It is very important for parents raising children to follow through with their promises, both of punishment for wrong behavior and reward for right behavior. Empty words without action destroy a child’s confidence that his father and mother mean what they say. God, like a good father, never made empty promises to the Israelites. God was faithful to his word to reward obedience and faithful to his word to punish disobedience. He was consistent in giving them what they deserved according to the terms of the covenant that he made with them.

Thus, given their repeated and blatant disregard for the covenant, it was only right that God should punish his people with exile, as he had promised he would do (Deut. 28:64). But in their culture, the welfare of a nation was thought to reflect the power of its god; thus for the nation of Judah to be conquered and exiled was all the evidence the foreign nations needed to conclude that their gods were more powerful than Yahweh, the God of Judah. To address this issue and vindicate his name in the eyes of the nations, God promised to act once again on behalf of his people. 

While they were in exile, the Lord told his people through the prophet Ezekiel, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name… And the nations will know that I am the LORD… I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land… And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:22-27).

In this passage, God promised to bring his people back from exile. This promise was fulfilled when King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their land and rebuild Jerusalem (Ezra 1). God also promised to begin a marvelous renewal among his people, described as giving them new hearts and putting his Spirit within them. This promise was fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ, who inaugurated a new covenant that began in Jerusalem and then spread throughout the entire world. It is one of the greatest blessings of the new covenant that we now have the Spirit of God within us! God’s Spirit is with us to strengthen, comfort, and empower us. And as Ezekiel said, Spirit-filled people walk in God’s statutes and carefully keep his word. The question for you and I, then, is this: Does my life bear the fruit (i.e. evidence) of the Spirit?