Heart

Why y’all getting nervous? You’re not seeing this on TV? I used to be known as Rocky, but you know me as Pastor Steve. I can’t get this one on, so we’ll just have to… That really blows the whole point I was gonna try to make.

So you’re looking at it. This is a small gym. Some of you probably would start with just, you know, should have practiced more. And some of you are gonna put that, you know, holster that again and call it good, and then others are gonna go, “Hey baby.” That was really stupid.

No, just kidding. Just kidding. So here’s the deal. I just want to give proper credit. Shari used to be a kickboxer, and this is her stuff.

And is that cool or what? I mean, you know, Shari, I just want to come to you and have a little fun for a minute. Would you just punch this thing like… Well, wait, let’s imagine something. You can do it any way you want, sister.

Oh, try it again. And again, you’re working up a sweat. Stop it. Okay, so… So these are just a few of the many props that maybe make up for you efforts to get healthy.

All right? They might be eating habits, and they might be exercise. And in most cases, if you really want to get where you want to go from a health standpoint, it’s gonna be both. You’re gonna eat a little different. Talk to a guy at men’s roundup yesterday that’s about half of who he used to be.

And he says, “You know the deal is I gave up on poison.” And I’m thinking, “Oh gosh, how does he define poison?” Right? And you know the word he used? Sugar.

Yeah, I just stopped. Every chance I get, I pass on sugar. And he said, “My main sin was…” He didn’t call it that. My main vice was ice cream.

There’s sugar and ice cream? And what? You’re messing up. You’re wrecking my fun here at men’s roundup, you know? So he’s made some changes.

I mean, I’m not telling you who it is, but it’s somebody you know, and he’s half the guy. He’s twice the guy today, but he’s half his size. ‘Cause he gave up poison as he put it. So there’s different things we do. There’s exercise, of course, that we’re gonna get into in this series.

That begins today called simply healthy. And you can see the subtitle, “Achieving Spiritual Things.” This is not just physical health though that gets your attention, right? But we’re after optimal spiritual vitality. All right?

I avoided the word thrive because you hear that in an ad for a healthcare company in our part of the country. And all kudos to them, I’m a member. But I want it to be bigger than thrive. I want it to be vital. I want you and me to make changes.

And we’ll have opportunities throughout this series. Let me kind of set the hook a little bit for you this morning. I am hooked on a show that’s brand new to me. It’s a Netflix show called “One Hour to Save Your Life.” Anybody seen that show?

That’s cool, gotta get to tell you about it. If I’m successful, you’re gonna get hooked too. It’s been around three years, I think, three or four year show, but I’m in season one. So I just stumbled onto this thing. Somebody mentioned it.

And it’s actually a BBC production. So it comes out of England, primarily in the city or suburbs of London. And it’s where they do heroic things. They talk about and take you on the journey through through key decisions that are carried out and made by doctors in the first critical hour of emergency care. It’s an hour to save your life.

So the show captures those 60 minutes that follow the victim along in real time. So these are not reenactments. What kind of curtain hearing things happen or imagining things happen? You’re there. You’re watching what they do with a woman that has an encounter with, I believe it’s called a Laurie.

Anybody know that word? Truck, I had to look it up. I’m like a Laurie, what’s that? And she was a tourist from Germany. And she was crossing a crosswalk in a Laurie hitter.

And what unfolded was in real time, in the front row, if you can picture that. And you’re watching incredibly dramatic things take place from that major accident scene all the way. That’s called the field, by the way, in the show. And they take you all the way to the theater, which is the trauma room and whatever has to happen from there in this hour to save their life. It’s astounding.

I sound like I’m peddling a show, but it’s really grabbed my attention. And it’s raw and it’s real. And you follow them clear through all the heroic interventions in what Ted would know as a paramedic, the golden hour. I tried this with another paramedic from our church at Men’s Round Up yesterday and he goes, that’s exactly what we still call it. It’s that golden hour.

Got an hour to get it right. And it’s literally an hour where seconds count in the effort to save someone’s life. By the way, not all survive. So now I’ve got your attention about something that’s big and important. Health.

This new series, though not likely to be as heart in your throat suspenseful, it is no less in my judgment and in my read of God’s judgment, no less consequential. That big a deal. It won’t be an hour this morning. To save your life, but it’ll be a significant time in God’s word that will hopefully result in taking, maybe for some, the very first step in the direction of healthy. We’re gonna be in this series throughout the fall.

