I’ll pray and we’ll get going. There are some seats up front. I’ll spit all over you, but they are available. They’re available for a reason: Because I’ll spit all over you. And so, if you need a seat, there’s a few in here and such, and direct people this way.

Father God, thank you for a chance to get together and study the scriptures this morning. Lord God, sounds like our nation is off to war, officially, as of today. And so, Lord God, we do pray for those families who are sitting in church today with those whom are in the military not present worshiping with them. We pray for much grace upon those families, especially those children who are looking at the risk of losing a parent because of war. Lord God, we also pray that as we go off to war that you would put a hedge of protection around the innocent; the women and the children and those people who just happen to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. I pray that you would be gracious and kind and merciful to them. Lord God, that the wicked would be brought to justice, but that the bystanders would be spared. Lord God, as well, we ask for wisdom for our rulers, those in authority, as scripture says we should; for our president and for his cabinet, and for our military leaders. And Lord God, we ask that today as we study the scriptures, we would continue to pray for our nation, keep track of its events, but keep our hand at the plow of building a different world with a different king, a different kingdom, and a different ethic. So that as this world and its desires are passing away, a beautiful alternative would be offered to those who desperately need light in dark places. We love you. We thank you. And we come asking you would teach us through your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we looked at the cultural mandate from Genesis 1, Genesis 9, Psalm 8. The cultural mandate is the framework that we’re getting into for our study of Proverbs. It says to be fruitful, increase in number, fill the earth, subdue it. That’s our job. We’re supposed to create a culture that gives honor and glory to God, and reflects his wisdom. The reason we do this is because we love God and because we love our neighbor. That we wanna create a place where we can live with our families and our friends that is worth of God’s name, and we want to be able to invite people who don’t know God into that world so that they too may taste and see that he is good. If you didn’t get that piece, then you’ll need to grab the sermon off the website, and you’ll need to sort of catch yourself up on that.

Where we’re going this week is we jump into the book of Proverbs, and Proverbs has a number of mega-themes within it. The one that we’re dealing with today is the issue of the heart. It is a mega-theme in Proverbs. I would encourage you all this week to read the book of Proverbs, and get a pen and just circle every time the word heart occurs, and look at it in its context. It’s an amazing study. The word heart appears in its derivatives and forms over 900 times in your Bible. If you find something 900 times in your Bible, you know it’s very, very, very important. I looked at every single one of them in context this week reading the scriptures. It was an amazing study. If you are really ambitious, that may be something that you wanna undertake. The reason we’re dealing with the issue of the heart is because if we’re going to talk about building a culture that glorifies God, and living lives that glorify God, ‘cause that’s really all that it is, our lives are individually either honoring or dishonoring toward God.

And then collectively, all of that comes together to build a thing that we all a culture. It’s a collected way of doing this as a group of people. As soon as, however, you begin to study the Bible, and you begin to look at the world that God intends for his children to dwell in, you realize that we are very, very far from that. The reason that we are very far from that is that we are intrinsically flawed in our nature. We’re broken. There’s something wrong. And even people who don’t know God understand this and agree with us.

We’ve created an entire industry called the mental health industry that exists to address the flawed human condition, trying to fix us because we’re broken. Because the lives we lead and the culture we build is flawed. We continue to live those lives and build those cultures because we’re made in the image and likeness of God. We can’t help ourselves. That’s just what we do. But we don’t like the lives we lead. We don’t like the culture we build. And so we have mental health advocacy that attempts to address the human condition. Insofar as that goes, I think it’s merciful. People are looking at one another and saying, “We are messed-up. We need some answers. We need some solutions to the condition of our soul.” How much money each year do you think this nation spends on mental health? $80 billion. $80 billion. Which should be a strong indication to you that we are really flawed.

If it takes $80 billion to get the world we live in, we are very broken. $80 billion should buy you better mental health than most of us have. And the reason that we spend all that money is because what we are trying to do is figure out who and how we are supposed to be. And so, the whole counseling, therapeutic industry is built on this process. First, we must define: What is a normal person? Which we can’t even agree on what a normal person is. Then, in defining normal, then we look at people who are doing things contrary to that and then we call those deviancies, and we call those things abnormal. What we try and figure out then is: What are the root causes that are instigating these people to be abnormal? And then we will put together treatments and therapies. So, treatments and therapies are two addressed causes for abnormality so that we can become normal.

All of that industry is completely flawed. It may be well intentioned, but it’s completely flawed because we don’t know what normal is. You go to one therapist, you’re an adulterer perhaps, you’re committing adultery on your wife. The therapist will tell you, “Well, you’re a highly evolved animal with primal instincts. I’ve studied under Sigmund Freud. He says we’re governed by sexuality, primal desire and urge. You are meant to have sex with a lot of people. You’re committing adultery, but that’s not a problem because that is normal.” You go to someone else and they say, “No, actually, I studied biological theory, and I believe that we were created to be in intimate relationship and bear progeny, and then raise those children. And so it is natural for you to be committed to one woman for your whole life.” We can’t even agree on what normal is. How many schools of psychological thought are there trying to address causes for abnormality, and then prescriptions that lead to normality? There are hundreds. I know of almost 300.

