Ezekiel 36:22-32
A New Heart and A New Spirit
The problem: Romans 7:14-25 in The Message
What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary:
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway: My decisions, such as they are; don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.”
This is the experience of the great Saint Paul – Wow! If he struggled with sin, what am I to do? Have you ever felt this way? That you want to do the right, but you end up doing the wrong?
The nation of Israel had this same struggle – the struggle between serving God and serving the gods and their fleshly desires.
This struggle goes on from almost day one. They go through periods of time when they serve God, but for the vast majority of time they give up on the struggle completely and forget God and his ways. Even in times of spiritual renewal, the high places where people worshiped other gods or tried to worship God in inappropriate ways were never completely removed – so the people always had opportunity and temptation to go running to the other gods when God wasn’t serving their purposes
“Throughout my life I have found that the best way to deal with temptation is to give into it.” – Dave from the Vinyl Café
The problem with giving into temptation over and over again is that it begins to be a habit – like a wagon that make ruts in a road it becomes easier and easier to just stay in the rut and continue to give in. This is where we find Judah and Jerusalem in the time of Ezekiel. They have gotten into a rut of sin, extreme promiscuity, idol worship, child sacrifice, and oppression of the poor and the weak.
They have become so bad that God finally has to remove them from the land he has promised them. He says in Ezekiel 33:25-29
“’This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Since you eat meat with the blood still in it and look to your idols and shed blood, should you then possess the land? 26 You rely on your sword, you do detestable things, and each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife. Should you then possess the land?’
27 "Say this to them: ’This is what the Sovereign LORD says: As surely as I live, those who are left in the ruins will fall by the sword, those out in the country I will give to the wild animals to be devoured, and those in strongholds and caves will die of a plague. 28 I will make the land a desolate waste, and her proud strength will come to an end, and the mountains of Israel will become desolate so that no one will cross them. 29 Then they will know that I am the LORD , when I have made the land a desolate waste because of all the detestable things they have done.’”
In Ezekiel 36, although God has cast his judgement upon them, he tells them that his Judgement will not last forever: one day he will restore them to the land that he promised them. This prophesy is fulfilled in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. God uses the pagan kings Cyrus and Artaxerxes to send the Jewish people back to Jerusalem and the land.
God also knows that even if Israel returns to him and serves him once again, it won’t be too long before the pull to sin and other gods begins again. So along with the promise of a return to the land, he gives them this promise of a heart transplant. No longer will their hearts be hard and cold to his love, but he will give them a heart of flesh that will respond to his love, and love him in return. He will give them a heart that actually wants to obey his ways.
Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 13 that describes the different states of a human heart.
Matthew 13 "A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9He who has ears, let him hear."…
19When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. 22The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. 23But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."
If our heart is beat down and hard like the path, we can’t even respond to the good news of God’s love for us, if we are like the rocky ground, we might be able to see the goodness in God’s message, but there is still no way for us to truly receive it. We need God to change our hearts so that we can actually respond to his word in the first place.
Paul write in Ephesians that it is not just that we have a hard heart to God, we are actually dead to him.
Ephesians 2
1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
When we are dead we cannot respond to anyone. What Paul tells us is that we are born as if dead to God – we in and of ourselves cannot respond to him. We are dead. But, in Christ, He reaches down and breathes new life in us, he takes that heart that will not beat for him and replaces it with one that can beat in time to his music.
Because Jesus died to pay the price that we deserved for our sins, he breaks through the power that holds our hearts in a death grip, and because he rose from the dead, he raises us up with him to new life with a new heart.
God gives us this new heart that is not hard – it can actually respond to him. Maybe you have experienced this yourself: there was a time in your life when you had no interest in spiritual things, but at some point your heart became alive to the Good News and you began your journey back to God through Jesus.
Linda Levin was telling me that there was a workman in the neighbourhood who would drive down Runnymede to Bloor for lunch every day. At some point in time he noticed our sign for Alpha out in front of Runnymede United. It has very little content. It has the Alpha logo guy and it says “Questions of Life” on it. He was so drawn to it that he found himself purposely driving down Runnymede to see it. Finally he called the church to see what this sign was all about. He was told about the Alpha course, and he began to attend. God Softened his heart enough to even be drawn in by the Alpha sign!
