April 11, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

FROM THE INSIDE OUT
Ezekiel 36:24-30
First in Sermon Series: Are You Filled?

Do any of you remember the old Heinz catsup commercial where the person is waiting for the thick, rich Heinz catsup to come out of the bottle and they’re playing Carly Simon’s song in the background, “Anticipation. Anticipation is making me wait, keeping me waiting…”? In my strange, demented way, it hit me this week that that’s what Old Testament prophecy was like—anticipation, longing, waiting for what God had ahead for the people that was so much better than what they had. It was about the anticipation of God breaking into their desperate times and lifting them out of their despair and hopelessness.

Well, the Old Testament passage we’re going to look at this morning is very much about anticipation. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Church may have been a New Testament event, something Jesus clearly anticipated and spoke about with His disciples before He left them—but the prophets of the Lord had centuries before heard God speak to them about the Holy Spirit coming to live in the hearts of people and the dramatic changes He would bring.

Just last week was Easter. In the Christian calendar, we’re living in the light of Easter now. We’ve been reminded again that while Jesus faced a cruel, torturous cross in order to provide for our salvation, that death could not keep Him! The Lord is risen! (He is risen indeed!) It’s still true, isn’t it?! But before He died and throughout His resurrection appearances to His followers, Jesus spoke about the coming of the Holy Spirit. We’ll celebrate the event of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the New Testament Church on May 23rd this year—Pentecost Sunday. But until then we’re going to be in a series of sermons I’ve called, “Are You Filled?”—as we consider the role of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives. I hope you’ll join me on the journey!

We’re going to begin with a passage from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. Let me try to set the stage for you. Ezekiel is writing from a bad situation to more than 10,000 fellow Jews in the same situation. They’d been exiled a thousand miles from home and living in the heart of the Babylonian Empire, in what is now Iraq.

Babylon had already invade the Jewish nation twice. They had made their point that they were the new world superpower replacing Assyria. In their two invasions of Israel, they had demanded tax money from the Jews. On their second invasion, they took thousands of Jews with them, Ezekiel included. Political prisoners, of sorts, many were free to live as they pleased in Babylon, as long as they didn’t try to go home.

Ezekiel was a priest—and now he had nothing to do since the work of a priest took place in the Jerusalem temple and the temple for Ezekiel was now a long and forbidden commute. But God gave him a new job—and he became a prophet to the Jewish exiles. His message had two points: first, that God was going to allow the Babylonians to destroy what was left of the Jewish nation because of their unfaithfulness; and second, that God would eventually send the Jews back home to rebuild their nation. While the first part was hard to hear, the second part gave them hope. It was the “anticipation” part I was speaking of earlier.

Let’s turn to Ezekiel chapter 36 and I want to begin reading at verse 24. And as I read, may I challenge you with the reminder that the God we speak of here is the same ever-present God who today meets the needs of those who trust him, regardless of what our circumstances may be.
[Read Ezekiel 36:24-30, NIV]

I love the word pictures in this passage. Particularly graphic to me is the image of God removing from us our heart of stone and giving to us a heart of flesh. Other biblical translators have put it in words that add to the imagery—
• “I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed.” (Ezekiel 36:26, The Message)
• “I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.” (Ezekiel 36:26, NLT)
The words of Ezekiel are reminders of what he had earlier written, in chapter 11—
“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 11:19, NIV)
The new heart would replace Israel’s old heart of stone which had become hardened against the Lord and His ways. The people would be empowered to live in the godly manner called for in the covenant brought before them by Moses centuries before—and they would be God’s people and He would be their God.

In this word of hope from God through His spokesman Ezekiel, God promises to put His Spirit in them and move them to follow His ways. Let’s consider a few of the ways that Ezekiel tells us that God works in our lives through the Holy Spirit. (Through the Holy Spirit, God…)

First of all, God wants to cleanse us. He cleanses us from our sins. Ezekiel’s imagery is that God will sprinkle clean water on us, washing away all our impurities. He’ll scrub us clean. Our filthy behavior is washed away. The shame and the guilt go down the drain. While we can never cover our sins by being good enough to make up for it, God has provided for the cleansing of our sins through the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. His blood covers our sins—and we are cleansed.

Ezekiel also looked ahead to the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and said that God’s Holy Spirit would come to live in us! He fills us with His Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God comes to abide in us. That’s what was ultimately fulfilled on the day of Pentecost described in Acts 2—and it’s what made the difference in the lives of the disciples of Jesus who so easily wavered in their faith and in their actions before they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And friends, it’s what can make the difference in our lives too—so that we don’t waver in our faith, strong one day and sadly weak another. When God’s Holy Spirit abides in us we are transformed from the inside out. And just as this was a word of hope to the Israelites in captivity, it’s a word of hope to people like you and me who so much need God to deliver us from flakey Christianity and the ups and downs we go through in our spiritual life if God’s Spirit isn’t abiding within us.

