“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
Ezekiel 36:26-27 (NIV)
I am thankful that I have no command from God to speak to a mountain range- though we have encouragement from our Lord to exercise faith that tells a mountain to move itself (Matt 17) and to go jump in the sea (Matt 21) - but Ezekiel, like the other OT prophets, was commanded to do sensational things in his ministry that illustrated in an unmistakable way spiritual truths God’s people needed to pay attention to.
The message of hope to the mountains of Israel is that God will punish the nations who took the land as their possession and plundered it, and will then resettle His people on the mountains and cause the land to prosper. (Don’t miss the implication that the land needs the people to prosper- for our secular society teaches the opposite.) As the prophet looked forward in time, he could see that not only would the LORD resettle His people on His land, but the LORD would deal with the root cause of the disaster that had come upon the mountains. How many times in our lives do we ignore the root cause of disaster? We deal with external symptoms and yet we forget that the root cause is our heart. The prophet could see the Gospel, he could see that a time was coming when God would change our hearts through the work of His Spirit, and cause us to follow His decrees and be careful to keep
His Laws.
His Laws.
This desire and carefulness is the mark of a true Christian.
Purify my heart O Lord my God - purify my heart today.
For Your Name’s sake.
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