Take your Bibles this morning, if you will, turning them to
Ezekiel, Ezekiel chapter 36, Ezekiel chapter 36.
I did not have the liberty to preach a message on Memorial
Day. For Memorial Day specifically,
of course, we want to remember. And I hope you'll take some time
to do that tomorrow, especially if you have children and just
remind them, remind yourself about the fact that we have the
freedoms to do what we're doing here right now.
Because somebody was willing to give and many, somebodies were
willing to give their lives in defense of that freedom.
And that's why it's important that we stand up for the
freedoms that we have. There was, there's too much
blood that was, that's been shed.
There's, there's too much sacrifice that has been made for
us to just let it go. That's why it's important that
we stand up for the freedoms that we do have in this country.
But I, I'm going to focus a little bit more on, on those
things around the July 4th holiday.
I have a message that I've been working on for the last few
weeks that God's just really been burning my heart about.
And here in Ezekiel chapter 36, we actually, we actually came to
this passage a couple of weeks ago when I was preaching the
message on prayer where two or three are gathered.
And we we focused on the last part of that.
Thus saith the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired of by
the House of Israel to to do it for them.
And of course, I'm not going to focus on that this morning.
I want to go in a different direction, but this just to just
to kind of remind you again about what is happening in this
passage as we as we lead up to it.
And and you know, when Ezekiel penned the words to Ezekiel
chapter 36. He is speaking to a people whose
hearts have become very hard. And it's sad that that God did
so much for the nation of Israel.
God, God LED them out of Egypt. He led them through the
wilderness. He did miracles that that he
never did for anybody else. And the things that he did for
them when they got into the promised land and just the the
way that he established them and it kept his promise to them and
did all of these things for him. And yet every time we turn
around, it seems like they're just hardening their hearts
again against God and they're going directly against the
warnings that he gave them. Hey, if you do this, this is
going to happen. And they would turn around and
do it. And then God followed through.
He had to follow through. Otherwise it would have just
been idle threats. But the nation of Israel hadn't
just made mistakes, which is often what we like to call our
sin many times. But they had repeatedly resisted
God. They had idols in their homes.
They they had compromised in their worship.
They had, they had rebellion in their hearts and in many cases
they just would not turn back to God.
And so God had warned them over and over through his prophets,
but they wouldn't listen to him. They refused.
And so God had to execute justice.
He had to execute judgment or his threats would have just been
idle threats and it wouldn't have meant anything when he
said, if you don't follow me, I'm going to do this.
And so God had to do that. And eventually that judgment
came in the form of them being carried away into Babylon, and
they were humiliated in that process.
But they had brought dishonor to God amongst the heathen by their
choices and by their sins and by their actions.
Their problem was not a political problem.
Their problem was not an economic problem.
Their problem was not a military problem.
Their problem was a internal problem.
They had a heart problem. And that's the setting of of
Ezekiel 36. But what's amazing is that God
after all of that doesn't just pronounce judgement on them and
write them off. He doesn't just, this is going
to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen.
Right in the middle of their failure, God begins to make
promises to them. And it goes all the way back to,
to verse #8 of Ezekiel chapter 36.
And I'm not going to read through all of that.
I, I did kind of do that just a couple weeks ago.
But he gets to be begins to promise them a physical
restoration. But that was only the very
beginning. Starting there in verse #25 God
begins to tell them about a spiritual transformation.
He says, then will I sprinkle clean water upon you?
You and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all
your idols. Will I cleanse?
You see, He says he's going to cleanse them, He's going to
restore them, He's going to gather them.
And then he gives them one of the most hope filled promises in
all of Scripture there in verse #26 a new heart also will I give
you, and a new spirit will I put within you.
And I will take away the Stony heart out of your flesh.
And I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put in my
spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye
shall keep my judgments and do them.
God was saying to them, your greatest need is not a new
location. Your greatest need is a new
heart. Your greatest need is not
improved circumstances. Your greatest need is an inward
transformation. One of the greatest dangers in
the Christian life is not necessarily always open
rebellion, although that is a danger.
And there are some young people, there are some old people and
everybody in between who are living in open rebellion against
God even in, even in a, in a, in a Baptist Church.
But many times the greatest danger in a Christian life is
not open rebellion. It's a hardened heart, and a
hard heart can still sit in church.
