Ezekiel 36:36
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Good evening, church. If you can open your word and turn to Exodus chapter 36, verse 36. Can you remember the last time a friend or a spouse or a colleague or a parent committed to doing something and then didn't follow through? Aaron and I have been married now for over 20 years. I did the math this afternoon, 7,514 days, babe, we've been married. We spent 21 New Year's Days together in which I've sat down and made commitments to myself resolving to be a better husband.
We've had countless conversations where I've committed to do something around the house, and then I've fallen short. I've made so many commitments to be the husband that Aaron deserves, and my failures just stack up. I have never loved a human being like my wife. I would jump in front of a car for her. I would leap into a burning building. I would take a bullet for her, gladly. And no matter how much I grit my teeth to keep my promises to her with all of my strength, wanting to be the man that I believe she deserves, no matter how much I love her, which is a lot, my sin just keeps tripping me up.
I'm so thankful that Aaron's salvation does not depend on me see friends i can't even save myself my life has been littered with promises to myself to be better as a husband as a dad as an employee as an employer to finally be physically active and fit to eat better to sleep better to read more and i just can't get out of my own way that's part of the reason that i shudder when i visit religious sites all around the world and i observe people performing countless acts imperfectly trying to impeach to appease false gods even the most strict adherence of these false religions mess up and even the masses who aren't committed to the visible idolatry of idol worship in a mosque or temple they're still caught up in idolatry perhaps it's the accumulation of wealth and things or the passionate fandom of a
sports franchise john calvin wrote that our hearts are human idol factories and he's not wrong let's think about the people of israel for a moment they were brought by god out of egypt his glory was visible in a pillar of fire in the night and a cloud by day They observed his glory as he spoke to Moses at Sinai. And in a flash of stupidity, the people of Israel began to melt the precious metals they had taken from Egypt to form a golden calf to worship.
As God was giving Moses instructions for covenant obedience, Israel was signaling that it was incapable of keeping up its end of the covenant. And so the history of Israel in the Old Testament is full of them pursuing the false gods of the nations around them. In Exodus chapter 19, they're called to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, bearing visible witness to God's glory. But time and time and time again, over hundreds of years, they fail to do that.
Their history is full of bad kings, derelict priests, and foolish false prophets. Even when God sends them good kings and good prophets, they rebel against God and they pursue the nations. When Babylon was at the height of its threat against God's people, do you know who they turned to? Egypt. Talk about not learning from history. Our verse tonight is Ezekiel 36, 36, which says, Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I am the Lord.
I have rebuilt and ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I am the Lord. I have spoken and I will do it. This section of Ezekiel occurs at the end of a section in this book where the Lord is foretelling the restoration of Jerusalem. Ezekiel had foretold of the fall of Jerusalem, and then as we read through the book, we realize that Jerusalem has fallen. The early section of this book focuses in on the fact that Israel has broken its covenant promises with God.
And God's glory is shown as moving out of the temple and moving out of the city in chapters 10 and 11. False prophets are condemned, Jerusalem's unfaithfulness is condemned, the failure of the king, kings of Judah, they're condemned, God speaks against Israel's rebellion from the time that they left Egypt to the present, the nations that God uses to punish the people of Israel, they're condemned, but after God condemns the shepherds of the people, he promises a new covenant. People will be gathered, cities will be rebuilt, and under this new covenant, God will give his covenant people a new heart and a new spirit. Between verses 22 and 36 of this chapter, Ezekiel 36, God makes, from what I can count, 17 distinct promises of what he will do.
And why does God do all of this? Why does he persist with the people of Israel time and time and time again. Why does he make the covenant promises he does in Ezekiel 36? It's because God is fundamentally for his own glory. He wants the nations to know that he is Lord and he wants them to give him glory. He says, I am the God who keeps covenant. What I say I will do, I'm going to do it because my word always comes to pass.
God is the only one who always keeps his promises. I think the main point of this text is that God is about his glory and he calls us to glorify him everywhere and to everyone as he keeps his promises. I want to draw out five quick points from this passage for our application tonight. Again, these are all under the banner of God keeps his promises and God is about his glory. Number one, we can glorify God as we recognize our inability to save ourselves.
For non-Christians, perhaps you're sitting here tonight and you being here tonight is symbolic of your pursuit of the Christian life as you see it. You show up at church often, you pray, you sing, you sit under some preaching, and you hope to assuage your guilt just a bit. As Christians, those of us in this room that are Christians, we abundantly are aware that our actions can't save us. There is no cosmic scale where good deeds outweigh our bad deeds.
We believe that dead sinners are incapable of working themselves into a good standing with God. So non-Christian friend, I just want to say to you, you are in an absolutely impossible pursuit. Christians put their faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. We believe that God has given us a new heart and a new spirit, just as Ezekiel 36 says. He has placed his spirit within us to cause us to walk in his statutes and carefully obey his commands. Like the people of Israel, we were incapable in our own strength to do this.
We were unclean, but God through Jesus has made us clean. So if you're not a Christian and you're in this room i just want to implore you stop trying to earn a salvation that cannot be earned put your faith in jesus and all of god's promises of forgiveness and cleanness will come to fruition your life and he always keeps his promises for christians we can glorify god by never losing sight of the grace that we have been shown it's easy for us to get caught up in what the lord is doing in and through us, and we can begin to believe our own press. Does your life reflect someone who understands the grace that they've been shown, or are you a glory thief? This shows up in weird ways. Eight years ago, I was traveling to Mongolia with a short-term missions team.
I was kind of at the peak of my passion for the nations at that point. We had about a dozen young adults and the day before we got on that plane I was called by my doctor who told me that I most likely had cancer I was so passionate for the nations I said can I still go to Mongolia and he said fine it was a dumb idea we turned around within 24 hours and I remember sitting on a plane 30,000 feet in the air over the arctic really angry with God I had all these plans of things that I wanted to do for his glory I was passionate I was ready to storm the nations for the glory of of God, and I was staring what I thought at that point, death, in the face. And I was so miffed.
