Ezekiel chapter 11, verses 9, well, I'll read
16 to 20, quickly.
Therefore say, thus saith the Lord God, although
I have cast them far off among the
nations, speaking of the fact that he's going
to, when Nebuchadnezzar comes, he's going to drive
the children of Israel out amongst the nations.
And although I have scattered them among the
countries, yet will I be to them as
a little sanctuary in the countries, and I
like King James here, sorry if your translation
robs it a little, but, I will be
to them a little sanctuary in the countries
where they shall come, is one way to
translate the Hebrew, and I like that because
it seems like the Lord is waiting for
them in the places that they will come
to.
Almost like when Elijah gets to the cave,
the Lord says, what are you doing here?
He was waiting in the cave for him,
and here it says God is going to
scatter his people amongst the nations.
They're not going to have the temple, they're
not going to have Jerusalem, but they're not
going to be missing anything because God says
when they come in these countries, they're going
to come to me, and I will be
a sanctuary to them in all the places
I've scattered them.
I will be that sanctuary.
It's almost as Jesus tells the woman at
the well, the time is coming when it'll
neither be in Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim where
those who worship the Father will worship in
spirit and truth, because God is a spirit,
and those who worship must worship in a
spirit and truth.
So here I will be a sanctuary to
them wherever they come.
Therefore say, thus saith the Lord God, I
will gather you from the people, assemble you
out of the countries where you have been
scattered, and I will give you the land
of Israel, and they shall come, they shall
take away all the detestable things thereof and
all the abominations thereof.
Notice verse 19 and 20 is where we
are this morning.
And I will give them one heart, and
I will put a new spirit within you,
and I will take the stony heart out
of their flesh, and will give them a
heart of flesh that they may walk in
my statutes and keep my ordinances and do
them.
They shall be my people, and I will
be their God.
Israel had been a people that were separated
from all of the other nations of the
world.
God had done miracles and signs and wonders,
had delivered them from Egypt, separated them, brought
them through the Red Sea, fed them for
40 years in the wilderness, the pillar of
cloud, the pillar of fire, the manna falling
from heaven.
They crossed the Jordan River to come into
Canaan.
The walls of Jericho had fallen down.
God had done miracle after miracle.
He had given them the land.
He instructed them.
He fed them.
He led them.
He cared for them.
And as they came into the land, sadly,
of course, the pattern of the nation was
much like the pattern in our lives sometimes.
They came into the land.
They settled in the land.
They were blessed in the land.
They prospered in the land.
And as they prospered in the land, no
longer so desperate then for God because of
all of the other distractions around them, they
began to cool.
And as they cooled, then they began to
worship other gods, and they rebelled.
And then God would judge them and chasten
them.
And then they would fall on their knees,
and they would cry out in repentance.
And God would be merciful, and he would
restore them, and he would bless them again.
And then when he blessed them, they would
begin to prosper.
When they began to prosper, they would cool
again.
When they cooled, they would become rebellious and
idolatrous, and God would chasten them.
And when he chastened them, they would cry
out.
They would repent, so he would bless them.
And when he blessed them, come on, you
should be able to do it by now.
And, you know, they just, you know, go
through that, you know, that process.
You and I know when things are desperate,
we pray desperate prayers.
When things are not desperate, we kind of
cruise, you know, like we need God's help
less when we're cruising than when we're screaming
or something.
And the truth is we are desperately in
need of him all of the time.
And, of course, that process had gone on
for centuries.
And now, as I know, it's been long
going through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, all of
that surrounding Jerusalem and Judah and their idolatry.
And it's been years now.
It's been chapter after chapter after chapter.
And it kind of seems redundant.
But you think, Lord, why did you give
so much print to this whole process?
Why are we still going through, you know,
60 chapters in Isaiah, you know, 50 chapters
in Jeremiah, Lamentations?
Now we're headed into more chapters.
And, Lord, why?
And I think it's because he wants every
generation to be warned.
He wants it to be written out, all
of its detail.