It’ll take time to unpack some and by no means all of what God puts before us in his word when it comes to how can I go from where I am ’cause that’s where you are. That’s where I am to a better place. A healthy place where we somehow, with God’s help all along the way, achieve optimal spiritual vitality. That’s where we’re heading. Starting today, we’re gonna call attention to healthy people in God’s view.

Healthy Christians and what they are, things that help us, healthy Christian is, has, and does. Would you write that down? That’s what this series is gonna be about. What does a healthy Christian have? Well, that is, what is a healthy Christian is, a healthy Christian has, and a healthy Christian does.

You hear the action there. Now, I’ve told you about an hour to save your life. Another quick story to really make what we’re about to talk about irresistible. That show was big and impactful and incredibly engaging, but about three weeks ago, everything changed for Debbie and I when we were at a boarding gate in Seattle’s airport, heading on a little getaway. We were just kind of minding our own business, waiting at the gate, suddenly with no hint that there was a problem.

We hear this desperate cry of a woman also seated at the gate next to her husband who had just begun sudden cardiac arrest. He was gone. He was gone. And without any scripting, without any rehearsal, everybody at that gate suddenly was swept up in this moment of desperate immediate action necessary or forget the hour. You won’t make the hour.

You won’t make minutes. Fairly sudden cardiac arrest. And all in this like fluid, fast moving motion, a group of men race over to that window, grab him. He was a huge man. I think four of them.

And instantly began. There was a, turns out it was a paramedic. We found out later traveling where we were going to go fishing. And he was there and did what he knows how to do and began immediately CPR compressions. And it was, I’ve been trained by one of our firefighters in our church and I paid attention, I thought, and I felt like I was ready in case something like that should happen.

And it’s like, oh my goodness. If you’ve never been in that moment, thank God for a firefighter, a paramedic or somebody that, you know, but you may have to do it anyway, not an ad for that. Here’s the deal. That went on immediately. People raced across, including myself to get the, call it the blaster.

There’s a better name. The defibrillator, right? And there’s one across the terminal there and a flight attendant grabbed it just ahead of me. And running back. They got this guy, they put a modesty curtain as they go to work.

And you see these people work. There’s paramedics coming in through the jetway. That was the quickest way. Park your fire truck and ambulance at the bottom of the stairway and make your way through that. So they’re flying in and port of Seattle paramedics come rushing through.

It was the pulling medical equipment off the airplane. In the moment, oxygen, everything. They’re hitting him three or four of the shocks. And this went on for an hour. Debbie and I are over there at one point, just praying, just quietly praying, just saying, Lord, there’s some, there’s a power and a presence that is bigger and better than everything happening here.

And we know you. Please be merciful. Please intervene powerfully in a way that you’re exalted. And we just, you know, it’s just, you know, we’re not making a scene. Everybody was just focused on this.

And they worked airport personnel, Alaska Airlines personnel, everybody going after it. And, and after probably 20 minutes or so of all of this, maybe, maybe a little longer, he survived. He survived. And, and maybe another 20 minutes, they get him finally on a gurney and up and they they wheel him right through a sort of an aisle way formed by people waiting at the gate. And we just erupted in applause.

We were just like, yes, he’s alive. Now I tell you that for a really important reason. For that man, in that moment, nothing mattered more than to get his heart going again. Nothing. You couldn’t have gone and talked to him about, hey, bro, you’re a little bigger than you should.

It’s time to lose a little weight. No, that you couldn’t, you couldn’t say, hey, you know, you weren’t really fit to fly. No, none of that. He would die before he flew without the measures taken. Nothing mattered more to that man at that moment than to have his heart started.

Same is true. This morning, as we’ll see with Ephesians 2 opened in my Bible, if you’ll find your way there. When it comes to spiritual health, would you please write this down? It’s urgently important. It starts with the heart.

God doesn’t ask you to do a thing for him. He pleads with you to open the door and let him do a thing in you. It starts with the heart. That’s what this talk is all about. When paramedics, on your way to Ephesians 2, when they arrive at a scene of a person without a pulse, they describe that scene as very grave.

Different departments announce it different ways to get the right personnel there. But that’s not unlike what the Bible’s blunt appraisal is of people without Christ. So Ephesians 2, I need to warn you, the news is not good. The news is, in fact, very bad. Not sick and injured, kind of bad.

Worse than that. D-O-A, kind of bad. Okay. Now we’re ready to read words that were read earlier by the worship team. As for you, the word of God begins in chapter two, in verse one, you were dead in your transgressions and sin, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the rulers of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who’s now at work and those who are disobedient.