But God, like, don't you want to use me? Friends, hopefully it doesn't take cancer for you to learn the lessons that I had to learn as a very stubborn man. God does not need me. He does not need you. He will always get his way in whatever way that he wants, and he chooses to use us. And that brings him glory. So don't be glory thieves. I'm preaching to myself in that. Number two, let's guard our hearts from desiring what the world desires.
Recognize that the things that you lust after are what the world lusts after, and they're incapable of satisfying you. You might be struggling with pornography, covetousness, unforgiveness. Friends, those are things that the world chases after. Let's not chase after what the world chases after. now we're not promised a life free from sin but we are blessed with an eternity free from the consequences of our sin that is grace i love how paul just after unraveling the glories of god's grace to us in jesus christ in romans 5 turns in chapter 6 and writes what shall we say then in light of this grace are we are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by no means he says we are dead to sin and alive in christ so friends we glorify god and we make much of him as the promise keeping god as we recognize his grace in our lives pray that we would do that number three we glorify god as we share the gospel and pray for new life i've never met a christian
who has been dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom of god Think about your own salvation. At one point, you were against God, opposite of him, and then you desired to follow him. That desire is a gift from God. Every single one of us Christians can attest to moving from being anti-God to desiring to follow him, even if it costs us everything. How is that possible? We see it in Ezekiel 36, a new heart.
So when we pray for salvation on nights like tonight and in our own quiet time, we are praying that God would grant new hearts and that he would grant his spirit to people who are currently dead in their trespasses. So yes, let's pray for our evangelistic witness to be bold, for us to communicate the gospel clearly. But God will use your imperfect ability to communicate the gospel as he works the miracle of giving people new hearts that desire to follow him. When you share the gospel, be sure to speak of the satisfaction that you have in Jesus.
Speak of the weight of your sin being removed. Speak of the glory of grace that has been shown to you. God has imprinted these desires on every single human heart. And talk about the ways that he has fulfilled your greatest desires in Jesus Christ. Number four, we can glorify God as the promise-keeping God as we fight our sin, praying that the Spirit will help us. Verse 27 of Ezekiel 36 says, I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
The people of Israel were incapable of following God's law. And so a new covenant was established showing the inferiority of the old covenant that depended on sinful human beings with wicked hearts trying to follow it, it pointed to a greater covenant in which God's Spirit, God's Spirit is within us, causing us to walk in His statutes and obey His many commands. Many of you here are trying to fight sin in your own strength.
Ask God to help you by His Spirit. Listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and confess your sin. I don't know if you're like me, but there are times in my life that I can look at my neglect of God's word and I can see that one of the reasons I was neglecting it was because of the conviction that it would bring as I struggled against a particular sin. Sometimes I felt unworthy of God. Sometimes I felt incapable of approaching him because of feeling filthy.
Remember God's words in Ezekiel 36.25 where he says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all of your idols, I will cleanse you. So friends, if you want to fight sin, ask the 100% promise-keeping God to help you by his spirit and find some faithful friends. John Owen wrote to kill sin before it kills you in his book, The Mortification of Sin.
In recent months, I have found the Puritans to be fast friends. They took sin seriously. They took God's promises seriously. They took his word seriously. So don't give attention to Christians who aren't committed to pursuing holiness alongside of you. Beware of the trap of non-Christian friends who are reveling in their sin. Beware of using your desire to be an evangelistic witness as permission to dwell in establishments that you know where you will be given to rampant sin.
Number five, and finally, let's take our corporate witness seriously. We're an embassy of the king. We serve the Lord. He has rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. Every single one of our testimonies can show that, that he will surely do what he has said that he will do. With confidence, then, we represent him collectively as his ambassadors and as a royal priesthood to the nations. God has seen fit to visibly show his glory through his church, specifically and tangibly through local churches like ours, who, by our unity and our united battle against sin and every worldly lust can call a watching world to join us god desires his glory to be declared to the furthest reaches of the world and under the old covenant his glory was present most in
the temple in jerusalem that was where we saw his manifest glory in the temple holy of holies under the new covenant we're commanded to proclaim his glory to the ends of the earth and as the nations turn to jesus we're told to instruct them to be baptized and join local churches where they can grow and be discipled as god's people and where there isn't a church a new one should be established friends i'm thankful to be a part of a local church that seeks to send out former members to make christ known amongst the nations taiwan east asia southeast asia central asia france south africa england iraq the united arab emirates i know a number of you are praying about places like tokyo these days one particular thing i just want to encourage you about that we're about in this church even today i got a picture from andy sims in southeast asia and there's a number of amazing things happening there and a group of pastors traveled from the u.s to be part of a commissioning service
involving missionaries they had sent to southeast asia who are going into a completely unreached language group in that part of the world as far as they know that language group has never heard the gospel before and so we as third avenue baptist church got to be part through extension with andy and the rochesters and meredith and rochelle to seeing god's glory pushing further and further into the physical edges of the world and we can know with confidence that god will bring about his purposes. There will not be one human being that Jesus has redeemed who will not spend eternity with him because God always keeps his promises. It's a good promise, eh? Let's pray.
Lord, we pray that as you declare in Ezekiel 36 that you will vindicate your holiness. We pray that you would do that in our lives individually and corporately. We pray that you would do that in the lives of people you've called to yourself around the world lord we pray that you would draw to yourself men and women from the nations that you would bring them into the kingdom that you would make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant lord we pray that you would do this for your glory that we pray that you would do this for your sake and we pray that you would do this for your renown in jesus name we pray amen