God's Promise of a New Covenant - Ezekiel 36:16-28

Well, we're blessed again to have Brother Jake come and preach, deliver a message from the

Word this morning. Jake, as you know, is a student at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary.

And so it's our joy and honor to support him in that.

And so I know many of you have been in prayer for him already. And so just a blessing that the

Lord would work through him, that he would be edifying to us and encouraging, exhorting, but it would also be honoring and glorifying to God.

Jake, come up and... Well, good morning.

Such a blessing to be here with you today. And if you're new here, welcome. Thank you for joining us and choosing to worship with us.

I just want to say thank you for this opportunity to preach. It's such a blessing to do this and get to study

God's Word with you together, my church family. But without further ado, we're going to be pausing our study in the book of Joshua and picking up our study in the book of the prophet

Ezekiel. And in the Hebrew canon, Ezekiel is part of a collection of books known as the

Latter Prophets. And one of the main functions of the Latter Prophets is to give prophetic commentary on God's judgment of Israel when he sends them into Babylonian captivity and when he exiles them.

Where after a long downward spiral of Israel sin, like I said,

God enacts his judgment on them and sends them into exile. And it's in this seemingly hopeless situation that Ezekiel proclaims the most magnificent promises of salvation that will be ushered in by a new covenant through Jesus Christ.

There's three sections of our text that we're going to be looking at this morning. Firstly, verses 16 to 20, this is the narrative portion of God's judgment against Israel for their sin.

And this is really the historical context that God chooses to promise salvation by a new and better covenant.

The second section we'll be looking at is verses 21 to 23, which is God's reason for salvation to usher in a new covenant.

And lastly, verses 24 to 28, which are the actual promises of salvation in the new covenant.

Our main focus this morning is going to be on verses 24 to 28, looking at God's promise to justify sinners,

God's promise to regenerate sinners, and we're going to be talking about the assurance of salvation. But sadly, it's one of these doctrines, the doctrine of regeneration that is known as the lost doctrine of this age.

It has been distorted, manipulated, and really misunderstood. And the distortion of this doctrine has led to innumerable false conversions.

It's confused even true believers and has led countless masses to hell. My aim for us this morning is that we would have a right and a biblical understanding of the doctrine of justification,

God's promise of regeneration, and the assurance of salvation that we would look to Christ as our only hope.

So let's go to our text this morning, Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 16 to 28. Ezekiel says, the word of the

Lord came to me, son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds.

Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity. So I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood that they had shed in the land, for the idols with which they had defiled it.

I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries. In accordance with their ways and their deeds,

I judged them. But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, and that people said of them, these are the people of the

Lord. And yet they had to go out of his land. But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.

Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake or house of Israel that I'm about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.

And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them.

And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

And these are the new covenant promises. He says, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannessness and from all your idols

I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your

God. Let's pray. Lord, as we come to you this morning, we're reminded of the words of John the

Baptist in John 3, 27, that we can not receive anything except that it comes from heaven.

And apart from your grace, we cannot apply your word to ourselves. We cannot understand it in all of its fullness.

So we ask that by your spirit that, Lord, your word, it would pierce to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and it would discern the thoughts and the intentions of our heart.

Lord, help me to preach your word rightly this morning, that your grace would cover my weakness and that we would have a right and biblical understanding of the new covenant, that we would look to Christ as our only hope for salvation, that his name and his name alone would be magnified.

We ask this in the precious name of your son, amen. So firstly, we're going to be looking at verses 16 to 20, and I want us to really understand that this is the historical background that God chooses in order to promise salvation by a new covenant.

And I really want to be diligent here, at least to briefly bridge the gap between the book of Joshua and the book of Ezekiel, where Israel is sent into Babylonian captivity.

And between the conquest of Canaan and God's judgment and his exile of Israel, where they go into captivity, is a time period of about 900 years.