He wants us to understand how the world
is alluring and would pull our hearts away,
and that ultimately he can't condone that.
And after centuries of unheeded warning and centuries
of unheeded warning and prophets and so forth,
and now, finally, in these chapters, it comes
to the point where it's an Ichabod.
The glory is departing.
They're unaware of it.
When we see tonight, they're worshiping.
They have no idea that the presence of
God is there.
The glory of God is there.
And yet, slowly but surely, he's withdrawing himself,
not because he wants to.
His heart is broken, but because they have
desecrated the temple.
They've desecrated everything that's holy.
They have little understanding of the high privilege
that God has given to them.
And as a nation, they have turned away.
Many unheeded warnings.
I think of our own nation, and certainly
there have been unheeded warnings or warnings that
had heated for a little while and then
turned away.
Our nation, we don't, you know, can we
say one nation under God?
Or do we have to have the Supreme
Court decide whether we can say under God
anymore?
Not allowed to have prayer in public places.
And, you know, and yet you look at
the things that are being handed to the
generation that's behind us.
We can't talk about God.
We can't do that.
But look at the stuff that's available.
We're trying to decide, can Michael Jackson, you
know, sleep with young boys?
Is that normal?
Is it normal to let Terry Shivo die?
Is it normal to let…
We look at what's going on around us.
We look into the lyrics and the music
industry.
We look about what's being handed to us
through video and DVDs and the movie.
And yet we don't, can't say anything about
God.
You can't say anything about sin.
You can't say anything about righteousness.
You can't use the H word, that's for
sure.
You don't want to talk about hell in
this generation.
You know, you can't do any of these
things.
And you look at everything that's out there.
And yet it's as a sense there's no
more warning.
There's no more parameters.
The flesh is being handed everything, but we're
being told publicly we're not allowed to put
out any heed, any warning.
You know, we're not allowed to say, this
ends in problems.
And I just read this article this week
by Dr. David Walsh, who has done a
study connecting violent video games with physical aggression.
He's been on CBS on 60 Minutes and
so forth.
He said this, teenagers, if you are a
teenager, you might want to listen, but according
to this, it may not sink in.
But if you're a parent with a teenager,
you want to listen.
He said this, the teenage brain is different
from the adult brain.
I don't know if that's teenagers or parents
laughing right now.
The teenage brain is different from the adult
brain.
The impulse control center, the part of the
brain that enables us to think ahead and
consider consequences and manage different urges, that's the
part of the brain right behind the forehead,
it's called the prefrontal cortex, that's under construction
during the teenage years.
In fact, the wiring is not completed until
the early 20s.
Now, this is a psychologist, a scientist, he's
saying that part that where you consider consequences,
you consider about controlling urges, that that part
really doesn't firm up until early 20s, but
look at what the world is handing to
13 and 14 year olds.
And look, teenagers, if you're arguing with your
parents and they're saying to you, didn't I
tell you this?
You never think about the consequences.
He said, look, my prefrontal cortex is still
under development.
Don't you listen in church?
You know, obviously your hearing's going bad because
of your age, and my prefrontal cortex is
not fully developed in my age, and you
know, just, but look what's being handed to
them.
But God doesn't talk about the prefrontal cortex
here.
He says, I'm going to give you a
new spirit.
I'm going to take away the stony places
in your heart and give you a new
heart.
He's not doing brain surgery, he's doing heart
surgery.
Because God knows the heart of a 14
year old or a 12 year old or
a 16 year old can be consecrated and
given over to the things of God, and
that the heart ultimate is a more powerful,
more fiery driving force in our lives than
our intellect is.
When something's real, and we just know it.
When we step to that place beyond intellect,
and we know this is real, I know
it's real.
I sense his presence.
When I read the word, he speaks to
me.
I look at what he's given me.
I know he's there.
I know he's watching.
I know he's real.
That there's something that can take place in
the heart.
And God says the problem with his people
through the ages is the heart.
They needed an undivided heart, a loyal heart.
