The Scalpel And The Surgeon Series

Cosmetic surgery has become very popular in our present day society. In one of the books I read a year ago, I ran across some unique surgeries that people actually pay money to have done to their bodies:

• Back in 2010 more than a million American women underwent lip augmentation surgery. They paid between $l,500 - $3,000 to have their lips plumped up. And to do that they surgeons used silicone, paraffin wax, and cow-collagen injections… and some women have opted to enhance their lips with purified tissue from their own skin taken or even from research cadavers. Just makes you want to pucker up, doesn’t it?

• Then there are Ocular surgeons in the Netherlands (it’s not legal anyplace else) that have developed a technique for implanting tiny bits of jewelry into a patient’s eyeballs. For a mere $860 they’ll implant a miniature platinum heart, star, or half-moon.

• Some surgeons in Los Angeles and New York are reportedly offering “pinky toe tucks,” where they surgically shave the bones of a woman's pinky toes to make their toes straighter… and make their feet narrower so women can wear narrower shoes. Cost: $1,000 per toe.

• And you men can get into the act by getting an instant six-pack. For a mere $5,000 to $10,000 a plastic surgeon will suck out only the fat between your stomach muscles.

(Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, page 107)

Now correct me if I’m wrong… but these folks are crazy.

They have to be half-daft to allow a supposedly reputable surgeon perform these kinds of operations. I mean have you seen (name of a famous personality who'd undergone face lifts) lately? He’s undergone several face lifts, and he’ll never look normal again.

Surgery is not something that should be taken lightly.

ILLUS: Years ago, when my oldest sister was about 12, she went to the doctor for stomach pains and the doctor said she needed emergency surgery. Now my dad had heard a rumor that this doctor had a reputation of scheduling unnecessary procedures. And so dad took the doctor aside and quietly told him:

“You’re the doctor and I’m not smart enough to know if this surgery is absolutely necessary or not. But understand something: if I find out that this surgery is NOT necessary, or you hurt my little girl - you had better pray I don’t find you. Because I’ll be coming after you.”

After serious reconsideration, the doctor decided the surgery wasn’t necessary after all.

If I’m going to have a surgery - if someone is going to go cutting on my body - I want to make sure it’s absolutely necessary.

In Hebrews 3 and 4 God is makes something very clear:

You need surgery and it IS absolutely necessary.

God says you and I have a heart condition. And that heart condition will kill us.

Hebrews 3:12 declares: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.”

God explained that, years before, people had died of heart disease because they refused His diagnosis.

“As has just been said: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion."

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert?

And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed?

So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” Hebrews 3:15-19

These folks had a heart condition.

They had hardening of their attitudes.

And they died because they refused to listen to God’s diagnosis of their problem.

So God says to us: Don’t be like them.

LISTEN TO ME!!!

Listen to me (says God)!!! YOU have a heart problem, and you don’t need cosmetic surgery. You need corrective surgery. You need to have Me (God) reach into your heart and fix what’s broken.

Well, how do you do that?

How do you go about letting God perform surgery on our heart?

Hebrews 4:12 says “… THE WORD OF GOD is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

The Word is God’s scalpel that He uses to get inside us.

And He uses that scalpel to cut right into our hearts.

He uses it to penetrate into our very Soul and Spirit.

He uses it to judge our thoughts and attitudes – and reveal to us what’s right and wrong.

Now, there are people who don’t like letting the Bible do that in their lives.