Sermon Transcript
Well, last week we began talking about biblical hospitality, taking strangers and turning them into friends, loving others like we love ourselves, serving whatever needs they have, and making sure that we don’t prioritize ourselves over them. And just as I am sure in your discussion groups, which by the way, if you haven’t found a discussion group to plug into yet, there’s still totally time to do that. We have a lot of weeks left. We want you to get into a discussion group. But as I am sure in your discussion groups you have been able to be honest about your struggles with hospitality, we can be honest in here as well with our struggles because sometimes hospitality is difficult, right?
We are, or I’ll speak for myself, I am wired to make sure I get my own needs met before I meet the needs of others. It’s just instinctive. Me first, and then if there’s enough left over, then you later. That’s probably a lot of us, or hopefully I’m not alone in that in this room. But occasionally, we will see someone who breaks that pattern.
Occasionally, we will run across someone who loves others first, and takes care of themselves second. And whenever we see someone like that, we’re like, wow, that’s amazing, it’s incredible. We feel inspired and uplifted. So, for instance, like many of you, Beth and I went to the Free Burma Rangers movie this last week. And if you have somehow not heard of that while being around Bridges, it’s about a real family So, mom, dad, 3 kids who live on the front lines of various wars.
They have lived on the front lines of war zones. In fact, the 3 kids were born and raised right there within earshot of gunfire, and they have chosen to live there because they want to help the people victimized by the conflict in whatever way they can.
I was totally caught off guard and surprised watching this documentary that apparently it is very common for indigenous families and children to be caught up in the middle of a battlefield. This is an obvious thing, I just never thought about it before. It is not like the Civil War perhaps where there are designated battlefields and armies just meet out in some field. And then when the day is done, the soldiers get to go home to their families, and the families are otherwise like sheltered from the actual battle that is going on. It is not like that.
The battlefield is in the middle of where people live in their neighborhoods and their homes, right? The battle happens right exactly where families live. So, there are all kinds of children in the middle of this crossfire. And this American family, mom, dad, 3 kids, decided to live amongst these other families to help however they could, bring medical supplies, play fun games with the kids, and they’ve been doing this for 20 years. So, I’m watching this and I’m thinking, they are so centered on others.
They are truly loving neighbor like they love themselves, even to the point that they value their neighbors’ lives as much or maybe even more than they value their own lives. And I’m watching that and I’m thinking, these people are so ridiculously different than me. There’s no way I can even compare how I view others to how they view others. I mean, we’re doing this hospitality series in here, so we’re talking about things that we struggle with like We don’t know if we can walk up to someone at fellowship hour and say, hello.
We are like, no, that is too awkward. I would be too nervous to do something like that, you know. We are concerned about walking up to someone who is holding a muffin, and we are like, too much! That is too scary. I just want to talk to my friends instead.
And then I see a documentary about people who are excitedly welcoming strangers to a kids’ program who, instead of holding a muffin, these strangers might be wearing explosive suicide vests. And the family is like, come on in. We are so glad that you are here. Now, we are going to need to check to see if you are going to try to blow us up or not, but come on in. We want you here.
That level of hospitality is not comparable to where I find myself. And I know, I totally agree, it’s absolutely true, God is working with all of us individually, and he is moving all of us just kind of one little baby step at a time, you know, like, amen, praise God. Right? And eventually, eventually down the road, we will all be a lot further than we are right now with one tiny little step at a time as He leads us. That’s totally true, 100% accurate, and praise God for that.
But if I’m honest, I need more than just a lot of little baby steps. I need a different set of instincts. I need a different will. I need different desires. I need a different heart.
I need to be a different person.
So, today we are looking at the normal way God makes new people. How does God transform people into the type of people who actually love neighbor like they love themselves? And we will see that answer involves God’s hospitality to us. So, our Scripture is Ezekiel 36 starting in verse 24. This is in your bulletin or it will be up on the screen as well, but Ezekiel 36 starting in verse 24.
God is speaking to the nation of Israel and God says, for I will take you out of the nations, I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 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.
Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors. You will be my people and I will be your God. I will save you from your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. I will increase the fruit of the trees and crops of the field so you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine.
Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices. I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and disgraced of your conduct, people of Israel. So, as we look at this passage today, we will see to whom God shows hospitality, the amount of God’s hospitality, and finally, what accompanies God’s hospitality. To whom God shows hospitality, the amount of God’s hospitality, and finally, what accompanies God’s hospitality.
