Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. And if you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'll be preaching this today from the book of Ezekiel
in the Old Testament, the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. And
I'll be preaching from Ezekiel chapter 36. And this is the second
message of a two-part message entitled The New Covenant. This
is part two. Last week, I preached on the
new covenant part one from the book of Jeremiah chapter 31. Well, today I'm gonna preach
on the new covenant from Ezekiel chapter 36. Now, let me give
you just a little history. Jeremiah prophesied to the people
of the Southern kingdom of Judah, mainly in Jerusalem, leading
up to the time of their captivity. when Nebuchadnezzar, king of
Babylon, brought his army down and literally demolished Jerusalem,
leveled the temple of Solomon, and took the people into captivity. Jeremiah, the prophet, he fled
to Egypt. Daniel, the prophet, he was taken
with, I believe, the first wave, the people of Judah, the whole
population, was taken to Babylon and they stayed in captivity
for 70 years, as Jeremiah prophesied. And they were taken in three
different groups, three different ways. Daniel the prophet was
taken in the first way. Ezekiel was a prophet who was
born in Babylon in captivity. In fact, he's the only prophet
of Israel, of Judah, who never prophesied in his home in the
land of Israel. His prophecy took place later
on to the people in captivity in Babylon. As Jeremiah spoke
to the people of a new covenant in the future that would come
to fruition and be fulfilled by the grace of God through the
Lord Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, Ezekiel spoke of the
same thing here in Ezekiel 36. Here's the people of Judah in
captivity and they are distraught. But Ezekiel tells them, now look,
the reason we're in captivity is because we've disobeyed God. We've distrusted God, we've misrepresented
God. Look at Ezekiel 36 and verse
21. Now God had made a covenant with
them, the old covenant, through Moses. And he meant to keep them
together as a nation, especially the tribe of Judah, until the
Messiah would come. And then in that time of the
Messiah and a little bit afterward, they stayed together until God
totally destroyed them and dispersed them in AD 70. But that old covenant
was in effect up until the time of the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ. And so, Ezekiel, the prophet,
he tells them in verse 21, speaking for God, he says, but I had pity
for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned
among the heathen, whither they went. Now, God at this time,
the northern kingdom, which was Israel, made up of 10 tribes,
had already been destroyed by the Assyrian empire, army, and
scattered throughout the land. Here, the southern kingdom, Judah,
and along with the tribe of Benjamin, was taken into captivity, but
God didn't totally destroy them and scatter them. He kept them
together. Why? Well, Was it because of
their goodness or their repentance? No. They were still lawbreakers,
sinners, just like we all are. The blessings of God upon His
people, as far as salvation is concerned, is always by grace. which means we don't deserve
them and we can't earn them. They're given. That's why the
Bible says that we who believe, sinners saved by grace, true
Christians, that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings
and heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Christ met the conditions,
we receive the blessings. And we don't deserve these blessings.
We're still sinners saved by grace. And grace reigns through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. So
it's not based on our obedience, it's based on His. Well, God
says here in verse 21 of Ezekiel 36, I had pity for mine holy
name. You see, God had made a promise.
And that promise was to send the Messiah, His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ into the world. and His pity toward the people
of Israel, the people of Judah, was not because of anything in
them, it's because of His promise, His name, His glory was on the
line here. God never broke a promise, He
never breaks a promise. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians
1 20, that all the promises of God are in Him, that is in Christ,
yea, and in Him, in Christ, amen. So God's promises, if God were
to break one of his promises to his people, he would be dishonored. But he's a faithful God. He keeps
his promises. He told through Jeremiah in the
book of Lamentations, he said, all of that, all of that, he
says that he will never, never go back on a promise. He will
never fail to keep his promises. He told through Malachi, he said,
I am the Lord, I change not, therefore you sons of Jacob are
not consigned. Who are sons of Jacob? That's
sinners. That's who he's talking about.
