Following the Way of Jesus - Series on Matthew's Gospel (2)

The Character of the King - He Judges Hearts! - Matthew 12:33-37.

“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

A Japanese proverb says, “Because your heart is so beautiful, everything looks beautiful to you.”

The converse is also true!

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates and teachers at Columbine High School. Columbine was dubbed the “worst school shooting in American history.” (It was overtaken on April 16, 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia). The masacre of April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred when two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others, before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. The Columbine shooting was, at the time, the worst high school shooting in U.S. history and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the gunmen.

Why did they do it? It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, born out of rage or grievance against the school, no, they prepared for it for a year and wanted to write their names in the history books.

Klebold boasted on video about inflicting “the most deaths in U.S. history.” Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. They arrived separately with two duffel bags, then walked into the school cafeteria, where they placed two duffel bags each containing a 20-pound propane bomb set to explode at 11:17 a.m. The teens then went back outside to their cars to wait for the bombs to go off. When the bombs failed to detonate, they began their shooting spree.

If they hadn’t been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters. The climax would be captured on live television. “It wasn’t just “fame” they were after, they were gunning for devastating infamy on the historical scale of an Attila the Hun. Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.”(FBI Agents Fuselier & Ochberg).

The FBI Agents stared that if you want to understand “the killers,” quit asking what drove them. They were radically different individuals, with vastly different motives and opposite mental conditions. Klebold was hotheaded, but depressive and suicidal. He blamed himself for his problems. On the day ot the killings he wore a black T-Shirt with the word “wrath” printed on it.

Harris was regarded as a good-natured and “well-spoken” young man who adults and students described as “nice.” But he was at heart, cold, calculating, and homicidal. “Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people.”(Fuselier) His journal, opened with the words, “I hate the f—ing world.” and he rages at people who like things like Country Music; “Geeks” who love Star Wars and “Morons” who mispronounce words! On the day ot the killings he wore a black T-Shirt with the words “natural selection” printed on it. Evidently, he thought of himself as stronger and fitter than others but he also didn’t mind lying to achieve his ends either - ““I lie a lot!” he wrote, “Almost constantly, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water. Let’s see, what are some of the big lies I told? Yeah I stopped smoking. For doing it, not for getting caught. No I haven’t been making more bombs. No I wouldn’t do that. And countless other ones.” The FBI Agent added, “He lied for pleasure. Duping delight”(Fuselier)

Most distrubing of all perhaps is that the conclusion that Psychiatrists and the FBI drew from Columbine was that Klebold, would never have pulled off Columbine without Harris. He might have gotten caught for some petty crime, gotten help in the process, and conceivably could have gone on to live a normal life. Their view of Harris is that he was not a wayward boy who could have been rescued. Dave Cullen, author of the 2009 book Columbine, described Harris as “the callously brutal mastermind,” while Klebold was a “quivering depressive who journaled obsessively about love and attended the Columbine prom three days before opening fire.” Harris, says Cullen “was a brilliant killer without a conscience, searching for the most diabolical scheme imaginable. If he had lived to adulthood and developed his murderous skills for many more years, there is no telling what he could have done. His death at Columbine may have stopped him from doing something even worse.” (The Depressive and the Psychopath At last we know why the Columbine killers did it. APRIL 20, 2004 BY DAVE CULLEN).

Jesus said, “the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”(Matt 15:18-20).

Now note, He does not say that everyone will murder - there are degress of evil behaviours here, but what he does explain is that all evil behaviour, whether its something as henious as a murder or something as ordinary as lying and slander, originiates in the heart!

And yet your heart is the problem because it is a sinful and corrupted heart - at its centre; because in the Hebrew idiom, the heart is the centre of the thinking life (not the emotions as this was the bowels!) and the emotions, the thought and the will are orientated away from God and to self - Jeremiah 17:9-10 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”

So the heart is the problem - To reinforce this truth that the heart reveals the true person, Jesus uses two different but related metaphors to make the same point, that what you say and do depends on, and reveals, what you are.

