If I Only Had A Heart (Ezekiel 36:26)

After my last sermon at my church, as I shook hands with the congregation members exiting, the pastor’s wife approached me. She thanked me for the sermon, and she commented about how I always use culture, or more specifically, pop culture, in my sermons, which she liked. Indeed, I do commonly mention some kind of culture as a sermon illustration. In my church, we’re talking about what being spiritually passionate looks like, and how we can become spiritually passionate. From what I noticed among my generation, my generation becomes spiritually passionate when they realized their faith is relevant to their lives and to their world, and they become less spiritually passionate when they cannot make that connection between their faith and their world. I fully believe in a saying that both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien lived by: “In Jesus Christ all the myths come true.” What this means, simply, is that God has written the gospel on our hearts, and therefore, sometimes some of the gospel appears in our stories. This is why I can so easily use culture as sermon illustrations. I have used the 90’s children’s show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to show how people desire to be transformed, as Paul wrote in Romans 12:2. I have used a Johnny Cash song to demonstrate that the heart longs for social justice, the social justice Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 1. I have used the sitcom the Office to display how everyone wants a second chance, like the second chance Jesus gave Peter in John 21. All these cultural artifacts, as I and many others like to call them, contain bits and pieces of the gospel, which reflect our yearning for the gospel.

 

I’ve already used televisions show and music, so this time, let’s use a movie. I know a lot of the previous examples I gave might be more relatable to young audiences because they are more recent, so let’s use a classic. It doesn’t get any more classic than The Wizard of Oz. My dad and his brothers, AKA my uncles, are very much into movies. They are always watching the lastest movies, either in the theatre or at home on DVD. Even after 50 years of watching movies, they still come back to The Wizard of Oz as a favorite. Just in case you’re not familiar with the book turned into a movie, Dorothy is a teenager living in rural Kansas. Not far into the movie, Dorothy realizes she’s not in Kansas anymore, but she finds herself in the land of Oz, thanks to a tornado. After a nasty encounter with a witch who wants her ruby red slippers, she feels quite unwelcomed and longs to go back home, but the only one who can bring her home is the Wizard of Oz, residing in Emerald City. The munchkins of Munchkin land inform Dorothy that she’ll get to Emerald City as long follows the yellow brick road.

On her travels along the yellow brick road, she meets three men who also need to see the Wizard of Oz for various needs. One of these men, the second, is the tin man. The tin man informs Dorothy that he was made without a heart, and he needs a heart. At first, the audience must assume the tin man is talking about a literal heart, the muscle that pumps blood. This might leave the audience scratching their heard. After all, why would a tin man need a muscle that pumps blood? But as the tin man sings his hit song for which this sermon is named, “If I Only A Heart,” the audience realizes the tin man is not talking about a literal heart. The tin man sings that he could be “tender, gentle, and awfully sentimental,” he could, “register emotion, jealousy and devotion, and he could be “kind of human,” if he only had a heart. Clearly, this isn’t the literal, physical heart. Instead, this is a metaphor, a symbol to represent emotions.

The tin man is not the only one to talk about the heart as a metaphor and a symbol. In fact, we use the heart as an expression and idiom a lot in the English language. You can have an aching heart, a big heart, a broken heart, a cold heart, a cowardly heart, an empty heart, an evil heart, a generous heart, a hard heart, a kind heart, a loving heart, a pure heart, a soft heart, a tender heart, a warm heart, a heart of glass, a heart of gold, a heart of a lion, a heart of stone, or the heart of a warrior. Furthermore, you can be half-hearted or whole-hearted, you can cross your heart and hope to die, eat your heart out, follow your heart, get to the heart of the matter, have your heart set on something, have a change of heart, have your heart in the right or wrong place, have a heart-to-heart talk, you can know something by heart, leave your heart somewhere, mean something from the bottom of your heart, pour your heart out and wear your heart on your sleeve. These are just some of the idioms and expressions, and there’s probably a lot more you can think of that I missed. After seeing this long list, I can’t help but wonder if we in the English language talk about the heart figuratively more than literally!

The Bible does the same thing. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for heart, lev, appears 252 times. In the New Testament, the Greek word for heart is kardia. For those in work in the medical field, that should be no surprise, as any medical term that involves the heart has kardia somewhere in it. For example, cardiac arrest is when the heart fails to pump blood. The Greek word kardia appears 156 times in the New Testament. That’s a total of 408 times the heart is mentioned in the Bible, and not a single one of those talks about the heart literally. Instead, they all talk about the heart figuratively. The heart symbolically represent emotions, attitudes, motives, intent, will and thought.

The Bible also is full of metaphors of the heart. The Bible talks about a blackslidden heart, burning heart, clean heart, closed heart, crooked heart, dark heart, deceitful heart, discerning heart, faint heart, faithful heart, foolish heart, glad heart, honest heart, humble heart, merry heart, open heart, overflowing heart, proud heart, renewed heart, righteous heart, silent heart and an uncircumcised heart. Furthermore, the Bible commands us to guard our heart, keep our heart, nourish our heart and strengthen our heart. The list goes on and on!