Great is his faithfulness. Great are his mercies. They endure
forever. But he says Israel had profaned
among the heathen wherever they went in their wanderings. And
even when they came to the promised land and occupied it, they profaned
the name of God. Mainly what they did wrong, they
did a lot of things wrong. Now the idolatry, intermarrying
with the heathen, there's all kinds of things that they did.
You can read it in the Old Testament. But mainly what they did is they
took that Old Covenant law which was given to show them their
sinfulness and the impossibility of salvation by their works,
and given to point them to Christ, they turned it into a self-righteous,
legalistic system of work salvation. Paul describes that in Romans
chapter 9, when he talks about Israel, which followed after
the law for righteousness, did not achieve it. Why? because
they sought it not by faith, that is by looking unto Jesus,
the author and finisher of their faith, but they sought it by
works of the law. And they failed. By deeds of
the law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. If I were to
tell you, if I were to sit here in this chair on this TV program
and tell you that God will save you if you'll do your part, if
you'll do this or do that, I would be misrepresenting and profaning
the name of God. But the Bible tells us that God
will save His people for Christ's sake. He honors Himself in saving
sinners, not by their works, but by his grace through the
blood and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Israel
profaned the name of God under that old covenant. Well, look
at verse 22 of Ezekiel 36. Therefore say unto the house
of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, I do not this for your sakes,
O house of Israel, but for mine holy namesake, which you have
profaned among the heathen, whether or wherever you went. In other
words, God said, I'm not doing this for your sake or based upon
your goodness or your efforts, but for my holy name. God's glory
is involved here. And this is what you need to
see. You know, the Bible teaches that the obedience unto death
of Christ is the salvation of his people. and there'll not
be one sinner who perishes for whom Christ died. And I'm telling
you this, you need to hear this. To preach that Christ died for
any who perish profanes the name of God. It denies the glory of
God in Christ. God's honor is at stake. He chose
His people to save, and He chose them before the foundation of
the world. And although we all fell in Adam into a state of
death and depravity and unbelief, God's going to get His people
and bring them out from there. He's going to redeem them by
the blood of Christ, and He's going to show them the way by
the power of the Holy Spirit under the preaching of the gospel.
Even to the point that Christ said this in John 6, 37, all
that the Father giveth me shall come to me, him that cometh to
me I will in no wise cast out. He goes on to say, this is the
will of him that sent me that of all which he hath given me
I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day.
Read those verses when you have time. So he says in verse 23,
As he said, I'm not doing it for your sake, I'm doing it for
my name's sake. And he says in verse 23, and
I will sanctify my great name. I'll set my name apart, which
was profaned among the heathen, which you have profaned in the
midst of them, and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord.
He's talking about Gentiles there. They're gonna know that I am
the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in
you before their eyes. Now technically, all of that's
going to take place in the salvation of God's elect, both Jew and
Gentile, by His grace through the Lord Jesus Christ. And they'll
see it. They may not recognize it, but
they'll see it. And He says in verse four, or
verse 24, for I will take you from among the heathen and gather
you out of all countries and will bring you into your own
land." Now there's a physical temporal fulfillment of that
prophecy and then there's a spiritual eternal fulfillment of it. The
physical temporal fulfillment was when he brought him out of
Babylon 70 years later and brought him back into the land of promise. And then you can read a lot of
the minor prophets on what happened when he brought him back and
gave him that land again. That was through God's providence
and power. And the first thing they were
to do was to reestablish the worship of God, but they failed
there. You can read about that in the
prophets like Zephaniah and Zechariah, all of those, the minor prophets
they call them, and that's okay. But he says, I will bring you
out of all countries. Now when he brought them back
out of Babylon, that's just one country. But see, the Bible tells
us that God has a people out of every tribe and nation. And
God's gonna go all over this world. That's why Christ said,
go into all the world and preach the gospel. He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved. That's not talking about baptism
to gain salvation. Because he that believeth what?
Believeth salvation by grace. And confesses it in baptism.
