Self-Help
Have you ever got into a self-improvement program? Could be exercise, or decluttering. Holding on to things that only spark joy. I started doing the push-up challenge this month. And even though it is like day 3, I think I have hurt myself already.
In America, the self-help industry makes about $11 billion a year. There seems to be a great demand for wanting to stop some habit or start a new one. Go to the gym, stop worrying, be more confident so we can win friends and influence them. We may need 12 rules for life to help us to tidy our rooms and to know where our own boundaries lie.
There is nothing too wrong with any of this type of self-help change. It is good for your health to stop smoking or drinking too much. It is good to be less anxious and more confident, but today in our passage we see that the nation of Israel and us, need something more than some sort of habit change. We need a better makeover, one that is more fundamental, one that involves a whole new heart transplant, something we can’t do ourselves.
Israel broke the Old Covenant
Last week we saw the promise from God to David that someone from His line would be on the throne forever, and that David’s son was going to build the temple - a permanent place for God to dwell in the city of Jerusalem. However much time has passed and things are not going well for Israel. We read about the history of the nation in the books of 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles.
David’s dynasty lasted two more generations before the nation split under his grandsons Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
There remaining two tribes in the South were called Judah and of their 20 kings 4 of them did good in the eyes of the lord. The Babylonians came and attacked them and they ended up getting deported to Babylon.
So when we read Ezekiel we are with Israel in this Exile. What is left of the great nation of Israel is not much. The great city of Jerusalem was in ruins. Their walls were knocked down and their temple was destroyed. They were living under a pagan king in a pagan land. It would have almost been a trick question to ask at this time to point to the nation of Israel on a map.
A faithful Israelite could have been like Abraham in Genesis 15 asking God “What has happened to the promises?”
God promised to Abraham that a great nation would come from him and that his descendants would live in the promised land.
All that did happen, but now things weren’t that great. Under Moses, the people agreed to follow God and his laws. But over time, Israel forgot, and despite warnings after warnings by prophets. The people didn’t return back to God.
So Israel was exiled in another type of Egypt, not in their own land, not as their own people. Why is this? What is going on? and what has happened to the promises of God?
Israel had disobeyed God. It wasn’t because they weren’t good a politics, their economy wasn’t strong, or their strategic thinking in war wasn’t as good as the opposition. The reason they were exiled was because they had disobeyed God. They had broken a covenant they made with God.
Two weeks ago we saw their two-way covenant at Mt Sinai. Moses acts as the mediator between Israel and God and in Ex 19 and Ex 24 the people say “We will do everything the Lord has said”. This was confirmed with blood. But as a nation, they did not follow. They did not keep the covenant they made with God. Like a marriage, when one party is unfaithful there can be a divorce. In Jeremiah 3:8 when talking about the North and South Kingdoms God says
I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery. (Jeremiah 3:8)
They broke the covenant and they were sent away. That is where we are in this passage.
Did you watch the coronation of King Charles III? What struck me was that it was a deeply religious service. It’s held in Westminster Abby, the Archbishop of Canterbury does the service, and there are prayers and hymns and even anointing of oil. All through the service, as they are installing the ruling monarch, there is this overtone that the King is under God. The king doesn’t get to make up what is right and wrong, the king is to administer justice under the true King, God.
In 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor (not king) at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The pope was doing the service and when it came for Napoleon to be crowned, Napoleon took the crown from the Pope’s hand and placed it on his own head. What a statement. What was He saying? He was crowing himself, he would not be under the church or God, he would be his own ruler, he would be the Emperor, not under anyone else.
And that was Israel, they sought to live as their own nation, not under God. They had broken God’s laws. And that is us too. We don’t like living under rules or the law. We want to do our own thing. Israel was meant to of being the nation that reflected God’s love and blessing to the nations, but they ended up like everyone else, in disobedience to God.
And so in a foreign land under foreign rule, Ezekiel gets this promise from God which has massive implications for Israel and for us today.
God promises a New Covenant
His Name
God says in Ezekiel 36:22–23
“Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.