Notice all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts, like the rest, like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. Well, let’s just stop and digest what we just read. Told you it’s not good news. It’s a condition from which Jesus saved us. He says it not once, verse one, but we didn’t read this far yet, verse five.

So make no mistake about it, people are not born children of God. They’re not even born spiritually alive. They did not start out spiritually alive and then died somewhere along the way. They are dead. They are D-O-A.

Or you could say D-O-D, dead on delivery. Okay. So that’s a basic Bible dogma. Here’s a second one, lest we think, yeah, I can think of people like that. Yeah, I know some folks like that.

No, you ready for this? He says, and I kind of emphasized it when we covered it. He says it twice in verse three, all of us. Do you see that? That avoids the, I know who they’re talking about.

I got a brother like that. I got a spouse like that, former spouse. No, no, it’s all, of us and he adds even as the rest or like the rest. So this condition, the Bible is saying is universal. Dead is dead and it is ubiquitous.

It’s dead everywhere. All of humanity, okay? And the consequences of this self-inflicted condition known as death, spiritual death, are catastrophic. In other words, you can’t just say, well, they’re dead. Yeah, that, unless they get alive, it’s not gonna work out so well.

No, that’s why words in verse three are supposed to jerk us right out of the chair. Like the rest, because of their deadness, they are by nature. That’s what I said, you’re dead on delivery. They are by nature, what? What’s it say there?

The consequences of being spiritually dead are consequences that are, the word wrath, I can’t possibly condense it. It’s a horrible place to be in, in a condition that you and I find ourselves in as spiritually dead. Now, let me just stop and say, as little cameras were rolling, you can talk about an accident scene. I mean, this is not a good scene. I was thinking about this recently, maybe you saw the footage of a head-on collision in New Mexico between a Greyhound bus and a tractor trailer.

And when the images came out, your sense was probably like mine, if you happen to see that, it was just last week. It was horrible, I think eight or more people died on the scene and others maybe since then. But it was this image that you had no one could survive that scene. No one could come out of that crash alive. And that would be true spiritually speaking as well.

Y’all, I apologize if you’re on your heels or blown back a little bit by the intensity of this. I only apologize because I don’t want you to think this is man-made. I don’t want you to think, wow, Steve’s kind of amped up. He must have been with those men too long. You know, it’s bigger than that.

I want to see you in heaven. I want to see you and me and everybody we love walking with Jesus and hanging out and having lattes that are always hot and foamy in heaven. That’s what I want. And that’s what the Bible wants. No one could survive this crash, this scene.

One word, but it’s a beautiful Bible. But that did not come out well. That was not good. So how do we go on? I got sweaty palms suddenly and cotton mouth.

Here we go. And look what happens after the butt, okay? But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy. Gosh, if you’re in the habit of circling words, circle these words. But because of the great love of God, we just sang about it.

Love would be a great word. And then of this great God who’s rich in, here’s another word, mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. And here’s another third great word. It is by grace. You have been saved.

Amen? It’s by grace. Not by what you’ve done. He goes on to talk about that later. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

In order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his, here’s the word again, grace. Expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace. I told you we’d get back to it. It is by grace.

You have saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is the gift from God of God, not by works of man or woman, humans. So that you can’t boast. No one gets to show up in heaven and go, hey, with a swag.

I pulled this one off. Where’s my joint? Well, I’m on that street or the next street. Joint’s not the new kind of joint in Oregon. But I love you guys.

You’re so forgiving. Some of you are thinking, man, too much coffee. So where’s my place? You know, I did good. I worked it out.

Pulled it off. No. What we just read says, this is not of yourself. It’s a gift from God, not by works so that no one can boast. But we are his workmanship, the workmanship of God created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

God in a powerful display of love, mercy, and grace saved us. Love, mercy, and grace. A powerful demonstration of those things results in salvation in the heart of a human being. That’s the gospel. Okay?

It’s, it’s, it’s, and let’s break down those words. He starts with love. His love seeks sinners. That’s why verse four is so cool because of his great love for us because what do we instinctively know about people that are blowing it? We don’t want to be around them.

Okay? We want to, I’ll use the word shun them. We want to, you know, yeah, you don’t measure up. Some cases you really don’t measure up. And so we want to sort of push ourselves away from them and shun them.

Jesus never does that. He runs to them. He goes and embraces such people like me, like you. Is that cool? I mean, he does that and he comes, on your own, read John chapter eight in this, this, this woman.

