Last time we started talking about how the coming of the Holy Spirit, after Jesus’ Ascension, announced a new season.
The Old Testament prophets had already prophesied about this.
Let me get straight to the point by quoting one of the passages in the Old Testament in which God himself had already prophesied in the Old Testament about the new season that would begin when Jesus, the Messiah, physically leaves us and God would send the Holy Spirit as “Immanuel”, God with us.
Did you hear what I said here? In this new season, the Holy Spirit is now our Immanuel, God with us, just as Jesus was for the 33 years of His life as a man here on earth! This is the heart and reason for the coming of the Holy Spirit!
Listen and hear how God Himself prophesies through the prophets how the Holy Spirit and what He will do in the new season will change everything!
We read this in Ezek. 36:24 and onwards.
“I will take you from among the nations, gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle water of purification on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idolatries. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit; I will remove the stony heart from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statutes and to keep my judgments and do them. You will live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.”
I am so afraid you missed what is written here, what God himself is telling you through His Spirit about this new “life” that is in you and me as believing followers of Jesus!
Let me repeat to you what I hear God say here:
“I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idolatry.
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit; I will take the stony heart out of 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 obey my judgments and do them.
... You will be my people, and I will be your God.”
Let us now read what else is written in Ezekiel about this.
“I will free you from all your defilements, and I will call upon the grain and make it abundant; I will no longer bring famine upon you.
I will make the fruit of the trees abundant and the harvest plentiful, so that you will no longer suffer the humiliation of famine among the nations.
Then you will remember your evil ways and your conduct that was not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and your abominations.”
Doesn’t this sound a lot like what Jesus himself promised us in John 10:10b?
“I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full.”