And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols will I cleanse you.
God speaks here to a people scattered among the nations, and He promises them a cleansing they cannot do for themselves. Three questions follow: what the "clean water" is, when the sprinkling happens, and why God does it at all.
Every verb in this promise belongs to God. One writer sets the promise beside the reason God gives for it. The reason is not Israel's improvement.
But though the Lord could do no more for Israel, He can for His own sake do the wonderful work in them of turning their hearts to Himself. And this will happen... "I am not doing this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake." (v. 22.)
Notice how many promises here begin with "I will."
"Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you." All help comes from God: cleansing, a new heart, and the Holy Spirit. This is the purpose of God for His name's sake. How precious the "I wills" of God! "I will take you." Yes, from His own heart's free grace He will do all this for Israel.
Sprinkled water was not a new idea to Ezekiel's hearers. Two earlier passages would have come to mind.
Ezekiel prophesied that God would "sprinkle clean water" upon Israel in the coming day, so that they might be clean. His readers would have thought back to the book of Numbers, where the sprinkling of water comes up twice. Numbers 8 gives the way the Levites were cleansed so that they might enter their service. Moses was told to "sprinkle water of purifying upon them." Numbers 19 gives the way the ordinary Israelite was cleansed from the various defilements he might pick up. From the ashes of a red heifer they were to make a "water of separation," and they were to sprinkle it on people and things that were defiled. That water, which purified, was made from "the ashes of the burnt heifer" — a picture of the death of Christ — and "running [or, living] water" — a picture of the Spirit.
The picture in Numbers and the promise in Ezekiel point the same way. The New Testament confirms it.
It is the Word of God which brings the death of Christ in its separating and purifying power to bear upon the soul... Ephesians 5:26 confirms it again: there "water" and "the Word" mean the same thing.
Israel already had washings under the law. This promise is different.
The cleansings under the law were ceremonial and external, and therefore of no real use. The prophet declares, and our Lord repeats, that this was to be real. A cleansing, not by purifying the flesh, but by a new birth, through the Spirit of God.
Jesus once pointed Nicodemus, a respected teacher in Israel, back to what the prophets had already written. This verse is part of that testimony.
As He had shown to Nicodemus, a teacher in Israel, the new birth was necessary even for the enjoyment of earthly blessings. As a teacher in Israel, he ought to have known this from the testimony of the prophets... In this way the nation is morally renewed, so that they may loathe themselves for their sins before God.
The promise is set in a future gathering, not in the return from Babylon.
He will gather them from among the nations and all countries and bring them back to their own land. Only a shallow interpreter can speak of a fulfilment when they returned from Babylon... So, when the people of Israel believe on Him and look upon Him whom they pierced (Zech. 12:10), they will be cleansed. "In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness" (Zech. 13:1).
The effect goes deeper than a change of behaviour.
The water will cleanse them so deeply and completely that their whole nature will be different. Once this mighty work has taken place, they will look back with disgust at what they used to be... A moral renovation will have been accomplished.
- The cause. God acts for His own name's sake, not for Israel's.
- The gift. The verbs are all "I will": cleansing, a new heart, and the Spirit all come from God's free grace.
- The means. The sprinkled water recalls Numbers 8 and 19. The ashes picture Christ's death and the living water the Spirit, and Ephesians 5:26 ties the water to the Word.
- The reach. This washing is real, not ceremonial. It works by new birth — the very thing a teacher in Israel should have known.
- The result. A nation gathered back to its own land, cleansed when it looks on the One they pierced, and so changed that it loathes what it once was.
And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
These words sit inside a promise God makes to Israel, a nation scattered and beaten: He will bring them home and change them from the inside. Two questions follow — when does this happen, and what is a "heart of stone"?
Israel came home from exile in Babylon, and many read that return as the fulfilment. Commentators point out that the details of the passage rule it out.
But there is a further and clearer proof that it has not yet been fulfilled... Was the Jew — let alone all Israel — cleansed from all his filth then? The book of Malachi tells a different story, and the Lord Himself proved it when He came in person. What is promised here, when it is fulfilled, is nothing less than the new birth of the Jewish people. God will give them a new heart and a new spirit, take away the heart of stone, and give a heart of flesh. He will put His Spirit within them, and cause that they shall walk in holy obedience, they His people, and He their God.
The image is not random. God had already given Israel His law carved into stone tablets.
In their hearts, the people of Israel were much like the stone the law was written on. It fits that God wrote the law on tablets of stone. You can smash a stone tablet, but you cannot stretch it or bend it like rubber... Israel proved itself to have a heart of stone. There was no surface left to write on. So in this book the Lord says, in effect, "I am going to make Israel new. I am going to work by My Spirit, so that they will be able to receive what I will write in a coming day."
Commentators insist this promise is not an improvement of what is already there.
The change Ezekiel predicts goes right down to the foundation. It gives a person a new heart and a new spirit. Then he wants what is good, and he walks in obedience. Verse 27 shows this. No wonder the Lord Jesus called it a new birth. It does not adjust the nature a person already has. It gives a nature that is completely new. The new heart is "given." The new spirit is "put within you." It is to start again from the very first.
The verse names two steps, and their order matters.
In Ezekiel 36, the first step is the removal of the stony heart, which is replaced by a heart of flesh. It is that which is impressionable and on which the Spirit of God writes.
But the heart God gives is not passive.
The heart of giving your life to God is that it must be willing... that surrender must come from the heart, or it is not surrender at all... "And I will give you a new heart," says the Lord. But the new heart He gives is a heart that freely chooses to serve its Master.
Read the chapter and count the promises. God also gives His reason for making them.
Did you notice in that passage in Ezekiel, how God says, "I will," "I will"? It is God speaking of what He will do of Himself and for Himself. It goes with a new covenant. God is no longer demanding what people ought to be for Him. He is saying what He will do for them Himself, and for His own glory.
Two lines in the chapter say why God acts.
But though the Lord could do no more for Israel, He can still do the wonderful work of turning their hearts to Himself, for His own sake... "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name." (v. 22.) "It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord God; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel." (v. 32.)
Verse 26 gives a new spirit; verse 27 gives another gift, and the difference is easy to miss.
Verse 27 speaks of "My Spirit" which is to be put within born-again Israel in that day. Some Bibles print it without a capital letter, but it should have one. It means the Spirit of God, and it is different from "a new spirit" in the verse before.
If the promise is Israel's, the condition it addresses is not theirs alone.
The law proved that they were beyond correction. In the same way we learn that "nothing good dwells in me (us)" and that "sin dwells within me (us)" (Rom. 7:17, 20). Our hearts, then, are not less stony than theirs. God must act before a heart can take an impression. This He has done in new birth.
- Stone diagnosed. The law was written on stone because Israel's heart was stone — unbending, and offering nothing for God to write on.
- Stone removed. The first move is removal, not repair; a heart of flesh is one that can take an impression.
- Spirit given. Verse 26's "new spirit" and verse 27's "My Spirit" are two gifts, not one; only with both does obedience follow.
- Grace sovereign. Every promise in the chapter is "I will," and God states the reason: His own name, not their deserving.
- Still future. Commentators say the return from exile fell far short. This is the new birth of a nation still to come — and the same stony heart, and the same cure, apply to every person now.