Ezekiel 36:24-27 24 “‘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. 25 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. 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 give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
If you back up in Ezekiel 36 you will see in verses 23-35 that the Israelites had blown their relationship with God and had blown their witness in the world. They had polluted God’s land, the land He gave to them by worshipping idols and putting up images to pagan gods. They had profaned God’s name by saying they were God’s people while they lived like people who didn’t know God. God sent them in exile to Babylon. They were going to have a good, long time out to think about what they had done, but more importantly, they would be able to reflect on who they were and what they wanted to become.
I don’t know where you are spiritually, how far you may have wandered away from God’s dreams and designs for your life, how much you have chosen the world’s ways over God’s, how hypocritical or apathetic you have been while claiming to be a child of God, how much God’s name has been perverted instead of praised because of your actions, affections, and attitude, but I can tell you without a doubt that God is willing to bring you back.
These verses tell me that God is willing to help you put the past in the past. The reason we need a second chance is because we have blown the first one. We can only put our past to rest by allowing God to wash away that which has stained us, that which has defined us, that which has boxed us in and limited us.
God is so good, so loving, so generous, that He promises not only to cleanse us, but to change our hearts so that we don’t want the things that led to our previous failures. When you give yourself completely to God, He promises to change your desires so that the things you once wanted that were perhaps short-sighted or selfish or sinful altogether are no longer the first thing you crave. He promises to transform your desires by giving you a heart that desires what He wants for you and from you.
God promises to empower our second chance by giving us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, and God cannot fail. If we stay yielded to the Holy Spirit, our second chance at a new life with Christ and many new opportunities will be fueled by God’s power. Romans 8:11-And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you.
When you are possessed by the Spirit of God, you can overcome anything because it was Holy Spirit power that gave Jesus resurrection power, and if death can be overcome, there are no other enemies left that could not be overcome with the Spirit’s help.
Ezekiel 36:28-30 28 You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. 30 I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine.
Don’t miss the importance of the bold and italicized words. When you get and take a spiritual second chance, God says He will claim you as His own. Your second chance comes with an identity. You will belong to God. You will be His chosen. You will be His beloved. You will be His child. And He will be Your God.
He will save us from our uncleanness. We have been known by and identified by our sin, but God says He will save us from all of that. Verse 29 goes on to say the grain will be plentiful in the land in which we live and that there won’t be famine. What could that mean? It means that God will provide for us. He says in verse 30 that he will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field.
He says at the end of verse 30 that he will end disgrace in our lives. He will remove shame. We can hold our heads high. There will be favor on our lives. Does anyone need a second chance like that? God will save you. God will provide for you. God will remove your shame. What an awesome depiction of the second chance God gives.
The amazing thing about God and second chances is that He offers them freely. You have nothing to prove. You only have to bring yourself, right where you are, and desire for God to do for you what He promised to do for Israel. Are you ready? Will you take a step toward your second chance?
