Week One-Step One
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 3 viewsNotes
Transcript
My child, pay attention to my words;
listen attentively to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your sight,
guard them within your heart;
for they are life to those who find them
and healing to one’s entire body.
Guard your heart with all vigilance,
for from it are the sources of life.
Remove perverse speech from your mouth;
keep devious talk far from your lips.
There is nothing outside of a person that can defile him by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles him.”
He said, “What comes out of a person defiles him. For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly. All these evils come from within and defile a person.”
“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from brambles.
Week One
Step One
Where in the Human personality does Spiritual Transformation take place?
There are several passages we could use to discover the answer to this question.
For this conversation here are a few passages that seem to point directly to the place where Reformation must take place in a man.
Proverbs 4:20-24
My child, pay attention to my words;
listen attentively to my sayings.
4:21 Do not let them depart from your sight,
guard them within your heart;
4:22 for they are life to those who find them
and healing to one’s entire body.
4:23 Guard your heart with all vigilance,
for from it are the sources of life.
4:24 Remove perverse speech from your mouth;
keep devious talk far from your lips.
4:25 Let your eyes look directly in front of you
and let your gaze look straight before you.
4:26 Make the path for your feet level,
so that all your ways may be established.
4:27 Do not turn to the right or to the left;
turn yourself away from evil.
Pay attention, the sayings of the Lord are Life to those who find them.
They offer Healing to one’s entire body
Guard the Heart, for from it are all the Sources of Life
Guard your heart as a prison guard, with all vigilance.
Your heart is the fountain head of all your life.
Notice that in this passage from Proverbs , the whole BODY is engaged in the process, The ears the eyes , the mouth, the heart, the feet.
Spiritual Transformation is not just an inward work, it is an inward work that engages with and involves the Entire Man, Body and Spirit
Mark 7:14-23
7:14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand. 7:15 There is nothing outside of a person that can defile him by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles him.”
7:17 Now when Jesus had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 7:18 He said to them, “Are you so foolish? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him? 7:19 For it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and then goes out into the sewer.” (This means all foods are clean.) 7:20 He said, “What comes out of a person defiles him. 7:21 For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 7:22 adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly. 7:23 All these evils come from within and defile a person.”
Jesus plainly teaches that it isn’t what a man eats that defiles him. It’s what comes out of him , it is what comes from his heart that defiles a man
In Luke’s account Jesus teach the following
Luke 6:43-45
6:43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 6:44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from brambles. 6:45 The good person out of the good treasury of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasury produces evil, for his mouth speaks from what fills his heart.
For years, I have been teaching men that no matter how much effort you place on changing your external world, that effort is futile and done in vain if the internal world has been left untouched.
Your outside world will always reflect your internal world because as these passages clearly show, it is what flows out of a man’s heart that defiles him and his world outside of him.
Fruit is an Outward Manifestation of what is in the Root of the Tree. There is no hiding what a tree is once the fruit has been displayed.
Men look at the Fruit of their lives, the broken and suffering marriages devoid of intimacy and respect, children who have been broken and wounded and display those wounds in ways that hurt others, a lack of purpose or passion, a drifting in life with no sense of real direction, a fractured self-identity with no wholeness to truly speak of and want to lay these things at someones else’s feet.
It must be someones else’s fault, my parents, my teachers, society, the government...anybody but ME.
Men spend decades producing bad fruit and letting their wives and children eat from that. And then, when their wives have had their fill of that bad fruit and refuse to got to that tree of seek out other trees; Most men will tie a ribbon on the tree, rake a few leaves away from the base of the tree, maybe prune a few unruly limbs from the tree and try to convince those who still have the sour taste of that fruit in their mouths that the tree is now different.
And when they don’t fall for it, the fruit of pain, anger and rejection get added to the tree and those around see that while their may be some new fruit it is still sour fruit.
You can do a thousand physical challenges, be SEAL FIT and still not be fit for life because your Heart is defiled, unruly, drawing it source from a root that cannot produce Good Fruit.
Trim all the limbs you want. rake away the leaves and tie own some ribbons, but the roots are the same and the fruit will not be changed.
Step One in becoming a Re:Man is the willingness; to acknowledge that apart from God, who is the creator of our Hearts, we have no life and that we do not have the ability to produce fruit that will be Good Enough.
Why does every man struggle with the sense of not being Good Enough?
Because apart from the one who Created you, outside of a reconciled relationship with Him, You Aren’t !
Step One is recognizing that what makes you who you are is something much deeper than the chemical reactions in your brain and the biological functions of your body.
You are a Body, but a Body that houses something greater than the Body...A Spirit,
Dallas Willard once said that Spiritual Reformation in the tradition of Jesus Christ is the process of the Transformation of the Inmost dimension of the human being, The Heart, which is the same as what we call the Spirit or the Will.
In a true Re:Formation of a man’s heart, his spirit and will are reformed in such as way that its natural expression, the outward deeds or fruit of that heart... accurately reflect the deeds of Christ and are done in the Power of Christ.
Step One is recognizing our need for this sort of Reforming, this sort of Transformation and knowing that we cannot in any way produce this by ourselves.
My prayer for you today is that you will come to this realization, recognize Jesus for who he truly is and accept his offer of forgiveness and new life, place your trust in him, offering him your loyalty and determine from this day forward you will seek follow him and let him teach you how to be transformed and become a New Man and Re:Man.
Until next week
24 ‘May the Lord bless you
and protect you.
25 May the Lord smile on you
and be gracious to you.
26 May the Lord show you his favor
and give you his peace.’