The Heart of the Matter

The NET Bible Ezekiel 36:26–27

36:26 I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone18 from your body and give you a heart of flesh.19 36:27 I will put my Spirit within you;20 I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes21 and carefully observe my regulations.22

The Heart of the Matter

In the past couple weeks we’ve talked about the the promise given in 2 Cor 5:17 of being a new creation in Christ Jesus and that even though this is a stated fact, we.... having grown up in Spiritual Slavery often continue to live and walk like slaves instead of like Sons.

One of mentors, Dr. Joe Martin says that most men ABT..Ain’t Been Taught. They walk like slaves because they Ain’t been taught how to Walk like Sons.

I think it fait to say there is truth that statement.

My personal experience wasn’t just that I hadn’t been taught, what little I had been taught was often rooted in error.

Some years ago, I came across a quote from the Scottish Poet and Pastor George MacDonald

MacDonald asked a simple questions

“How have we learned Christ?”

He goes on to say

“It ought to be a startling thought, that we may have learned him wrong. That must be far worse than not to have learned him at all: his place is occupied by a false Christ, hard to root out!”

I had learned Christ, but I didn’t really know Jesus. I knew who Jesus was, but I didn’t KNOW my KING like a man knows a close friend or a brother.

Jesus spent a decade with me, effectively benching me, so my faith could be completely deconstructed and then rebuilt on Him and a personal Knowing of him.

This was at times a painful process, but one that was absolutely necessary. it is not enough to know Jesus intellectually, we must knowing him with our whole hearts.

I mentioned last week that we would look at WHERE in a man’s life does true Spiritual Transformation take place?

It takes place in your Heart, but what the heck does that really mean?

There are several passages we could look at to discover the answer to this question but for the sake of time we will look at a just a few.

Proverbs 4:20–23 NET

20 My child, pay attention to my words; listen attentively to my sayings. 21 Do not let them depart from your sight, guard them within your heart; 22 for they are life to those who find them and healing to one’s entire body. 23 Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it are the sources of life.

I could spend weeks on this passage or scripture alone.

Pay attention, he says, My words are Life to those who find them.

They offer Healing to one’s entire body - I hope somebody today allows this truth alone to sink in.

Guard the Heart, for from it are all the Sources of Life

That word Guard is a strong word that carries with it the idea of a Strong Sentry or a Watchman on the Tower of the city responsible for the Safety and Security of all inside.

Your heart is the fountain head of all your life.

Spiritual Transformation is not just an inward work, it is an inward work that engages with and involves the Entire Man, Body and Spirit and then manifests outward in that man’s life.

In Mark’s Gospel we see Jesus teaching this principle

Mark 7:14–15 NET

14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand. 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.”

Mark 7:21–23 NET

21 For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly. 23 All these evils come from within and defile a person.”

In Luke’s Gospel we see Jesus teaching again this concept of what comes from the inside being what defiles a man

Luke 6:43–45

 NET

43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from brambles.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 wasted .....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.

Some 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 often display those wounds in ways that hurt others

A lack of purpose or passion...a life that is drifting with no sense of real direction

A fractured self-identity with no wholeness to speak of

And a desire to lay this fruit at someones else’s feet, their parents, teachers, society, the government...anybody but them.

Men will 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 start rejecting the tree OR they start to 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 even prune a few unruly limbs from the tree

And then try to convince those who still have the sour taste of that fruit in their mouths that the tree is now different.

I see this SO MANY TIMES GUYS!

Our families and friends, those who have the the sour taste of our bad fruit still on their lips, will often come back to the neatly trimmed tree, in desperate hope of finding new and better fruit.

Men that try to trim and prune themselves almost always become so self-focused that they fail to see just how desperate, those who love them are for Good Fruit ...

and how fearful they are.... that all they will get for returning to the neatly trimmed tree .....is more bad fruit that just looks like it tastes better.

I have watched in sorrow, as men have ignored the Gospel, spend tons of time, money and effort in some killer tree trimming and then blow their lives up, when their wives and kids reject all the effort that has been made, because the fruit still seems sour.

You can do a thousand physical challenges, be SEAL FIT and still not be fit for life because your Heart is defiled, unruly, and drawing its 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.

If we are to walk in the newness of life, we must first acknowledge that apart from God, who is the only One who can give us New Hearts, we do not have the ability to produce fruit that will be Good Enough.

You ever wondered why so many men seem to struggle with the sense of not being Good Enough?

Because apart from the one who Created us, outside of a reconciled relationship with Him, WE Aren’t !

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.

Ezekiel 36:26–27

 NET

26 I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.27 I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.

Gal 2:20

 I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

1 Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2005), Ga 2:20–21.

Men...We want to build and create lives worth living.

The New Heart that God promises is the only thing that has the power to transform your World, because your world will always be a reflection of your Heart.

In the next few week, we will look at how we can be intentional as men and engage our spirits, our wills with the Gospel of Jesus and how these simply practices , in partnership with the Holy Spirit will transform us and give us the ability learn Christ right... and to walk as Sons instead of Slaves.

The heart however may need a prep work first and that where we will pick up next week.

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.’