And it's really difficult to cover really the entirety of Israel's sin and what happened in a time period of, you know, 900 years, but we can look at passages such as Hosea chapter 4 that really give a catalog of Israel's sin in their downward spiral of rebellion and rejection against God.

And I'm going to be paraphrasing here for the sake of time, but these are really God's indictments against Israel when he sends them into Babylonian captivity.

Hosea chapter 4, he says, they were not faithful, they were not loving, there was no knowledge of God, they were swearing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery, drunkenness, idolatry, prostitution, they were seeking prophecy from false gods, they sacrificed to false gods, they even sacrificed their own children by burning them on the altar of false gods.

God in this passage, he goes on to say, the more they increase, the more they sinned against me, they are greedy for their iniquity, a spirit of whoredom has led them astray and they have left their

God to play the whore. So how is God going to react? How is the most holy of holies going to react and deal with this sin?

Verse 18, God punishes Israel by using the nation of Babylon to take them into captivity where between the years of 607 to about 536

BC, approximately 15 to 20 ,000 Israelites were exiled and dispersed among their captive nation.

And I want to submit to you that this is really actually an act of mercy upon Israel. Firstly, because God is not giving

Israel what they deserve. Ezekiel 18, verse 4 says, the soul that sins must surely die. God should have punished

Israel by sending them to eternal judgment, yet instead, he exiles them.

And secondly, while God, in his mercy, he restrains the totality of his justice and wrath against Israel, he is all the while orchestrating his divine plan of redemption through the lineage of Israel to send his son,

Jesus Christ, to earth to save sinners. And we'll see these promises of the new covenant in verses 24 to 28.

So he goes on, verse 21, he says, but I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.

Therefore, say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake,

O house of Israel, that I'm about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, and I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them.

And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you

I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. Here there comes a shift, a change in what we would expect

God to do. God is about to act in a way that is contrary to what

Israel rightly deserves and what mankind rightly deserves. God is going to do something miraculous, extraordinary.

He's going to establish a new covenant where mankind's sin is finally dealt with and where the great chasm between a holy

God and sinful man is once for all closed. But why does he do this?

Why is God going to do something that seems to contradict what all of mankind rightly deserves? And why is

God choosing this context of Israel's rebellion to promise a way of salvation for all mankind when his justice really demands that they be punished?

Look at verse 22. He gives us his answer. He says, for the sake of my holy name.

And it's repeated here multiple times to add emphasis that God is acting in salvation for his own glory.

This is the golden thread that runs throughout the entirety of Scripture, the glory of God.

Everything that God does, everything that he ordains, everything that comes to pass, everything that occurs on the timeline of history, it is all for his glory.

The glory of God is the culminating endpoint of all things on heaven and on earth.

Isaiah 46, verses 9 through 10, he says, I am God and there is no other. I am

God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose.

This is why salvation is not only possible but definite, because it does not depend on man and it is not motivated by man.

The only thing that God is motivated to do when he looks upon sinful men is judge them.

There is nothing within you that would cause God to save you. As one missionary writes, he says, if God was not the utmost concerned about making a name for himself and demonstrating his greatness in the universe, every man since Adam would be in hell.

Salvation is a free and sovereign choice of God because God is the utmost concerned with making his holy name known, that only he would be glorified.

And this is why Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, he says that the one who boasts, boasts in the

Lord. Now verses 24 to 28, this is what God is going to do.

He says, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannessness and from all your idols

I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your

God. He promises here that he's going to justify them in verse 25, that he's going to regenerate them, verses 26, that he will sanctify them and indwell them with his

Holy Spirit in verse 27 and that sinners will be reconciled to him and dwell with him forever, verses 24 and 28.

Firstly, we're going to be looking at verses 25 and God's promise to justify sinners. Again, he says,

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannessness. This sprinkling of water in the old covenant in the temple and sacrificial system, it was a means to morally purify people and objects that they would be pleasing before the holy presence of God.

It's really a moral cleansing, it's associated with a moral purification, but this was a sprinkling that had to be done over and over again.

