Renewed Hearts and Rebuilt Lives
The Prophetic Wisdom in Dr. Lloyd-Jones's Sermons on Ezekiel
In an age marked by spiritual confusion, moral decay, and the pursuit of fleeting satisfactions, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's sermons on Ezekiel offer extraordinary clarity and hope. His sermon series from this prophet of exile provides timeless insights into God's transforming work in human hearts and His unfailing commitment to restore what sin has destroyed.
Ezekiel's Message in These Sermons: As Relevant Today as When First Given
What makes Dr. Lloyd-Jones's treatment of Ezekiel so compelling is how he reveals the profound connection between ancient Israel's spiritual condition and our modern spiritual struggles. Throughout his sermons, he demonstrates that the core issues confronting humanity have not changed.
As he explains in his sermon "Out of Babylon into Canaan":
"The world tonight is sitting by the waters of Babylon. The world is in distress. The world is in a state of misery and of unhappiness. And why? Well, we've already been given the answer. It's because of sin. Now it's no use going on with the consideration of the gospel until we are clear about that."
This state of affairs, Dr. Lloyd-Jones insists, stems from the same fundamental problem Ezekiel diagnosed in his day: humanity has turned away from the living God and fallen into spiritual captivity. The ancient question remains: How can we be delivered from our bondage and restored to fellowship with God?
The Two Great Problems: Sin and a Hardened Heart
In his sermon "A New Heart," Dr. Lloyd-Jones examines Ezekiel 36:26, which he describes as "one of the most glorious statements found anywhere in the scripture." This verse identifies humanity's core problem: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh."
Lloyd-Jones powerfully explains that there are two fundamentally different views about humanity's condition:
"The popular view, the non-biblical view, is this. It says that man is fundamentally and essentially good, but that his real trouble is due to the fact that he doesn't live up to what he is and what he knows he ought to be."
In contrast, he presents the biblical view revealed in Ezekiel:
"The biblical view says that man is ... fundamentally wrong. That the trouble with him is not in the superstructure but in the very foundation itself. That man's trouble is not that he's wrong in certain respects, but that he himself is wrong, that he's wrong in his heart, in the very center of his being."
This "stony heart" manifests in several ways:
- Spiritual Deadness: "The man who's got a hard heart is a man who is dead to everything spiritual."
- Blindness to God: "They never see God. They don't stop to think at a deep level."
- Obliviousness to Eternal Destiny: "The man who's got a hard heart never sits down and says to himself, where am I going? What happens when I die?"
- Antagonism Toward Christ: "Men with stony hearts see nothing in the Lord Jesus Christ."
The Ruins of Sin in Human Life
One of the most striking aspects of Dr. Lloyd-Jones's sermons on Ezekiel is his vivid portrayal of how sin ruins human life. In "The Temple in the Soul," he uses Ezekiel's imagery of a destroyed city to illustrate what sin does to us:
"Sin always leads to ruination and to desolation. Now that is the great message of the Bible. It starts away back in the garden of Eden. There it began. Man started in paradise. He's no longer in paradise. His world is no longer paradise."
He elaborates with a powerful metaphor of sin attacking a city:
"The first thing is this. Sin ruins life. Sin always leads to ruination and to desolation... I can look at that city. There we see that magnificent city set upon a hill... What a noble pile it is. What a wonderful city. What a glorious prospect."
But then sin enters and begins its destructive work:
-
Breach in the Defenses: "Because of our neglect of these things, because of forgetfulness of God and our failure to apply teaching and the whole subtlety and insinuation of Satan and sin, an attack is made. A breach is made in the wall, and an enemy enters in."
-
Disorder and Indiscipline: "Discipline becomes less and less and slacker and slacker. Ah, we say. After all, when we were children, of course, we took these things desperately seriously. But of course, that was ignorance."
-
Moral Collapse: "Man's moral greatness and grandeur. Oh, how the enemy is attacking that at the present time, indeed, this building has obviously been raised to the ground. People no longer seem to believe in morality."
-
Cultural Degradation: "Isn't there a general lowering of the manifestation of the highest powers of men? I don't want to go into details, but I venture to hazard this opinion that we seem to have lost our ideas to what constitutes even music."