There’s one metaphor that I left out. That’s a new heart. That’s our metaphor for today, and that’s the metaphor that comes from our Scripture verse, Ezekiel 36:26.

Let me set the context on Ezekiel 36:26 by giving the whole context of Ezekiel 36. From our reading of the Old Testament, God has entered into a covenant with Israel. If Israel fulfills the conditions of the covenant by obeying the Law, Israel will receive blessings of land, seed (descendants) and many other blessings on top of that. If Israel did not fulfill the covenant, and they disobeyed the Law, God will remove his blessings and Israel will stand cursed. In the time of Ezekiel, we find just that. Israel has not fulfilled its end of the covenant, it has not obeyed the Law, it has sinned. They have not shown love to God because they have worshipped idols. They have not shown love to their neighbors, but have become quite violent towards each other. In Ezekiel 36:16,17, God confronts Israel about its sin. God blessed Israel with a land of their own, but Israel ruined their blessing by defiling it with idol worship and violated bloodshed. Therefore, in a covenant of obedience producing blessings and disobedience resulting in curses, God exiled Israel from the land he gave them into the lands of the gods they worshipped, as recorded in Ezekiel 36:18,19, for they did not hold up their end of the covenant. Sounds simple, right? But it’s not so simple. God entered a covenant with Israel in order to be a witness on how God loves his people, cares for his people, wants to be in a relationship and bless the people he’s created. While Israel sinned, thus deserving their punishment, it might seem like God has turned his back on his people, ruining the witness, as stated in Ezekiel 36:20,21. God, in his infinite omniscience, can imagine the people from other nations saying, “How can the God of Israel call himself loving and caring, yet will allow his people to be conquered and lose their land?” Ladies and gentlemen, as the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. How many times have we heard those critical of Christianity say, “How can a good and loving God allow this suffering to happen to those people?” While this might be a question humans struggle with, the omniscient God has the answer. The Lord has the solution. God’s solution to this problem is to vindicate, or avenge, his name. How God will vindicate his name extends all the way to the end of the chapter, but we’re going to focus in on verses 22  to 32, since that paragraph contains our verse.

Ezekiel 36:22-32 

22 Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. 23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. 24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. 29 And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. 30 I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. 31 Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. 32 It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.

In seminary, I typically have to read about four or five books, averaging about 300 pages, per class. If I have two classes, you can double that workload. And I have to do get that done in four months. So sometimes reading every line of every pages just isn’t feasible. So my seminary professors taught me how to speed read. Perhaps you are familiar with the method. You read the first line and the last line of each paragraph because those lines have the main point of the author. Everything in between is details that reinforce that main point. God really wants to make his point clear, for he pretty much repeats his main point at the beginning, verse 22, and the end, verse 32. Verse 22 reads, “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came,” and verse 32 reads, “It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord God; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.” Notice the similarities? God wants Israel to know that they did nothing to deserve the blessings they will receive. Rather, God merely blesses Israel to hold up his end of the covenant and demonstrate his love and faithfulness to his people. Instead of waiting for Israel’s obedience, God’s love and blessings should motivate Israel to fulfill their end of the covenant and obey! Perhaps our verse will help Israel do just that.
 

God will help Israel do just that by giving them a new heart, a heart of flesh. Now the flesh in “heart of flesh” does not have the same weight as the New Testament term for flesh (sarx, if you’re familiar with the Greek) does. In the New Testament, flesh means corrupt or fallen, but not in this Old Testament context. The “heart of flesh” contrasts the “heart of stone” earlier in the verse. Note the irony in this text. The Israelites have worshipped gods of stone, and therefore the Israelites’ hearts had become like that gods they worshipped: hard like stone. Therefore, God will give them “hearts of flesh,” hearts less like the idols and more like the true God. God will will soften their hearts. How will God soften their hearts? He will give them his spirit, the Holy Spirit. Once the Holy Spirit gets in there and gives Israel a new heart, a heart made of flesh, everything else will come naturally, as natural as the flowing of the paragraph the verse is in. Once Israel gets a new heart, a heart of flesh with the Holy Spirit inside, the Holy Spirit will help them obey the Law given to them. Once Israel obeys the Law, the condition of the covenant, Israel will once again receive the blessing promised, such as the Promised Land of Israel, and not just the land, but the a healthy and fruitful land. Then a cycle will begin. The blessings Israel receives will remind Israel of God’s faithfulness to the covenant, which will cause them to be faithful to the covenant. When Israel is faithful to the covenant, they will be blessed even more. The cycle goes on and on.
 

