The Heart Of The Matter

Ezekiel 36 : 26 — “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.”

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1. The Vegetarian With a Pig’s Heart

My ex-wife’s grandfather was a conservative Adventist doctor in Napa City—the kind of man who read Ministry of Healing like it was Mosby’s Medical Dictionary and treated Counsels on Diet and Foods like a secret revelation handed down on Sinai.

He was a strict vegetarian. Never touched meat. I’m convinced he could smell a tofu cutlet from fifty yards and diagnose your cholesterol level by sight.

Then, late in life, his own heart began to fail.

The physicians he had once mentored told him, “Doctor, we can fix this—but you’re going to need a new valve…from a pig.”

Now picture that moment. For a man who had never so much as tasted chicken broth, this wasn’t just a medical decision—it was a theological crisis. He’d spent decades preaching the virtues of clean living, and now grace had arrived wearing a snout.

He hesitated. He prayed. And finally he said yes.

The surgery succeeded, and he lived many more good years.

Someone teased him afterward, “Doc, have you given your heart to Jesus?”

He smiled. “Yes,” he said, “but right now I’m borrowing one from a pig.”

And that, friends, is what I call divine irony. God has a sense of humor.

Sometimes grace doesn’t arrive looking holy—it just saves your life.

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2. When God Talks About the Heart

Ezekiel 36:26 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.”

It’s one of the great promises of Scripture, spoken to exiles who had lost everything.

In Hebrew, the heart isn’t the seat of romance; it’s the control center of life—your will, motives, and moral compass. It’s where decisions are born. So when God says “I’ll give you a new heart,” He’s promising more than spiritual cholesterol control. He’s talking about a total transplant—replacing stone with flesh, resistance with responsiveness.

Humanity, the Bible says, suffers from chronic heart disease. Jeremiah 17:9 calls it “deceitful above all things.”

We try medication—good intentions, resolutions, religion—but the arrhythmia remains. We need divine surgery.

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3. Ezekiel’s Context: Religion Without Pulse

Ezekiel was writing to people who still believed in religion. They kept the symbols—the Sabbath, the sacrifices, the forms—but the pulse was gone. The temple rituals continued while hearts calcified.

So God makes an outrageous promise: “I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Not, “I’ll improve your heart,” or “I’ll patch it.” He says, “I’ll replace it.”

That’s grace—not moral reform, but divine replacement therapy.

Grace doesn’t polish stone; it resurrects flesh.

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4. Grace Through Unlikely Means

Back to our Napa doctor. A pig’s valve is an unlikely savior. But grace often comes dressed in ways that offend our sensibilities.

Think of the Bible’s lineup of “unclean instruments”:

A Moabite widow named Ruth becomes the ancestor of Christ.

A prostitute named Rahab hides spies and saves a nation.

A Roman cross, symbol of shame, becomes the world’s doorway to hope.

Each time, grace breaks etiquette to save someone. God uses the wrong people, the wrong tools, the wrong timing—yet always the right mercy.

That’s how He works. Because if grace came only through clean channels, none of us would ever get it.

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5. When Grace Offends Our Systems

The Pharisees couldn’t stand that about Jesus.

They loved systems—clean vs. unclean, insiders vs. outsiders.

Then Jesus touched lepers, ate with sinners, talked theology with Samaritans, and ruined every category.

They said, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

Exactly. Because grace eats with whoever’s hungry.

Religious hearts prefer control. Grace prefers compassion.

And that’s why many of us still struggle: we want a sanitized salvation, not a saving surgeon.

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6. God the Heart Surgeon

Imagine God as the ultimate cardiac specialist.

He doesn’t offer a fitness plan; He offers a transplant.

The old heart—self-centered, fearful, proud—must come out.

But that’s painful surgery.

You have to sign the consent form called surrender.

He opens you with mercy, replaces hardness with tenderness,

and closes you up with the stitches of the Spirit.

Then He monitors your vitals daily through prayer and worship.

Grace isn’t an event—it’s ongoing cardiac rehab.

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7. Living With a Borrowed Heart

Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

That’s spiritual borrowed-heart language.

The believer survives on grace not native to us.

Every act of kindness, every forgiveness we extend, every patient word—that’s not us performing; that’s the borrowed heart of Jesus beating inside.

Just like the doctor who lived because another creature’s valve kept rhythm, we live because another Heart—Christ’s—keeps ours alive.

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8. Signs of a New Heart