A hard heart can still sing hymns.
A hard heart can still carry a Bible and can still dress up and
and do all the things and even no doctrine.
But somewhere along the way, that tenderness toward God
disappears. A hard heart resists the
conviction that God brings through through the Word of God
and through the messages that are being preached.
A hard heart excuses sin. A hard heart grows cold toward
God, but God specializes in doing what people cannot do.
He can take a heart of stone and he can make it soft again.
God's promise in Ezekiel 36 is not just behavior modification.
He didn't, he's not saying I'll teach you how to act better.
He said, I'll give you a new heart.
And what I've seen over the years, and it's, it's a danger
even in even in this church, is that it becomes very easy to
learn how to play the game. You know, it becomes very easy
to let your heart get hard while making it appear soft.
And a lot of us have, have, have, have mastered that
technique, right? We let bitterness get in.
We let pride get in. We lose our sensitivity to the
preaching and to God's word. We get into a certain point in
our walk with Christ, and then we dig our heels in and we
defiantly tell him that we're not going any farther.
And we cover all that hardness under a soft layer of a smile
because I'm here, right? I brought my Bible this morning,
right? I dressed up for church, right?
Everybody, everybody knows to me, knows me to be a good
Christian, right? But inside the heart is hard.
And we can we we can learn how so well to play that game,
especially if you've been in church for any length of time.
Religion can clean the outside, but only God can soften the
inside. Alexander McLaren, in talking
about this passage, said this. There are so there are no
sentimental illusions about the grim facts of humanity here.
Superficial views of sin and rose tinted fancies about human
nature will not admit the truth of the scriptural doctrine of
sinfulness and alienation from God.
They diagnosed the disease superficially and therefore do
not know how to cure it. The Bible can venture to give
full weight to the gravity of the sickness because it knows
the remedy. No surgery, but gods can perform
that operation of extracting the Stony heart and inserting a
heart of flesh. No system which cannot do that
can do what men want. The Gospel alone deals
thoroughly with man's ills. See, a soft heart is not
produced by your efforts. It's produced by the work of
God. But you have to let him.
You have to let him. I want to take a few minutes
this morning to preach to you about a soft heart.
What is required if we are going to have a soft heart?
Heart towards the things of God, toward the toward the conviction
of God's Word and God's message, a soft heart.
Let's talk about that for a few minutes this morning after we
have a word of prayer. Father, again, we thank you so
much for your goodness to us. Thank you for allowing us to be
here together this morning. It's no accident that you have
everybody that's here this morning sitting right here under
the sound of my voice and under the Word of God this morning.
God, may you help every one of us to evaluate ourselves.
See where we are in light of God's Word.
See where we are in light of God's holiness and evaluate
whether we have a heart that's that that's getting hard, or a
heart that is already hard, or a heart that's soft and tender
toward the things of God. May you help us this morning to
make the decisions that are necessary to be where You want
us to be. Thank you again for all you do
for us in Jesus name. Amen #1A soft heart, first of
all, requires dependence. A soft heart lives in daily
dependence upon Jesus Christ. No, perhaps you're sitting here
this morning, you're fighting a battle in your heart.
You know that you're not where you should be or in many cases
where you want to be. And I say this all the time, you
are as close to God right now as you want to be.
Because if you really wanted to be right with God, you would set
aside the sin. You would set aside the things
that are keeping you from having that relationship with God.
But I think all of us would say, no, I, I want to grow closer to
Christ in my relationship with him.
And maybe you're sitting here and you know you're not where
you should be, but sometimes you get too prideful to admit it in
the open. So you sitting there thinking, I
can handle this. I can, I can get it figured out.
I know how to live this life. It'll just take a little bit of
time. I'll fake it until I finally
figure out how to have V1 of these days.
I'll have victory. And you just live in that defeat
and you live in that, in that hardness of your heart because
you're trying to do it all in your own strength.
That's the tell tale sign of a hard heart.
Many Christians try to live the Christian life through their
through through self effort. I can do this.
It's amazing. I've been for 2345 weeks without
reading my Bible and I haven't really prayed and looked.
I, I haven't destroyed my life yet.
It's not really that difficult to do all of this on my own.
I can handle this Christian life thing.
Nobody knows that I haven't read my Bible.
Nobody knows that I've got bitterness in my heart.