At this point, you might be thinking, “But I’m not Israel, and so this is not my covenant. What does this have to do with me?” Ah, but it is your covenant. I agree with many scholars when I say that I believe this is a prophecy of the New Covenant, the covenant that Jesus established with the church. In the New Covenant, Jesus offers a new heart! In the medical field, what you call it when a new heart replaces the old, bad heart? A heart transplant! A heart transplant, or cardiac transplant, is a surgery a working heart of a recently deceased donor heart is placed is the body of someone who needs a new heart. The first heart transplant was performed in 1967. In the first ten years of heart transplants, only 300 were performed. Now, almost ten times as many, about 3,500, heart transplants happen every year worldwide. Maybe you know one of those people who had a heart transplant. If you don’t former vice president Dick Cheny had a heart transplant. But this isn’t a physical heart transplant. This is a spiritual heart transplant. If you do not believe in Jesus, Jesus is offering you a spiritual heart transplant. If you believe in Jesus, Jesus has already performed a spiritual heart transplant, and he has given you a new heart!

What does this new heart look like in the believer?  First, the new heart brings about restoration and reconciliation. When the exiles finally returned home, the exiles knew God restored his relationship with the people. The evidence God provides Christians of a new heart is a spiritual change. Just like visitors of a foreign land coming home, we leave behind the desires of the world and the rebellion that demands we have it our way in order to seek God for forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration. Second, a new heart has been washed clean from sin. Note in verse 25 of Ezekiel 36 that God wants to generally clean Israel of all its uncleanliness, but He also wants to cleanse Israel of specific sins they have committed, like idol worship. When Jesus gives you a spiritual heart transplant, he cleanses you not only in general, like your sinful nature, but he also cleanses you specifically of each and every sin. It doesn’t matter if that sin is past, present or future. Know for certain that when Jesus gives you a spiritual heart transplant, each and every sin has been scrubbed clean from your heart. Not a sin has been missed. Third, as I mentioned before and I will mention again, a new heart has the Holy Spirit within it. Radical spiritual change cannot happen without the Holy Spirit. Cleansing of sin cannot happen without the Holy Spirit. Ezekiel 36:27 tells that the Holy Spirit is the only way we can even have a hope in following the Law. All this is only possible with the Holy Spirit. So naturally, it only make sense that a new heart has the Holy Spirit. Know that the Holy Spirit is there to guide you and to help you. Fourth, the new heart brings about a whole new relationship with God. Israel’s exile into a foreign land has deep symbolism. If Israel wanted to worship the idols of the enemy, then Israel would become part of the enemy and be exiled into their land. When God brings them back to their land, they are no longer the enemy, but rather, God’s people and God’s children. Paul in Romans makes it clear that when we are in sin, we are enemies of the holy God. When Jesus gives us a spiritual heart transplant, we are no longer enemies of God’ but you are a child of God. Finally, when Jesus gives us a spiritual heart transplant, that new heart hates to sin. As I said earlier, when Israel would see God’s faithfulness to the covenant, it would encourage them to fulfill their end of the covenant by not sinning. Similarly, when Jesus gives us a spiritual heart transplant, the new heart should hate sin. Our hearts should look always to avoid sin. When our heart faces temptation to sin, it fights it. When we do accidently mess up and sin, our heart immediately sets out to seek repentance. Just like eating something disgusting, sin should cause such a bitterness in us that we would wish to spit it out.

 

The truth is we all need spiritual heart transplant. Some of us still have dirty hearts, tainted from sin. Some of us have rebellious hearts, not wanting to submit to the lordship of our heavenly father. Some of us have a broken heart, still broken from broken relationships, which have hurt our relationship with God. If you have never have believed in Jesus as your lord and savior, your heart is dying in sin. You need a spiritual heart plant. Only Jesus is the surgeon who can take out that old, sinful heart and give you a new, clean heart. If you have never made the decision to believe in Jesus, make that decision today. If you have made that decision, Jesus has performed the spiritual heart transplant, and He has given you a new heart. But transformation and restoration isn’t a once and done thing. Our hearts are still in repair. Let that Holy Spirit inside your new heart convict you, and ask God for what needs to still be made new within you. If you lack evangelism, ask Jesus for a heart for the lost. If you need to spiritual grow, or see a need for spiritual growth in others, ask for a heart of discipleship and mentorship. If you find yourself apathetic to a person in need, ask for a loving a caring heart. If you find yourself struggling to practice your faith beyond Sunday, ask for a passionate heart.

Earlier, I mentioned Dick Cheny as the example of a heart transplant. Dick Cheny’s heart transplant was a peculiar one. Dick Cheny had to wait 20 months to get his new heart, over twice the waiting time for a heart transplant. Perhaps Cheny had to wait for so long due to his condition. At the time, Dick Cheny was seventy-one years old. He was in frail health, due to five heart attacks spanning over forty years. His heart transplant caused much controversy. Shouldn’t a heart transplant be given to someone younger and in better health? The heart transplant Jesus offers is nothing like that. There’s age limit or health check-up; God gives a spiritual heart transplant to anyone! There’s no waiting list; God gives anyone a spiritual heart transplant immediately upon asking for one. So come, ask for a new heart, and then embrace it.

Acknowledgements: I am grateful and thankful to Pastor John Blackburn, Spiritual Formation Pastor at Olathe Bible Church in Olathe, Kansas, for his sermon "A New Heart Within You," which he originally preached at Olathe Bible Church in Olathe, Kansas on April 15, 2012, for it gave me ideas for this sermon.