1. What is it All About (Introduction)

Every Wednesday night, we have bible study at church, and I have to confess that as I went down this week, I was not really in the mood for it or feeling prepared. I would go so far as to say I was not sure I even wanted to be there. You see, I had been away the weekend before on a course, and then had to travel back: Monday is my day off, Tuesday I was still tired, and then Wednesday came, and I had the sense of 100 things to do before I was to get time to prepare something or think about anything. Does life ever feel like that for you? Does your faith ever feel like that for you? We start something with the desire to see it through and the hope that it will be useful for us, beneficial for us, and good in terms of our walk with faith, and then we get 30% of the way into it – it’s not having the desired effect, and it actually feels like something of a burden. I remember a few years ago thinking it would be a wonderful idea to follow a read the bible in a year plan using one of the apps – I started it, and I Kept going, but I remember being on holidays and walking around Washington DC listening to my bible passaged on 1.5 speed because since I had been away I was 14 days behind, and every time I opened the app it annoyed me how far behind I had fallen, it made me feel disappointed in myself, so I let the days increase because I feel better ignoring how far I had fallen behind than trying to do something about it. Why did I feel bad? Because I was not spending enough time in God’s word while I was jaunting around the USA? Not really, I felt bad because I was disappointed in myself and the fact that I was not succeeding. I thought that I should be able to do more – that I was failing as a Christian because I was not reading my bible enough, not praying enough, not doing enough spiritual things to be better at following Jesus.

I will be honest, even in praying and preparing for this talk, and this evening, I always feel something of that feeling, that weight – How do I do my best to impress? The wonder about how I make my sermon the best talk any of you have ever heard, a don’t waste your life moment when you leave this place having been convicted to your soul about how much of your life you have already wasted collecting seashells, and on TikTok when you could have been doing things for Jesus! Then I sit down to pray about what to say, to think about which passage to use, to start writing a sermon (three times I deleted something), and then I get so frustrated with myself that I leave it untouched because I haven’t been able to inspire myself to inspire you. Have you ever felt that sense of disappointment in yourself in terms of your own walk?

1.1 Success Through the Lens of the World

We live in a world that values success, demands success, and then leaves us perpetually disappointed in our own efforts and results. The other day I was with a friend whom I do some shared community work with, and I could tell he was not feeling 100% himself – his energy was off, his craic not the same; so I did what any good minister would do and asked him and in very typical Northern Irish fashion he was fine.. Yet, after we had been chatting for a while, he eventually told him what was up, as he said it felt like his life had fallen apart because he did not meet a certain standard for a work test. He was disappointed with himself! Why? Because we end up living with a worldview that tells us what it means to succeed; he was living with a view of what happiness should feel like, and how he should succeed – he had followed the plan, and stumbled along the way but still had success, and yet was perpetually disappointed in our own efforts and results.

1.2 Feeling Failure In Faith

How often do we feel it in life? Never mind our walk of faith? That preputial sense of disappointment in our own performance, our own worth, and our worthiness of the things of God: we say to ourselves, “if only they knew….” Or “I need to do better”, and so the whisper in our ear goes on. And again, I will be honest when I am asked to speak at something that is often the whisper in my ear, the lie I try to convince myself is true – that I have to perform well, represent anglicanism well, my preaching, because that is what I am here for. We want to accomplish, and so we wrestle with ourselves and our lives. How can I best tell you what the priorities for this new year should be in your walk with Christ?

Then at bible study on Wednesday night, it happened to him without me looking for it. It hit me what was happening, about the Lens through which I was thinking about my own life, ministry, and often by which we begin to think for ourselves and our walk with God. We were looking at 6 verses from Mark 3, when Jesus is in the Temple on the Sabbath, and the man with the shrivelled hand appears and takes centre stage as Jesus calls him out. It is a scene we all know so well, and before Jesus heals him, what happens? Jesus turns to the Pharisees and asks them a deep and searching question about the Sabbath Law, about mercy, and ultimately about their own hearts. Dare we say he asks them about their priorities and what they think God’s priorities are when he poses the question: “Is it right to do good on the Sabbath day, or to do harm? Is it right to save life or to kill?” If I could put it another way: “What is God’s priority on his Sabbath, doing good or evil?” I said it hit me, and what I mean is when I heard this question being asked and when we talked about it, I realised that Jesus was indirectly challenging the Pharisees about the priorities of their own life, and the priorities they thought other people should have when it came to following God and worship. In Short, they had misprioritised the Sabbath by being more concerned with artificial rules about holiness and Sabbath-keeping than about God’s heart for Mercy, and God’s call to those outside the city wall. You see, I realised that often we become Pharisees to ourselves in our approach to faith, and our approach to our own faith and following of Jesus. What do I mean? We turn faith, fruitfulness, and following into forms of moralism and religious activity by which we judge our success and goodness in the life of the Kingdom and our living for the King. We fix priorities we can measure our progress against, we set goals that we think we can achieve on our own strength, and then every so often we look back on where we have been and either beat ourselves up or pat ourselves on the back about our success or lack thereof.

