Made New for the Lord's Sake
Why your best five minutes can't save you (and why that's good news)
Series: They Speak of Him Preacher: Demetrius Williamson Date: October 18, 2026 Passage: Ezekiel 36:16-32 Listen: Audio & video on SermonAudio
Would you stake your eternity on your own ways?
Pastor Demetrius Williamson opened this morning’s message with a question worth sitting under. What if you could compile your best five minutes of life… the moments where you’ve felt the most righteous… like an athlete’s highlight tape? Would you take that highlight clip and stake your eternal well-being on it?
If you’re a Christian, the honest answer is no. And yet, he warned, we quietly do exactly that. It shows up as pride when we look at the struggles of our brothers and sisters and think, “I am righteous in and of myself.” And on the flip side, it leads to despair… measuring ourselves against our own standard, never raising our eyes beyond ourselves to Christ and what He has done for sinners.
The Problem: A Wounded Name
The context is exile. Judah had been deported three times… 605 BC, 597 BC, and finally 586 BC. Ezekiel was taken in the second wave, and God raised him up to explain to His people what happened, why it happened, and what He would do on their behalf.
They had defiled the land in two specific ways: bloodshed… murder, taking advantage of the poor and the needy… and idolatry, which is ironic, because idolatry is exactly what God had delivered them from out of Egypt. And here’s the key: idolatry always originates in the heart. They made idols in their hearts first, and their hearts gave those idols outward expression.
Then the nations watched them suffer and mocked. “We thought your God was powerful. We thought your God could protect you. But look where you’re at.” God’s holy name had been profaned. Pastor Demetrius noted that the word can also be heard as “to pierce” or “to wound”… God’s name had been wounded by His own people. He also pressed the sense of the verse itself: they dishonored God, treated Him as unholy, treated Him as common, as if He were just another land-god who could not keep His people.
There’s a detail that stings: the name Ezekiel means “God’s strength.” The nations were effectively looking at God’s people and saying, “Your God has no strength.”
"It Is Not for Your Sake"
God’s answer is framed at both ends of the passage (verses 22 and 32), like a bookend He doesn’t want us to miss:
God doesn’t repeat Himself by accident. He’s saying: don’t think for a second that what I’m about to do is because of your ways, your goodness, or what you deserve.
The other half of that bookend is not only what He will not do it for. Verse 23 says what He will do it for: “I will vindicate the holiness of my great name… and the nations will know that I am the Lord… when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.” His name is holy because He is holy… separate, sacred, in a category by Himself, unlike the gods of the nations. He acts to showcase how holy and how great He actually is. The nations are watching. Ezekiel uses “they will know that I am the Lord” more than seventy times. God will be glorified among the pagans. And, as Pastor Demetrius said, that is happening even now, as people recognize the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus.
And that lands in our own lives. When we lack holiness, the people around us come to false conclusions about God. Your house is the one place where you can’t trick people. You can be whoever you need to be for two hours on Sunday, but your family and your co-workers see you day in, day out… and if you’re not serious about honoring God, they’ll conclude your God isn’t serious either.
He pressed the same warning from the other direction: the spiritual resume. Church. Bible reading. Praying three times a day, even down on your knees. Then hardship comes… health fails, or someone you have been praying for begins to lose theirs… and the heart says, “Have you not seen my resume? Have you not seen how faithful I have been, and this is how you repay me?” That is not right. Know for certain: it is not because of you that the Lord has acted in your life.
Pastor Demetrius pressed one warning especially hard, because we live in a meritocracy and we’re tempted to import it into the gospel:
And if you insist on your works, he asked, let me tell you what you have contributed:
About Fifteen "I Will"s
In verses 24-30, God lays out the remedy. He would not make them count, but if you did you would find about fifteen or sixteen, and the subject of every one is God Himself. The remedy for the human problem is divine grace. Not your works. Not your efforts. His grace.
He will gather them. He will take His people from the nations and bring them home (v. 24).
He will cleanse them. This is a priestly act, with its background in the cleansing rituals of Numbers 19. And we still need it, because the old man is always busy crafting idols. Pastor Demetrius defined it plainly: an idol is anything that draws you away from love and trust of God… anything that makes your heart leap for contentment, joy, purpose, and satisfaction more than God Himself. It could be comfort. It could be approval… likes and follows. It could be entertainment. Anything you love more than God is an idol. And God promises: I will cleanse you.
He will give them a new heart and a new spirit. Here’s the twist. Back in Ezekiel 18:31, God commanded the exiles: “Make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.” Eighteen chapters later, He tells them… and us… that you can’t do that. He was right to command it, but it’s beyond us. So He says: I will give you a new heart. He will remove the heart of stone… unresponsive to His judgments and unresponsive to His grace… and give you a heart of flesh: a tender heart that looks at who God is and loves Him, and looks at who you are in light of who God is and grieves over it.
He will put His Spirit within them. “And cause you to walk in my ways.” To modern man, that’s offensive. What do you mean God’s going to cause me to do something? I can obey Him in my own strength. But as Pastor Demetrius put it: you have not understood your flesh. A new heart alone wouldn’t be enough. We need His Spirit within us to lead us and cause us to obey. The Second London Baptist Confession, writing about four hundred years ago, got it right: the creature is “wholly passive therein, being dead in sins and trespasses,” until quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit.