Sadly, she’s the only one talked about. The man never talked, gets any attention, but he’s the other half of adultery that was going on. And they drag her up there and they’re ready to stoner because after all, the law says we can do it. And Jesus says, yeah, you’re right here. Let’s go after it.

Now, he says, you know, this isn’t, I’ll tell you something. There’s no question this woman knows she’s messed up. No question she knows she left the path in a big way. And he restores her. He, he, he embraces her.

He says, you know what? I’m gonna, I’m doing a work here in your life. I reach out to people like you. I embrace and make room for people like you. Read Mark two and you’ll see there was a group of people that weren’t so happy with what I just said.

Have you heard the latest? Yeah, Jesus hangs around prostitutes. Yeah, no kidding. I saw him. Yeah, he hangs around drunkards, jerks, people that drive too slow.

He, he, he’s around people around all those people on my list that I don’t like. Right? And that’s an indictment on me. That’s me. That’s God saying, yeah, get there too.

And that should be good news for you that he loves and his loves seek sinners. Notice the second word though, we, we talked about this. By the way, Luke 19, 10 says, the son of man came to seek and to save those who were lost. So that’s not just the spin I gave it. The Bible describes Jesus that way, came to seek.

Where are they? Where are they? I’ll find him, I’ll find him. And to save those who are lost. The second word I had you sort of circle along the way is his mercy.

His mercy withholds from sinners what they deserve. And we read already what they deserve, wrath for their sin. Mercy says, no, you have it coming. That’s a reality some of us have to embrace. We have wrath.

A deserved wrath. And God says, no, I’m going to withhold something you have coming. That’s what mercy means. There’s a third word, it’s grace. It’s just kind of feels a little bit like the opposite.

He gives to sinners something they don’t deserve. And verse eight tells us what that is, salvation. There’s some really cool clarifying words. They come out of Titus and Paul. Paul’s writing Titus here and he says, once we too were foolish and disobedient.

He’s talking about the death stuff, right? We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. I mean, fill in the details from your own life. Our lives were full of evil and envy and we hated each other. There’s that but word again, right?

But when God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, it’s not gentle that this is all woven together here. He saved us not because of the righteous things we have done. But because of his, what’s the word? Would you say it out loud with me? Mercy, not giving you what you deserve.

Because of his mercy, the quote’s not done. He goes on to say, he washed away our sins because of his mercy. He could have held us accountable to those sins. But he says, I’m going to withhold the wrath which is deserved because of my mercy. Wash away our sins.

Is a new birth, a new life through the Holy Spirit. And he generously, generously pours out that spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. Because of his, there’s the word grace, a gift that we didn’t deserve. He’s made us right in his sight and given us, I want us to read that last sentence because it’s so cool. At the end of the day, at the end of our lives, that’s the only question on people’s mind.

So that we will help me inherit eternal life. If I’m learning this for the first time, I’m writing these things down so I can go back. And when I feel like I’ve lost my salvation, when I feel like I’ve somehow blown it too big for God’s mercy and grace to still work in me, I go back to this and I say, no, the day will come when I have that confidence that I will inherit eternal life. Can I get an amen? That’s it.

Amen. So that’s a beautiful statement. You and I are looking at something that’s just so from God’s heart. We start out foolish. We start out disobedient.

We start out in misled and enslaved and it’s a pretty harsh word, the previous part of this quote, evil. He was the one full of evil and envy. That’s a harsh assessment. That’s how we start out, but God made a move. And he did what only he could do.

He saved us. That’s the same that we’re reading here in Ephesians chapter two. This is an amazing truth. And I think it’s probably for more than a few of us confusing too. And I say that because I think that there’s probably in you something that’s in me.

You want something. You do what to get it. Let me give you an example. You want a cool truck. What do you do?

I know you asked to borrow mine. Okay, I get it. Well, what do you do? You save money and you buy one. Want a cool home.

Nice house. You do the same. Save money and I got to save the whole thing. You save enough to put a pile of cash at a banker’s desk and say, hey, can you loan me the rest and you buy a house? And that’s the simple logic of life.

So it’s no surprise that the same thing shows up towards spiritual things. We go, well, I want that thing we talked about with confidence. I want to stand before I want to make my way to heaven someday. I know a couple of people that pass on that. I just don’t get it.

You’re offered heaven or hell. Which would you choose? I don’t know. Doesn’t make sense to me that people would say indifferently, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t know where to go from there.

I think it will matter and it does matter. But our problem is we tend to go, okay, I got to get to heaven. And we start to think through how can that happen? I get it. I know what I’ll do because I’m American and I know what to do when I want that trucker home.