They needed a new spirit.
They had stony, unresponsive hearts.
And as Christians, we can do the same
thing.
We get settled into the land that God
gives us.
We get settled into the temple or the
place of worship that he gives us.
We get settled into Christianese and a Christian
culture, and we can get desensitized.
We can get hard-hearted.
We get stony places in our heart where
there used to be fire, where things used
to be soft towards the things of God.
And like David, we can find ourselves saying,
Lord, create in me a clean heart.
Renew a right spirit within me, Lord.
And God says the day is coming when
this is what I'm going to do and
make their hearts—not their minds, their hearts—responsive to
the things of God.
He's not the only one who says it.
Jeremiah as he sees the difficulty of God's
people and their sin, he says, but this
shall be the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel.
After those days, saith the Lord, I will
put my law in their inward parts and
write it in their hearts, and will be
their God, and they shall be my people.
Ezekiel in chapter 36 is going to say,
then will I sprinkle clean water upon you,
and you shall be clean and all your
filthiness and all your idols.
I will, of all of those things, cleanse
you.
A new heart also will I give you.
A new spirit will I put within you.
I will take away the stony heart out
of your flesh, and I will give you
a heart of flesh.
I will put my spirit within you and
cause you to walk in my statutes.
You shall keep my judgments and do them,
and you shall dwell in the land that
I gave to your fathers, and you shall
be my people.
I will be your God, and I will
also save you from all of your uncleanness.
Paul says much the same thing in 2
Corinthians chapter 3, verse 3, where he says,
for as much as you are manifestly declared
to be the epistle of Christ, the letter
of Christ, ministered by us, written not with
ink, but with the spirit of the living
God, not in tables of stone, but in
the fleshly tables of the heart.
Paul says, our life and our message is
written upon your hearts, not on stone, but
on fleshly tables of the heart, affirming the
very same thing in the New Testament.
God doesn't want a legal relationship with us.
You have to do this, and you have
to do that, and you have to do
this, because ultimately he wants a love relationship.
And who wants a love relationship like that,
with a husband, with a wife, with children,
with the parents?
Who wants it to be legal?
We want love out of loyalty, out of
tenderness, out of genuineness, not at the point
of a gun.
I like Kirk Douglas, and I was watching
the—Ulysses is one of my favorite movies, where
he wipes out all those guys at the
end—but earlier, in the movie, in the part
of the Odyssey, originally, you know, he's this
long journey of years coming home, and he's—they're
going to go past this island, all the
mariners, the seagoers know of, it's famous, where
these seductress, these sirens, these, you know, women
live on this island, and they are enchantresses,
and they sing this song, and it's so
beautiful that it lures in these ships to
the rocks.
The sailors and the captains hear their voices,
hear the song.
It is so alluring, so desirable.
They so long to get close and to
have more, that the ships are destroyed on
the rocks, and then they become castaways.
They die there, imprisoned there.
And Ulysses knows that he's coming there, so
he says to his crew, I want you
guys to clog your ears with wax so
you can't hear anything.
Of course, maybe your kid, maybe it's not
the prefrontal cortex, check their ears for wax,
but he says, I want you to jam
wax in all of your ears so you
can't hear anything, and I want you to
chain me to the mast, because I want
to hear this, and no matter what I
say, what I do, don't stop you, Ropess.
So, of course, here's the whole crew, the
rowing, and Kirk Douglas Ulysses, he's chained to
the mast there.
He's, ah, it's so beautiful.
Stop.
He's screaming.
He's losing his mind, but he's chained to
the mast, and he wants to get in
there.
He wants more of it.
He wants to get closer to it.
Of course, they just keep rowing, and they
get past it.
But God doesn't want to chain us to
the mast.
He doesn't want to say, here's the world
that's so alluring, it's so desirable.
There's something in you that resonates with sin
and the desires of the flesh, but what
I'm going to do is I'm going to
put wax in all your friends' ears, and
I'm going to chain you to the mast,
and we're going to row past it all,
and you're going to be screaming, let me
loose, cut me loose, let me have it,
but that's how the Bible works, and no,
no, that's not what he wants.
