Is your heart a heart of flesh?
Text Ezekiel 11:19, 20 Time 17/08/14 Place Childs Hill Baptist Church
One thing we always need
to remember about ourselves is – how do we best put it? - that
there is more to us than meets the eye. Besides our bodies, which we
can see, we all have an invisible side we can't see. Call it your
soul, spirit, whatever; you must remember that that is part of who
you are.
When we want to talk
about our invisible part we often speak of our hearts. You say
“my heart wasn't in it” or “my heart's desire is to do this or
that”. The heart is literally, of course, the muscle that pumps
blood round your body. We use it as a picture of the inner invisible
me. We sometimes use other words. Think of - going with my gut
feeling; being gutted at bad news, gut wrenching bad news. To speak
with bile or spleen is to speak with deep hatred. In the Bible,
kidneys and bowels are spoken of like that but we don't use the words
like that any more so you won't find those words in modern
translations. We speak rather of being “low in spirit”, having
something on our minds, even feeling something in our souls.
Now this is what I want
to speak to you about this morning – the invisible part of you;
your heart, your soul, the inner you. This is the best day for
thinking about your soul – it's big shop day for the soul! It's
part of what we do in meetings like this where we worship God from
our hearts. This message is intended to speak to you about your
souls, your hearts.
Well, what do I want to
say? I want to focus on some verses we read earlier from Ezekiel 11.
In verses 19 and 20 God speaks of his people and he says
I
will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I
will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of
flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my
laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
Almost
the same thing is repeated in Ezekiel 36:26-28 I
will give you
a new heart and put a new spirit in you;
I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of
flesh, etc.
Ezekiel, some of you will remember,
prophesied in the days of exile in Babylon, when the Jews were thrown
out of the Promised Land. Even though they were in exile God came and
met with Ezekiel in a wonderful way. A first vision comes at the
beginning of the book and a second similar one begins in Chapter 8.
At the end of Chapter 11 Ezekiel describes how after the vision
the cherubim (these magnificent
creatures from heaven who accompanied the visions with the
wheels beside them, spread their wings, and the glory of the God of
Israel was above them.) Then The
glory of the LORD went up from within the city and stopped above the
mountain east of it. Ezekiel
says The Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the exiles
in Babylonia in the vision given by the Spirit of God. Then the
vision I had seen went up from me, and I told the exiles everything
the LORD had shown me.
Among
the things Ezekiel is to speak to them about is what is found in
verses 16ff. It begins with the Sovereign LORD
saying of the people Although I sent them far away among
the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet two
things
1.
Already For a little while I have been a sanctuary for them
in the countries where they have gone. The
time of exile was not one of unmitigated suffering. God looked after
his people in exile.
2.
Further, Ezekiel is to say in the name of the Sovereign
LORD - I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the
countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the
land of Israel again.
This
is the promise then (18) They will return to the
Promised Land and remove all its vile images and detestable
idols. What wonderful promises
these must have been for the people to hear. It goes on with God
saying, as we have seen, I will give them an undivided
heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their
heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow
my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people,
and I will be their God.
Verse
21 adds a warning But as for those whose hearts are devoted
to their vile images and detestable idols, I will bring down on their
own heads what they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD.
This
really goes back to the promise right back in Deuteronomy 30:5, 6 He
will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you
will take possession of it. He will make you more
prosperous and numerous than your
ancestors. The
LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your
descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with
all your soul, and live.
Well,
was this prophecy fulfilled? Certainly, God's people were brought
back from exile and resettled in the Promised Land. And indeed it was
the formal end of idolatry - all its vile images and
detestable idols were removed.
But what about this idea of God's people being given an
undivided heart and having a
new spirit put in
them; having their
heart of stone removed and their
being given a heart of flesh so
that they ... follow God's
decrees and are
careful to keep his
laws and really become God's
people? Is there something more?
In
Ezekiel 18:30a, 31 God says to the people Repent!
Turn away from all your offences; then sin will not be your downfall.
Rid
yourselves of all the offences you have committed, and
get a new heart and a new spirit.
Why will you die, people of Israel? It
is clear from what we read there that this idea of having a new heart
and a new spirit is something with a more general application. What
God commands his people to get in Chapter 18, he promises to give
them either side first in Chapter 11 then in Chapter 36. Again, when
we come to the New Testament it speaks about the need of renewal –
the need to be born again, to become a new creation in Christ, to
live a resurrection life - something God does in the lives of
Christians. And so we say this morning three things:
1.