So, there are 300 different perspectives on normal, abnormal, cause and treatment. Now you know why we spend $80 billion. We don’t even know what we’re trying to produce, let alone how to get there or why we’re failing. And so, in this system, what you’ll find is that every system that I have ever studied blames someone other than the individual. We live in an incessant culture of blame. We love to blame other people because then we can claim ourselves to be victims. And then as a result of our victimhood, we can get money. It’s profitable. There’s a whole industry built around this. We’re gonna get to the problems in a minute. I wanna deconstruct the world so that you don’t just import all of the principles of Proverbs into a secular mind. That our minds need to be no longer conformed but transformed. We have to think about things differently.

So, if you go to someone to is trained under B.F. Skinner, they’ll say, “Blame the environment. Environmental conditioning is what makes us bad.” And there’s a half-truth there, but environmental conditioning is not the sole cause of what we do. Adam and Eve lived in a nice neighborhood. They had a nice neighbor, his name was God. I’m sure they went to a decent school, they had a decent environment. Things were nice. They’re naked, eating fruit, just like we all desire to be. Things are good. Why do they sin against God? Is it because of environment? No, it’s because of internal environment, not external environment. Why does Satan fall from heaven? Why is he cast – not because of his external environment. He’s in heaven. Heaven is nice. Whatever your theology, heaven is nice. That’s a nice neighborhood. You and I would love to live there. And he gets cast out not because of his external environment, but because of his internal environment.

You study under Freud, you’ll be told it’s primal urges. You’re a highly evolved animal. You can’t help yourself. If you’re trained under someone that is more of a Rogerian school, Carl Rogers, you’ll be told, “Well, it’s a lack of self-awareness. You’re a really good person. You have self-esteem, self-worth, self-dignity, and you need to self-actualize. You need to go within yourself to get the answers for your external life.” So, we get into regressive memory therapy. We get into hypnosis. We get into meditation. We get into self-esteem and self-actualization. Hmm, I’m not living my life well. I must not be connected to myself, ‘cause I’m a good person. If I was connected, then I would do things differently. And it just goes on and on and on and on and on. Proverbs, however, deals with this completely differently. It says that the root problem is the heart, and that life is filled with the consequences of the heart. And Proverbs draws a cause and effect relationship between the condition of the human heart, the living of the human life, and the forming of a human culture; which is the collective living of the individual lives.

And so, as we get into Proverbs, you need to just sort of wipe away all your blame. Your temptation will be to go back to Genesis 3 and say, “Well, God it’s your fault;” or, “It’s my wife’s fault;” or, “The devil made me do it.” Someone will get the blame. Proverbs says that our heart is the problem. And as we get into Proverbs, what I want you to understand is that in order to understand Proverbs, to understand scripture, to understand God, you must come with a poetic imagination. You must be able to think in pictures, and you must be able to think differently than the world thinks. I’m not just talking about Christian thoughts. I’m talking about thinking Christian ways; which leads to Christian thoughts. I’ll give you an example. There are some pastors here this week for a conference that is going on downtown on post-modernity. Some have wrongly said that we are a post-modern church. We are not. We live in a post-modern age, perhaps, but post-modernity is about something called “Deconstruction.” If you read a gentleman – I’ll go – I won’t go too far – a gentleman named Jacques Derrida; he’s sort of the Abraham of post-modernity. He says that post-modernity is about stripping away layers and getting down to the essence and the core and the substance of things.

And so, it’s about reducing things to their most basic nature. Let me ask you this: Is that how scripture works? That is not how scripture works. Scripture works just the opposite. Scripture layers things. It doesn’t strip away layers, it adds to them. I’ll give you an example. And you have to use your imagination, because the Bible speaks in metaphors and pictures, and faith is inextricably interconnected with the imagination. So, scripture gives us pictures, for example, of God. God is a what? God is spirit. There’s a layer. What else is God? God is like the wind. That’s a layer. What else? God is like fire. God is Father. What’s that? God is a rock. God is a gentle whisper for Elijah. What is God? What else? God is a king. God is a warrior. God is a priest. God is a shepherd. Do you see the layers? The Bible does not teach by reducing things down to their essence, but by layering poetic images one on top of the other. So, at certain seasons you and I will be struggling and lost. We’ll say, “God as a shepherd, come to find me as a lost sheep.”

There will be times where you and I are in rebellion, and we’ll remind ourselves that God is a judge, and God is a king. There will be times where we will be hurt and discouraged and despondent, and we’ll remember that God is a father. And all of these images in the Bible are laid on top of one another. As we get into Proverbs, I tell you that because it’ll be vital for you to think that way. We’re gonna talk today about the heart. And is not the heart in and of itself just a poetic form? He’s not talking just about the heart as a – as an organ, or as your physical heart. He’s talking about your center, your essence, your nature. That’s why we say things like, “We need to get to the heart of the matter.” We’re talking about getting down to where all things emanate from. And so, as we talk about the heart, the heart in its various forms occurs 900 times. And it is not just the mind, it is not the body, and it is not the spirit. If you study philosophy or any of the social sciences you’ll be told that we’re two parts. The human being is two parts: Mind and body. Meaning we are meat and ideas. That’s what we are. That’s the sum total of our life.