And in a wonderful sense, the Spirit empowers us to do His will. We just have to admit that on our own we fumble and fall every time! Whenever we find ourselves relying on our own spiritual fortitude, we find what we’re really made of! We’re like jello! Have you ever tried to scoop jello into a bowl and had it jiggle off the spoon? It has no substance! Have you heard the phrase—“like trying to nail jello to the wall”? Can you imagine that? It would just slip right through the nail and plop onto the floor! And the truth is that we simply can’t have much substance in our spiritual life unless God’s Spirit is empowering us to become the people He wants us to be and empowering us to carry out what He asks us to do!

Several years ago, I sensed God calling me to do something that seemed way beyond my comfort zone! Have you ever been there? Do you ever wish God would quit stretching you in such ways? I’ll admit that looking back I can be nothing but grateful for the ways in which He has led me and empowered me to do His will, but I’ll confess that when I’m going through it I’m not so grateful for every aspect of the journey!

And so it was then. Friends and family members had opinions and gave input—in fact, more people gladly gave their opinions than I cared to hear from on the matter! And in my time with God, I had to ask Him, “What do you make of this?” And almost as clearly as if He were speaking to me I heard the words God spoke to the Apostle Paul when Paul was struggling on his journey—“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9) It was as if the Lord was saying to me, “Let’s just get this straight now: You aren’t adequate for this task, but I am…and that’s all that matters!”

I’ve learned to live with that promise and come to believe that His grace is sufficient! His power is made perfect in my weakness! He empowers me to do His will! I’ve found it to be true over and over again…in so many of the hurdles and challenges of life. And I’m so desperately dependent upon Him empowering me!

The other day I came upon the notes from the devotional I shared with you as a congregation 2 ½ years ago—the evening that you had your first opportunity most of you had to check me out as your potential pastor. The Church Board had just nominated me to become your new pastor and many of you had come to see this new guy and see what he and his wife were like. I shared the promise from 2 Corinthians 12:9 with you that evening, and noted that we were all stepping out into new water in exploring the possibility of this pastor/church relationship and seeking God’s will in the matter. There was a lot of excitement about the possibilities, but also a bit of anxiety about the unknowns—for all of us! I was recalling this week that just weeks prior to that evening I had never even heard of Meridian, Idaho! And as we’ve leaned on Him, the Lord has empowered us to carve out a wonderful relationship and He is working through us together in marvelous ways! But make no mistake about it—it’s His empowering that makes the difference! It’s always been that way—and it always will be!

Back to Ezekiel’s words about what the Holy Spirit does for us, we learn that the Spirit offers a new covenant with God. Ezekiel was looking ahead and speaking of a new relationship between God and us. Did you know that the labels “Old Testament” and “New Testament” could also be expressed as “Old Covenant” and “New Covenant”? The Old Testament prophets looked ahead to the new covenant that God would make with His people, where the Lord would declare, “You will be my people, and I will be your God.” And as I said a moment ago, the Lord empowers us then to live up to our part of that new covenant! And let’s not forget that there are great blessings in this new relationship. Ezekiel spoke of the way that the Lord would bless them—and He continues to bless those today who eagerly embrace this new covenant that God offers to us.

I suppose the most significant thing to me this morning in the words of Ezekiel is that the Holy Spirit transforms us. It’s this new heart that has gripped my thoughts this week—the removal of our stony heart and God putting in its place a tender, malleable heart that is prepared and eager to do the will of the Lord! God does for us what we could not do for ourselves!

I sometimes wonder if the greatest challenge people face in fully embracing Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is the matter that in our humanness we seem to have this propensity to resist anyone telling us what to do. We’re glad that Jesus has forgiven our sins and we’re glad for the blessings He brings into our lives—but it’s a whole other thing to embrace all of what He has in mind for us and all of His promptings along the way. So we push back from Him, preferring to do things the way we want to do them, somehow convinced that our way is infinitely better than God’s way—which sounds pretty silly when you consider that He’s Who He is and we’re just—well, we’re just us! But we live out that battle too many times, don’t we?

Did you catch the words from Ezekiel that address this very matter?
And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:27)
He’ll give us a heart that desires the ways of the Lord! In other words, He wants to give us the “want-to” of obeying Him. He transforms us from the inside out in order that we will have a growing desire to do the will of God.

You’ve probably heard of the young boy who was a bit out of control at school one day and his teacher instructed him to sit down in his chair. He resisted for a while, but she finally made her point and he relented and sat down—but not without mumbling loud enough for her to hear him say, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but on the inside I’m still standing!”

