Introduction
As I mentioned last week and the week before, Ezekiel 33 was a turning point in the book of Ezekiel. The message from the Lord to the people in exile in the first thirty-two chapters was a message of judgment: God was going to destroy the city of Jerusalem and the people who lived in it because of their persistent unbelief and rebellion; and he was going to destroy the surrounding nations for what they had done to God’s people and for their foolish pride. God was going to send the Babylonians against Jerusalem and the surroundings nations. The Babylonians were the weapon in God’s hand and he was going to use them to kill and destroy the people of Jerusalem and the people in the other nations. From time to time, the Lord sprinkled that message of judgment with hope for the future, but mostly his message to the exiles in chapters 1 to 32 was a message of judgment and doom and gloom.
And then, in chapter 33, which is the turning point, we read that a messenger came from Jerusalem to the exiles in Babylon with the news that Jerusalem had fallen. What God said would happen had happened. And though that was terrible news for the exile, it was indeed a turning point, because from chapter 34 to the end of the book, the Lord’s message to his people in exile is much more positive and hopeful. In the remaining chapters of this book, the Lord announced to the exiles better days to come and hope for the future. God will restore them to the land and he will dwell with his people for ever.
And so, in last week’s chapter, the Lord announced that he was going to save his people from the wicked kings who once ruled over them and he himself will gather them from the nations where they had been scattered and he will bring them back to the Promised Land. And after they have returned, he will appoint over them a new and better king and he will make a covenant of peace with them so that they will live in peace and safety and will receive one blessing after another from the Lord.
And when the Lord referred to this new and better king, he meant the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God’s Only Begotten Son who came into the world as one of us and who came to be our great Saviour–King to deliver us from our sin and misery in this world and to give us everlasting life in the new heavens and earth where all of God’s people will enjoy perfect peace and rest for ever and where there will be fullness of joy and pleasures for evermore for all of God’s people. We’ll be perfectly happy for ever and we’ll worship God without weariness. And we’ll be able to enjoy all of these good things, because of Christ our Saviour–King who gave up his life on the cross to pay for our sins and to make peace for us with God for ever.
Today we’re going to study chapters 35 and 36. And we’re going to divide the two chapter into three parts. In the first part, which is the whole of chapter 35, the Lord announces his judgment on the people of Edom. In the second part, which is the first fifteen verses of chapter 36, he announces that the Promised Land will no longer lie desolate, because it will once again be filled with God’s people. And in the third part, which is from verse 16 in chapter 36 to the end of the chapter, the Lord promises to do wonderful things for his people in the future. And by doing so, he will uphold the honour of his name which his sinful people have dishonoured.
35:1–15
Let’s turn to the first part which is the whole of chapter 35.
The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel once again and the Lord told him to set his face against Mount Seir. Mount Seir was in the land of Edom. And by referring to Mount Seir, he means the land of Edom and its people. And the people of Edom were long-standing enemies of Israel. They were the descendants of Esau, who was the brother of Jacob from whom the people of Israel came. And so, two nations came from these two brothers: Israel came from Jacob and Edom came from Esau. And just as the two brothers struggled against one another, so the two nations struggled against one another. For instance, in Numbers 20 we read how the people of Israel were travelling to the Promised Land. They wanted to go through the land of Edom and asked for permission to do so. But the Edomites refused. And Amos 1 speaks of Edom pursuing the Israelites with a sword and how Edom’s anger raged continually and his fury flamed unchecked. And in Psalm 137 we read how the Edomites were glad when they heard about the destruction of Jerusalem. And the whole of the book of Obadiah is about God’s judgment on the Edomites because of their bitter hatred towards the Israelites.
In other words, the Edomites had it in for the people of Israel. And so, the Lord’s announcement that he was against the people of Edom would have been regarded as good news for the Lord’s people in exile. The Lord was finally going to punish Israel’s old enemy and he was going to give them what they deserved. As it says in verse 3, he was going to stretch out his hand against Edom and make the land a desolate waste. He was going to turn its towns into ruins, with no one living in them.
