S43 || When God Vindicates His Name Among the Nations || Ezekiel 36:21-38 || Session 43

A single line in Ezekiel chapter 36 flips the script on everything we think we know about divine favor: “Not for your sake... but for my holy name.” We pick up at verse 21 and walk through the chapter’s turning point, where God promises to gather Israel, cleanse idolatry, give a new heart, and put His Spirit within them—then backs it with tangible proof the nations can see: rebuilt cities, fruitful fields, and people filling the land like festival flocks. The claim is bold and public: Yahweh will vindicate His name in history.

Together we trace the storyline from Abraham’s first land promise to Ezekiel’s restoration language, connect it with Jeremiah’s new covenant and Zechariah’s vision of national repentance, and note how Acts 1:6 preserves the disciples’ expectation of a restored kingdom. Along the way, we address a common interpretive tangle: those salvation-sounding phrases—cleansing, new heart, Spirit—do not cancel the plain meaning of land, grain, and fortified cities. Instead, Ezekiel holds physical restoration and spiritual renewal together without blurring them into allegory. God grants the church real spiritual blessings now while pledging Israel a future, corporate restoration that displays His holiness before a watching world.

At the heart of it all is national regeneration. “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.” Obedience is not self-generated; it’s Spirit-ignited. That truth humbles pride and fuels hope—then and now. 

If this chapter reshaped how you see God’s promises, share it with a friend, subscribe for the next deep dive, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so we can keep this study growing.

Chapters

• 0:00 Picking Up Ezekiel 36
• 1:30 For My Holy Name
• 5:20 Abraham’s Promise and the Land
• 9:30 Vindication Before the Nations
• 13:03 Reading 36:24–38 Aloud
• 17:23 Physical Land, Not Allegory
• 21:43 New Heart and Spirit Explained
• 25:53 Israel’s Future Restoration Timeline
• 29:03 New Covenant Clarified

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

If you were with us last time, we started Ezekiel chapter thirty-six, and that was where God had turned the corner and starts to restore the nation Israel back to the land. And as we saw last time, there were several passages where God says that I will do this. And there's nothing in there about Israel's worthiness for any of this. We also saw last time that what he's going to do will be permanent. He said that several times. Today we're going to start in Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 21, and we're going to find out what God's going to do and why he's going to do it. He's going to be quite clear. And what is amazing with this, again, we have to keep reminding ourselves is the many, many chapters of God's judgment and wrath, and how blunt and severe he was with all of his wrath and punishment on the Jewish people. Here we see almost right out of the blue, he brings blessing. And it's because what he is going to determine. So pick up with me in Ezekiel 36, 21, says this. This is God speaking. But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned amongst the nations where they went. Therefore, say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for my holy name, which you have profaned amongst the nations where you went. I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I prove myself holy among you in their sight. So, Steve, why does God say He is about to act in this section?

SPEAKER_00: 2:15

He says he's doing it for his name. The nation of Israel has profaned his name because they're outside of the land. Therefore, God is taking things into his own hands and he's doing it, bring them back for his name's sake.

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

He said that quite clearly, verse 21, quote, I had concern for my holy name. The end of verse 22, but for my holy name. Verse 23, quote, I will vindicate the holiness of my great name. And if you look at the middle of verse 22, is God acting because of Israel's obedience?

SPEAKER_00: 2:58

No, he tells him, he says, I'm not doing this for your sake, the house of Israel. I'm doing it because of my holy name.

SPEAKER_01: 3:07

God says unilaterally that he's promising to bring Israel back to the land, and he says he's doing it because of my name. Verse 23, I will vindicate the holiness of my great name. Steve, if we go back to originally when God gave the promise to Israel for the land, where was that first given?

SPEAKER_00: 3:30

It was first given with Abraham. There were three things that he promised to Abraham. If Abraham would believe in him and follow him, he said, I'm going to make you a great nation. He said, I am going to give you this land from wherever you can see and everywhere you walk. And there's going to be a seed come to you that's going to be a blessing to all the other nations. So it was originally given to Abraham.

SPEAKER_01: 3:56

Was originally given to Abraham. And if you were with us when we went through Genesis, he was quite clear, repeated it several times. The first one was in Genesis 13, 15. God gave the land to Abraham. And back in that original situation, was there anything that Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, who is Israel, did they do anything to deserve the land in the first place?

