Chapter 17 “A Heart of Flesh or A Heart of Stone”
Ezekiel 36:16-27
Intro – when I was pastoring in Winnipeg, one of my good pastor friends was Dave Henkelman. You may recognize his name from the NAB world. We were both young guys just starting in our first senior pastoral roles, I at FRBC and Dave at Whyte Ridge Baptist. We were both about the same age and had lots in common that made us quick friends.
But, Dave had a major heart condition. Basically, he was born with a heart that was slowly dying…in the late 90’s he was diagnosed with heart failure and was put on a transplant list. His old heart would eventually give out so his only hope for long-term survival was a new heart.
It became more and more difficult for Dave to do normal activities without being winded and exhausted. He would experience what’s called a lethal rhythm… So doctors implanted a defibrillator device in his chest, not a pace-maker, an actual defibrillator that would automatically restart his heart when it would start to fail…
Dave actually chuckled about getting zapped, as he called it, at the most unexpected moment…he’d be shoveling snow and…zzzz…he’d get this jolt in his chest which would cause him to jump…
Finally in late May, 2003, the call came that a new donor heart was ready for him and he jumped on a plane, came here to Edmonton where he went through a successful heart transplant operation.
I remember visiting him a couple of days after and there sat Dave on his hospital bed, dozens of wires and tubes attached to him, but the biggest smile on his face…one of the first things he said was, “My toes are finally warm!”
A young girl in his church asked one of the other pastors, with this concerned look on her face, “Does Pastor Dave need to accept Jesus into his new heart again?”
Well, Dave lived a normal life for the next 12 years until the summer of 2015 when his body started to reject the new heart. He was transported out here to the Mazankowski Heart Institute where two ventricular heart assist devices were implanted. While still in the hospital one of them failed and he died soon after at the age of 60. A sad loss indeed.
For Dave it was all about the heart…having a healthy, fully functioning, good heart.
And as we come to this chapter in the Story of God’s people, it’s the same thing…it’s all about their heart, the condition of their heart toward God…that brought life or death, blessing or judgment…
Today we’re going to look at the diagnosis God gives about the condition of His people’s hearts through the prophet Ezekiel…and we’re going to discover the cure…please open your Bibles to Ez 36…
Prayer…
Ezekiel was God’s prophet during the period of the Babylonian exile of God’s people. This is in the late 500’s BC, when things are going from bad to worse for the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah.
Despite centuries of warnings and calls to return, they continue to refuse to listen to God and they are unwilling to turn back to Him with their whole hearts. They continue to worship pagan gods and idols and engage in detestable practices that God cannot tolerate…so God takes even more drastic steps to get their attention by allowing King Nebuchadnezzar to capture the Israelites and bring them to Babylon as exiles which lasted for 75 years.
So through Ezekiel, God gives the diagnosis and the cure for the sin and waywardness of His people…
Let’s read it from Ez 36:16-27…
I The Diagnosis
So the diagnosis for the chronic sinful pattern of disobedience by the people of God is, acc to Ezekiel, a heart of stone. Ez. 36:26.
What is a heart of stone? A heart that is hard, cold, unresponsive toward God.
…a heart that is incapable of honoring and obeying God because over a long period of time it has become dead to the things of God, to love, grace, compassion, mercy…
How do we develop a heart of stone?
A heart of stone happens to people today. There’s many ways we develop a heart of stone.
-by loving the world, setting up idols that we love and worship (money, sex, power, etc.), by un-forgiveness (huge one), by trying to be a good Christian and keep all the rules only to keep on failing and deciding it doesn’t work and it’s not worth trying anymore, neglecting God’s word and prayer and authentic relationships with fellow believers, by expecting God to do things for us and when He doesn’t come through we get disappointed and bitter…
-there are so many ways…
II The Cure
So if that is God’s diagnosis of the problem with His people, then the cure is obvious, a heart of flesh. 36:26
What is a heart of flesh? A heart that is soft, warm, and responsive toward God.
…a heart that is open and tender enough to be moved with love for God…which has a desire to honor and respect God…which is humble and willing to align itself with God’s truth rather than rebel and insist on doing things its own way…
How do we develop a heart of flesh?