So, first, God shows hospitality to evil people.
He shows hospitality to evil people. These people to whom God offers hospitality in this text are not people who have their act together. As far as we know, they don’t have their act together at all, not even a little bit. Um, in, in our verses, verse 32, God says things like, I’m not doing this for your sake. It’s not on account of you that I’m doing this.
You haven’t done anything to merit this. These people, in fact, have shameful and disgraceful conduct. Verse 32, or verse 31, they have evil ways in wicked deeds. And yet God says, I’m going to do a new work in you.
He says, hey, uh, evil person, I’m going to bring you near to me. I’m going to adopt you. I’m going to say that you’re my people. Verse 28. In our language, we might say, this is my group, this is my family.
You know, not my biological family, but the family I have chosen, like who I’d spend Thanksgiving with if I didn’t have to spend Thanksgiving with my biological family, right? My family, this is who I’m going to do life with. I’m locking arms with these people and we are walking together. They are my people. That’s what God says to evil people before they show any sign of progress.
In the verses right before what we read, it says this group of people has been scattered among the nations, and while they were out there scattered among the nations, they are profaning God’s name to people everywhere. And yet, God says, come here. You are mine. I will be with you. It is so hard for us to understand because it is not what we do.
Right? We push people away who would talk badly about us, who would profane our name. We push people away who have disrespected us or who have sinned against us, who have hurt us in some way. We say, if I’m ever going to be able to trust you again, if you are ever going to crawl your way back into being one of my people, I’m first going to need to see some changes in you. And after you have proved yourself and not messed up again, remember, like, how you messed up last time, and you haven’t done that for a while, Then we can begin to talk about us again.
That’s what we do, but that’s not what God does. God says, first, you are mine. Before you change, before you get better, first, I am welcoming you to me. First, I am showing you hospitality, unmerited hospitality. Now, when we’re talking about God’s hospitality toward us, for those of you who have been paying attention during our series, the term hospitality doesn’t completely work with God because we’ve said hospitality is friendship to a stranger, right?
Loving a stranger, welcoming a stranger, and as far as God is concerned, of course, there are no true strangers. He knows everyone, right? He made everyone. There is no one who could walk up to God and God would say, huh, who are you? You are new.
Like, what is your name? I am God. That would never happen with God, right? So, in that sense, God can’t do that definition of hospitality because no one is actually a real, real stranger. However, for all of us, Because of what we have done, we have hurt people who God loves.
Because we have done that, while we are not strangers to Him, we are estranged from Him. There is a relational distance between us. It is like how I would feel as a parent if another kid did something mean to one of my kids, like hypothetically. Another kid steals one of my kid’s Pokémon cards. That’s what he’s into right now.
And as far as I know, that has never happened, so this really is hypothetical, for real, really hypothetical. But if that happened, if somebody stole some of his Pokémon cards, I would think, I don’t really like that kid, right? It would put distance between me and that kid because that kid has done something to hurt someone that I love. I would still know who the kid is. He wouldn’t be a stranger to me, but he would be estranged from me.
So it is with us and God. We have hurt people who He loves and we are relationally separated. We have alienated ourselves from Him. But God, even though we have made ourselves an enemy to Him, and an enemy to people that he loves, God says, I welcome you. I am bringing you to me.
You are my people.
It reminds me of the family in the documentary who welcomes people potentially wearing explosive suicide vests, right? You have hurt people that I love, You might continue to hurt people that I love, and we are opening our doors. We are welcoming you.
Those are the people to whom God extends hospitality, evil people. Now, let’s look at the amount of God’s hospitality. The amount of God’s hospitality is excessive and lavish. It is abundant. It is way over the top.
In verses 29 and 30, God says, I’m going to make the grain harvest plentiful. I’m going to increase the fruit of the trees and crops of the field. I’m going to back the truck up and give you everything. You will lack nothing. And God promises this to wicked people.
Which doesn’t make any sense. When people behave as these people were behaving, you’re supposed to cut them off, God. What are you thinking? You don’t promise them more. Yet, that’s exactly what he did.