Nobody knows that the that the pride has welled up so much in
there because they can't see it. But look, nobody knows any
different. It's not that difficult.
I can do this on my own. And so they begin to rely on on
yesterday's experience. They rely on yesterday's prayer
time. They rely on yesterday's
victory. But the Christian life was never
designed to be lived in your own power, independently of God's
power. They might work for a little
while because you've done it for so long that you've learned how
to to play the game, but eventually it's going to run
out. Eventually it's going to show
itself. Eventually you're going to get
to the point where you're you're farther down than you ever
thought you'd be and now you're stuck in a big hole.
Marie Shipley, he died in 1899, but he said this.
We may have wanted a clear and mental conception of how we are
delivered, but I've learned that I have greater strength and
victory by realizing Christ as my present Savior this moment
and then the next moment without thinking how it is.
So not relying on thought, but on Him not taking up, as it
were, a sponge full of water in the morning to last through the
day, but realizing Him as the living spring in my heart moment
by moment, delivering me from this little temper or that great
temperature temptation. And that's exactly the way that
we ought to be living our life. Turn over to John chapter 15.
I'm not going to take the time to read the whole passage.
I want to just read one verse to you this morning.
But the whole passage is talking.
I think the whole passage kind of hinges on this one verse here
in John chapter 15. But verse #5 John chapter 15 and
verse #5 the Bible says this. I am the vine, Ye are the
branches. He that abideth in me, and I in
him the same bringeth forth much fruit.
For without me ye can do nothing.
That doesn't mean that you can do some things and be all right
with it. No, he said, without me ye can
do nothing. A soft heart stays near the
vine. So many Christians are trying to
survive spiritually on yesterday's filling.
He said, you know, you wake up and you get that one sponge full
of water and you think that's going to last you throughout the
day. They they got wet ones, but now
they're dry again because they're not abiding in Christ
moment by moment. Jesus never intended for us to
carry enough grace for the weak. He intended us.
He intended for us to walk with him step by step by step by
step. The softened heart is not
self-sufficient. It is Savior dependent.
I read a story about a famous tightrope Walker in the 1800s by
the name of Charles Blondin, and he became known for crossing
over the Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
I don't think you can get away with that now.
But he used to do that and thousands of people would gather
to watch him do just just unbelievable feats.
He would, he would cross blindfolded.
He would push a wheelbarrow across.
He would carry things across the rope.
And at one point he was he was performing for thousands of
people that were standing there at the at the top of the falls.
And he had just walked across that rope with a wheelbarrow.
And of course, everybody cheered, wow, what a what a
great feat. And he turned to the crowd and
he said, do you think I could put a person in this wheelbarrow
and walk across? Then they said, oh, absolutely.
We've seen you do all these things.
You just walked there. Absolutely you can walk across
with a wheelbarrow. And they said, all right, who
wants to get in? And the crowd went silent.
See, they believed in his ability, but trusting in him was
completely different when they had to climb in.
That's the Christian life. A lot of people believe, Oh,
Jesus Christ has the power to save me.
He has the power to give me strength.
He can guide me. He can sustain me.
He can do all these things. But day after day, they try to
carry themselves spiritually. They they'll trust Christ for
eternity, but they won't trust him for Monday morning, right?
And Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning and all the
rest of the week, Jesus never intended for us to wheel
ourselves across the Christian life.
John chapter 15 teaches abiding, not striving.
It's not you doing that work yourself.
It is you abiding in Christ. And as you abide in him, he's
the vine. You're the branch.
You're connected to, to the to what gives you the life that you
have Without me, you can do nothing, can you?
What is a branch that's not connected to A to a tree?
It's a stick, right? And it's dead, right?
You go pick up the sticks in the yard and you burn them because
that's what a branch that's not connected to the tree is.
And there's a lot of little sticks walking around pretending
to be a branch. And those that have the eyes to
see can tell that you're not a stick.
They can tell that you're not a branch.
They can tell you're a stick because you're not connected to
the vine. But you think because I look
like a branch, because I have all the characteristics of a
branch, but you're a stick. No, the, the, the, the branch is
connected to the vine and it's abiding in Christ.
What I want you to understand in this first point is that you
have to come to the realization that you cannot do it on your
own. I hope that everybody in here
has a desire to not have a hard heart.
I hope that everybody in here has a desire to have a soft
heart. But I'm not under any illusion.
