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Welcome to the Cross References podcast on the Book of Ezekiel. In this study, you learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and most importantly, how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
Whether you’re a newbie Christian or a veteran Bible reader, my goal is that God’s Word will make more sense to you after every episode.
Host: Luke Taylor
A New Spirit
Ezekiel 36:27
Ezekiel series, Part 67
Introduction
Last week I talked about how I did my parental duty and instilled the love of star wars into my child.
Now let me talk about one of the stupidest things in star wars.
And it comes from the same place that all of the stupidest things in star wars come from: the new Disney movies.
This one is flies right into the face of common sense.
It comes from the inner turmoil experienced by the villain of Episode 7: Kylo Ren.
Kylo is on the dark side. He seeks to prove himself a true, fully committed disciple of the dark side throughout the movie, and throughout the film he makes some comments. One of them is:
Forgive me. I feel it again. The pull to the light.
Throughout the film, Kylo is dealing with this “quote-unquote-temptation” to turn good, and this is one of the lines he uses.
Now, to write a line like that betrays any understanding of how the human heart actually operates. We want to be good, but we wrestle with the temptation to be bad.
Like it says in Galatians 5: the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh…to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
The Bible says we “want” to do good, but it’s our sinful desires that pull us back. But Kylo wants to be bad and wrestles with a temptation to be good. It’s completely backwards. It’s like saying, “Pray for me, I’m really tempted to eat this salad when I know I should order a double cheeseburger.”
There is not something naturally inside of us that pulls us toward righteousness and away from evil. What is inside of us pulls us to the flesh, to our natural instincts, toward selfishness and evil, toward…the dark side.
We aren’t tempted toward the light. The decision to pursue the light does not come from something within us naturally; but something that is given to us by God.
To be drawn toward the light requires God to put a new heart and a new spirit within us.
Which sounds like what we’ve been studying as we go through the book of Ezekiel, and it’s something you’ll find out about today on the Cross References podcast.
[theme music]
THE SPIRIT
Welcome to the book of Ezekiel: a Cross References Bible study where we learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
My name is Luke Taylor, and I’m on the light side, but only by the grace of God.
So last time, we read this verse:
Ezekiel 36:26
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 we focused last time on the first part of that verse: a new heart. But as you saw in today’s episode title, today I’d like to focus on the second half of that verse: a new spirit. Which means something different and I believe even more exciting than a new heart.
Ezekiel 36:27 follows that:
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
In case you didn’t listen last time, let me just remind you: Ezekiel is talking about blessings of the New Covenant. What we refer to today as The Gospel. The good news of Jesus dying for your sins and forgiving you and letting you go to heaven, even though we could never do anything to deserve it.
And one of the blessings of the new covenant is that we receive a new spirit. So let’s talk about what our spirit is today, and this will help us understand the exciting truth of the new spirit. Just like last time, we defined what the heart is: the leb, the internal locus of control. What is our spirit?
This is the Hebrew word ruach (roo-awckh). It means wind, breath or spirit. It means who you are in your inner core, at your deepest level. It’s who you are on the inside, but not just on the inside. Inside your inside. That’s where you find your spirit.
Many people think who you are on the inside is your soul. When most people think of their spirit, they think it’s just another word for your soul. It’s actually a little more complicated than that.
I Thessalonians 5:23 says
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So you have three parts of yourself: your body, your soul, AND your spirit. Your soul and your spirit are two different things.
I’d think of it this way: we all know what your body is. But your soul is your mind. Your soul is your emotions. Your soul is your conscience. If I sit directly across from you and have a conversation with you about my favorite color, we are speaking body-to-body, because my body is in the room with your body. But we’re also speaking soul-to-soul, because my inner self is speaking to your inner self. We’re speaking soul-to-soul. It’s orange, by the way.
My favorite color. Not my soul.
Now, what is my spirit, then? My spirit is a level deeper. I am not in tune with my spirit as much as I’m in tune with my body or soul. If someone steps on my toe, I usually know it right away, because then my toe hurts. I am in touch with my body at a very basic level to where I know it immediately when a part of it is in pain.
When someone hurts my feelings- also, ironically, known as stepping on someone’s toes- I usually know that pretty quickly as well. I’m not always super in-tune with my feelings; that’s why God gave us wives. So they could help us guys understand the feelings that we are feeling because we don’t always understand what we’re feeling.