And when the Lord does this to Edom, the Edomites will know that he is the Lord. Do you see that at the end of verse 4? When the word LORD appears in the Old Testament in capital letters, then it’s God’s special covenant name. It’s the name he revealed to his covenant people and it speaks of his commitment to them and of how he has bound himself with a promise to be their God for ever. And so, when the Lord makes Edom a desolate wasteland, the Edomites will realise that he did this to them because of his steadfast love and mercy and goodness towards the Israelites. The reason he destroyed Edom was to rescue the Israelites from the bitter hatred of the Edomites. He was going to pay the Edomites back for what they did to his covenant people.
In verse 5, the Lord refers to Edom’s ancient hostility to his people and there’s a suggestion in the verse that the Edomites may have helped the Babylonians when they attacked Jerusalem. But now the Lord announces that he will hand them over to bloodshed. He means they will be killed. In fact, the Lord will fill Edom’s mountains and hills and valleys and ravines with the slain and their towns will not be inhabited.
According to verse 10, it seems the people of Edom looked at what Babylon did to Israel and they saw this as their chance to take over the land of Israel. They said, ‘These two nations and countries [i.e. Israel in the north and Judah in the south] will be ours….’ But they forgot that the Promised Land belonged to the Lord. They had no right to take it for themselves. Even though the Lord’s people had gone into exile, he still owned the Promised Land.
And look now at verse 13, where it says the Edomites boasted against the Lord and spoke against him without restraint. Perhaps they boasted that their gods were greater and stronger than Israel’s God. But the Lord heard what they said about him and he knew their plans to take over the Promised Land and he will not allow it. This is how I will treat you, he says to them in verse 15: ‘You will be desolate, O Mount Seir, you and all of Edom.’ And they will know that the Lord has done this to them because of his steadfast love and his covenant commitment to his people, Israel.
Application
And what the Lord did to Edom is a foretaste of what he will do to all those people in every generation who hate and persecute his people on the earth and who dishonour the Lord by their unbelief. While it may seem for now that they are getting away with what they have done to hurt the church of Christ and to dishonour the Lord our God, nevertheless, in the end, when the Lord Jesus returns in glory and with power to judge the living and the dead, he will repay them for what they have done unless they first turn from their sins in repentance and turn back to the one, true and living God, trusting in Christ his Son for forgiveness.
The Lord saw and heard what the Edomites did to his people and in the end he judged them for it. And the Lord sees what people are doing today to persecute his people. And in the end he will hold them accountable for what they have done to his suffering people. And in the end, God’s people will enjoy perfect peace and rest in the new creation to come. And that bring us to the second part of today’s passage: verses 1 to 15 of chapter 36.
36:1–15
In the previous part, God instructed Ezekiel to speak against Mount Seir in Edom. In this part, he instructs Ezekiel to speak to the mountains of Israel. And really he’s referring to the whole of the land. And according to verse 2, the enemy nations said that the ancient heights of Israel will become their possession. We’ve just seen that Edom saw what Babylon did to Israel as their chance to take over the land of Israel for themselves. But now the Lord has this to say to the mountains of Israel and to all the desolate ruins and deserted towns that have been plundered by the nations and ridiculed: in his burning zeal, God is going to judge and punish the nations, including Edom, for the malicious glee in their hearts and for their desire to take over Israel. So, God is against them and he will not let them get away with what they have done to Israel. Because Israel has suffered the scorn of the nations, then the nations around Israel will also suffer scorn. That’s in verse 7. God is going to repay the nations for what they have done to the mountains of Israel. The nations have made Israel desolate, but the Lord will make them desolate too.
