Ezekiel 11:14-25--Israel's New Heart and Spirit

Ezekiel 11:14-25
English Standard Version

Israel's New Heart and Spirit
14 And the word of the LORD came to me: 15 “Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘Go far from the LORD; to us this land is given for a possession.’ 16 Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: Though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone.’ 17 Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ 18 And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. 19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 21 But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord GOD.”

22 Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. 23 And the glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city. 24 And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. Then the vision that I had seen went up from me. 25 And I told the exiles all the things that the LORD had shown me.

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The LORD once again promises Ezekiel that His people who have been scattered to the nations will once again be gathered together in the Land.  Though they have not had a Temple to worship at while they have been scattered, they will once again build a dwelling place fit for a King when they return to the Land.  They will purge the Land of all of the idols that polluted their land and tear down all the high places and destroy all the altars that they made to the false gods and goddesses.  These were the things that the people thought they needed to become the people of God once again.

However, the LORD identities an even greater need within them.  These people need to be made new from the inside out.  They will never be able to be His covenant people unless He gives them a new heart and new spirit.  This sounds very "new covenant" to us who are familiar with what Jesus did, first for the Jews and also for the Gentiles.  He made it possible for all of us to be "born again" (regeneration is something else that Ezekiel will be promised later in his visions with The Valley of Dry Bones).  The LORD says His people have hearts that are currently cold, hard, and dead like stone.  Instead, He will give them a heart of flesh that is warm, softened to the hearing and doing of His Word, and alive and at work within them.  He would put His Spirit within them sot that then, and only then, they may be able to walk in His statutes (keep His Law) as He called them to do in Exodus 19 and 20.  He will be their God and they will be His people once again.

He would also remove their guilt and shame.  No longer would they be a byword to the nations.  They would not be seen as detestable and an abomination.  No longer would people wag their heads when they walked by and talk about a people that God had seemingly abandoned and cursed because they had abandoned and cursed Him.  However, this is exactly what people would do to the Son of God when they watched Him be crucified.  They would jeer and mock Him in the same way that Israel was jeered and mocked.  They would accuse Him of lying about His relationship with God and ask Jesus where His Father was in this moment and why His Father refused to save Him.  The answer was that the Father and the Son planed for the Son to represent all of His people and He would take all the suffering they deserved so that they might receive His heart and His Spirit and the blessings that only He deserved.

The LORD also promises that the wickedness of the Gentile nations, especially those who abused His people during this time that they were dispersed throughout the nations, would not go unpunished.  The day is coming when the same One who is the Savior for His people will be the Judge of those who persecuted Him and His people.

The vision finishes with the LORD bringing Ezekiel to His people living in Exile because they needed to hear these words and know that He was still with them wherever they went.  Though there was no Temple, they still needed priests like Ezekiel to minister to them in all the places they now lived.  The need was as great if not greater for them to hear the Word of the LORD now when that was all that would help them hold onto their faith and their identity as the people of God who had been displaced, but but not dispossessed (The Land would still belong to them when the LORD brought them back, it would not belong to those who tried to live in the Land while they were gone).  They were exiled, but not abandoned.  Moreover, they needed to know that the LORD had not broken His covenant with them and His goals for them were unchanged.  He was still going to save them and make them new--a people for His own possession and to the praise of His glory!