Heart Transplant

We went to church at St. Alban's, Belmore this morning to participate in an outreach service. The speaker was Richard Gibson, a lecturer from Moore College. He preached on "The Great Heart Transplant", using Ezekiel 36:24-28 and Hebrews 8:7-12 as his texts. What really struck me most was his description of what God means when he says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

- Ezekiel 36:26

He said it truly is the spiritual equivalent of a heart transplant - something the Israelite wouldn't have ever seen, but with which we are more familiar today.

The physical heart transplant and the spiritual one have these things in common:

• We must be opened up In order for God to deal effectively with our condition - our hardness of heart - He must often first peel away the layers of stuff concealing the state of our hearts. This can be painful, but is necessary for our healing. Perhaps think of it as ripping away the band-aids with which we have tried to fix the problem, but with which we really just conceal it from ourselves. Our solutions are not enough - serious surgery is required.
  
• The donated heart must be healthy There's no point replacing a faulty heart with another faulty heart is there? We must, therefore, find ourselves a donor who has a perfectly healthy heart. Fortunately we have such a donor - Jesus. Jesus came to earth and through His healthy living he kept His heart from harm - so that He might donate it to us.
  
• It often involves tragedy When you think about the hardships facing people in need of a physical transplant - their life slowly ebbing away, surrounded by loved ones already starting to feel the grief of loss - it is easy to forget that finding a donor usually means a tragedy. How else do we expect to find a healthy heart unless the donor has first died? Again, Jesus died so that He could be our spiritual heart donor.