1.3 Drifting into What the Gospel Opposes

We become those who have lost sight of the sabbath and heart of God for our own lives and in our living, and if we are honest, it leaves us tired, anxious, and unsure of how to not waste our lives for God. We do our best and then we end up busy, distracted, and strangely hollow because we do not realise the water we are swimming in and then because our effort in faith in not producing the results in faith we thought it would or should we quietly relegate God to among the priorities of our life, not in rejection of him, but often in frustration of ourselves. Mark 3 helped me relearn that simple truth that I think we often loose sight of; Aslan said it best:, “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been proof that you were not.” And the lie we so often think of about our own discipleship: that Grace saves us, and then mercy moves us to self-sufficiency. Our priority this year might just be to realise, again or for the first time, that we have become too much of a phrase to ourselves and to how we see the world, and that we need to again embrace the wonder of Mercy and Grace. We need to live lives of the Sabbath.

1.4 Reminded of Ezekiel

If that sense of quiet hollowness resonates at all — if faith feels solid but thin; if you feel confident, yet strangely tired: then the good news is this, the word of God knows us better than we know ourselves. It speaks the truth we need to hear about our misprioritisation. Long before our language of burnout, performance, or new-year priorities, God spoke to his own people about what happens when belief remains intact, but life with God becomes hollowed out. When people get tired of living on their own strength, they choose to stop living. Yet, he didn’t begin by telling them to do more. He began by telling them the truth about what was really going on beneath the surface. So we listen now, not as critics or observers, but as God’s people, to how the Lord speaks in Ezekiel chapter 36, and speaks in a way that shapes not just our new year priorities – but our life.

The Passage | Ezekiel 36:22-30 CSB

Therefore, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Lord GOD says: It is not for your sake that I will act, house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you profaned among the nations where you went. 23 I will honour the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations-the name you have profaned among them. The nations will know that I am the LORD-this is the declaration of the Lord GOD-when I demonstrate my holiness through you in their sight. 24 “‘For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. 28 You will live in the land that I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will summon the grain and make it plentiful, and I will not bring famine on you. 30 I will also make the fruit of the trees and the produce of the field plentiful, so that you will no longer experience reproach among the nations on account of famine.

2. God’s Diagnosis: The Problem Beneath the Problem (Ezk 36:22–23)

2.1 The Moment Which God Speaks Into

What a command it is that God gives the prophet Ezekiel to speak to his people who are in exile. Not pagans who do not know God, but a people who are his covenant children and find themselves living far from their homes in exile because of a continuous and long-term drift from the way of God. Their lives are uncomfortable, and their faith is shaken: Jerusalem has long fallen, the temple has been destroyed, and the land that once gave faith a geographical anchor and identity is but a memory of generations past as God’s people are in Babylon, they are living as resident aliens in a world that feels both familiar yet distant as they try to make sense of who they are now, of where God is, and how they can get back what they have lost. It is in this moment that God speaks again and tells Ezekiel to remind the people of the deep problem in their collective lives and way of living. They aren’t in exile because of their political weakness or lack of Military strength – they are in exile because that is where God has moved them to be. Why? To show that their problem is not a geographical location but an identity problem, they have become a people who know God in name but are far from him in heart, a shallow people who have hollowed out the honour of God’s name among the nations by how they have lived. How have they lived? On their own strength and by their own efforts, strivings and priorities.

2.2 The People that God is speaking to

Isn’t it fascinating to think about the people God is speaking to – his people! I think often we read back on the Old Testament and think that so much of the prophecy and judgment is towards places like Nineveh, or Babylon – these places that are so obviously far from God and against the way of God in the world. Yet, here we are reminded of the simple truth that so often the prophets of God are sent to speak to the people of God because they have lost sight of God even though they think they have not! God’s prophets are mostly sent to God’s people because they have lost sight of what God has done and how God has called them to live.

