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The sermon teaches that humanity’s fall has corrupted the whole person, making moral reform and religious effort insufficient for salvation. Ezekiel’s promise is therefore not improvement but a new heart and spirit, an act of regeneration performed by God alone through sovereign grace. Spurgeon strongly emphasizes divine initiative and effectual grace while presenting this doctrine as a source of hope for sinners who hate sin and desire Christ. The proper response is repentance, prayer, rejection of personal merit, and simple trust in God’s mercy through Christ.
Theological center: Salvation requires sovereign divine regeneration because fallen humanity is totally depraved and incapable of renewing itself.
Applications: Seek God’s promised new heart · Cast yourself on God’s mercy · Trust Christ simply and implicitly · Consider human depravity
Primary texts: Ezekiel 36:26 · Psalm 51:10 · Jude 1:6
“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 an heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26 BEHOLD a wonder of divine love. When God makes His creatures, one creation He regards as sufficient, and should they lapse from the condition in which He has created them, He suffers them, as a rule, to endure the penalty of their transgression, and to abide in the place into which they are fallen. But here He makes an exception. Man, fallen man, created by his Maker, pure and holy, has willfully and wickedly rebelled against the Most High, and lost his first estate. But behold, he is to be the subject of a new creation through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Behold this and wonder! What is man compared with an angel? Is he not little and insignificant? “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” God has no mercy upon them. He made them pure and holy and they ought to have remained so, but inasmuch as they willfully rebelled, He cast them down from their shining seats forever. And without a single promise of mercy, He has bound them fast in the fetters of destiny to abide in eternal torment. But wonder, you heavens, the God who destroyed the angels stoops from His highest throne in glory, and speaks to His creature man, and thus says unto him, “Now, you have fallen from Me even as the angels did. You have grossly erred and gone astray from My ways—not for your sake do I do this, but for Mine own name’s sake—behold I will undo the mischief which your own hand has done. “I will take away that heart which has rebelled against Me. Having made you once, you have unmade yourself—I will make you over again. I will put My hand a second time to the work. Once more shall you revolve upon the pottery wheel, and I will make you a vessel of honor, fit for My gracious use. I will take away your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh. A new heart will I give you. A new spirit will I put within you.” Is not this a wonder of divine sovereignty and of infinite grace, that mighty angels should be cast into the fire forever and yet God has made a covenant with man that He will renew and restore him? And now, my dear friends, I shall attempt this morning, first of all, to show the necessity for the great promise contained in my text—that God will give us a new heart and a new spirit. And after that, I shall endeavor to show the nature of the great work which God…