Rev. David Holwick ZQ
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
December 31, 2017
Psalm 51:10-15
WARM COLD HEARTS
I. It's cold outside.
A. Cold snaps get our attention.
1) Celeste hates being cold.
a) The solution is a roaring fire in the fireplace.
b) Which means Pastor David has to trudge out into the
bitter cold to haul in firewood.
c) Do you have any idea how much wood is consumed by a
roaring fire over an eight-hour period?
d) I couldn't feel my fingers for two days.
2) Bostedos' pipes, and those in the church office, froze
this week. Mark Noyes was my salvation.
3) I have to consider this: when it was 10 degrees in Roxbury,
it was 14 BELOW in Boothbay, Maine. (where we will retire)
B. It doesn't just get cold outside.
1) Someone came to me two weeks ago and said they were feeling
spiritually cold.
a) (I actually heard this from two different people.)
b) They were going through the motions but it brought them
no joy.
c) They still believed in God but it didn't seem to matter
much.
d) They WANTED to feel different, but didn't know how to
go about it.
2) This got me to thinking.
a) What makes your heart grow cold, and takes the joy away?
b) What can you do to warm it up again?
c) Lots of firewood doesn't cut it. We need something
else.
II. The cause of cold hearts.
A. You become disillusioned with others.
1) We depend a great deal on the interactions we have with
others.
a) If they hurt us or fail us, we take it hard.
b) The rest of your life can be dimmed by it.
1> I think that is why so many people are spiritually
open after a close relationship has failed.
2> Conversely, hurtful relationships can harden you
to spiritual joy.
2) It is especially tough if the hurtful person is a believer.
a) It makes us question the validity of salvation and
whether God is real.
b) If we are honest, we probably should admit that humans
here have more of an impact on us than God "up there."
B. The hardness of life overwhelms you.
1) Coldness can come from bad things that happen to us through
no fault of our own.
2) I got an email this week from a person who has an issue
with the book of Job.
a) At the beginning of the book, Job's family is wiped out;
at the end of the book, he gets a new family again.
b) The person who sent the email wasn't thrilled by this.
1> Getting a replacement family doesn't balance out
having your first family wiped out.
2> It seemed like a raw deal to him, and many others.
3) Life is filled with raw deals.
a) Often we have no idea why it is happening to us.
b) The end result can be that we conclude God "doesn't work"
and we want to give up on him.
C. You develop a self-centered focus.
1) Coldness can be purely our own fault.
2) We take God for granted and start focusing on what lacks in
our life instead of looking at the blessings.
3) We slip away from habits like fellowship and prayer and
quiet time with God.
4) Then before you know it, you feel empty and along.
D. Habitual sin creeps in.
1) Sometimes our coldness has a concrete cause - active
rebellion against the Living God.
a) The Bible is filled with episodes of those who defy God
and choose their own way.
b) Judgment often follows, and they turn to God in despair.
2) Christians in the old days called it "worldliness."
a) Christmas is an awesome time for worldliness.
1> Lots of alcohol, frenetic activity, flirting with
good-looking people...
2> You cross some moral boundaries, and it becomes
easier to cross even more.
3> The Christian way begins to seem quaint and
restrictive.
b) You can end up very far away from God.
3) Sin can be pleasurable and seem to have no bad consequences.
a) At least at first. But it siphons away your intimate
feeling with God.
b) You almost have to move away from him to protect
yourself from the feelings of hypocrisy.
III. Churches can get cold too.
A. The furnace is usually not the issue.
1) We have had bad furnaces.
2) I remember it cost around $20,000 to fix.
3) But even with a new furnace, churches can be very cold
places.
A church newsletter mentioned a man who visited 18 different
churches on successive Sundays.
He was trying to find out what the churches were really like.
He sat near the front.
After the service, he walked slowly to the rear, then returned
to the front and went back to the foyer using another aisle.
He smiled and was neatly dressed.
He asked one person to direct him to a specific place: a
fellowship hall, the bathroom, the pastor's study, etc.
He remained for coffee if served.
The man used a scale to rate the reception he received.
He awarded points on the following basis:
10 for a smile from a worshiper
10 for a greeting from someone sitting nearby
100 for an exchange of names
200 for an invitation to have coffee
200 for an invitation to return
1000 for an introduction to another worshiper
2000 for an invitation to meet the pastor
On this scale, 11 of the 18 churches earned fewer than 100
points.
Five actually received less than 20. (less than one smile and
a greeting!)
The conclusion: The doctrine may be biblical, the singing
inspirational, the sermon uplifting --
But when a visitor finds nobody who cares whether he's here,
he is not likely to come back.
#34114
B. Church warmth involves far more than attendance.
1) Do you care about people, and get below the superficial
level with them?
2) I don't think you can be deeply in love with everyone, but
you should be able to connect on a deeper, heart-felt
level with at least five others.
