Renovation fever, I think it started with the TV show Extreme Makeover years ago. Well, that's the topic of today's message from Dr. Wilton today.
That's right, Extreme Makeover. That's today's topic as we open God's Word together. Here on The Encouraging Word, we'll be headed to the book of John in just a moment. But as we open the Word, we're also opening our hearts to pray with you, to connect with you, keyboard to keyboard on our website at www.tewonline.org or this phone number. Yes, we're having a renewed commitment to having conversations together, praying together on the phone at 866-899-WORD.
That's 866-899-9673. And now let's prepare John chapter 2 as we study God's Word together with Dr. Don Wilton on today's message called Extreme Makeover. Did you know that God has a plan for you? He has a plan for me.
He has a plan for His church. I want to ask you a question today, and I'm going to ask you to respond. Are you ready? How many of you would readily admit that you need a makeover? Thank you. I appreciate that.
All right. How many of you need an extreme makeover? I don't mind telling you that one of my favorite television shows is actually entitled Extreme Makeover.
You've probably watched that, I'm sure. What I like about it is it's clean, and it gets a hold of your heart, and it's true, and it's real. And here's this group of people led by this fellow with funny hair and a megaphone, and they select somebody or some family that have gone through some kind of difficulty. For example, I remember one of them, their daddy had lost his life in Iraq, and the family was struggling to be able to maintain their household. Another one that I remember that pops into my mind was a young mother died prematurely and left the young father with like four or five young ones.
And it was a real struggle, and during all of this their house, their actual house, just becomes too small and cluttered, and it deteriorates, and it's just not quite adequate. And so the group comes in and sends the family off somewhere, and we all watch it on television, and then after a while the family comes back, and they have this big RV, this beautiful RV, and the fellow with the megaphone says, Driver, move that bus, and the bus moves out the way, and the family looks at an extreme makeover, and it's just one of those joyful experiences because you enter into the joy of that fresh beginning, and there's just nothing like it. It's a breath of fresh air, and it grips our hearts. I believe that the Bible speaks very clearly about moving that bus, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself presents to us, not on one occasion, but on a number of occasions, a plan of action for us, tells us what we need to do in order to have an extreme makeover. Now folks, I want you to know something today. I truly believe with all of my heart that God is going to speak to you at the things that you need to deal with. He's going to speak to the church. He's going to speak to our church and your church, no matter where you are or how long you've been there, what you've accomplished. He's going to speak to you and me about our personal lives. God is going to make that application. I'm going to try not to make too much of an application because I want the Lord to speak to your heart. I don't want to be in the way of that. But I do know that in John chapter 2, God gives us a plan of action for an extreme makeover, and I'm going to ask that this plan of action be put up for you to see right now. I want the whole plan of action there.
There are six parts. That's the entire message today. It's what I'm going to talk to you about.
I want to just leave that up there right throughout this entire time that we're together. This is exactly what the Lord is showing us in this encounter that we find in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'm going to say this very quickly.
This is going to come in bullet form. Every year, the Jewish people celebrated the Feast of the Passover. And they still do today.
It's incredible. What were they celebrating? What were they commemorating when they went to the temple in Jerusalem? That time when, remember, the Jewish people, the Israelites, were in bondage in Israel. Did you know that they were in bondage for 400 years? I think they got slap worn out, don't you think? I mean, they got to the point at which they believed nothing more could be done.
Four hundred years. And here were God's chosen people in Israel, in Egypt, in bondage, and God sent the angel of death to get the attention of the Egyptians. He said, here's what's going to happen. I want you to kill, to slaughter a lamb. I want you to take the blood of that lamb and I want you to paint it over your doorpost. And when the angel of death comes through the streets of your suburbs and he sees the blood painted on the doorpost, he's going to pass over your home and your firstborn will not die. Folks, we have a wonderful picture of God's grace in Jesus Christ, the salvation that we have through the shed blood of Jesus. That's exactly what happens to you.
Did you know that? When you give your heart to Jesus, there is a sense in which, because of the shed blood of Jesus on the cross, your life, your heart is painted in the blood of the lamb, the lamb of God. So that when the angel of death comes, he's going to pass over you because the wages of sin is death. That's the sentence passed on every person because of sin. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
When you give your life to Jesus Christ, your life is painted, you're washed by the blood of the lamb and the angel of death passes over you because you have received eternal life. And so every year the Jews celebrated, commemorated the Passover, but they had to come from everywhere. They traveled long distances and everybody came. And they also had to pay a temple tax when they got there. And when they paid their temple tax, they could only use coinage that was of a particular silver.
