Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Scott and I'm a member with Restored Church.
If you are new, we want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. We believe the church is not an event, but a family you belong to. So we would love the opportunity to connect with you. If you want to learn more about our church or if we can help you in any way, please Visit our website, www.restoretomecula.church and click on contact.
We also have a mobile app with resources including our Sunday messages, information about upcoming events, and other ways to connect. You can download our app on the Apple or Android app stores.
With all that said, we hope you enjoyed the message. I love you guys.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Okay, this morning, a couple different things before we get started.
I just feel so much. I was over here, we were singing and just thanking Jesus, his kindness.
It is an unbelievable privilege to be a part of this church.
I love you guys so much. I feel the love of the Father for our church like, it's crazy. It's unexplainable youth. I'm so glad and proud of you and glad that you're stepping into all the things that God has for you. I hope that you know that this church family really is not just cheering you on, but available to you as you pursue the things of God in your life.
What a privilege.
Okay. This morning last week I shared a bit of an update on this space. So if you missed that, I want to bring you up to speed.
I do not have any more information, but I want to make sure that everybody knows kind of where we're at currently.
We are.
We've been so thankful to Margarita Middle School for the administration, for the ways that they have allowed us to gather here. They've made it really. They've given us storage on site.
They've been very, very kind to us.
But there is some uncertainty as to whether or not we'll be able to meet here moving forward. We're still waiting to hear back from them on a couple different things. And so I put that before you not to cause anybody to panic or anything. We for sure have this space through the month of June.
After that, it's a little uncertain. Nothing to necessarily worry about, but it is something to really pray about.
I'm asking the entire church. There's been, I mean, over a dozen people have been actively seeking as many options as we can to where can we gather? What could we do? Like, what options do we have available to us here in the Valley to be able to gather? Maybe more stable space, maybe another school, any creative option But I want to open up to the entire church. Please, please, please, ask, seek and knock, cry out to God in prayer. Like we really want. We want to see what God where he wants to lead us in this season of the life of this church family. And we don't want to close any doors ourselves. We want to walk through whatever open door the Lord might open for us. And so I want to. I want everybody to be aware. I want everybody to know. I'm not panicking, I'm not worried.
God is a good father. He's a shepherd. He's guiding us. He's actually positioning us right now. He's always positioning us. But he's doing things in such a way where we can grow and experience his fatherly care and love. Even when circumstances maybe feel a little uncertain or maybe a little, we might be tempted to feel insecure.
We don't need to be because our security does not come from our circumstances, does comes from him. And he's doing something in us. And we're going to kind of talk about it a little bit this morning, but I'm confident that God's doing something in us. And through that, I think he'll provide things for us. And so, that being said, go ahead and grab your Bibles. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 15 this morning.
We are continuing on in our series the King and His Kingdom. We're going through Matthew's gospel. We want to learn as much as we can about King Jesus and as much as we can about what his kingdom looks like. The kingdom of God, the kingdom of Heaven, the rule and the reign of the King of the universe. That's the kingdom. What does it look like when God gets his way? That's what we're giving ourselves over to.
Gosh. I think this is. I think this is message 74 in this series. So we've been doing this for a while now.
Now, if you were with us this past Sunday, I mentioned that today was kind of gonna be a part two, like a continuation of last week. So if you missed last week, you. You're gonna be totally in the dark. I'm so sorry.
I was trying to make a joke and it didn't go over well. You won't be in the dark. I'm gonna bring you up to speed. But this is gonna be a bit of a part two from last week. Okay. We had this kind of epic confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees and we'll get into it in just a bit. But what I wanna do is I wanna Pray. I'm feeling all sorts of things this morning.
And so I want to pray and ask God to teach us, to guide us, to help us through his spirit, help us to see Jesus more clearly. So I'd love it if you join me in prayer right now.
Holy Spirit, we open our hearts and minds to you.
Oh, Lord, thank you for what you're doing among us.
There's so much evidence of your grace.
It's in the lives of the children, it's in the lives of the youth. It's in the lives of these precious adults in this space right now.
You have been unbelievably gracious to us.
And so right now, Holy Spirit, I pray that you would teach us about worship this morning.
Jesus, you're so worthy of all of our attention, all of our affection, every resource that we have, every thought that we think, there's nobody like you, Jesus.
So we confess your worth and we ask you, would you guide us this morning, Holy Spirit, teach us, show us more of the beauty of Jesus.
Strengthen our worship. We pray. And all God's people said Amen. Okay, so we're going to be in Matthew, chapter 15.
Some of this will look familiar, but what I want to do is I want to kind of set the stage. I want to insert some context here from last week. If you remember Jesus, he's confronted by who?
The Pharisees. Right. These Pharisees, they travel all the way from Jerusalem up to Galilee. It's a long journey. They come up and they confront Jesus. Cause they're bothered by what Jesus is doing. Namely, they're bothered by what Jesus is teaching his disciples. Okay? They're bothered because he's teaching his disciples to break their tradition.