It was really imperfect and it wasn't powerful enough to really cleanse or justify a sinner.

But yet despite Israel's rejection of God, despite mankind's hatred of their creator and despite the great debt that mankind owes to God for their sin,

God is going to do the unthinkable by promising a total cleansing, a total forgiveness that's really fulfilled in the work of his son.

And you can't understand the magnitude of this cleansing or the magnitude of this forgiveness until you understand the magnitude of your sin.

I mean, have you ever thought about the weightiness of Christ bearing your sin? The Puritans would say there are some things that you cannot say without a trembling lip.

Romans 3 .23 says that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Can you imagine the amount of times that you have sinned, that you do sin or will sin in the entirety of your life?

I mean, have you actually ever stopped to think about that? All your moments of idolatry, coveting, sexual morality, lying, lusting, selfishness, jealousy, stealing, and not even the things that you do outwardly, but the things that you do inwardly, the things that are in your heart.

Or even think about every second that you have spent not living for the glory of God, but living for yourself or living for the world, or even just a fraction of one of those moments causes you to deserve the most horrific of punishments beyond our imagination because it is against the most holy of holies.

There is no number or anything in our language or any theological parameter that I can put around your sin to truly capture the enormity of it.

This is not some small collection of a few bad decisions that you have made. This is an insurmountable mountain of your sin that you cannot deal with.

And yet, if you are in Christ, Christ took that entire mass of sin upon himself.

He bore the justice of God that you deserve, and he cast that mountain of sin into the sea.

That as far as the east is from the west, he would remember your sin no more.

And notice he says, I will cleanse you. God does not say clean yourself up and then come to me. Any religious reform that we attempt, any work that we try and do apart from Christ, it's all meaningless.

Isaiah 64, 6 says all our works are like a filthy rag before a holy God. The only way a sinner can approach a holy

God is on the basis of Christ's blood and righteousness. And Luke, he says there is more joy in heaven for one sinner who repents than 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.

Our filth, it should not drive us to clean ourselves up, it should drive us to the cross.

And don't miss the alls here. He says, and I will cleanse you from all your uncleannessness.

What God sets out to do, he does completely. God does not only have the power to take away some of your sins, but all of it.

There is no sin that can overcome the cleansing power of the blood of Christ.

Isaiah 118, it says, come now, let us reason together, says the

Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

This is not some sprinkling that needs to be done over and over again. This is a total washing, a total cleansing that once for all washes a sinner before a holy

God. This is a blood so sweet, so powerful, so marvelous that even the most wretched of sinners can come to the fountain of life drawn from Emmanuel's veins.

Where sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

And this blood of Christ, this righteousness of Christ, this is really the foundation of our assurance of salvation.

Hebrews 1019, it says, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh.

And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith.

Paul also says in Romans 839 that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

This blood, this righteousness of Christ, it gives us assurance that those who are in Christ will forever be in Christ.

And if you are here and you're wondering, even if I'm in Christ, will my sin separate me from God?

Will God abandon me because of my sin? Look no further than the cross of Christ, because what

Christ has done for his bride, he has done completely that none of his sheep will perish.

Sometimes regarding assurance, the temptation can be to solely look to yourself apart from the work of Christ.

And while there are inward promises of grace that we'll talk about, and while there is absolutely a biblical precedent to test yourself, to examine yourself, to see whether you're in the faith, do not look to yourself and your performance for eternal hope.

Do not look at your performance as if it will gain you a right standing before God. Firstly look to Christ.

Those who are in Christ, they can be assured of their righteous standing before God, not because of anything that they've done, but because of what

Christ has done. Let all your doubts, fears, and uncertainties of your salvation drive you afresh to the cross.

So we've seen that God in salvation, he promises to cleanse us and that he will justify sinful man, but he not only promises to cleanse us, he promises to change us.

Look at verse 26. He says, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit

I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Here God is really doing a supernatural work in the heart and spirit of a sinner. But first we have to define what really is the heart and spirit.