IV. Cold hearts can end up frozen solid.
Wearing only a diaper and a pink T-shirt, 13-month-old Canadian
Erika Nordby wandered outdoors into the -11 degree weather
during the night of February 23, 2001.
Hours later, Erika's mom, Leyla, found her lying in the snow,
frozen stiff.
By the time paramedics reached the house, Erika's heart had
stopped beating for as long as two hours, her lungs had
stopped breathing, and her body temperature was 61 degrees,
which is 36 degrees below normal.
She was clinically dead.
But paramedics, one of whom had seen a similar case seven years
earlier in Saskatchewan, did not give up.
They tried CPR but nothing happened.
They tried to insert a breathing tube but could not.
They rushed her to hospital.
The staff there hooked the baby up to a machine that warmed
her blood outside of her body and then cycled it back.
Just as they were about to hook up the machine that would cause
her heart to beat for her, Erika's little heart started to
beat on its own.
The next day, just like any other toddler, Erika was eating,
drinking from her sippy cup, watching Barney on TV and
babbling happily away to the doctors, nurses and her mom.
A month later, Erika Nordby went home from hospital, with a
small skin graft on her left foot from frostbite the only
permanent damage she had to show for her ordeal.
Everyone said it was a miracle.
But the experts said that because it was so cold, Erika's
entire body, heart, brain, everything, had frozen so quickly
that it was perfectly protected.
Once she was warmed up, her body was in perfect condition to
start up again as if nothing had happened.
There are an awful lot of people in this world who go through
life with frozen hearts.
Unlike little Erika's, our hearts didn't freeze suddenly and
quickly.
For most of us, it is a much longer and more painful process
than that. #31621
Our hearts become cool, then cold, then have no feeling at all.
Can such a heart beat warm again?
V. Warming a cold heart.
A. Recognize the problem.
A new minister in a small Oklahoma town spent the first four
days desperately calling on the membership, begging them to
come to his first services ... they didn't.
He then placed a notice in the local newspapers, stating that
since the church was dead, it was his duty to give it a
decent Christian burial.
The ad said the funeral would be held the following Sunday
afternoon.
Morbidly curious, the whole town turned out.
In front of the pulpit, they saw a coffin on a high platform,
smothered in flowers.
The minister read the obituary and delivered a eulogy; he
then invited his congregation to step forward and pay their
last respects to the dearly beloved who had departed.
The long line filed by.
Each mourner peeped into the coffin and then turned away with
a guilty, sheepish look.
For in the coffin, tilted at the correct angle, was a large
mirror.
Everyone saw himself. #24488
a) Coldness is not always because of you, but often it is.
b) King David acknowledged this when he wrote Psalm 51.
1> In verse 4 he admits he has sinned against God and
deserves his agony.
2> If you feel distant from God, look into your heart
and ask God to show you what the reason is.
B. Repent of any known sin.
1) King David admitted his sin with Bathsheba, but only after
a prophet hit him over the head with it.
a) Drifting from God can make us dense like this.
b) David realized he had to change his ways.
2) He asks God for a clean start.
a) He wanted a pure heart and a feeling of joy again.
b) And he wanted to help restore others, as he had been
restored.
3) Is there something you need to repent of?
a) A sinful habit that is consuming your thoughts and time?
b) A relationship that you know God forbids?
c) Something in the past you have buried, but not really
dealt with?
C. Do something different.
1) New Years is a good time to start new habits.
a) Don Jacke told me he has resolved to read the Bible
cover-to-cover for the fourth time.
b) He will be doing it on his phone.
2) Make someone your personal project.
a) This sounds tacky, even arrogant, but I see wisdom in
it.
b) Instead of "loving everyone," pick a specific person.
1> Someone you are on the "outs" with.
2> Someone you love, but they have rejected God in
their life.
c) Make a commitment to pray for them, contact them,
lift their spirits and point them to God.
D. Open up to God again.
1) Schedule a special time for prayer.
a) Even better, do it with a partner who can hold you to it
and keep you honest.
2) Pick up a Christian book that is positive and challenging.
3) Make more of an effort at fellowship, the kind that is deep
and satisfying.
4) Make an effort to draw near to God, and see if the sense
of joy and fulfillment returns again.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
#24488 “Death of the Church,” author unknown; Abe Kudra Collection,
March 23, 2003.
#31621 “Thawing Frozen Hearts,” by Rev. Heather McCance, Anglican Parish
of Sharon and Holland Landing, Ontario, Canada; Kerux Sermon
#26111, December 24, 2003. Her illustration uses Celsius
instead of Fahrenheit temperatures.
#34114 “Rating Churches,” Wit And Wisdom internet newsletter by
Richard G. Wimer, January 22, 2007; original source is
“Laugh & Lift.”
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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