If you study according to Christian and other spiritual philosophies, they’ll say, “No, we’re mind, body and spirit.” And we are. Scripture talks about all those things. But Proverbs goes much deeper, and it says that all of that and much, much more comes out of the heart. And the heart is everything. So, if we’re going to address the human condition for the living of the human life, and the shaping of a culture, we need to address the heart. We can’t just talk about the mind and turning our faith into a crossword puzzle. We can’t just talk about the body; that everything is genetic and DNA and molecular, and we’re evolved animals. And we can’t just talk about the spirit. We need to talk about the heart; everything.

Here’s a brief list of what appears just in Proverbs regarding the heart. In Proverbs alone, the heart is the seed of understanding, learning, memory, faith, obedience, rebellion, planning, imagination, lust, the will, perversity, deceit, folly, anxiety, hope, joy, hurt, grief, peace, wisdom, happiness, discernment, rage, motives, purity, folly, friendship, gladness, envy – I skipped a line – cheerfulness, contemplation, pride, and speech. It’s the seat of violence, reasoning, sadness, evil, sin, joy and hardness toward God. We could just make the heart the junk drawer, and we could just say, “Everything goes in there.” Right? What is the heart? Everything. In scripture, the heart is everything. Your mind? That’s out of your heart. Your will? That’s out of your heart. Your emotions? That’s out of your heart. Your reasoning? That’s out of your heart. Your imagination? That’s out of your heart. Your conduct? Your speech? Your love? Your hatred? Everything comes out of your heart.

And so that’s why scripture begins to lay then poetic imagery, one on top of another. Here are some of the pictures you need to see. Proverbs 27:19, “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.” Don’t you love that image? You say, “Well, what’s the heart?” He says, “Well, have you ever had an undisturbed glance at yourself in water and seen your reflection? That’s what your heart is.” Your heart is the reflecting of your identity, of your essence, of your nature. It is a reflection of who you are. It is who you are. When you look at yourself in a mirror or in an undisturbed portion of water, you see an exact reflection of who you are. Your heart is the reflection of your identity, of your nature. That’s who you are.

Above all else, here’s probably my favorite: “Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” I love that poetic imagery. Proverbs 4:23 tells us that our heart is our wellspring for our life. What this means, very simply, a wellspring is an ever-flowing source. It can be freshwater or sewage, but it flows incessantly and continually. What this means, is that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between life and the heart. And any time we are talking about changing our living, or changing our conduct, or our behavior, or our ethics, or our morality, we have to talk about the heart; otherwise we are chasing effects without addressing causes. Do you understand what I’m saying?

We spend a lot of our time saying things like, “I don’t want to drink anymore. I don’t want to look at pornography anymore. I don’t want to sleep with someone outside of marriage anymore. I don’t want to lie anymore. I don’t wanna steal anymore. I don’t wanna cheat anymore.” And Proverbs would say, “All of that is an overflow of your heart.” And so, before we can become good legalists who just try and change behavior and conduct, we must be utterly transformed in the depths of our heart; that our heart is the wellspring of our life. This is very important to teach to your children. One of the things that I love about Proverbs, it is for the simple and the foolish, for the young and the old. And it is intended – we’ll get into this next week – for children. The reason it teaches in a poetic form is because you and I may not conceptually understand everything about the human condition. And little children especially may not either. But they’ll get this. Your heart shows your life. It’s very simple. Cause and effect. Your life is a reflection of your heart. That’s it.

So, when my daughter says something unkind, I ask her, “Honey, why did you do that?” She’ll say, “Because there was not love in my heart.” That’s the answer. Not because her brother took her toy. That’s Genesis 3 blaming. “I sinned because he sinned.” No, I sin because of my heart. It’s a heart condition. That’s why we have such a hard time in this culture seeing real change through therapy and psychological – psychology and counseling. I’m not saying that those things are all evil or bad. Those offices are filled with people who care and are trying to help. But they can’t understand the human heart. They can’t address the human heart. They don’t understand the Biblical pictures of the heart. All they are working with is life under the sun. They’re working through empirical investigation and only what their senses can derive. They don’t have God speaking into the situation.

And it is God who created us; God who created our heart; God who knows our hearts. And God knows our condition. God knows normal. God knows abnormal. God knows root cause, and God knows treatment. And so, apart from an accurate assessment of the heart and the work of God, character and conduct and life change is impossible. So he tells us, “Guard your heart.” Why? It’s the whole spring of your life. We’ll get into this. Jesus says, Mathew 12:34, “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” There’s another poetic layer. Out of your heart comes your life. Out of your heart comes your words. Out of your heart comes your motives. And what we love to say is that we have justification for the condition of our heart. We love to say, “Oh, you don’t understand. The reason I said that is because they did this.”

If I had a glass here of fresh spring water and a glass here of sewage, bumping a glass over would not change its contents. If your heart is filled with, as Jesus says, “Streams of living water,” and someone bumps you in life, out comes streams of living water. If you are filled with sewage and someone bumps you and out comes sewage, you can’t say, “Well, they put sewage in me, and then I spilled it.” They just bumped you. They revealed what was latent. They revealed what was in your heart. But what we love to do, we love to justify ourselves. Proverbs talks about this clearly, and I’m glad that it does. It says in Proverbs 20:5, “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” What this means is, you will not be able to simply really discern the condition of your heart; that the heart is deep water.