The difficulty is that there are times when, even after we’ve become a Christian that we can relate very we to Paul’s statement in Romans 7 – even though I want to do the right thing, I can’t seem to do it. And even though I don’t want to do wrong, I at times find myself doing it. We still have this struggle going on.
Robert Robinson (1735-1790) got saved under the ministry of George Whitefield. He even entered into the Christian ministry, but he still tended to wandered from God. He wrote the hymn “Come Thou Fount” as an autobiographical sketch. His heart would get out of tune, causing him to neglect God. In stanza two he tells of his conversion. And stanza three he admits that he has a daily debt to Grace and asked God to help his wandering heart..
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wand’ring from the fold of god;
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wand’ring heart to Thee;
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for Thy courts above.
The Holy Spirit
There are times when even as a Christian our hearts are prone to wander, and that is why we need verse 27 “I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
God does not just give us new hearts of flesh that are alive to him, he also gives us his Spirit to help us to want to obey him!
Paul writes in Philippians 2:12-13
12Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you to will and
When God’s Spirit takes a hold of us he gives us the desire to obey, and the power to fulfill those desires and actually obey him and do what he wants!
But we need to walk with the Spirit, or our hearts can begin to harden once again.
Later on in the hymn writer Robert Robinson’s life he was on a stagecoach. He was behaving in a manner that made a fellow passenger think that he didn’t know Christ. She wanted to share her faith with him. She quoted his own hymn saying, “These words might help you as they have helped me.” He sobbed, “Madam, I am the poor, unhappy man who composed that hymn many years ago. I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then.”
When we come to Christ, His Spirit helps us to want the right and to do it, but he doesn’t take our will away. If we want to we can resist The Spirit and continue to behave badly.
Some of you know that on my holidays I spent much of the time building a small cabin on my family’s property. I am building it timber-frame style, mostly using hand tools, like a hand saw, chisels and a mallet. When I first started, my hands would get sore because they aren’t used to that kind of work, but as time went on, calluses formed and my hands didn’t feel the rough work so much.
In the same way, God has given us soft hearts that are sensitive to the work of his Spirit, but if we continue to willfully resist his Spirit, our hearts become callused and we loose our sensitivity. The Spirit is still working in us to desire and do the right thing, but our hearts have become hard and unresponsive once again.
That is why Jesus is always saying “those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” It is not because they are hard of hearing, but the have become hard of listening! And just like people who live beside a train track stop hearing the trains going by – they continue to go by, but their brains tell them that it is not an important sound, in the same way when we constant ignore the prodding of the Spirit in our lives, pretty soon, our brains tell us that it isn’t an important sound.
Hebrews 3:12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15As has just been said:
"Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion."
This is why Paul writes in Romans 8 how to get over the struggle of Romans 7. He says: “5Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;”
We need to set our minds on the things of the Spirit, not the things of the sinful nature – So what are you filling your mind with?
There is a story of a Native elder who had come to faith in Jesus, and he described the struggle to a younger man by saying, “It feels like there are two dogs fighting inside of me.” The young man asked, “which dog wins?” The older man replied “Which ever one I feed?”
Which dog are you feeding? Are you feeding the things of the Spirit in your life, or are you feeding the things of the sinful nature? Are you spending time in prayer, Scripture reading, Christian fellowship & worship? Or are you watching movies & TV that you shouldn’t, being too busy…?
If the floors f your house were dirt, where would the well warn paths be? The paths to prayer and Scripture or the paths to the T.V. and computer?
Which paths are getting well worn in your life?
I am a mountain biker, and there are times when the trails erode and you get a big rut in the middle of a steep down hill. If you get into the rut it is near impossible to get out. The way to stay out of the rut is not to pay close attention to it, but to pay close attention to where you want to go. “Look where you want to go.” the trainers tell us. It is similar in the Spiritual life – we see the rut that we might fall into, we try to stay out of it, fight against it, pray against it, and still end up falling into it. The way to stay out of the rut of habitual sin is not to stare it down, but instead to look where you want to go – pay attention to the things that feed the life in the Spirit. That is why Paul says in Philippians 4:8:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.”
Application.
Are you trying to be good on your own and not doing a great job? Have you given your life to Jesus? If you do, he will give you a new heart: one that is open to hearing the voice of God
Are you struggling with following the Spirit, are there some calluses that you need God to remove?
Come forward for prayer.