All right? In other words, their preferred worship style, that's been passed down and handed down from generation to generation. Right. And if you remember the story, they're talking about ceremonial hand washing.
We talked about how it wasn't about hygiene.
It wasn't about, like, physical cleanliness. It was more than that. It was about spiritual cleanness.
And we talked about the difference between being clean and being unclean spiritually. And that so much of that was rooted in their reverence for God's holiness.
Right?
And what happens is Jesus ends up calling out their hypocrisy.
And last week we covered kind of three things. How do you know? What do you do with dealing with hypocrisy? We talked about how Jesus calls out their hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. He says that they're prioritizing their Tradition over God's commands, okay? We talked about how they're making excuses for when they broke God's commands. And we talked about how they prioritized appearance over the heart.
So what people see on the outside versus what's really going on inside.
And he calls them hypocrites.
So like I said, this morning's message is going to be a continuation of that. And what we're going to do is we're going to focus on this concept of the heart.
Alright? So look at verse seven we're going to pick up there.
Right in the middle of Jesus interaction with these Pharisees, he says this. He calls them hypocrites, Exclamation point, hypocrites. He says, Isaiah prophesied correctly about you when he said this. People honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
They worship me in vain.
Teaching his doctrines, human commands and then summoning the crowd. This is verse 10, summoning the crowd. He, Jesus told them, he goes, listen and understand.
It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. Talking about clean, clean, cleanliness or cleanliness, right, like spiritual cleanness. It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth. This defiles a person.
Verse 12. Then the disciples came up to him and they said this. They said, do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?
Really quickly.
If Jesus never offends you, I don't know.
There's an issue there.
He confronts not to condemn, but sometimes his confrontations, they can be offensive because they deal with the reality of our condition.
But what I love about Jesus is he doesn't just confront to cause harm or to belittle. That's not his heart at all. He's always confronting so that we might be transformed by his grace and his love and his mercy and his goodness.
We'll get into that a little bit here in just a second.
So, yeah, so these disciples are like, did you know that the Pharisees, they were offended by what you heard? This is what he says. Jesus replied, verse 13. Every plant that my heavenly Father didn't plant will be uprooted.
Leave them alone.
They are blind guides.
If the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.
Then Peter said, explain this parable to us.
Do you still lack understanding? Jesus asked, don't you realize that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated?
But what comes out of the mouth comes from the what heart Underline, that comes from the heart and this defiles a person. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies. That's lies, slander.
These are the things that defile a person. Listen what Jesus says. But eating with unwashed hands does not defile a person.
All right, so that's our passage for this morning.
A few points for you that I have. I'm going to try to go quickly this morning. The first one, I'm going to do it quick. Look back at verse 15. This isn't like the main crux of this message, what I'm about to share with you.
However, it's too important, especially for the. For our church this morning. It's too important to not address this. Look at verse 15.
Then Peter said to Jesus, he said, explain this parable to us. And Jesus responds with, do you still lack understanding?
So I want you to get the picture. Peter, he doesn't understand what Jesus is teaching them here, all right? And I don't know if he caught it, but Peter's not the only one that doesn't understand.
The rest of the disciples don't understand. And the reason we know that the rest of the disciples didn't understand is cause he used the word us.
Jesus, he's more of like an ambassador for the rest of the disciples. Hey, will you explain this to us? Because this is kind of fuzzy. We're not fully comprehending what you're trying to say. Now listen, the reason I'm bringing this up is because if you find yourself in a space, youth in the room, this is perfect. Even some of you that have been following Jesus for a short time or for a long time, everybody in the room, listen. If you don't fully understand Jesus teachings yet, you're in good company.
Neither did these original disciples. That's why they're going to Jesus and asking, hey, can you help me understand this? Okay, if you're taking notes, my first point quickly is this kingdom. Growth is gradual.
Growing in God's kingdom is a gradual process. It takes time.
And I don't know if you're anything like me, but I feel like, man, modern people, we want things now, like instant gratification now. That's why so many gym memberships get canceled in February, because by the end of January, they're like, I don't have a six pack. This isn't working. Like, no. In the same way your physical health and development and growth is gradual. So is your spiritual kingdom growth. It's gradual. It happens over time.
But here's the key.
Like, the secret, right? The key here with kingdom growth is what we see here with Peter, and that is that he's seeking to understand.
He's actually seeking to understand.
In 2018, Ebony and I were in the UK for, like, this meeting of different pastors and leaders, really, from all over the world.
And it was an incredible trip. God did some amazing things. Like, EB Got miraculously healed in an overnight. It's a story for another day. Some of you have heard this story, but the trip was amazing. God did so many amazing things. But we're, like, an hour and a half outside of London, kind of near the coast, middle of nowhere, okay? And it's, like, foggy and kind of cold and whatever. But there was, like, this retreat center, and coincidentally, we got assigned to stay in this cottage.
Now, that might sound really kind of romantic.
And at first I thought it was going to be like, oh, man, we're gonna stay in this cottage in, like, the English countryside. This is gonna be awesome, right?
