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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 Heart
Ezekiel 36:24-26
Ezekiel series, Part 66
Introduction
Poor Nicodemus. That guy really gets a bad wrap.
Nicodemus was the Pharisee who famously came to Jesus by night, because he was afraid if he approached Jesus during the day that people might see, and people might talk. He was a wise man, a religious man, a scholar.
And it’s a good thing that he comes to Jesus in the middle of the night like this because if anyone did hear what Nicodemus was saying, he’d never hear the end of it. When he was told that he must be born again, in
John 3:4, he replied to Jesus,
How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
And if this were a sitcom, modern people will stick the laugh track right here and we’ll all high-five and laugh at the dumb question. So Jesus makes this statement:
(Verse 5)
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus is still confused. He says to Jesus,
“How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”
Now the laugh track probably goes off again, but we should stop and consider this question. It’s actually kind of a tricky one. Jesus expects Nicodemus to know this.
But why should he be expected to understand this? Why should Nicodemus know about concepts like “born again” and “born of water and the Spirit.” It’s not like the Old Testament teaches about these things.
Or do they? You’ll find out today on the Cross References podcast.
[theme music]
V24, The Return
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 a parent of a 5-year-old who loves star wars. And one of his favorite things in star wars is when the stormtroopers are told to execute order 66. This is the scene where all the stormtroopers turn evil. When they are told to execute order 66, it means that they are to start hunting the Jedi, the good guys. Order 66 turns them bad.
And so it seems fitting that today, in part 66 of our Ezekiel series, we’re going to learn about how we can turn from bad to good.
This is probably the most exciting chapter of Ezekiel so far, especially today, as we’ll read about the blessings of a new future covenant. It was future for Ezekiel’s audience, it’s already come for us.
So we’re going to pick it up at verse 24 of Ezekiel 36. Previously, God had just said that He was going to act for Israel, who had been taken away from their land. Here’s what God’s going to do.
Ezekiel 36:24
24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.
The Jewish people had been taken away through three attacks in Ezekiel’s day. The first one was in 605 BC, and that’s when Daniel and a few others were taken. The second attack happened 5 to 10 years later, and that’s when many Jews were taken, including Ezekiel himself. And then the final attack happened in 586 BC, and that’s when Jerusalem itself was totally utterly destroyed.
This prophecy says that Israel will be brought back into their land, and as we know, this will become true. After a while, Babylon would be conquered by the Medo-Persian empire, and King Cyrus would take control. The Decree of Cyrus, which is 70 years after the first attack, said that the Jews could return to their homeland.
V25, Cleansed by Water
Now, I know that was kind of the boring history lesson part of today’s lesson. Now I really want to get into the meat of what we’re talking about today.
Let’s go back to Nicodemus. So as we said, he comes to Jesus by night. Jesus is all, “Be born of water and the Spirit.”
Now, some people think that the phrase “water and the Spirit” is referring to two different births right here, and it’s easy to understand why, because Jesus was just talking about being “born AGAIN” a few verses earlier. So some take “born of water” to mean your natural birth, and “born of the Spirt” to be born again.
This is actually incorrect. The physical birth is never called “born of water” in the Bible or Jewish history. “Born of water and the spirit” are both referring to the same event: the second birth, or getting saved.
This is also not referring to baptism. I can understand why some people try to make it about that, but it’s not. It’s actually referring to God’s act of saving us by washing away our sins.
And Nicodemus seems perplexed by what Jesus is saying, and then Jesus said that line to him
In verse 10
“Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”
Now that seems a little unfair, because how would Nicodemus have been expected to know these things? This is a question that confuses some commentators, because they understand why Nicodemus is confused, and they don’t understand why Jesus says, “Shouldn’t you already know this?” So why is Jesus being so hard on him?
The answer is, there is actually one place in the Old Testament that talks about water and the Spirit. Only one. So where Jesus is drawing this from would have to be
Ezekiel 36:25-26
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. 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.