Thus, Ezekiel has not been sent to speak to a people far from God about a coming judgment because of their sin, unless they repent. This is not about conversation; it is about a confrontation of a misaligned confidence: their faith is real, dare we even say orthodox, but it has been hollowed out by their own self-confidence and effort. Again and again, they have missed the power of Grace and the way of Mercy God has called them to live because He showed it to them. They have relied too much on the devices and desires of their own lives, and it has led them to this moment of exile, of self-examination and distance from God. Dare we say it, Ezekiel could to often represent the church of today, and the evangelical world in which we inhabit where we judge the success of ministry by the size of the platform, the charisma of leader by the content they produce, and the health of a church by its bank balance, baptisms, or attendees at Alpha, Christianity Explored or Sunday Worship, and not be the faithfulness to God and the life of faith marked by the Cross. Dare we say it, they are a foreshadow of what we often become in our own life of faith, especially at the beginning of a new year when we think about all the ways we are going to do better, be stronger, and produce more fruit without any real thought of God or the Spirit who is at work in us to show Grace or maintain it. They are a people of faith, but it’s hollow, and Ezekiel comes to challenge them to again make God not just the purpose of their lives but the power of it.

2.2 Exile has Exposed Misaligned Priorities

Do you ever find yourself in a situation and think – How have I got here? How have I ended up in this moment? It might be a bottom-of-the-barrel type thing, or it may just be one of those days where nothing seems to go right. We think, how have we got to this place, and if our faith is shaken, we wonder if God is good because we are in a moment that is uncomfortable, even though we know the words that Jesus spoke. I often wonder what it was like to be among the people of God when they found themselves in the different ages of the exile; when they grew up as Children with the rhythms of the feasts and the reminders about the power of the God of Isreal – He who alone brought down the majesty of Egypt and the power of the Pharaohs; What it must have like to grown up among God’s people and hear about wonder of Jerusalem and the majesty of the Temple of Yahweh. Then to move from the Joy of memories to the realism of the moment as they looked around themselves and found themselves amid a foreign place, among a pagan people and all the splendour and comfort of home long gone. It must have been hard to feign Joy in those moments of doubt and wondering – where is God? They were not in exile because God was weak or had abandoned them: no, they were where they were because God was good, and He had brought them to expose the folly of their hearts and the weak foundations of what they had given their lives to.

What so often looks like a crises of circumstance is often a crises of formation – of who we have allowed ourselves to become because we have los sight of God his Gospel as we tire from trying to live on our own strength and effort and reduce God to one among many priorities, even thought when someone asks us we can put on the right face, say the right things, and pretend that everything is alright. Exile and the tiredness expose the folly of what we allow ourselves to become in Christ only when we let it. You see, it can be easy for me to point out the danger of Judging a church by its size, or a preacher by his reach or power – most of us will have the wisdom and spiritual maturity to know that it is not the metrics of the Kingdom or the way in which God works, we can grasp and delight in the upside-down nature of the Kingdom that exposes the foolishness of the world and its priorities: but how often are we willing to allow the same truths to challenge us about how we judge our own life, fruitfulness, and following of Christ. We must allow this moment to expose not just the cancers that seep into the church and those we look to, but how we look to ourselves – not through the lens of Grace and Mercy but through metrics of measurement and success that then shape what we priorities in our life, and in our faith especially when we reach markers like a new year that ultimately mean nothing, but we convince ourselves it can be a new beginning in faith because we will do better. As we dwell on the Gospel in our exile of this age, we must allow it to expose the crisis of our own formation because we have lived too long with misplaced priorities. God is not speaking to their situation; he is speaking to the mispriorities of our hearts to our idols. What is an idol in the life of a Christian? Keller says:

“It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”

2.3 Our Strength Hollows God’s Glory

There is something deeply harrowing in this moment, at the beginning of this passage, as God speaks, something deeply harrowing and yet deeply hopeful. As God tells Ezekiel to explain the why behind the what he is about to do, Ezekiel is to make clear that God is acting not because of pity or empathy, but because of his Glory. The harrow is the rebuke, the hope is still how visible the mercy of God is toward his awol people – “I am bringing you back, but not because you deserve it.” (NLT) God chooses to act in spite of his people, and still chooses to stop through them, even though how they have lived has hollowed out the Glory of God’s name and the majesty of what he has done in the world around him. It’s rebuke and its Grace: its challenge and its comfort to all of us today as we are forced to see the heart of the diagnostic; even as Christians who are trying to be faithful and striving to be fruitful, we can dishonour the name of God by how we live; by when we live on our own strength. God is not speaking to people through Ezekiel in the midst of open rebellion; he is speaking to a people who have, for too long, been trying to live on their own strength without the power of Grace or the direction of Mercy. Yet, so good is God, so beautiful is God, so powerful is God that even as he challenges them – and us – to the core, he does so with Grace in sight because his heart is merciful. He tells the people of God that he will act for his name in them and through them, even as he reminds them that they do not deserve it. They might live as if they only know him by name, as they rely on their own effort, strength and wisdom; and in so doing, they have made God look small and ineffective. Yet by Grace and through Mercy God still chooses to use us for His Glory even when we drift. What will we do? He will “reveal his holiness through you before their very eyes… then the nations will know that He is the LORD.” (23)