I don't I, I would never be able to give you a percentage of how
many people sitting in here have a hard heart.
But I know that it's, it's probably more than 1015, twenty,
30% of people, right? Because if you have a soft
heart, everything, everything is open to God, right?
If you have anything that you're not willing to surrender to him,
then your heart is not soft the way that he wants it to be soft.
If you have not surrendered to Him, then you have hard places
in your heart, if not a hard heart completely.
You'll never get victory over sin on your own.
You will never be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ on
your own. You will never walk in the
Spirit on your own. You will never have the power to
do God's work on your own. And on your own, you will
utterly fail in this Christian life.
So our goal, our job, if, if God is going to use you, you must
remove the dependence on yourself and everything you know
about the Christian life. And you must place your complete
dependence upon Jesus Christ. And so I say first of all, that
a soft heart requires dependence, but #2A soft heart
requires death. A soft heart requires death.
A soft heart dies daily to self. There are two great obstacles to
a spirit filled life and the first obstacle is sin.
I'll go back to Ezekiel chapter 36.
I should have asked you to keep your finger there.
But sin is the hard ground that often does not allow the seed of
God's Word to be planted in a way that allows it to grow.
And it may not always be outward sin, a sin that that is obvious,
like pornography or anger or or bitterness or bad attitude.
It may not be one of those things that everybody looks on
the outside and says, obviously there's a problem.
There may not be one of those. But the root of a hard heart
very often is pride. It's pride that says, well,
you're just a pastor. You can't tell me what to do.
I don't have to read God's Word if I don't feel like it.
I don't have to follow it if I don't feel like it.
It's pride that says in your heart, come and make me do this,
or come in and make me stop doing this.
It's pride and sin that says, I've taken as many steps as I'm
going to take. Let me just go back to Egypt
where everything was comfortable and you end up living in the
wilderness of desperation. Not yet back in Egypt where you
can completely indulge in your sin, but certainly not living
the victorious Christian life and enjoying the blessings of
the promised land. And so for years and years and
years, you wander in the wilderness, always wanting to go
back to Egypt, always hoping that maybe someday you'll get to
the Promised land. But you spend 40 years living in
a dry, dusty spiritual life because of foolish pride.
There is no salvation and there's no sanctification
without repentance. In fact, right there in that
passage in Ezekiel chapter 36 and verse #31 then shall you
remember your own evil ways and your doings that were not good
and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your
iniquities and for your abominations.
See repentance is to acknowledge your evil ways before God.
And most of us want to just call it a a little white liar, just a
it's just a small sin. It's it's not really that big of
a deal, but when you realize that even the little small sins
in the little white lies or what put Jesus Christ and the cross,
you will loathe your sin. You will loathe yourself.
It's repentance is to acknowledge that I am not
righteous and I am not deserving.
I am deserving of God's judgment.
It's as he says here to loathe yourselves in your own sight for
your iniquities in your abominations.
We can see example of that in the in the prodigal son, and I
don't want to take the time to to to look at it.
But in Luke chapter 15, he said I have sinned against heaven.
He said, and against you. He's talking to his father.
Of course he had sinned against his father, but his first
recognition was that he had sinned against God.
The second greatest obstacle to the Spirit filled life is self.
And I suppose that the last point could have very easily
gone with this one. But the root of sin is pride,
and the root of pride is self. Evan Hopkins quoting Romans 725
said this. So then with the mind, I myself
serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
And then he said this. The I myself is one thing, but
the Christ life is another. There are multitudes of
Christians who are living the I Myself life.
They know what pardon is. They know what it is to come to
the fountain. They know what it is to look to
Jesus Christ in times of difficulty and perplexity and to
come back again to Him with their guilt and get forgiven.
But they are living the I Myself life instead of the Christ life.
The solution to those great obstacles of sin and self is
surrender. There's many Christians who have
received forgiveness and they're saved, but they don't know
surrender. They've trusted Christ for
salvation and they may have given up a few things that God
has asked them to give up, but they still live every day
controlled by self will and controlled by self pity or self
promotion or self-reliance. The I myself is exhausting
because self was never meant to carry the Christian life.
And so many people get so discouraged in the Christian
life because they're trying to do it on their own.
They get so they they get so weary of living the Christian
life because it's just so difficult to be a Christian.
