#DailyDevotion YHWY Jesus Christ Saves Us For His Own Name’s Sake
Ezek. 36:22-28 22“So tell Israel, “The Lord GOD says this: I’m not doing this for you, O Israel, but for My holy name that you have defiled among the people wherever you went. 23I will make holy My great name that you have defiled among the nations. Then those nations will know I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when I let them see how I make Myself holy among you. 24I will take you from these nations, gather you from all the countries, and bring you to your own land. 25I will sprinkle clean water on you to cleanse you from all your uncleanness. I will also cleanse you from all your idols. 26I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My orders and carefully keep My laws. 28You will live in the land I gave your fathers and be My people, and I will be your God.
So, we must remember, Ezekiel is prophesying during the time of Judah’s exile. The northern tribes have been dispersed among the nations over a century ago by the Assyrians. Judah is in the process of being exiled to Babylon. Ezekiel came there with one of the first groups. More were to follow until Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. In 70 years time, the LORD would send back Jews to Jerusalem by the hand of the Persians to live there and rebuild it. But that wouldn’t be the fulfillment of this prophecy. The return of Jews to Israel in 1948 also is not the fulfillment nor the beginning of the fulfillment of this prophecy.
Why were they exiled in the first place? They did not listen to the LORD their God and trust him. When they returned from exile, it seems the vast majority of them still did not listen to the LORD their God. Instead, they invented the traditions of men some of which contradicted the Torah, added on to the Torah and took away from the Torah. Sure, they didn’t make graven idols or worship them, but they still had idols of the heart and did not trust in the LORD their God. They rejected him in the time of his visitation, crucified him and killed him. He gave them a time to repent and believe in him through the preaching of the Apostles. Many did repent, listen and believe in Jesus Christ their LORD. Yet the LORD Jesus Christ sent the Romans to destroy Jerusalem and it’s Temple because of the hardness of their hearts, not listening to him and trusting him.
Yet on Pentecost the LORD began the fulfillment of this prophecy. Through the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name, he began to take out their hearts of stone and giving them hearts of flesh. He puts his Spirit in us and moves us to follow his orders and to carefully keep his commandments. The LORD Jesus Christ is gathering his people to himself from every nation, tribe, race and language to be his holy people Israel. He is doing this not because we got everything straight and right. He doesn’t do it because we have merited it in some way. No, he is doing this for his own name’s sake. He doing this so the nations who reject him and his people see it and glorify him on the day of this prophecy’s complete fulfillment. It is completely fulfilled in Christ on the day he raises us all from the dead and gives us the new heavens and new earth. That is the Promised Land he had gone to prepare while he is gone from our sight. It is the land Abraham saw and was promised. (Heb. 11) It is the land we receive for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the LORD.
Heavenly Father, every day give us your Holy Spirit so our hearts may not be hardened against your will but that we live, breath and walk in it every day. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.