Sermon Tone Analysis

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?).