And we pull up to this. I should have given you guys a photo. But we pull up to this cottage, and I was like, wow, that looks really kind of cute and cool.
And discovered that it was built in the 1600s, which. That's a long time ago, okay?
And I'm kind of excited. I'm like. And the person who's taking it, who's, like, said, like, hey, this is where you guys are assigned to stay. They're, like, kind of hyping it up, like, you guys get to stay in the cottage. And I'm like, wow. Like, such privilege. Like, holy smokes. Like, we could just stay in this cottage. So we pull up and we get to the door, and I instantly notice, like, something's very wrong, because the door, the top of the door ended about here.
And I'm like, okay, maybe it's just, like, a weird old door thing. Open the door, go inside.
The ceilings are five feet tall.
Now, listen, I'm not the tallest guy in the world, but that's an issue for me, okay?
I'm about a foot taller than the ceilings. So I'm literally this whole. I got my bag, I got my luggage. I am walking around in this ceiling, and I'm going, this is. And, you know, it's just to confess, like, my heart was not a good place.
Like, I'm staying there for free, right? But I'm like, this is ridiculous. Inside, I wouldn't have said it outside. I think maybe I said it outside to her, but nobody Else, just inside, I'm like, this is ridiculous. Like, how am I. I can't stand up for these next two days. Like, this is gonna be ridiculous. How am I gonna shower in this place?
And so we unpack, then we go back to meet with the crew. And I'm like, I asked one of the people that were. That were like, overseeing the space, and I'm like, hey, so what's the deal with the cod? Oh, isn't it cute? Isn't it lovely? Like, yeah, but like, the ceilings and they're like, yeah.
And I was like, so what's the deal with that? Like, is this like a real hobbit house? Like, what is this? You know, like.
And they explained to me, like, I said it was built in the 1600s and it was built during a time of famine.
And so if you're not familiar with famine, shortage of food.
So the people who originally built that cottage were pretty significantly malnourished.
They didn't get the nourishment that their body needs through food. Okay.
They didn't grow. As a result, they didn't grow the way they typically would because they didn't have access to the food and they weren't able to eat the way they needed to. Right. So they only needed five or like five foot ceilings.
I know it sounds silly, but, like, if you eat, you will grow.
At the same time, if you don't eat, you won't grow and you'll only need five foot ceilings.
Earlier on in Matthew, Jesus says something to people that's pretty significant. In Matthew chapter 4, verse 4, he says this. He says, it's written, man must not live on bread alone, but on every what?
Every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Okay, so back to our passage. Do you see what Peter's doing here?
He's going, feed us, Jesus. We lack understanding.
Feed us.
We need to grow in our understanding. We need you to feed us. We want to grow. So Peter's aware, at least he's not perfect, right? Peter blows it a lot. But at least here he's aware if he's going to grow, he needs words that come from the mouth of God in order to grow in his understanding of the kingdom of. What does it look like when God's rule and God's reign actually happens? Okay, so I just want to encourage you really quickly before I jump into the crux of this message.
If you have a Bible, will you just kind of hold it up? If you have a physical Bible.
Beautiful. Love it.
I know you know this already.
I know you know this, but I'm just gonna say it. Cause there's power in speaking the truth. That Bible, your Bible is a treasure.
It's a treasure not. Cause it's the most incredible literature ever written. It's a treasure not just because like, oh my gosh, like it's powerful and if you apply its principles to your life, you can live a more beneficial life, you can live a better life if you will, you can live your best life.
All that can be true.
It's a treasure because it's God's words that the Holy Spirit of God literally wrote those words through spirit filled men, and potentially even women, depending on who you think wrote the book of Hebrews.
I just want you to know and I want to remind you, your Bible friends is a treasure, an absolute treasure. Because it's God's word. And hear me, if you eat, you will grow.
If you don't eat, you won't grow.
And you'll only need those five foot ceilings spiritually, okay?
These disciples, they struggled to understand Jesus teachings too. So if you find yourself ever where like, I'm kind of struggling to understand what Jesus is teaching. If you don't understand Jesus teachings fully yet, you're in good company.
Because these disciples, these guys, changed the world.
We know that they grew over time. How do we know? We're in this room because of the spiritual growth that took place in their life as God's spirit became infused with their spirit in their body, in their life, and empowered them to do spectacular things.
These early Christians guys, they overthrew Rome not through violence, but through worship.
It's wild.
It's incredible. We are in this room because of their growth and development. Spiritually because of their discipleship to Jesus, it's changed the world.
Yet in this scene, they're going, we don't understand Jesus.
Just want to encourage you. If you ever find yourself in that space, you're in really good company.
You're in really good company. Because growth in the kingdom is a gradual process.
Okay, but if you don't eat, you won't grow, all right?
You won't grow.
If you're in this space and you're like, man, I feel like I'm in a season where like, I desire to grow more spiritually, but I'm kind of struggling with it and maybe life's getting in the way. Maybe you're just having a hard time, maybe you don't know what to do. I want to make a recommendation to you. If you don't have an eat and speak Journal.