I work my way to it. I get my brow down and my determination going. I want to get healthy and I work to get healthy. Yeah, maybe it’s the end of some borrowing. But here’s the deal.

I want to share one more thing. How much less time than I thought we’d have at this point. Would you go to an exchange in John chapter three and it’s an exchange between a, I would call him a religious retailer and Jesus. Would you make your way to the fourth gospel? John chapter three, just for some, we don’t have much time on this.

But there’s this scene happening, a big crush of people in Jerusalem. Particular week every year actually. But on this particular week, this religious retailer, he’s a man in the story known as Nicodemus and he, he’s there along with everybody else for the week of Passover. It starts with the Seder meal and it continues on for a whole week’s time and the whole week is called Feast of Unleavened Bread. And it’s a festival.

It is buzzing. The population increases tenfold or more in Jerusalem. During that week of the year. It’s, it’s the Rose Festival on steroids. Okay, so it’s just a big, big deal.

And it’s a spiritually driven deal. It’s, and people came and it was expected that you would be there and it was, there was actually a good reason to be there because you wanted to celebrate this wonderful memory in your, in your history with God. And that is that he freed slaves from Egypt and set them, you know, the Exodus and the whole scene. And by the way, Exodus 12, you want to read that, we talk about Exodus, what’s that look like? Exodus 12 gives you really the guts and feathers of a really amazing kind of thing.

And so they’re in this city and they’re, there’s vast crowds and one of these people, Nicodemus, he comes to Jesus and he has a pretty foundational question I’m going to say for especially a journeyman religious guy. He’s not a rookie, not a new recruit. He is, we’re told he’s a member of the Jewish ruling council. He’s supposed to know his stuff. I used to go, I used to get together with a really, a guy man that became a good friend of mine who was Jewish man in Southern Cal.

We got together annually. We had a really special time. He started asking me about my gig is how he put it. So you’re a pastor, what’s that gig like, you know? And we started talking and I knew that the Bible of the Jews, the Torah, the law, we share in common the Bible, the Old Testament and for Christians and Jews is the same sacred book.

And so I thought we got a common ground and I said, so yeah, our Bible actually includes the information about Abraham and Moses and David and his look, everybody look at me right now, he’s like, who are they? And I said, I’m thinking he’s messing with me. Of course you know who they are. You know their story inside and out. He just, it’s blank stare.

And it was beautiful to be able to share the gospel with him, introducing him to his patriarchs of the faith. And it was really cool. But Nicodemus is not quite there, but he’s stumbling over a pretty basic question. And his question is how can I, well, let’s just read the exchange. This Pharisee named Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night.

Probably because he knows he should know the answer, but he didn’t. And so he says, Rabbi, we know we got, and he’s right on the next verse. We know that you, your teachings make you somebody that must have come from God. For no one could perform the signs you’re doing if God were not with him. So what you teach and what you, the people you touch miraculously, that tells us something about you Jesus.

We think I’m pretty sure you’re somebody that knows the answer. And to what question? How can I see and how can I enter the kingdom of God? Verse three is the, how can I see? Jesus says, very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they’re born again and drop down at verse five.

And it has to do with more than seeing it’s actually being in or entering the kingdom. Very truly, I tell you Jesus said, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and of spirit. So here’s the deal. It comes down to this. Conversation back and forth.

And I apologize, this is really a whole nother sermon. They have this conversation and Jesus establishes very clearly, and he does so three different times, how to be born again. How to enter, how to see and enter the kingdom of God. He says in verse three, verse five and verse seven in this exchange, you must be born again. And they go through this conversation that’s confusing because it’s like he’s, at first, we could make fun of him, but he’s like, I don’t get this born again.

I was born once a long time ago by my mom, and that’s kind of gross, but it just doesn’t make any sense. And I don’t think he was quite going there, but how can someone see and enter the kingdom of God? And you must be born again, came Jesus’ answer. Let me bring it to the reality of this message this morning. Nothing matters about how you live the Christian life until you have the Christian life.

You can talk about walking in a new kind of life, but you can’t do that unless you have that. With me? So the rest of the series, we’re gonna talk about how God wants us to walk, things he wants us to have and be, and in some cases do. But I joke about this from time to time, I mean it seriously right now, don’t try this on your own. You will fumble and stumble, and here’s the worst part, you’re gonna give up, and you’re gonna join a lot of other people who say, you know, religion didn’t work for me.

