The Scalpel And The Surgeon Series

Isaiah 53 prophesied that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not…. (He) carried our sorrows…. He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities… the LORD… laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

So when Jesus cuts away the dead skin from our hearts He doesn’t want to hurt us. He doesn’t want to make us suffer. He hasn’t gone inside of us and just so He can cut and slash.

And that’s what it says in John 3:16-17

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (NKJV)

Jesus wasn’t sent to hurt us and destroy us.

He was sent to heal us and change our lives so that we’d have a whole NEW heart and mind.

CLOSE: Jesus came to fix our bodies and minds. He came to give us…

• a new face that would reflect the joy we now have.

• new lips that would give thanks and praise God

• new feet that would walk with God

• new hands that would serve others

• a new mind that would be cleared off all the guilt and shame of the past.

• And a new heart that would beat with God’s love for others.

ILLUS: In the 5th century there was a man named Augustine. He was a sinner. He was a really good sinner. If there was sin to be committed, he found a way to do it. His mother had earnestly prayed for him his entire life that he would give his life to the service of Christ, but Augustine persisted in his sins until one day he sat with a friend on a bench weeping over the state of his life. It was at this moment that he heard a boy or girl--he says he does not know which it was--singing a song. The sound was coming from a neighboring house. The child was chanting over and over: "Pick it up, read it; pick it up; read it."

Augustine wrote: “Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon.

So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostles book. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof."

I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away."