It had to come from the region of Tyre, T-Y-R-E, which is in Lebanon today, or it had to be specific Jewish coinage because of the quality of the silver. And so there was a group of people that set themselves up to exchange their coinage, but they also levied a very, very heavy fee on those who exchanged. When you travel to Europe and you need Deutsche Marks in Germany and you exchange your US dollar for a Deutsche Mark and you go to a bank in Frankfurt, Germany, and they charge you what? A fee. Well, the fees that they charged were exorbitant. Not only that, they had to slaughter an animal.
It had to be a cow, it had to be a dove, or it had to be a sheep. Well, did they bring them with them? They couldn't. They had to travel miles and miles. And so there was a group of people that moved into the temple. They said, boy, have we got an opportunity. And so what originally began as a wonderful act of worship, the original plan was that people would come and celebrate the presence of the Lord. Over time became skewered and infiltrated by a business and an activity that was anything but pleasing to the Lord.
It was not part of God's plan. And what it did, folks, it distracted the people from what they were supposed to be doing. And they were profiteers. These merchants, they were opportunistic.
They were making money. And so what happened, folks, is that the whole worship experience got sidetracked. And here's Jesus.
Let's read about it quickly. John chapter 2 and verse 13. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And in the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and he drove all from the temple, both sheep and cattle. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables to those who sold doves.
He said, get these things out of you. How dare you turn my father's house into a marketplace when it is a house of worship and prayer. And so it was that his disciples who were with him remembered that it was written, the zeal of your house, the worship with which I worship God as a house of prayer will consume me. And the Jews became upset because their treasury was being set threatened. Their traditions were being threatened, folks. The way they wanted to do things, their coffers were being lined. They didn't want anybody coming in there and telling them what anybody should do with their church.
They had formed the committee. The Sanhedrin had met and had made their decision, but Jesus showed up. And this is what the Jews said. They said, what miraculous sign can you do to prove your authority? Can I summarize that verse? Who in the world do you think you are? What do you think you're doing?
Coming in here and ordering us around and telling us what we ought and ought not to do. Show us a sign. Jesus answered them, destroy this temple. That's the sign I'll tell you about.
And I will raise it up. Well, of course, these people didn't understand it, folks. They were so cluttered up. They were so full of obstacles. They were so distracted. They couldn't see God. They were there for any other reason. And Jesus was about to lower the boom on them. He was about to say to them, let me tell you something, folks. When it comes down to priorities, your priority is to have a right relationship with me. And anything else needs to move out of the way.
You need an extreme makeover. The Jews replied, it's taken 46 years to build this temple. And you are trying to tell us you're going to build it up in three days. Folks, Jesus wasn't talking about a building. He said, you just don't get it. I'm not interested in a building. I'm not interested in stained glass windows.
You just don't get it. The church is not about a building. It's about the heart and soul of the people who worship me in spirit and in truth, who connect with God. And these people looked at him. The Bible says, but the temple he was speaking of was his body. And so it was years later, three years later, after he was raised from the dead, that the disciples recalled what he had said and they believed the word he said and they believed the scripture that recorded the word that he said.
I really believe that Jesus here set in motion a six point plan for an extreme makeover. I don't know what the Lord is saying to you. It may be about your marriage. It may be about your worship. It may be about your church. Folks, what part of thou shalt worship the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind do we not seem to understand? This is Jesus saying there's only one thing that matters and that is keeping the main thing the main thing. Forgive the interruption, but Dr. Don insists I remind you we're here for you because when we hear him preach talking about keeping the main thing the main thing, sometimes God's convicting us to say, how do we reorder our priorities?
How do we make sure we're keeping Jesus the main thing? If you'd like to have someone talk to, pray with, we're connecting online at 866-899-WORD. That's the phone number 866-899-9673 or keyboard to keyboard at TEWONLINE.ORG.
That's TEWONLINE.ORG. Now back to today's message. And so let's follow Jesus through this experience.
