Breaking up boulders

Good morning and welcome in everyone.  Today, we are going to take a look at a passage of scripture, but before we do that, I wanted to tell you a little story.

For many years, my children often play outside in the front yard. They were starting to get a little bored one summer, so I decided to order a dump truck load of gravel from a neighbor.

He couldn’t get into our property because we’re built on a hill, so what he did is he dumped it on the side of the hill and the whole pile slid down the hill, exposing all the rocks and boulders that were in the gravel .

About a week later I heard something outside in the yard. I kept hearing these noises…… chip chip chip , chip chip chip. Curiously I went outside to see what was going on.

The children were all gathered in a circle with a couple of hammers breaking up boulders.

This reminds me of the Christian Life.

Hebrews 4:7 ” Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

A boulder is a fairly hard material.

A few years ago, a neighbor of ours told me a story about when he was a kid. They had a huge boulder that they were trying to remove from their field because they had hit it with their plow. It was so big that they had to dig around it and try to dynamite it. When the dynamite went off, the rock came up out of the ground for a moment, and then fell right back into the same hole that it come out of.

Each of our hearts can become just as hard as that big boulder. No matter how hard it is, our hearts need to break before God.

Hebrews 3:8 “Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:”

In gravel pits they break up boulders by using a large Crusher. It pulverizes them and breaks them up into next to nothing.

That’s what we need to do with each of our hearts . We need to become humble before God. We need to allow ourselves to be pulverized into nothingness so that we can listen and hear the things that God is trying to say to us.

Matt 13:15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

God wants to convert and heal us, but first we need to break up those hard hearts. They need to become soft and pliable.

Think about the thick ice out on the lake in the winter time. It’s so hard that people actually drive their heavy vehicles out onto it. But eventually what happens in the spring? All that hard ice is broken up by the light from the Son. If you leave your fish house out there it’s going to eventually fall right into the lake.

Our hearts need to become that soft. We need to melt that hardness away until they are soft, like a liquid. Only when our hearts become that soft do our ears begin to hear the voice of God. We become putty in the hands of our maker.

We need to allow God to reach down deep inside of our hearts so he can help us to grow. He wants to come into our hearts but the thing that prevents that is our own hard-heartedness.

The word hard-hearted actually means unmerciful and without pity or compassion. It’s a person who lacks in sympathetic understanding. Those are qualities that are completely against the divine nature of God.

Hosea 10:12 “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.”

Have you ever watched a backhoe as it begins digging out a basement? Sometimes the ground is very hard and he has to keep hitting the ground to break it all up.

Have you ever been out somewhere and watched people doing construction? You may see a man with a very loud jackhammer breaking up all the concrete. Watch how he tears through that concrete until it’s reduced to a pile of rubble.

In order to hear the voice of God through the teachings of the Holy scriptures, our hearts have to break and be broken apart, like taking down a brick wall brick by brick until it’s ready to submit and listen and learn from the word of God.

To hear something is more than just hearing with your ears. To become spiritual, we must hear it from our hearts. It’s a hard heart that causes us not to want to listen so in order to hear with our hearts, they first must be broken down.

Hebrews 4:7 ” To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

Have you ever loved and cared for somebody else so much, but they refuse to listen to what you have to say. Think about how God the Father feels when people will not listen to His Son Jesus Christ and the things that he taught.

God does not want anybody to perish. He wants each of us to come to a place of repentance and believe on His Son Jesus who died on the cross for our sins and misdeeds. Through him we have access through Gates of Heaven and eternity, but our hearts must first be broken so that we can get to the point that we will listen to him completely.

Matt 17:5 “While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.”

We have to hear God’s word in our heart in order for us to be converted and to be able to become pleasing unto God. It’s more than just hearing the word of God preached or taught, it’s hearing it from a broken and contrite heart.

Matt 13:16 “But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.”

That is the kind of meek and lowly heart that God wants from each of us.

Romans 10:17 – So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

I remember not too many years ago I was at a gas station and I was putting some gas in my vehicle when someone pulled up next to me on the opposite side of the pump.

I happened to notice something on his vehicle and started to strike up a conversation with him, but it seemed like he hadn’t heard anything that I had said. I repeated myself twice as loud the next time but he didn’t even turn his head.

Eventually he finished fueling up and looked me in the eye and I asked him practically shouting at him, how are you doing today sir, to which he smiled and responded, doing fine, doing fine.

In order to have a conversation with him I was nearly at the top of my voice speaking to him because his poor ears were so bad.

God wants us to hear Him, but we can’t. God wants us to to incline an ear and follow His Son’s teachings, but we can’t. God wants us to listen and walk in love, mercy and kindness, but we can’t….

Not until we start…..

…..Breaking up Boulders.

Let’s think about these things for right now.  We can be found on your web browser by searching tlkjbc, or by going to hipcast, buzzsprout or amazon, or by getting our podcast feed directly at tlkjbc.com, or I suppose, you can find us somewhere up here, in the Great Northern Minnesota woods.  Lord willing, we will talk with you some more tomorrow. Till then, bye bye everybody. ❤️

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