Operation

Text: Deuteronomy 30:6-15

Introduction:

      - The game of operation

1. God Wants to Deliver Man From Sin.
1. Cut it Out

- Cancer has to be cut out or it spreads.

- Circumcision of the heart is the removal of sin from within.

- The Holy Bible, New International Version

Jeremiah 31:31 through Jeremiah 31:33 (NIV)

31        “The time is coming,” declares the LORD,

“when I will make a new covenant

with the house of Israel

and with the house of Judah.

32      It will not be like the covenant

I made with their forefathers

when I took them by the hand

to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant,

though I was a husband to them,”

declares the LORD.

33      “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel

after that time,” declares the LORD.

“I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

Ezekiel 36:24 through Ezekiel 36:27 (NIV) 24“‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26I 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. 27And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

New American Standard Bible

Acts 15:7 through Acts 15:9 (NASB) 7After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8“And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; 9and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.

1. Completing Love

- We cannot fully love God apart from His work in us.

  * First the Ten Commandments, then Jesus, make it very clear that there are two kinds of important relationships for human beings. One is a relationship between human beings and God, and the other is a relationship between human beings. The way we treat each other is a reflection of what we think of him.

   -- Curtis Lundgren, Marriage Partnership, Vol. 9, no. 4.

1. Capturing Life - Many people do not realize they have a life threatening disease, but without the operation that God wants to perform in our hearts, we face the threat of true death.

1. God Will Delight in Man's Obedience
1. Delivering Blessings -    Someone writing in Christianity Today several years ago said, "Shall I thank God at this Thanksgiving? Why was I born at this particular time in the history of the world? Why was I born in a spotless delivery room in an American hospital instead of a steaming shelter in the dank jungle of the Amazon or a mud hut in Africa? Why did I have the privilege of going to school with capable instructors while millions around the world, without a school book, sit or squat on a dirt floor listening to a missionary?

   "How does it happen that my children are tucked into warm beds at night with clean white sheets while millions of babies in the world will lie in cold rooms, many in their own filth and vomit? Why can I sit down to a warm meal whenever I want to and eat too much when millions will know all of their lives the gnawing pangs of hunger? Do I deserve to share in such wealth? Why me and not other millions? Why was I born in a land I didn't build, in a prosperity that I didn't create and enjoy a freedom that I didn't establish? Why an American sitting comfortably in my own living room this Thanksgiving rather than an Indian squatting in the dark corner of some infested alley in Calcutta, shivering in the cold, or a Cambodian in the rubble of what used to he my home, or a terrified, running Nicaraguan in the jungle? Do I deserve it? By what right do I have it?"

   -- Joel Gregory, "The Unlikely Thanker," Preaching Today, Tape No. 110.

1. Demanding Loyalty

- not divided.  It takes complete consecration. The promise that God will delight himself in us is contingent on our turning toHim with ALL our heart and ALL our soul.

1. Displaying Favor - The Lord will delight in us.

1. God Works Directly Through Man's Faith
1. An Inner Reach - The scriptures say that the word is near us, in your mouth, even in your heart.  It could be in our next breath or the next heartbeat if only we can make that short reach inside ourselves. The operation is God's part, but we must find the faith within ourselves to grasp mighty surgeons hands and place them upon our needy hearts.
2. An Inner Revelation

- God reveals himself to us in the inner ways.  God reveals himself to us in our hearts by communicating his holiness to us, and our conscience operates to show us precisely where we do not measure up to his expectations for us. We do not really need someone else to proclaim it to us.

1. An Inner Reaction As our faith reaches out to God and takes hold of him, He takes hold of us and performs the wonderful operation.  The operation is complete when we turn our heart fully to Him, and give him all our heart, believing him for our cleansing as we believed him for our salvation, producing obedience that is of God. It God's righteousness that works in us, and not our own.

Conclusion:

- struggle and drown or relax and float.