Meditations for midweek of the Sunday after Ascension

Ezekiel 36:25-27  +  Romans 8:29-39  +  John 17:20-26

Ezekiel 36:25-27  Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.

Israel was wasting away in exile when Ezekiel wrote those words. Punished for their stubborn rebellion against the God who had made a covenant with them and who had patiently borne with them for a thousand years. But they were stripped of their homes, stripped of their belongings, stripped of the comforts they had known, because they kept hardening their hearts to the preaching of God’s prophets, kept refusing to repent, kept refusing to live righteously, according to God’s commandments, because they weren’t righteous people. They had abandoned the faith. It takes righteous people to lead lives that are truly righteous. But you only become a righteous person when God, by His Spirit, turns an unbelieving heart into a believing one, and He doesn’t do that while people are stubbornly resisting Him.

But God speaks a beautiful promise to these Jews in exile. A day of sprinkling. A day of cleansing. A day of return. It would much more than the return from exile in Babylon. It would be a return to faith, a conversion of many Israelites who had been lost, a new beginning from the Holy Spirit, who would melt away their stubbornness, their stony hearts, and give them hearts of flesh.

That happened on the Day of Pentecost, when Jews from many nations were gathered and heard Peter’s preaching and his call to repent and to be baptized. And there was the sprinkling with clean water. There was the forgiveness of sins. And there began the New Israel, gifted with the Holy Spirit to lead new lives of obedience.

You’ve been included in that New Israel, too, sprinkled with clean water and brought into Christ. But that’s not just an external sprinkling. It has to be a sprinkling of the heart. Be on the lookout for the idolatry that derailed Old Testament Israel. Be on guard against a dead or dying faith. And learn to walk each day, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:29-39  For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Where do you seek certainty of your salvation? How do you know that you will escape condemnation? How do you know that God’s promises to Israel apply to you? Your call to believe the Gospel is evidence of God’s eternal plan to save you, the fact that the Gospel was sent to you and that you embraced it as the truth—that’s proof of predestination, as long as you continue in faith and keep living in daily contrition and repentance. If the eternal Father gave His Son for you, what won’t He give of all that you need? What do you have to fear? From anyone or anything? If Christ is at the right hand of God interceding for you, even as the Spirit Himself intercedes with groans that words can’t express, what can you lack? No sin can condemn you. No guilt can weigh you down. No enemy can touch you as long as you remain in Christ.

John 17:20-26  “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

What was it Paul said in the Epistle? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Of He makes intercession for us there. Because He already made intercession for us here, before He suffered, before He died. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word. That’s you. That’s me. And how is it we came to believe? “Through their word,” Jesus says. As always, faith comes by hearing the word that is preached about Christ.

And what does He pray for in this particular great High Priestly prayer? That all believers may be one, with a oneness that resembles the oneness between God the Father and God the Son, in perfect love and devotion, perfect appreciation, perfect unity of purpose and of goals. This is what Jesus wants for His Christians, for us to be one—not one with different doctrines and beliefs, but one in the true prophetic and apostolic doctrine, one in the truth, one in the true faith, and one in love.

But all of that is only possible because of the Spirit of truth. And so we continue to pray, Lord, Jesus, send us Your Holy Spirit! And we look forward to Sunday when we will celebrate the outpouring of the Spirit into the world.