Find someone in the back. I think we have some here. I'm going to make sure you get one. Okay? I'll cover the cost. You don't need to even buy it. What the Eaton Speak journal is, is it's just a tool.
It's a tool to help you encounter God through his Word. And I dare you, I dare you to do it for like 20 minutes a day. Just do like one entry a day. Do it for 20 minutes a day, say for 40 days. That's a good biblical number. Do it for 40 days.
Come back to me and tell me you're not experiencing significant spiritual growth.
Gradual, yes, but significant nonetheless. Okay, look back at verse 7.
Kingdom growth is gradual be encouraged. Verse 7. Hypocrites.
Isaiah prophesied correctly about you when he said, again, he's speaking to these Pharisees.
This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain.
Teaching is doctrines, human commands. Okay? Like I said, we touched on this last week and I said then I'm gonna spend some more time on it. I wanna do it now. Okay? So Jesus, he's calling out these Pharisees because they were prioritizing, excuse me, they were prioritizing appearance over the heart.
They were prioritizing the appearance, the external, what other people could observe and see versus the true condition of what's going on inside of them.
In other words, they were claiming to worship God while bypassing the heart.
And Jesus tells them that they're worshipping God in vain.
My next point for you, if you're taking notes, is worship happens in the heart before it happens with the hands.
Worship happens in here before it happens here.
It can happen here, it can happen with your hands, it ought to happen with your hands, but it can't happen here unless it first happens here.
You with me?
I want you to imagine for a second, imagine for a second that after gathering we're all going to go to a park, okay?
And depending on your personality, some people are going to play basketball over at the basketball courts and other people are going to play soccer over at the field. Okay? I'll let you decide in your heart which one you like better. But either way, let's say, okay, so you show up to the basketball court, those of you that are going to play basketball and you're like, alright, let's play. You got your Jordans on, you're ready to roll your sweatbands, your whole thing, okay? And pretty quickly you realize no one's dribbling the ball, no one's dribbling the ball. And in fact, not only are they not dribbling the ball, but you know how in basketball you'd shoot it and you'd want to get it through the top of the rim, right? You notice no one's dribbling the ball, and they're not shooting it through the top of the rim. They're trying to shoot it underneath out from underneath out to the top.
You'd be like, what are we doing?
What's going on? You probably say something like, hey, guys, wait a second. This looks fun and everything, but, like, I thought we were playing basketball.
And then someone else on the corner goes, yeah, this is basketball.
How would you respond to that?
You'd say something like, no, no, you're playing a different game, right?
Okay, so the basketball crew's over there. They're confused. Meanwhile, you have the soccer players. They're over at the field. They show up to play soccer, right? And then really, really quickly, you start seeing everybody's using their hands.
They're picking up the ball, they're throwing the ball, right? It's like rugby or something. You're like, what's happening here?
They're using their hands and they're like, throwing the ball into the net. No one's kicking. There's not one kick that's happening.
Similarly, you'd be like, hey, I thought we were playing soccer.
And they're like, yeah, this is soccer.
How would you respond to that?
Right? Cool. Your tracker would be, no, right? You're playing a different game. You're just calling it soccer. You're playing a different game. You're just calling it basketball, right? Hear me. These Pharisees, they were claiming to worship God.
They're claiming to worship God while bypassing the heart.
And Jesus is like, hey, you call it worship, but you're playing a totally different game.
Just like you can't play basketball without dribbling.
Just like you can't play soccer with your hands. You hear me? You can't worship God while bypassing your heart, because worship happens in the heart before it happens with the hands. Are you tracking with me?
So, I mean, there's so much here, guys, if you want to know what you actually worship, you gotta examine what's going on in here.
William Barclay, I quote him a lot. I really love his stuff. On Matthew, he says this quote, once and for all, Jesus lays it down that what matters is not the state of people's ritual observance.
That means the things that you do, but the state of their hearts end Quote, Christianity is a heart game way before it's a hands game.
How's your heart?
Seriously though, how's your heart?
Here's the thing.
I believe it's really difficult to self diagnose your own heart.
Let me rephrase that. It's very difficult for me to self diagnose my own heart. It's hard what's going on in there, right? That's why I believe that like guys like in the Bible, guys like King David, that's why I think he would pray things like he did in Psalm 139. Will you throw that up there for me? Psalm 139, verse 23 and 24. This is King David, right? And he's praying to God. These are his requests, these are his petitions. These are what he's praying. He's going, search me, God, and know my heart.
Test me and know my concerns. See if there's any offensive way in me. Lead me in the everlasting way.
Here's my translation.
God, examine what's going on in me.
Search my heart, O God, reveal to me. Show me the things that are unclean in here. Cause self diagnosing your heart is really tricky and really challenging and really hard.
I feel like it's such a common story.
I've heard it multiple times with both men and women where they're feeling great and then they kind of start to feel a little funky.
