Sermon Tone Analysis

Heart Trouble

A four-year-old girl was at the pediatrician's office for a checkup.

As the doctor looked into her ears, he asked, "Do you think I'll find Big Bird in here?"

The little girl didn't answer.

Next, the doctor took a tongue depressor and looked down her throat.

He asked, "Do you think I'll find the Cookie Monster down there?"

Again, the little girl was silent.

Then the doctor put a stethoscope to her chest.

As he listened to her heartbeat, he asked, "Do you think I'll hear Barney in there?"

"Oh, no!" the little girl replied.

"Jesus is in my heart.

Barney's on my underpants."

That little girl certainly has her priorities straight, getting right to the heart of the matter.

I won’t ask anyone to raise their hands, but I know that there are several of you who have experienced heart problems.

A number of years ago I had issues with A-Fib.

Hearing the diagnosis helped me realize that I wasn’t crazy and that there was something going on in my chest.

I said at the time it felt like that there was a bird trapped inside my chest and it kept fluttering it’s wings in a failed attempt to escape.

The first time I recognized it, they did a heart catheterization to see if I some type of blockage.

I was glad to hear when the anesthesia wore off that everything was good, no blockages.

A experienced it a second time and when I went to my PCP they did a EKG and they could see it on the printout.

This time I was sent to see an electrocardiologist.

She started me on some pills to help control my heart rhythm, but that failed to keep my heart in rhythm and out of A-Fib.

She told me that my only other option was to do an ablation procedure to kill some of the nerves that were causing me to go into A-Fib.

That was a little scary thinking that she would be killing some nerves.

I think I asked her if I needed those nerves.

She reassured me that I would be ok, so I trusted my heart to her.

The procedure was scheduled and all went well with it.

I experience an occasional flutter but I have not experienced any significant A-Fib since then.

Our hearts are one of the most vital organs in our bodies, however, it takes all of our organs working the way that God designed them to ensure that we are healthy.

We often will talk about problems we have in church.

Many will give answers as to why we have this problem or that problem, but when asked they don’t volunteer to help solve the problem.

When we talk about funding the operation of the church, I’ve said many times that we don’t have a money problem.

When we talk about getting volunteers to help with a ministry, I’ve said, we don’t have a people problem.

When we talk about discipleship, I’ve said we don’t have a disciple problem.

The church doesn’t have a money problem or a people problem, the church has a heart problem.

It really is not anything new.

The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote:

We have been bouncing around with Jeremiah over the past couple of weeks.

We’ve learned about some of his prophecies leading up to Jerusalem being conquered.

We jumped ahead and looked in Lamentations which was written after Jerusalem was conquered.

We’re now back to just before Jerusalem was conquered.

There is really nothing new under the sun.

God’s people had repeatedly turned away from God and worshiped false gods.

They would repent and follow God.

They would turn back to worshipping false gods.

It was a constant cycle of following God, abandoning God, following God, abandoning God, and now it is time for punishment.

Jeremiah in the opening verse of our text makes an astounding announcement from God.

God had made a covenant with the Jews at Mount Sinai.

You can go back and read it in Exodus 19:5-6 “5 So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me.

6 You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.

These are the words you should say to the Israelites.””

A priest is a visible representative of God.

Their mission in the Old Testament was to offer sacrifices, to teach, to declare healing.

They were to speak on behalf of God, bringing God to the people.

Israel was to be a kingdom of priests, they were to live holy lives.

They kept failing, they kept walking away from God.

They kept running away from their side of the covenant with God.

They had a serious heart problem.

Jeremiah recognized that.

In chapter 17 he wrote

He wrote about this deceitfulness a number of times in this book.

Jer 3:17 “17 At that time, they will call Jerusalem the Lord’s throne, and all nations will gather there to honor the Lord’s name.

No longer will they follow their own willful and evil hearts.”

Jer 7:24 “24 But they didn’t listen or pay attention.

They followed their willful and evil hearts and went backward rather than forward.”

Jer9:14 “14 Instead, they have followed their own willful hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their ancestors taught them.”

Jer 11:8 “8 But they didn’t listen or pay attention; they followed their own willful ambitions.

So I brought upon them all the punishments I prescribed for violating this covenant—for refusing to obey.”

Jer 17:1 “1 Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron pen.

It’s etched with a diamond point on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars.”

John Bate, a Methodist minister from the 1800s wrote about how some Christians can get caught up in a cycle of sinning and repenting.

He wrote:

We should not move in a circle of sinning and repenting, but should enter through the straight gate and go on our way until we pass into the country of eternal sinlessness and joy.

To be sinning and repenting, repenting and sinning, is to remain in religion like a man in a ship, while a headwind and a strong under-current drive him back to the point whence he started and may dash his vessel on the rocks, which will bring upon him sudden destruction.

Can a man who one day builds his house and the next day pulls it down ever get his home completed?

Will that traveler who goes on his journey a few miles and then returns and repeats this continually ever reach the destination upon which he first fixed his mind?

No more can you who, are repeating the commission of sin and the exercise of repentance.

Giving in to the temptation and sinning, and then repenting of it, promising to not do it again, obtaining forgiveness, and then no sooner joyous in the favor of God and His people, than you fall into the sin again.

This course of religious life will never bring you excellence, stability, usefulness, confidence with your brethren, or the reward of heaven.

It is true that if you sin, you should repent and seek a quick pardon from God, but you should not repeat the sin.

Having been canceled, it should never appear again.

Once committed and forgiven, it should only exist in the recollection and never be touched by you.

You should become stronger and stronger every day in grace and sin proportionably weaker and weaker.

Instead of the tears of repentance for sins into which you have fallen, there should be tears of joy for increased conformity to Christ and readiness for heaven.

Unless you come out of the circle, you may finally be drifted into the yawning vortex of despair.

The last thing you do may be the sin that besets you, without time or grace to repent, and so, after all your religious attempts, die without religion.

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Israel had fallen into that sinning and repenting cycle and the cycle ended with their exile from the promised land.

God could have just left them go and started all over again.

But God said Jer 31:31 “31 The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.”

God said that they had broken that old covenant.

Jer 31:32 “32 It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.

They broke that covenant with me even though I was their husband, declares the Lord.”

God is proposing to do something entirely new.

It wasn’t going to be like He had done before.

The people proved that they could not live within the scope of that first covenant.

God said in the very next verse Jer 31:33

Rather than having an external set of commandments and such.

God says that He is going to put his “Instructions within them on their hearts.”

That is a pretty radical change.

The old covenant is broken.