Last time I posted section 1 of a Sermon presented Sunday morning November 17 2013 at the Pinehill church Sault Ste Marie Ontario titled "The New Heart: My heart story".Section 1 told God's "heart" story -- the old, old story of Jesus and His love.
The sermon was prompted by Bible verses describing how God "strengthens" and "cleans (makes new) our heart.
Psalm 73:26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
This post is the continuation of that sermon.
I
love explaining things using analogies and metaphors. I think they are a good
way of using familiar things to help us understand unfamiliar things (Jesus did this
with parables). There are 2 dangers with
this approach.
1)
the point (or meaning) you are intending to make may not be understood (as was
often the case with Jesus parables) and
2)
we may “reverse” the process and use something that is true about the
“analog” to show that the same thing must be true about the “real thing” - and that isn’t always the case
In this sermon lesson I am using something that happened to me in the
“physical” world to draw
spiritual lessons – and, it is possible I may not have
gotten it completely right.
I pray like the Bereans, you will search the
scriptures to see that these things are so.
So here are some things
I observed during this "physical" journey that led
to spiritual lessons.
1st comparison: No matter how healthy I was a year ago,
10 years ago or even at the moment of my birth – my body is subject to the
ravages of time.
The fact is “I will die
sometime”. (Hebrews 9:27 “appointed
for man to die once”) , or in words attributed to Benjamin Franklin
“nothing in life is certain but death and taxes”.
The same is true of our “spiritual
heart” – as innocent and pure as we are when we are born – we all (eventually) die spiritually – “fall short
of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
In the case of our
physical health there are things we can do (or refrain from doing) which
tend to keep us healthy longer or tend to speed up the “decay”. In fact, Linda has and continues to be “my
conscience’ in that area - watching my diet and encouraging me to exercise and chiding
me when I spend too much of my time “hunched over the computer”. But in the end we all die.
Equally it is true
the spiritual world; nothing I can do will affect the process of "dying" - it isn’t
up to me. In a very real sense, without Jesus, I am (already) dead - no matter how innocent I am, or how hard I try to be or
do good.
2nd comparison: A year ago I didn’t know there was
anything wrong. I was blithely unaware
of the problem – but that didn’t mean the problem wasn’t there. (as an aside – Linda is more “intuitive” about
these things and she sensed there was something wrong – but she thought it was
just that I had been too tied up in teaching and had gotten “out of shape” and her answer was
to wait until January when I was done and march me off to the gym J)
How many people in
the world have “broken spirits” and don’t know it? What of those who totally reject God? -- they are dead – and don’t know it. Their
lack of knowledge doesn’t change their situation. They may have “no clue” or they may, as Linda did, sense “something isn’t right”
but really not know what it is.
I hope there are none here today in this position but
if you haven’t received a “new heart” from God
– please let’s talk more..
In both cases (my
heart problem and for those who reject God) ignorance is NOT bliss.
.. to be continued
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