So they go into the doctor, doctor does a checkup, right? You know, they check your vitals and they maybe draw some blood and maybe some other bodily fluids, whatever. But they do those things to get a. They're checking out, right? Fairly common story. People will go in, they feel kind of funky. The doctor will kind of intentionally look at them and, and then he'll come back and go, hey, we discovered something. We discovered a heart condition.
There was things going on in the person's. In the condition of the person's heart, medically, physically, that they weren't aware of, that they didn't realize that until someone intentionally checked it out.
When was the last time you got an accurate read on the condition of your heart spiritually?
I struggled with this this week, guys.
There's a ton of stuff going on personally with the church, many of you, man. There's a lot of stuff going on.
Busy week.
Like, I didn't have a pulse on my heart. What's going on in me?
What's the real condition of my heart? When was the last time you just got an accurate read on the condition of your heart spiritually? Not your own opinion, not just a self diagnosis. Right. Those can be helpful, but they can also be lacking.
Like what's really going on in here.
I have a theory.
I have a theory that people avoid that.
My theory is that people avoid that for the same reason they avoid doctor visits.
I hate going to the doctor. If you're in the medical profession. Sorry.
I hate going to the doctor because I don't want to know.
Just being real.
Ignorance is bliss.
I see men nodding their heads. Yeah.
Women are like, you're stupid.
Not all. Sorry to stereotype men and women. But it's funny, I think people avoid that what's going on in my heart for the same reason they avoid wanting to go to the doctor. Right. They don't want to know because here's the. Let's be honest, it can get dark in here sometimes.
I mean, look at what Jesus said in verse 19.
Look back at it.
This is the words of God in the flesh.
For from the heart come evil thoughts.
I'm going to read these slow evil thoughts.
There's not a person in this room who has not at some point had some pretty wicked evil thoughts.
From the heart come evil thoughts, murders.
That's intense.
You might be like, I've never done that. Right. Remember what Jesus said.
If you've had hatred in your heart towards a brother or a sister, you've murdered them in your heart.
The seeds of murder maybe didn't fully come to fruition, but the condition of your heart, if that's left unchecked, it will produce fruit consistent with the seed.
That's concerning adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies.
That's a lie, Slander, lies about other people.
Jesus says, these are the things that defile a person.
And where do they come from? He said, inside, in the heart. And the concept of the heart, biblically is not just your emotions.
It's your thoughts, it's your emotions, it's your will, it's your inner being. Really kind of.
And it's not just Jesus words, man. Jeremiah spoke about this in the old testament.
Jeremiah 17, starting in verse 9. This is what he says about the heart.
Prophet, right.
The heart is more deceitful than anything else and incurable. Who can understand it? I, the Lord, examine the mind. I test the heart to give to each according to his way, according to what his actions deserve.
Saying the heart is deceptive.
Do you realize what that means?
Been lied to.
It's the first thing it means. Disney told us to follow our heart.
That's about the Worst advice anyone's ever given.
Straight up, though, one of the reasons why there's so much brokenness and division and just chaos in the world is because people are following their heart and they're justifying it. They've redefined good.
Love you, Jared. Stay strong.
Your heart is deceptive. Do you know what else it means, guys? It means you can believe you're worshiping God while your heart is actually engaging in idols.
There's like a blindness. That's why Jesus calls them blind.
He says it's possible to claim Christianity on the outside while worshiping a false God on the inside.
Comfort. That one gets me all the time.
When I say worship, I just mean ascribing ultimate worth. This is the most valuable thing.
Comfort, control, power, approval of other people.
You name it, right? He says it's possible to claim Christianity outside while you're worshiping an idol, a false God, like one of those things I listed on the inside.
And it's what we see here with the Pharisees. They claim to worship God while not worshiping God. And that's what Jesus goes. Hypocrites.
You're claiming to worship God while you're not worshiping God. You're worshiping something else. In their situation. They're worshiping their traditions, their preferences, their whatever. The things that they feel like they're in control. Maybe they. It's comfortable to them. It's, you know, there's communal approval involved. You name it. I don't know their hearts, but there's something deeper going on there.
Claim to worship God while not worshiping God. That's why Jesus calls him hypocrites. He says, you call it basketball, but you aren't dribbling.
You call it soccer, but you're using your hands. You call it worship, but you're bypassing your heart.
He's like, you're playing a different game.
You've changed the rules.
God never changed the rules.
Worship happens in the heart before it happens with the hands.
Here's what I just want us to understand. And this is the biggest thing I'm trying to install in the operating system of my heart and mind, guys. God's primary concern is my heart.
I know you know this, but we have to believe has to make its way into us. God's primary concern is your heart.
His primary concern is your heart.
Okay? And you might be saying, well, look, people will say things like, okay, well, I'm not gonna do it if my heart's not in it. I'm not gonna praise God if my Heart's not in it. I'm not gonna engage in this thing that I know I'm supposed to do if my heart's not in it, in an attempt to kind of, like, acquiesce to this. Well, you know, I know my heart's. But God primarily cares about my heart. So if my heart's not in, I'm not gonna do it.