So, God is against the nations for what they have done to the land of Israel. But God is going to do much more than that. Take a look now at verse 8 in chapter 36, where God addresses the mountains of Israel and he promises them that they will produce branches and fruit for his people in preparation for the time when they will come home. So, the Lord is announcing here that the exile is about to come to an end and his exiled people will be allowed to return home to the Promised Land. And look how he refers to the people as ‘my people’. They are his chosen people, the people he loves and cares for. Though they broke the covenant with him, he still regarded them as his covenant people whom he loved.
And when his people return home, they will discover that the Lord has got things ready for them. Just as we prepare a room for a relative who is coming to stay, so the Lord was preparing the land of Israel for his people who were coming to live there again. God will ensure that the land is ploughed and sown. So, the fields had been left desolate and bare for years. But that’s going to change. The land will once again be ploughed and seed will be planted on it. And God will multiply the number of people on the land. He will bring on the land the whole house of Israel. So, not just some of the people, but all of them will return: men and women and boys and girls from the twelve tribes of Israel. And the towns of Israel will be inhabited once again and the ruined buildings will be rebuilt. God will increase the number of people and animals and they will be fruitful and will become numerous.
Do you know what he’s saying? It will be like the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve had everything they needed and God blessed them and told them to be fruitful and to increase in number and fill the earth. And when the Lord brings his people back to the Promised Land, it will be like Eden and they will be fruitful and they’ll increase and they’ll fill the land because God’s blessing will be upon them. And God will settle people on the land and he’ll make them prosper more than before. And the Lord will cause his people to walk on the land of Israel. So, no longer will the enemy nations walk on it, but God’s own people will walk on it and enjoy it. They will possess the land, which God will give to them as their inheritance. And the land will never deprive them of their children. That is to say, their children will live long lives and won’t die in infancy because of famine or hardship. And no longer will the land hear the taunts of the nations. No one will ever speak against the land of Israel, saying that it’s no good for farming. No one will scorn the land, because the Lord will make the land fruitful and he will make his people prosperous and happy.
And look at the end of verse 11 where we once again have the same words as before: ‘Then you will know that I am the Lord’. The reason the Lord will bless the land is because of his steadfast love for his people and his commitment to them. He will bless and prosper the people, because he loves them.
Application
And we know from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah that the Lord commanded Cyrus, the king of Persia, to give the order to let God’s people go. The people returned to the Promised Land and they rebuilt Jerusalem, including its walls and temple, and they filled the land and planted the fields and they increased in number and they raised their animals. The Lord blessed them in many ways.
However, the return from exile was really only a foretaste of what the Lord will do for his people when Christ comes again in glory and with power to gather his people from across the nations of the earth to bring us into the new heavens and earth, where we’ll enjoy perfect peace and rest and gladness for ever. God will multiply the number of his people who live there, because he has promised that we’ll be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore: too many to count. And our every desire will be satisfied there; and no one will desire anything which is not right; and we’ll have everthing we need for perfect happiness. And to convey to us how happy and satisfied we’ll be, the Bible tells us that we shall not hunger or thirst there and neither the sun nor moon nor anything else will harm us. The sound of weeping will never be heard and our former troubles will be forgotten. We’ll be invited to take part in the marriage supper of the Lamb and we’ll drink from the water of life. As one theologian (Turretin) puts it: there will be light without darkness and joy without grief and peace without war and glory without disgrace and security without fear and happiness with misery and riches without poverty and life without death.
The return from exile was a foretaste of all these wonderful things which the Lord has stored up for all who trust in his Son who died to bring us to God in heaven above, where all will be well. And so, we should give thanks to God for his wonderful kindness to us in Christ Jesus and for promising us what we do not deserve and cannot earn, but which we receive as a free gift through faith in Christ our Lord who loved us and gave up his life for us that we might have this wonderful, eternal life in the presence of God in the new heavens and earth.
36:16–38
And so, we come to the third and final part of today’s passage from verse 16 to verse 38 of chapter 36, where the Lord to do more wonderful things for his people.