You’re going to have to descend for a bit into a place of honesty. Romans 12:3 says, “We should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought, but with sober judgment.” What this means is you and I cannot say, “Well, I’m a good person, and I live a good life, and my heart is pure.” It is a deep well, and it takes wisdom and understanding to draw out the true content of the human heart. The reason that is, is because Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 17:9, that our heart is what? Deceitful. Your heart will trick you. Your heart is like your enemy, filled with deceit. Satan, one of his titles in the scriptures is that he is a deceiver. I believe that perhaps Satan is so deceived that he is now self-deceived. Some people ask, “Well, why is Satan still fighting against God’s children, and fighting against God?” I think because he is self-deceived. He may actually believe that he is right, and that God is wrong. And that he will win, and that God will lose.

It is possible to become so deceived that you’re self-deceived, because your heart is deceptive. You will built an apologetic and an airtight defense for every stupid thing you do. If you’re married, you’ve seen this first hand. If you have children, it is obvious. Have you ever met someone that was doing something terrible, and when you talked to them and asked them why, they spoke for 10 minutes; and half-way through you thought it was a good idea and your mind was changed? And then you walk away going, “Wait a second. That – they just convinced me to be an alcoholic and a wife-beater.” But, in their own reasoning, it makes perfect sense. They have a good reason for what they do. The heart is deceitful. You can’t trust it. That’s why as Christians, we will even come-up with what we want, and then we’ll open the Bible and say, “Well, I know there’s something in here somewhere that vindicates me. Here it is. Here it is. There’s something right here.” Well, it’s not really there. “Ah, well, we’ll just stick it in there.”

And we vindicate and justify ourselves, and we even come to the Word of God, not submitting to it, but standing over it saying, “Well, is there something in here that can vindicate me? Because I got a deceitful heart, but I want a verse to back it up so that the church doesn’t spank me.” Not you. I’m saying, some people do that. Don’t wanna meddle in your affairs. Why do we do that? Because our hearts are deceived. We wanna vindicate and justify ourselves. So, our first response when we’re caught is not repentance, it is blaming and excusing, justifying, and vindicating. It’s exactly what Proverbs says will happen. Proverbs 21:2, “All a man’s ways seem right to him.” It’s true, isn’t it? But what? But the Lord weighs the heart.

You and I each think that we are living our lives with wisdom and obedience, and we are doing wonderfully well. The problem is, everyone else is so messed up. They keep interrupting the course of our lives. I am wise and I am righteous and I am holy and I am doing well. And all of these knuckleheads keep impinging on my journey. I wish they were wise. I wish they had good, clean, pure hearts like me. It’s true, isn’t it? No clearly – more clearly can you see this than in traffic. Everyone is an idiot, except for me. Everyone thinks that their course and their journey and their way and their motive and their reasoning is right on the money, and they think that everyone else is a fool that is messing up their life. So, what we pray for is for God to fix everybody so they quit messing up our life.

Proverbs also says, “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure,’ and that, ‘I am clean and without sin?’” Proverbs 20:9. When you honestly, soberly look at the condition of your heart and your own self-deception and your vindication, you have to recognize that you’ve sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. It’s the great understatement of the Bible. And some of you, right now, are having this conversation in your mind. It goes something like this: “But, he doesn’t understand what I’ve been through. He doesn’t understand how much I’ve suffered. He doesn’t understand what that person did to me. He doesn’t understand. He’s self-righteous. I’m sure he’s no better than me. Who is he to point the finger at me? I’m sure – I know Mark, and he – he’s worse than me. I should have his job.” All of which may be true. But why are you doing that right now in your head? And you’re doing it. You’re doing it because your heart is deceptive.

And as the spirit of God convicts you, your first instinct is to defend and justify and justify a whole line of logic and reasoning. You find this all the time. Why are you unfaithful to your wife? “Well, she’s not very fun.” What does that have to do with anything? Why are you dishonoring your parents? “Well, because they didn’t give me what I want.” What does that have to do with anything? Why are you stealing from your boss? “Because he’s a jerk.” What does that have to do with anything? Immediately, we like to justify ourselves and deceive ourselves, and enter into a false world. Proverbs says, “Who can say, ‘My heart is pure and I’m without sin?’” Who can say that?

See, the problem that we have is sin, deception and folly. We can’t blame it on anybody. We have to own it. The culture is a reflection of your heart. Your life is a reflection of your heart. If everything is untidy and chaotic, and filled with darkness and death and the stench of the grave and Adam, who’s fault is that? That would be my fault. So, here’s what we need. We need a sober assessment of who we are. Mathew says, “These people honor me with their lips,” this is Jesus speaking, “but their hearts are what? They’re very far from me.” Some of you hide it through pious speech. You’ve learned six or eight Christian words. Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. You – through our speech we will even pretend that our hearts are pious because of our deception. I love God. I talk about God. I know scripture. I have all these words. I know the language. I speak about God. My heart is pure. Oh, see? Look at all my words.

