A Heart of Flesh
A Heart of Flesh
“Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’
18“They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. 19I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. 20Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God. Ez. 11:17-20
The people of God, who were called Israel, had finally experienced what God had long warned them about. He did the unthinkable, which was to tear them from the land that they fought for, died for, languished over, and humbly received. Those that survived the initial murderous attacks were forceable marched to Babylon. But, God promised to bring them back after they presumably had learned a very painful lesson.
What you will see in the above verses is what God was going to do within them. God was going to change their hearts of stone into flesh. What does that mean? It means that God was going to use their captivity to change their rebellious hearts to obedient, humble hearts.
How does a person’s heart become stoney? Well, in Israel’s case it took generations to wear away the very words of God that were written in stone. Each generation would carry a smidgeon of doubt to the next generation. That doubt would gather another layer, and another layer until their hearts were covered with stone. They no longer recognized good from evil, unholy from holy, and purity from vile.
The promise above is encouraging because God wants us to have a heart of flesh and the beautiful truth is that we can “decalcify” our hearts quickly through humility and repentance. You will notice that to keep this ongoing softening, we must walk away from those things that represent the stumbling, the misdirection and the deception that caused the hardness in the first place.
From what I see in this powerful promise is that if we do come to God in all humility without wavering in what we know is true regarding holiness, then God will bless us and restore to us what the enemy stole.
Do not give in Christian. Do not for the sake of peace and safety abandon what you know in your heart is right, and what you see written in stone to be true. God will indeed give us a heart of flesh so that we can feel; we can decern; we can love those that do not know Jesus. We can have true compassion for those who are struggling with what is morally right rather than disdain for those who are standing up for what has been biblically and clearly written.
Prayer: Dear God, give us a heart of flesh today. Help us grow in our convictions so that having done all to stand, we can stand in any storm, any battle, or challenge to our faith. Deliver us from evil and all its crafty manifestations. May our hearts grow in compassion for those who despise us, mistrust us, or even hate us. We bless those that curse us knowing that God will bless us for doing so. Thank you, God that we can walk through the floods and not drown, and we can walk through the fires of chaos and not be burned. This is the heritage of the righteous, made so by the blood of Jesus. Amen!