And I agree with Martin Lloyd -Jones that the heart, it really refers to the whole nature of man.

It's the very center of man's being and person, and it's really the deepest descriptive term that encompasses the entirety of what man is.

And the spirit, it indicates our attitudes or our motives. It's the reasoning behind why we do certain things.

And it's the heart that dictates our spirit or our motives. And every man is born with a heart of stone.

But what is this heart of stone? And why must it be removed? Why can it not just be improved upon or changed or even reformed?

Why must it be taken out and a heart of flesh take its place? What is this heart of stone? And while this list, it's not exhaustive, it's really scripture's revelation to us of who we are apart from Christ.

Firstly, the heart of stone is morally corrupt. Romans 5 .12 says, therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people because all sinned.

Because of the fall, every man is born spiritually dead and morally corrupt.

We sin not, or sorry, we're sinners not because we sin, we sin because we're sinners.

From the inside out, every fiber of our being, our heart, our minds, our affections, our attitudes, our motives, the very core of who we are is all morally corrupt.

And our greatest desire is to pursue sin. Psalm 58 .3

says, from the womb we have gone wayward, spreading lies. And this is not just a weak and whimsical desire for sin, this is a love for sin.

Secondly, a heart of stone hates God. This is certainly what it says in Romans 1 .30. Scripture tells us that God is light and in him is no darkness at all, and that man is darkness and in him is no light at all.

The moral purity of God and the moral filth of man, they have no affinity for one another.

They're like two opposing magnets that you try and push together, but they only separate and get pushed further apart.

They're total polar opposites that are at war with one another. And fallen man's greatest desire is really to be divorced from his creator at all costs.

Thirdly, the heart of stone hates God's law and his covenants. Romans 8 .7 says, the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

It does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot. The heart of flesh does not submit to God's law because it hates

God's law and the very giver of the law. And really God's law, it's an expression of his righteousness.

It's restraining, it's condemning, it tells the sinner that his sin must be dealt with.

Romans 3 .20 says, through the law comes a knowledge of sin. And the heart of stone hates any obstacle or restraint that would prevent him from carrying out the most carnal desires of his heart.

And notice that this is the main effort of progressive Christianity. It's to erase God's law.

You hear it all the time. God's law doesn't condemn homosexuality. God's law doesn't condemn abortion.

God's law doesn't condemn my lifestyle. A hatred or dismissal, or sorry,

Jesus says, out of the heart the mouth speaks. A hatred or dismissal of God's law only reveals a spiritually dead heart of stone.

Lastly, the heart of stone is morally corrupt, or sorry, morally incapable. 1 Corinthians 2 .14,

the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he is not able to understand them because they can only be discerned through the spirit.

The word of stone in Hebrew, it simply means stone. And what God intends to show here is that the heart of man, it's unmalleable, it's unchangeable, it's unresponsive to any outward stimuli.

That the heart of stone cannot and will not receive the truth of God's word. And that rather it's impervious to the truth of God's word.

Martin Lloyd -Jones, he gives a helpful example here. He says if a bird were to fly over a concrete sidewalk and drop a seed onto that sidewalk, if you were to come back 5, 10, 50, or even 100 years from when that bird dropped that seed, that seed would not dig down into the concrete.

It would not take any root in the concrete. But rather that sidewalk, that stone would be impervious to that seed.

And in the same way, the man's heart of stone is impervious to the truth of God's word.

And this is exactly what Jesus says in Matthew 13 in the parable of the sower. I just want to emphasize this quickly before moving on.

One missionary writes that this moral inability, it's not because man lacks the mental faculties to obey

God, or because he is somehow physically incapable. His inability is moral, and it stems from his hostility toward God.

His problem is not a free will, but an ill will. And for this reason, moral inability may also be called willing hostility.

So this heart of stone, it cannot improve itself. It cannot reform itself to be pleasing to God. In it is no light or life.

It cannot produce anything. But rather it's dead and unresponsive. So a supernatural work must take place for mankind to be made new.

