Heart Scan: Greed (2)

Heart Scan: Greed

Introduction:

Heart scan: What is it?

Mayo Clinic: A heart scan, also known as a coronary calcium scan, is a specialized X-ray test that provides pictures of your heart that can help your doctor detect and measure calcium-containing plaque in your arteries.

Plaque inside the arteries of your heart can grow and restrict blood flow to the muscles of your heart. Measuring calcified plaque with a heart scan may allow your doctor to identify possible coronary artery disease before you have signs and symptoms.

Main Verse:

“You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”

Allow the Holy Spirit to expose any plague in our hearts… Particularly in the area of how we manage our resources and money…

Plaque: cholesterol, fatty substances, waste products, calcium and a clot-making substance.

Plaque=narrow and stiff arteries

As plaque continues to collect on your artery walls, your arteries narrow and stiffen. Plaque can clog or damage your arteries, which limits or stops blood flow to your heart muscle.

Jesus Summarizes a Parable:

10 “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Context: Parable of the Lost Sons

THEN, Jesus tells a Parable about money that points to the Pharisees again. Our passage is a summary of that parable.

Financial Manager of a Rich Man

Point: How we handle our Resources from now until Jesus comes or we die… Did we handle resources correctly?

NIVAC: “One cannot serve both God and Money. If the resources we receive are a stewardship from God to be used in service to him and to others, then to serve God is to give our resources to meet the needs of those around us.” Darrell Bock

NIVAC: “Just as the unrighteous manager was prudent in considering what the future required, so we must be prudent in considering how God desires us to handle his resources.”

Ephesians 4:28 ESV

28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

“This parable, especially the applications at the end, argues that the use of resources is a litmus test of spiritual stewardship.” Darrell Bock

Pharisees Couldn’t Handle This

14 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.

What was that all about?

How did they ridicule him?

Ridicule=Lit. “to suffer from a nose bleed”… What do you do when you get a nose bleed, you put up your nose! Physically, my nose bends upwards...

Examples of their greed in Luke??

You’re going to defend what you love!

You’re going to stick up for your idol!

Jesus’ Response Part I: God Knows Your Heart

15 And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.”

Luke 11:37-41: 37 While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. 38 The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. 39 And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.

“Give as alms those things that are within...” ESVSB: “God will accept the good he does… even if he does not follow the outward ceremonial washing required by Jewish traditions.”

Jesus Response Part II:

“For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”

What is the Chief End of Man?

ESVSB: “Any kind of human achievement not done for the glory of God.”

10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.

In what ways do we justify ourselves before men?

What do we Exalt in our Culture?

How are these an Abomination?