The Two Things Every Person Needs (Ezekiel 25-36)

A Few Thoughts to Consider

What are the most critical needs you have in your life?

While your list might be long, Ezekiel 36 reveals that every person has two basic needs. But first, some background. The central theme of Ezekiel 25-36 is the sovereignty of God in executing judgment and promising restoration. Chapters 25-32 highlight God's judgment against neighboring nations for their hostility towards Israel, demonstrating that God holds all nations accountable for their actions. In chapters 33-36, the focus shifts to Israel, emphasizing the importance of repentance and God's promise to restore and renew the nation.

However, as Chapter 36 reveals, God is very unhappy with Israel. In verse 17, God says, “Son of man, while the house of Israel lived in their land, they defiled it with their conduct and actions. Their behavior before me was like menstrual impurity.” Despite his anger with how Israel has sinned, God says he will act. However, as Steven Tuell notes, “God’s action depends not on the worthiness, righteousness, or repentance of Israel, but on God’s own identity and character.”^[1]

While some might think this is egotistical, Iain Duguid writes, “For God to delight in his own perfections is entirely appropriate, since there is no one and nothing greater in which he can delight. To delight in anything less than himself would be idolatry, just as surely as it is idolatry for us as creatures to delight in anything less than our great Creator.”^[2] This is true, and this is why God speaks through Ezekiel to Israel in Ezekiel 36:24-27, saying:

²² “Therefore, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Lord God says: It is not for your sake that I will act, house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you profaned among the nations where you went. ²³ I will honor the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations—the name you have profaned among them. The nations will know that I am the Lord—this is the declaration of the Lord God—when I demonstrate my holiness through you in their sight.

²⁴ “‘For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. ²⁵ I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. ²⁶ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. 

As Duguid observed, “What Israel had done while they lived in their land was to turn it into a permanent place of death, thoroughly defiling it by means of bloodshed and idolatry, making it a place unfit for divine habitation by the living God (Ezek. 36:18).”^[3] Year after year, generation after generation, they had rejected the rule of Yahweh and opted for cheap substitutes.

While the average onlooker today might be tempted to fix Israel’s depraved moral culture with physical solutions, God has a very different idea. “It Is not enough for God merely to give Israel a new shepherd-leader and a renewed land,” Duguid writes. “The nation had had good kings in the past and had lived in the land God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the people themselves had proved unworthy to inhabit the land. A total transformation was required if the regathering and return were to be a success.”^[4]

This transformation involved giving his people a new heart and a new spirit. It was the ultimate solution for his people. “Such a salvation will not bring about pride in the renewed nation but rather a profound sense of shame, for they will realize that their salvation is not something they have merited or deserved in any sense. Rather, it is a free gift of sovereign grace. Nothing short of such radical divine intervention could have saved such a people.”^[5]