There are six points in this plan for an extreme makeover. And God's going to apply it to your heart and mind. Number one, prepared to take action. Prepared to take action. Did you note here in this text that Jesus never said a word before he made a whip.
He got everything in place. Folks, watch me. Watch me. You and I can turn over a new leaf and make every decision under the sun.
But if we're not prepared to take action, it's not going to happen. See, there's an old saying that we've got, you can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink. It's the making it drink.
It's the fact that I know that there's water in front of me. What I've got to do is I've got to determine my willingness to actually drink. What does God's Word say? I know the plans I have for you. I've set it in motion. I've given you a clear cut path.
Now, I may not be able to explain all the details and I might not clearly see, but God sits before us an open door. We've got to be prepared to take the action that is necessary to take. If we're not prepared to take the action that's necessary to take this time next year, I'll still be talking about what I need to do in order to take myself through the extreme makeover that I need to have a breath of fresh air in my life. Otherwise, all I'm going to do is keep talking about it and reading about it and deciding about it.
But until I'm prepared to take action on it, nothing's going to happen. Number two, remove all obstacles. By the way, folks, this passage tells us clearly that Jesus removed the obstacles.
Jesus came to this point. He said, you want an extreme makeover? You need to get to where I need you to be. You've got to remove the obstacles. It's non-negotiable. Don't even get off the bed. You know what you need to do. What's there in your life?
What's there in your church that's just nothing but an obstacle? It's a blood clot. Dissolve the blood clot. You've got to let the blood flow.
Nobody said it's pleasant, folks. I didn't raise my hand and say, whoop-de-doo. I'd love to just spend five days lying there in ICU with all these pipes coming out of me. But I'll tell you what, folks, with the help of a lot of wonderful people, a lot of prayer, I am completely free and clean.
I have no blood clots anymore. Look at my hand. I mean, I can shake it all over the place here. You want a piece of me? I'll tell you the best part. I'm still alive, folks.
I've had another four years with my family and with you. Remove the obstacles. Don't need a committee meeting. Call a deacons meeting.
Don't need to sit around and have a big discussion about it. Remove them. Number three, unclutter the walkways. Watch what happened here, folks. It's remarkable.
Just watch this. What happened in this particular instance? The walkways were cluttered. Well, the obstacles were something else. The money changes and those, man, they just had to go. But there was something else, folks. There were cattle and sheep and doves cluttering up the walkways.
It's kind of like, excuse me, oops. Oh, man, that dove just dropped something on my shoulder. I mean, these people were coming to church. They were supposed to be celebrating the Passover, worshipping God, but they were having to step over cluttered walkways. I want to give you a challenge. Can you imagine any of us going up to one of those cars or sheep or doves and saying, excuse me, car, did you make a decision to be here?
Well, obviously not. Do you know, folks, in every one of our lives, all of us have got cluttered walkways. Sometimes they're very innocent things. Sometimes they come there with the passing of time. Sometimes they are unintentional, but they're there.
You've got to unclutter your walkways. Number four, enlist spiritual leaders. Now, this is a rather interesting thing because the disciples here accompanied Jesus in this extreme makeover. Who were the disciples? They were a group of spiritual leaders, folks. Could Jesus have done everything by Himself?
He's the only one that could have because He's God. But He chose to be accompanied by spiritual leaders who became the primary means of echo. They echoed His words. They carried it through the ranks. They affirmed the work of God.
They stood the test of time. They held the banner of that testimony. If I was to ask you today, wherever you might be, do you or do you not consider yourself a spiritual leader? If you consider yourself a spiritual leader, my friend, He's talking to you. And I'm going to tell you, when you and I go through an extreme makeover personally or in the church or in whatever zone in our lives, God asks us and invites us to surround ourselves with the kind of quality of people who are willing to stand up and be counted and echo vision and say, Thus saith the Lord.
This is our accountability partner. This is the godly group that surround us. This is the power of the local church. It is vested in the hearts of spiritual leaders. Well, there was a fifth plan to the action that the Lord Jesus brought to bear in this particular instance. Not only prepared to take action and remove all obstacles and unclutter the walkways and enlist spiritual leaders, but realign the original plan.
I love this. Well, I tell you, the Jews came and said, Excuse me, who are you? What do you think you're doing?
This is our house. So you know what Jesus did? He realigned the original plan. He took them back to the original purpose. He gave to them a fresh mission. He took them back to Bethel. He told them why they exist.
