Today's Bible Reading: EZEKIEL 10:1-13:23
Ezekiel 11:19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
Sometimes we try to do something that we really have no ability to do. Now granted there are acquired skills and learned abilities that can enable us to do things that we never thought we could do. But there are also those things that we are just not capable of doing. Man simple cannot fly and he can’t remain indefinitely submerged under water. Neither of these activities can be maintained without something to aid us in doing so. Without some kind of miraculous transformation occurring we do not have the capacity to do certain things.
Our text tells us of a spiritual transformation that God will accomplish in us. He will give us what we lack to sustain a dynamic and flourishing faith. He will enable us to do what we have struggled to do. Notice the phrase “that they may”. It suggests that they had not been able or capable of being fully embedded in following the Lord. Understandably they had pushed back from faithfully following Him and had pursued other gods which led them away from Him.
We are all born with a bad heart. It indwells each one of us and leads us into sin. It is unavoidable and inescapable. The scriptures tell us “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). Our text tells us that we have a “heart of stone”. This type of heart is hard and heavy like a rock. It is a heart hardened by sin. It is dead and devoid of spiritual life. It is stubborn and incapable of change apart from a work of God.
But God promises that He will “remove the heart of stone” and replace it with “a heart of flesh”. This is God’s work alone. He alone can transform our bad heart into a good heart. He will make our heart tender and pliable. This is a heart that is not antagonist to the things of God but one that freely and willingly embraces His statues and principles. This is a living spiritual pulsating heart that creates in us a deep abiding desire to forsake all other deities and devote ourselves wholly to the Lord. This is the new birth of which Paul says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor 5:17).
This is what we all need. This new birth puts a new spirit and a new heart within us (John 3:3-8). It is what we must pray that the Lord will produce in us. It is what we need that we “may walk in (His) statutes and keep (His) rules and obey them.” Without this change of heart and spirit we are incapable of having a dynamic and flourishing faith.
Today thank the Lord for His new birth. Thank Him for a new heart and a new spirit that He gives us “that we may” faithfully walk in His ways.
Comments