Transformed, Part 2

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STORY - Mustang with the floor made out of cups

Have you ever settled for a patch job?

God’s people were suffering - and Ezekiel had a message from God for them

CONTEXT - The israelites were in exile. Ezekiel had a word for the people.

In this word, he was saying to the israelites - they were put in exile because God judged them based on their actions.

That they were acting in the kind of fashion that God had to step in and do something. And even in exile, they had continued that way.

However, in this, God was going to restore them, He was going to change their paths. And God was clear - He wasn’t doing it for any reason that they’ve earned, but He was doing it to show how great HIS name was.

Ezekiel 36:25–27 NIV

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

So, God makes three promises here:

He promised to cleanse them

He promised to give them a new heart

He promised to put His Spirit in them to help them obey

So, three big things - they would be clean, they would have a new heart, and they would have new power to obey.

And not one bit of it was because of anytihng they had done - in fact, it was DESPITE what they had done. Ezekiel clearly points out to them - God’s not going forward with his rescue plan because they’ve earned it, or even shown any proof that they deserve it at all.

There’s a truth here to understand, and without understanding this we can’t possibly begin to approach the idea of transformation.

Transformation starts with God’s effort, and it proves how good God is

And both of these are not about us.

All we can do is patch jobs.

God doesn’t start transformation when we try really hard. ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is a phrase that you’ll find nowhere in the bible.

God’s transformative power isn’t meant to prove our goodness either. If God is doing something in us or for us, it’s not a reason for us to turn around and say ‘hey, look at how good I am! I have proof - God has accepted me!’. God spoke through a donkey once.

It’s very humbling to be able to say,

Everything I am and have is because God is so good and so powerful

But certainly, this does’t mean that we have nothing to do! We aren’t supposed to just sit back, kick up our feet, and let God wait on us hand and foot.

What are we supposed to do?

In Ezekiel, God talks about 3 big things - cleansing, a new heart, and a new Spirit in us.

This was a word for a previous generation, but it still sits VERY relevant to us today - because God is doing the same things today for the same reasons.

Now, precursor - this is extremely important because

Our mind and our heart dictate everything about what we do and think

And that’s a problem. Because both are broken and messy. We NEED cleaning to be able to continue. We NEED a new heart, and the power from The Holy Spirit.

Jeremiah 17:9 NIV

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Jesus taught about the impact our hearts have on us.

Matthew 15:18 NIV

But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.

Jesus also teaches,

Luke 6:45 NIV

A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

so, recap.

We speak and act out of what our hearts are full of.

Our hearts are deceitful and beyond cure.

Our hearts are what is poisoning us.

Sounds pretty hopeless. And the truth is - it IS hopeless - without God. This is why transformation is so essential.

So, there’s three parts to this God-led transformation.

First,

We need to be cleansed from unrighteousness

In the bible, this is what we call ‘Salvation’. God making us righteous.

Titus 3:5 NIV

he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,

Now, it’s incredibly important to understand here. If this is all from God, if it’s all a gift. If God saved us out of mercy rather than merit.

Then

What does real righteousness look like?

We interpret it as ‘rule-based living’. Don’t do this, don’t eat that. Make sure you’re always doing this, and never doing that. You can tell someone is righteous, by looking at their actions.

And sure, there’s plenty of good practices that we need to adopt.

But the key is WHY. What’s our motivation? Do we act because we feel like, we aren’t righteous unless we’re obeying the list? That God won’t have mercy or grace on us unless we’re checking all the right boxes? That righteousness is about how many good things WE do?

1 Corinthians 1:26–31 NIV

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Godly righteousness starts by saying

Look at how good God is

rather than looking at ourselves.

If at any point we start to feel like boasting, like pointing at ourselves - we remember this. ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ I’ve seen people fall so hard because they saw the power of God working through them (and in real ways too, not fake ones), and they starting thinking, ‘wow, look how good I must be’.

Also, Paul points out in romans a curious scenario.

