June 20, 2021

“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.

According to this text church, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you might think your doing real good and then al of the sudden out of no where you do or say something that is just simply wicked to the core?

Maybe some of you cannot identify but let me help you understand what this text is telling us.

Deceitful- ( duplicitous) adj. — marked by deliberate deceptiveness, sly, crooked, polluted, and misleading others.

Now obviously this is our Adamic nature or our old heart, because we know that:

Ezekiel 36:26–27 NKJV

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.

We receive this new heart by placing our faith in Jesus

By accepting him as our Lord and Savior church

And when we surrender, he fills us with his Holy Spirit that will enable us to walk with him in obedience to his Word

Let us remember that we are not saved by works:

Ephesians 2:8–10 NKJV

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Did you know that the Word says that we are His workmanship?

Workmanship-poiema- Gods creation

The Greek word Paul chose for this sentence is “poiema,” and what he had in mind is a work of masterful creativity. Paul selected this word carefully. The only other time in Scripture he used it was in Romans 1:20:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Here it takes five English words to unpack poiema. All that we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell in the universe is reading God’s creative masterpiece, his epic poem

You my beloved are God’s wonderful master piece, you are his poiema!

What is interesting about this word is we get the English word poem from this, therefore, you are God’s poetry.

And that is why we have slowed down the plow, to allow God to deal with and change our hearts.

For the last several weeks, the Lord has taught us about our position in Christ, who we are in Christ, that are identity is in Christ, and that nothing absolutely nothing apart from Jesus can reform our flesh.

He moved us from position, to practice, or from belief to behavior

Because how does one know how to act, unless unless they first know what they believe?

And by the way, Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life!

He is the Truth, because Truth, exposes the lies that have been sown into our lives over the years.

Review

We have taken off the graveclothes church and are putting on our new grace clothes and this is part of the new heart or the new man if you may.

We put on the garment of:

Compassion or Tender Mercies

Kindness

Humility

Meekness

Longsuffering

Forbearance, bearing with one another, or another way of putting this is making allowance for one another faults.

We learned about the false teaching that was coming into the church that will always create division and confusion.

Philosophy

Legalism

Mysticism

Asceticism

And today, we come to the big one, one that can be rather dificult to do :

Forgiveness

The voice of sin is loud, but the voice of forgiveness is louder.

~DL Moody~

Colossians 3:13 NKJV

bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

We finished up last week with looking deeper at what longsuffering and making allowance for each others faults which is forbearing.

If we bear with one another church, we must forgive one another

Paul says if anyone has a complaint against another you must forgive!

Must do is not an option, but an imperative in the Greek, that means a command by the Lord.

For many years in my life church, I struggled to forgive my father who committed suicide when I was three.

It was here, that the devil got a foothold in my life and rebellion set in.

It was here that I learned resentment at an early age, that turned to anger, and then anger turned into bitterness

Bitterness is a deadly malignancy of the soul. Its poisonous venom destroys both the physical body and the spiritual health of an individual. I once heard it said, “Bitterness is like the acid you have inside that you want to spew on others; but it may well eat you alive before you get the chance.”

Hebrews says it like this church:

Hebrews 12:14–15 NKJV

Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled;

Consider the account of Cain and Abel for a moment. (Genesis 4:1-16) We see that Abel brought the appropriate offering to God and received His favor, while Cain’s offering was not accepted because it was the wrong way to approach God. As a result, Cain was bitter at his brother. God warned Cain that if he did not deal with his simmering anger, sin was crouching at the door of his heart, desiring to master him. Although God’s desire was for Cain to rule over his anger, sadly, Cain did not heed God’s warning.

We see the ultimate fruit of this failure when he rose up and killed his brother Abel

We see great violence in this great nation, why?

It is because Father’s have not stepped up to the plate to be the High Priest of their homes.

Its because of the trauma of not coming from a two parent household church.

Its because we have a bunch of people who say they are Christians but do not live out their faith through love and through action.

It is because we have an angry, resentful bunch of kids screaming for help and nobody is helping.

It is because computers and TV are raising our kids.

Its because if we dont parent our children someone else will and that is why many join gangs or connect with unsafe people

Its because we are allowing the children of today to put garbage in their minds and e must remember church, garbage in, garbage out.

