“I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
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 vs 24- 27
Are you filled with hope today or are you stuck in a dark place where you are struggling to see how things can ever work out?
Wherever you are at, know that Jesus is in the midst of everything you are going through and that He has already provided a way out. When Ezekiel gave this prophecy, Israel was practically desolate and her people were exiled. God’s word came and He promised to not only bring back His people from the Babylonian captivity, but he spoke of a greater and more complete gathering to come. Israel were longing for release from their oppressors but Jesus was coming to release these prisoners from the captivity of their wayward hearts. “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you.” This foretells the new covenant of grace, promising the spiritual cleansing of God’s people made possible through the death of Jesus. The old testament sacrifices could merely cover sin as they were imperfect. The true cleansing of sin could only be accomplished through Jesus’ finished work on the cross.
In John chapter 3 as Jesus spoke with Israel’s renowned Rabbi Nicodemus, He explained about the new birth through the water and the spirit. Nicodemus would have understood the reference to this passage and how the words of the scriptures were being fulfilled. Jesus was here “to clean man from all his uncleanness.“ Instead of the law working from the outside in, with all its rules, laws and restrictions that merely resulted in behaviour modification, Jesus came to work from the inside out and give man a new heart resulting in spiritual transformation. Man would no longer have a heart of stone that was stubborn, willful and hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Instead, man would have a new heart fashioned after the heart of Jesus, a heart of flesh that can flow in love and be a channel of God’s grace to all around him.
Spurgeon wrote: “You may enlighten a man’s understanding and you have done much, but as long as his heart is wrong, the enlightenment of the understanding only enables him to sin with a greater weight of responsibility resting on him.”
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit empowers you today to trust in Jesus and follow his ways effortlessly. Meditate today on what he has done for you. He has given you a new heart and His Spirit lives in you. You are clean and blameless in his sight. Allow His Spirit to guide you and His voice to whisper how precious you are to Him. Your obedience is a product of love not duty, born out of trust and adoration for the one who has given us his all.
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Who Do You Say I Am Series – Exchange Church Belfast 2020