So let’s take this a little at a time, because like I said, I’m focusing today on the subject receiving a new heart from God. As for the part about a new spirit, that’s a different subject, and that’s what I’ll be discussing next time.
But first it uses the word “clean” three times. God says He will sprinkle the Jews with clean water, to make them clean, and cleansed of idolatry. So a heavy emphasis here on becoming clean.
The phrase “sprinkle clean water” is the part that jumped out at me the most, because my first thought when I saw this was: is this where the practice of baptism by sprinkling came from? Because the idea that you can sprinkle water on someone and that this is how someone can be baptized is an idea found nowhere in the Bible.
Now, I get in debates about this on Twitter with people regularly, and they can never provide me with a verse that shows baptism by sprinkling. If you disagree, my email is crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com. If you disagree, send me an email. I’ll gladly answer it in private or on the show, but my stance is that baptism is only ever by immersion in the Scriptures, not by sprinkling.
So this verse threw me for a little bit of a loop. I thought, is this where people get the idea of baptism by sprinkling? However, this verse is actually nothing about the practice of baptism; the idea here in Ezekiel 36:25 is about God cleansing us from our sins internally.
The idea was in the old testament when the priests would be washed prior to serving in the tabernacle. However, that was outward symbolism; again, it was the inward cleansing that we truly need, and it’s what God is talking about right here. You can wash yourself as clean as you want to, but no matter how much soap or scrubbing or sprinkling or immersing you do, that doesn’t literally save your soul. God has to do a work of cleaning you from your sins.
It reminds me of a vision in
Zechariah 3:3-5
3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. 4 And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” 5 And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments.
The meaning of that vision is clear. If we want to go to heaven, we can’t change our physical clothes and expect us to be made pure in God’s sight. Clothes are just clothes. But in this vision, they symbolize our spiritual state before God. Joshua the high priest right here is dirty before God. That represents our sins and our impurities, which have polluted us. But God says to give him clean clothes, representing salvation, which can only be an act of God. We can’t save ourselves or make ourselves pure before Him.
And that’s the cleansing that Ezekiel is discussing here. Not an outward act, but an inward purification. Now, this is speaking to the ancient Jews, but this is also speaking of that future covenant where we’ll be cleansed by the blood of Jesus.
A great cross reference for this is when Jeremiah also prophesied about the future new and better covenant in
Jeremiah 31:31-34
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
The prophets were speaking of a better covenant to come, and that’s the New Covenant, which another word for is the New Testament. So what Jeremiah and Ezekiel are talking about here are that future better plan that God had that would be a covenant not by the blood of bulls and goats, but the blood of Jesus Christ, a once and for all sacrifice for our sins.
What Ezekiel is talking about here is his version of what Jeremiah was talking about over there.
V26, A new heart
So let’s read it again, and this time I want to focus on verse 26, and that’s probably where we’ll stop for today.
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.
So when we come to God, we are given a new heart. Let’s drill down on what the heart is.
The word “heart” here in the Hebrew is leb. It represents a person’s internal locus of control. Now, if this sounds familiar, it’s because this phrase came up earlier in Ezekiel.
Ezekiel 11:19
And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh
So the same idea here. That word “flesh” might give us pause, because to our New-Testament-ears, the flesh is a bad thing. The flesh is something that we don’t want to let control us, because it speaks of our sinful desires.
But that is not how Ezekiel is using the word “flesh” right here. Ezekiel is using it as a contrast to a heart of stone. A heart of stone is dead to God. Unresponsive. DOA. Sinful man cannot come to God unless God awakens him. I am not a Calvinist, but I do somewhat agree with the concept of total depravity. That man does not seek God on His own, but God draws Him. We are dead to God.
But when we get saved, God removes the stony heart and gives us a heart that’s tender. That’s what “heart of flesh” means here. Not flesh in the bad way. Flesh in the sense that it’s tender. Responsive. God can mold it. God can massage it.
