Easter 7
Ez
36:22-28
6/1/25
“You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in
them. I am the LORD your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my
rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.” Those
are the words with which Yahweh instructed Israel in the book of Leviticus. He
commanded them to walk in the ways of the Law – the Torah that he had given to
them as his covenant people. He told
them that if a person does them, he will live.
Yahweh told them that if they walked in his ways and kept his law
they would receive life and blessings. But he warned them that if they did not
– if they violated his law – they would receive judgment and destruction. In
Deuteronomy, just as they were about to take possession of the promised land he
warned them, “And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one
end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other
gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have
known.”
As Ezekiel wrote in the sixth century B.C., the results were
clearly in. God’s people had not walked in his ways. The Law – the Torah – had
not brought them blessings and life.
Instead, they had disobeyed it at every turn. They had worshipped false gods. They had not loved their neighbor as
themselves, and instead had oppressed the poor in their midst.
And God was bringing judgment upon them exactly as he had said. The
northern kingdom of Isarel had broken away from Judah and had pursued the most
crass form of idolatry. God had used the
Assyrians who in 722 BC. conquered them and took them into exile.
Judah was now about to face the same thing. Already, some like Ezekiel, had been taken
into exile. Ezekiel wrote from Babylon. He
was a priest who had been taken there in 597 B.C. as part of a group of middle level
social figures that the Babylonians took away as a warning that Judah should
not disobey again.
In a vision, Yahweh had dramatically revealed to Ezekiel the depths
of Judah’s sin. He saw that the kings of Judah had brought idols into the
temple itself. The temple was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was
located in the Holy of Holies. This was the throne of Yahweh – it was the
located means by which the glory of Yahweh dwelt in the midst of his people.
But now, Judah had completely defiled it.
Ezekiel watched as he saw the glory of Yahweh leave the temple. God
showed Ezekiel that he was abandoning the temple. He was rejecting it and the
people and city in which it was located. He had withdrawn his presence and
revealed to Ezekiel that siege and destruction awaited Jerusalem.
The Book of Ezekiel is interesting, because the first thirty three
chapters are basically all law, as Ezekiel confronts the sin of Judah and
announces that Yahweh’s judgment is coming. Then, in chapter thirty three
Ezekiel reports: “a fugitive from Jerusalem came to me and said, ‘The city
has been struck down.’” The prophet learns that Jerusalem has been captured, and
that it along with the temple has been destroyed. From that moment on, the rest
of the book is all Gospel. It is God
offering hope as he speaks about the restoration he will provide.
Our text comes from this portion of the book. Yahweh says that he
will bring his people back. He states in our text, “I will take you from
the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your
own land.”
However, God tells the people that they have not merited this
deliverance in any way. He says, “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus
says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am
about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned
among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my
great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have
profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD,
declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their
eyes.”
In the ancient world, each nation had their god or gods. The way
that you evaluated whose god was most powerful was on the basis of how that
nation did in conflict. The nation that won in war had the more powerful gods.
Yahweh was the God of Judah.
Because of Judah’s sin, he had used Babylonia as his instrument to bring
judgment on his people. But to the
world, this looked like Yahweh was weak and unable to protect them. The sin of
Judah had profaned God’s name among the nations. Now, Yahweh would act to
vindicate his holiness among the nations by bringing Judah back.
Judah is not the only one who profanes God’s name. We do as
well. God put his name upon us when we
were baptized and he set us apart as his children. Every Sunday we receive a reminder of this
fact in the Benediction. There we use
words from Numbers chapter six. God
commanded that Aaron and his sons were to speak the words of the Benediction
over the people, and he explained, “So shall they put my name upon the people
of Israel, and I will bless them.”
In the triune Name of the invocation
and in the words of the Benediction, the liturgy of the Divine Service begins
and ends with the reminder that God has put his name on us and made us his
children. We have the privilege of
bearing his name – and we also have the responsibility
of doing so.