SPEAKER_00: 4:21

No, these were all situations where God selected them. And with the case of Abraham, he picked them out of the land of the Chaldeans and he said, Come follow me and I'll give you a land. And then he took and chose Isaac over Ishmael. Then he chose Jacob over Esau, and he reiterated the promises to both Isaac and Jacob. But no, there wasn't anything deserving on their part. It was done by God himself.

SPEAKER_01: 4:54

Originally, the land was a gift from God. There's nothing that Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob did that was worthy of it. So it was a gift from God because God wanted to give it to them. During the years that they occupied it, they were never strong enough militarily to control it. They were constantly fighting over it. Here, God has taken them out of the land and he is promising to bring them back in again. Therefore, God is in control of when Israel is in the land and when they are outside of the land. When Israel was destroyed, especially Jerusalem and its temple, the other nations would have viewed this as a weakness and a defeat of the God that was the nation of Israel's God. Therefore, God is saying he will bring Israel back to the land and have them prosper as a vindication of his name. God says, My name will be glorified. God is powerful, he's in control, and he will convince the nations of this. The reason why we're emphasizing this so strongly is because there's Bible teachers running around the countryside that says that because of Israel's disobedience, then therefore they've lost the land and they're never going to come back again. The problem with that teaching is that they didn't get the land in the first place because they deserved it. They didn't get the land because of belief and obedience. They couldn't keep it during the years they were there because of obedience and belief. Remember what God said, if you will but trust me, I will run out the enemies from your land. They never did trust him. They were in constant disbelief. And so they were in constant fighting over the land. They weren't strong enough to keep it by their faith or military power during all the years of the kings. And once God took them out of the land, they never repented. There was no repentance here in Ezekiel 36. God says, I'm bringing you back because of my name. So beginning and middle and end, throughout the entire process, there's nothing here that would lead us to believe that Israel was in the land or out of the land because of their belief. It's because of God's gift. All they did was disobey. And God says, I'm bringing them back and I'm blessing them because of my name. That's what he says here. And he makes it quite clear. God is powerful, he's in control, and he will convince the nations of the worthiness of his name. That's what this passage is saying. We're going to go on in this next passage. The most amazing part is he's going to say specifically how he's going to glorify his name. So, Steve, can you start in verse 24 and read down to verse 38?

SPEAKER_00: 7:49

For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from 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 be careful to observe my ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers, so you will be my people, and I will be your God. Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanliness, and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring a famine on you. I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, so that you will not receive again the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations. I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Lord God. Let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord God, On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the waste places to be rebuilt. The desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passes by. They will say, This desolate land has become like the Garden of Eden, and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited. Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate. I, the Lord, have spoken and will do it. Thus says the Lord God, this also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them. I will increase their men like a flock, like the flock for their sacrifices, like the flock of Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so will the waste cities be filled with flocks of men. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

SPEAKER_01: 10:21

As we've seen many of these passages in Ezekiel, God says, Then they will know that I am the Lord. In our translations, we miss some of the emphasis of that. What he's actually saying is, then they will know that I am Yahweh. They will know my name. In our translation, the capital L-O-R-D is always his name, Yahweh. What he's saying here is, my name was profaned. And when I do this, bring Israel back, then they will know my name. They will know that I am the one that is in control here. His name will be glorified. So this is an amazing section. What we want to do is get a little bit specific here simply because so many people take these passages and they broad brush them and they don't go through them in detail. And that's where they end up in some degree of error. For example, if you're just broad brushing this, you can see that there's several passages that make the Christian automatically think of salvation. Verse 25, cleanse you from your filthiness. That's a phrase that makes us think of New Testament cleansing from our sins. Verse 26, give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. The Christian automatically thinks of salvation. Verse 27, put my spirit within you. The Christian is full of God's Holy Spirit. However, several passages in this section make it crystal clear. This is not talking about the church nor personal salvation. Verse 24, bring you to your own land. Verse 28, quote, you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers. Steve, which land was he going to give them?

SPEAKER_00: 12:10

The same land that the forefathers had. That's the land of Israel.

