Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1129
“I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26.
IT is a peculiar feature in our holy religion that it begins its work within and acts first upon the heart. Other religions, like that of the Pharisees, begin with outward forms and ceremonies, perhaps hoping to work inwardly from without, although the process never ends, for though the outside of the cup and of the platter is made clean, the inside still remains full of rottenness as before. No Truth of God is more sure than this concerning all the sons of men, “You must be born again.”
There must be an entire and radical change of man’s nature or else where God is he can never come—the Gospel does not flinch from this, but enforces the declaration. The Holy Spirit does not attempt to improve human nature into something better, but lays the axe at the root of the trees and declares that we must become new creatures—and that by a supernatural work of the Omnipotent God.
Scripture does not mince matters, or say that some men may be better than others, naturally, and by an improvement of their excellencies may at last become good enough for God. Far from it! It declares concerning all, “Except you are converted and become as little children, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” True religion begins, then, with the heart, and the heart is the ruling power of manhood. You may enlighten a man’s understanding and you have done much, but as long as his heart is wrong, the enlightenment of the understanding only enables him to sin with a greater weight of responsibility resting upon him. He knows good to be good, but he prefers the evil. He sees the light, but he loves the darkness and turns from the Truth of God because his heart is alienated from God.
If the heart is renewed, the judgment will, before long, follow in the same track. But as long as the heart is wrong, the affections govern the will and bias the character of the man towards evil. If a man loves evil he is evil. If he hates God he is God’s enemy, whatever his outward professions, whatever his knowledge, whatever his apparent good qualities. “As a man thinks in his heart so he is.” This is more nearly the man than any other of the faculties and powers which God has bestowed upon our nature. What if I say that the heart is the Eve in the little garden of our nature and she it is that first plucks the evil fruit? And though the understanding follows the affections, even as Adam followed Eve, yet the first power for good or evil lies in the affections.
The heart, when renewed by Grace, is the best part of manhood. Unrenewed, it is the very worst. Aesop, when his master ordered him to provide nothing for a feast but the best things in the market, brought him nothing but tongues, and when, the next day, he ordered him to buy nothing but the worst things in the market, still brought nothing but tongues. And I would venture to correct or spiritualize the story by exchanging hearts for tongues, for there is nothing better in the world than hearts renewed, and nothing worse than hearts unregenerate. It is a great Covenant promise that the heart shall be renewed and the particular form of its renewal is this—that it shall be made living, warm, sensitive, and tender. It is naturally a heart of stone—it is to become, by a work of Divine Grace—a heart of flesh. Therefore, very much of the result of regeneration and conversion will be found to lie in the production of a tender spirit.
Tenderness, the opposite of that which is stout, obstinate, cold, hard—tenderness is one of the most gracious signs in a man’s character. And where God has given fleshiness, or living sensitiveness instead of stoniness, or dead insensibility of heart, there we may conclude that there is a real work of Grace and that God has created vital godliness within. Concerning this tenderness I am about to speak—“I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.”
I. Our first remark is that THE TENDERNESS HERE INTENDED IS ABSENT IN THE UNREGENERATE. They frequently have a natural sensitiveness—some persons who are not converted are very tender, indeed, as mothers to
their children, as fathers to their offspring, as friends to friends. And God forbid that we should say anything amiss concerning that which is good in human nature after its kind! But that is widely different from the spiritually tender heart. Some there are who have a tenderness which arises from timidity, a tenderness which sometimes inclines them to good, not because they love the good, but because they are easily ruled by their company—so that they would be just as easily led towards evil if they fell in with bad companions. They have no principle, no root in themselves.
Such a tenderness Rehoboam had, who was tender, and therefore followed evil advisers to his own injury. Such an unmanly softness as this is to be strived against, for we need to have some grit in our constitution, some firmness and resolution—and that sort of pliability which unman’s a man and makes him a puppet for others to handle is a great evil. There is also a tenderness which arises mainly from legal terror and fear which is very different from the evangelical or saving softness of heart which is described in our text. I know some who exhibit a sort of counterfeit tenderness. When they hear a sermon they are excited by it and if it is about the world to come, the lifting up of the curtain of the future, they are affected for the time being. But then their goodness soon departs from them. They forget the next moment that which affected them a moment back—they are soon hot and soon cold—they are inconstant as the wind. That is a not the kind of tenderness to be desired—goodness which is as the morning cloud and the early dew which passes away.