You must have an undivided, heart of flesh, a new spirit that God
alone can give you
The
promise from God to his people is that he
will give them a
new perhaps or an
undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; he'll
remove … their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
This is what needs to happen then
Negatively 1. Your heart of stone
needs to be removed
As many of you know I had a
major heart operation back in April. They discovered that my heart
was diseased and I couldn't go on as I was. Some major repairs were
necessary. Various things can go wrong with the heart. This wasn't my
problem but there is a heart condition called cardiac calcification
or stone heart (caused by a build up of calcium). That is the picture
here - a person with a heart of stone has a heart that is no good. It
needs to be repaired or renewed. With the muscle in the body
sometimes it can be repaired but, of course, in very severe cases
there has to be a heart transplant.
When
it comes to your heart, your soul, that is what needs to happen, your
heart of stone (your diseased and malfunctioning heart of stone)
needs to be removed. It needs to be changed. A stone heart will not
take the impression of God's Word. The material is resistant to it.
Zechariah describes (Zechariah 7:12) They
made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or
to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through
the earlier prophets. This
made God angry. The
fact is that by nature the invisible part of us, like the visible
part is sinful and wicked by nature, hardened against God and
unyielding to him. That old heart has to go. There is no future, no
life without that.
2. It needs to be replaced by a
heart that is an undivided heart of flesh and a new spirit
What
is needed is a new heart or a new Spirit, one that is characterised
here as being not only new but (in many manuscripts) undivided and a
heart of flesh. Undivided
suggests a nation with no more divisions. Acts 4:32 speaks of the
believers being of one mind and heart. More to the point - the
people no longer turn to their own ways. The people have an undivided
and single heart that has only one aim – to please God. It is
described as a heart of flesh because it is yielding and flexible,
ready to take an retain the impression of God's Word, a heart beating
with a passion to be shaped by God
in service to him. The hymn writer calls it “A
heart resigned, submissive, meek, My dear Redeemer's throne; Where
only Christ is heard to speak, Where Jesus reigns alone.”
Do you keep butter in the fridge? There are some advantages I suppose
to that but one thing ordinary
butter won't do is spread straight from the fridge. It needs to be
softened. Our hearts, if you like, are hard like butter from the
fridge or freezer. It is only as we are exposed to God and his Word
that our hearts soften and melt and become the hearts they should be.
Has your heart of stone been removed? Has that hardness against God
gone? Have you been born again? Has your heart been softened or
melted and renewed or regenerated so that it is set on serving God?
If it has, praise God! If it hasn't - pray that it will be. Rid
yourselves of all the offences you have committed, and get a new
heart and a new spirit. Why will you die …?
2.
Grasp that this is the only way you can follow God's decrees and keep
his laws as you ought
Then
they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You
see that little then
here.
Then
they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Without
this change, it is not possible for a person to follow God's decrees
or be careful to keep his laws. God has made his law clear.
1. He has revealed it in our
consciences
In his book Shepherding a child's heart Tedd Tripp has a story about
an incident where a young boy was found stealing money from the
offering plate after the church service. The father was informed and
shortly after he and his son appeared in the pastor's study where the
boy produced $2 and confessed to having taken it. He was in tears,
asking for forgiveness. The pastor told him he was glad that in God's
mercy the boy had been caught. God had spared him the hardness of
heart that comes when a person sins and gets away with it. He went
on to remind him why Jesus came -
because people like him and his father and the pastor have hard
hearts that want to steal but God's love for wicked boys and men is
so great that he sent his Son to change them from the inside out and
make them givers not takers. It
was only at this point that the boy broke down in sobs and took a
further $20 from his pocket! Up until then he had merely been going
through the motions. “What happened?” asks Tripp. Clearly the
boy's conscience “was smitten by the gospel! … The gospel hit its
mark in his conscience”. Conscience had done something a beating
would never have done.
We all have some idea of right and
wrong. We know we cannot live just as we please. There are things we
must not do and things we ought to do. To live regardless of God is
wrong. We must worship him and put him first. Stealing is wrong. To
kill or to hurt another human being is wrong. Rather, we should help
each other and show each other kindness.