Jesus says, “You can honor me with your lips, and your heart can still be very, very far from me.” Oh, that’s not right. That’s judgmental. God gets to judge you. God sits on a throne. God has a right. Don’t deceive yourself. God knows your heart. We know your words. We know your life. We know your actions. We can draw cause-and-effect relationship. God can go far deeper than that. The reason that we don’t understand what is normal is because we don’t believe in Jesus. God comes as a man; one of the purposes of which is to show us what is normal. Jesus is a normal person. That’s what we’re supposed to look like. Philippians 2, the kenosis, “He laid aside his deity. He took upon humanity. He became God in human flesh, and he lived normal.” Tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. So, if you wanna know what normal is, normal is Jesus. What is abnormal? Everything else.

So, don’t justify yourself by saying, “Well, I’m better than my neighbor;” or, “I used to be really bad, and now I’m just bad; making progress.” Jesus is normal. Can you get that in your head? Now, how – how are we doing now? Scripture says, “All of sin falls short,” you’re like, “Yeah? That – that would be true.” No one has ever been confused as being Jesus Christ. You know, you look just like Jesus. If you hear that, take that person in for medication who told you. You look nothing like Jesus. We are enemies of God. We’re supposed to be imitators of God. What we were created for is to imitate Jesus; and we don’t. So, we are abnormal. Now, let me ask you this: If you are normal and I am abnormal, and the only way we’re going to change is to have an accurate, sober assessment of our hearts, how in the world am I gonna assess your heart? And how in the world are you going to assess mine? Because neither of us are normal. This is, as scripture says, “The blind leading the blind.”

There is – there is a right thinking in therapy that says, “You are self-deceived. You have justified and vindicated yourself. You don’t even understand how dark your soul is. You need someone who is objective, from the outside, to look at that and to give an accurate assessment of your heart.” The problem is, he doesn’t live, or she doesn’t live on this planet. We’re all self-deceived. And so, to even get an accurate assessment of our heart cannot be done by ourselves. You and I cannot sit here and say, “Well, I’ll just do a little analyzation. How am I doing? I’m doing great.” Self-deceived people think that. Wicked people think that. If you come to that conclusion, that’s your evidence that you are completely depraved. So, what we need is we need someone who is normal to evaluate those of us who are abnormal. We need someone who is perfect to shed light on those of us who are imperfect.

We need someone who has created us; knows why we were made; knows how we’re supposed to look; knows why we do what we do; can tell us what is abnormal and what is the root cause, and what is the proper treatment. And that is God. God has made us in his image and likeness. He alone knows why we’re here, what we’re supposed to be about, how we’re supposed to go about it. He alone can evaluate the heart. So, we’re gonna look at Jesus’ words. Because, what we need here is wisdom. Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God. It tells us in the gospels that he grew in wisdom. It tells us in Colossians that, “In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom.” And so, we need Jesus. The gospels say that he is wiser than Solomon, and he taught with wisdom.

We have plenty of opinions. We have hundreds of therapies. We have lots of conjecture. What we need is God to reveal himself and speak to us clearly, so that we can’t deceive ourselves any longer. And so, we will listen to Jesus’ words. He is our great physician. He will open up our heart. Mathew 15:28. Here is your list. “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his what? Heart.” “You don’t understand, God. Lustful thinking, pornography, adultery – this is – this is not my heart. This is a problem with my exterior. The women don’t wear enough clothes, and the magazines are too available, and the internet is too accessible. You don’t understand.” God says, “I understand. It’s your heart.” You say, “No, no, no. I’m a victim. It’s a dark culture.” No, it’s your heart. Men who are unfaithful to their wives with their actions and their eyes, Jesus says, it’s an issue of the heart.

What that means is, if you disconnect the cable modem, and have accountability groups, and invoke tremendous amounts of legalism, and a man’s heart is not changed, what does he do? He lusts in his heart? How? You could put a man off on an island where he never sees a woman again, and he’ll lust in his heart. Why? Because his heart is wicked, and it will conjure-up images, and his imagination will cause him to lust. You see where legalism is a dismal failure? One man says, “It’s just a re-arranging of the flesh.” Some of us want things to change, but we don’t want to change. We just want things to change. And Jesus says, “For where your treasure is your heart will be also.” Now, this is sticky, ‘cause money is one of the great idols. Money is the root, scripture says, of all kinds of evil. “My heart is pure.” She me your wallet. “Take my word for it.” No. Show me your wallet.”

Your money goes where your heart is already dwelling. That is the truth. Your heart lives somewhere, and your wallet is following-up. It is bringing-up the rear. If your money goes toward yourself and your ambitions and your desires, and you are selfish, and you are greedy, you’re worshiping yourself. You have fashioned yourself into your own God. You are committing idolatry. God says you are robbing him. Where your treasure is your heart is. You say, “Well, I’ll get more money.” It doesn’t matter if you give money. In 2 Corinthians 8:9, we’re supposed to give money out of what kind of heart? Cheerful. Cheerful. So, it’s not even that you give God money, you need to give it to him laughing and smiling. Now, immediately, some of you are already playing this game in your head. “Oh, he’s – now he’s gonna pass the plate. This is a fund-raiser and he’s trying to stick me. That punk. He wants a bigger building, and he wants a new car. I know how this works. My last church, they did that. They make you feel bad and pass the plate, and then they make you feel really bad and pass it again. I know these guys.”