So we may not always have the self-awareness to understand our own emotions, but we can usually figure it out pretty quickly with some inward reflection.
But then our spirit is a level deeper. You need a lot of self-awareness to know what’s going on in your spirit. Not everyone knows what’s going on in their spirit; in fact, I’m not even sure you CAN know what’s going on in your spirit without being saved.
Romans 8:5 says
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh
Verse 7 says
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.
Jude 19 in the NIV says
These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
So I’m not sure if someone who hasn’t been saved yet is even capable of knowing what’s in their spirit because they have nothing to contrast it to. It’s like trying to ask a fish what being wet feels like. It’s not that they don’t know what water is; it’s that they’ve never known anything BUT water. They don’t know what something dry feels like to compare it to.
So an unsaved person only has their instincts and a fleshly mind and thoughts. But when you get saved, you are a new creation (accordion to II Corinthians 5) and you have God’s Holy Spirit placed within you. What that literally means is that your spirit, your innermost being, is reborn and replaced by the Holy Spirit. The spirit that is within you is now the Spirit of God.
Not a better spirit. THE Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit. Living inside of you.
This is exciting stuff, guys! Think of it this way. You are spirit, soul and body. Right now, your body and soul have not yet been made perfect. Your body is falling apart and wearing down. Your soul is still quite sinful most days. Your mind, will, emotions and conscience is not perfected yet.
When you die, your soul goes to heaven and your soul will be made perfect. Your conscienceless will go up to heaven. You will not sin in heaven. You’ll be changed when you go into heaven.
Someday our bodies will be resurrected (which I believe is at the rapture) and our physical bodies will be changed and made perfect. But that day has not yet come. So our bodies and our souls are still imperfect.
But our spirit IS perfect. Our spirit was sanctified and made pure and the Holy Spirit was deposited into us and renewed our spirit. So we are already 1/3 completely saved. Purified. Your spirit is as saved right now as it will ever be throughout all eternity. Your body and soul still need some work. But your spirit is good to go.
The Spirit Empowers You
So now I hope you understand what you’re working with. You’ve got to get your soul- and, I suppose- your body in line with the spirit that lives within you. That perfect spirit who only leads you toward God and toward righteousness and toward purity and toward truth.
You say, “Luke, I still feel kinda yucky on the inside, especially after I sin; are you sure you aren’t exaggerating a little bit when you say my spirit is already 100% saved?” Well, was Paul exaggerating when he said in
Romans 8:11
…the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you…(?)
Was that a true fact, or was Paul exaggerating? If Paul was just getting carried away, then never mind, you can shut this podcast off and do something else with your time. But I believe Paul was being serious right there.
You see, that’s why you feel yucky sometimes when you’ve done something wrong. Because your pure spirit on the inside is reacting to that. The Holy Spirit doesn’t like it when you sin. Let me just read
Romans 8:9-11 in context
9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
Some wonderful truths; in fact, your homework- whether you want to pause this podcast right now, or whether you want to do this after the episode is done- go read Romans 8 again. Just Romans 8. If all that I’m saying to you today is new information for you, then just listen to what I’m saying and then go read Romans 8. It’s all there.
So I want to make a few points about the Holy Spirit inside you today, and the first one is: The Holy Spirit Empowers You. Because the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is now in you.
So if you want the power to do everything from living a pure life to having the boldness to witness for Christ to being able to lay hands on someone and work a miracle, then guess what: you need to be aware that the power to do all that is already inside you.
You have the Holy Spirit who had the same power that raised Christ from the dead who lives within you. So I would spend some time trying to learn how to tap into that. Get on the same page with the Holy Spirit. Align yourself with the Holy Spirit.
So number one today is that the Spirit Empowers You.
The Spirit Seals You
Number two, the Spirit seals you.
Ephesians 1:13-14 say
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
A seal in those days, which was during the Roman Empire, was like a mark or a brand. Think of how people used to brand their cattle in the old days. You did that so if your cattle got mixed in with someone else’s cattle, you could mark whose are yours and which are mine.
We obviously can’t see a seal in the physical realm, but in the spiritual realm, we have been marked as God’s chosen people. You say, what does that mean to me right now? Paul is saying that this mark has set you apart from everyone else spiritually, and that this is a guarantee of our inheritance for the future. This is the downpayment for everything else that is to come.