He says, I’m going to give you so much you will never be disgraced for having nothing again. Verse 30, there is coming a day when every cup will be full, every plate will have food, every person will have clothes, the land will produce what it is supposed to produce, and the planet will run with harmony instead of chaos. That is God’s promise to wicked people. He will give them that, which obviously, if we think about it, right, the complete, final, total realization of that promise isn’t something that has happened in history, nor is it really something that even can be fulfilled in our natural history. This will only be completely fulfilled in the future, kind of eternal glory that is beyond the current temporal world.
This is true with many promises in Scripture, small Bible lesson. Many promises have an immediate fulfillment, a right away fulfillment, maybe an intermediate fulfillment, something else will happen before the final end, and then an ultimate fulfillment at the final end. So, the immediate fulfillment for this promise was that these people who had been scattered to many other nations were actually brought back into a land of their own. That really happened. They really were brought back to the land from which they had been scattered.
But when they came back, they just came back to normal land. The land still had famines and shortages, as all land always will. So, the return to that land was not the ultimate final end fulfillment. The ultimate fulfillment is what we still look forward to as Christians, which is when God will remake the earth and there will be no war or disease or hunger or loss. There will be peace in every way, politically, agriculturally, interpersonally, emotionally, peace in every single way.
That is the eventual ultimate fulfillment to which this is pointing. But the important observation for us today is this promise of a of a heaven on earth is not the type of promise that you would make to wicked people. This is not normal. This does not fit into any categories of any other religions. This is not karma where good things will come to you if you do good things to others.
It’s not that, right? In this case, they were doing bad things and they were promised The best things.
What is that? It is like if some kid really did steal my kids’ Pokémon cards and I went up to said kid and told him, you know, not only am I going to welcome you into my home, but I am also going to take you out for ice cream and cotton candy, and then after that, we are going to go to Disneyland. How does that sound? That’s not what we would promise wicked people. That would be very abnormal.
We might even think that that’s unwise because wouldn’t they just take advantage of our kindness? If we welcome and adopt a kid who steals and then give him ice cream and take him to Disneyland, won’t he just steal more?
Maybe in our human interactions that might be a possibility, although you can talk about this. I happen to believe that excessive hospitality toward wicked people will always have some level of positive effect. You can think about Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, right? He was a criminal that received excessive hospitality And then it changed him, right? He was no longer the same man.
He was no longer a criminal. He left that life behind as a result of somebody’s kindness and hospitality toward him. So, in our human interactions, it may not always work out as beautifully as Jean Valjean, right? It might be a little bit messier in our human hospitality toward each other, but with God, it always works out that beautifully. God ensures that we won’t abuse his hospitality because along with hospitality, God also makes us new.
In verses 25 to 27 of our text, God says to these wicked people, I will clean you from all your impurities. I will remove your heart of stone. I will give you a new heart. I will put my Spirit in you. I’ll put a new spirit in you.
When God extends hospitality to wicked people, He simultaneously makes those wicked people good. He doesn’t take the bad kid out for ice cream and just, like, hope that the kid will become good. Again, that probably will always have some amount of positive effect. That’s my personal belief, but God does more than that. More than the hospitality, God gives wicked people a new heart and a new spirit which want to follow His laws.
By giving the bad kid a new heart, the kid now desires to follow God instead of desiring to follow sin. So, in other words, God doesn’t waste His time with behavior modification therapy. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t just say to bad people, like, hey, you better be good. If you aren’t good, I am going to hit you with a stick.
And if you are good, though, I will give you a treat. Deeper than that, deeper than that strategy, God goes to the root of what causes us to behave the way that we do, like what drives us to hurt others? Why do we have a will that is selfish and self-centered instead of others-centered? Why do we look out for number one at the expense expense of others? It’s because there is something wrong with our hearts.
Our actions don’t just come out of nowhere, our actions are driven by our hearts. We act selfishly because we have hearts of stone. And unless the heart of stone is replaced with God’s heart, then the only thing punishments and rewards will do is constrain a selfish heart. Instead of making a good heart. The test for all of us to determine what kind of heart we have, like, oh, do I have a heart of stone or do I have a heart of flesh?
Do I have a selfish heart or do I actually have a good heart? The test for all of us is to ask, what would we do if we could get away with it?
If there wasn’t going to be a punishment, If there wasn’t going to be a consequence, what would we do? If the threat of punishment is the only reason we aren’t doing something, it shows our good behavior really still comes from a selfish heart, right? We don’t want the punishment, which means we are still looking out for number one. We have just constrained a selfish heart. That is all we have done.
