Ezekiel 11:17-20

Now I want to go to Ezekiel 11 and several other places in the book of Ezekiel, where such language is being used about having a new heart. So we will start in Ezekiel 11, verse 17 and we will read to verse 20. Now these scriptures that I am taking you to all have to do with God restoring Israel and changing them, but it works with spiritual Israel as well. We are forerunners to what God is going to do with Israel once Christ returns, but here we get an illustration of what He is going to do to the whole nation once He calls them back.

Notice what happens here. They repent; they take away the idols. They do not do those things anymore, and then God gives them a new spirit, and this new spirit begins working on them, changing their heart from a stony human heart to a heart of flesh, one that is malleable, one that is beating in time, if you will, with God's heart. And then after that starts to happen, "they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them." Same way it works under the New Covenant, right? That we really cannot use the Holy Spirit and walk. . . Let me put it this way. Before we get the Holy Spirit, we cannot walk in His ways. We cannot do His statutes and judgments. But once that happens, once He gives it to us and we start making use of it, then we can. It is hard. Nobody would deny that who has tried it. But it is possible now.