It's just so difficult to live in this wicked world and to and
to really do what's right. Not if you're connected to the
vine, not if you are abiding in Christ, not if you are
surrendered to him. It's not hard to stand up to the
things that that the world is promoting.
It's not hard to stand up to the wickedness in the world.
It's not hard to put those things aside.
It's not hard to truly want to be holy.
Not if you're truly surrendered. The reason it's hard is because
you're still trying to do it yourself.
You're still relying on yourself.
You're still trying to hold on to the things that you just
won't let go of when you surrender to God.
It's not hard if you find yourself struggling every single
day to live the Christian life. And oh man, I failed again.
Oh man, I messed up again. God, I'm sorry, it's me again.
Please forgive me. If you find yourself in that
situation, there's probably one reason why.
It's because you are not surrendered to God.
You're trying to do it on your own.
A soft heart is a surrendered heart.
Luke Chapter 9 and verse 23. If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me
that word daily. The Christian life is not a life
of a dramatic surrender and then independence afterward.
It is continual surrender, continual surrender every day.
Paul said I die daily. I wake up in the morning and my
life is yours to control. I give you my heart and my soul.
I'll seek your will. Never mind, right?
That's daily surrender. Andrew Murray illustrated this
beautifully. He said this someone said to me
yesterday when talking of these things.
And must we then die every day? As if the thought was, is it not
enough to die once for all with Jesus in order to live the
resurrection life? My brother would that I could
help you to see that the death of Christ is a thing for every
day, as really as His life is. They are inseparable.
I cannot make it plainer than by pointing you to some splendid
oak tree. Where was that oak born?
In a grave. The acorn was pushed under the
ground. It had its grave there.
And in that grave it sprouted and sent its buds upward in that
tree. I ask you, was it only one day
that it stood in that grave? No.
That oak stood for 100 years, but it stood every day in that
grave in that place of death. And in that place of death it
has found its life and its beauty.
See, that's, that's the, the oak draws life from the very place
where the acorn died. The acorn doesn't go into the
ground and die and then walk out and say, well, I died and
nothing happened, right. The acorn stays dead and because
it died, that's where the life comes from.
And in the very much the same way a believer finds spiritual
beauty in the place of surrender, You don't die to
yourself once and and then come up out of the grave and say, I
don't know what happened. I, I surrendered yesterday and
nothing crazy happened. God didn't do anything wonderful
in my life. I don't, I don't see what
surrender is going to do because you got to stay in the grave.
You got to stay dead to yourself.
We want the resurrection life without crucifixion.
We want victory without death to self.
We want the crown without the cross.
And you can't have it both ways. The point, we must come to the
point where our heart is soft, says Lord, not my will, but thy
will be done. Are you surrendered to God?
All right now? I'm not just asking if you're
surrendered to God's will for your life.
Most of you are probably doing what God wants you to do for
your life as a whole. I'm asking you, are you
surrendered today? Did you surrender yesterday?
Will you surrender tomorrow? Because that's what's required
of us if we are going to have a soft heart that God can use.
So a soft heart requires dependence.
A soft heart requires death, but number 3A soft heart requires
devotion. Turn over to Isaiah 55.
See, one of the quickest ways for a heart to harden is
disappointment with God. Sometimes we obey God because we
expect the immediate results from Him.
All right, that happens a lot of times when people are newly
saved, they start making changes and they see God bless them or
somebody that's that's been away from the Lord for a while.
And so they, they start coming back to God and they start, they
start really, really, really getting right with God and they
start getting the things out of their life that need to be
gotten out. And they start putting the
things into their life that need to be put in.
And they start seeing God bless them because of those choices
and those decisions that they're making.
And then they make a change and they don't see as much of A
blessing from it, so they start to go back on what they
previously had been convicted about and made changes about.
And it can take place over a few years, but the heart begins to
grow hard. We expect immediate healing
because I came to God and I asked him to heal me, or I asked
him to heal somebody, and I didn't see any answers.
Or we expect immediate success or immediate answers or
immediate fulfillment of our dreams.
And when we don't see it happen, we begin to give up on what we
started on with God. But God often works very
differently than what we expect in Isaiah chapter 55 and verse
#8 The Bible says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Stuart Holden said this. I know a man, I have him in mind
tonight, who, being disappointed in, disappointed in his
experience, nervously begins to pity himself.