Israel in their disobedience, in their unfaithfulness had profaned God’s name. That is, they had brought disgrace upon the name of God, or upon His reputation. Sometimes, just saying someone’s name brings up an emotion, because of the name that carries. Rolf Harris. Ivan Milat. Hitler. When saying these names, their reputation may come to mind. And that is what Israel did with God.
They were not good representatives of God, they were immoral and idolatrous. They moved false Gods into the Temple that Solomon built and didn’t live how they said they would.
Honouring God’s name is a big theme in the Bible. It is what we pray in the Lord's Prayer, “Our Father in heaven, hallow be your name”. It is why in Psalm 23 we are led along the right paths, for his name's sake. In Matthew 28 we are to make disciples in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Lifting up God’s name is what God wants us to do. God is for God. There is nothing greater in the universe that God can be for. You and I are not at the centre of God’s universe, God is at the centre of His universe. If he was to exhaust something or someone else, then he wouldn’t be the greatest thing to worship, something else would be.
Throughout the Bible, we see the pattern of God saving people for His own reputation.
God rescues Israel from Egypt so Egypt would know that He was the Lord.
While in Exile, in Daniel 6, God rescues Daniel from the lion's den and a pagan king responds by saying God is Sovereign.
And here God says he will rescue his people, not because they are great. Not because they have been good, not for their sake but for the sake of His name. Because God wants the nations to know that he is the Lord through the saving act of his people.
The “I wills”
God is the active agent in all of this. Just listen to the next bit in our passage, see if you can catch a repeated phrase.
“ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine. Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices. I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, people of Israel! (Ezekiel 36:24–32)
It’s not hard to see all the “I wills” in this passage. This is a common theme in the covenants we have seen so far. Besides the Mt Sinai covenant where the people say “we will obey”, all the others God is initiating, God is promising.
With Noah God says He will not destroy the earth again by flood
With Abraham He says Gen 12:1-3 “”I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.””
Last week God said to David: I will provide a place for my people. I will establish your throne forever. I will give you rest from your enemies.
And in our passage today there are a bunch of I wills that God is promising to do
God, despite Israel, is going to restore Israel. He will:
- Bring them back to the land
- Clean them from idols
- Remove their heart of stone
- Put His Spirit in them
- Be their God
- Give them crops in abundance
There are lots we could focus on here. Both externally and internally. Israel spends 70 years in Babylon but then some come back. In Jerusalem, their temple and walls get rebuilt in Ezra and Nehemiah. And internally, God says He will clean them and give them a new heart and a new spirit.
Under the Mosaic covenant, they broke God’s laws. Not because the law was bad but because they were.
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The plan was we would go out to dinner at this place in Manuka and then afterwards we would go for a walk and I would propose, she didn’t know any of this. On the way to dinner, thinking about the night, with a ring burning a hole in my pocket, a police car shows up and we pull us over on Adelaide Ave. The cop asks if there was a reason why I was going 10 over the speed limit, and I said sorry, I was just thinking about other things. So that dinner I was a bit grumpy and quiet. Hannah thought it was just the ticket, and it was a little, I was thinking, it was stupid that I got a fine tonight, that wasn’t fair, I really wasn’t endangering anyone, they could up the seep limit on Adelaide Ave, the lanes are wide. Why tonight did I get this fine, I’ve been 10 over before.
Now at that moment, the problem wasn’t the law, we have speed limits for good reason, the problem was me. My heart was saying, this was a stupid law. I’m fine, I should be the exception, especially that night. We like laws for other people, but when it comes to us, really we are ok, we don’t need governing.
God gave the people the law and it was good, but the people disobeyed because their hearts weren’t good.
Our hearts need a cleanse, for they are dirty. We need something external, outside of us to help us in our disobedience, for we can’t change ourselves.
And God says to Ezekiel, there is a time coming when He will give his people a new heart and put a new spirit in them. So that they will be able to follow God’s decrees and laws, not for the purpose of avoiding trouble, but for His glory so the nations can know He is Lord.
We are people of the New Covenant
And the Good News is, that Jesus brought about this new promise. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, He changed the Passover to be about Him and this new covenant. That through his blood this new covenant was made, and in this we get these promises in Ezekiel.