SPEAKER_01: 12:51

And so it's quite clear it's the land given to the forefathers. Verse 29, quote, I will call for the grain and multiply it. Grain is a physical food. Verse 30, quote, I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field. Verse 33, on that day I will cause the cities to be inhabited. Verse 34, the desolate land will be cultivated. Verse 35, the cities are fortified and inhabited. Verse 38, the waste cities will be filled with flocks of men. Therefore, these passages are too many references to specific geographic features for it to be some sort of allegory or parable. To make this say that it's really applying to personal salvation or the church today means you would have to take vast sections, two, three dozen chapters that have been prior to this, and say that means one thing, but suddenly we've switched topics to something else entirely, because we can't take this passage with the cleansing of the heart and make it talk about personal salvation. As we've seen, he said things like it's going to be the former ways, as we saw in recent verses. Well, the church isn't going to be taken back to our former ways. That's back into lostness. Therefore, God gives the church spiritual blessings now while promising Israel physical blessings later. That's what he's doing here. This passage is clearly saying that God is going to gather Israel from the nations that they've been scattered in and his judgment that he talked about for multiple passages. He's going to gather them back to the land that he gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God will wash away their sins. God is going to change their hearts. He will give them a new spirit. He will cause them to obey his laws. That's what it said in there. I will cause you to obey, is exactly what it said. The nations around Israel will know that it's God that has blessed them. God's name will no longer be ridiculed to the nations, and it's going to be permanent because of all the times he talked about it being permanent in the first part of the chapter. Now, Steve, I ask you, was that ever fulfilled in the past?

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

No, it hasn't been fulfilled at all. All of this description here is giving a description of really a land that is at peace from all the other nations. And God says, I'm going to rebuild the things that were desolate, of the produce and also the cities and everything else. So it's really talking about a restored land. And what we refer to it is also as the restored kingdom of Israel. Think back of Acts chapter one, verse six. Jesus has resurrected from the dead. So this was something that was on their mind. This very thing in Ezekiel was one of the areas that was talked about of restoring Israel itself. This is a source of that question that was asked by that disciple in Acts. This isn't the only place. This is about the third or fourth time that God has given some inclination that there's going to be a restored kingdom, but it's very direct here and very plain and really very forceful in the most detail that is given that he is going to restore this kingdom to them. It's a physical land with physical places and cities. It was the land that their forefathers had.

SPEAKER_01: 17:27

So that's taking an Old Testament idea and applying it in a New Testament concept. That's fine. That's what the New Testament writers do. What is illicit is to take a New Testament idea, then go back to the Old Testament and change the original meaning of the passage of in the Old Testament to mean a New Testament idea. That's illicit. It would be illicit to take a New Testament idea of the church being living stones and then read that back into an Old Testament and say there never was a real physical temple. Well, no, the Old Testament passage meant what it meant to the original writers. And so we can't take a New Testament idea of salvation and then take that to reinterpret an Old Testament passage. That's what's illicit. So back to what it's saying here. God is promising Israel a blessing. What's profound is that he's doing it after all of Israel's idol worship, all of their abominations, all of their bloodshed, all of their sex worship, child sacrifice. And he's bringing in this blessing, bringing them back to the land and making the land fruitful, full of food again. He's not doing this based on their belief or obedience prior to bringing them back. There would be no theological reason God would abandon his national promise based on rejection of Christ. I know that's gonna shake a lot of people, but think of what he's saying here. There's places in the Old Testament, such as the golden calf, that was an equal rejection to denying Christ. I mean, the golden calf was a total rejection of God in the first place. Read the first half of Ezekiel over and over and over again. They were totally ignoring God's prophets, they were not believing Yahweh, they were ignoring his laws, they were sacrificing their own children on the idol Molech, and God judged them for it. They never repented. Yet here, God says, not because of you, but because of my name, I'm bringing you back. So because of that, we can then take and say, these things never were fulfilled in the past any longer, it says that they're not going to have derision from the other nations. So they are yet to be fulfilled. Therefore, God will return Israel to the land and cause them to believe in Jesus as a nation in the future. There's only one way of salvation through Jesus, but what God can do is also work to save national Israel too. We're not talking here about personal salvation. We're talking about a nation coming together as a country. And God can raise up countries and tear them down again. And it has really separate and apart from personal salvation. He's not saying that they're right with him in the sense of salvation here. Look at verse 25. God cleansing Israel with water. Remember earlier in the chapter, God compared Israel's sin to a woman's menstrual period, which made them ritually unclean. In the Old Testament law, after menstruation, a woman had to be cleansed with water. Leviticus 15, verses 21 and 22. Thus, God is following through with the illustration that Israel's sin was ugly, unclean, and they had to be cleansed before they could come back into fellowship. Verse 27 quote, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. What is the only way that we or Israel can have the ability to walk in God's commands?