Why do we do that? Because our heart is deceitful and wicked. We wanna keep our money in our pocket, and have a Biblical reason to do it. You need to be careful about where you spend your money, and I need to be careful about how I take it from you. We’re both in jeopardy here, aren’t we?

Jesus says, “From within, out of men’s hearts, comes what? Evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly.” All of these come from the inside, and they make a man clean. Some of you have been raised in churches that say, “Don’t associate with anything that is bad, otherwise it’ll get in you.” Jesus says that bad is already in you. What’s out there is just an opportunity. It is what comes out of you that makes you unclean. You look at this list, it’s overwhelming. This is just buckshot coming out of the cannon of God. We all get it. We’re just laid bare. “Okay, fine. I was gonna justify myself, but then he kept going, and it just – it’s just – I’m dead.” Jesus says, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart. And the evil man brings evil things out of the evil in his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” There’s another layer.

The heart is just chocked full of life, and it just sort of pours out in death and violence and vitriol and decay and stench. Out of the heart the mouth speaks. Give me your words.

Let me see your words. I’ll tell you your heart; cause and effect. Don’t be deceived. A man reaps what he sows; cause and effect. Let me see your wallet. Let me see your words. Let me see your life. Let me see your loves. Let me see your lusts. That’s your heart. Jesus says, “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life. And that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.” You get discouraged. You get depressed. You drink to drown your sorrows. You throw yourself into what Blaze Pascal calls, “Diversions.” You just sit there like a zombie looking at a television or a video game monitor, or something else that is just wasting your time. Your heart anxious, and burdened, and weighed-down.

Jesus says, “Watch out. That’s what can happen to your heart.” Do you know why some people are depressed? Some people are depressed because they don’t know God. And that’s what a heart does when it doesn’t know God. It falls into sadness. Proverbs 20:9, “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure, and that I am clean, and I am without sin?’” It’s a rhetorical question, obviously. No one. Jesus, the great physician, has just cut us open, taken out our heart, and let us look at it. We can’t fight him on it. You can fight me, because I’m a sinful, imperfect man. But you can’t fight the Lord Jesus. He is not a hypocrite. He is not a liar. He has just cut our heart out and showed it to us. We can’t argue with him. We can’t vindicate ourselves before him. We can’t have a plant/speck relationship whereby we point-out all of his flaws and his hypocrisy against us. For he was tempted in every way as we are, yet not sinned.

That is our heart. What I wanna speak of now is the heart of God. Not only do you and I have a heart, you and I have a heart because we’re made in the image and likeness of God; and God has a heart. Genesis 6 – 5 and 6, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil, all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his what? His heart was filled with what? Pain.” That is the heart of God. God looks at you and I and he says, “The inclination of every motivation and action that proceeds from the heart is evil.” And God is pained that he has made us. You say, “No, I’m smart. I’m pretty. I’m talented. I help. I’ve done good things.” God says that you have been a source of pain in his heart. Sorrow and grief and sadness is what you have contributed to him.

You and I can be deceived and say, “No, no, no. Look at all the good I’ve done.” And God says, “All I feel is pain.” Here’s the heart of God. Deuteronomy 5:29, “Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me.” We’re gonna talk about that in Proverbs. “And keep all my commandments always.” And immediately, the heart jumps-in and says, “That’s ‘cause God is mean. And God is angry. And God is violent. And God doesn’t want us to live. And God doesn’t want us to have joy. And God is trying to rob us of our freedom. And God is trying to impose on our lives. And God is trying to rule over us. And what kind of God is this?” He tells us. Why does he do this? So that it may go well with us and with our children, forever. “Oh. God crashes into my world because he cares. God takes his heart and inclines it toward me because he wants my life to be filled with his life and his joy. And he wants to make sure that he gives that to my kids as well; and to my grandkids, and my great-grandkids, forever.”

“Oh, I guess God’s heart is different; that God is holy; that God is other.” Why does God do what he does? Because God cares for you, and he cares for me, and his heart is filled with love. Even though it is filled with pain and sorrow, it is still filled with love. Here is God’s ultimate heart for our heart, Deuteronomy 6:5, Jesus quotes it, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.” God’s heart desires that our heart would love him. That’s the heart of God. And as you look at the condition of our heart, and you look at the condition of what God intends for our heart, you realize that we are incapable of ever producing anything that honors him. If the wellspring and polluted and pouring out raw sewage, you will never get fresh, clean water at the end of the spigot.

If God’s desire is that we would love him, but all we love is ourselves and our sin and our death and our enemy, this is not a possibility for us. That heart is incapable of doing anything good. And you will justify yourself immediately. You will say, “But, I do good things.” When you do something good, how do you feel about that which you have done? Proud. Which is what? The heart of all sin and rebellion against God. Augustus says rightly, “All sin is pride.” You say, “Come on. Just look at the actions. Don’t look at the heart. Look at what I do. Don’t investigate the motives.” Deceitful. Do you feel it? Some of you right now are having the conversation in your head. “Is he done, yet?” I’m not done, because I need to tell you the gospel. It is the power of God to everyone who believes. It is good news. And if we’re going to be honest about our heart, we desperately need good news and power.