Think of it like this relating to what I said before: your spirit has been redeemed. Your body and soul are yet to be perfected. And so the sealing of the Holy Spirit on you is like saying, “your body and soul have been purchased, but not yet redeemed.”
This is a different blessing than what happened before the church. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit did not indwell all believers like He does today. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would “come upon” people for unique purposes or events. The Holy Spirit might even anoint or rest upon a person for a long period of time. But the Holy Spirit didn’t dwell within those saints the way He does with saints today.
But remember what Ezekiel said, talking about the blessing of this new covenant we find ourselves in: 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.
See, this indwelling of the Holy Spirit making our spirit pure is not something the Old Testament saints in Ezekiel’s day could have expected. It was something new.
And then remember what he says right after: And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
So that brings me to my third point:
The Spirit Guides You
The Spirit Guides you. The Holy Spirit will guide you in two ways: one is toward holiness. Two is toward your personal calling and direction for your life.
These will never be in conflict with each other. But the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit’s power within you is not to help you perform miracles or make you pick the winning lottery ticket. His purpose first and foremost is to make you live more holy.
Away from sin, away from the flesh, away from temptation, toward godliness and righteousness and sanctification.
Galatians 5:16 and 17
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
And you just keep reading Galatians 5 from there. It gives you the works of the flesh vs the fruit of the Spirit. The key thing here is “the Spirit.” Our works do not save us, but the works we do will reveal whether we are actually saved. It’s the fruit of our lives. Do our lives produce the fruit of the flesh, or the fruit of the Spirit?
And the primary signal of that is not worldly success; it’s not how much money you make. Don’t listen to people who say that God has led them into all this wealth and power if they don’t have the godly fruit in their life to back it up.
I like a quote from John Bevere, and I’ve actually added it to the bottom of the page in my prayer journal: Lord, do not let my ministry grow beyond the character you’ve developed in me. I pray that because some people get too big for their britches in ministry. They get a lot of influence but they don’t have the godly character to back it up. So my prayer is that my life will primarily produce the fruit of the spirit more than building a big ministry.
That’s how I want to partner with the Spirit because that’s His primary role in my life. That’s what he’s most interested in. So if you’re praying for the Holy Spirit’s power, start with the power to live a godly life before you ask for anything else.
A lot of people want the Holy Spirit to lead them toward their destiny. And He will! I fully believe He will. But instead of praying so much about your calling, first ask: am I doing the things that the Bible already tells me to do?
I Thessalonians 5 tells us
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
This is the will of God for all of us. Just one example- actually three examples- from one sentence in the New Testament. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. How are you doing at that? I’m failing at that a lot of days. So first follow the things God has already told us to do before praying for a new house or a new job or bigger influence or whatever.
Think of it like this: God has a general will for all of us and a specific will for you. There are things that God calls all of us to, like holy living as we’re talking about here. Then there’s the specific will that’s only for you to do. Lots of us are interested in that personal will.
If you want to know God’s personal will for your life, how are you doing with following his general will? His general will is located in the Bible. If you want to advance in your personal calling, first just make sure you’re doing what He said in the general.
If you’re doing what God said with His general will, if you’re living a holy life, you won’t miss your specific calling and destiny. He’ll make sure you get where you need to be. Don’t stress about waiting for a bush to burst into flames one day and tell you what your mission on this earth is. Focus on the revealed will of God, and if you’re nailing that, He’ll give you the unrevealed will.
Because you’ll be walking according to the Spirit, and when you’re walking by the Spirit, you’ll be carried along to where you need to go.
Here’s another good tip to remember as you’re trying to discern God’s will for your life: do you feel like you’re struggling against the wind?
John 3:8 says
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
If you’re greatly struggling to do what you feel you’re supposed to do, perhaps you’re working against the wind of the Spirit. Perhaps you’re going in an opposite direction to where He’s blowing you.
It’s taking you more energy to get less accomplished. I can testify to this from my years in youth ministry. I never wanted to preach a message to the youth group that hadn’t been bathed in prayer and was the exact message that God wanted me to deliver. There were days that I was so excited to get into my study or writing my sermon notes that I just tried to skip through the prayer time as quickly as I could. And guess what: when I did that, it was just so hard to write the message. It was a battle, like walking through mud. It was trying to write with a pen that has no ink. Frustrating. I’d sit at my computer for an hour and have like one page of notes written.
