Ezekiel 36:26

But there is a further and clearer proof that it has not yet been fulfilled... Was the Jew — let alone all Israel — cleansed from all his filth then? The book of Malachi tells a different story, and the Lord Himself proved it when He came in person. What is promised here, when it is fulfilled, is nothing less than the new birth of the Jewish people. God will give them a new heart and a new spirit, take away the heart of stone, and give a heart of flesh. He will put His Spirit within them, and cause that they shall walk in holy obedience, they His people, and He their God.

In their hearts, the people of Israel were much like the stone the law was written on. It fits that God wrote the law on tablets of stone. You can smash a stone tablet, but you cannot stretch it or bend it like rubber... Israel proved itself to have a heart of stone. There was no surface left to write on. So in this book the Lord says, in effect, "I am going to make Israel new. I am going to work by My Spirit, so that they will be able to receive what I will write in a coming day."

The change Ezekiel predicts goes right down to the foundation. It gives a person a new heart and a new spirit. Then he wants what is good, and he walks in obedience. Verse 27 shows this. No wonder the Lord Jesus called it a new birth. It does not adjust the nature a person already has. It gives a nature that is completely new. The new heart is "given." The new spirit is "put within you." It is to start again from the very first.

In Ezekiel 36, the first step is the removal of the stony heart, which is replaced by a heart of flesh. It is that which is impressionable and on which the Spirit of God writes.

The heart of giving your life to God is that it must be willing... that surrender must come from the heart, or it is not surrender at all... "And I will give you a new heart," says the Lord. But the new heart He gives is a heart that freely chooses to serve its Master.

Did you notice in that passage in Ezekiel, how God says, "I will," "I will"? It is God speaking of what He will do of Himself and for Himself. It goes with a new covenant. God is no longer demanding what people ought to be for Him. He is saying what He will do for them Himself, and for His own glory.

But though the Lord could do no more for Israel, He can still do the wonderful work of turning their hearts to Himself, for His own sake... "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name." (v. 22.) "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." (v. 32.)

Verse 27 speaks of "My Spirit" which is to be put within born-again Israel in that day. Some Bibles print it without a capital letter, but it should have one. It means the Spirit of God, and it is different from "a new spirit" in the verse before.

The law proved that they were beyond correction. In the same way we learn that "nothing good dwells in me (us)" and that "sin dwells within me (us)" (Rom. 7:17, 20). Our hearts, then, are not less stony than theirs. God must act before a heart can take an impression. This He has done in new birth.