Have you ever seen in like a medical drama when they’re operating on someone and trying to get their heart going, and they have to kind of massage it a little to get the blood pumping again? Well, that’s how we want our hearts to be toward God. Something He can reach into us and massage it and mold us and shape us.
I want to have a heart that’s like playdoh in God’s hands. Not a heart that God needs to bring His sledgehammer down on to get anything done with me.
I feel like that’s what God’s getting at when He says, “He who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” If you’re prideful, full of yourself, hard-hearted, think you know it all, sometimes God has to knock you on your butt to get your attention, because your heart is hard and unresponsive. That’s the purpose of some of the trials that we go through in our lives. God is trying to get ahold of us any way He can. Some of us don’t even have a strong prayer life unless something’s going wrong. And THEN we start praying. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be.
A heart that’s soft toward God is sensitive to His leading and the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t have to bring the hammer down on it because that would be overkill. God’s not mean. God doesn’t want to be any harder on you than necessary. It’s us who make it hard a lot of the time.
So God gives us a new heart. Chuck Missler often points out that the Bible never says God will fix our old heart. God can’t do anything with our old heart. If we want to work with Him, we have to get a new heart. The old heart is beyond repair. David says
In Pslam 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Someone should write a song about that.
Our old heart can’t be fixed. It’s stone. It’s dead. We need to pray for a new heart. And the right spirit- well, that’s what we’ll be talking about next time.
Also, in a few weeks, I’m going to share a conversation I had with author Chris Pace. I’m sharing it here because it relates so much to what we’re studying this week and next week about having a new heart and a new spirit.
Chris is with John Bevere’s Messenger International ministry. Chris has written a book called Level Up, and in the conversation I’ll share in a few weeks, he’s going to share the point that
Proverbs 3:5-6 famously say
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Chris will note that in this famous verse about being led by God, it doesn’t say “trust in the Lord with all your mind.” It says to trust with all your heart. Why? Because there are some things that God places directly into your heart. God bypasses your mind and speaks directly to your heart.
There will be times in life where you are being led by God to do something and you can’t explain it intellectually, and it might not make sense to your mind, but it will make sense to your heart. Because that’s the avenue through which God is speaking to you.
And that’s why it’s so important to get a sense of the new heart that God gives you when you get saved.
As I said before, the heart, the leb, is our internal locus of control. In the past, we were ruled by a stony heart that just let us do whatever we wanted to do. We were ruled by our instincts, our desires, we were spiritually dead.
But when we get saved, we get a new heart, and that gives us new desires. Doesn’t mean we’ll be perfect, as anyone who’s been saved longer than five minutes knows. But we’ll desire to do better in a way we didn’t before.
Our new heart will be the source of God’s supernatural love, agape; God’s supernatural thoughts, logos; and God’s supernatural power, dunamis. And not just our new heart, but our new spirit.
A note on the future
Let’s turn our attention to future prophecy for just a minute. Is this section of Ezekiel something that was already fulfilled in the past, or is it something yet future? And the truth is, it’s both. It’s available now. If you’re saved, this has been fulfilled to you. But for the Jewish people that this was originally spoken true, this hasn’t yet come to total fulfillment.
Just to keep all my dispensational ducks in a row, Ezekiel’s audience- the Jews- this is still going to be a future fulfillment. Collectively, the Jewish people have not embraced the Messiah. Some have, but the vast majority have not. About 1% of modern Jewish people are saved.
And unfortunately, that’s not changing until we literally get to the end of the world.
Romans 11:25-26
a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved.
That means there’s a blinder put on them currently that won’t be lifted until this moment of the fulness of the gentiles being brought in. That means when every gentile that needs to get saved gets saved. We don’t know what that number is. But once we hit it, the rapture will happen, the end of the world begins, and it’s during that 7-year tribulation period that the Jewish people will finally have a heart change and turn to Jesus. And then they will realize that Jesus was truly the Messiah all along.
