The Battle For Your Heart

The Battle for Your Heart

Text: Matthew 13:3-9 Matthew 13:18-23

Intro:

We will say sometimes lets get to the heart of the problem… but sometimes the problem is the Heart.

Why is it that some people’s lives change after one sermon, and others don’t seem to change at all?

Why is it as I preach, only a few people hear, hang on to , and put to practice the message?

How can two people sit side by side on the same aisle, in the same church. Listen to the same message’s week after week and:

Only one of them grows in faith.

Only one of them matures

Only on learns to walk in the Spirit

Only one of them begins to live a productive life.

Only one is living a fruitful life.

And others fail

No sign of maturity.

No sign of sharing their faith

No evidence of fruit.

Little or no change

Sam problem week after week, year after year

Jesus tells us that in the parable of the Sower that not all believers will show the same kind of fruitfulness

Three Basic Symbols in the parable.

The seed is the word of God

The Sower is the one who shares the word of God

The Battle for your Heart

The soil or ground represents the heart of different kinds of listeners

Jesus describes 4 kinds of hearts

The first kind of heart is the hardened heart.

The Wayside Ground (The Harden Heart)

In Matthew 13:4

Jesus talks about the seed which falls beside the wayside and the birds came and eat the seed.

“And as he sowed, some seeds fell by the road, and the birds came and ate them up.”

Jesus explains in Matthew 13:19

“When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches it away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one whom seed was sewn beside the road.

This is the person who has hardened their heart.

We sometimes say that we might as well be talking to a brick wall than them.

Matthew 13:9 Does not understand it.

This is the person that hears the word of God but does not understand it.

It is not that he doesn’t understand it but is not willing to try. Won’t take the time to understand it.

This person can be a non-believer or a believer.

This person may go to church every week.

This is the person who will decide what he will hear and what he will not hear.

The Battle for your Heart

This person closes their mind to anything that they do not want to do.

The mind is closed, and the heart is hardened because they have heard the truth so many times without responding to God.

There is a danger when we hear the word of God and do not respond to Gods word because the heart becomes hardened.

Jesus says: “It’s like the seed dopped on the hard ground where the seed has no chance to grow.

The Birds came and ate the seed Matthew 13:4

The Birds are a symbol of the devil.

Satan comes and snatches away the thought from your heart, and it never comes back again.

Satan will come and steal the word of God from you if you fail to apply the word of God towards your everyday living.

When you allow your heart to become calloused to the word of God then you give Satan an opportunity to steal Gods words out of our life.

The reason Satan could snatch away the word was that it could not penetrate to the heart.

The problem isn’t the word the problem is the heart is so hard that the word couldn’t penetrate the heart.

WE ARE INVOLVED IN SPOROTUAL WARFARE

Satan wants to harden our hearts. This spiritual warfare is to harden our hearts towards God.

The Battle for your Heart

The Second kind of heart is the shallow heart

II) The Rocky Ground (The Shallow Heart)

Matthew 13:5-6

“And others fell upon the rocky places, where they did not have much soil: and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched and because they had no root, they withered away.”

Jesus’ explanation is in Matthew 13:20-21 NIV

20 The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy.

21 yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the [a]word, immediately he [b]falls away.

Receives it with Joy (Matthew 13:20)

This represents an emotional heart who hears the word, but the response is only emotional or shallow and temporary.