The Heart of Man wk. 3

The Heart of Man

An Exclusive Heart

Good morning CHURCH!

Are you ready to be equipped today?

Let me see your Bibles.

Let’s go to the book of Joshua for this week’s wisdom Vaccination.

This Week’s Wisdom Vaccination

Joshua 24:15 ESV

And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua made a choice!

Reminds me of this guy who was coaching a little league football team (chiefs, broncos, chargers and raiders)

They practice 4 days a week (M,T,Th,F) and played games on the weekend.

A really talented player tells the coach he can only commit to 2 practices a week and every other game.

Why?

The other practice days and game day he will be playing for the competition.

Choose this day which team your going to play for.

Today’s message is titled:

An Exclusive Heart

Exclude – to separate or isolate something and place in a group apart from others (as for a purpose).

(Add 2nd definition upon my request.)

Exclude – to prevent something/someone from being included or considered or accepted.

To draw clear boundary lines which separate those within from those without.

Point #1

An Exclusive Heart for Marriage

If you’re not married take notes for your future or to pass on this info to someone else who will need it.

You youngsters in here pay close attention because high school/college won’t teach you this.

Matthew 19:4-6 ESV

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

If you want to challenge the exclusivity of marriage before you do, you need to consider what he who kitzo (created) them from the beginning said.

(Why is this important? Because the creator/manufacture determines the purpose for a thing.)

We also see here that from the beginning God created two complementary genders for each other.

We were not meant to be the same.

We were meant for our differences to complement each other.

The main two components of a marriage are to leave and to cleave or be united.

We take this leaving part to mean only to get your own space to dwell in, but this is not the intent and definitely not the main intent.

In the biblical world extended families regularly dwelled together.

You are to transfer your allegiance from parents to your spouse.

You are to take your separate learned ways of doing life and merge them together for the benefit of your own union.

And I think it goes without saying that you are to use the nature and character of God to formulate the way this new union operates.

(Do you know that if you use the nature and character of God to formulate the way your marriage/family operates, you’ll cut out all of the fussing that leads to negative feelings and over time negative belief systems about one another.)

That is what was going on in Matthew 19.

They were trying to get Jesus to say that it’s okay to divorce now that we are no longer pleased with her. (pointing back to Deut. 24.)

Deuteronomy 24:1 NLT

“Suppose a man marries a woman but she does not please him. Having discovered something wrong with her, he writes a document of divorce, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house.

Before we get to the point of divorce, we come to a place of displeasure with one another.

You know you’re at the point of displeasure with one another because quite often you find yourselves attacking one another verbally and especially in your thought life. (Any relationships)

This leads to divorce. Divorce is a tearing away of oneness.

When you find yourself attacking one another in marriage, you are being implicit in attacking the very image of God. (Gen. 1:26-27)

Marriage is supposed to show unity and love in action just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit do.

And not just marriage but anyone who is born again of God’s spirit is now supposed to interact with other humans in such a way that we display not the old nature we grew up with but the new nature that we received at the new birth. (Born Again)

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

If you are not displaying this new nature and you have been born again for a while, you need to schedule some appointment time with God and find out what seems to be the problem.

But I kind of know what he’s going to tell you.

Ephesians 4:22-24 ESV

To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

A transformed heart and nature by God will not only cause you to be committed to your spouse but will cause you to do whatever it takes to display God’s nature to one another.

Point #2

An Exclusive Heart for God

Psalm 100:3 ESV

Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

There is a sense of obligation here.

If you act like he is not God and you are not a sheep of his pasture, you act as if you created yourself. What pride!

So, if you created yourself, I hope you created your own heaven to spend eternity in.

Of course God made us! He is responsible for making mankind.

But he also made us in the sense that he chose Israel to be his, separately from the other nations.

And through adoption he has chosen you if you received him.

Romans 14:8 ESV

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

This was in a passage contextually talking about not casting judgement on one another because one may have weaker eating preferences.

But as we see it concluded with a resounding “we are the Lord’s”, because that ultimately is what is more important than anything else.

There should be nothing that we commit to or seriously engage in that we know will not please the Lord.

Galatians 2:20 ESV

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

I’m sure we can all say that Christ was and is all about us.

But can we say that I am all about Christ?

Or better yet, will he say you are all about Christ.

And let’s throw in an Old Testament Scripture for good measure.

Isaiah 43:1 ESV

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

The Lord shaped his very own people.

The latter part of this verse brings the reader to mind of a shepherd calling his sheep by name because they belong to him.

If you’re watching online or here in the room, I have a very important question to ask you.

What is Holy Spirit saying to you right now?