We haven’t made a good heart, The good heart will still produce good behavior even if there weren’t going to be any punishment for being selfish. So, God, who understands this situation, doesn’t only give us a system of, like, punishments and rewards, He says, I am going to make you new. That thing in you that drives your actions, your heart, I’m going to give you a new one of those. I’m going to change your instincts. You react selfishly without even thinking about it because that’s what’s in your heart.
Even when we do something good, a lot of times we complain about how hard it was for us. Have you been guilty of this? Like, I baked you this cake, but then I didn’t have sugar, so I went to the store, they didn’t have sugar, so I had to go to another store, and then there was traffic, and it’s— we’re just complaining. Like, we’ve made the whole thing about us. Even when we are doing something good for somebody else, right?
We are at the center of our world and it is just instinctual. We don’t try to be that way, we just are that way. And God says, I am going to make you new. I am going to give you new instincts.
The message of Christianity is not so much be good, It’s not so much behave correctly. That’s not the message of Christianity. The message of Christianity is be new, be remade, be reborn. And the good news is we don’t need to muster up the strength to be new. God does that for us.
So, listen to who does all the work in these verses. God says— seriously, I’d love for you to take out your sheet and look at this. This is starting in verse 25, but God is speaking. I just want you to see this so you feel like the pressure is off for you to make yourself new, right? Somebody else is going to do it.
God’s going to do it. Verse 25, God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from your idols. Verse 26, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and implied, I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit in you and move you.
God says, I will move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. So, who makes us clean? Who gives us a new heart? Who gives us a new spirit? Who moves us to follow God’s laws?
God. Another translation, which I didn’t use because it’s more clunky, but it is more literal, says that last sentence, verse 27, I, God, will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my laws. God causes us to move or moves us to follow Him. And for those of you who might be troubled by that and think, like, what, God causes us to act in certain ways? Doesn’t that mess with our free will?
Well, I would just point you to how Jesus explains this. Matthew 15, Jesus says that what comes out of a person, some of you are probably familiar with this verse, what cometh out of a person proceeds from that person’s heart. Jesus says, Matthew 15:19, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, theft, false witness, slander. It is our hearts that drive our actions. Before we act, we have a desire to act.
And where does that desire come from? Out of our hearts. You know, what we long for, what we want most, our deepest hopes, those are underneath and those drive what we do. Our desires, hopes, longings, those move us to act in certain ways. So, if we want to change the way we act, we change what is underneath of the way that we act.
But how? Have you ever done something like this? How do we change our deepest hope? How do we change what we long for most? How do we change our hearts?
We don’t. We need to be made new. We need to be reprogrammed. And that is exactly what God says He will do. He will take our old programming, delete it, and reboot us with new programming.
We find out later when we get to the New Testament of the Bible, which begins about 600 years after Ezekiel, We find out that God removes our hearts of stone and replaces them with His heart through the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. In Christ’s crucifixion, our old hearts, our old desires, our old affections, our old longings, those are killed along with Jesus. And then with His resurrection, God reboots us with His Spirit, His heart, His longings. His affections. We die and raised to life again along with Christ so that we actually are new and different.
That happens to us when we become Christians. Now, I assume this morning there are people here who would call themselves Christians, and there are people who would say that you are not Christians. If you are a Christian, You are someone who has, to some extent, said, God, please take my selfish, self-centered, sinful desires and longings and give me new affections, give me new instincts, give me a new heart, give me your heart, you know, resurrect me as you have resurrected Jesus. If you are a Christian, you have told God something like that. If you are not a Christian, but today you find yourself ashamed of your selfishness, perhaps that is even why you came to church because you are like, I have to get right with God.
Maybe you regret how you have hurt people, ignored people, passed by people. If that is you and you want forgiveness and restoration, you tell God, You say, God, I don’t want my same desires and inward focus anymore. I want you to make me new. I see the futility in trying to make myself better on my own. I understand, like, trying harder hasn’t really got me anywhere.
God, you need to remake me new. You can tell God that right now in your head. You say, God, please take away my sinful, self-centered desires, crucify them with Jesus, and resurrect me anew. With your desires and your heart.