And when God saves a sinner, he removes this heart of stone and he puts within him a heart of flesh.

And this heart of flesh responds in saving faith. Ephesians 2 .8 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And these are not of your own doing. They're the gift of God. God not only gives grace, but he gives the faith to believe in that grace.

This is why we're unashamed being reformed and saying that regeneration precedes faith. Not in the sense that there's a measurable amount of chronological time between when a person is regenerated and when they place their faith in Christ.

There's no such thing as a person who's walking around regenerated who hasn't placed their faith in Christ.

Or the other way that there's a person who has placed their faith in Christ and hasn't been regenerated. But what we mean is this in a spiritual sense, in a theological sense, that God is the initiator and man is the responder.

Rather than man being the initiator and God being the responder. God is the sole author of salvation.

He is the sole cause in regeneration. Therefore, he's the sole recipient of all salvific glory.

So what God does to a man that he sovereignly saves, it's miraculous. I mean, it is really a miracle.

God spiritually resurrects the soul of a man from death to life where the very center and foundation of a man's being is totally transformed and totally made new.

2 Corinthians 5, 17 says, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come.

This is a total transformation of the affections, the desires, the will of a man, a transformation from the inside out.

There will be a radical change on the outside because there has been a radical change on the inside.

And this is why it's impossible to say that you can be saved by God yet live the same way as you once did.

And while you physically cannot see a person be regenerated, you cannot hide the evidences of it.

The person who has been made new by God will have evidence of a supernatural work of God within them.

And while these inward evidences of grace are not something in and of themselves that save a sinner, they're simply evidence that a person has been born again.

And regarding these inward evidences, Paul even says to test yourself, to examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith because a mere profession of faith will not save you.

As Jesus tells Nicodemus, you must be born again to even see the kingdom of heaven. And I want to pause here for a second to really emphasize a point because talking about inward evidences of grace, it's become controversial sadly especially in the past couple of years.

But I really want to submit to you that there is a difference between a self -examination that Paul is talking about and self -righteousness.

Self -righteousness, it looks at inward evidences of grace as if they somehow maintain or uphold our salvation.

Or it looks inwardly to see whether we are good enough in order to count ourselves as justified. But let me submit to you that the point of the gospel is that you are not good enough and that these inward evidences of grace will never be good enough.

But you are saved through faith in Christ because He is good enough. In other words, as one missionary said, you're not saved because your repentance and faith are perfect.

You're saved because the work of Christ is perfect and you're clinging to that in your frailty and helplessness.

A biblical self -examination that Paul is talking about, it's always through the lens of justification by faith.

And it looks at the inward workings of God in your life as evidence of being born again, not as the object of your salvation.

In other words, these evidences, these changes that God does in the life of a sinner, these are simply evidence of a genuine saving faith, but they're not the object of saving faith.

So here's what God promises to do in the heart and spirit of a sinner that He makes new.

Firstly, a new heart and a new spirit will have a new relationship with God. Whereas the heart of stone, it was cold and callous towards God, the heart of flesh has true and genuine affections towards God.

Firstly, like we talked about, the heart, it responds in saving faith and repentance, where faith rests exclusively in the person and work of Christ for salvation.

And by repentance, it turns from sin and turns to God with a new purpose to obey and submit to the authority of Christ.

And this faith and repentance, it will not only be present at the moment of conversion, but it will continue on throughout the life of a believer until he is in glory with Christ forever.

The heart of flesh also loves God. 1 John 4, 19, we love because He first loved us.

When a man is regenerated and born again, he is so overcome by the gospel, he is so swallowed up by the grace of God in Christ that he responds to God by loving

Him back. Jesus says in Luke 14, that unless you hate your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, and yes, even your life, you're not worthy to be my disciple.

Christ is the preeminent love in the heart of a believer. This is a dominating love with a chief concern for God and how to live for God.