But if I would just stop and pray for 10 or 15 minutes, all of a sudden, everything unlocked. I go back to writing my lesson and suddenly I’m popping out four pages of notes in about 45 minutes. It all just clicked. Why? Because I got on the same page as the Holy Spirit. Something about prayer just aligned my spirit with God’s Spirit. I made that connection. And once I did that, suddenly the thoughts just kept coming to my mind even faster than I could type them. It was like something clicked and all the synapses just started firing.
I couldn’t even always get through my prayer. I’d just be praying at my desk about the message I was working on and suddenly, I would just start receiving the download of information from God, and I’d immediately starting writing down as much of it as I could before I had time to forget anything.
And that sudden gush of information is how God would speak to me a lot. That’s how I knew it wasn’t from me; because it would often start with me trying to crack open a passage in my own power and my own might, and then suddenly through prayer it’s like a dam would break and God would just start revealing all kinds of applications of a passage to my mind that I hadn’t seen before.
So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
So that brings me to my last main point today:
The Spirit is a Point of Connection Between You and God
The Spirit is a Point of Connection Between You and God
Ezekiel 36:27
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
So, I have explained theologically what happened to your spirit inside you when you were saved. Your spirit was made pure and holy, just as the Holy Spirit is. You are 1/3 perfected. You are spirit, soul and body, and your spirit has already been made perfect. So if you want to hear from God, you need to align your body and soul with your spirit- especially your soul, because it’s that bridge between what is natural in the physical body and what is supernatural in the spirit.
I Corinthians 2:10-14 say
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
So if you have the Spirit, you are no longer just ‘the natural person.’ Now, if we pursue sin and the flesh harden our hearts, we can move toward being merely natural and deaden ourselves to God’s voice. And that’s why the regular practices of prayer and Bible study are so important. Reading your Bible allows the Spirit to renew your mind. Prayer also aligns you with the Holy Spirit. Even when you don’t feel like anything’s happening, God is working while you pray. Remember what we talked about a few episodes back: be still and know God.
So as we move away from being the natural person and toward the supernatural, we get in touch with that Holy Spirit inside of us. Our inner spirit is that point of connection between us and God.
Remember Elijah’s moment on that mountain when there was the wind and the earthquake and the fire, and anyone would assume: God is like that, God’s gotta be in the earthquake. And no, God was in the whisper. There are tornadoes and earthquakes going on around us all the time, but God is oftentimes in the whisper, and it’s hard to hear a whisper. If someone is whispering, in order to hear them, you’ve got to tune out everything else, and you yourself need to get still and get quiet and listen.
And that’ what prayer does in our lives. And when we do that, we can discern the things that are only discerned spiritually. And the Holy Spirit’s presence inside us is how we do that.
And then we will not just hear God’s general will for our lives, but you’ll hear God’s specific will.
Ezekiel 36:27
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
“To walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules.” Always remember that that’s His primary goal in working in your life.
Not your comfort. Not your prosperity. Not even your calling. If you can’t get the holiness thing right, nothing else is gonna matter, and nothing else is gonna work.
[music]
Housekeeping/Mailbag
Next time on this podcast, I would really like to share an interview with Chris Pace, the author of the book Level Up: How to Advance in Your Calling and Never Get Stuck. I actually met Chris while on vacation a few months ago, I read his book- it was great- I called him up and did an interview and I’m going to share that conversation with you on here. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
However, next Monday is a Labor Day, and I hope you have a great one. I will not be releasing a new episode on Monday due to it being a holiday, and I know from experience that episodes that release on a holiday don’t do so well.
And I really want you to hear that episode because the interview is so good! If you enjoy what you’re hearing today, you’ll want to come back in two weeks and hear that conversation.
So on Labor Day, I will not be releasing a new episode. I might throw up a re-run from the past or something but it will not be new content. Come back in two weeks as we hear the interview with Chris, and then come back in three weeks as we get back into Ezekiel chapter 36.
Because I didn’t finish it today like I thought I would! But I’ll try to finish this chapter on the Sept. 16 episode.