That's what he's talking about. Confession, publicly. And so he says he's gonna gather
his people out of all nations. God has a chosen people out of
every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. And though they be
few compared to the population of the world throughout history,
they're more than what we can number. So he says in verse,
I'm gonna bring you out of the land, into your own land, verse
25 he says, then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and you
shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your
idols will I cleanse you. Now God doesn't say I'll cleanse
you if you will do this. He said this is what I'm gonna
do. And how does he cleanse his people spiritually, savingly? By the blood of Jesus Christ.
When they came back into the land of promise, they were to
sacrifice the blood of bulls and goats and sheep, you know,
the sacrificial system which was established at the beginning,
how to come to God. And all of those bulls and goats
and sheep and all of that, they were types and pictures of Christ.
Hebrews tells us that the blood of bulls and goats could never
take away sin. The blood of those physical animals
did not take away sin, but they pictured the one person, the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who beareth away the sins
of the world, who conquered sin. That doesn't mean he died for
everybody and took away their sins. It means that God's people
all over this world are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
And so that's how he sprinkles. Spiritually speaking, the sprinkling
comes when the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel,
applies to our consciences, our minds, affections, and will,
the blood of Christ, showing us that knowledge, how Christ's
death on the cross, His obedience unto death, put away all my sin. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
me from all sin. In His death on the cross, He
satisfied the justice of God. He paid my sin debt in full. My sins were charged to Him,
imputed to Him. And He paid it with the price
of His blood unto death. and he paid it in full. That's
what propitiation is about. You heard that word, propitiation.
That means a sin bearing sacrifice that brings satisfaction. I don't
owe a debt to God's law and justice because Christ paid my debt in
full. And every true believer can say
that. He paid my debt in full. Somebody
said, well, you mean we don't owe God anything? We owe him
a debt of love. which we'll never pay, love God
perfectly, love our neighbors ourself, but no legal debt. The law cannot condemn me. My
debt's been paid. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? Who can condemn us? It's Christ
that died. Yea, rather is risen again and
seated at the right hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession
for us because he's our propitiation. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ who walk after the Spirit and not
after the flesh. That means walking by faith in
Him, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
So God says, I'll do this. This is the nature of the new
covenant. It's not conditioned on what we do or what we decide. Now there are things because
of God's grace in our salvation that we will do. and that we
will decide, but that doesn't put the covenant, the new covenant
into effect. What puts the new covenant into
effect? What makes it effectual to the
salvation of his people? The blood of Jesus Christ, the
righteousness that he accomplished in his obedience unto death for
his people. And so he says in verse 26, now
this sprinkling has to do with our justification before God.
And the Bible says we're justified by His blood, justified by His
righteousness imputed. Romans chapter four and verse
six, where Paul was writing how David described the blessedness
of the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works.
I have a righteousness. See, it's what justification
is. I've said this so many times, but you need to hear it again.
To be justified before God means to be forgiven of all my sins,
past sins, present sins, future sins, sins of action, sins of
thought, all sin on a just ground. And what is the just ground?
The blood of Jesus Christ. and to be justified is to be
declared righteous in God's sight. How can I, who am a sinner, be
righteous in God's sight? What is righteousness? It's perfect
satisfaction to God's law and justice. That's why Christ said
in Matthew 5 20, Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter the
kingdom of heaven. That's why it says in Romans
10, 4, that Christ is the end, the fulfillment, the perfection
of the law for righteousness to every known that believe it.
That's why Jeremiah twice identifies Christ, the Messiah to come,
as the Lord, our righteousness. So God declares me righteous,
but he must do it on a just ground. And what is that just ground?
It's the imputed righteousness of Christ. the merits of his
obedience unto death that God has accounted, put to my account. And that's what the Bible teaches.
That's the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, Romans
1, 16 and 17. Well, to all whom he has cleansed,
he has justified that he sprinkled clean, that clean water, that
blood. He says this now, verse 26, a
new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within
you. And I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh."