Ezekiel; here is a promise from your God. Ezekiel 11:19, “I will give them an undivided heart, and put a new spirit in them. I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” That is the heart of God. Here’s another layer on the poetic imagination; heart of stone. Imagine if right now we laid you up, we cut you open, we took out your heart and we put a rock in. God says, that’s how you were born into this world. There is no life. There is no love. There is no joy. There is no hope for that heart. It is not like, if I had a stone instead of a heart that I could discipline or motivate or inspire myself to pump blood. I can’t do it. I am incapable. So, God says, “Here’s the deal. I am the great physician. I will lay you down on my alter of grace. I will cut you open. I will take out that rock, and I’ll put in a heart of flesh.” Life. You’re gonna breathe. You’re gonna feel. You’re gonna be alive.

And it’s something that God does. And in our heart’s wickedness we like to think that somehow we even participate in that. “No, I repented, so God gave me a new heart.” No, you repented because God gave you a new heart. “No, I loved so that God would give me a new heart.” No, you loved because God gave you a new heart. A rock does not love. A rock does not obey. A rock does not care. Life is because God has given you a new heart. And it’s the wellspring of your life. And out of that comes your lusts and your money and your speech; comes your passions and your joys and your fears. God, through Ezekiel also says, “Rid yourself of all the offenses you have committed.” The first thing that happens when you get a new heart, you have to hate your sin. You gotta hate it. It’s your enemy. It’s death. It’s back to a heart that is nothing but a rock.

And get a new heart, and a new spirit. God promises again in Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh.” Jeremiah says, “I will give them a heart to know me.” You wanna know that you got a heart of flesh? Ask you one question. More than anything, do you wanna know God? If you wanna know God, that’s because you have a heart that has been turned into flesh. Rocks don’t have fathers, and rocks don’t want to love them; children do.

For many of you, you may struggle with reading scripture. And you may be trapped in this dumb idea of discipline, trying to get to know God. Thinking, “Well, if I know God better, then I’ll have a new heart.” No, I need a new heart so I can know God. It’s cause and effect. Without a new heart the scriptures are dead, because you are dead. And if I stand outside of the grave of a dead man with a rock for a heart and read the word of the living God, it does nothing. He needs, like Lazarus, to be brought forth, in his stench; given life, and then he can hear. If you want to know God, you have to have a new heart. But, if you do love knowing God and your desire is to know God, you have a good indication that God has given you a new heart. Most of you are here today because God has given you a new heart, and you want to know about him.

“I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people and I will be their God, and they will return to me with all their heart.” That’s what God wants. That’s the heart of God. God wants us to be children. He wants to be Father. Why? Because he wants to control and manipulate? No, only your deceitful heart would ever even think that. Because God loves. God cares. God is life. And apart from him, there is no life. Do you have a new heart? How many of you have a new heart?

Never, never take that for granted. That is a miracle, what God has done. God spoke creation into existence, and I think that was easier than taking out our heart of stone. Because creating did not fight him, and we do. God has done a miracle, and he has just [Makes slapping sound] given us a new heart. And we’re alive. We know him and we love him, and we’re convicted of our sin. And we realize that our life is hidden in Christ. Some of you say, “Well, I know I have a new heart.” Don’t be too sure about that. James tells us not to merely listen to the word and so deceive ourselves; thinking that because we’ve been in church for a while, that we have a pastor who uses a lot of scripture and yells at us, that we’re good Christians.

Don’t merely listen to the word and still deceive yourselves; do what it says. If your life is not reflecting what is birthed in a new heart, you should seriously consider whether or not you actually have a saving relationship with God; whether he has given you a new heart. Some of you do have a new heart, and you’re saying, “Okay, I understand this, but my life is still pumping sewage and death. Why is that?” Over 900 times your Bible talks about the heart, and its derivatives and their various forms. This week, I went through and I read all of them in their context. One of the themes that comes up over and over and over and over in your Bible, I’ll read you a few, is a calloused heart. That God can give you a new heart, and that over time because of misuse and abuse and neglect it can become calloused and hard. Any of you musicians or tradesmen who work with your hands? You get calluses, don’t you? What happens is, that skin dies but it remains, and it ceases to enable you to feel. You become dead. It becomes very hard. God says that can happen to our heart; that through negligence and rebellion, lack of repentance, lack of continuing in the things that he’s called us to by grace, our hearts can get calloused.

Deuteronomy 30:6 talks about this calloused heart, “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts, and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart, and all your soul, and live.” He uses this language of circumcision. Circumcision is the effect. It is the process by which we remove flesh. Your old nature, according to the apostle Paul in the scriptures, is fleshly. God will give you a new heart, and your old, fleshly nature will cause it to become calloused and hard and dead and unfeeling. And so, God circumcises it. That is the process by which he strips those dead layers of flesh off of the human heart. Mathew 13:15, “For this people’s heart has become calloused. They hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn. That’s repentance, and I will heal them.”

Repentance is saying, “God, you were right, and I am wrong. And I will not deceive myself any longer; that let God be true and me be a liar; that my heart is, in certain places, calloused and hard. And the more God speaks the less I hear. And the more God prods, the less I feel. And the more God cares, the less I do.” The sin in your life, if you’re a child of God, is the result of callousness on a portion of your heart. Do not be deceived. A mean reaps what he sows. Guard your heart. It is the wellspring of your life. Your sin is because of your calluses.