Romans 9:30–32 NIV

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.

Paul says - these gentiles, the people who were not concerned about righteousness - they obtained it. And the israelites, the people who were by very definition living every day trying to attain righteousness - they didn’t get it.

The differing point is this -

Righteousness comes with faith, not by works

God doesn’t look at your works and determine if you’re righteous. That’s the wrong scale.

God looks at your faith. How much you’re willing to trust Him. How much you’re willing to open up to Him. How much of your life is about being with Him.

And faith is an easy thing to start.

Romans 10:9 NIV

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Notice how neither thing is based on our efforts - it’s based on our perspective. Our confession. What we’re willing to recognize and admit - to ourselves and to others.

But we need to mean this. We can’t say, ‘jesus is lord’ and pretend like this word Lord is some holy title without any practical impact. Lord means king, ruler, the person on the throne.

This is a confession of submission - it’s us saying, I recognize that my life is about Jesus and not myself. I want Him to be my Lord.

And if you’re here today or tuning in online, and you’ve never made that confession - I encourage you to do so.

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Second,

We need new hearts

God’s already promised this for us. He said it earlier.

Ezekiel 36:26–27 NIV

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

God will take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh

God will put His Spirit in us, so that He can prompt us to follow His decrees, and that the Spirit will help us be careful to keep His laws

This one is such a big deal, this process was part of the prophecy that Peter claimed when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost

How do we do this? By praying every day, and

Asking God to come in and regularly do heart surgery

Psalm 139:23–24 NIV

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Search MY heart, Oh God. Even down to our thoughts, our motivations.

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Third,

We learn to rely daily on the power of the Spirit in us

We can’t ignore the massive difference that the power of the Holy Spirit makes in us.

But this is way beyond just miracles, and spiritual looking things. It’s not like the Spirit is given to us as a battery to provide power for the obviously supernatural. For sure, He does the supernatural for us - but it doesn’t start or stop there.

1 Corinthians 2:12–14 NIV

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

So Paul talks about this process, where even understanding what God is saying or doing depends on the Spirit working in us to interpret and explain.

And Paul says, this wisdom from the spirit is so unlike us, so far away from our natural tendencies, that the person without the spirit considers what the Spirit does as straight up foolishness.

Relying on the spirit means regularly praying, every day,

I know that I’ll always get this wrong - Holy Spirit, come and guide me the right way

Denying ourselves, recognizing our limitations. Recognizing our natural sinfulness, and our natural bent towards doing and thinking the wrong things.

And this is why our own effort can never transform us. Because our own effort is naturally toxic and foolish.

Paul gave a helpful saying:

1 Timothy 1:15 NIV

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.

We need the power of the spirit daily to even be doing and thinking and saying the right things.

Let’s Pray

MAKE SURE IN PRAYER, FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO COMMIT TO HIM - LEAD THEM IN PRAYER. LEAVE GAPS SO THEY CAN REPEAT.

We also need to ask God to

Renew our minds

Romans 12:2 NIV

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Paul calls the way of doing things by the world ‘conforming to a pattern’.

That means - we do whatever for the same reasons as the world.

The truth is - two people can go drastically different directions for the same reasons.

The bible backs this one up

Proverbs 22:6 NIV

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

That seems pretty against what we’re used to seeing, right? You see parents with drastically different children.

But it doesn’t say, whatever end goal, whatever RESULT you steer a kid towards they will reach what you set out.

What it means is this - whatever way of navigating you’ve equipped them with, whatever tools you’ve given them, they’ll continue to use.

Pride can motivate one person to try and be a strong christian, and can motivate another to walk away from the faith.

Self-centeredness can point one person towards charity work, and another towards greed.

To Paul, the only way to renew ourselves, to renew our minds, is to be transformed by the Spirit

This one comes with a promise - allow God to transform you, and He’ll answer that biggest question - how do we hear from God? How do we know what He’s saying? How do we know what’s right?