Let’s be honest with one another? How often do we end up in the same place as the people of God – living with a hollowed out faith because we are ashamed, we know we have been saved by Grace, but we struggle to live in Grace. We know the beauty of mercy, but we struggle to delight in the beauty of mercy towards us. What do I mean? How often do we get to the point of a new season and tell ourselves that we are going to do better? Be more Christian! We come to these junction moments with the heart of a Pharisee and through the lens of the world and its way of shaping priorities set out for ourselves, how we are going to do better, do more. And some of us might do well for a season or a long while, faith feels like its on fire, fruit seems to be growing, and opportunities seem to grow in our life as we do our best to live for God as we worship God, Yet, there will come a moment when we stumble, when we fall – it might not be obvious, but our striving will cease and our zeal will dull, and we will feel it even if we won’t acknowledge it. How do I know? Because I have felt the tiredness of life of faith lived in my strength and will without the renewal of Grace and power of the Spirit in my own life, in my own ministry; I have set priorities for God without consulting Grace or remember the Cross, and for a season I have done well, but inevitable something has caused me to stumble, to fall, and to again for the millionth time set aside Christ among many priorities when he should simply be my life. We all reach that moment where our strivings cease, and the gospel of Christ confronts us with a truth: if even our best efforts hollow out God’s glory, then the question is not ‘What should we do next?’ but ‘What will God do about hearts like ours?” as he invites us again to sit at the seat of Grace.

3. God’s Action: Grace Before Demand, a New Heart Not Better Habits (Ezk 36:25–26)

We know grace, don’t we? That is why we are here! Or at least we know the language of it, we know the rhythms of it, but sometimes I think we struggle to grasp the depth of it, especially as evangelicals. We know we are saved by Grace, but at some level, we think that we have to prove, do, or be, and so we get on with the work of a Christian with some sense of bettering ourselves and being fruitful. We know the language of Grace. We can explain it when someone asks what is so amazing about it! And, we love to sing about it; yet, if we are honest, we struggle to truly live by it, because somewhere deep down we still hope there is an atom of us involved. It is only human to want to do something, and so without even realising it, we live and set goals that mean in some small way we can point to our own contribution, strength, discipline, or effort that makes us feel a better Christian. We are happy to say grace saves us, but far less willing to admit how much grace must carry us.

That is both the beauty of Grace and the challenge of Grace, not just at the moment we come to know Christ, but in the everyday normal that we find ourselves in – it is Grace that keeps us, carries us, and restores us. That is why the opening words of God in this passage land with such force. Before a single command is given, before a single priority is listed, God does not say, “ Tell a people who have been far from him what they must do to get back to him! There is no, you must: here! There is only “I will.” I will sprinkle; I will cleanse; I will give; and I will put – the initiative is entirely God’s in response to the stubbornness and sinfulness of his people. The initiative is entirely of God, and the movement is altogether Grace. Even after the covenant between God and his people, everything remains an act of Grace through God’s movement towards his people. It is something that should delight us and give Us Joy. Yet, I think we can enter a season where it makes us uncomfortable. There might be times when things are going well. We feel that faith is good, or at the beginning of something like a new chapter in life, a new year and we want to do better, its not inherently wrong – but that truth that we are nothing without Grace and the power of the Spirit when it comes to the life of faith is hard to hear because it challenges our pride, it challenges our sense of self to the core – our pride. Being reminded of Grace makes us uncomfortable because, too often, in the small things, we become Pharisees towards ourselves and towards faith; we want to perform and keep rules, because then it gives us a way to measure our life in Christ. Yet, the humility of Grace reminds us daily how far we drift from the Cross and the life of strength in weakness it calls us to. We turn renewal into effort, obedience into self-reliance, and discipleship into discipline and something we think we can manage. Perhaps, the call of Jesus to daily take up our Cross was not just about a life of service or sacrifice, but being reminded of our need for grace and the way of Grace. Beautifully, as the prophet of God speaks to his people, Ezekiel will not allow that illusion to stand; he enables us no space to think we do it by our own strength, or through our own merits: God acts first because God is God; not when we are ready or willing or our morality is good, but when God choses to because God is God. Not because the people are prepared; often it is when we least expect it. Yet when God acts, it is because it is the right time for his name to be honoured. Grace should not just comfort us in our stumbling, it should unsettle us in our moment, and until we stop living as if grace merely starts the journey and admit that grace must sustain it, we will never truly grasp what God means when he promises a new heart and the life of the Spirit in us – we will never be able to know what priorities look like in the Kingdom.