2. He has revealed it in his Word
Most obviously there are the Ten
Commandments that call on us to worship God and him alone and to do
it as he says it should be done. His name is not to be misused or
dishonoured. His day must be kept. We must also love our neighbour as
ourselves – showing respect, not stealing from them or being
unfaithful or harming them or lying to them or coveting what is
theirs.
The
trouble is we cannot live like that. We fail to do so again and
again. Despite our resolves, despite our resolutions, despite our
consciences, we do not follow
God's
decrees, we
are not
careful to keep his
laws.
Why?
Because of these divided, stony, calloused, unfeeling hearts of ours.
There is a deep seated resistance to God and to his law. We will not
obey.
It is only when we receive that
new spirit, that new heart of flesh that we really want to obey God
and serve him. This is God's promise then that if our hearts are
renewed by him we will have a new desire to serve the Lord and obey
him.
I went to some lectures in July
and the lecturer, an American from Texas, was saying how when he
became a Christian at 19 he remembers his friend 'phoning and him
telling him what had happened. The friend wanted to go out on the
town that night but the new convert was just not interested. They
were not going to do anything particularly bad but he knew there
would be temptations and he just didn't want to sin any more. That's
how it is when a person is converted – not that the feeling is
constant but it is the underlying thing.
Again, is this you? Do you have
a desire to please God, to obey him? Has that seed of holiness been
planted in you so that you genuinely desire to serve the Lord? One of
the characteristics of the converted person is that he no longer sins
as he used to. There is a reluctance about it. His deepest desire is
to obey the Lord. If you don't have that desire you need to be
changed. It is a change that God alone can bring about. Call out to
him to change you.
3
Enter into covenant with God so that he is your God and you belong to
him
The
final phrase I want us to look at is this one,
They will be my people, and I will be their God. Again
it is a promise and again it follows on. These people and these
people alone – those whose hearts of stone have been removed and
who have a new spirit, a heart of flesh that follows God's decrees
and is
careful to keep his
laws, they
alone are really God's people. It's no good thinking that just
because you are a Jew that you are one of God's people or just
because you come to church or call yourself a Christian that is
enough. No, the they
in
They
will be my people are
those with renewed hearts, hearts that obey. And those of whom it can
truly be said God
will be their God are
those whose heart of stone is gone and has been replaced by a heart
of flesh that is careful
to keep God's
law.
Some
Christians think that the key to understanding the Bible is
understanding the different dispensations. You start, they say, with
the
dispensation of innocence, then comes conscience, government,
patriarchal rule, law, grace and the millennial kingdom. There is
something in that, perhaps, but it is much more important to see that
all the way through God is a covenant God and he works in the same
covenantal way all the way through. This phrase They
will be my people, and I will be their God comes
up at least another three times in Ezekiel and is in Hosea and
Zechariah and especially in Jeremiah, where the new covenant is
spoken of in these very terms – 31:33 "This
is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that
time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be
my people.
This
is why we are keen for the children to learn what a covenant is –
an agreement between two or more persons. That is why Chapter 7 of
the Baptist Confession of 1689 begins
“The
distance between God and the creature is so great, that although
reasonable creatures do owe obedience to Him as their creator, yet
they could never have attained the reward of life but by some
voluntary condescension on God's part, which He has been pleased to
express by way of covenant.”
Do you belong to God? And does
God belong to you? Are you in covenant with him? If he has taken away
your heart of stone and given you a heart of flesh, then that is the
case.
1.
Are you neglecting your immortal soul? $ Imagine a parent loving one
child but completely neglecting the other. Such things do happen.
Don't be like that – looking after your body but neglecting your
soul. Remember Jesus' words Do
not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in
hell.
and
What
good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit
their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
(Matthew
10:38, 16:26) Or what about Paul's words (1 Timothy 4:8) physical
training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things,
holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
2. Has your soul been made new?
Are you born again? Cry out to God to do it.
3. This is absolutely vital. There
is no entering the kingdom of God without it. There is no way of
pleasing God without this.
4. Are you in covenant with God.
Can you sing “in a love that cannot cease I am his and he is mine”?
5.
Don't miss that warning in verse 21 But
as for those whose hearts are devoted to their vile images and
detestable idols, I will bring down on their own heads what they have
done, declares the Sovereign LORD.
The
ultimate fulfilment of this prophecy is found in Revelation 21 where
we read of the new heavens and the new earth and the New Jerusalem.
John sees Jesus seated on the throne
and saying I am making
everything new! What a glorious
prospect awaits God's people.