SPEAKER_00: 21:21

It's through the new heart that we have that He gives us whenever we become a believer in Jesus Christ. I think some of the confusion comes in, Glenn, of mixing this up. The new covenant is spoken of in Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through 34. But in Ezekiel, this is the fourth time that he has mentioned this new covenant and made a parallel of it. Here he doesn't use the word covenant. Previously he has. And in chapter 37, he will specifically mention the word covenant. But in verse 26, he says, I'll give you a new heart and a new spirit within you. That's a parallel to the new covenant that's spoken of in Jeremiah. And then we have Jesus says at the Lord's Supper before his crucifixion, This is the blood of the new covenant. Do this in remembrance of me. So people have joined those together, and they say, Oh, the church is part of the new covenant, therefore, Jeremiah's covenant and the covenants that are mentioned here in Ezekiel and the promises given to the nation itself, that's the church. But these covenants and promises that are mentioned in the Old Testament, even the one in Jeremiah, it's specifically to the nation of Israel. We as Gentiles as part of the church are participants in that covenant, and we get the benefits of the covenant. As Paul puts it, we are wild olive branches that have been grafted into the normal olive tree, but we're not the olive tree itself. So the church is not the same as what God is promising here in these verses in the Old Testament. And you have just very clearly mentioned all of the reasons why that is the case. But I think that's where the conflation comes in between the two. And God is very specific. Now, earlier, you mentioned that said that God is going to cause them to become believers in them. What does scripture say how that's going to happen? Go over to Zechariah. And we also have already gone through a study in Zechariah. Listen to our study through that. What is going to happen is that Jesus is going to come back when all the nations are coming against Israel. During that time frame, they're all going to look on him and the one that they've pierced, and they will come to understand that Jesus is the Messiah. And they're going to mourn and they're going to mourn in such a way that this soul-wrenching, and then they will believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths that Jesus Christ is Lord. And at that time they will have salvation, in which they will be filled with the Holy Spirit. It all fits together, the Old Testament and the New Testament. This is how God places a new spirit in them. Just like how God placed a new spirit in you and me, Glenn, whenever we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, we were given a new heart. We were given the Holy Spirit to indwell us. And we also became a new creation. That's the same thing that's going to happen at that time whenever Jesus comes back and fights for them against all the nations in Jerusalem, and they finally recognize who He is, and they come to that saving, salvific faith in Jesus Christ. So when you say that God causes them to become believers in them, this is the method in which he causes that to happen. Then all of these mentions of covenant in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah and all the other places come together into a good, clean fashion and fit together like perfect puzzle pieces on a puzzle. And we see that they're all fit together just by going through and reading the plain meaning of the text. And so I think we should keep that in mind that God is doing more than just redeeming mankind in general. As we've mentioned before, he's also redeeming the nations, and he's also specifically here redeeming the nation of Israel itself.

SPEAKER_01: 26:01

God says, You were scattered because of your disobedience, but because of my name, not because of you, because of my name, I'm going to bring you back in Ezekiel 36, 27, quote, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, close quote. So the only way that Israel could ever obey God is when he puts his spirit within them and causes them to obey the statutes. And guess what? It's the only way we can obey God is when he puts his spirit within us and causes us to do so simply because we would not have the desire to obey God if we're not regenerated. Israel didn't have the desire to obey God because they were not regenerated. The change that we have when God takes out our old heart of stone and gives us a new heart, that's when we have the desire to obey God. With a new heart, we're going to have new desires. We can only be obedient to God through the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells the believer in Jesus Christ. There's never been any other way to be right with God except through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Old Testament knew, future of the past, it's through faith in the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And that's what he's saying here. He's saying, all you did throughout the book was disobey, and I judged you by scattering you. But because of my name, I'm going to bring you back. I'm going to take out your heart of stone, put in a heart of flesh, put my spirit within you, and then you will obey. That's what he's saying. Now we can apply that to the Christian life, but what it's saying here in the context of Ezekiel is that this is Israel. With that, we'll stop for today. That is a tremendous passage. That chapter, Ezekiel 36, is arguably the most important chapter because it teaches so much and so clearly about the restoration of Israel. The next chapter, 37, is probably the most well-known chapter in Ezekiel. If anybody thinks of Ezekiel, they always think of the dry bones. It's a wonderful literary description. So be back here next time and we'll learn about the Valley of the Dry Bones. Thank you so much for watching and listening.