3.2 Grace that Cleanses; before it Encourages

It’s interesting, isn’t it, in terms of the language that Ezekiel begins to employ as he speaks to the people and tells them that God is going to rescue them for the Glory of their name. Isn’t is fascinating that after making clear that God is doing despite them, but still going to use them to show his power and majesty (23) by demonstrating it through them in the sight of all the nations (23b), that God then makes clear how he will do it – By taking them from their exile and returning them back into their own land and something more. God declares that he will bring Glory to his name by working through his people to make known his name to the hostile nations, and then do something else, and it’s not an outward act of power. No, it’s an inward act of renewal – it is the sprinkling of water (25). This imagery is strange for us because we don’t often think in terms of the temple practice. Yet it’s beautiful because Ezekiel uses priestly imagery to depict the removal of defilement. It is the cleansing of that which makes us unworthy to stand before a holy God, and again, we should delight in seeing that it is God who does this work in us. Ezekiel is not speaking to a people coming for the first time before the throne of the King; he is talking to a people in a covenant relationship with the Almighty, telling them that the Almighty will again act to make them ready for life with him. The Cross is the realisation of Grace, yet often we need to realise and delight in the truth that Grace is an ongoing reality in our life, an ongoing gift from God and a daily work of the Spirit to sustain us in the Kingdom before the King. Thus, Grace here is not cheering us on to try harder, or do more – it’s not a little extra power that separates us from the world that doesn’t know God. No Grace is everything and should be our priority every day. Thus, here before a people who know him and live out a hollow faith in him, God again acts towards them in Grace and says that he will deal decisively with the idols they live with, depend on, and justify themselves with: Self, moralism, and doing more. God is the one who does the cleansing in us by the Cross of Christ, and God is the one who sustains us in that state by the work of the Holy Spirit daily in our lives; all to the Glory of his name. Thus, we are reminded here simply and plainly at the beginning of a new year, or at the start of any season when we might seek to set goals or priorities that our walk, our day, our life or faith – our renewal begins not with better priorities but with God washing away what we could not, and sustaining us through Grace and by Grace in all that is ahead.

3.3 Grace Is Not A Repair Job

How will he do it? By setting some new laws for the people to break despite their best efforts? By appointing a new leader to inspire them to a better life by the ethic of the Kingdom? By some new moment of Judgment to scare the sin out of them? NO! By doing something that seems impossible! And that is the point: the thing we need is impossible if it comes from us, but only made possible by the work and way of God in the world. Thus, to deal with the hollowness of their faith, and the emptiness of their worship, God does not commend them to more of the same or set about some repair Job because they are nearly there – this is something entirely new.

In another moment, God tells them that he will give them a new heart and a new Spirit. It’s not that he will soften the stone or hardness that has grown; this is surgery, as the old is cut out and replaced with something far more beautiful. Sinful hearts are not nearly there; they are as far from God as the east is from the west. Thus, God not only tells them he will give them a new heart but that he will remove the old heart of Stone. Why? Because that heart is incapable of receiving Grace, of love, and of beating to the true life – the life of the Spirit. God will bring Glory to his name through them, so that all the nations will know he is God, and he will do it both in a display of power and through Grace at work in them as he removes hearts hardened by Sin and replaces them with a heart of flesh, and gives the life of the Spirit. In Ezekiel 11:19, the prophet spoke of the same action: “ will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” And then of the same results, the following of the decrees of God, and the covenant identity in God as his children, and him being their God. 25 Chapters leading the Prophet is speaking again and challenging us to see today that whether we have been walking in Christ for a life time or yet to take that first step, we must be those who remember where we being, and what we continue in – Grace. We must be those who avoid the dangers of empty religion, of pious living by thinking of faith and fruitfulness in terms of doing, or what we have done, and then judging ourselves by what we have left undone. There can only be one priority, the Christian life, at the beginning of every day, season, and year: Grace and a deepening of it in our lives, and through our living, because of the new heart God has given us, and the Life of the Spirit breathed into us. Thus, it is the daily tension of the Christian life, as we walk the road we Christ we must do so knowing that there is nothing we can bring to please him or to add to what God has done in giving us a new heart and Spirit by the Cross – it is all the movement from God towards us, because that brings ultimately Glory to Gods name. Grace has freed us, but in Grace we never confuse ourselves into idleness or idol: We delight in knowing that Grace has freed us from something, towards something – the Spirit that God puts in us brings us life to allow us to live in and out the Kingdom for the Glory of God. Grace gives us life and then sustains us in life so that God’s name is honoured, the problem becomes when we start to reframe the life of Grace through the lens of the Pharisee or world – the doing of something because we are needed. It is the life of the new heart we see in the next section, not the try-hard.

