Ezekiel 36:27
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The Ghost Army was a unique and highly secretive unit within the United States Army during World War II. Their mission was to deceive the enemy, and they used a number of psychological warfare techniques. Really, their job was to mislead and confuse the enemy forces on the battlefield. And there was just over a thousand people that were a part of this effort, And they carried out more than 20 campaigns or so that were these deception campaigns.
So they had, for example, one of these campaigns, they had sound engineers that would simulate the noise of a large armored unit that were on the move. And they accomplished this by playing, they recorded sound effects through loudspeakers. Another one, they would even use inflatable tanks and trucks and aircrafts made of rubberized fabric that were designed to look like real military vehicles and equipment from a distance.
And they would paint fake vehicle tracks and tire marks on roads and use canvas screens to hide military movements. They even had people under this division wear uniforms of high-ranking officials that would attract enemy attention. They set up dummy camps, complete with tents and vehicles and equipment to divert the enemy's attention away from actual allied operations. The Ghost Army's efforts were highly successful in deceiving German forces about the location and the strength of Allied units.
One thing was particularly unique about it. The work of this unit was hidden. You couldn't see it. It wasn't widely known. For the common army soldier, they wouldn't have even known about the work or the efforts of this unit. The work was covert, working inside the larger U.S. effort to win the war. Our text this evening is Ezekiel 36, 27.
It can be found on the front of your bulletin. It reads, And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So the point I want to draw out of Ezekiel 36 27 is this. Christian the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you, actively working to make you holy. Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you, actively working to make you holy. And I'll focus on two points about this truth because the Spirit resides in you. The first point, the Spirit is working to make us holy.
And the second one, we are responsible to put sin to death in cooperation with the Spirit. Without the Spirit, we are powerless. We also know that the Spirit doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of living for the glory of Jesus Christ. Since Christ is holy in himself, he wants us to be holy in ourselves, but not by ourselves. So our first point, the Spirit is working to make us holy. We see clearly here in the Old Testament the promise of the Holy Spirit, God the Father, has shown his love for us by giving us two of the most precious gifts.
God has given his people his Son and his Spirit to reside inside of us. The Holy Spirit is God's divine presence among his people. And that's what we see here in Ezekiel. And in our text this evening, we see that the Spirit has a vital and responsive role in our lives. In the Old Testament, we see that God's promise is that he will work a good work in his people. We see that through a promise.
So what is that good work? Well, God would cleanse them from their sins. Jump up two verses in Ezekiel 36, 25. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all of your uncleannesses. God would give them a new heart, a disposition that is vastly different than what they had before. Instead of a heart of stone, insensible and inflexible, God would give them a heart of flesh.
This is a soft and tender heart. This is something different. And finally, we see in our text this evening that God will cause them to walk in his statutes. What does he say he will do here? He says He will put His Spirit within them. His Spirit will act as a teacher, guide, sanctifier. It is important to know here that God doesn't force people to walk in His statutes by some type of external, physical force.
But He causes them to walk in His statutes by an internal person. The internal person is the work of the Spirit in our lives. And this is the same Spirit that David speaks about in the Psalms. When you hide your face, they are dismayed. When you take away their breath, they die and return to dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground.
This is also the same Spirit that rested in Christ in Isaiah 11, 2. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. Talking about Jesus, shall rest upon Jesus. The spirit of wisdom and understanding. The spirit of counsel and might. The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And this is the same spirit that is in us. Romans 8, 9. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the spirit.
if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. The purpose of the Spirit in our life is to bear witness to Christ and conform us to Christ-likeness. The Scriptures refer to us as saints. The term saint means one who is holy. We must be made holy since holiness is not found in ourselves. This work is done by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not more holy than just the Father or the Son, but we call the Holy Spirit holy because of His work that He's doing to us. The work of the Spirit in your life is thorough, exhaustive, it's comprehensive, it's complete. If you're a Christian, and I don't want you to miss this point, the Spirit's work in your life is all-encompassing.
You know, we're quick to use all these terms that I just mentioned here, exhaustive or comprehensive, all-encompassing, when we describe the devastating nature of sin. We say that sin is far-reaching and we are totally depraved. Yeah, this is true, but it's not the end of the story. Let me encourage you, the Spirit's work in the life of a believer is just as comprehensive and all-encompassing.
The Spirit's work reaches to the most foundational impulses of your life and leaves no part of your being untouched. The new man is put on, and we're being constantly renewed by the work of the Spirit. Because of this, the Holy Spirit gives us abilities beyond our natural self. The Spirit is vital in our sanctification. The Spirit is vital in saving us, preserving us, and bringing us to glory.
What else does the Spirit do for us? The Spirit makes the kingdom of God clearly visible. Before the Spirit's work in our life, we sat in darkness by nature. In this dark state, we couldn't know, we couldn't admire, we couldn't adore, we couldn't love, or even serve the true God in any spiritual way. It is by the work of the Spirit that we can now do these things.
The Spirit also gives us an appetite for born-again realities. With the Spirit's help, we gain a reverence for divine things. We understand there's a temporal nature to the world. We live for the new heavens and the new earth. The Spirit also sustains our ability to repent and believe, to turn back and keep believing. The Holy Spirit is necessary for repentance and faith.
