"..I'll remove the stone heart.." Ezekiel 36:24-28 (MSG)

God is alive and active in the lives of His people. He is not stoic or uninvolved but connected to where we are in our lives and where we are geographically on the earth.  

God is also decisive in His plan for us, He does not vacillate in His decisions but is firm in His resolve to gather His family together and remind them who they are and that they are children of Yahweh.

One thing the Lord is reminding me of this morning regarding this passage is that His main desire is to keep the language of Love alive and not let it die out.  

Our God is a God of love and great mercy which has never changed, His words remain consistent.  He wants to keep the dialogue going throughout the generations so other family members can hear Him speak and enter into closer communion with Him.  With the Lord, it was always about building a relationship, not sacrifice.

 

God says He is “going to take you out of these countries, gather you from all over, and bring you back to your own land.” You could say He is returning His people to Israel, but there is a spiritual meaning here, which is much deeper.  He is returning His people to their inheritance, which is back to a place of relationship that they may live with Him in His heavenly Kingdom.  

It was never about geographical Israel, even though it was a placeholder representing God’s spiritual kingdom. 

God never wanted Israel to have a king; He always wanted to be their king, personal and relational operating from each person's heart so that He may prove that He is a God of love through our lives devoted to hearing and following Him.  

“I’ll pour pure water over you and scrub you clean.”  The scrubbing is the work of the Holy Spirit, which works in our lives by revealing the word of God and allowing it to cleanse our ways, our thoughts, and our attitudes about life, and about God, and about ourselves.  

The scrubbing process is when we have conviction over our actions and choices in life as it affects us and other people. We want to please God, serve Him and become devoted to Him and His ways. 

God truly wants to reflect His heart toward others through us that we may become living breathing sons and daughters of God and can demonstrate that our King is alive and lives inside each of us.  

“I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you.” I love this part, for this is God’s active role in changing us from the inside out.  Our relationship with Him achieves this new heart and spirit; it is the work that He does in our lives by His abiding presence.  He puts a new spirit within us that quickens us; he literally “pinches us alive,” much like a doctor does with a newborn child out of the womb.

This is why the Scripture says,“Arise, you sleeper! Rise up from the dead and the Anointed One will shine his light into you!” Ephesians 5:14 (TPT)

“I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed.” Other translations say that God will remove “the stony heart,” which means He will remove a cold-hearted attitude toward Him and others and replace it with a God-centered heart of loyal obedience to Him. Here is God’s active role in the life of the believer, changing the heart so that His mercy can come through, and that compassion can be expressed to others.

“I’ll put my Spirit in you and make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands.” This is where the rubber meets the road, it is all about God doing what He does best through His Spirit.  There is no way we can live a Godly life on our own without His intervention. 

Notice He says, “I’ll put my Spirit in you,” He doesn’t say I’ll send my spirit to help you or assist you, there is an active role once again taking charge.  In other words, I will do this!  Why?  “To make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands.” To put it another way, you can’t do this on your own because you do not have the capacity within yourself. 

“You’ll once again live in the land I gave your ancestors.” That land given to our ancestors was figurative, it was the land of faith hearing and trusting God in His kingdom as He spoke to our hearts. 

“Throughout our history, God has spoken to our ancestors by his prophets in many different ways. The revelation he gave them was only a fragment at a time, building one truth upon another. But to us living in these last days, God now speaks to us openly in the language of a Son, the appointed Heir of everything, for through him God created the panorama of all things and all time.” Hebrews 1:1-2 (TPT)

“You’ll be my people! I’ll be your God!” God always wanted a people for Himself which is why He created man in the first place, that man might be His image-bearers.  

A rebellion in heaven corrupted that plan from becoming a reality, so God sent His Son which was born a man which triggered a war in heaven when Jesus was born. (see Revelation 12)  Jesus did the impossible; as a man, He fully restored God’s image to humankind so we could be His image-bearers once again, this time the leader of the rebellion was defeated.

Then I heard a triumphant voice in heaven proclaiming:

“Now salvation and power are set in place, and the kingdom reign of our God and the ruling authority of his Anointed One are established.  For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who relentlessly accused them day and night before our God, has now been defeated—cast out once and for all!” 

Revelation 12:10 (TPT)

There is now freedom from the accuser because he is defeated, and the light of God can shine through us as we allow Him to change us into His true image, which is Christ Jesus.

Be Blessed;
Stephen Barnett