I tried, and it just didn’t work for me. And you know what? It was never meant to work. You need what that man in the airport needed. He needed that heart to get going.

He needed to be, yeah, brought to life, and you and I do if we’re to walk the Christian life. You say, well pastor, this is a church filled with people that have been here a long time, and that’s what, and you’d be right in most cases, and that’s what worries me the most. I am not looking at an individual, I don’t call people out, I want the spirit of God to do that. But if you’ve been in church a long time, the only way to be confident on that day that we read about in Titus 3 verse 7 is to make really sure you have not a religious sort of affiliation. True relationship with Jesus.

And that’s a new heart. There’s a wonderful statement. I’m gonna skip through a million verses at the end here, and see how far we were gonna go this morning? Here it is. Nope.

Okay, so I’m not pressing, but it’s still going. And it wasn’t that verse. Okay, well, you know what, I’m not gonna. Here it is, I wanna read it to you. It’s from Ezekiel 36.

That’s what God wants to do. If you find that cliff, throw up Ezekiel 36, 26 and seven. I will give you a new heart. There it is. Everybody look at this, this is so good.

It’s a Old Testament, and if you find your way to Hebrews chapter eight in the New Testament, you’ll go, same thing, because it’s been fulfilled. In Jesus, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you the heart that doesn’t work anymore. It never worked in the first place. It’s a heart of stone, and I’m gonna give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to live my laws, keep my laws. I want you to imagine a scene. If you could kill the slide show for now, Cliff, thank you, and here’s the deal. You come to me or come to church, and you have needs in your life. And they present with things like loneliness or sorrow.

There’s a piece of news that you’re trying to sort of embrace and see your way through, disquieting news, and it’s just not working for you. And that happens, by the way, all the time. There’s people in here this morning, that’s why you’re here. There are people in my counseling schedule this next week, that’s why they will come. They come presenting a problem, and with compassion and truth, we talk about the problem and God’s answer to the problem, and here’s the deal.

I want you to pretend I’m not a pastor, I’m a doctor, and they come to me with one of these concerns, and I listen, and I take it in, say to them, here’s what I want you to do, and I pull out a jar of pills, and I hand them the pills. And I say, I want you to take one, three times a day, and you’re gonna be feeling better. And you trust me, ’cause I’m your doctor, and you leave, and I hand you the bill, and you go out, and on your way to your car, you notice a lot of big words, and then two words that are in plain speak to you. Painkiller. How do you feel about me right now?

Am I a good doctor? Or are you gonna look for a better doctor? You’re shier than a university audience. When I ask the same question, they just about threw things at me. You’re a quack.

You’re malpractice, you’re a jerk, and I’m like, it’s just an illustration, be nice. But it’s true. I did you no good to kill the pain. If I didn’t deal, where’s the pain coming from? Jesus would say, you need a new heart, it was up there.

Brand new heart. And that means transplant, that does not mean fix the old one. Single person qualified to give that new heart, and you will never meet someone qualified to give you that new heart, aside from Jesus Christ. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Whoa, Lord. There’s a lot here. They thank you for saving that man in the airport that day. And the look on his face when he was rolled by us, he had been through just a meat grant. It was a horrible, but alive.

He had been beat up terribly by that experience. But he was alive. A lot of us are like that in life. We’re beat up, we’re hurt. And we want to get better, we want to feel better.

That makes sense. I like painkillers because I don’t like pain. But I want something better than that. And I want something better than that for every person that calls this church home, or for every person who will hear a piece of this message from someone sitting here today. This message of hope that Jesus wants to change your heart and give you things in his mercy and grace that you can’t get or give to yourself.

I pray for those that are going to go out of here and be a missionary with that message. But if you’re here this morning, don’t you even get out of your chair before you make a decision. Are y’all in? Have you said, “Jesus, I surrender. I cannot buy it like I do a truck.

I need you to give me forgiveness. To be the God that’s rich in mercy and love and grace to give me a new heart.” Will you pray that to him right now? Will you say, “God, I give you my heart. God, I pray for a new one.”

And with it, a new heart. With the new heart, a new start. As you make me a healthy child of yours. If you prayed that, I want to talk to you. I want you to call me or I’ll hang out here afterwards.

Let’s just visit for a little bit, okay? So thank you for this time, Jesus. I know this is a big deal. It starts with the heart. And I pray that even today and in days to come, people will surrender to you.

And begin to have new expectations, new excitement about what you have in store for us to make us healthy and vital for your glory. We give you our praise and our gifts now as we wrap up this service in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 6,524 words.