And here’s the corollary that stings evangelizers: not only can we not give ourselves new hearts, we can’t do it for other people either. The trap is thinking that if we just get the formula right… the right words in the right order at the right pace… we can save this person. As Pastor Demetrius said, we become popes in our own homes. We do this with our children. We run the formula, pronounce them Christians, and then tell them it is about time they started acting like it. But how does that reconcile with this… that God must regenerate them, bring them from the dead, and that apart from His activity they remain dead in their sins? If you want the dramatized version of this passage, turn to the next chapter. Ezekiel 37 takes what Ezekiel 36 says and gives it a Hollywood visual: dead, dry, unresponsive bones, brought to life by God acting unilaterally.
They will be His covenant people, and He will provide for them and deliver them from all their uncleanness (vv. 28-30). Notice what the Jews who were contemporaries of Jesus missed: they thought all they needed was deliverance from Rome. What they needed, ultimately and foremost, was deliverance from their personal defilement… the internal stain that only God can cleanse.
The Only God-Pleasing Response
In verses 31-32, God shows the response this grace produces:
Two things matter here.
First, God’s grace demands a response. It is not enough to hear about God’s unilateral work of salvation and walk out the door unchanged.
Second, notice the order. Grace comes first from God. Then a new heart is given. Then the people respond. We often get that backwards… if I repent, then I’ll get a new heart. But the new heart is what makes the response possible. When you’re standing before God changed, your stance toward God changes too. The new heart is not hostile to God. It delights in submission to Him in response to His grace. It praises God for what He has done and glories in nothing in itself.
Pastor Demetrius slowed down on loathe. We do not use the word much. He took it to mean they would detest and despise themselves for the perversion of their sins and their disgusting idolatry… that they would think rightly about their lives in light of who God is and what God has done for them. Be ashamed means feel shame. Be confounded means blush, be embarrassed by how you have lived. Set next to the introduction, that is not the despair of measuring yourself until hope dies. The new heart sees sin rightly because it can finally see God.
A Signpost to Christ
This passage is a highway to the gospel, and Pastor Demetrius showed us the signs.
Titus 3:3-7 parallels Ezekiel 36 almost line by line. “We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, slaves to various passions” corresponds to Israel’s defiled ways and deeds. “Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy” corresponds to “not for your sake”… mercy, not merit. “The washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” is the cleansing, the new heart, the new spirit. “Poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” is the Spirit God promised to put within His people. And “heirs according to the hope of eternal life” is the covenant: you shall be my people.
John 3 shows us Christ Himself using Ezekiel 36. Late at night, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again… born of water and the Spirit. And then He drops the signpost: “Are you not the teacher of Israel?” In other words, you have Ezekiel 36:26-27. You know God promises to give His people new life in His Spirit. What you need is what was promised there… through Me.
And when Jesus repeatedly tells His disciples that He will give them the Spirit of God, He is claiming to be God. Only God can give the Spirit of God. In Revelation 5, the risen Lamb stands with seven eyes, “which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” The slain and resurrected Lamb is the one with authority to send the Spirit into the world.
For the Sake of His Name
“I pray for the people here, that no one here would bet on themselves, that they could stand before you, looking to their ways or their deeds to be justified in your holy presence. But instead, your Spirit would give them new life, a new heart, that your Spirit would indwell them leading them to turn away from their sin, to turn away from their self-righteousness, to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus.”
God’s grace is the bedrock of His promises. In our redemption, our salvation is set inside the guardrails of His glory. He promised to act for His glory in a way that would benefit His people, and Jesus, His Son, is the only one through whom God’s grace cleanses us and makes us new.
The promise still stands today. Jesus still sends His Holy Spirit to those who repent of their sins and receive Him. If you have not turned from your sins, if you have not fallen before God crying out for mercy, this is your invitation: come to know the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, who came to save sinners.
Highlights from the Message
- “Would you stake your eternity on your own ways?”
- “The gospel is not God’s grace plus what you contribute. The gospel is solely what God has done in his Son on your behalf.”
- “If you insist on your works, let me tell you what you have contributed: rebellion. Sin against God. Indifference to his holiness.”
- “Idolatry always originates in the heart.”
- “An idol is anything that draws you away from love and trust of God. Anything that makes your heart leap for contentment and joy and purpose and satisfaction more than God himself.”
- “Ezekiel 18:31 commanded them to make for themselves a new heart. Eighteen chapters later, God says: I have to do it.”
- “We become popes in our own homes.”
- “The order is flipped. God was gracious to them first… and then, out of those new hearts, they responded.”
- “Jesus looks at Nicodemus and says: you need through me what was promised in Ezekiel 36.”
- “God’s grace is the bedrock of His promises. In our redemption, our salvation is set inside the guardrails of his glory.”
Questions for Discussion
- Where is the “highlight tape” thinking showing up in your own life… pride when you compare yourself to other believers, or despair when you measure yourself against your own standard?
- Pastor Demetrius said your house is the one place where you can’t trick people. What would it look like this week to be serious about honoring God in the place God’s name is most at stake?
- What idols is the old man crafting in your heart right now… comfort, approval, entertainment? What does it mean that God promises to cleanse you from them?
- How does the order of grace first, new heart second, response third, change the way you think about repentance?
- How does the connection between Ezekiel 36 and John 3 change the way you read the Old Testament promises?
- Where has a spiritual resume started to feel like a claim on God… church, Bible, prayer… and what does “not for your sake” say to that claim when hardship comes?
- Pastor Demetrius said we become popes in our own homes: we run the formula, pronounce a child a Christian, then demand they act like it. Where are you tempted to do for someone what only God can do?