That's exactly what He did. I'm such a useless person when it comes to construction. But I tell you, as I walk around my neighborhood, sometimes I see I saw a home just yesterday walking in the neighborhood that's being constructed. There was a truck parked there and a group of important looking people on a Saturday afternoon and they were surrounding a big piece of paper.
Do you know what I think it was, folks? It was the blueprint for the home they were constructing. You know what happens? You say, Look, I want the bedroom here and the bathroom there and I want this here and I want that there. You plan it all out there and you move in and you live in it.
Your children grow up, your dog runs around, the cat dies. Everything happens in that home for a period of time and eventually many parts of your same very home lose their originality. The plan for which they were created, rooms become cluttered, obstacles creep in.
Places that you intended for a purpose no longer serve that purpose. Isn't it wonderful sometimes when you get together and say, You know, we really intended this to be a study. Let's make it the study it was intended to be. God's got an original plan for His church, folks.
It's His plan. We've got the blueprint and right here He gives to us the three leveled mission of the church. Number one, worship. The disciples remembered zeal. Worship is what it's all about.
It was the consuming fire. It's the very purpose for which we were created was to worship the Lord. Now watch this. If the most important thing that I'm about is to worship my Saviour and have access to Him and commune with Him, but I'm being distracted. I've got obstacles.
I'm stepping over this and doing that. He wants me to have an extreme makeover because I need to have a fresh walk with my Saviour. Number two, the matter of prayer. That's the second part of God's original plan. He talks about His house being a house of prayer. And number three, evangelism.
He turned to His body. He said, you've got it wrong. It's not about the programs. It's not about signing up to do something, folks.
It's not about how big you are. It's about evangelism. He said, you need to keep the main thing, the main thing. He turned to these people.
He said, look at me. It's about me. It's about my death upon the cross. It's about the empty tomb. It's about the fact that I've come to give life. It's about the fact that I'm the light of the world and the Saviour and I've come to die for the sins of the world. Here it is, the threefold original plan of our Saviour. He said, you want an extreme makeover? You've got to go back to the original plan. Worship, prayer and evangelism. Anything else is an obstacle.
All others are simply cluttering the walkways. And you need an extreme makeover. He looks into my heart and he says, Don Wilton, if you're not worshipping me, if you're not speaking to me and if you're not sharing me with others, you need an extreme makeover because therein lies my original plan for you, my son. Well, there was one final point.
I love this last one. He pointed to the future. Verse 22, when it was all said and done, Jesus right there pointed to the future.
The disciples remembered what he had said. Do you know by the way that the Lord Jesus Christ is there before you and I even begin? Do you know by the way that he wants us to have an extreme makeover because he's already guaranteed the future? And what he's going to tell us is that we need to work according to his purpose. We need to do it his way.
We need to let go of ourselves. We need to say, Lord, give me an extreme makeover. I want to take a fresh look at you. I want to speak to you and I want to be filled with a redemptive passion that compels me to do whatever it takes to reach my world for Jesus Christ. How about you today? He's been preaching and teaching us, asking that question, how about you today? Would you take these next 60 seconds and open your heart to the most important 60 seconds of today's broadcast?
Here's Dr. Don Wilton. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today I repent of my sin and by faith I receive you into my heart. In Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.
This is exciting news. If God stirred in your heart, give us a call. 866-899-9673 and let us connect with grand resources like this one called Safeguards of Our Faith. We are living in a rapidly changing world. What is this new normal today? How do we as believers hold firm?
How do we press on? We press on by resting in the safeguards of our faith. When you have a history of God's faithfulness in your heart and spirit, you can walk boldly and unflinchingly through the midst of trouble.
Why? Because God has proven himself to you. With your gift of support to the encouraging word this month, you will receive Dr. Wilton's faith-building message, the Safeguards of Our Faith. This four-message set will help equip you to stand firm on the foundation of Jesus Christ in these not-so-new normal days. Call us at 866-899-WORD and request the Safeguards of Our Faith available on CD or DVD today. The Encouraging Word is a viewer and listener-supported ministry. Thank you for listening today. Our time's gone for today, but let's stay connected online at TEWOnline.org. That's TEWOnline.org. Consider signing up for the daily encouraging word emails from Dr. Don. You will be blessed.
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