It throws away the world, it rejects living for self, and it becomes a slave to Christ. This is why

Paul says in Philippians 1, 21, that to live is Christ and to die is gain. And while the believer's love for Christ will waver, may at times grow or feel dim, and while the believer will many times choose to sin rather than obey his master, this love will nevertheless be present, and it will nevertheless control and shape the life of a believer from the moment he is made new.

If you claim to be in Christ, do you love Him? Do you long to spend time with Him? Is your heart's desire to follow the

King of kings and Lord of lords, or is it to live the same as you once did before you professed to know Him? Is this love of Christ a reality in your life?

Secondly, the new heart and the new spirit has a new relationship with God's people. 1 John 4, 20 says,

If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love

God whom he has not seen. The heart of flesh has new affections for God's people.

It desires to worship with them, commune with them, to serve them. Christ so radically loves

His bride that He shed His blood for them. And if we love Christ, we love the things of Christ, and therefore we love

His bride. If you claim to be in Christ, do you love His people? Do you have new affections for the bride of Christ?

Thirdly, a new heart and a new spirit has a new relationship with sin in the world. The heart of stone, it indulges in sin.

It does not care at all about its sin. It loves sin, but the heart of flesh, it's sensitive to sin.

Ezekiel 36, a few verses down, sorry, Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 31, a few verses down from what we're covering.

After God has regenerated His bride through these promises, He says, then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations.

Those who are made new in Christ, they have a grief and a hatred over their sin, and they cannot go on living the same way as they once did because their very nature has been changed.

And the best illustration that I can think of for this is Charles Spurgeon's illustration of a pig, where if you were to have a platter of the world's most finest foods, and yet you were to have a garbage pail full of slop and muck, and if you were to let a pig loose in this congregation, he would run straight towards that pile of garbage and devour it insatiably, not caring about anything else that's going on around him.

But yet, in a split second, if I were to snap my fingers and that pig turned into a man, he would be disgusted with that garbage that he was eating.

He would vomit it out. He would hate it, and he would be repulsed by it. And in the same way, when a person is regenerated by God, he vomits out his old lifestyle of sin, and he becomes a slave to Christ.

He will reject a relentless pursuit of the world and the things of the world. 1 John says, If anyone loves the world or the things of the world, then the love of the

Father is not in him. And while the believer, he will not be sinless, or at times he may even commit grievous sin, or of course rebel and go back to worldly things to taste that bucket, he will struggle over his sin,

Romans 7. He will be convicted over his sin, John 16, 8. He will be sensitive to sin,

Ezekiel 36, 31. And he will confess and continue to repent of his sin,

Acts 26, verse 20. And speaking of assurance of salvation, this is why it's very hard to have assurance of salvation if you are living in secret sin.

If you are here this morning and you are living a lifestyle of unrepentant habitual sin, where there's no conviction over your sin, there's no desire for forgiveness, there's no change in your relationship with sin since you profess to know

Christ, then it's because you do not know Christ. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 says there, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

But there is a radiant hope here. In verse 11 it says, And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. If this is you, your only answer is to turn to Christ in repentance and faith.

So since you profess to know Christ, do you have a new relationship with sin? Does the Holy Spirit convict you over your sin?

Or do you live in the exact same way as you once did before you professed to know Christ? Is this new relationship with sin and the world a reality in your life?

Fourthly, the new heart and the new spirit has a new relationship with God's law. And what I mean by God's law here in the narrow sense is

God's commands, but really in a more general sense, just the word of God overall. Whereas the heart of stone hates

God's law, the heart of flesh loves and delights in God's law. Psalm 1 says,

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. This love for God's law is not because obedience justifies, but because if we are in Christ, we have been justified.

God's grace does not diminish our obedience. God's grace, through saving sinners, empowers our obedience.

And it causes the believer to have a high view, a love, and a reverence for God's law.

This is not, I profess to know Christ, but continue to live however I want. This is because I've been saved by Christ, I will live how he wants.

So much of modern Christianity, especially people in my generation, they equate holiness and obedience with legalism.