4. God’s Power and Goal: Life by the Spirit, Belonging Before Performance (Ezk 36:27–28)

4.1 The Logic Of Grace Lived

At the beginning of a new year, we often look ahead and think about what we want to achieve. Usually, we treat our faith like this – we want to be better than we were at the start of the year. It’s not an inherently bad thing; it’s just a difficult thing to measure in the Christian faith because Grace has no scale to tell us how much we need or how much we have improved. Thus, Good things in the life of faith can slip into idols we judge our performance against, or lead us to be idle in the life of faith because we think we are not good enough. Thus, there can only really be one priority for the disciple of Christ at the start of any new year, of any new day – to live the life of faith the way Christ intended it to be lived – By grace. If verse 23-4 tell us the why behind God acting in the world, to bring Glory to his name which we have often hollowed out, and doing it through us because they brings Him even more Glory; and verse 25 and 26 show us what Grace does in us and through us, that is they are a glimpse of the Cross; then verses 27 and 28 complete the logic of what God has already done, they show us what this new heart reality is in our collective and individual lives when we live in Grace by the Spirit: there are two precise movements here. Verse 27 helps us to understand how this new heart lives, and then verse 28 tells us what kind of Life this new heart creates in us, and then through us.

4.2 Life enlivened by the Spirit; not by Effort (27)

The Church I have the privilege of leading is 175 years old this year, and while our building looks as good as it ever did, when you get close to the stonework, you can see the effects of time. That is the problem with something new: it soon becomes old and feels the effects of time. New phones slow down, new cars wear out, and so on. In our world, everything eventually needs to be repaired or replaced. I think sometimes how we perceive newness in the world around us shapes how we see it in terms of the Kingdom of God and the work God is doing in us each day as we live out our faith in the moment we are in. We know that God has given us a new heart when we come to faith, but at some level, we feel that heart starts to age and lose the power it once had, because we interpret the work of God through the lens of the world and our own experience. We think that as we mature in faith the heart that was once new starts to become a bit old, and with the best of efforts it might need our help to compliment it: So we pray, read the bible, do church, evangelism, mission work, and serve in many ways to help the life of faith; we know Grace, and we trust that we are saved by it but at some level the Protestant work ethic slips in to how we perceive the life of faith and our call as disciples: so we do, and do some more because what was new has become a little older.
We cannot comprehend the wonder of what it is God does in us and through us each day, that in the each of us is something of the reality of heaven, something that time cannot define, age cannot weary, and its essence cannot be altered by the context we are in – The new heart God gives us by faith to receive the life of faith, remains the same in every moment because it is God who gave it to us, and God who sustains it in us. His Mercies are new every morning, and our new heart is one of his mercies as we live in this world. It does not need our help to complement the life it gives; it does not need our willpower or moral resolve. The new heart that comes by faith as a gift from God and is then sustained by the Spirit of God. This is what distinguishes Gospel obedience from worldly obedience: Gospel obedience flows from indwelling in the life of God, not simply from following instructions alone. What the law cannot produce from the outside, what we cannot create by our own effort, strength or striving, the spirit now brings from the inside out. The Spirit of God brings life to the people of God through the work of Christ, to the Glory of God! Life does not come through behaviour modification or improved moralism, but through being God’s people. The life of the Spirit is a gift of Grace – God sends his Spirit upon his people so that we can live out, in the freedom of Grace, the things he has called us to do to bring honour to his name; Grace does not lead to do-betterism, it leads to dependency. Nichodemus asked how he could inherit the Kingdom, and Jesus told him that he must be born again; Ezekiel 36:27 shows us what this new heart looks like in the life of the believer; the next verse shows us the life it gives: that is a life reframed by our belonging, not by our performing.