-
Destruction of the Temple: "But above all, of course, the temple. The temple has been ruined and sacked and has been left a mass of rubble... Is there still a temple in your life? Is there still a sanctuary of God in your soul? Do you meet with God when you're alone?"
God's Magnificent Solution: A Complete Salvation
The heart of Dr. Lloyd-Jones's message from Ezekiel is not merely diagnosis but the glorious solution God provides. Throughout the Ezekiel sermons, he unfolds God's comprehensive plan of salvation.
The Divine Initiative in Salvation
In "Out of Babylon into Canaan," Lloyd-Jones emphasizes that salvation is entirely God's work:
"I will take you from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries and will bring you into your own land... Nothing less than the power of God can make anybody a Christian. Let's put it in that form. The trouble is, I say, that we don't realize truly what a Christian is."
He further explains:
"No man makes himself a Christian. It doesn't matter how good you live, how many vows you may take... you'll never make yourself a Christian. It's impossible. And if you could harness and engage all the ability of all the world with you to try and make you a Christian, the whole of mankind couldn't do it either. God alone can make a man a Christian."
A New Heart for a New Life
In "A New Heart," Lloyd-Jones explores how God transforms the very center of our being:
"A man can't make himself a new heart. A man can't change his own spirit... It's God who says, a new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you."
This transformation produces remarkable results:
"When the new principle is given, when the new heart is put in, why, we begin to see things. The Bible is so plain. It's such an interesting book. It's an exciting book. It's a romantic book. And here is truth stepping out to meet us, as it were, this marvellous truth about God and creation and man and what he is, and I, myself and my soul, my sinfulness, Christ as my redeemer, my new relationship to him."
The Indwelling Spirit for Spiritual Power
In "I Will Put My Spirit Within You," Dr. Lloyd-Jones explains how God empowers believers to live the Christian life:
"And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them... This is a promise. It is all God's work from beginning to end."
This indwelling Spirit produces transformation that would otherwise be impossible:
"It's the power of the Holy Spirit. It's this energy of God. And therefore I say it is absolutely vital that we should understand it. And it's not only true in general like that in the whole history of the church. You'll never understand the life of a single individual Christian unless you grasp this."
The Rebuilding of Spiritual Ruins
In "The Temple in the Soul," Lloyd-Jones describes how God rebuilds what sin has destroyed:
"This gospel of salvation doesn't ask you to make yourself a Christian. It doesn't ask you to change your life. It knows you can't. It knows that you can make some superficial reformation, but you can't change your nature."
Instead, God undertakes the complete restoration work:
"He clears away the rubbish and the rubble, and, oh, what a lot of it there is. The rubbish and the rubble of our own foolish philosophies, our own clever ideas and thoughts... And when the Holy Spirit gets to work, he does it. He clears it away."
The result is a completely rebuilt life:
"And then what does he do? Well, he brings out the new plans and the new specifications, and he begins to measure it out and to order it and to arrange it. And you begin to see the possibilities of a new tidiness in your life. A city shall be rebuilt."
The Fellowship of God's People: A Surprising Blessing
One of the most beautiful aspects of Dr. Lloyd-Jones's Ezekiel expositions is his emphasis on the fellowship that comes through salvation. In "The Temple in the Soul," he challenges the common misconception that Christianity leads to isolation:
"We all by nature seem to have the idea that to become a Christian, somehow or another, is to isolate ourselves. We think of it as a great giving up and going out of the world, the wonderful world with all its company and all its happiness and joy and camaraderie. And you're to become a Christian. And what does that mean? Well, it means stepping out on your own, and you become a lonely pilgrim in some sort of wilderness."
Instead, he points out the exact opposite is true:
"There's nothing more wonderful about the christian life than this. You suddenly discover that it isn't the isolated life you thought it was. You know, for the first time in your life, you rarely discover friends. You discover brothers and sisters."
In contrast, it is sin that leads to true isolation:
"Life is becoming increasingly lonely. There is no place on earth which is so lonely in a sense, as a great city. You stand in a corner and you see people rushing hither and thither. They're all of them passing you by and you stand alone."
Visit the MLJ Trust's Ezekiel sermon series page to further explore these expositions.