Sermon Central
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The Stolen Seed
Contributed by Shawn Miller on Nov 28, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: This sermon deals with how hearts are harden by pride and lack of conviction toward the gospel and as a result the gospel seed is stolen before it ever had a chance to germinate in our souls. Good in a series of the 4 soils in mark 4.
When you have gone there, when you look toward the way of tradition, what was once a ritual becomes a religion. There is no religion that can save you. Only Christ Jesus can save you. He is the only way (Jn. 14:6) to God. Religion is man working to get to Heaven and Salvation is only found in Jesus (Jn 3:16)
This also includes the pride in our denominations
John - "we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop because he was not one of us." Jesus - "Do not stop him" "for whoever is not against us is for us."
Its long been the case throughout Church history that we tend to rebuke someone using the name of Jesus, simply because "they are not one of us." It's ONLY our group, our clique, our church, our denomination, our country, etc. that has the monopoly on truth. Pride hardens hearts. Faith in religion, faith in a denomination, faith in tradition WILL NOT SAVE YOU!
2) Lack of Conviction. Strong conviction is lacking today among most people. We are constantly reminded every time we turn on the T.V. that the world has strong convictions, just not for the word of God. If we don't preach the truth about sin and its consequences for fear of offending sinners we will never give them the strong conviction they need to “repent and believe” (Mark 1:15) The way side soil are the hard-hearted souls that are incensed that THEIR way is not THE way of salvation. TO them this is unfair. And as a result of their inability to humble themselves to the truth, they are indignant to the things of God. And as we see this disdain for things Holy & Godly increase in men, if we are not there already; then we are certainly rushing headlong toward that time when every man is doing that which is 'right in his own eyes'."
And that brings us to our conclusion: If we continue to harden our hearts, eventually God will give us over to a reprobate mind (Rom. 1:28) or a strong delusion to believe what is false (2 Thes. 2:11)
The Thief on the cross proved that it is never too late to repent. However as Matthew Henry puts it: "It is never too late for TRUE repentance, however, LATE repentance is seldom true." Don't wait until until the last minute.
Lets not allow our Hearts to be harden, lets allow God to humble them to receive his everlasting word, everlasting grace, everlasting love and everlasting life.