The man to whom self consequences everything.
When God contradicts his expectations and longing, his
faith is staggered and his backsliding begins.
I know the man is willing to accept the shallow answer to a
great question. The man to whom disappointment
becomes disbelief. The man who measures God in the
tiny scales of his own self consciousness.
Many a one such has gone from revival services to be utterly
disheartened, utterly despondent, and ultimately A
deserter. He has never learned to say but
if not, my God, but if not. That phrase comes from Daniel
chapter 3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
were forced to bow before the king, and they determined that
they were not going to do that. And so the music played and they
didn't bow. And the king sent his
messengers, and he said, maybe you didn't hear what you're
supposed to do when you hear the sound of that music.
You're supposed to bow down. And they said, we're not going
to bow down at all. You can play all the music you
want to. We're not going to bow down.
And Daniel chapter 3 and verse #17 The King's men said, well,
you know what the punishment for that is, right?
You get thrown in the fiery furnace.
They said this, If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to
deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will
deliver us out of thy hand, O King.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not
serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou has set
up. That's the language of a soft
heart. That's the language of devotion.
I'm not serving God for what I can get out of Him.
I'm not serving God because of what He gives me.
I'm not serving God because of the benefits that come from
serving Him. I'm serving God out of a heart
of love. I'm serving God because I want
to live for Him. I'm serving God because I want
to be right with Him. I'm serving God because this is
only temporary. There is eternity coming, and I
want to be able to stand before Him and tell Him I did
everything I could, whether He blessed me or not, whether I
felt like I was I was mistreated or not, whether I felt like I
had everything that God promised that He was going to give me or
not. I'll keep serving him.
That's devotion, and that only comes from a soft heart.
So many people are only willing to serve God when everything is
going their way. Somebody with a hard heart
follows God only as long as God cooperates with His plan, As
long as it, as long as everything goes my way, then
I'll serve God. As long as everybody does
everything that I want to do, then I'll serve God.
But as soon as it starts to turn a little bit and and I don't get
what I want, as soon as it starts to turn a little bit and
I don't see God blessing me the way that I think he should, As
long as the conviction I'm feeling doesn't interfere with
what I already think, long as it doesn't make me do something
that I feel is uncomfortable, then I'm good.
But the minute God asked me to do something that I don't want
to do, the heart begins to grow cold.
A soft heart says, even if the prayer is not answered.
A soft heart says, even if the dream dies.
The soft heart says, even if the furnace grows hotter.
The soft heart says, even if it's not what I had hoped or
planned. The soft heart says, even if it
pulls me out of my comfort zone. The soft heart says I will still
surrender and I will still trust in Him.
If you only follow Christ as long as he fulfills your dreams,
then eventually you're going to stop following him.
Often the way God works is this. He gives you a dream and you
pursue that passionately and it crashes and burns and you
realize that He was the point all along and begin pursuing Him
instead of the dream. And then he gives you something
deeper and something better than you originally had ever
imagined. But many never make it past the
but if not stage. They become bitter instead of
broken, become cynical instead of surrendered.
Their disappointment hardens them.
But a soft heart keeps trusting even when it doesn't understand.
William Carey spent years in India translating the Bible into
the local languages. It was very painstaking work.
This was long before computers. This was long before printing
was easy. Every page had to be handwritten
and then edited by hand. And after years of working on
these Bibles, one night a fire broke out in the print shop and
it destroyed all of his manuscripts, everything that he
had spent all of those years working on, all of his notes,
all of his translation work, all of the dictionaries.
Years of effort gone in just a couple hours.
And William Carey, one of his Co workers that was there, said he
stood there quietly just looking at everything.
Everything was just in ashes at that point.
There was nothing left, nothing that he could even salvage.
And he simply said this the Lord has laid me low that I may look
more simply to him. And then he said, we have all
the work to do again. No bitterness, no quitting, no
accusations. Think about that.
He had prayed, he had sacrificed, he had obeyed.
He was on the mission field. He was doing God's work.
He was doing what God had told him to do.
God allowed the very thing that William Carey had poured his
life into to be reduced to ashes, but he refused to let
disappointment become unbelief. He essentially said, Lord, I
thought you would do it this way.
But if not, I'll trust you and I'll keep serving.
Faith is not just believing that God can.
