Heart Matters

Perhaps you saw this story on the news last week. A six-year-old boy was in need of a heart transplant. He no longer had the energy of a kid his age and was getting worse, and his doctors had tried everything. But then, it was shown how joyful the boy and his mom were when they got the news that a heart was finally available, from another young boy that had died in a car accident. His mom had made the decision to allow his organs to be used for others. She expressed how hard it was to make that decision, as it came on the worst day of her life. But she knew it was the right thing to do, and was a good way to honor the short life of her son.

The surgery was a success, and the donor mom was able to meet the family of the boy who recieved her son’s heart. She had a device that looks like a stethoscope attached to a speaker, and she placed the cone-shaped end on the chest of the boy who had recieved her son’s heart. You could hear that heart beating, her son’s heart, in the boy who had recieved a new lease on life. You could see her tears along with a big, bittersweet smile. He now can play and run around like any other kid his age, with his new heart, and her son lives on in him, more than just in her memory.

Perhaps you thought of something like this as we read our passage from Ezekiel:

I will give them a single heart, and I will put a new spirit in them. I will remove the stony hearts from their bodies and give them hearts of flesh. (Ezekiel 11:19)

This is not just new hearts for individuals, but a “single heart” in the sense of a unified heart for the people, a unity in purpose and devotion to God. But, of course, this is metaphorical, as are many similar images in the Bible, and we all know how elusive such unity is. Ezekiel lived through a tumultuous time and saw many traumatic events unfold, as well as seeing many things in visions. He was there when the book of the Law was found during the reign of the “good” King Josiah, so he would have witnessed the efforts at that time to rid Jerusalem of idols and other things offensive to God, but things quickly fell apart after Josiah’s death. As many of the prophets make clear, including Ezekiel, the downfall of Israel was due to its collective sins as a nation, especially turning from God and chasing after foreign gods and making alliances with ungodly nations. That new, single or unified heart of all individual hearts combined would have made Israel complete, as God intended.

So under Josiah, Ezekiel saw what Israel could have been, but under the next king, Jehoiachim, the people again turned away from God, and the kingdom would fall to the Babylonians. Ezekiel was carried into exile along with most of the elites from Jerusalem, and it is in while in exile that he gets his first vision, during the seige of Jerusalem and its eventual destruction. Although he would never return from exile, he did have prophetic visions of the the restoration of Israel.

Shortly before the passage we read, we are informed that Ezekiel is under the power of the Spirit, who gives him his visions. We may not have a similar experience, but we too should seek to be in the Spirit, letting it guide, teach, and comfort us through this difficult time. We may live in a very different place, but we can easily see similarities, with fewer and fewer people living lives that honor God, chasing after false gods and sinful pursuits. We may identify different idols today instead of the false gods of the Bible, but the sin is the same, as people hold earthly things higher than they esteem God.

But even after the destruction wreaked upon Israel due to their sins, God is still there, calling to His people. He promises to bring His people back from among the other nations where they have been scattered, gathering them back to the fertile land of Israel, which He will restore.

Note that Ezekiel does not say that God’s people must follow His statues under their own power, but that God will give them new hearts, as it is written:

so that they may follow my regulations and carefully observe my case laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God. As for those whose hearts continue to go after their disgusting and detestable things, I will hold them accountable for their ways. This is what the LORD God says! (Ezekiel 11:20-21)

God is not seeking mere legalism or mindlessly keeping His commands, we are to be in a right relationship with Him first, with our hearts in the right place, and to then honor that relationship by following His regulations and laws through the power of the Holy Spirit. We belong to Him, and He is our God. Not just as individuals, but as His unified people. Obedience should come through love and gratitude, not fear or in the hope of getting something extra in return.

It is common to hear commentators compare modern America to the decline of the Roman Empire, and we can also compare our time to that of Ezekiel’s, noting the bad things, of course. When we look at Israel and see their inability to obey God fully, we probably think it would be even harder for our nation to so today. Abraham Lincoln quoted our Gospel passage a couple of years before the start of the Civil War, and we wonder today if our nation is even more divided now than it was then.

However, thanks be to God, we have the New Covenant under Jesus, rather than the Old Covenant under the Law. Our relationship with God as individuals does not rely on our relationship to God (or lack of one) as a nation. We don’t have to offer sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem to pay for our sins as a people and cleanse our land through the blood of animals, we each cleanse our hearts in the blood of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, whether in church or at home.

For most of us, replacing our stony hearts is not the issue: we have already been saved by the grace of God and His love fills our hearts. What we need now is to protect our hearts, especially in this age of the internet and a culture where anything goes in the name of personal fulfilment, even things we know to be harmful. We don’t become people of God by being born a Jew or Christian or whatever, as in the Old Testament, we become the children of God as if through adoption, accepted by God through faith in Jesus. From that relationship, we seek to do the will of God and put our faith into action. As Jesus says:

“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." (Mark 3:35).

Again, we don’t do the will of God grudgingly or seeking personal gain, we do it out of love and gratitude, having our hearts in the right place. Any comments on how we are to protect our hearts?

We tend to turn to God when problems arise, don’t we, instead of laying a firm foundation beforehand. But if we have that foundation of faith, we will be prepared for the inevitable trials and temptations that come our way. The best way to protect our hearts is to build our relationship with God, letting the Spirit nourish us, as we spend time with God and with His people. We put our trust in Him before trouble strikes, so the Spirit can protect us and guide us when we need it the most. As Paul writes:

Just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture--"I believed, and so I spoke" --we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1)

The main lesson here is to keep an eternal perspective, trying to see things from God’s point of view. When we see things from an earthly perspective, we start chasing after earthly things and put them before God. We will have passing trials in this life, but they don’t compare to the eternal glories in Christ we will enjoy. For now, we keep walking and talking with God, spending time with Him, letting him transform our hearts, making us more obedient and faithful, giving us His joy. The house that is made by human hands can be divided and destroyed, but the mansion awaiting for us with Jesus in Heaven will never perish.