But the true Christian does not hate a lifestyle of holiness, he pursues it. And this is not only a desire that we will obey, but a guarantee.

Verse 27, it says, I will cause you to walk in my statutes. One of the most obvious and certain proofs of a genuine conversion, it's a simple and heartfelt obedience to God's commands.

John 14, 15, Jesus says, If you love me, you will keep my commands. First John 2, 3 through 4,

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

And James says, faith without works is dead. This does not mean that a believer will never disobey, or struggle to obey, or grieve the

Holy Spirit, but there will be evidence of a simple obedience to God's word.

And I just want to remind you that this is, obedience to God's word is the fruit of our salvation, it's not the root.

We're justified by faith, and faith alone in Christ. If you claim to be in Christ, is this new relationship to God's word a reality in your life?

Do you desire to obey his word, or do you despise his commands? Is obedience to God's word evident in your life?

Lastly, the new heart and the new spirit will be conformed to the image of God's beloved son.

One of the most remarkable things that God does to a believer is indwell him with his Holy Spirit.

In verse 27, that our bodies would be temples to God himself. God not only saves us in salvation, but he sustains us through the power of the

Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, he will convict a believer over sin. He will lovingly, like a father, discipline the believer over that sin.

He will illuminate God's word to our minds. But one of the chief functions of the

Holy Spirit is to conform the believer to the image of Christ. The believer's new relationship with God, his new relationship with God's people, his new relationship with sin in the world, his new relationship with God's law, these all serve to conform us to the image of God's beloved son.

Romans 8 .29 says, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

One commentator writes, he says, Although the outward signs at the moment of true conversion may be less than dramatic, the gradual effects will be monumental.

Like a pebble cast into the very center of a lake, the ripple effect of the gospel will eventually reach the full circumference of the believer's life and touch every shore.

So the believer in Christ will become less and less like the world and more and more like Jesus Christ.

This will change the way that you dress. It will change the way that you talk, the people you hang out with, the decisions that you make.

A person who has been justified will be sanctified. He will grow in holiness.

He will grow in obedience. He will bear fruit. And this at times it will feel, many times, like a constant fight with many backslidings and failures.

But it will nevertheless be present in the life of a believer. Is this conformity to the image of Christ a reality in your life?

So these are the inward promises of grace, the inward changes that God will do in the life of someone who is made new, in the life of a believer.

And there is cause for great concern if you profess to know Christ, but these are not evident in your life.

And it's easy to be listening to this right now and to think that this false assurance of salvation, these false conversions, this only happens in these mega churches where the emphasis is on an experience rather than the gospel, where the gospel is compromised.

It doesn't truly happen in biblical churches like this where there's biblical elders and biblical preaching.

But I want to submit to you that there will be many people in hell who attended biblical churches, who had the right theology, they could defend the doctrines of grace, they attended small group, but they did not know the

Lord. Their theology was only a dead knowledge and not a true saving faith in Christ.

Their confidence was in the flesh rather than in Christ. So if you are here,

I want to remind you that your denomination will not save you, your theology will not save you, attending a biblical church will not save you.

It is Jesus Christ and faith alone in Christ that will save you. The answer is not to go to church more, or I'm sorry, my prayer is that if you are here this morning and you have a genuine saving faith in Christ, and you have a real assurance from the

Holy Spirit that you are in Christ, my prayer is that you would grow in your faith and that you would grow in your assurance.

But if you are here and your assurance is wavering and you're struggling to know whether you belong to Christ and you've looked at the cross and you know that those who are in Christ will forever be in Christ, I want to remind you that the answer is not to go to church more, it's not to pray more, it's not to try and to clean yourself up, the only answer is in Christ.

And I cannot illustrate this better than in the words of Charles Spurgeon here. He says, A great king would on certain occasions entertain all the beggars of the city at a great feast.

Around the king were placed all his royal advisors, all clothed in rich apparel.