The way that we live either brings
glory to God’s name or profanes it. If
we claim to be Christians, then what we say and do reflects on God. As Luther writes in the Small Catechism,
“God’s name is kept holy when the Word of God is taught in its truth and
purity, and we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it. Help us to do this, dear Father in
heaven! But anyone who teaches or
lives contrary to God’s Word profanes the name of God among us. Protect us from this, heavenly Father!”
In our text, God describes how he will
bring his people back from exile. This is what God did in 538 B.C. using Cyrus
and the Persians. But we learn that this saving action by God was the beginning
of something even bigger. It was an action that has found its fulfillment in
Jesus Christ.
In the next chapter Yahweh says, “My
servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all
have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey
my statutes.” God describes how the Messiah – the descendant of King David –
will rule his people. This didn’t happen
in the sixth century B.C., or in the centuries that followed. But in the first
century A.D. God sent his Son as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born
of the virgin Mary. True God, he was also the One who descended from David according
to the flesh.
As an expression of God’s will, the
Law offered life. However, it did not provide the power to live in the ways it
described. And so, instead of life it brought a curse and death on fallen
people. Paul told the Galatians, “For all who rely on works of the law
are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does
not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’”
Jesus Christ was born under the law in
order to redeem those who were under the law – those whose own actions could
never produce any outcome other than the curse. And so on Good Friday he died
on the cross for our sins. Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, ‘Cursed is
everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” Jesus freed us from the slavery of the
curse by dying in our place.
The goal of the law was life – eternal
life with God. Because of our sin, it could not provide this. But on the third
day God raised Jesus from the dead as the beginning of the life that is ours. In Christ God has overcome sin and death.
In our text 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. 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.”
God has washed us with water and
cleansed us of all our sin. Ananias urged the newly converted Paul, “Rise and
be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” Our sins
have been washed away in baptism. There we were clothed with Christ so that in
God’s eyes we are now holy. There we were born again of water and the Spirit.
The law did not provide the power for
its own fulfillment. Israel and its history was a demonstration of this fact.
But God promised that he would do something new. He would put his Spirit within
his people to transform their heart. As the baptized, God has done this for
you. You have received the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy
Spirt. You are a new creation in Christ.
Next Sunday, on Pentecost, we will
celebrate the fact that God has poured out the Holy Spirit on his people. This
action is part of the end times in which we live. God has fulfilled the promise
in Ezekiel, and now the Spirit leads and empowers us to walk in God’s ways. There
is still a struggle because the old Adam in us has not yet been completely
destroyed. Yet as Paul told the
Galatians, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will certainly not
gratify the desires of the flesh.”
The Spirit is the resurrection power
of God already at work in us. Our life with God is not defined by works of the
law that we do as we seek favor with him. Instead, the Spirit is at work in us
to bring forth fruit – to bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. He brings forth love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. This love is not a feeling. Instead, it is the act of service
directed toward others. And this life of love prompted by the Spirit is what
the law was really all about. Paul said, “For the whole law is fulfilled
in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The Spirit empowers. The Spirit leads.
But we are not robots. The life in
Christ is something to which we must direct our attention and effort. Paul told
the Galatians, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit,”
or “let us keep step with the Spirit” as it can also be translated.
And here, God’s Word – his Law – becomes the guide for how we live according to God’s will. We find here a description of what the life in Christ looks like. We see the goal of how we seek to live each day through the Spirit.
The Law is an expression of God’s will, and it describes life lived
in fellowship with him. However the Law does not provide the power by which
fallen man can live according to it. In Jesus Christ, God has delivered us from
the curse of the law and its judgment. Now, because of Christ, we are holy
before God.
God has fulfilled the words of Ezekiel by sending his Spirit in the
last days. Through the work of the Spirit we have been born again, and are a
new creation in Christ. The Spirit who has given us new life continues to
empower us to walk in the ways of the Lord.