1. A Good Heart produces Good Behaviours.

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.”

The word translated “good things” is thēsauros, which can be translated “treasure” giving us the English word, thesaurus, a treasury of words.

“A person’s heart is the treasury of his thoughts, ambitions, desires, loves, attitudes, and loyalties. It is the reservoir from which the mouth draws its expressions. It is axiomatic that a good treasure brings forth what is good and an evil treasure brings forth what is evil.”(MacArthur).

Again, Jesus agrees, “the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”(Matt 15:18-20). The opposite is also true, out of a good heart, a redeemed heart, comes “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control, against such things there is no law!”(Gal 5:22-23).

The Pharisees’ abuse of Jesus could not therefore be treated as a thoughtless, or passing hostility; their murderous intentions and open rejection of Him revealed their true nature and Jesus illustrates this by use of different metaphors to make the same point - “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.”

The point here is that a tree and its fruit corresponds - I have an Apple tree in my garden and it produces, guess what? Apples - not pears or oranges, apples!

Jesus is showing us that what a man stores up will ultimately be revealed by what he brings out of his cupboards! This explains the Pharisees as it explains all evil behaviours. They are a result of what we store up! They are, to use a Computer terminology, “garbage in” so “garbage out”!

Jesus spoke earlier of this in Matthe 7:16–20 : “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”

The Pharisees might have looked all religious and holy on the outside but Jesus tells us the truth about them! - “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”(Matthew 25:25-28).

John the Baptist’s metaphor of the brood of vipers (cf. Matt 3:7) is used again here to indicate the Pharisees had a wrong orientation towards that which is good and true. (Matt 15:17–20). “Vipers” refer to a potentially deadly, poisonous snake who are also cunning and deceptive, because they blend into surrounding rocks or sticks, and can attack their victims with total surprise.(Remember the Viper in the wood pile in Acts 28 that bit the Apostle Paul?).

Their murderous intent and their rejection of the truth that Jesus preached and confirmed through miracles reveals the true hardness of their hearts - their “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” A determined and deliberate, thoughful rejection of the offes of salvation, which they acknowledged was making a difference in the world and changing the lives of people, but one that they would not endorse or embrace for themselves.

Think of it, the many people who heard Jesus teach and preach God’s truth, who even witnessed His miracles but in the end, refused to believe Him. They had seen him heal every kind of disease, cast out every kind of demon, and forgive every kind of sin, yet they charged Him with deceit, falsehood, and demonism.

In the face of every possible evidence of Jesus’ messiahship and deity, they said no, we “will not have this man to rule over us”! They would not repent and they would therefore remain eternally unforgiven - “For penitence they substitute hardening, for confession plotting. Thus, by means of their own criminal and completely inexcusable callousness, they are dooming themselves. Their sin is unpardonable because they are unwilling to tread the path that leads to pardon. For a thief, an adulterer, and a murderer there is hope. The message of the gospel may cause him to cry out, “O God be merciful to me, the sinner.” But when a man has become hardened, so that he has made up his mind not to pay any attention to the … Spirit, … he has placed himself on the road that leads to perdition.” (William Hendriksen, The Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973], p. 529)

The writer to the Hebrews warns us against such rejection

Hebrews 2:1-4 “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”

Mark 3:28–30: “‘Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ — for they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’”

This is why Jesus denounces these leaders so often as “hypocrites!” - You who put on a mask; you actors! Your who pretend youre one thing but really you are another! Wow that stings!

The Gospel says of Jesus, that He knew the “thoughts” of the Pharisees(Matt 12:25). Faced with opposition from religious leaders, Mark tells us that “immediately Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, said to them, “Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts?”(Mark 2:8). Also John, tells us that “while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.(John 2:22-25).

There is nothing about us that Jesus does not know, and as such, He uses His word to “judges the thoughts and intents of our hearts”(Heb 4:12). When the word of God is read and preached, our hearts are on trial and how we respond to His word, determines the truth our hearts, whether we are with Christ, or against Him! Whether we believe His gospel or reject it!