This is true for you when you first believed in Christ and you were regenerated. But this is also true as you continue to walk in faith as you are sanctified. The Spirit helps, gives us a greater moral sensitivity to the world. The Spirit is our comforter. Romans 8.26 says that the Spirit helps us in our weakness. He's there when we are wounded and grief stricken. The Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
He empowers us with courage and boldness. And this leads us to our second point. Those are things that the Spirit does for us. Second point. We are responsible to put sin to death in cooperation with the Spirit. Ezekiel says, And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. how do you walk and are you careful to obey?
When we speak of desiring holiness and walking in the statutes of the Lord and obeying what God's word says, then we need to ask ourselves these critical questions. It starts with, what do we want Christ to do for us? Do you really want to grow in holiness? Or has your failure left you content with mediocre levels of sanctification?
Augustine was in a spiritual wasteland at one point in his life where he prayed to God, give me chastity, but not yet. And I think we need to consider the fact that we may have a prevailing sin in our life that we don't want to give up. We're willing to quench the work of the Spirit because our desires have fooled us into thinking that we're just all right.
We think that we have time. Time's on our side. There's no immediate action that needs to take place. You know, we're praying the same prayer of Augustine. Give me blank. You fill in the blank. But not yet. The scriptures tell us in 1 Peter 1, But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.
Are you praying, give me a heart of forgiveness, but not yet? Give me a heart of patience without anger, but not yet. The Spirit participates actively in our ability to worship, glorify, and obey the Father and the Son. And it's foundational that our growth towards Christ, our sanctification, is rooted in our relationship with Christ.
And what we have, we call this our union. We are one with Christ because of His death and resurrection. And even in this reality, as Christians, we continue to be troubled by the presence of indwelling sin. There's a real flesh-spirit conflict that we experience. Christ dwells within us, and sin also continues inside.
So what are we to do? The Spirit is in us. The Spirit is in the believer and works with the believer. But the Spirit doesn't become the believer. also the spirit the work of the spirit does not bypass our minds and work directly just on our emotions and affections the spirit addresses our minds through the word of God how and what we think determines how we feel how we act how we live the bible says a lot about our minds the way we should think, and how we should develop our minds.
Scripture speaks about renewing our mind, thinking about what is true, taking thoughts captive. I think all of these things are done in cooperation with the Spirit. This means that we do not conform to what the world says, but we think of eternal things. You don't just settle for the status quo, wisdom, that the world wants you to know. But you fight to know God's true way. You may circumstantially be deep in sin.
It may be pornography, a pattern of lies, vanity. You may be deep in the deep end of the pool, way down underwater. If you're a Christian, the Spirit gives you the ability to start kicking your legs and flapping your arms. A lot of the time, we can make a dangerous mistake as a Christian and we can look at for these dramatic and immediate experience. We want a dramatic and immediate experience of sanctification.
We liken it to our experience of justification. The truth is that sanctification takes time and work. And our sin nature ensures that we're going to go through trials and suffering. We all should strive to grow in holiness and enjoy closer fellowship with God. But this can be a painful experience when layers of sin are exposed that have been hidden in our hearts.
Some of those sins may have never been exposed. You may have something on your mind right now that you have never told anyone. What's going to happen when you start to fight against your sin? You may want to stop doing something. You want to break an addiction. Well, don't be surprised that this good act to resist sin may be met with more temptations the flesh spirit conflict is going to be amplified sometimes breaking a pattern of sin is like throwing the gasoline on the fire of your sinful desires sometimes we mistakenly think that once we we stop doing something or we you know break an addiction to a sin that it just goes away. It just runs away from us. We're fooled into thinking that it just leaves us, and it just
promises never to return. There will also be a great temptation for you in your sin struggle to minimize sin or divert it to some other pleasure-seeking activity. When we do this, it usually lives on, but in a different, less obvious form. We don't want to deal with the stark reality of a sin, so we lessen the impact, deny its grip on our life, even defend sin until it seems favorable to other people. Confessing that we are sinners in general is particularly not helpful when we want to make headway against a particularly dominating sin in our life.
Be transparent and honest before God. As I mentioned earlier, the work of the Ghost Army was kept a secret from the U.S. soldiers. They were highly effective. But the soldiers had no idea that they had this help. We as Christians, on the other hand, know we have a highly effective helper.
A second advocate, as John says. One that was told to us from Ezekiel. His purpose is not a mystery and his work is not hidden. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Our helper has been with us from the beginning, giving us new life. He regenerated us, making us alive again through the work of the spirit.
Our helper brings convictions to us and brings spiritual awakening when we fall asleep. He dwells within us and seals us and guarantees our salvation and adoption into God's family. The Spirit helps us apply the word to our lives. He gives us an ability to resist sin and even helps us pray. Our helper unites believers in the body of Christ and enables us to love and serve one another.
Our helper brings comfort, encouragement, and counsel in times of trouble, sorrow, and uncertainty. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us your Son and your Spirit. Jesus, you died on the cross so that we can have spiritual life.
You made it possible. Holy Spirit, we are thankful that you dwell within us. You are an advocate as the Son who helps us as your Word says that you will be with us forever. Spirit, guide us in the truth. We thank you for your work of regeneration and sanctification in our lives. You allow us to see the divine things of this world and are active in making us holy.
We pray that you will help us become obedient, walking in your statutes, obeying your word. Conform us to the image of Christ. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you.