And you know what he's describing there? The new birth. You must
be born again. All whom God chose before the
world began, all whom he justified by the blood of Jesus Christ,
by his righteousness imputed, all whom Christ redeemed on the
cross for whom he died shall be born again." And he doesn't
say here, a new heart also will I give you if you'll make a decision
or if you'll accept me as your personal son. No, that's not
in the Bible. Man's concocted that and he preaches
a false gospel when he says that. This is what I'm gonna do, a
new heart, a new mind, new affections, new will, a new conscience. Sprinkle,
I'll put my spirit within you. The Holy Spirit will indwell,
but he'll give us a spirit of life. Man by nature is spiritually
dead. His heart is deceitful and desperately
wicked, even in religion now. He doesn't have spiritual eyes
to see spiritual things or spiritual ears to hear spiritual things. And so in the new birth, he regenerates
us. That's called regeneration. That's
the giving of spiritual life to the dead. Literally resurrecting
us from the dead spiritually. And he gives us new eyes to see
and new ears to hear. That gospel, which we hate by
nature and reject, he brings us to receive it and believe
it. He brings us to submit to Christ as the Lord our righteousness. And he takes away that stony,
rebellious, unbelieving heart out of our flesh and gives us
a heart of flesh. Now flesh there, in the Bible,
flesh usually means sinful, but flesh here just means that heart
of flesh that's pliable, bending, humble, willingly submitting
to what God gives. He says in verse 27 of Ezekiel
36, I will put my spirit within you and I'll cause you to walk
in my statutes, his word, and you shall keep my judgments and
do them. See the nature of the new covenant,
which in essence is the everlasting covenant of grace established
in time by Christ. I will, you shall. It's not I
will, if you will, it's I will and you shall. You'll walk in
my statutes. What are his statutes? Well,
that's his word. Doesn't mean we'll be perfect
people in ourselves and we'll be perfectly obedient, but it
means we'll walk by faith in Christ, seeking him to know more
of him, growing in grace and in knowledge, walking in his
judgment. What is his judgment? It's his
gospel. How do I know I'm saved? Do I
believe the true gospel? Am I looking to the true Christ
or a counterfeit? Verse 28, he says, you shall
dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall
be my people and I will be your God. Now, again, there's a temporal,
physical fulfillment of that promise when he brings them back
out of Babylon and reestablishes them in the land of promise,
but that's temporal, temporary. And God told him that. There's
coming a time that I'm gonna make a new covenant with you,
not like this old covenant. Jeremiah said that in Jeremiah
31. That's what I preached on last week. But the eternal spiritual
fulfillment of this is in the salvation of his people established
in the land of his kingdom, spiritual land, the kingdom of God. He takes us out of this dark
world and the fellowship of the world and brings us into the
fellowship of His kingdom, His church, His people. And we have
a permanent dwelling place there that cannot be lost because it's
not conditioned on us. It's conditioned on Christ and
He cannot fail nor be discouraged. And he says, you shall be my
people, I'll be your God. That's the marriage of Christ
and his people that cannot be dissolved. I mentioned last week
how Jeremiah talked to the people of Israel showing how, and Isaiah
said this too, how God would give them a bill of divorcement. That old covenant which God united
himself with that nation in a temporal ceremonial way, was only going
to last until Christ came. The time of reformation, Hebrews
9 says it. And God, after that, he divorced
himself from that nation, that physical nation. That old covenant
was abolished by way of fulfillment. But God has a permanent marriage. Christ has a permanent wedding
vow, marriage with his spiritual people. his sheep, God's elect,
his church. And he'll never divorce us. He
says, he said, I will save you from all your uncleanness and
I will call for the corn, increase it and lay no famine upon. In
other words, he's talking about spiritual purity that cannot
be corrupted. And we'll enjoy that perfectly
when we die and go to be with the Lord and leave this body
of flesh. Paul wrote of that. He said,
who shall deliver me from this body of death? And he said, I
thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord. I hope you'll join us
next week for another message from God's word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.