Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Hard Hearts.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel 36:26

One day Jesus was in the synagogue when a man walked in who had a diseased hand. Jesus asked the man to stand up and he then asked the asked the leaders of the church, "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days or to do evil? To save life, or to kill?" But they didn't answer him.

Jesus looked on them with "...anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts." He then healed the man and the Pharisees took counsel with the Herodians on how they might kill Jesus. Mark 3:1-6

",,,this is a heart hardened by sin, and confirmed in it; destitute of spiritual life and motion; senseless and stupid, stubborn and inflexible; on which no impressions are made; and which remains hard and impenitent: now this is in "the flesh", in corrupt nature; and this hardness of heart is natural to men; and all who have it are after the flesh, or are carnal; and it requires omnipotence to remove it; it cannot be taken out by men of themselves: nor by ministers of the word; nor by the bare mercies and judgments of God; but by the powerful and efficacious grace of God; giving repentance unto life; working faith in the soul, to look to a crucified Christ; and shedding abroad the love of God in the heart, which softens and melts it; all which is done by the Spirit, and frequently by means of the word."
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Jesus was grieved (heartache, sorrow, sad) and angry (offended, indignant) at the response of the Pharisees. I like the way the Pulpit Commentary explains Jesus' anger.

He looked round about on them with anger. He was indignant at their blindness of heart, and their unbelief, which led them to attack the miracles of mercy wrought by him on the Sabbath day as though they were a violation of the law of the Sabbath. We see here how plainly there were in Christ the passions and affections common to the human nature, only restrained and subordinated to reason. Hero is the difference between the anger of fallen man and the anger of the sinless One. With fallen man, auger is the desire of retaliating, of punishing those by whom you consider yourself unjustly treated. Hence, in other men, anger springs from self-love; in Christ it sprang from the love of God. He loved God above all things; hence he was distressed and irritated on account of the wrongs done to God by sins and sinners. So that his anger was a righteous zeal for the honour of God; and hence it was mingled with grief, because, in their blindness and obstinacy, they would not acknowledge him to be the Messiah, but misrepresented his kindnesses wrought on the sick on the sabbath day, and found fault with them as evil. Thus our Lord, by showing grief and sorrow, makes it plain that his anger did not spring from the desire of revenge. He was indeed angry at the sin, while he grieved over and with the sinners, as those whom he loved, and for whose sake he came into the world that he might redeem and save them. 
Pulpit Commentary

I remember when I was a young woman and first read Ezekiel 36:26. I started praying God would take my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. This verse still comes to me and I still pray for a soft heart. I know I need a new heart from God every day or my soft heart will harden.

No comments: