Part 18

The Holy Spirit Can Be Forsaken, Part 4

Ezekiel 44:4–8 (ESV) —  Then he brought me by way of the north gate to the front of the temple, and I looked, and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord. And I fell on my face.  And the Lord said to me, “Son of man, mark well, see with your eyes, and hear with your ears all that I shall tell you concerning all the statutes of the temple of the Lord and all its laws. And mark well the entrance to the temple and all the exits from the sanctuary.  And say to the rebellious house, to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: O house of Israel, enough of all your abominations,  in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple, when you offer to me my food, the fat and the blood. You have broken my covenant, in addition to all your abominations.  And you have not kept charge of my holy things, but you have set others to keep my charge for you in my sanctuary.

Recap 

This month we’re going to continue to explore what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit departing from fellowship with unrepentant unbelievers. By now, it may seem like my approach to this point is similar to my little sister’s approach to a spider: keep hitting it repeatedly and vigorously until someone tells you to stop. Well, maybe that’s true, but there is still much to explore here and equip our minds and hearts with. So we press on.

If I were to try to frame all of this up in an outline form, this discussion of forsaking the Holy Spirit (which is entering it’s fourth month now) would be a sub-point under the larger point that the Means of Grace (such as Christian Baptism) well and truly give the Holy Spirit. The reason it’s a sub-point under Baptism is that far too many of our friends and neighbors believe that since they were baptized, they can continue in obvious unbelief in rebellion against God and His Word and still expect to see eternal life. That is a false and dangerous belief.

Scripture makes a powerful testimony that rebellion against God’s Word is an attempt to push the Holy Spirit out of a gracious relationship with you. In my second article on forsaking the Holy Spirit, we learned that the action of “current, continuous, ongoing, deliberate and unrepentant sin” can alienate the Holy Spirit from you. We need to incorporate this truth into our faith. We don’t hold this truth for the purpose of scaring ourselves and others into a terror based faith, but we do hold this knowledge for the sake of lovingly warning those who need to be warned. 

Last month we looked at the story of King Saul forsaking the Holy Spirit and we even read about the Holy Spirit departing from Saul and sending menacing spirits back to Saul instead. This is one example of a few in Holy Scripture that demonstrate that the Holy Spirit can be pushed away through unrepentance. 

Yet, this work of His feels very foreign. After all, the articles 2-4 in this newsletter series were dedicated to showing that the Holy Spirit’s mission is to create and give life. Him departing from people feels more like judgement and even death than creating and maintaining life. How does all that stuff fit together? 

The Sanctifying Work of the Holy Spirit

We are not going to be able to completely answer that question in this article, but we are going to begin to. In the first 3 articles about forsaking the Spirit, I was mostly just showing that this is a real and true thing (contra the Calvinists who deny that salvation can be lost). Now we’re going to shift a bit and start looking at why. 

“Why?” is a huge question. A lot of times when we ask God the question “why” we can and should only expect a partial answer. This is one of those times. Still, there are partial answers available to us, and it’s good for us to learn more about how the Holy Spirit advances His mission of giving and creating life by departing from some. 

Life is not simply a biological process. Life is created by God to give whoever receives it a relationship with Him. 

John 17:3 (ESV) —  And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Matthew 6:25b (ESV) -  “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 

You were created with the purpose of knowing, loving and being loved by God. Yet God is holy and we cannot enter His presence unless we are also holy. That means, for all of us who sin and make ourselves unholy (and that really is all of us), we must be again cleansed and made holy by the Sanctifier, the Holy Spirit. 

Leviticus 19:1–2 (ESV) —  And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,  “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”

1 Corinthians 6:11 (ESV) —  And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

The Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work makes us Holy and able to have a relationship with God our creator. Yet if you do not receive His sanctifying work as He graciously offers it, you will eventually be cleansed in other ways. One of Jesus’ most direct sayings makes this point.

Mark 9:47–50 (ESV) — [Jesus was saying to them] “And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,  ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’  For everyone will be salted with fire.  Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” 

The Holy Spirit and His work is often made known or even accomplished through fire (a point which I’ll make more extensively some other time). When Jesus says “everyone will be salted by fire” what He means is that some people (believers who “have salt within themselves”) will accept the gracious work of the Holy Spirit, be enlightened unto salvation (1 Timothy 2:4), and be salted that way. Others will ignore the Holy Spirit thus refusing His work of creating faith in their hearts, and will ultimately just be burned. Either way, when judgement day is finished, everyone will be purified by the sanctifier: the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:16, Isaiah 4:4, 11:2). 

An Entire Sanctuary In Rebellion

Throughout history the Lord has made many dwelling places where He and His people could meet. Originally, the whole creation was a holy meeting place between God and man. God had no problem walking among His people like a grandfather at a family reunion (Genesis 3:8), but sin shattered all that. A new separation between God and man became necessary (Genesis 3:24). 