Without this promise, there would be no hope for us. Left to ourselves we can’t obey God’s law. Israel tried and failed, I know I have tried and failed, but God doesn’t leave us on our own and say with cold indifference “You get what you deserve”. No, God comes down as one of us, who lives the lawful life required. He is the only one from the nation of Israel who says to the Mosaic covenant “I will obey” and does. And In Him, through His death and resurrection, we get his righteousness, his victory.
Jesus obeyed the law. He died to it and we are now under a new covenant.
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:6)
You may hear how Christians pick and choose the Biblical laws they want to follow. Why don’t we stone people for wearing polyester, or planting two crops in the same field? Why do you eat pork and shellfish now? Christians just ignore all sorts of things in the Bible, they pick and choose what they want to obey.
Those who claim Christians pick and choose parts of the Bible, are just showing their hand. They have picked and chosen from the Bible, and not read it. There is a divide in our Bibles between the Old Testament, or covenant and the New Testament, or covenant. It's because of this New Covenant that everything changes. It is because we have read the Bible and know where we are in the timeline.
We have been released from the law because Christ obeyed it on our behalf. He died to it and rose again in new life. And since we are in Him, we have died to the law and are given a new way of life. One empowered by the Spirit.
So this has massive implications for how we see the Christian life. God is the initiator. He saves us, for His glory, so the nations will believe. We don’t save ourselves and we don’t save our friends or families. God does that. We don’t have to get caught up worrying about evangelism techniques, or knowing all the right answers, or any of that. For it is God who saves. And those who He saves, will seek His glory, and be willing to extend His worship over the whole earth. It is because our God is a sovereign God that we can praise Him and be willing to live and die for His reputation. Because He is good. Because He keeps His word and saves a people for Himself.
The wooden man wasn’t pumping the water, the water was pumping the man. The Spirit is there to help us to live. A. J. Gordon goes on to say, when you see someone who is at work for God and producing results, recognize that it is the Holy Spirit working through them, not the person's efforts that are giving results.
In this new covenant, the spirit dwells in His people. God changes their hearts so that they can obey Him. Apart from Christ, we are all in need of a heart transplant. This means those in Christ are a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come. We can now get help from God to follow God for God’s sake.
So how do you know if you have the Spirit in you? Do you remember CD’s? If you look at the shiny part underneath, there is no way of telling what is on the disk. There are perhaps two ways of knowing what is on the CD. You can trust the writing on the top and you can actually play the CD. We can know the Holy Spirit indwells us by believing God, by trusting His writings and by seeing His results in our lives when we are obedient to Him
So when your kids are narky at each other you can have patience with them. When a work college does something annoying causing you more work you don’t have to fly into a fit of rage towards them but instead, you can be kind to them. When someone slanders your name, you don’t retaliate. When interest rates are on the rise and the cost of living is going up you can have peace and still be generous and not selfish. When someone in your family or life group makes some political statement you disagree with, you don’t let that become a dived between you. For the Spirit helps us order our love in the right way.
The school teacher in Ngukurr was also a Christian and he knew the boys who had stolen the car. He told them, those folk over at the church, they are my people, they will forgive you if you ask. So these boys sheepishly approached the MMM crew and the leader was a bit unhappy with them and step forward, but this couple said they gestured for him to step back, and said it was their car that was stolen they will deal with this. They approached the boys and said “You stole our car. You are forgiven” and extend their hands and they shook. And they could tell by the boy's emotion that this was nothing they had experienced before. These white guys forgave them for stealing their stuff. But that crew were Jesus folk, and Jesus folk live in step with the spirit not in step with the world. They did get their car back and I think later still their tools did turn up.
People of God, our God has saved us to make His name great to the nations. We have the Spirit, who has given us a new heart. As we go home today, go to work tomorrow, call friends and family, may we seek His name and His glory, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Sovereign Lord,
We thank You that you are God and that You persistently created a people for yourself, even though we had broken Your holy laws.
Thank you that you revealed a new covenant for your people, so that they can obey you for the sake of your Holy name.
Only by the help of your Spirit, may we joyfully fulfil your command to love, so that the nations will know you are God.
We ask this through the name of Christ our Lord
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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