Give us Hearts to Hear
Preach for Mark • Sermon • Submitted
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Intro: Unapologetic Question Junkie.
Intro: Unapologetic Question Junkie.
The Constant why of a childhood curiosity should become the consistent why of a mature believer.
8/7 - Give us Hearts to Hear (The Why of Preaching)
Scripture Reading - Colossians 2:1-7
1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. 5 For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. 6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Why do we need preaching?
Why do we need preaching?
What is the spirit up to in preaching?
The sinful condition of our hearts
The sinful condition of our hearts
1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
Hebrews speaks of the danger of our sinful unbelieving hearts – like the wanderers in the wilderness –
1 Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! 2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” 11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”
To drive us out of ourselves
To drive us out of ourselves
- We have this problem of thinking that our lives should be all about us. The continual preaching of the Word rewrites our script – We are like rouge actors, who have a part to play in God’s drama, but we are busy trying to act out our own plot in front of His cameras.
Get in our won heads - Baseball player in a slump. Pitcher on a mound bulpen after 3 pitches.
14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
Give the Spirit the opportunity to bring us to life
Give the Spirit the opportunity to bring us to life
, open our eyes and change out hearts. The scriptures applied by the spirit bring the dead to life, Open the eyes of the blind and change the heart of stone to a heart of flesh. Preaching provides that opportunity.
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
The Spirit of God makes the preaching of the Word effective. Rather than stiff arming the truth: Soften hearts, enlightening, convicting and humbling sinners, driving them out of themselves and unto Christ –
Sets our eyes on things above
Sets our eyes on things above
Col 3:1-4 because that is where our life actually is.
1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Out of that setting our eyes on things above comes maturity.
1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. 5 For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. 6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Reveal our Need for Christ
Reveal our Need for Christ
11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.
19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. 21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
lievers and unbelievers alike. We’re believers, we don’t need to hear the gospel again?! Do We need Christ now?
How should we Listen to a Sermon?
How should we Listen to a Sermon?
- How do you prepare your heart to hear a sermon? Wanting to. How do we best participate with the Spirit of God as we hear the word preached.
Prayerfully Prepare
Prayerfully Prepare
Ø What does your Saturday night look like? B. Confess sin/Repent C. Ask God to open your ears and eyes - Ps 40:6 Pray for courage and attentiveness to obey and apply.
6 In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.
Humbly Receive
Humbly Receive
11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
God built us to be receivers – He knows what we need.
You are the Creature, he is Creator - He continually gives life – depend on him for physical and spiritual life.
God intends the sermon to be a gift of Grace – give you something undeserved, a gift from God
Excitedly Expect
Excitedly Expect
Check your expectations - Why Do you come to church? Do you come to church with ears to hear?
1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.
Do you come to receive? What do you expect to receive?
What do you expect from a sermon? Do you come to a sermon expecting anything? You might not be getting anything from listening to sermons b/c you aren’t expecting anything from sermons. -
To make a pretense of coming unto God, and not with expectation of receiving good and great things from him, is to despise God himself . . . and deprive our own souls of all benefit thereby. (Works of John Owen,
13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
What are the things that run through your head during a sermon? Focused? Distracted?
Critically Think
Critically Think
Actively listen - Question- does this line up? b. Take Notes c. look for connections to other scriptures.
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
D. Careful that your doubts and conviction don’t make you sidestep where God is pressing in
17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
About your life - James 1:22-23
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.
54 lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.
Communally Listen
Communally Listen
12 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. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
A fighting army –Band of Brothers
Actively apply
Actively apply
1 “And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “ ‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.
21 But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
Let Thankfulness be the ground of any Application – not guilt
Let Joy be the Motivation for obedience, not determination
Choose specific action steps or you will be like the other soils.
Study the Soils - Mark 4:1-9 , Luke 8:4-8, Matt 13:1-8