If someone is full of unforgiveness, anger, resentment, and bitterness, what do you think is going to come out of them? Love? absolutely not! It will be hate!!! Because they do not know LOVE and we know that God is love church, God is love!

I have taught on this several time church, because it seems like every where we turn to in the Word, forgiveness shows up!

Why do you think this is? It is because forgiveness is the heart of the gospel! It is the core of Christianity. It is what Jesus gave us on the cross church!

How did Jesus respond when the beat, pulled out his beard hair, spit on him and drove the nails inot his hands and feet?

Isaiah 50:6 NKJV

I gave My back to those who struck Me, And My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting.

Pulling out the beard of a condemned man before crucifixion was a part of the humiliation that was carried out against those who were crucified. The historical records of the Jews, consistently describes men who were condemned to death as having their beards torn from their faces

Isaiah 53:6–7 NKJV

All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.

After all the pain, all the suffering, taking on the weight of the sins of the world and hanging in our place upon a Cross, guess what Jesus said:

Luke 23:34 NKJV

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And they divided His garments and cast lots.

So, you might be thinking this is the Son of God, God in flesh, right? But there is no way that I could do this, there is no way!

Some scholars believe that when Jesus and other were crucified, that not only did their shoulders dislocate, put their elbows as well. This could possible mean that by the end of the suffering upon the cross that their arms could end up being up-to 9 inches longer than they were.

Jesus, was our example church, Paul says imitate me as I imitate Christ

I listened to a Doctor give a lecture yesterday about forgiveness and he used the illustration of someone being abused. People are abused physically, emotionally, and sexually all the time in this sin sick world. He shared that he has many patients that have endured great trauma and when asked the question is you could do whatever you wanted to the person or person who hurt you and have not accountability for your actions what would you do? And he shared that almost every-time each patient wanted to do them harm, they wanted vengeance. Some where believers and some where not.

Where do you stand with those that have hurt you? Abused you? Abandoned or rejected you? Where are you with your mother and father? How about your brothers or sisters? Your neighbor, co-workers, spouse? Where do you stand church with the bullies in your life? Where do you stand?

Are you still playing the victim?

What separates the victim from the perpetrator church? Circumstances and opportunities

We see in the illustration I gave, that given the opportunity that the victim would act the same way as the perpetrator. Why? Its because they have the same heart that needs to be made a new.

Being the victim comes from how your respond what was done to you

The only place a victim can let it go is at the cross or you will hang on to victim hood

Both must be saved , both must come to the cross and be set free

Real forgiveness brings us to the place for say Father forgive them

2 Corinthians 5:21 NKJV

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Jesus became sin for us??? Was it just for you or for those that have sinned against you as well?

This verse does not mean or teach Jesus was a sinner!

But it does teach about how our sins were imputed to Jesus church.

To impute something is to ascribe or attribute it to someone. On the cross, our sin was imputed to Christ. That is how Christ paid our sin debt to God. He had no sin in Himself, but our sin was imputed (attributed) to Him so, as He suffered, He took the just penalty that our sin deserves. At the same time, through faith, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. Now we can stand before God sinless, just as Jesus is sinless. We are not righteous in ourselves; rather, Christ’s righteousness is applied to us.

We are no longer the victim because Jesus took our place

If you are still playing the victim or the perpetrator then you are living in an experience before the cross

You cannot enter into the cross and not become free of being a victim or being a perpetrator because Jesus died for them both

When you go to the cross you are no longer the victim or perpetrator

Faith takes a hold of Christ and there is a great exchange

Have you accepted Jesus and what he did for you one the cross?

Because if you go to the Cross, you will leave changed and not only changed, but the chains that held you captive, will be loosed.

Luke 4:18 NKJV

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

If we have not forgiven some person, place, thing, or institution, then guess what?

Do you think we are free?

Let us take it to the cross!

Next week, we will cover the belt of all the garments we talked about about and about the peace of God.

The following week, I would like to spend one Sunday on learning about what it looks like to let the Word of Christ, dwell in us richly.

Prayer

Announcements

Are there any announcements?

We still continue to pray for the person the Lord is calling to be our Youth Director.

Benediction

Psalm 32:1 NKJV

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered.

The Lord Bless you!

Your Mission Starts Now!

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