Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh… I. THE OLD PRINCIPLE WHICH MUST BE GOT RID OF. "A stony heart." Of course this is a figure when you speak of a man's heart, because you do not speak of that which beats in a man's frame, but of his will and affections. Likewise a stony heart is a figure used to describe one who knows not Christ, and cannot until it is removed. What is a stone? A stone is a thing upon which you can make no impression. You may strike it with a hammer, or a sword, or any other weapon, but you can make no impression upon it; so with a stony human heart, no arguments or anything we can do will influence it. There are some hearts we cannot reach, they seem harder than the nether millstone. Until God touches the hard heart it has no feeling; and there are men and women now who figuratively go to that stony rock of Calvary, whereon Christ died for our sins, and even come to services like these in which we literally go there with Him, and yet do not feel touched in their hearts. II. A NEW PRINCIPLE WHICH IS TO BE GIVEN US. There are two ways in which people may be said to have anything new. First, when it is absolutely new. When the Ark of God was to be brought back, a cart was to be made by the Divine Will, and it has to be a new cart, entirely out of new materials. So in the New Testament we are told Joseph of Arimathea laid our Lord in a new tomb, wherein yet never anyone had lain. There is another sense in which a thing is made new, that is, when it is renewed, for that comes to the same thing. This is what happens when a man's heart is renewed, and turned to God. You may meet a man, and say, "I see no change in him," and yet that man has been renewed by the Spirit of God. This, then, is the new principle that God will give; and it is "a new heart," and when that happens the whole man is changed. Again, when a man's will is renewed he is made to say, "Not my will, but Thine be done." And a man's affections are renewed, and even his memory is renewed. That memory, that used to be running off on other things, now returns to God. III. THE DIVINE GIVER. It is the work of Omnipotence. He can make the heart love and glow with life. When He does this work it is done in an instant. A man at the receipt of custom, who was as busy as any of you, was called by Christ, and Matthew arose and followed Him in a moment. He said also to Zacchaeus, "Make haste and come down," "and he made haste and came down." It was done in a moment. And when Lydia sat listening to Paul's address we are told that "the Lord opened her heart," and then she attended to the words spoken by Paul. And when Saul was entering into Damascus to persecute the Christians in that city, carrying with him letters from the high priest at Jerusalem, a voice asked him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" God touched his heart, and it was done in a moment. IV. IT BRINGS GREAT GLORY TO GOD. It is greater than creating a world. Someone has said. "It was great to speak a world from nought"; but it is a greater work when He comes down to that heart which He first made in His own image, and which sin has marred and ruined, and promises to dwell there, than the work of creation. (Canon Fleming.) Parallel Verses KJV: A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. |
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