I Will Be Your God — Part 3: May 15, 2024

Broadcast

                      I Will Be Your God - Part 3
                           Ezekiel 36:24-25
                              05/15/2024


        24   I will take you from the nations and gather you
             from all the countries and bring you into your own
             land.
        25   I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall
             be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all
             your idols I will cleanse you.  (ESV)

        For forty days after Jesus rose from the dead, He taught His
   disciples:
        And [He] said to them, ``Thus it is written, that the
        Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the
        dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins
        should be proclaimed in his name to all nations,
        beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these
        things.[2]


        His words showed how God fulfilled the promise made through
   the prophet Ezekiel.
        I will take you from the nations and gather you from
        all the countries and bring you into your own land.  I
        will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be
        clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your
        idols I will cleanse you.


        The promise was fulfilled first as the children of Israel
   were restored to Jerusalem and Judea following the Babylonian
   Captivity.  More so, it is fulfilled in the Church as the Holy
   Spirit, through the Gospel and Sacraments, calls us from the
   darkness of sin into the light of God's love and grace.

        How does the Holy Spirit create the faith which acknowledges
   and trusts the Word of God?  We believe, teach, and confess that
   the water of Baptism, combined with the promise of Jesus Christ,
   marks us as God's own children, buries our sinful nature with
   Jesus in His tomb, and bursts forth as the resurrected child of
   the almighty.

        May our Lord grant that we hold firmly to the promise of
   life and forgiveness given to us through the water and the word.
   Amen.
  ____________________

   2. Luke 24:46-48 (ESV)