- Not about knowing good and evil, but God’s laws
- Psalm 147:20 Nations not knowing God’s laws vs Israel God’s heart revealed.
- 1 Corinthians 13:1 – Clanging cymbal without love. Usually, love discarded in place of money, social status.
- Psalm 103:7 He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel.
- Communication Yes/No: Matthew 5:37-Darkness not comprehend light: John 1:5.
- Heart Controls obedience or disobedience toward God
The heart’s control of our life is a constant theme of Scripture.
- Proverbs 25:28 (NLT) A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls.
- Ecclesiastes 10:2 A wise man’s heart is at his right hand, But a fool’s heart at his left.
- Matthew 25:33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.
Obedience or disobedience toward God is determined by the condition of our heart:
- Deuteronomy 30:17 But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them,
- The people of Jeremiah’s day rebelled in apostasy because they “walked, each one, in the stubbornness of his evil heart”.
- Jeremiah 7:24 Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.
- The lie of Ananias and Sapphira was generated in their heart as Peter’s question indicates their heart.
- Acts 5:4 While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”
Jesus and your heart
No one taught that the heart is the source of life more plainly than Jesus.
- Old Testament/covenant: Body leading to heart
- New Testament: Heart leading to your body
- New Testament: Heart chooses to obey the Born-again Spirit
- New Testament: Renew mind
Throughout the Bible, the choice is the creations; of being reconciled to God.
- Fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil.
- Noah let out a Raven and a Dove. Raven flew into the world, the Dove came back, refuge in God.
- Offering the two goats to be right with God in the old covenant sacrificial system; scapegoat and the sacrificial, sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering
- Good vs evil treasure; abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, living sacrifice.
Jesus’ response to accusing him of casting out demons by the power of the Devil.
- Matthew 12:34–35 Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.
The implications of this clear:
- Good words and good behavior do not spring from mere resolutions “I will be good“ but from our being.
- Psalm 51:6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom
- Evil things come from evil persons.
- Good things come from good persons.
What defines a person’s character and the activities of his life is the content of the storehouse of his heart where he has treasured up either evil or good.
As Jesus’ words attest, our speech is the primary way that we reveal who we are, and that revelation can sometimes be surprising.
- Speech is the overflow of our being;
- it is the main way we express what we ‘are’;
- it is the major fruit of who we are;
- speech is the self that is “expressed” outward.
The poison of asps
- Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.
- Colossians 3:8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.
Do you find yourself blurting profanity when under stress?
- When we get angry?
Though you may not be in the habit of using such language, where did it come from?
- Romans 3:13 “Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit”; “The poison of asps is under their lips”;
- When the serpent strikes, its fangs, ordinarily folded back in the upper jaw, drop down. And in the process of actually biting, serpents press a sack of deadly poison hidden “under their lips” at the root of the hollow fangs thereby injecting the venom into the wound.
I realized from this and other scriptures that what came out of my mouth was already in me, lying hidden in my heart.
- It just took the pressure of stress to spew it out.
If there are cockroaches in a darkness you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly.
- But the suddenness does not create the cockroaches
- it only prevents them from hiding.
- In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.
Apparently these “cockroaches” were always there in the darkness of my soul.
- I’ve heard the advice to count to ten before responding in a stressful situation.
We try to intercept the heart’s expression, tweaking it with what is more appropriate for a good appearance and reputation.
We seek to hide what is in our heart, and to some extent are able to succeed in not exposing all of its contents.
- But as we’ve already seen, the issues of life flow out of the heart.
- This duplicity is harmful
In one form or another, the contents of our heart inevitably make their presence known in the experiences of our life.
- Mark 7:20–23And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”
Unlike Jesus, who could respond immediately from a holy, loving heart, we need to be careful about letting the fleshly contents of our heart display themselves spontaneously.
- Salt and light
- Matthew 5:13–14 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
Direct your heart to the word of God
- Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
- Herein lies the good news.
- Romans 8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
- Philippians 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
- Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
God willing, we will continue next week.