Listen To Your Heart Series

“Listen to Your Heart”

John 10: 7-10

October 9, 2011

Intro: A # of years ago there was a game show on TV called “Let’s Make A Deal.” The host would come out and go into the audience and offer cash to a person. He’d tell them, “You can keep this cash or you can choose what’s behind door #1, #2, or #3.” That meant the contestant had to make a choice. He had to decide if he was going to keep what was in hand or go out on a limb and take a chance that what was behind one of the doors was better.

-In that game the worse thing that could happen was to go home w/a really bad gift like a bucket of dirt or a goat, but as we’re going to discover today the results of choosing poorly can have eternal consequences.

-Today we’re continuing our series “Classic Rock.” One of my favorite little ballads in the 80’s was the song “Listen to Your Heart” by Roxette. The song, while it wasn’t meant to be spiritual, actually has some spiritual truths in it. One of the verses in the song says, “Listen to your heart, when he’s calling for you. Listen to your heart, there’s nothing else you can do…Listen to your heart before you tell him goodbye.”

-As I listened to that song I thought, “When we make decisions in life, who or what is it we’re listening to to guide us; to help us make decisions?” When it comes to us making a decision on how we’re going to live and whom we’re going to live for, how are we coming to our conclusions?

-My thought is that deep w/in us we KNOW how to live. Deep w/in us we have etched into our hearts God. The Bible tells us in Jer. 31: 33, “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” So if that’s the case then it comes down to us making the choice to follow what God has set in our hearts.

Sermon Idea: Today in our passage of Scripture we’re going to see Jesus giving us a choice on how we’re going to live our lives. He lets us know that we can make a deal w/Him and have some guarantees in this life or we can choose to go thru another door in life that doesn’t include Him.

-My hope is that as we go thru this text that we’ll simply listen to what God’s already etched on our hearts and choose wisely.

TEXT: JOHN 10: 7-10

Bckgrd: This section of Scripture is in response to the religious leaders of the day. As you may know, the religious leaders in general weren’t too fond of Jesus. They saw Him as being a threat to their religious power. He was getting more attention than they were.

-The real tragedy is that for these religious men who claimed to have a connection w/God, they couldn’t even recognize His presence when He stood before them. In ch. 9 Jesus healed a blind man! Instead of it causing them to consider what had happened they automatically rejected what Jesus had done. They ignored what God had written on their hearts and chose to follow their own leading.

-Today, let’s make a decision to choose wisely how we’re going to live and to whom we’re going to live for. So I want to share w/you 3 reasons from our text to choose Jesus. The 1st reason to choose Jesus is b/c:

DIV. 1: HE PROTECTS US (vv. 7-8)

Exp: Jesus said He was the gate for the sheep. The people in Jesus’ day knew exactly what He was talking @ b/c they lived in a rural society w/a lot of shepherds. So for us to really get the full gist of what Jesus was saying we need to understand how shepherds worked w/their sheep when they were in the pasture.

A. The shepherd would take his sheep and find a shelter of rock walls or a cave or a section that had brambles. He would then bring the sheep into this enclosed structure leaving only a narrow opening as an entry and then he would lie down across the opening and literally become the door or the gate into the sheep pen.

1. The only way the sheep could leave or the only way predators could get in would be to go thru the shepherd. Now what was the purpose of this? It was for the shepherd to be able to PROTECT His sheep!

a. The correlation Jesus was making here is that if you come into His fold He is going to protect you! He’s going to be the gate watcher of your life! Some people like to think they don’t need anyone to watch over their lives; that they can survive on their own. But the fact is we can’t! We all need God! Why? B/c God has created all of us w/a God sized hole in our lives that only He can fill.