"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." Ezekiel 36:26
When God brings restoration, He doesn't stopwith the cleansing pat. He doesn't just remove our sins; He also heals and reives. He performs radical surgery on us, enabling His people to live in obedience to His Word. He gives us a "new heart" removing our "heart of stne" and giving us a "heart of flesh" - a heart that's alive and healthy and thriving.
The heart is not just one individual part of a person's makeup. It repesents our total personality. We use the term heart to refer to our mind, will and emotions. In the Bible it stands for the seat of our personality.
Jesus, you may remember, called the scribes and pharisees "'hypocrites'" because they honored Him with their lips "'but their heart is far from Me'" (Matthew 15:7-8 quoting Isaiah 29:13). These men, unrivaled in their obsession with ceremonial purty, were greatly offended. Christ's disciples, too, appeared somewhat shcoked by His implication. Didn't Jesus know that these mn had every appearance of holiness and uprightness? Yes, but Jesus kne more.He knew their evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies." (Matt. 15:19) and al the rest, and He knew from where these secret sins came. "From the heart" come the things that define a person. Our hearts tell us who we really are.
Israel's heart had become fossilized, like a stone, unfeeling and unresponsive. But God promised to do for them what they could not do or themselves. He would give hem a heart of flesh, a heat He could mold and move and fashion, a heart that cold hear Hi Word and react in obedience.
Will you pray this prayer that the Psalmist prayed?
"Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psalms 139: 23-24
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