“And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.” (NLT)

“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (NRSVUE)

Ezekiel 36:26

• Church should be a safe place. “Any church leader who feeds themselves rather than feeding the sheep is a counterfeit shepherd. Anyone in a position of power within the body of Christ who abuses a lamb or hides the abuse done to one the Good Shepherd knows and calls by name profanes the name of God. God stands against them just as he did the shepherds in Ezekiel 34. Should not his church stand with him against such shepherds?” Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church by Diane Langberg, p.138

• The heart was considered the seat of the mind and its will, or inclinations.
• The reference to stone was not simply about the hardness, but about the weight or the heaviness.
• Exodus 7:3– קָשָׁה qashah: “To be hard, to be severe, to be difficult, to be stubborn.” Strong’s: “make grievous” : “to make difficult, to make burdensome, to show stubbornness”
• In Exodus 8:15– כָּבַד kavad: to be heavy or to be honored/great, verb form in the verse is “to make heavy”
• God made Pharaoh’s heart burdened, not hard. He allowed his heart to feel and experience the full weight, the heaviness of his choices; a chance to repent. Every verb after Ex. 7:3 is 3rd person masculine; it was Pharaoh’s choice
• No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one.  James 1:13 (NRSVUE)
• https://biblehub.com/text/ezekiel/36-26.htm
• בְּקִרְבְּכֶ֑ם bə·qir·bə·ḵem: Within the midst of you, the interior of the body, the seat of thoughts and emotions
• קֶרֶב  qereb: midst, inner part, inward part, among, within
• נָתַן natan: Strong’s: to give, used with greatest latitude of application
• בָּשָׂר basar: Strong’s: flesh, by extension the body
• “A new heart” is not putting something there that wasn’t there before, but removing what was making the heart heavy or burdensome; what was weighing the heart down.

Let Jesus remove what is weighing down your heart.