Ezekiel 36:22-28 "The Covenant Glory of Christmas"

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Introduction:

Ezekiel was a post exile prophet. Many of the people had been exiled away from the southern kingdom and taken into captivity.

The last of the Davidic kings has been dethroned at the writing of Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry. And the people lived under Babylonian occupation.

This would include the apparent observation that the promises of Yaweh in the Davidic covenant have failed to come to pass. And it would also appear to the ancient mindset that the gods of the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon were greater than the God of Israel.

This is because in ancient times the power of a nation was thought to be derived from the power of their gods.

If they celebrated Christmas in those days they probably would have been so discouraged they would have never put up the tree, or any of the other decorations.

If you were an Israelite in this day the temptation would be to despair in your faith because it might seem to you that Yahweh had failed and your whole identity that was tied into your ethnicity and your religious practice had been stripped away from you.

And many lived in foreign lands against their will and it would be easy in the self-righteous tendency of the human condition to blame this all on Yaweh. Even though we all know that it was Yahweh who raised up the Assyrians and the Babylonians as an act of judgement against His people.

Many may argue that such judgement would be a self-inflicting contradiction on Yahweh's part. In other words His judgement would violate the terms of His own covenant. But as we saw last Sunday the divine intent behind God’s covenant revelation does not always match what fallen men perceive.

This is because man has usually sees historical events through the lens of their own sense of well being and this is the same way in which we define justice in the world and how we determine good from evil. But God deals in categories of absolutes and objectivity. And He is the ultimate standard of truth and righteousness. This is why when it comes to His covenant fidelity, He determines how He vindicates Himself in displaying His faithfulness. Look at verse 22-23 at His declaration of vindication:

I. The Vindication (22-23).

Notice that when it comes to motive, God acts to uphold His covenant fidelity ultimately for the sake of His holy name. And He specifically states that He doesn’t do it ultimately for the sake of His covenant people but for the sake of His Holy name.

The people have not lived for the glory of Yahweh before the nations. The lived for themselves and their behavior before the nations profaned the name of Yahweh.

Their sin defiled the greatness and glory of the covenant and the glory and greatness of the Lord who had initiated the covenant and brought about their deliverance from Egypt. Their sin was to live in contradiction to the very faith that they professed. They lived in such a way that was no different to the pagan nations around them.

So when the Lord says, He will vindicate the holiness of His great name, He is saying that He will set His name apart as sacred, set apart and consecrated before the nations (BDB). This is how all the nations of the world will know that He is the Lord.

Christian this is how we know that God’s ultimate purpose is not the salvation of men. His ultimate purpose is to maximize the glory of Himself in all things including His expressed love for sinners and in initiating their salvation.

If you make the salvation of men God’s highest end you elevate the value and glory of God over the value and glory of God Himself. This is one reason why theology matters.

Fallen man too often measures the covenant fidelity of God relative to the well being and benefit of the self. While the Lord measures covenant fidelity relative to Himself and His own glorification.

Man does this by default due to His sin nature but the Lord measures His covenant fidelity by the standard of His divine righteousness. He cannot do other than to act in faithfulness to that which brings Him glory. That is why God is the ultimate standard of goodness and we are not.

Christian to elevate humanity in the place of God and His glory is to profane the holiness of His great name and to live out your faith contrary to the covenant context revealed in the Scriptures.

When the good of humanity is the highest purpose of God there is a tendency for us to measure and judge God from the perspective of how well it appears that He is relatively taking care of human beings.

This then transfers to the personal level where the individual measures the value and worth of God by our perception of how much He contributes to our sense of well-being. This is why prosperity teaching and felt need teaching from pulpits is so very popular in our day. Fallen people who believe that they are like God love belief systems that make much of themselves and measure everything by the supremacy of the self. This is why Mormonism is such an attractive false religion in our culture and in the world.

Make no mistake Christian this is not biblical Christianity and it is not the restoration that the Lord promises in the new covenant. The real restoration is described in verses 24-28. Look back at your text at the Restoration starting in verse 24:

II. The Restoration (24-28).

Now we know He will do all these thing through the invoking of the New Covenant and expressing it all in the Christ event. Just like getting a present on Christmas morning, there is something more than just a empty box with wrapping on it under the tree. The gifts are buried under the paper and the cardboard. You have to dig deeper to find the gift.

Once you find it no one throws the gift away and keeps the paper and the boxes. So too we must remember Christian, there is more to Christmas than just a baby in a manger. That was merely the wrapping paper of the incarnation where the Son of God came down in clothed humanity.