That's not what he wants from us.
He's not going to force us, but he
says he will give us a new heart.
He will give us a new compass, a
new drive mechanism.
How?
How does that happen?
How do I rekindle an old flame that
used to be there?
I was on fire for Christ at one
point in time, and I'm cooled, and I'm
turned away, and I'm living in sin.
How do I get back there?
Like it's a geographical problem.
It's a spiritual problem, not a spatial problem.
Or maybe you're here this morning, and you
don't know Christ, and somebody drug you here,
chained you to the mast, and you're saying,
how do I just get a new heart?
Right, right, okay, okay, yeah, how do I
just—and the Bible says that we ask.
We ask.
How can these things be?
How can that happen?
You know, we have that question in the
New Testament, John chapter 3, where a man
named Nicodemus comes to Christ at night, and
Christ says to him, Nicodemus, you're never going
to see the kingdom of God unless you're
born again.
And he says to Christ, how can these
things be?
Israel, the most privileged nation they had come
back from captivity, and yet even though they
had come back from captivity, and the temple
was being built, and the Pharisees were the
guardians of orthodoxy, they were still dead.
And at the center of this privileged nation,
Josephus tells us at this time, there were
40,000 rabbis in Israel.
And even more at the center than the
40,000 rabbis, there were 22,000 Levites.
They were more at the center.
And amongst the 22,000 Levites, there were
several thousand priests of Aaron's line.
And then at the center of that was
the Sanhedrin, 70 men who were at the
center of the most privileged nation in the
world in the midst of the 40,000
rabbis, in the midst of the 22,000
Levites, and in the midst of the priests
was the 70, the most privileged spiritually, as
it were, religiously.
And at the center of that is a
man named Nicodemus, the third wealthiest man in
Jerusalem, we're told at this point in time.
Jesus is going to say to him, are
you a master in Israel?
You don't understand these things.
Literally what it says is, are you the
teacher in Israel?
He was a Pharisee.
He was in the school of Gamaliel.
And Josephus tells us it was in vogue,
if you're going to study Jewish theology, Hebrew
theology, to study with Nicodemus.
Nicodemus was the man.
He was at the center.
From where he was, every way was down.
He was at the top of the pile,
disillusioned, empty, loaded with questions.
And he comes to Jesus at night.
And he says, teacher, we know you're sent
from God.
There's reality, and it's resonating.
Nobody could do the things you do, except
God sent him.
And Jesus said, Nicodemus, unless a man is
born again, he's never going to see the
kingdom.
Isn't that interesting?
Jesus doesn't record that story as he's talking
to a publican, or to a prostitute, or
to a drunkard.
And he spent plenty of time with them.
He takes the most privileged religious character on
the planet to hold before us.
The most theologically correct, but dead.
He was so right, he was dead right.
The guy, and he says, and he holds
him up and says, if this one needs
to get born again, so does everybody else.
And Nicodemus, you can't see the king unless
you're then mind to mind.
Nicodemus is a great thinker.
He's engaged.
What does that mean?
Do I have to go back into my
mother's womb a second time?
I'm the product of everything that my life
has made me.
I'm supposed to be born again?
And what are you talking about?
Jesus says, no, look, you have to be
born of the water and of the spirit.
What's born of the flesh is flesh.
Water.
What's born of the spirit is spirit.
Marvel not.
Now he's taking him beyond the intellect.
Marvel not that I say unto you, you
must be born again.
He says, Nicodemus, there are things beyond the
grasp of human intellect that are necessary for
life.
Don't let your intellectual capacity rob you of
something that spiritual that needs to take place
in your heart.
Nicodemus for everybody in this room, there are
things beyond our intellectual capacity that God desires
to give to us.
And if all we do is reach out
for the things we understand, we're going to
be pauperish.
We're not to be unlearned.
Our faith is an educated faith.