A Note on Hearing from the Spirit
So as we wrap up, I just want to make a note on something about hearing from the spirit. In light of the fact that the Bible has been written, the Biblical canon is finished. I want to talk about an error that I see being made by those in the cessationist crowd who say that God no longer speaks to us today or gives new information, now that the Bible has been written. And I also want to talk about an error that I see those in the more charismatic or pentecostal camps making. And I believe both of these groups can make an error that comes from the same misunderstanding of what it means when God speaks.
So the note I want to make, or addendum to this discussion, is that when God speaks to you, God is speaking to YOU; He is not speaking to everybody. God is not necessarily saying to YOU what He is saying to EVERYBODY.
Just because you’ve heard from God before does not mean you’re a prophet now, and that what God has said to you is something you’re supposed to hop up behind a pulpit and tell everybody: “Thus Sayeth the Lord.” Most of the things God says to you are probably just between Him and you.
So here’s the error I see both sides of the cessationism debate making, and perhaps I’ll just start with the cessationists. Because I was watching a debate or conversation between two cessationist pastors and two pentecostal pastors. The pentecostals were the guys over at Remnant Radio. The cessationists were Joel Webbon and Doug Wilson. And I love a lot of the things Pastor Doug Wilson says, but he’s not perfect. And he said something during this debate- which is available on Youtube on the Right Response Ministries account- but Pastor Doug was questioning why- if you believe you can hear from God today, that God still speaks today- then how come pentecostals don’t write down every word of prophecy and treat it as The Bible Part II. Where everything God says is written down and preserved and great care is taken to protect it. Why is God’s Word in the Bible treated as supreme, and God’s Word spoken to us today treated as lesser or secondary.
And that’s a fair question, but I think there’s a good answer to it. The Bible is God’s general revelation for all Christians. Hearing from God speaking to you today from your inner spirit in communion with God’s Spirit is a specific revelation. When God speaks to you today, it’s to YOU. He is not speaking to everyone. And you don’t have to treat everything God says to you as The Word of the Lord to all mankind.
A Word of the Lord can be a word of Knowledge, a Word of Wisdom, an interpretation given after someone speaks in tongues, or a prophecy given. I’ve heard all of them used in church. It means God is speaking to someone and through them for the benefit of that person or another person or the church body as a whole. It doesn’t mean that it’s a word for all people in all times in all places like the Bible is.
The Bible is written to general audiences. The Bible is for everybody. If someone gives a Word from the Lord, it doesn’t necessarily apply to all people at all times in all places. It won’t contradict the Bible, but it might not be as broadly applied as the Bible is. God might speak through the spiritual gifts to a specific person or congregation or situation.
And so I hope this would help a cessationist to understand how modern pentecostals view a word from God today, and why we might not necessarily treat it with the same reverence that we would a Bible verse. But also, I’d offer this as a corrective or an admonition to my fellow Pentecostal Christians.
I’ve noticed an issue in Pentecostal circles where someone says they prayed about this or that issue and God answered them, but then they say that God’s answer has to apply to everybody. They say, “Well God told me it’s not OK to do XYZ. So I don’t think Christians should do XYZ.”
See the problem there? They are assuming that since God told them not to do this thing, that no Christian should do it, either.
Now, I’ll assume that they heard God correctly. They may not have, but I can’t prove it one way or the other, so let’s just assume they correctly heard from God. God told them not to do X. That’s well and good. I have no problem with you not doing X. It’s between you and God.
But I don’t agree with telling other Christians that they shouldn’t do X either just because God told you that you shouldn’t. And pastors do this all the time, even behind a pulpit.
Now, if someone gives a message in tongues and interpretation, or if someone gives a word of prophecy in the church, then that’s one thing. And in that case, that might be a word for that specific congregation. Again, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a word for all churches everywhere.
And I think we get that. I’ve never heard of a church publishing their prophetic words or interpretations from a message in tongues and publishing it as a word for all churches. And I’d just say, we should apply that same logic to when we hear from God personally as well.
The Spirit is of the Lord.
The Spirit is inside you.
The Spirit empowers you.
The Spirit seals you.
The Spirit guides you.
The Spirit is a point of connection between you and God.
And when God speaks to you, God is speaking to YOU; He is not speaking to everybody.
Thanks for listening to this Cross References Bible Study on the Book of Ezekiel. This has been Luke Taylor, reminding you that it’s orange, by the way. Just in case you forgot.