Ezekiel delivered a message to Israel while they were in exile in Babylon. Their sins had led them to the state they were in. God had sent them away from their homeland and they had been reduced to captivity and had become refugees in a foreign land. Ezekiel not only diagnosed their spiritual sickness but he proclaimed a promise from God that would bring their healing and recovery. It was not only a promise to Israel, it is the only solution for all of us. In the New Testament we call it grace. It is the only way sinners can be restored to a healthy relationship with God.
We may try to keep all the rules, observe all the religious ceremonies and submit to all the regulations that perfect performance requires of us without the one thing we desperately need. We need a heart change. We need new hearts!
Ezekiel expresses both the need and the promise God makes. It is a promise to Israel and to us through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 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 36:25-26).
The new Spirit is the presence of the Holy Spirit in a believer and the new heart is the result of the gracious gift of salvation. Jesus didn’t come to keep us struggling to keep the law in our own strength. We had proved that we couldn’t do that. No one has but Jesus. He came to change us from the inside out. That’s what Ezekiel was talking about. When we believe in Jesus we are changed on the inside. We get a new heart.
Max Lucado, in his book, Grace, tells the following story. He described a heart transplant from the perspective of Tara Storch. “In the spring of 2010 a skiing accident took the life of her thirteen-year-old daughter, Taylor. What followed for Tara and her husband, Todd, was every parent’s worst nightmare: a funeral, a burial, a flood of questions and tears.
“They decided to donate their daughter’s organs to needy patients. Few people needed a heart more than Patricia Winters. Her heart had begun to fail five years earlier, leaving her too weak to do much more than sleep. Taylor’s heart gave Patricia a fresh start on life.
“Tara had only one request: she wanted to hear the heart of her daughter. She and Todd flew from Dallas to Phoenix and went to Patricia’s home to listen to Taylor’s heart. The two mothers embraced for a long time. Then Patricia offered Tara and Todd a stethoscope. When they listened to the healthy rhythm, whose heart did they hear? Did they not hear the still-beating heart of their daughter? It indwells a different body, but the heart is the heart of their child. And when God hears your heart, does he not hear the still-beating heart of his Son?”*
Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). We as believers now live but it isn’t the same old heart struggling to keep us alive. It is the very life of Christ alive in us. Our heartbeat is from a fresh, new heart that reflects His nature and His very life. That is the power of grace.
Wally | GG Team
