May 20, Ezekiel 36
"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." - Ezekiel 36:26-27
Our God is a promise-making, promise-keeping God. In contrast to mute idols who could not make any promises, God made many promises through his prophets to his people. He made the promises to motivate them to return to him and serve him. In another contrast, God had the power to keep the promises he made and bring the things he planned into being. The idols were powerless, unable to do anything at all.
Some promises God made and blessings he gave were unconditional. He chose Israel and blessed them by his grace, not because of anything they did to earn his favor. But most of the promises he made to Israel were conditional promises. They would be blessed if they honored him alone as God and kept the laws that accompanied the promises in the covenant.
Beyond that initial favor God showed the Israelites, he was still gracious to them. He wanted to reconcile them to himself, even after they broke the covenant. He reached out in love to these serial idolaters who had been unfaithful to him over and over again. He wanted to restore them and bless them beyond their ability to imagine. As Chapter 36 reminds us, it was for the glory of his name that he rescued them from their calamities when they did not deserve to be rescued.
After the survivors from Jerusalem joined the rest of the exiles in Babylon, God made two distinct, multi-featured promises to his people once again. One was about restoring them to their homeland, taking them back to the land they lost by their willful rebellion against God. The other promise went beyond getting them back to their land. It was a promise about something God would do inside their hearts and lives that would give them new lives, restore their fellowship with him and make them different from the inside out.
God limited the duration of their exile from the beginning. The divine timer would count off seventy years before the remnant of Israel would return to the land they lost. God’s plans required a distinct, identifiable group of his people to be in the land God had given them when Messiah came. So he promised them that they would return. They would cultivate the now desolate land and it would be fruitful again. They would rebuild ruined cities. The people and their flocks would multiply. God did it all for the glory of his name and to set the stage for Messiah to appear in the right place at the right time.
The second big promise was not about a changed address. It was something God would do to change them, from the inside out, by changing their hearts and spirits under the new covenant of Messiah. God told them he was going to renew them by cleansing them from their idols and other sins. He said he would give them a new heart and a new spirit. He would change them from the inside in a way that external rules never could. He would bless them in ways that went beyond material blessings to affect their souls.
God's promises about these amazing things were conditional. He would do for them what they could never do for themselves. But they had to turn from their sins and obey him. The people did return to the land and rebuild the cities. They prospered to some degree. But they did not turn to the Lord. The book of Malachi shows how corrupt and sinful the people and even the priests were after they returned. So they forfeited many of the material blessings God offered them.
Those who received and believed on Messiah when he came would become God's true sons and daughters. They would experience what Jesus described to Nicodemus as being "born again." It would be a work of grace in their lives, but they had to surrender to Jesus as Lord. In Christ, they would be "a new creation," as Paul described it to the Corinthians. But the great majority of the Jews rejected Jesus when he came, and forfeited the spiritual blessings, too.
The promises of what the gospel offers us are here — forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit and new life in Christ. Our promise-making, promise-keeping God told them these things hundreds of years before Jesus came.
We are blessed with New Testament light to see and understand these promises. The gospel offers these very blessings to those who put their trust in Christ. He changes those who truly trust him and enables them to honor him and obey him. We obey him, not to earn salvation, but as evidence that we are saved. As amazing as that transformation may seem, it is backed by the guarantee of God's perfect faithfulness. What great promises! What a great God!
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—May 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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