The Lord begins by telling Ezekiel that when the people of Israel lived in the Promised Land before the exile, they defiled it by the conduct and their actions. The land became morally polluted because of the wicked things they did. And he explains in verse 18 that they polluted the land because they shed blood. That is, they murdered one another. And they also worshipped idols. So, they sinned against God by worshipping false gods and they sinned against one another by killing one another. And so, the Lord poured out his wrath on them and he scattered them among the nations. He sent them into exile.
And wherever they went among the nations, they profaned God’s holy name. That is to say, they ruined God’s reputation. The people in the other nations knew they were the Lord’s people. And so, it seemed to them that Israel’s God was weak. He was no good. He wasn’t able to protect his people from their enemies. Now, the truth is that God sent them into exile because of their sins. But the people in other nations assumed they were taken into exile because their God was too weak to save them. So, their being in exile spoiled God’s reputation as a great God. And according to verse 21, the Lord cared about his reputation among the nations. He did not want his name to be profaned. He wanted the nations to know how great he is. And so, for the sake of his name, for the sake of his reputation among the nations, he was going to do these things for the people of Israel. He was going to act in such a way that the nations will see his greatness and that they will see that he is the Lord, the covenant-keeping God who loves his people with a steadfast love and who is able to save them and to transform them.
And so, this is what the Lord will do for his people. And we’re looking at verses 24 to 30 now. Firstly, he will take his people out of the nations where they had been scattered and he’s going to bring them back to their own land, which is the Promised Land of Canaan. Just as he once led his people out of Egypt and brought them into the land, so he’s going to lead them out of Babylon and wherever else they were sent and he’s going to bring them back to the land.
Secondly, he’s going to sprinkle them with clean water so that they will be clean. He will cleanse them of all their impurities and their idols. In other words, the Lord will cleanse them of their guilt. He will remove the stain of their sins from them. He will forgive them and purify them from all that is not right.
Thirdly, he’s going to give them a new heart. This new heart will replace their old heart of stone. By calling it a heart of stone, he’s saying it’s hard and unresponsive. And by saying it will be replaced with a heart of flesh, he means the new heart will be responsive. It will be alive. And he says he will give them a new spirit. In fact, he will put his own Spirit, the Holy Spirit, in his people. And the Spirit of God, living inside us, will move us to follow God’s decrees. He will enable us to be careful to keep God’s laws. He will incline our hearts to do what is right in God’s sight. The Spirit will renew us inwardly and make us more and more willing and able to do God’s will here on earth.
And fourthly, God will renew his covenant with his people. We see this in verse 28 where he says that they will live in the Promised Land and ‘you will be my people and I will be your God.’ That’s the covenant in a nutshell, when God declares himself to be our God and when he takes us as his people.
And once God has done all of these things for his people, he will bless them. So, take a look at verses 29 and 30 where he says he will call for the corn and make it plentiful; and there will not be any more famines; and he’ll increase the fruit of their trees and the crops in their fields.
And he says in verse 31 that they will then remember their evil ways and their wicked deeds. They’ll loathe themselves for their sins and detestable practices. And in this way they’ll know that God did not do these things for them because they deserved it. They will realise that they did not deserve anything from God except his wrath and curse, because they were sinners who sinned against him continually. And so, they did not deserve these blessings from the Lord. And that means the reason he’s going to bless them like this is for the sake of his own name. He wants the nations to see what a great and glorious and good God he is.
And so, look at verses 33 to 36 where he says that when he cleanses them and when he resettles their towns and when he rebuilds their ruins and when the desolate land is cultivated once again, then the nations will know that it was the Lord who did it. They will know that he’s the one who turned this desolate wasteland into a land like the Garden of Eden. The nations will realise how great and glorious and kind and good he is. They will honour him.