And we cannot fool Him! The character of our King, is not only One which delights in love and mercy but also one that delights in truth and honesty! He is not therefore merely concerned with words and outer religious conformity, but also with truth and inward integrity!

What you are on the inside - in the heart, the centre of your emotions and will, reveals the truth of who you are on the inside and what you are on the inside will ultimately be evidenced in the way that you behave. And it is also KNOWN TO GOD!

So we need a new heart! The Prophet Ezekiel, speaking the word of the Lord says, “ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws”(Ezekiel 36:24-27).

God can give us a new heart and a new life, filled by His Spirit and empowered to live in obedient love to Him! To receive it, “you must be born again”(John 3:3). “Flesh and blood cannot enter the Kingdom of God” because in our sinful nature, we don’t just fail to obey the law of God, we don’t even want to and we cannot do so!(Rom 8:7).

Only Jesus can “break the power of cancelled sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availes for me”(John Wesley).

2. A Good Heart Articulates itself in Good Words - vs 36-37

Just as there is an evil ehart is revealed in wicked behaviour, so an evil heart is also revealed by cruel and unkind words! - “You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks... But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Words are incredibly powerful - to good or to do harm!

In the early 1970s, the Carpenters were a big deal on the music scene with chart topping records like “We’ve Only Just Begun”, “Rainy Days and Mondays”, “Top of the World” and their biggest hit of all “Close to You” and yet you may not be aware of the tragedy behind the band. Though, Karen Carpenter and her brother Richard produced an amazing 14 Gold records, winning an Oscar and 3 Grammy awards, she died of a heart attackk brought on by an eating disorder anorexia nervosa. Tragically the reason behind this began after a music reviewer called her “Richard’s chubby little sister.” Little did the reviewer know that from the time she was a young girl, Karen with self-esteem and though she became a music superstar, Karen could not shake her adolescent and childhood insecurities. It wasn’t just words the killed Karen Carpenter of course, but in part, cruel, unecessary words brought about her downfall!

What happens physically when we hear a word? the physical movement that enters our ear and then the inner ear activates 24,000 little nerves which react through the limbic system and results in the pituitary gland sending hormones into the body. Our whole physical system reacts when we hear words of care or condemnation. When we hear words that bring us pain or anxiety, the physical-chemical reaction can take up to 72 hours to subside. No wonder some people live in a perpetual state of agitation and upset!

I would like for you to try an experiment with me. We are going to exercise choice, make a decision and then watch the power of our words cause a physical reaction ... thousands of neural circuits will be engaged as we do this.

- Repeat after me... "I love you." (Marvelous!)

- Now repeat my words again... "I hate you." (Hopefully there will be hesitation! -- praise God!)

- Do you see? -- We are entrusted with a great power here. We are given a gift that can create or destroy. We can build up or tear down with this gift.

WORDS ARE VERY POWERFUL AND THEY MATTER!

Words spoken at a marriage - promises "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part"

Words spoken at a child's Christiening/baptism - promises to bring up a child in the Christian faith; promises of godparents to ensure a Christian education and guidance.

Words spoken in a Court of law - "I promise to tell the truth; the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God"!

Words of promise - made to friends; parents; employers, etc. Those words mattered! They were meant to be "our bond" BUT DID WE stick to them? Did we stand by our words?

Words matter so much that Jesus reserves one of the strongest warnings that He ever issued with regard to how we use our speech?

Listen carefully: "I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter..." Matt. 12:36

Why, because our spoken words, reveal something about our character - "The heart is the fountain, the words are the streams ; Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks"(Matthew Henry)

Jesus, makes clear that good words, kindly spoken reveal a good, kind heart whereas evil words, dirty word, swear words reveal something very unsavoury about the speaker and the words that we speak will have to be explained on judgment day! - But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken

The word translated, ‘careless’ (Grk Argon) is literally ‘workless’, hence “doing nothing” (Matt 20:3, 6). The word may imply ‘ineffective’, like the ‘useless’ faith which is “without works” in James 2:20. So, a ‘a careless word is a worthless word because it had been better been left unspoken! Such a word may also be ‘untrue’ and ‘idle’ or ‘thoughtless’ and yet it still reveals something about the person who says it and can become the basis for a severe condemnation.

