Get a New Heart: The one who sins is the one who will die.
I felt there could only be one theme to this month’s editorial after Rick’s operation on Tuesday 19th May and that is “Get a new heart”! With a normal human heart beating an average of 100,000 times a day, it’s surprising that the heart doesn’t give out more often than it does. After all, have you ever heard of a car engine that ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 70 years and often more without the need of a major service or engive replacement?
Our Citroen MPV is eight years old and last month we notched up 100,000 miles “on the clock” whilst motoring in France. I worked out that is about 3,500 hours constant use or 140 days (as our long term average speed is 35mph). Our heart’s however typically run for much longer. Still, there are times when the human heart fails. sometimes from not looking after it or in Rick’s case, organ degereration. In some cases the heart may be so damaged that a new one is needed.
How is your heart performing? Is it beating with strong regular intervals, delivering an adequate supply of oxygen throughout your body? Well, I have some bad news for you. God tells us that we all need a new heart. Of course he’s not talking about this thing beating inside of us. God wants us each to have a heart, an attitude, that recognizes its own sinfulness and treasures God’s forgiveness. If we don’t have such a heart, we are to get one because it’s a matter of eternal life or death.
A new heart is a necessity - Although they didn’t know it, the people of Ezekiel’s day were badly in need of such a heart transplant, both individually and as a nation and that is the message of Ezekiel chapter 18. Ezekiel lived through the second sack and deportation of Jerusalem and was among those
carried off to Babylon. The people, however, weren’t willing to admit that their sin had brought this judgment. Instead of repenting they quoted the following proverb: “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”. What the exiles were saying is that since it was their fathers who had eaten the sour grapes, why should they be punished for sins their fathers were guilty of?
Our heart needs to recognise its own sinfulness – Now it was true that their fathers had been guilty of thoroughly turning away from the Lord. The sad thing is that our heart is not any better. By nature we like to minimize our own guilt and blame others for our sins. So get a new heart, a heart that recognises one’s own sinfulness. Don’t ever excuse your sin no matter what the circumstances.
Our heart needs to treasure God’s forgiveness - Exactly how does God give us this new heart? Surprisingly it’s a lot like the way you would receive a new heart if you rushed into a specialist heart hospital like Papworth for a heart transplant. Before you can receive a new heart someone has to die. Not only that, there is a consent process on behalf of the person who has died, whose heart is now available to be transplanted. Finally that heart has to be a match or your body will reject it. In Rick’s case, size mattered here as well!
You see the similarities with Jesus don’t you? He willingly died so that we could receive this new heart. But how do we know that this new heart Jesus gave us is a match? We know it will work because Jesus promised that he came to die for the sins of the whole world and that whoever believes in him has eternal life. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Take care of this heart because it’s given you much more than a new lease of life; it guarantees eternal life.
Kevin Borrett
June 2014
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