I. The old heart is taken away and a new one put in its place. The substitution of one heart for another implies an entire change in the character and current of our affections. Now a change may be simply a reform, or extending farther, it may pass into a revolution. The spiritual change, which we call conversion, is not a mere reform. It is a revolution. It changes the heart, the habits, the eternal destiny of an immortal being. For the old mischievous laws which it repeals, it introduces a new code of statutes; it changes the reigning dynasty, wrenches the sceptre from a usurper's hand, and banishing him forth of the kingdom, in restoring the throne to God, restores it to its rightful monarch.
II. Consider the view which our text gives of the natural heart. It is a heart of stone. "I will take the stony heart out of your flesh." Notice some of the characteristic properties of a stone. (1) A stone is cold. But what stone so cold as that in man's breast? Sin has quenched a fire that once burned bright and holy there, and has left nothing now on that chill hearth, but embers and ashes cold as death. (2) A stone is hard. Fire melts wax, but not stone; water softens clay, but not stone; a hammer bends the stubborn iron, but not stone. Stone resists these influences; and emblem of a heart crushed, but not sanctified by affliction, it may be shattered into fragments or ground to powder, yet its atoms are as hard as ever. (3) A stone is dead. It has no vitality, no feeling, no power of motion. It lies where it is laid; speak to it, it returns no answer; weep to it, it sheds no tears; image of a lost and loved one, it feels not the grief that itself can move. How many sit in the house of God as unmoved! Careless as spectators who have no concern in what takes place before them, they take no interest in anything that was done on Calvary; one would think it is of stones, and yet it is of living men that these words are spoken: "Having eyes, they see not; having ears, they hear not; neither do they understand." T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel,p. 268.
(with 2 Corinthians 5:17, and Revelation 21:5)
I. Human hearts unappeasably cry out after change. Something new we all need, and because we need, we crave for it; and what we crave after, we hope for. The old we have tried, and it is not enough. In the future there may be what we need, and so long as there is a future, there is hope; but the past is dead. Now the best lesson which the years can teach us is, perhaps, this one, that the new thing we need is, not a new world, but a new self. No change can count for much to a man save one which changes him.
II. At this point the Gospel meets us. It is the singular pretension of the Christian Gospel that it does make men new. It professes to alter character, not as all other religious and ethical systems in the world have done, by mere influence of reason or of motives, or by a discipline of the flesh; it professes to alter human character by altering human nature. The Gospel is a message from Him who made us, that He is among us re-making us. Out of the fact of the Incarnation springs the hope of our renewal. God now is not outside of mankind, but inside. From the inside He can work and does work, renewingly. A race which includes God need not despair of Divine life; it can be divinely re-created from within itself. "The Head of every man is Christ." He that is in Christ is a new creature. Attach yourself to Him; hang on by Him. He is God in man, renewing man; and He will renew you in this new year.
III. Let us stir ourselves up to compare the life we are this day leading with the life we should lead were we made new by the Holy Ghost. Set the one against the other. Spiritual things are distasteful, and we drag ourselves to religious duty; we ought to rejoice in the Lord and run in His pleasant paths. This world absorbs and conquers us; we ought to rule it and use it for heaven. Internal restlessness and dissatisfaction with ourselves gnaw our hearts, but the saints have peace. "A new heart will I give you." Do we not need it? Shall we not, every one of us, go to this daring much-promising Man, who claims to regenerate his fellows, and say: "Never men needed this renewing more than we do. Give us a new temper and a new spirit; yea, a new self, Lord, like Thyself."
IV. Change the man and you change his world. The new self will make all around it as good as new, though no actual change should pass on it; for, to a very wonderful extent, a man creates his own world.
J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons,p. 249.
I. When God gives a new heart, our affections are engaged in religion. The Gospel is accommodated to our nature; its light is adapted to our darkness; its mercy to our misery; its pardon to our guilt; its comforts to our griefs, and in substituting the love of Christ for the love of sin, in giving us an object to love, it meets our constitution and satisfies the strongest cravings of our nature. It engages our affections, and in taking away an old heart, supplies its place with a new one and a better.
II. Consider the new heart. It mainly consists in a change of the affections as they regard spiritual objects. In obedience to a Divine impulse, their course is not only in a different, but in a contrary, direction; for the grace of God works such a complete change of feeling, that what was once hated you now love, and what was once loved you now loathe; you fly from what you once courted, and pursue what you once shunned.
III. In conversion God gives a new spirit. By this change (1) the understanding and judgment are enlightened; (2) the will is renewed; (3) the temper and disposition are changed and sanctified.
IV. In conversion God gives a heart of flesh. In conversion a man gets (1 a warm heart; (2) a soft heart; (3) a living heart.
V. By conversion man is ennobled.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel,p. 287.
References: Ezekiel 36:26. T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel,p. 247; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 62; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 212; vol. viii., No. 456; vol. xix., No. 1129; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 230; D. B. James, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 125.Ezekiel 36:26; Ezekiel 36:27. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xviii., No. 1046; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 13.