Faith is continuing when God doesn't do what we expected.
William Carey's faith wasn't built on God protecting the
manuscripts. It was built on God Himself.
And that's what our faith is needs to be built on as well.
Now, if you will go back to Ezekiel chapter 36, a soft heart
requires dependence. A soft heart requires death,
soft heart requires devotion, and lastly a soft heart requires
decision. Verse #36 The Bible says this.
Then the heathen that are left around about you shall know that
I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant that that was
desolate. I, the Lord have spoken it, and
I will do it. Thus saith the Lord God.
I will yet for this be inquired of by the House of Israel to do
it for them. I will increase them with men
like a flock. But back in verse 26 he says
this, a new heart also will I give you, and the new Spirit
will I put within you. And I will take away the Stony
heart out of your flesh, And I will give you a heart of flesh,
and I will put my spirit within you, cause you to walk in my
statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.
God says, I'll take your Stony heart away and I'll give you a
soft heart. The Stony heart is cold, it's
resistant, it's self reliant, it's prideful, it's easily
offended, it's easily discouraged, it's very quick to
quit. Soft heart though, is tender
toward God. A soft heart is yielded to God.
It's dependent upon Christ. It's willing to die to self.
It's faithful through disappointment.
Question I'm asking you this morning is not are you
religious? It's not.
Have you figured out how to weigh?
Have you figured out a way to make everybody think you are
doing things the right way? Not asking you if you're good
enough? I'm not asking you if you are
better than a majority of the people in your life.
Question is, is your heart soft before God?
Is your heart soft before God? Answer that question honestly.
Is your heart soft? Maybe somewhere along the way,
pain hardened to you, or disappointment hardened to you,
or pride hardened to you, or sin hardened to you, or unanswered
prayer hardened you. There's any number of things
that that we allow in that that starts to harden our heart.
But the God who removed the Stony hearts in Ezekiel's day
can still soften hearts today. He can make you tender again.
He can make you trusting again. He can make you surrendered
again. And the softest hearts are not
the hearts that never suffer. They're the hearts that suffered
deeply in some cases, but they stayed yielded to God anyway.
Many people want the blessings of God without the
transformation of God. We want peace without surrender.
We want victory without obedience.
We want changed circumstances without a changed heart.
God's promise does not stop in verse #26 look at verse 27.
I will put in My spirit within you and cause you to walk in my
statutes, and you shall keep my judgments and do them.
Look at that progression. Verse 26, God gives a new heart.
Verse 27, God gives a new spirit, and that new heart and
that new spirit produces a new walk.
You shall keep my judgments. You shall walk in my statutes,
and you shall keep my judgments and do them.
See, here's what you have to understand.
A soft heart is not the finish line.
A soft heart is the starting point.
If all you're trying to do is have a soft heart, it's not
going to get you very far. It's the starting place.
When God softens your heart, convictions become conviction
from from the preaching of God's Word and conviction from the
Word of God becomes welcome instead of resisted.
When God softens your heart, obedience becomes joyful instead
of burdensome. When God softens your heart,
worship becomes real instead of just just routine, just
something that you do because this is what I do every Sunday.
When when God softens your heart, holiness becomes desired
instead of avoided. And that's what I that's the
point that I was making earlier. When you are surrendered to God,
when you have a soft heart, when he has all of you, it's not hard
to live the Christian life. It's not hard to say yes to him.
We sang that song. I'll say yes, Lord, yes to your
will and to your way. But will you really say yes?
Not if you have a hard heart. God never intended us for us to
simply look changed. He changes us from the inside
out. And maybe your heart has been
hardened by disappointment or sin or busyness or hurt or just
time. Over time, you've allowed your
heart to grow hard. But the invitation in this
passage is not just try harder. Get out there and and see if you
can make something happen. Oh, the invitation is let God do
open heart surgery on you. Let him come in and change the
heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
Let him take that bitterness. Let him take that pride.
Let him take that sin. Let him take that unsurrended
thing in your life and let him have it.
And he'll take that hard heart, and he'll turn it into a heart
of flesh. And he'll begin to use you, and
he'll begin to mold you into exactly what he wants for you
instead of what you want for yourself.
And you'll find out that the heart that God moulds is going
to be far better than a heart of stone that just will not be
moved. Only God can remove stone.