Notice the familiar covenant language of “I will” in this section: I will take you from the nations and gather you, and bring you into your own land (24); I will sprinkle clean water on you and I will cleanse you (25); I will give you a new heart and I will put a new Spirit within you and I will remove your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh (26); I will put my Spirit within you and I will cause you to obey my rules (27).

All of these things and more are the various ways in which Yahweh intends to vindicate the holiness of His great name before the nations. He doesn’t do these things ultimately for the sake of His covenant people. He does these things for the sake of His own glory.

Covenant fidelity can’t depend on human beings because the fallen nature of man keeps showing that we are incapable in and of ourselves to uphold covenant fidelity. That is why the Lord must act in such a way as to even insure our appropriate reaction and response to the covenant. This is why the Lord has to act to transform us inside out and empower us by His Spirit to act in faith to uphold us.

Remember several weeks ago I made reference to the Wizard of Oz and how Dorthy had to follow the Yellow Brick Road and I compared it to us as Christians following the word of God? Dorthy on her journey met three characters. A Scarecrow who didn’t have a brain and a Tin-Man who didn’t have a heart and a Lion who didn’t have any courage.

The Lord acts on our behalf because without His initiation of His work in our lives we didn’t have the brains, the heart or the courage to live in obedience to the Lord. So the Lord on our behalf initiates His wisdom, a new heart and transforming power for faith in our lives.

And Christian you don’t have to go to the land of OZ to get it. You don’t even have to wait until you get to heaven before you receive the benefits. And you will never find it strictly on the horizontal plain of our human experience in the world. The world has nothing to offer. Everything is tainted by sin.

You only find it in the Christ event. Because in the Christ event the Son of God came into the world conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. It is on that original Christmas the covenant reality of the “I will” of God was initiated vertically outside of this fallen world. The Son of God came down and descended vertically into our midst. He subjected Himself to the Father’s will and He lived in the confines of a fallen world.

But He was unstained by sin without a human Father and He came to vindicate and to uphold the name and glory of God. He has done this by cleansing us of our sin and empowering us to saving faith for our justification and loving obedience by the power of the Holy Spirit. To put it in the language of OZ He gave us brains, heart and courage.

But notice Christian that the power and plan of Yahweh brings us home to the eternal implications of the covenant for the future in verse 28.

It is not just an eternal dwelling place but a place contextualized in relationship with Yahweh as our God forever. Remember this has always been the desire of God in the relational sense. To once again dwell with His covenant people as their God and them as His people.

We have seen this again and again in the expressed intent of the Lord’s covenant desire to be in relationship with His people. So in the backdrop of the grand cosmic display of the glory of God in all its majesty and beauty all characterized by His righteousness upheld in the Christ event, there is a relational and intimate relationship between redeemed sinners and their God established for all eternity.

“Christmas in Canaan” Orphan taken it to a poor family. The Father gave presents with pictures cut out of the Christmas catalogue in them of gifts he knew that the family wanted. Eventually the orphan boy became a successful writer and he eventually was famous and wealthy. And One Christmas he went home to his original house and he invited the family that took him in to celebrate with him at his original home where he lived before living with them.

When it came time he invited the family to open their presents. You see in those Christmas celebrations of the past the family would imagine they got the gifts in the wrapped presents and for a few moments they would make believe then they would throw them away the pictures away with the wrapping paper.

But the orphan boy would sort through the paper to find the pictures and He kept them all those years. And now he had bought the gifts and had them under the tree for his adopted family. They finally got the real thing.

And remember Christian one day the New Jerusalem descends like a Bride adorned for her husband in Revelation 21 as display of an intimate relationship. And in that city it is said that God will be their God and they will be His people for all eternity. That’s what you call in the ultimate sense finally being home for Christmas.

Conclusion:

Unbeliever everything you ever looked for and longed for in this world at the deepest levels of your heart were only meant to be found in Christ. He came down to bring us into restored relationship with God in Christ. Everything in this world in all that it has to offer will never bring you fulfillment in line with meaning, purpose and relationship.

Again, today He hold out to you the real meaning of Christmas in the person and work of Christ as His covenant fulfillment. Maybe today is your day. Believe the gospel.

Believer life in grace is living by faith in all that He has initiated to us in the person and work of Christ and an extension of His glory and for the honor of His name among the nations.

He has established the basis of our covenant security in Christ. Confess your sin and know that He is faithful and just to cleanse us of all our unrighteousness. May we always find our joy and hope in the covenant glory of Christmas! Let’s Pray!

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