There's so much today we can study about
creation and evolution and culture.
And we have so much at our disposal
today.
But when we begin to reach vertically, we
have to do that by faith.
How can this happen?
He asked the same question.
How can this be?
How can I get a new heart?
How can I be born again?
How can I get a new spirit?
And Jesus says to him, and I know
Nicodemus was was intent.
He was listening because he was facing reality
and he was so disillusioned by religion.
And Jesus said, Nicodemus, are you the teacher
in Israel?
You don't understand.
If I told you earthly things and you
don't understand them, how am I going to
tell you heavenly things?
But remember this.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, that would be something he'd be completely
familiar with.
So must the Son of Man be lifted
up.
This is what he says to Nicodemus.
Nicodemus, this is your history.
You're familiar with it.
Do you believe it's true?
You teach it's true.
The children of Israel were in rebellion.
They were in sin.
They were in the wilderness.
And God sent among them vipers, fiery serpents.
And it says the people were being bitten
by these serpents and they were dying.
The neurotoxins were getting into their bloodstream and
shutting down their breathing, shutting down their body.
They're dying.
And God didn't say to Moses, grab this
bag of anti-venom, get your hypodermic needle
and get busy.
He said, Moses, put up a serpent on
the pole in the middle of the camp
and tell them that if they look upon
the serpent, they shall live.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be
lifted up.
Nicodemus, there are things beyond the grasp of
the intellect.
You teach the people that though they had
neurotoxins in their blood, though they were poisoned,
that if by faith they listened to God
and they looked up and saw the serpent
on the pole that they would live.
That's beyond human reason.
That's beyond intellect.
And what I'm saying in the same way,
the Son of Man must be lifted up.
You know, Ezekiel and Jeremiah don't tell us
anything of the cost.
What is the cost of a new heart,
of a new birth, of a new spirit?
He hints at it here.
He says, Nicodemus, so the Son of Man
must be lifted up.
How does it happen?
How can this be?
The same way as Moses and the serpent.
If they look to me, look to me.
Though the neurotoxin of sin is killing them
in their system, if they look in faith,
they shall live.
They shall live.
The heart will change.
The things they once ignored or despised when
they just wanted to live in sin and
the natural part of their being resonated with
the temptations of this world and they felt
like they needed to be chained to the
mast, those things that they despised of Christianity
or people talking about spiritual things, they're going
to start to embrace the spiritual things and
to despise the things that brought them into
bondage.
The heart will change.
They're going to resonate with truth.
Something inside will transpire and change, Nicodemus.
And it happens by faith, not by reason,
not by intellect.
You're here this morning and you don't know
Christ.
This is where we get the passage about
being born again.
It's what Ezekiel and Jeremiah, many of the
Old Testament spoke of, a new heart, a
new spirit, being born again.
In fact, the word that he uses is
anothen, born from above.
The second birth has to do with the
vertical, not the natural.
How does it happen?
By knowing that you're poisoned, by looking to
Christ.
Isaiah, he said, look unto me all ye
ends of the earth and be ye saved.
To look to Jesus.
Forget about church.
Forget about religion.
Forget about everything that Nicodemus has filled his
life with that brought him nowhere.
Don't judge Jesus because of what you've seen
in the church or what you've seen on
television with televangelists.
Don't judge Jesus Christ by what out there
claims to be Christian.
Judge Jesus Christ by his own claims.
Go to the scripture and see what he
said in regards to your life and put
him on the spot.
Embrace the claims of Christ and see what
it means in your life.
And today you can look to him and
you can be saved.
It doesn't matter what you've done.
As a Christian, if you're here and your
heart is cooled and you're compromised and your
heart has become stony and hardened again, it's
not how do I get back.
It's not spatial.
It's spiritual.
You don't need a map.
You don't need to get on a map
quest to get back to Jesus.
You need to get on your knees and
say, Lord, my heart is hardened and I'm
looking to you again and in faith, Lord,
because God won't ignore the cost that he
paid to make that available.