You're still giving into idolatry. You're still worshiping a false God. Like, that's dangerous. Don't do that.
God's primary concern is your heart. Thomas Aquinas, old dead guy, church father, he says this quote, sorry, that was irreverent. I'm sorry, Sorry, take it back. He says, this man sees the deed, God sees the intention.
William Barclay, again, fire, says this quote, what matters to God is not so much how we act, but why we act.
Not so much what we actually do, but what we. Listen to this, but what we wish in our heart of hearts to do.
It is Jesus teaching, and it is the teaching which condemns every one of us. That people cannot call themselves good listen to this. Because they observe external rules and regulations.
They can call themselves good listen only when their hearts are pure.
End quote.
So Aquinas and Barclay, they're saying what Jesus is saying that your why matters more than your what.
And if you've been around for a while, you've heard me preach this same message packaged in like, 10 different ways, right?
God cares more about why you do what you do than what you are actually doing. Why? Because the heart reveals the worship.
The heart reveals the worship. Your why reveals what you're really worshiping. And that's what Christianity is all about. Christianity is not about people who meet together on Sundays and sing, although we do. It's not people who read the Scriptures all the time, although we do.
It's not about people who care for the poor and seek justice, although we do. Hear me, Christianity is about a word that starts with the letter W.
What differentiates Christians from any other person is the object of their worship.
And if you're anything like me, I get caught up in so many. I'm ascribing ultimate worth to so many other lesser things.
And you know what that is?
That is a departure from the way of Jesus. It's a departure from the Christian life. And we all do it. And then we try to justify it, make excuses for it, just like the Pharisees.
We talked about this last week. I don't want to get into the same message, but we're all Hypocrites.
Your why reveals what you really worship. It's all about the heart.
It's all about the heart, friends.
And this passage says that it's the condition of a person's heart that defiles them.
May I ask you again?
How's your heart?
How's your heart?
What's going on in there?
Some of you, your heart needs to be cleansed.
Your heart needs to be cleansed, and you know it.
You know your motives.
We can deceive other people, but we can't deceive him.
Some of us, like, our hearts need to be cleansed. That's been my prayer this whole week. God, cleanse my heart.
Show me the gross stuff in there. Cleanse my heart.
You know your intentions, you know your thoughts, you know your motives. You know, they're not always pretty. Sometimes they're awesome, right? Sometimes you're like, yeah, that was beautiful. That was actually really loving to my wife. I can't believe that happened. This is awesome.
And other times, you're like, nah, that's not.
The running joke is like, if we had, like, a special microphone and we just.
It could literally, like, put what's going on in our hearts over the speakers for everyone to hear. And we just took turns. We'd all hate each other.
Like, these people are weird.
And then it'd be our turn, and we'd be like, turn the volume down. I don't want anybody to hear. Because there's. Sometimes there's stuff in there that's just not pretty. Huh?
So maybe you're here and your heart's not in the best space.
If you're honest, there's stuff going on in here that I'm not proud of.
There's stuff going on here that, dare I say, is ungodly. If that's you, I have fantastic news for you.
First John, chapter one. I'm almost done. I got, like, a few minutes. I'm closing. First John, chapter one, verses five through nine.
If you find yourself in that space where you go, man, my heart isn't in the best shape. It's not in the best condition.
There's some dark stuff going on in there. Nobody knows. Because I work really hard to cover up my appearance, right?
If that's you, I got great news for you. 1 John, chapter 1. Starting in verse 5, the apostle John writes this. He says, this is the message we have heard from him. Do you know who the hymn is?
Say his name.
I love it.
We sang it. There's power in the name of Jesus.
This is the Message that we have heard from him, Jesus, and then declare to you, God is light and there is absolutely no darkness in him.
If we say we have fellowship with him, and yet we walk in darkness, hidden, no one can see.
Walk in darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth. That's another word for hypo. That's another way of saying hypocrisy.
We're living as hypocrites.
Verse 7. If we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.
And here it is. And the blood of Jesus his Son, what cleanses. Ooh, yes. Cleanses us from some of the sins in our life. The ones that aren't scandalous. The ones that are. No, all of them.
If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus his Son, cleanses us from all sin. Verse 8. If we say we have no sin, there's no darkness. I mean, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 9. Here it is. If everybody say if.
If. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins. And there's that word again. Cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Please hear me. I have great news for you. The blood of Jesus has the power to cleanse that heart of yours.
The blood of Jesus has the power to cleanse you on the inside. The Pharisees are so preoccupied about cleansing the outside. Wash the hands properly, do the rituals properly. Give yourself over to my preferences and what I think is the best, our traditions from the elders, all the things. And Jesus is going get inside. Give me the heart. I want the heart.
Cause if I get the heart, then I'll get the hands. Do you see this?
It's all about the heart. And the blood of Jesus has the power to cleanse you at a heart level.
If that's a condition. We don't like conditions.