4.3 Life From Belonging and Not Performing (28)

If verse 27 tells us how the new heart lives, then verse 28 tells us what kind of life that creates, and that life’s priorities. If we are honest, I don’t think it’s the life we default to for a base setting; what the Gospel produces is not what most of us would prescribe, list, or set forth. Isn’t it fascinating that after showing us what the Spirit of God enables us to do, the prophet of God does not go further into output or fruit, but belonging.. He tells them where they will be rooted a people in terms of their land, but more than that he tells them where they will be rooted in light of eternity: You Shall be My people, and I will be your God. Simply put its identity, its belonging; and what is even more challenging is that its not a statement of outcome because of obedience, it is where God begins; the ground beneath our feet is the truth that God see’s us as his own, and by the work of Christ makes us his own, and then from there gives us the life of the Spirit to welkin his way and obey his decrees. It is from the delight of belonging that obedience grows and purpose flows, not to earn us the right to be there, but simply because by Grace we are there. Before anything is asked of them, God tells them who they are and where they stand because of who he is – God reminds them of Grace.

Grace saves us, and Grace sustains us in the life that God gives us, and I think it matters for us to hear this again and again. Because one of our default dangers as evangelicals is to move away from a Grace-grounded faith to a performance-driven one, and that will only ever leave us tired, anxious, and weary. Think about it if at some level we live as if our standing before God is tied to our performance If my standing with God is tied to how well I am doing, then every good season will inflate my spiritual pride and sense of self: “I have got this! I have been invited to speak at this or that…Church is growing and I must be doing well…” then inversely – I will feel the weight of every Stumble and fall! If we let ourselves think of our standing before God as tied to the fruit of our lives then we will either end up either quietly proud or ashamed of how its going and in a place of false humility or quiet dishonesty about our life and the state of it: we will end up with a hollowed out faint as we measuring ourselves against others; and past seasons of our life, or some weird version of what a proper Christian is our head. If, as a person, my foundation is not first Christ, but being a minister for Christ, then I will aim for something else, or some version of it based on someone else, because I think they are successful, and ultimately I will miss, grow weary as the idols of the heart move me to being idle. No matter what we do in Christ, if we do not make our belonging priority at the start of every day, we start to mis-frame the Grace God has given us and our life in faith, and then obedience becomes a way of securing our place rather than a response in worship to having one because of what God has done.

Thankfully, the Gospel frees us from any assurance that we can ever earn from God or need to please him, even here in the depths of Old Testament, the Gospel cries out as Grace is seen in everything God says to his people because of his covenant with them:

• God brings his people home and then tells them how to live.
• God gives them land before he speaks of fruit.
• God speaks of washing them clean before speaking of how they will live for him.
• God names them as his Own before ever speaking of their faithfulness.
  

What is this? Covenant language: in which god has taken upon himself the burden of the very covenant he made, because he knew we could not keep it. This is not “prove yourself,” but “you belong.” The life of the Spirit is not sustained by fear of being cast out, but by the security of the Grace that holds us – The Grace of the Cross. Thus, against the logic of the world, we have the wonder of what Grace does in each disciple who has truly been grasped by it and lives in the Spirit: where the world would think that Mercy might produce weakness, or grace produce passivity; it produces peace. And that is a peace that the world cannot comprehend because it’s not rooted in this world but in the truth that he is our God and we are his people. It is that peace that flows from belonging that is the soil in which fruitful obedience grows, and worship is known. Our foundation is our freedom, and that Freedom is the natural rhythm of our daily life in the normal where God has placed us. We do not obey in order to become God’s people; we obey because we already are, and obedience is actually our life – it is the life of the Spirit from our New Heart flowing out of us because God has given it to us, and we are in his presence by his sustaining Grace. Thus! Until our priorities are shaped by belonging rather than performing, we will keep turning even good spiritual disciplines into subtle attempts to justify ourselves before one another, and ultimately before a God we think we need to please. Verse 28 reminds us that the goal of grace is not just activity for God, but life with God, and the first step we take is from his presence and never towards it.