Whenever I come to these passages on a
new heart, I remember the story that Sandy
McIntosh told us way back in the old
building, 1987-88, of a family in California,
a young eight-year-old boy, congenital heart
problems, was dying on a transplant list, waiting
for a new heart.
And the parents were going through the torture
of wondering whether he's going to make it
until that heart came available.
There had to be a match and so
forth.
And in the same hospital, a boy was
brought in an emergency, auto accident, on life
support.
The doctors had gone through the process of
letting that take place for several days on
life support, knowing that he was never going
to be revived, never going to come back,
and finally said to the parents, look, this
is what's happening.
And we don't ever want to seem insensitive
and please forgive us, but if you're willing
to donate your son's heart, there is a
boy down the hall who will live.
That's all we're going to say.
We'll leave it with you.
You talk about it.
You can let us know.
And the family came back and said, you
can take our son's heart under one condition.
What's that?
That we want to see the other little
boy before he leaves the hospital.
The doctors had to go to the parents
of the child who needed the transplant, because
usually you don't find out that fast where
the heart came from.
And the parents, of course, said, well, certainly,
we make that concession.
The papers were signed.
The heart transplant took place.
And before that little boy left the hospital,
the other parents came to see this little
boy who lived.
And, of course, the parents wept, they embraced,
and finally said, why the request?
Why was it that you wanted to come
in and to see our son?
And the father said, because we wanted to,
if it's okay with you, bend down and
put our ear on his chest and hear
our son's heart beating one more time.
And that's what the father wants.
It was at that cost to him that
he gave his son.
All he wants is to bow down and
hear the heart of Christ beating within us.
And there's glory all over that, that God
could take such as us and give us
a new heart and a new spirit and
an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fades not away.
And we want to dabble and fiddle around
with things in the world, and we don't
understand that the glory of God is abiding
over us, the glory of eternity, the glory
of God.
God marked our lives, so he's not ashamed
to call us his sons and his daughters,
to stoop down, as it were, and hear
the very heart of his own son born
anew within us, the cost unimaginable.
If you don't know that God before you
leave today, we just pray that you would
have the courage just to come up after
the service and say, if God really loves
me that way, I need heart surgery.
I need a transplant.
My life is so out of whack and
so empty and so off course, I need
a change.
We would love to pray with you and
give you a Bible, give you some literature
to read.
I encourage you to make your way up
here after the service is over.
For those of you that are believers, as
the musicians come and we sing this last
song, you know, Jesus challenges the church and
says, you know, you got all kinds of
great stuff going on, all kinds of ministries,
you're touching the world, but I have this
against you.
You've lost your first love.
It's all become business.
There's no relationship.
It's all business.
There's no love.
And a church that's in love with Christ
is going to change the world.
I encourage you as believers to say, Lord,
break up the fallow ground in my life,
the stony ground, soften my heart again, create
in me a clean heart, renew a right
spirit within me.
And if you're here today, you're thinking, I
don't need none of that.
I'm an on fire Christian and my heart
is just the way it should be.
Then pray for me because I want all
of it I can get.
You can stand and say, Lord, I don't
need none of this.
None of this applies to me.
That's great.
Would you pray for me?
Let's stand.
Let's pray together.
Lord, we look to you and we thank
you for your word.
This simplicity of it, Lord, in these passages,
familiar to us for years and years and
years, and yet familiarity with our mind, Lord,
falls short of the fire in our hearts
that should burn as we look deeper into
these things, Lord, as the years go by,
as they become more profound to us, as
we become more familiar with our own failings
and with your grace, your glory.
Lord, we pray for those here today who
may not know you, that you draw them
to yourself.
Give them a new heart, a new beginning,
a new spirit.
And Lord, for us, your sons and daughters,
soften us, Lord.
Drag the plow of life and of your
word, of your Holy Spirit over our hearts.
Break up the clots, Father, the hard places,
the stony ground.
And let the love of Christ be shed
abroad from our hearts.
We believe we're praying according to your will.
We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.