If you have been following along the January 2024 Scripture Writing Plan: His Mercies are New, you might think I made a mistake. Did we not just read this verse, yesterday? Sort of, but not really.
When God speaks something more than once, I believe it is important to sit up a little straighter and pay close attention. We are still in Ezekiel and yesterday we learned that God is going to give us a complete spiritual heart transplant. It is Him, through Christ, that our hearts are completely transformed. Today God speaks His promise to Israel, and us, again, and gives us more to what it means to have a new heart.
Ezekiel 36 gives us some comforting words. Ezekiel can very judgmental in declarations against Israel. In chapter 4-7, he rebukes them for their unfaithfulness and rebellion. They are to receive some pretty extreme and sever judgements because of their disloyalty towards God.
We read a sad statement by Ezekiel.
21 In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month, a fugitive from Jerusalem came to me and reported, “The city has been taken!”
Ezekiel 33:21
Jerusalem has fallen.
This is a very decisive moment for Ezekiel. His message now turns from judgement to hope. From reproach to promise. God’s punishment had been received and Ezekiel turns to the future and to the way God will act to revive and restore His people.
This is the decisive moment for Ezekiel and his ministry. His prophetic message turns from judgment to hope, from reproach to promise. Now that God’s punishment has been received, Ezekiel turns to the future and to the ways that God will act to revive and restore God’s people.
This brings us to our scripture today. It is the focal point in this chapter:
24 “‘For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. 28 You will live in the land that I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.
Ezekiel 36:24-28
God gives us His rescue plan! Notice all the things God speaks towards His people and us!
God’s actions.
Notice Ezekiel does not point to the people’s actions, rather, God’s actions. He does not point out what they people were responsible for doing, but emphasizes on God’s role. Ezekiel’s concern here is not to lay out a new set of rules for them to follow. God is their hope. God’s acts will save them.
God’s actions include:
- Gathering Israel back to the land
- Cleansing Israel
- Giving Israel a new heart and spirit to obey Torah.
The result of these transformations is that God will be their God, and they will be God’s people. The right covenantal relationship is reestablished.
God gathers.
First, God will gather the dispersed people. The exile has scattered God’s people away from the land, the temple and the community. This experience of exile is a traumatic one for the people. God will reverse this pattern by assembling the people. In the next chapter, Ezekiel 37, we get a visual of God’s work as the dry bones receive breath and connect back together.
God cleanses.
Second, God will purify the people. God cleanses them from their rebellion and defilement. The book of Ezekiel contends that the exile is a punishment for the people’s corruption. They are therefore in need of purification. Our passage mentions idols as one element in need of cleansing. They needed cleansing from their rebellion and sinful natures and lifestyles. God cleansed them from all of what brought exile upon them.
God gives newness.
Finally, God promises to give the people a new heart and new spirit. The imagery represents the people’s desires and will, their renewed commitment to God’s dream. They will think and act differently because of this gift from God. Their current heart is stone, that is, dead and unresponsive. It needs a transplant.
31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”—the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.
Jeremiah 31:33-34
Jeremiah mentions a new covenant (a renewed relationship between God and God’s people), which will include God placing God’s instructions within the people and writing it on their hearts.
My people, your God
The people will be transformed through spiritual heart surgery and renew their covenantal relationship with God. Ezekiel uses the language of Exodus (and Jeremiah) to explain this bond: “you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
Despite all the threats of judgment from earlier in Ezekiel and considering the people’s distressing experience of exile (loss of land, temple, kingship, community), God desires to be the people’s God.
God wants a relationship with God’s people as they move forward into restoration. God wants a relationship with you! God’s greatest mercy is no matter how much we mess up and rebel, He is waiting patiently for us to turn around and return to Him. To make Himself ours.
Ponder: Do I realize how important that statement is: He is my God? He wants Himself to be my one and only God?
It Starts Small 
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