"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."
Ezekiel 36:26-27
Thoughts:
So I finally think I'm getting into the flow of keeping a journal of thoughts. I'm glad I decided just to work through the Bible slowly rather than complete a workbook or something like that. I feel that my thoughts on verses are more God inspired in this format than having a workbook just tell me what the answers are. Awkwardly enough, when I was straight reading through the Bible months / years ago, Ezekiel is where I got bogged down at and quit. Picking it back up here, I am finding all kinds of insights. There is a huge difference in just reading the Bible as fast as you can (basically trying to check that box off of the "to-do to make God happy list) and meditating through each verse...studying each verse...deriving meaning from each verse. It is refreshing and exhilarating at the same time.
So today, I hit Ezekiel 36. I was intrigued glancing over it because the text seemed to switch from passing judgment on nations surrounding Israel to focusing its attention on Israel itself. The section headers "The Lord's Concern for His Holy Name" and "I Will Put My Spirit Within You" seemed exciting compared to the previous "Prophecy Against [insert various nations here]" and "Lament Against [insert various nations here]". And low and behold, I was not disappointing.
Ezekiel 36 shows some important philosophical characteristics about God. One is that being Holy, one of the key motivations of God is that he wants to protect his holy name. He makes a point of telling Israel that he will hold true to his word and covenant, even though Israel royally screwed up. Additionally, it shows that it doesn't matter how much Israel cries or begs for deliverance, God will act to preserve and vindicate his name. No action Israel could do would determine whether or not God would eventually bring his people home. He was going to bring them home one way or the other to vindicate his name (v. 23).
From there, God ups the ante on his promise in order to show his holiness. Not only will he bring his people home, but he will impart his Spirit on them to clean them of their iniquities and literally change their hearts. He will make it where they want to obey his rules. Now this sounds like something Jesus or Paul or Peter would tell us, but it is plain as day coming from God himself in the Old Testament (v. 24-27). This just reemphasizes to me the validity of Jesus. It is another example of him coming to "fulfill the law" rather than "abolish it".
Two other things that stood out to me doctrine wise (as opposed to literary). One again deals with the elect vs. free will debate (see my previous post for more info on that). Verses 22-32 seem to lean towards the idea of an elect again. Throughout it, God says that he will change you and clean you and make you want to obey. It doesn't mention anything about "ask me and then I will do this for you." The text just says that he will do this to maintain his holiness. It sounds more and more to me like God molds your heart to prepare you for salvation...not so much you have to make the decision to change your heart. I don't like the idea of not having free will, but the text seems to push it that way. I take solace in verse 32 though where it says the ways and reasoning of Gods actions confound me. My ways are not his ways and he is holier than I, so who am I to argue if he wants to use elect instead of free will.
The other piece of doctrine I always wondered about was why some denominations sprinkle for baptisms and other ceremonies rather than dunk. The New Testament seems filled with examples of submersion, so where did sprinkling come in? I think at least part of the example is in Ezekiel 36:25 where God says "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you." I'm still of the dunking variety, but I can see where some denominations would use sprinkling after a verse like that.
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