It's a condition. If What?
If you walk in the light.
If you walk in the light. If you bring the real, true condition of your heart into the light, exposing it to God and other people.
Not everybody in the room, but some in the room.
You. You. You literally bring it out of darkness. And that's what confession is. Hey, this is hidden. I'm taking it out of the dark, bringing it into the light. I'm. I'm acknowledging it, Lord. I'm taking responsibility for it. God, there's bitterness in my heart.
God, I. I lied when I spoke to Jackie. Or. Or Kevin. Or. I didn't. I'm just using that as an example. But either way, like, I'm bringing this stuff that's in there, I'm bringing it into the light. I'm confessing it to God.
If you walk in the light, if you bring the true condition of your heart into the light, the truth, if you confess it to him, that means you own it.
You don't make excuses, you don't try to explain. Ah, I was stressed out and.
No, man, you own it.
If.
If you confess it, if you bring it into the light, you can experience forgiveness.
Not because of what you do or don't do or how you do it, but because of who he is.
He's the one that opened his veins so that he could forgive you, so he could pay the full debt of. Of all of your uncle.
The hymnals all say it. So I could be washed as white as snow.
We sing it all the time. Nothing but the blood of Jesus oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. It's a cleansing.
Not a physical cleansing primarily, right? Not hygiene.
Heart level. A new heart, a transformed heart with new desires and new longings and a will that. That isn't bent this way contrary to God. But now that it's in alignment, in step dancing, if you will, with the spirit, if you don't remember anything I've said this morning, just remember this.
The blood of Jesus can cleanse your heart.
And if it cleanses your heart, it will capture your heart.
Because there's never been a love like Jesus.
Cliche, right? John 3:16.
For God loved the world in this way that he gave his only Son.
Whoever trusts in him, whoever believes in him, receives eternal life, both now and forever. It's the kingdom.
The blood of Jesus has the power to cleanse your heart. All right, I'm going to call the band up.
I'm going to close quiz really quickly.
This passage, it references hypocrisy, yes, but it's not primarily about hypocrisy.
If you were to sum up this passage here, say this passage is about blank. It's one word, and it starts with the letter W. What is it?
Worship. Louder. Worship. That's what this is about. It's about worship. It's about what your heart ascribes ultimate worth to.
And that we as human beings, things get messy and things don't go well. They really believe it or not, they really are destined for a crash and burn. When we ascribe ultimate worth to lesser things that are not Worthy of your worship.
Fill in the blank with any good thing. If the good thing becomes the God thing, it's not going to go well for anybody. It's not going to go well for you, and it's not going to go well for the people around you. This passage is all about worship.
Now I want to, I want to apply this just for a second to us, to this church family.
Okay?
There are, this is always the case. But right now there's a lot of stuff happening in the life of our church. And I don't mean just good stuff, I mean challenging stuff.
I mean, so many households facing really challenging, difficult things.
Instability with living spaces.
I'm in that camp too.
I mean, our church is in that camp, right?
What are we going to gather?
Uncertainty in business.
What's going to happen?
Things that are outside of our control.
Health issues. There's some health. There's some pretty serious health issues in the church right now.
Difficult, challenging things, right? There's marriage issues.
There always is. Marriage is hard.
If you're in a tough spot in your marriage, yeah, it's as much to sanctify you as it is for your pleasure.
It's hard. But there's serious marriage issues right now. There's, there's, there's parenting issues, there's. There's significant relational conflict that people are trying to work through right now.
There's a lot of stuff. There's trauma that people are trying to unpack and heal from.
I'm giving you a 30,000 foot view. That's just a little bit. There's a lot of really difficult and challenging things that are happening in the life of the people that you're sitting around right now.
And here's the thing about difficult circumstances. Challenging circumstances. Good God. Do they come with temptation?
They come with temptation. And here's the biggest temptation they come with.
We think it's like, well, we want a comfortable life. So we think that it's like, gosh, this is so hard. Why can't things just be easier? Right? That's not the temptation I'm talking about. About.
They come with a temptation to pay less attention to the condition of this because you're so concerned with what's going on. And these stuff, these things are big, these things are serious, they're significant. But what they do. Satan comes in and he tries to tempt you to be distracted, to make this the main thing instead of this the main thing. And next thing you know, we are not paying near enough attention to the condition of our heart. And the problem with that is that worship starts in the heart.
And the next thing you know, we've drifted from worshiping God and now we're ascribing ultimate worth to these lesser things, and things start to spiral and not go so well. And next thing you know, we don't have peace. And next thing you know, we're building our life. The peace in our life, the hope in our life is built on circumstances you can't stand.
We get disoriented, we get dizzy spiritually. And Jesus is like, that's not the way.
Some of you are very tempted right now because of the circumstances that you face. And the temptation is causing you to pay less attention to your heart, to pay less attention to your worship.
But hear me, worship is the whole point.
Literally. If the church exists to do anything, it first exists to worship him in everything we do. It's way more than just singing songs. Although that's praise, that's a part of it. We're ascribing ultimate worth when we praise him.