5. Christ and the New Year: Receiving What God Gives (Conclusion | Ezekiel 36 fulfilled in Christ)

Thus, we find ourselves back where it all began looking to the year ahead, not with a strategy but framed through a question that Jesus himself asked as he stood in the Synagogue, ready to often some religious leaders by his heart towards the lost man with the withered hand: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do harm? To save life, or to kill?” It is, at some level, a question of priorities for the Sabbath as understood by the religious world in which Jesus lived. Yet, it strikes deeper than that; it strikes to our heart and its state. Do you see the contract that on one side stands Jesus, the personification of Grace and Mercy; unhurried, attentive and moving toward weakness with mercy because of Love. Then on the other side stand the Pharisees, convinced they know God, sure they are protecting holiness, yet strangely unmoved by the suffering right in front of them, and more worried about the moral keeping of the Sabbath than what the sabbath was to be for. Thus, for me, the tragedy of this moment is not simply that they oppose Jesus, but that those who are meant to be the personification of a new heart and life in the Spirit are instead the perfect picture of hearts already complex; already hollowed out by a way of relating to God that has turned obedience into control and faith into performance. Sometimes it can feel far off, yet we lose something if we think of them as a people of a movement; when often they are the picture of what our church culture can feel like, of the water we swim in. Do you see it? We can know Scripture, love theology, care deeply about faithfulness and our fruitfulness, and still drift into a way of life where our priorities are shaped more by fear of failure than delighting in God’s presence because of his mercy; we live in a way that tied to prove ourselves to ourselves before God; rather than whole life worship because we trust the God who has already acted towards us to bring Glory to his name. I think Ezekiel tells us why that way of living cannot sustain life in the norm of our world: because hearts of stone cannot receive grace, and lives built on effort will always exhaust themselves as they hollow out the faith that saved them. Yet, there is good news for those who love the Gospel; there is relief for the weary disciple as we reaffirm the truth that God’s movement is not a one-off; it is constant to us wherever we are, and when He comes for us, He will not leave us there. There is no yelling of Instructions to hearts that have gone hard with some sort of list about how to make them better; by Grace through faith God simply replaces them – use what every imagery you want: new birth, sprinkling of clean water but to the sinner God gives a new heart; and to the wearied on the road of faith he calls us to him to renew our heart in the life of the Spirit. Thus, there in Jesus, standing in that synagogue and then walking all the way to the Cross, we see that movement of God towards his people, so that his name will be honoured among the nations, fulfilled in person; the covenant embodied upon the Cross and justified in resurrection and ascension. He is God acting for his name, not because we deserve it, not because we are ready for it: no, it is because mercy is who he is. He is our Sabbath rest incarnate, and he restores life where rules have strangled it.

Thus, if we are those who have grasped the wonder of this Gospel truth and life in the Spirit – that Jesus himself is the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s promise, the one who makes God our God and us his people by his work on the Cross; then the question for the new year is not first what should we do? nor is it what should we priorities; It must simply be how will we live from what has already been given and is being sustained in us by the Spirit? Then surely only one priority can emerge: It is not activity; no our priority for the year and every day God gives us must be dependency. We must deepening trust in God through grace as we delight in his Mercy we will become it. This isn’t about thinking we have to do less in terms of the rhythms of Grace or the life of the Church; its not permission to passivity – rather it is an invitation to go deeper, to live differently and by different scales form the world around us. Because if his Kingdom is not of this world, then his priorities will look nothing like this world. As we go deeper in dependancy then the rhythms of Grace will shape out lives because they become the means of deepening rather than measuring.

It is learning again to pray not as a way of proving devotion but as an act of need, to open Scripture not to keep score but to be addressed, to gather with God’s people not as performers but as those who belong to his family and delight in being in his community, and to rest without guilt because God has done it! These are not techniques for earning favour; they are the ordinary ways grace deepens our dependancy to sustain our living in a broken world, in our Babylon moment. And this word is for all of us across our churches and their traditions, across our calling or whatever season of life we find ourselves in because the temptation to perform is universal; thus, so is the invitation of Christ. Jesus still stands among his people and calls us to himself not because we have proved ourselves but because he knows we need him everyday; he is not impressed by hardened certainty or religious morality. Isn’t it fascinating how the Pharisees leave that synagogue grumbling and plotting, but Jesus leaves having restored a man to wholeness – both think they have made the right choice, but only one is the way, the truth, and the life. That is the contrast set before us as we look to the year ahead; and into every season of our life, not one that is a hard choice between effort and apathy, but between hard hearts and hearts made new and all that will flow form them! What should be our priorities for the new year? Pray more, Read your bible more? Go to church more? Give more? Maybe…. Or what if it is simply to abide, to depend, to deepen what God has already done; in the life of the Spirit and trusting that the Grace that saved us is sharing us, carrying us, and bringing glory to the name of God through us – whether we are sure or not – until the day he comes again.