The words that we speak will either justify us or condemn us on Judgment Day! "The tongue has the power of life and death"(Prov 18:31).

Let me give you a lttle mental quiz. A silent true or false quiz just for you to answer honestly in your heart before the Lord:

- I have never hurt another person with my words!

- I have never gossiped about another person or repeated anything about another person unless I knew it was absolutely true!

- I have never told a crude joke or used humour to humiliate another person!

- I have never broken a promise I have made!

How did you do? How do you feel about giving an account of these on Judgment Day?

Of and what of the words that youy might have forgotten about? It’s possible because the “average person spends one-fifth of his or her life talking? That's what the statistics say. If all of our words were put into print, the result would be this: a single day's words would fill a 50-page book, while in a year's time the average person's words would fill 132 books of 200 pages each! Among all those words there are bound to be some spoken in anger, carelessness, or haste.” (Today in the Word, June 15, 1992).

Now listen to James: "the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be." (James 3:5-10)

One of the great catastrophes of history was the Chicago fire of 1871. Tradition has it that it started when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over her lantern. Whether or not that was true, the fire burned for three days over three and one half square miles of the city. It killed 250 people, made 100,000 homeless, and destroyed property valued in the millions. The tongue is like a small lighted match or a turned-over lantern. Its potentials for wickedness are almost infinite.Just as the root of evil actions, spring up from the heart, so out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The words spoken against Jesus reveals the evil intentions of the heart toward Jesus!

Your words are a sound basis for judgment: they reveal what you really are. The Pharisees’ verbal abuse of Jesus, showed them to be fundamentally against God’s purpose.

What a person is on the inside, will be evidenced, out of the mouth and again this is a reall problem for us because just as we cannot fully control our evil behaviour by self-restraint; so we cannot fullly control our tongue by biting it! For as James says, we “cannot tame the tongue” by human effort or the powers of self-restraint alone. If we could we would be “a perfect man” (James 3:2). But none of us by nature are “perfect” for “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”(Rom 3:23).

We need the power of the Holy Spirit to control the tongue, just as we need the renewal of the heart and the growth of the “fruit of the Spirit” to transform our evil behavious into good ones.

And the evidence of the Spirit at work within us is the transformation from sinful self-indulgence, selfish and vile behaviours and cruel and hurtful language in which we “bless God and curse men”; to a life and a tongue surrendered to the power of the Holy Spirit!

The Christian’s speech should reflect God’s transforming work in the heart so it needs constant monitoring and restraint that it may be increasingly spiritual, wholesome, fitting, kind, sensitive, loving, purposeful, edifying, and truthful.

We should pray with the Psalmist: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer”(Psa 19:14) and “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips” (Ps. 141:3).

We should, every day, remember the Proverb, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”(Prov 4:23).

Practice:

The character of our King is that He judges the heart! And what He reveals is that our hearts are deceitful and wicked by nature and we need a “new heart” and “a new spirit: with us to change! So what do we take away this morning. Let us pray and consider our souls today!

1. What is my heart like? Do I agree with the Bible that it is by nature, “deceithful” and capable of impure thoughts and wicked behaviours? Am I prepared to open my heart to Jesus for it to be changed and transformed by the power of His Holy Spirit? Will you not pray, “O come to my heart Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for Thee!”

2. Am I guarding my heart? As a Christian, am I being careful about what garbage I am letting in? Am I taking care and praying for the discernment of the Holy Spirit to ensure that I am not loving stuff and things and sins that are hindering my relationship with Jesus? Am I crucifying “the flesh with its sinful passions and desires”? Am I living by the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit?(Gal 5:24-25).

3. Am I ready to repent of any specific sins of heart and tongue that the Holy Spirit brings to mind and receive the help and power of the Holy Spirit to overcome?