We believe God always answers that prayer and will make you new. If you, if you just prayed that and that is sincerely what you want God to do, we need to talk afterward, like to me or to another pastor. The next step for you is baptism, and we want to have lots of conversations to get you started in this new life that just began. That is if you are not a Christian. But if you have been a Christian for a long time, here is the question that might be floating in your head as we have talked about these things this morning.
Has my old heart of stone really been removed and now I really have God’s heart? Because it sure doesn’t feel that way. I still have a lot of selfish desires. I have a lot of sinful desires. Weren’t those crucified?
What about those? Why do I have those desires if my heart has supposedly been made new? Great questions. Those are honest questions. I experience the same thing.
So, here is a response. Yes, if you are a Christian, your heart really has changed. What is most fundamentally true about you is now different. Your deepest, your deepest love is now to follow God and obey His commands. But at least this is how I sort it out for myself, we all have a certain muscle memory built into us from before we got our heart transplant because when our heart was remade not everything else about us was remade, our bodies have not been remade yet so we still have other desires, They’re not as fundamental as our hearts, they aren’t our deepest longings, but they are still there.
So, for instance, we’re talking about all this hospitality stuff, right? And if you are a Christian, your deepest, most true part of you will want to follow what God says about hospitality. Like we see the Burma Rangers movie about the family serving other families in a war zone. And we think those people actually seem to love other people just as much, if not more, than they love themselves. And we are drawn to that.
There is something about it and we say, that is right. That is the way it ought to be. It has a gravity to it. It’s deeper than other desires we have. We think, I need to be like that.
I mean, I don’t need to move to Burma, but I need to actually center my life on others the way that they do. There’s a resonance with our soul as if we have kind of bumped into some kind of ultimate reality.
And now compare the gravity of that desire to other desires that we have, like, well, I need to make sure I get my own needs met first.
I’ll be glad to help others after I get myself established and have the discretionary time to do so. Right? Those desires are there too, but you can almost feel the difference between those 2 different desires.
Comparing the surface-level ones to the deeper ones, it almost seems foreign to who we are. They’re shallow, they’re hollow, they’re not extending down to like the roots of our soul.
So, this is how I pray whenever my lesser desires are not in line with what God wants, whether it’s about hospitality or anything else, I tell God, I say, God, you claim— I mean, you said, God, that you have given me a new heart that wants to follow you, but I don’t want to follow you. I want to be selfish.
But if you really have put a new heart in me, then just like verse 27, I pray that you move me, that you cause me to follow your laws and obey your decrees. Like, do it, Lord. If this thing in me is real, if this new heart in me is actually there, then prove it. Align me to you.
My experience is that he always does.
It might take more than a day of praying that way, but he really does. Align my desires with his. In fact, this is actually probably the greatest, most convincing evidence to me that God is real and this whole thing is legit. Even if I don’t pray that, even if I tell God, I’m going to pursue lesser desires, like that is going to happen, God. I am going to be selfish.
I do not want to be aligned with your heart. That you gave me, don’t want that. Even if I’m saying that, the new heart and the new spirit that he put in me are so real that they eventually push through my selfishness and realign me to God’s desires anyway, like in spite of me.
So here’s my advice on this hospitality stuff.
Wherever you find yourself resisting or pushing back, which is probably all of us to some extent, maybe you’re saying, you know, I can’t focus on others as much as myself. Like, I have a legit job and it actually needs to get done. I can’t just be thinking of others all the time. Or, I’m too scared to walk up and talk to new people that I don’t know. Whatever your resistance is, for whatever reason that you are pushing back on hospitality, just pray.
You say, God, align my desires to the desires of the new heart that You have given me. If You put a new heart in me that longs to follow You, if that really happened, then make it so. Move me to follow your laws. Cause me to be hospitable.
Now, I am confident, I am very sure, if you are a Christian and you pray that, it will happen. God will align you to the desires of the new heart that He put in you. So, let’s pray together.
Father, thank You for welcoming us, for inviting us in when we were evil. Thank You for Your unmerited, excessive, lavish hospitality to us, Lord. We pray that that in itself would transform us, but we pray also, Lord, that the new heart that You put in us would not be— that we would not cover up that new heart with selfish, sinful desires of our own, that we would not try to squash its desires, but that we would let it free, that we would let Your will reign in our lives and we would follow what is most true about us if we have accepted You, which is the new heart. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
