Theme Verse.

Question(s)

Who is Jesus?

What did He do?

Why did Jesus die on the cross?

What is sin?

Why is it so bad?

What does it mean to be defiled?

What is our heart?

Our theme verse this year is Matthew 15:18, which says, “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.”

What we see in this verse is that sin comes from our hearts. It is not just an action we do, or something we say, or even something we think. It is all those things, but we do all those things because of our hearts are sick and evil.

Jeremiah 17:9 ““The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can know it?”

Here we see that our hearts are deceitful.

deceitful means lying, deceiving, or tricking. so our hearts try to trick us into thinking that we are good and pure, when we really aren’t

Our hearts deceive us, telling us that we are innocent, when we really aren’t.

Our evil deeds deserve death (Romans 3:23; 6:23).

Does someone here know how we get a new heart?

Jeremiah 31:33 ““But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh: “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Here we see that God will give us a new heart? But how?

Titus 3:4-7 “But when the kindness and affection of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, so that we can be washed from our evil deeds, saved from the wrath of God, and be given eternal life!

We are going to talk more about that tomorrow. And then later on this week, we will talk about how we can know that we are saved!