As a matter of Heart

Have you ever done something out of necessity and not becasue you wanted too? I have and I am sure you have too. Have you ever done something without understanding why exactly you are doing it? Yep ive been there too. What about doing something without purpose?

In Alice in wonderland we are introduced to the Cheshire Cat, Alice asked the cat, "Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the cat. "I don't much care where," said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the cat.

Being a Christian and doing good things or living a good life means nothing if we are doing it without the correct heart. Jesus understood the power of the heart to direct the person. Jesus also understood and saw the people who simply acted good without a proper Heart. This moring we will explore what Jesus said about how our Hearts. Turn with me to Matthew 15:10-20

Matthew 15:10–20 ESV

And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

Today we will see Three points that Jesus made in this Scripture. First, we will see the Heart Disease. Second, we will explore the Heart Function. Third we will explore the Heart Solution.

The Hearts Disease

Matthew 15:10–11 ESV

And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”

In this scripture Jesus is giving us our first glimpse into the heart of man and what the Father considers hearts diseas. You see it is not that Jesus is saying that the Heart cannot be good, He is saying though that the initial intents of the Heart are not good. The human heart not as in the organ that we all need to operate and to live but the center of who we are as a person. In Spanish the heart is Corazon. Meaning the Core the center. Who you are is in your heart. Our actions unless masked pour from our heart. The disease of the heart that Jesus is speaking of is the disease of diception. The Jews had covered their consience with the idea that eating clean and washing their hands and following all the rules is what made them pure before God. They set up wash stations and areas where they could clean themselves becasue they truly believed that the act of cleaning ones body or eating the right foods was what showed their love for God. Jesus dismanteled this in front of their religious leaders.

Matthew 15:10–11 ESV

And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”

Jesus made no apologies for this and let the whole community know that the real problem here was that they were decieving themselves into believing that they were good. Their actions were good but their hearts were evil. Have you ever done something that you didnt want to do but did it becasuse of how it would make you look?

I was the middle child and as such I took the title very seriously. Now I was a twin but since he got the title of oldest by 1 minute that made me the middle child. I understood from an early age that this meant I should be the best child. Not the favorite and not the one that causes all the problems but the one that your parents almost forgot they had. There is a middle child handbook that they give you that teaches you these things. So I contently fell into my place. However as I got older I began to experiment with my location on the chart. I began to realize that I could do things that would make my twin upset and my younger brother upset then I could sweep in with the right words or actions and look like the innocent good kid. I would do things like tell my older brother that my younger brother had broken something of his and he would haul off and either hit my little borther or yell at him and you know as twins we shared most things in common so if he had something I was bound to have it too. I would wate until they were in the middle of an all out WWE style cage match and when my parents were coming in to see what all the yelling and screaming and slaming of each other was all about and I would swoop in with whatever it was and give it to my brother in a way to end their fight. Secretly I was the one who broke it and handed it to my younger brother and before he knew what happend I had already told my twin. I did this with the intent of making myself our parents secret favorite. The peace maker, the solver of problems, the good child. My actions looked good but the heart in which I was doing this was evil.

This is where the Jews found themselves in Jesus time and where many Christians find themselves on a daily basis. We are all working hard at being good and looking good and sounding good. But our hearts are far from God. We do good things and nice things but for the purpose of looking good. Jesus was making it clear that the heart has a disease of deciet and making us believe that we are good through actions that do not matter. The Bible is clear about the diseas of the heart.

Genesis 6:5 ESV

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Jeremiah 17:9–10 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

Hebrews 3:12 ESV

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

The Bible is proof that we have Heart disease. Our hearts are decietful and we try to fix this beacuse we do not understand the function of the Heart and and that leads me to our next point. The Heart has disease and you cannot fix it until you understand the Hearts function.

The Hearts Function

Matthew 15:16–18 ESV

And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.

Jesus clarified for the disciples that the Hearts funtion is to drive the character of the person. The heart is what dicatates not what we do but why we do it. Eating clean food with clean hands means nothing if you do not love the Father. The heart is the well that our character flows from. The Bible says about the function of the heart

Proverbs 27:19 ESV

As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.

Proverbs 4:23 ESV

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Jeremiah 17:10 ESV

“I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

The funtion of the heart is to drive our character. We are who our heart is set on us being. Jesus understood that the Heart was the measure of the person and not their actions. The scriptures are also clear about the Lords discernment of who we are by viewing our heart.

1 Samuel 16:7 ESV

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Proverbs 21:2 ESV

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.

Hebrews 4:12 ESV

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Your heart is diseased and it convinces you to cover this up though convincing those around you that you are better than you are by using actions and it drives you to convince others that you are good. You find yourself driving to do good works while never truly feeling as though you have reached the purpose. You try and try but never feel good enough. The function of the heart is often overlooked becasue we are convinced that our actions are what dictate our character.

On my way to work I saw a woman with her flashers on her car stopped in the middle of the road. I was on my way to a meeting but decided that I should stop and help get her car out of the road. I got up to the car and she was on her phone and I asked her if I could help get her car to safety. Now this was not a prius or a reasonably sized car it was a 1995 caddilac. You know the cars that are heavier than a train. So I began to push her across the street in my nice dress clothes and finally got her into the gas station parking lot. After getting her safely to the other side I asked her why she had a gas can in her hand and she stated that she always runs out of gas because the needle on her fuel guage is broken. I had just spent the last 30 minutes sweating and getting her car to the gas station that was 30 feet away when the best answer for the problem was the light weight gas can in her hands.

This is the same way we try to fix our human condition. We wear ourselves out with actions and trying to be good people becasue we truly believe that God cares about our actions. Deceptive actions are just as sinful as outright sinful actions. Doing good for the benefit of looking good does nothing for you. The fact is that if you want to be Holy as God is Holy you need to understand that that must pour from your heart. From your core from who you are inside not through all the things you do trying to look good or meet a standard that God never set. The solution for us is not acting better but allowing God to be our Hearts Solution.

The Hearts Solution

Psalm 51:10 ESV

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

The Solution for you is not to be a better actor. The solution is not to pay more tithes. The solution is not to go to church more. The solution for the Hearts Disease is to allow God to purify your heart.

A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can't be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket don't get angry and buy another product instead.

Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort.

The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution -- on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.

A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. "That's some money well spent!" -- he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.

It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. It should've been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.

Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.

"Oh, that," says one of the workers -- "one of the guys put it there 'cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang."

Do you want to be a better husband or wife, a better parent, a better child? Do you want to be a better employee? Maybe you just dont want to continue to feel so defeated becasue no matter how many good things you do you seem to fail eventually and fall short of what you think you should be. The Heart Solution is simple. It is not simple to do but it is a simple answer. Allow God to put in you a new heart. Take time to read the Word, study the Word, memorize the Word, and live out the Word. If you continue to base your faith on actions you will always fall short. I am a perfect example of that if you know me outside of this building and in my every day life you can attest to this. As a matter of fact if we spend enough time together in this building you can attest to the fact that I am not a perfect shining example of Christ. When I fail in my actions though I do not feel defeated or discouraged. I put my Heart back in focus with God and I fix my actions through asking God for a pure heart. This morning you may not have a heart that has ever asked God into it. Fix that! Maybe you are in here and you have asked God into your Heart but you have forgotten that it is the Heart that God is concerned with and that a Pure Heart a fixed Heart will drive better actions and a better love for others. Fix that! God desires to be in the Heart repair business not the pretty fascade business.