It's all of life. You're always ascribing ultimate worth to something. When you go to lunch today, you're going to be worshiping. When you lay your head down before you go to bed, you're going to be worshiping. When you wake up in the morning, you're going to be worshiping. When you go off to work, you're going to be worshiping. When you're driving in the car, you're going to be like, you're always doing it.
And so here's what I want to do.
I want to call us to paying more attention to our worship.
I want to call us to when we're facing these difficult circumstances.
Like, here's what I want, guys, and I want this for me as much as I want it for us.
I want to poke Satan in the eye.
Like, I want to be like, oh, all these circumstances are happening around me. And there's this temptation to pay more attention to that and less to my heart of the why, to get more focus on the what and less focus on the why. And you know what I want to do? I want to go, no, I'm not going to play that game. I'm going to give all of my attention as much as I possibly can to what's going on in the me. I'm not gonna hand over my worship because Jesus is worthy.
I want us to do that. I want us to be that kind of a community. And many of you do this honestly in spectacular ways. You face hard things and you stand firm, resolved in your worship. I'm not gonna hand it over. My heart belongs to him.
If we do that, we're gonna live spectacular lives. Lives. We're going to live lives filled with pleasure, enjoying God, obeying him and operating like him.
And our hope will be stable and our peace will be secure.
If we don't, many of us are in the wind and the wave season. It's tough. If we don't, we're going to be in danger.
Can we resolve our worship?
Can we offer it exclusively to the one who offered all of himself to us, even to the point of his blood, to cleanse that heart of yours?
Let's do this. Love. Will you come pray over us quickly?
You need a microphone.
I'm gonna ask God to just pray over us and then we're gonna go and into a time of response.
You okay with that?
[00:55:19] Speaker C: I actually wasn't prepared and thinking through specifics, but I just got a bunch right now that I'm like trying to process through all the information.
But the verse that really popped up. Well, actually. Okay, I'm getting direction. Bear with me.
I'm reminded my dad used to tell me he used to use this illustration of a fruit, like, for example, an orange. When there's pressure put on it, the juice that squeezes out of it isn't lemon juice, it's not apple juice, it's not pomegranate juice.
It's like what you get is what's inside.
And I feel like that just. I was reminded of that and that goes with this of just like the condition of our heart.
And I want to pray over that, but it feel. I feel led to read the verse that kept coming up was Proverbs 7.
Can I put this on?
[00:56:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:33] Speaker C: Proverbs 7.
I'm sorry, 3, 7.
Don't be wise in your own eyes.
Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
This will be healing for your body and strengthening for your bones.
Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest.
Then your barn will be completely filled. This is like a promise.
And vats will overflow with new wine.
I just felt like that just kept coming up.
I'm not going to decipher all of that, but I just wanted to follow through in obedience just to read it because I think some of you needed to hear that.
Lord, I thank you for the gift that your word is.
It's not to shame us, it's not to condemn us. I rebuke and renounce any voice, any thought that would just Want to come in quick with that?
No shame, God, I just love how you even will use the guilt that we can feel sometimes over our sin to direct us towards freedom in you and your forgiveness.
And the Lord's Prayer, actually, it speaks of that of like. It postures our heart of like, forgive me of my sins, like, God, forgive me of my sins as I forgive the sins of my debtors.
That is something to recite. Not just like to have lip service, but really to draw our hearts to a position of humility, to see our need first of a savior.
So, God, I just want to pray over this room.
I pray fear of the Lord.
I pray against fear of man.
I pray that the fear of the Lord will grow, grow in just recognizing who you are.
And you're so faithful and you're so good to continually show us what's on the inside.
Like, we don't need to put a microphone to our heart for you to hear it. You know, the inner workings. You know, things that we don't even know about ourselves. So, Lord, I pray, pray with just your kindness that as the pressures of life come at us, that we wouldn't just, like, if we're blind to see the juice, like the fruit that there is. But, Lord, would we taste it?
Would we taste what's inside that juice that is squeezed out, what's really there?
Would you renew our taste buds? Would we not be, like, numb to what? The reality of the condition of our heart. And not to condemn us or shame us, but to free us.
I pray that over all of us here that we would experience more and more freedom through seeing what's really on the inside.
You discipline those you love.
You love your children.
You love all of your children.
And you're so good and you're so kind. May we not resist it or resent it, but would we be humble enough to see that you're a good father?
We love you so much, Jesus. In your name, amen.
[01:00:15] Speaker B: Amen.
All right. Will you stand with me if you're able?
Kingdom growth is gradual, right? So, everybody, we got a next step.
Be patient on the journey, but you have a next step. What is it for you?
Don't forget, worship happens in the heart before it happens with the hands. Okay? Let's give attention to what's going on in our heart. We have a little bit of time. I'm actually. If you're on the prayer team, don't come forward. I think we just need to collectively respond to God for just a minute, and then Mike is going to come up and pastor us and close us. Okay? Love you guys.