Only God can breathe life. Only God can place his spirit
within you. And when He does, your life is
going to begin to show what your heart has become.
But that's why I say that a soft heart requires decision, because
that's a decision that you have to make.
Well, you allow God to do that work in your heart.
That's the decision this morning.
Will you allow God to work in your heart?
I'm done, but I want you to get this.
A soft heart receives God's touch and a spirit filled life
reveals God's work. There's so much left in this
passage, but notice what happened when God changes the
heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
Verse 27 The Bible says you'll walk in his statutes and you
shall keep my judgments and do them.
Verse 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your
Father's, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
You're going to enjoy fellowship with God.
Verse 29 You'll have that fruitfulness and that growth.
I will also save you from all your uncleanness, and I will
call for the corn, and we'll increase it, and lay no famine
upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of
the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive
no more reproach of famine among the heathen.
Verse 33 It says that will be a testimony to others.
Thus saith the Lord God, in the day that I shall have cleansed
you from all your iniquities, I will also cause you to dwell in
the cities, and the wastes shall be builded, and the desolate
land shall be tilled, whereas I lay desolate in the sight of all
that passed by. And they shall say, This land
that was desolate has become like the Garden of Eden, and the
waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced and are
inhabited. Then the heathen that are left
round about, you shall know that I the Lord, build the ruined
places and plant that that was desolate.
I, the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.
Soft hearts obey. Soft hearts bear fruit.
Soft hearts point others back to Christ.
When God softens a heart, He changes a life, and change lives
become a testimony that can be used for the glory of God.
What about your heart? What about your heart?
Do you have a soft heart this morning?
Or if you allowed it to become hard, maybe it's not.
Maybe it's not an entire heart of stone, But you've allowed
some things to get in there that have kept you from being
surrendered the way that God wants you to be.
What about your heart? Is it soft?
Is it tender? Is it surrendered?
Is it pliable? Can God use it?
Can God do whatever He wants to with you?
Until it is, you're going to find that you're just spinning
your wheels. I can't get out of this rut, and
I don't know why I can't get out of the rut because you have a
heart of stone and it's not surrender to God.
What about your heart? Let's pray.
Father, again, we thank you so much for your goodness to us.
Thank you for the message that we find here in Ezekiel 36.
Thank you so much that you are willing to work on us, to not
give up on us even when we give up on you.
God, may you help all of us to have soft, tender, moldable,
surrendered hearts. God, where our hearts have grown
hard, may you help us to surrender that to you.
Thank you again for all that you do for us in Jesus name, Amen.
If you would please stand at your seats with your heads bowed
and your eyes closed, I want to give you an opportunity to
respond to the message as God spoken to your heart.
As the piano plays the invitations open, you come.
Amen. Well, thank you for being here
this morning. And I know that there's a lot of
places you could have chosen to bend besides here and you came,
so I appreciate it and I trust that it was a help to you
tonight. We'll be back here at 6:00.
We'll have our communion service and we'll do all of our regular
regular singing and all of that, but with a focus and a mind to
remember what Christ did for us. So think about that this
afternoon. Make sure your heart's prepared
and ready for that tonight, and we'll be back here and looking
forward to it. Brother Brian's going to close
this out and then we'll be dismissed.
All right. That's.
Right, Father, I thank you for the state giving us, thank you
for the opportunity and privilege have to be in your
house today and God the responsibility that comes with
it. I thank you for the message that
we heard today and I do pray that you would help each one of
us as you worked in our hearts this morning to gather.
We wouldn't just want to make some reformation in our heart,
but that we would want you to give us a new heart, that one
that is totally dependent on you and one that's surrendered to
you and God surrendering daily. I pray God that you would help
us as Christians never to get in that groove where we just begin
to act and, and to act the part and not actually surrender our
hearts and be the part. And so God, I just pray that as
we heard this morning, you would that our prayer and our desire
would be for you to give us a new heart and that we would be
asking you for that each and every day.
Got to pray that you would just be with us this afternoon as we
prepare our hearts for the communion service tonight.
I got to pray that you would meet with us tonight and just
the seriousness of of what we are doing there and remembering
your death on the cross. God, I thank you so much for
that sacrifice and I pray that you would help us never to
forget it in the busyness of of life.
And I pray that be a reminder to us this evening.
Pray that you give us a good afternoon.
In Jesus name I pray. Amen.