Sermon Central
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Extreme Makeover - Heart Transplant Series
Contributed by Scott Kircher on Jun 16, 2008 (message contributor)
Summary: If God were going to make us over, He would start with a heart transplant
Extreme Makeover
Heart Transplant
We need a heart transplant because…
Without one we will not be able to Love God
Without one we will not be able to Love People
Without one, we will not be able to Live
Slide 1
If you have seen TV at all in the past several years, you can see that reality shows have taken over much of the airwaves.
There is
Survivor,
Big Brother,
The Apprentice,
What not to wear,
Who wants to marry a Millionaire,
The Bachelor,
The Bachelorette,
The Swan,
Wife Swap,
Nanny 911,
Super Nanny,
Fear Factor,
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,
Extreme Makeover
All of these shows try and take real people and either
put them in a different environment (ala Survivor, Big Brother) or change something about them (What not to wear?, Extreme makeover.).
The purpose is to do one of 2 things.
Slide 2
Reveal what a person is truly like inside.
Change some of the externals of a person.
Or in other words,
Slide 3
They expose the flaws on the inside or
Slide 4
Cover over the flaws on the outside
But they don’t really do anything to change the person.
Now these things are not bad.
Sometimes we need our flaws on the inside revealed or
it is helpful to fix our flaws on the outside
But if God had a reality show, Do you think He would be interested in doing those things or would it be something else.
To answer that, I think we must know a couple things about God.
First God already knows what is inside a person. It doesn’t need to be revealed to Him
Second God is really not that interested in changing only the external appearance of anything.
What God is really interested in is doing some major reconstructive surgery that changes us inside which will also have effects on the outside.
God wants to do an Extreme Makeover on you from the inside out.
Slide 5
If God wanted to do an extreme makeover on us,
What would he do?
Where would he start?
Over the next several weeks we are going to be doing a series entitled Extreme Makeover: God Edition.
We are going to look at some things that God would change in each of us.
Some of the surgeries that I believe God would do to enhance us are the following:
Ear augmentation – Expand our ears
Tongue resection – shorten our tongue
Lasik surgery to make your vision Cross-Eyed
To name a few of the topics we will be covering
But I believe the place he would start is with a heart transplant,
Slide 6
so that is where I want to start this week.
A heart Transplant is essential to all the other work God would want to do on us. Without a heart transplant, the other elements of the makeover will be rejected by our bodies.
We are going to be looking at a number of different scriptures today, but I want to start with a verse in Ezekiel 36.
In Ezekiel, the Lord is speaking through the prophet to the nation of Israel about bringing them back from their rebellion so God can bring glory to Himself.
To do that, to change them, God tells them that He will give them a new heart.
In Ezekiel 36:26, the Lord says
Slide 7
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.
God is in the business of doing Extreme Makeovers and He wants to start with your heart. Why?
Because our heart is the center of who we are and
for any external thing to change,
we need to change on the inside.
Physically, why does a person get a heart transplant anyway?
Because their heart is bad.
Many times, a person does not even know they have a bad heart until it is too late.
Why do we need a heart transplant?
Everyone needs a heart transplant, because the heart we have is a heart of stone.
I want to propose 3 reasons today that each one of us need a heart transplant, and if you have never had your heart transplanted by God, you will have an opportunity to have that done at the end of the service.
The first reason that we need a heart transplant is because without one…
We will not be able to Love God
Slide 8
The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.
God needs to
circumcise our heart,
do major surgery,