The beggars sat at the same table in their rags of poverty. Now one day one of the royal advisors had spoiled his silken apparel so that he dared not put it on.

And he felt, I cannot go to the king's feast today for my robe is foul.

He sat weeping till the thought struck him. Tomorrow when the king holds his great feast some will come as his royal advisors happily decked in beautiful array, but others will come and be made quite as welcome dressed in rags.

Well, well, he said, so long as I may see the king's face and sit at the royal table

I will enter among the beggars. So without mourning because he lost his silken robes he put on the rags of a beggar and saw the king's face just as well as if he had worn his scarlet and fine linen.

And Charles Spurgeon, he goes on to make this application. He says, my soul has done this many a time. When her evidences of salvation have been dim I bid you do the same as this royal advisor.

If you cannot come to Christ as a saint, come as a sinner. Only do come with simple faith in him and you shall receive joy and peace.

You see, no matter how afraid or uncertain you may feel in your soul about your salvation remember that Christ is still the same.

All his benefits of salvation are just as free to you now as they always have been.

Only come to him as a sinner and nothing but a sinner clinging to him in simple faith for he welcomes home repentant sinners like the father of a prodigal son.

Lastly, verse 28. He says, you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you will be my people and I will be your

God. Regarding the land that he promises that his people will dwell in I think there's a partial fulfillment when the

Israelites are taken out of Babylonian captivity and go back to their own land. But I really think the full fulfillment is for believers when we are with Christ forever in glory in heaven.

And he goes on, he says, you will be my people and I will be your God. This is the culminating promise of the new covenant that those who were once enemies of God are now adopted as sons of God and that they are now his people.

I fear there are many people who dwell too much on the secondary blessings of heaven. Streets of gold, getting to be with loved ones or even eternal life itself rather than dwelling on the primary blessing of getting to be with God.

The point of the gospel is not that we get heaven or streets of gold or eternal life in and of itself.

It's that we get God. Christ is the great reward of our salvation.

Christ is the reward of being justified, of being regenerated, of being sanctified, of being saved from our sin.

He is the reward of our salvation. Jonathan Edwards, he writes something tangentially related to this.

I think it's helpful. He says, God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper and the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.

To go to heaven fully to enjoy God is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here, better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives or children or the company of any or all earthly friends.

These are but shadows, but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun.

These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.

If you were here this morning and you are not in Christ, you are not in fellowship with God.

You are the enemy of this God and your sin condemns you. His just wrath burns against you and you cannot reconcile yourself to him.

You cannot clean yourself up, but yet you are not without hope. God sent his son,

Jesus Christ to earth, born of a virgin so as not to inherit our sinful nature. He lived the perfect sinless life that you and I can never live, that he could go to the cross and be the spotless lamb that takes away the sins of the world.

And on the cross, 2 Corinthians 521, says God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us.

So that in him, we might become the righteousness of Christ. Christ bore the sin of his bride.

He suffered the justice of God due for sinners. And he imputed his righteousness from his perfect sinless life to all those who believe in him, that they would stand before God forgiven.

He died, he was buried, and rose again on the third as a testament to the world that sin and death have been defeated.

Turn to him in repentance and faith. For only he can wash you. Only he can cleanse you.

Only he can make you into a new creation. Cling to Christ and you will be amongst his people and he will be your

God, where you will dwell in his glorious presence, not just for a moment, not just for a season, but for all of eternity, forever and ever.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word and the hope that it gives to those who are lowly in spirit, that you promise to justify sinful men, that you promise to regenerate us and make us into a new creation, and that we would be reconciled to you and dwell with you for all of eternity.

Help us this week to apply this word to our lives, that we would look to you as our only hope,

Lord, and that we would be empowered by the Holy Spirit to spread this gospel to the nations, that they would look to Christ in repentance and faith to be saved from their sin, as you call your children home, like the father of the prodigal son.

We thank you that salvation is not by any merit within us, it's not by us cleaning ourselves up, but as Peter says in Acts, there is salvation in no other name except by your grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.