In short, we don’t. It’s not something we can produce on our own. Just like Dave Henkelman couldn’t fix up his old, dying heart, there’s nothing we can do about the sinful heart by ourselves, for ourselves…
We have to receive a heart transplant, we need to get a new heart from God…and we do receive a new heart when we are born again, when we come into a new and living relationship with Jesus Christ…and place our faith in Him alone for our salvation…
The Bible says in 2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!
-and that includes our heart…
It’s like Jesus is both the Doctor and the Donor. Since He has a perfect heart of flesh, the heart of God, He gladly donates it to us if we will only ask…and then He performs the surgery…He takes out the old, sinful, dying heart and replaces it with His new, godly, living heart of flesh…
But, once we receive a new heart of flesh from God, then we have the major responsibility to keep it soft, keep it warm, keep it responsive toward God…to maintain it…
How do we maintain a heart of flesh?
And how do we do that? There are many ways we maintain a heart of flesh.
-by abiding in God’s presence, worship, the word, prayer, being vitally connected to God’s people…by confessing our sin to God quickly (keeping short accounts with God) so that sin isn’t allowed to harden our hearts, by dealing with hurt and offence with others sooner than later, so un-forgiveness and bitterness doesn’t have a chance to take root…so many ways…
But the truth is, we actually can’t even maintain our heart on our own: we cant’ keep our hearts soft and responsive toward God by ourselves…because we still have a sinful heart, a heart that is drawn to evil…a heart that rebels against God and is selfish instead of loving toward God…
So just like we can’t give ourselves a new heart, we can’t even maintain the one God gives us without help…
-so you know where that help comes from?
The Role of the Holy Spirit
Ezekiel tells us in v.27… And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
It is the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit within us Who gives us the inner desire and ability to love and follow God…the HS moves us to obedience and responsiveness toward God…He empowers us to maintain a heart of flesh rather than let our hearts become stone…
Phil 2:12-13 continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. divine/human partnership…
The Valley of Dry Bones
I love this vision of the valley of dry bones that God gives Ezekiel in the next chapter, 37. It’s a perfect illustration of what we’re saying about the Holy Spirit. …read 37:1-10…
This is a picture of so many things for us today…but it is certainly what the Holy Spirit does for our hearts…His breath gives us life…He breathes His breath on our dry bones, hard hearts…and we come to life…
It’s so imperative that you and I invite the Holy Spirit to do His work within us…we be open to His life, breath…and we call upon Him constantly to keep us fresh and alive and soft and obedient to Jesus…
Where are you at?
If a heart of stone and a heart of flesh were a continuim…where are you at right now?
Here’s how to recover a heart of flesh…tell God you want one…admit your heart is hard…repent of those things that have hardened your heart…call out to God for His Spirit’s life-giving breath…start doing those things that keep your heart soft…
Perhaps you haven’t yet received your new heart from God. Are you still waiting for a heart transplant? Call on Jesus and He will give you a new heart through His saving grace…
A New Covenant - Jeremiah 31:31-34
To wrap this up, take a look with me at what the prophet Jeremiah has to say about the future of God’s people from an upper story perspective…turn to Jer. 31:31-34…Jeremiah was a contemporary of Ezekiel prophesying during this time of Babylonian captivity…he and Ezekiel say a lot of the same things…but in ch.31 he talks about a new covenant…
-read Jer 31:31-34…
-that is the future fulfillment of what Ezekiel is prophesying…the new covenant between God and His people…the new relationship between God and His people based on a new heart, a new Spirit, a new love, a new obedience from within rather than imposed from the outside…
And we know that this new covenant was established when Jesus Christ died on the cross and inaugurated the new covenant in His blood…”this cup is the new covenant in my blood”…
Remember, to get a new heart transplant, somebody had to die…the donor had to die…which is what Jesus did to make our new relationship with God possible…
So as we come to the communion table , to the cross of Jesus Christ, we do so with heightened awareness of the focal point of the Story, of the Story the Bible is telling…that God created you and loves you, but He lost you because of sin…but now He is on a rescue mission to find you and bring you back to Himself…and He did so by giving His life on the cross so that you could have a new heart and a new life and be able to know God for all eternity…
The cross is the center of it all…Let’s pray…
• give us a heart of flesh…
• we invite your Spirit to breath His life into us…
• help us to maintain a soft heart toward you…
• forgive us for our hardness of heart…
• thank you for the cross, Your death…
• thanks for being our heart Donor…
Worship…