FVC Sermon Podcast

FVC Sermon Podcast


The Amazing and Amazed Jesus

September 05, 2019

https://youtu.be/eFByscJmTm8

The Amazing and Amazed Jesus Hebrews 3 • Mark 6:1-6 

Guard your heart... that’s pretty much the whole sermon tonight. # words. write them down. repeat them back to yourself. guard your heart... You shouldn’t go home tonight wondering what the whole point of the message was. Here it is. Guard your hearts! a couple weeks ago Pastor Matt was up here pleading with us, commending us in the name of Jesus to guard our hearts. He passionately went scripture by scripture showing us how it’s, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.” 

When you do something bad, when you sin, when you lash out in anger on your fellow man, when you covet your neighbors wife, when you provoke you children to anger, when you fudge your timecard at work or call in pretending to be sick - whenever you show contempt for your parents or defile the Lord’s day by treating it like any other day, that’s evil. When you murmer and complain. When you bring forth into the world evil, it’s not just something that happens spontaneously, out of nowhere, without cause, out of your control. 

No, you give birth to your evil deeds, they come from your heart when you’re not diligent to guard it and nurture it in the faith. 

For the love of God! for the sake of all that is good and lovely, for the sake of your own soul and the very lives of your spouse and children, will you not Guard your heart?! 

Now, that begs the question, From what, do you need to guard your heart? well, if i remember correctly, Pastor Matt admonished the church to guard our hearts by throwing ourselves on the promises of God. .. Oh the great and wonderful promises of God. How true they are! how mighty they are to guide and lead and sustain you, to lift you up, to empower you, to give you hope and joy in suffering, to keep you on the path of life and blessing. to make you wise. 

So if you guard your heart by trusting Him. What you’re guarding your heart from, and what gives birth to all your sin, what defiles you, is unbelief. When you sin, it’s because you don’t believe, - because you don’t trust. Now, that’s a harsh truth. it stings. But if you can humble yourself enough o accept it and not fight against it, it will free you to actually deal with your sin and understand it and get at it’s root cause and have victory over it by the grace of God. When you sin, it’s because you don’t believe, it’s because you’ve allowed sin to deceive you. Remember, a deception, a lie, only has power when it’s believed in. You can strip the devil of his power if only you would stop believing his wicked, murderous lies. You defend yourself from him by picking up the shield of Faith and trusting in your brave young savior and all the promises of God. 

Open your bibles to Hebrews 3:7 And test for yourself whether what you’re hearing is true or not. Listen for the connection between unbelief and hard hearts that give birth to sin. (Hebrews 3:7-19) ... the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” of 1 9 

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.