Eventually the Lord God gave the people of Israel the unique blessing of the Tent of Meeting. God promised to make His name dwell there among them (Deuteronomy 12:11) and that as long as they followed His statutes and rules that He would continue to do so. In short, if they remained faithful, they would have life. 

The same blessing then passed to the Temple of God in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8). There the Lord God promised, again, to meet with His people. The Lord God quickly spoke to Solomon though, and made clear that if they abandoned worshiping in truth and instead turned to idols, God would not only abandon the Temple, but He would also cast the people out of “the promised land” (1 Kings 9:1-9). 

Eventually, Israel did exactly that. Not long after Solomon died the 10 northern tribes of Israel rebelled against the Davidic king living in Jerusalem. Then not long after that, the new King of northern Israel set up golden calves for his people to worship instead of the Lord God in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 11:13-15).  Northern Israel never again repented of their idolatry, and years later they were turned over to the Lord’s wrath and so were carried off into exile and scattered to the four corners of the world by the Assyrians. 

The Judean Israelites were faithful to the Word of the Lord for much longer, but not forever. Eventually they too succumbed to the rampant idolatry in the lands all around them. They traded worship of the creator for worship of the thing created (Romans 1:18-32) and infuriated God. 

Ezekiel 8:6 (ESV) —  And he said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations.”

The Prophecy of Jeremiah is essentially a book explaining (among other things) why the people were driven from their land. Ezekiel was written from exile but it explains (among other things) why the Holy Spirit departed from the temple in Jerusalem. The reason was because their continual unrepentance and rebellion against God’s Word drove the Holy Spirit’s gracious presence away from them. The Glory of the Lord that had once blessed and occupied the temple now departed from it. 

Ezekiel 11:20b–23 (ESV) —  But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God.”  Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them.  And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city.

The Spirit Can Depart Congregations As Well

What we see in the beginning of Ezekiel is that the Holy Spirit can depart not only individuals who are unrepentant and not walking in truth, but that He can be forsaken by an entire congregation of people. The Book of Ezekiel is an explainer to the whole world that the Old Covenant, which tied many of the Means of Grace to a singular location, had ended (Hebrews 8:13). This was a tragedy at the time, but it made way for a new and better blessing (partially explained in the Ezekiel 44 text up top). 

Ezekiel chapter 40 through 48 are some of the most beautiful but also mysterious chapters in the whole Bible. They were probably written right around the time that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed  by the Babylonians. The Temple’s destruction and the exile of all the Judeans was a result of their continual, ongoing, unrepentant rebellion against God. When the Holy Spirit’s presence departed their congregation, His sovereign protection of them also was removed. They were given over to the rage of the world whose gods they had made a habit of worshiping. 

Ezekiel chapter 40 through 48 was a gift to them in that new circumstance. It’s a promise that they could return to faith in Yahweh and once again enjoy a living relationship with Him. They could once again have the Holy Spirit in their midst (Haggai 2:5), and once again meet with the God of the Universe in His Temple. 

The Temple at the end of Ezekiel is not a physical temple though. The dimensions are beyond enormous and the descriptions are baffling. It’s not a physical location. God promises in Ezekiel 44 that the “uncircumcised” who “profane” the temple with their presence will never again enter it. The temple in Jerusalem was physically rebuilt in the time of Haggai, but in AD 70 foreigners once again trampled it. 

The reason uncircumcised foreigners will never again profane God’s Temple is because it is a spiritual temple, untouchable by them. The Holy Spirit no longer attaches Himself to physical locations so as to be placed in the presence of unrighteous and unholy unbelievers. His Temple is believers. He remains graciously present with them always. 

The Warning For Us From Ezekiel

John 4:21–24 (ESV) —  Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.  You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 

In Ezekiel’s day, the people of Jerusalem basically thought they could do whatever they wanted in the Temple. They departed from the truth and worshiped all manner of idolatrous things. God sent them warning after warning, prophet after prophet to try to recall them to His truth, but they refused. The eventual result of their obstinance was the Holy Spirit departing from them. 

Our situation is no different. We cannot be obstinate in the face of God’s truth. We cannot confuse the inclinations of our heart (Jeremiah 17:9) or the idolatrous teachings of this world (Colossians 2:8) for the truth of Jesus Christ as it’s given to us in His Word. 

God seeks people to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. Abandoning the truth and chasing after the fancy of our old sinful hearts will lead us to worship idols in the house of God just like Ezekiel’s first audience was doing. Sadly, many so-called “Christian” congregations have done just that. While we can’t pass judgement on whether the Spirit has departed them yet or not, we certainly can heed the Holy Spirit’s warning not to follow their path.  

The truth that the Holy Spirit can be forsaken by an entire congregation has a clear purpose in our lives: It calls us to remain steadfast and attentive to the truth of God’s Word. We must let it speak against our idolatry, our hypocrisy and our sin (even though that is an unpleasant experience!) If we let the Word do that, the Holy Spirit will use the Word to sanctify us. We will be salted by His Word, made Holy by His work, and His presence will abide with us forever.