Those of you who have had the privilege of raising strong-willed children know exactly what I’m talking about! We always thought our firstborn, our son Justin, was the one about whom James Dobson had written his famous book, “The Strong-willed Child”! And while Justin’s a wonderful young man today and experiencing great success in his career, I remember my wife Cindy becoming so frustrated with his strong will as a toddler that she’d sit down and put her head in her hands, and express her desperate fears that he’d be in prison by the time he was 20!

But the strong-willed child really doesn’t have much on most of us—because we like to have things our own way too! The problem is that our ways aren’t always the ways of the Lord—and our ways aren’t always the best ways for us or for others. And while God lays out His way for us, we find ourselves resisting it for all kinds of reasons. And what becomes apparent is that it is a “heart” issue—and that’s what the Holy Spirit addresses in our lives. He transforms our hearts and gives us the “want-to” to do God’s will!

He gives us a new heart! He takes away the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh—that’s tender and willing to do the will of the Lord! It’s a heart transplant! He takes away our heart that resists the Lord and in its place gives us a heart that longs for the ways of the Lord!

Cindy and I have known three people across the years who’ve had heart transplants. One was the mother of our kids’ school friends in their elementary years. She was involved with Cindy in PTA, and became quite a spokesperson for the cause of heart health and organ donation. Another was a pastor friend who had been seemingly quite healthy until a massive heart attack destroyed his heart. And the other is someone some of you would know—Dwight Douglas—son-in-law of Dr. Quentin Howard and brother-in-law to Shirley and Quentin Howard. It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it, to think of a healthy heart being transplanted into the body of someone whose heart is no longer functioning properly!

The trade-off is a pretty good one—a healthy heart for a sick and dying heart. The doctors surgically remove the heart that is so weak that it’s barely functioning—the color isn’t what it’s suppose to be, the muscle that a heart is suppose to have simply isn’t there, and part of the heart has already died—it’s quit working! And in its place the doctors put a heart with a strong beat and good color. It’s absolutely amazing! It changes everything! It’s absolutely transformational!

And what scripture is getting at this morning for us is that God—through His Holy Spirit living within us—removes our heart of stone that is cold and resistant—like this rock. As hard as I would try, I couldn’t shape this rock to be in some other shape. Even with the right tools, I’d shatter it if I tried to reshape it. I really can’t do much about it—just as we sometimes feel hopeless in changing who we think we are and the problems we face and the temptations that seem to have a firm grip on our lives. So we excuse away our anger when we blow up at someone—“that’s just the way I am!” And we rationalize that which is sinful and dirty and shameful, making excuses that it’s still not as bad as some people or it’s just “who I am.” All the while, we resist truly becoming the people God wants us to be.

Have you ever felt your heart was hard? Have you ever felt yourself resistant to God? Is your heart cold and indifferent to God’s daily promptings? Do you even hear His voice anymore? Maybe “indifference” is the greatest tragedy of a hard heart. I suppose our indifference to God can be seen as the result of a lot of things. Maybe it’s our own weariness of trying to do it His way and failing miserably every time. Maybe we just don’t feel ourselves worthy of this new kind of relationship with God (even though He clearly thinks every one of us is worthy of it!). Maybe others who said they were following the Lord have disappointed you and made you doubt that any of us can ever truly live a Christian life! Maybe you’ve been hurt and you’re just angry with the world and angry with God (though your anger’s not gotten you anywhere except for making your heart even harder)!

Do you believe that God could change you—from the inside out? If He could really do it, would you be willing to let Him?

You see, that’s what this whole passage is about this morning—God wants to transform us from the inside out! He wants to send His Holy Spirit to live within us—to cleanse us from our sins, to fill us with the abiding presence of His Spirit, to empower us to live the way He wants us to live, to offer us a new covenant—a new relationship with God, and, ultimately, to transform us from the inside out! He wants to give us new hearts that long to do His will—and remove from us our hard, resistant, cold hearts.

Do you realize what this hope that Ezekiel proclaimed said about our Heavenly Father? It tells us that He loves us deeply and wants to help us live life at its best. It tells us that our Heavenly Father provides all that we need in order for that to happen! It reminds us that He is the God of Hope!

We’re beginning a journey for the next six weeks as we explore what God can do in our lives through the Holy Spirit. I want to ask you to commit yourself to this journey with me—to be here every Sunday you possibly can be, but, even more importantly, to seek the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in your life. Just as it’s true for our physical hearts, sometimes we have spiritual heart problems and aren’t even aware. I want us during these weeks to open ourselves up—to be open and honest before ourselves and before God—to let Him change us as He sees fit so that each of us has a heart that’s tender toward the ways of the Lord, that yearns to do the will of God, that seeks the heart and mind of God in all our ways. Will you commit yourself to that journey? I believe God will bless you if you will.