Zechariah 12:10
“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
So that day is coming for them; this day that Ezekiel is prophesying to them.
But for us, this day is already here. You can recognize Jesus as Messiah now, get saved, and all these blessings that Ezekiel 36 mentions are yours now. God will give you a new heart and a new spirit.
All you have to do is execute Order 66. But God’s Order 66.. God will turn you from bad to good.
[music]
By the way, one last note on that. Some people will try to say that the church is Israel in the New Covenant, and that national Israel and the Jewish people not longer have a specific role to play in end-times-bible-prophecy.
You cannot read Romans 11 with that view, because take what I just read right there in those verses. It talks about the fulness of the Gentiles coming in, and it says “all Israel will be saved.” Let me read it again:
Verse 25
a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
Verse 26
And in this way all Israel will be saved
So, if Israel is the church, then how come it says a hardening has come upon the church? Who are the Gentiles then, unsaved people? If so, what does it mean that they come in? The church is hardened until all the unsaved people come in? It makes no sense.
But replacement theology Christians- those who say that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan- say that Israel is referring to the nation of Israel in verse 25, but then they say that the Israel in verse 26 is the church. So the word “Israel” has to completely change meanings from one verse to the next.
That’s just bad hermeneutics. Just plain bad. Even my ESV study Bible, which was largely worked on by replacement theology theologians, which means I take a lot of its notes with a grain of salt, but even my ESV study Bible admits right here in the note on Romans 11:25 that “Paul [referring] to the salvation of Israel at the end of time seems most likely.”
Now, I love my ESV study Bible but the scholars who wrote the notes here were largely reformed, Calvinistic, replacement theology anti-dispensationalist theologians. And even they admit that Romans 11 implies that God has a future plan to save the whole nation of Israel.
Now, I know that I just used a bunch of five-syllable words and many of you probably don’t know or care what I’m talking about. But if you’re still here, thank you, and let me tell you what you’re in for next time. I’ll try to get through verse 27 next time. That’s all I’m promising. I’m hoping to finish the chapter but I also thought I’d finish the chapter this time, and I got stuck at verse 26. And verse 27 has a lot going on, so we’ll just see how far we get next time.
I am not trying to drag this out. Honestly, I’m not. I have another podcast, it’s called Weird Stuff in the Bible, it gets 10 times as many listeners as this podcast, I should probably just seek to wrap this Ezekiel Bible Study podcast up as quickly as possible and then focus on the other one.
But I love this book of Ezekiel too much to rush my way through it, especially as we get into chapters 36, 37, 38 and 39, truly the best part of Ezekiel. So I’m not rushing this, I’m going to take my time with what God says to us here.
Next time we’ll cover at least verse 27 and talk about what it means that God promises to put a new spirit in His people. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
And if you do have any hate mail for me today- maybe you don’t like something I said because you are reformed, or you like replacement theology, or you are pro-anti-dispensationalism, or if you like TULIPs- and all that’s fine; you can send your hate mail to crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com
Closing Thoughts
Nicodemus wanted a secret conversation with Jesus, so he came to Jesus by night.
Unfortunately for him, that conversation was recorded in the best-selling and most widely-read book of all time. AKA the Bible.
Not only that, his conversation that he didn’t want anyone to hear ends up being probably the most famous conversation in the entire Bible, and I say that because it contains the most-searched-for verse of all time.
John 3:16 is, by far, the most famous verse in all of human history. The Gospel message condensed into one verse.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
Year after year, it’s cited as the most-searched for verse on Bible softwares and Google searches.
And it’s interesting that John 3:16 and the conversation that birthed it had its origins all the way back in Ezekiel 36: you must be born again. By water and the spirit.
Poor Nicodemus. He embarrassed himself because he didn’t know Ezekiel 36.
And before today, you may not have known Ezekiel 36 either. But now you do.
Thanks for listening to this Cross References Bible Study on the Book of Ezekiel. This has been Luke Taylor, and I hope the Bible makes more sense to you after this episode.