own doing!
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And before we leave this passage, there’s one more thing to notice about true salvation—and that from God . . .
4. IT MEANS BEING GIVEN A BRAND NEW IDENTITY
IN RELATIONSHIP TO GOD (v. 28).
God promised that, after He called His people back to Himself and restored them; after He, by grace, washed them clean of all their sins; after He placed a new heart and a new spirit in them; after the Holy Spirit took up permanent residence in them and empowered them to live according to God’s will; He declares in verse 28, “Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.”
Man-made ‘transformation’ is merely a matter of “reinventing” one’s self. It’s a matter of the same old person re-arranging all the fallen aspects of what is already there into a new form of the same old fallenness. They aren’t really new people at all. If fallen people try to present themselves to a holy God on the basis of merely reinventing themselves in that way, they would never be acceptable in His sight.
But when God Himself saves someone, they become completely new people, with a completely new identity, who enter into a completely new relationship with Him. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:17;
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
They are no longer strangers and aliens to God because of our sin; but as Paul puts it in Romans 8:15-17;
For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together (Romans 8:15-17).
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Now, dear brothers and sisters; this is the message that it’s our privilege to declare to a fallen and dark world such as ours—a world that is reeling with shock at the evil potential of our own fallenness—a world that feels hopeless, and helpless, and that believes that nothing can really be done to transform our fallen nature. We declare “salvation—and that from God”.
A faithful preaching of the gospel doesn’t mean that such horrible tragedies as we saw last week would never again occur. This is still a fallen world; and such things, sadly, will happen so long as people continue to rebel against God—and until the time when the Lord Jesus returns to this earth. But what we are saying is that, even in the face of such horrible tragedies, we are not hopeless. Human beings are not stuck in their fallenness. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest force for human change in the world—able to utterly transform even the most evil man or woman who hears and believes.
The gospel brings about a salvation in which God does nothing less than completely wash away all of a person’s sin—past, present and future. It’s a salvation in which He creates a new heart in the redeemed sinner, and renews a right spirit within them. It’s a salvation in which God the Father places His Holy Spirit within them and empowers them to live for Him. It’s a salvation that is so great that He transforms them and makes them into His own people—His own dear children; and enters into a relationship with them as their God. There isn’t any message more relevant to these dark times than that!
And there isn’t anything more important for us personally than to make certain that we truly have been saved with a salvation that is from God. If we have merely “reformed” ourselves; or adopted “religion” or “resolved” to live a good life; or even sought to “reinvent” ourselves according to some pattern that we admire, we are fooling ourselves. Our fallen nature remains unchanged, and we are not saved.
Jesus Himself put it this way:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God . . . Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again'” (John 3:3, 5-7).
Make absolutely sure, then, that you have been transformed by a salvation that is of God’s own doing—that you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ and have been washed by the Father of all sin through faith in His Son; that He has given you a new heart that is inclined to follow His way; that His Spirit is at work in you—empowering you to live for Him; that you truly have been made by Him to be among His people, and that He truly is your God.
You can not be truly “saved” by any other kind of ‘salvation’ than “salvation—and that from God”!