And whereas in the past he refused to listen to his people, because of their sinfulness, the time is coming, according to verse 37, when the Lord will once again listen to the prayers of his people. He will yield to their pleas and he will make them as numerous as sheep: as numerous as the flocks of sheep which used to be brought into Jerusalem for one of the annual festivals when they needed thousands and thousands of sheep for all the sacrifices which were offered. There will be so many of God’s people that they can’t be counted. The ruined cities will be filled with God’s people. And they will know that this has happened to them because of the Lord their God, who is the covenant-keeping God who loves his people with a steadfast, never-ending love.
And so, the Lord will bring his people back to the Promised Land. He’ll forgive and renew and multiple them. And he will enable them to live in a land like the Garden of Eden, And it’s all to the praise of God’s glory.
Application
What the Lord announced here is really the same as what he announced through the prophet Jeremiah when he said that he would make a new covenant with his people after the exile. What he said through Jeremiah is that this new covenant will not be like the old one which he made with them at Sinai in the days of Moses, because the people did not keep that covenant. However, because the people broke that covenant, the Lord was going to make a new covenant. And here in Ezekiel, he makes clear what the terms of the new covenant are: he will cleanse his people from all their unrighteousness; he will give them a new heart and spirit to love him; he will fill them with his Spirit to renew them. And the New Testament refers to these things as justification and regeneration and sanctification. Justification is an act of God by which he pardons our sins and accepts us as righteousness in his sight through faith in his Son. Regeneration is an act of God by which he gives us a new, believing heart so that we’re able to love God and trust in his Son. And sanctification is that work of God in us by which he makes us more and more willing and able to do his will here on earth. And so, under the terms of the new covenant, God promises to justify and to regenerate and sanctify his people.
And that new covenant was put into effect by the Lord Jesus Christ. On the night be was betrayed, he took a cup and he announced that it signified the blood of the new covenant, which he was about to pour out by his death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. Under the terms of the old covenant — the covenant he made with them at Mount Sinai in the days of Moses — the people were to sacrifice an animal and offer the blood to God to make up for their sins. But everyone knew that the blood of an animal could not really make up for their sins. That’s why they had to keep repeating those sacrifices over and over and over again. But when the Lord Jesus gave up his life on the cross, he was offering himself as the once-for-all, perfect sacrifice for sins. His blood covers over all of our sins so that everyone who believes is cleansed from all that is not right. As one preacher (Binning) says, though the current of sin in us does not dry up, but runs constantly while we are in this life, yet there is another stream that never dries up and is never exhausted and which is not emptied. And it’s the stream of Christ’s blood that runs as full and as free and as clear and as fresh as it ever did. It swallows up the stream of our sin and takes away our daily filth.
Christ died so that we might be justified through faith. And he enables us to believe by giving us a new heart. And through faith, we are not only justified, but we are sanctified by his Spirit who lives in us and who enables us more and more to do his will.
And what he begins in us in this life, he will bring to completion in the life to come when we will be set completely free from sin and when our only thought will be to do our Father’s will.
Conclusion
And so, in this final part of today’s passage, the Lord announced what he would do for us. He will cleanse us of our guilt. He will give our a new heart. And he will fill us with his Spirit to renew us in his image and to enable us to do his will. These are the terms of the new covenant which Christ put into effect when he gave up his life on the cross to pay for our sins and to make peace for us with God.
And God did not do this for us because we deserved it. We were sinners. We were his enemies. We deserved his wrath and curse and not his blessings. No, he did all of this for us, not because we deserved it, but for the sake of his own great name. He did it to make clear to the world how great and glorious and kind and good and gracious he is. He did it so that people will praise him throughout the world in every nation where the good news of the gospel is proclaimed. And he did it so that people will praise him both now and for evermore. And so, we should lift up our voices to praise the name of the Lord our God. And we should seek to glorify him in our daily lives while we wait to enter the glory to come where we’ll behold his glory and where we’ll worship him for ever.
Sermons and Stuff 