Romans 2:5, “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart,” – how do you get callus on your heart? He just told us: stubbornness. “God, I know that’s what you say, but dammit, I don’t care. [Makes smacking sound] It’s gonna go this way. I’m unrepentant. I won’t change. I don’t care what the scripture says. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what you want. You forgive me of my sins. You send me to heaven. In the meantime, you stay the hell out of my business.” Stubborn. Unrepentant. Some of you live there. Some of you live there, and with your words, Jesus says, you honor him. “Oh, I love the Lord.”

Your hearts can be calloused. Some of you, your hearts are calloused. You say, “Don’t yell at me.” I’m more stubborn than you are, and I will do this every week for the rest of my life; because I love you, and I love God, and I do not want the children of God running around with hearts of stone. It is not good for their father. It is not good for his children. Hard words produce soft people. Soft words produce hard people. That is the heart of God. Because of your stubborn and unrepentant hearts. I stand with you guilty and condemned. My only righteousness is Christ’s righteousness, imputed and given to me. The scripture says that we must speak truthfully to one another out of reverence for Christ. And this issue of stubbornness and unrepentance, that is your problem. It says, in doing so you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.

Romans 2:29, “No man is a Jew if he is one inwardly and circumcision is circumcision of the heart.” “Okay, fine. I want a circumcised heart. How do I get that? What do I do?” That’s stone speaking. By the spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit that does this. He convicts us of sin and righteousness and judgment, John says. “The spirit of God is placed within the child of God.” Not only do we get a heart of flesh, we get a new spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit comes into the child of God, and he fights him every single step of the way, and says, “That is hardness. That is rebellion. That is callousness. I’m stripping that away.” “My God, don’t you love me?” “No,” God says, “because I want it to go well with you, and I want it to go well with your kids.”

My last verse. At least, I think. You should commit this verse to memory. “Delight,” – isn’t that a good word in the midst of what I’ve just told you? “Okay, we’ll have fun now.” Delight yourself in whom? The Lord. That’s a king, by the way; a king who happens to be your dad. And he will do something for you. What will he do? He will give you something. He will give you the desires of your heart. How do I do this? You don’t. God gives you a new heart. God convicts you of sin. Your duty is to repent and allow the Spirit to overcome your stubbornness, and your rebellion, and to rip that callus of your heart. Some of you have parts of the Bible that you won’t even read because you hate it. But, God gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh. Through his Holy Spirit, he rips the layers off as we get calloused and stubborn and unrepentant. That is not the conclusion of the matter. The conclusion of the matter is for a purpose: So that we can delight in him; we can enjoy him; we can love him; we can be in him, and he can be in us.

That in him is hidden life and wisdom and knowledge. And as we are in Christ, and Christ is in us, we are first alive, and then we live. And we can enjoy God. If you have a heart of stone, you cannot enjoy God. If you have a wicked, unrepentant, rebellious, stubborn heart, you cannot enjoy God. But if God has given you a new heart and you have repented your sin, and he has taken off the layers of callousness, now you can delight in God; you can enjoy him. Do you enjoy God? I’m not talking just about the fruit that falls off his tree. I’m not just talking about health and friendship and encouragement and love. I’m talking about God. Do you enjoy God? I love God. I enjoy God. I fully enjoy God. I believe, as Ecclesiastes 3 says, that every day of my life is a season, and each of those seasons is filled with an opportunity for joy. And I squeeze it for everything it has, and I live in God.

I’m not waiting to get to heaven. I have eternal life. That means it begins now, and it goes forever. That the Holy Spirit is my down-payment, a deposit guaranteeing the full inheritance which is to come. Delight yourself in the Lord and he’ll do what? He’ll give you the desires of what? Your heart. “Well, I thought the heart was wicked and evil and depraved and stubborn and fleshly and unyielded.” God changes that heart. And what he pours into that heart is his desires. It’s why I hate legalism. Legalism wants effect without cause. Why will you read scripture? Why will you pray? Why will you love your spouse? Why will your marriage endure? Why will you pray over your children? Why will you tithe to God’s work? Why will you preach the gospel? Why will you live your lives in reckless abandon to God’s grace? Because you enjoy it. Discipline and accountability is highly over-rated. Discipline and accountability is for people who do not enjoy God. People who enjoy God, live. Martin Luther says it, “Love God and do whatever you want.” Isn’t that true?

If you love God, you get to do exactly what you want to do. Because, according to Psalm 37:4, who put those desires on your heart? God. The problem that we have, is that we have desires and God has desires, and until God gives us his heart, strips away our stubborn unrepentance, places his spirit with us, takes out that rock, we have a war. But, as soon as God does that, all of the sudden the heart of God is placed within the children of God, and the spirit of God is placed within the children of God, and the children of God are alive; and they get to live; and they get to do exactly what they want to do; and they squeeze every moment of it. And they love it. And they’re alive in God. Doesn’t that beat stone?

You do not need to discipline me to love my wife and kiss my children. I do that ‘cause I love it. I really love to kiss my wife. If you enjoy something you will do it all the time. You will do it in joy. You will do it out of the wellspring of your life, which is your heart. God puts the desires in there, and then he brings them to pass. And you and God, your hearts are beating in complete synchronicity. You’re back to the place that you were created to dwell. You are in God and God is in you. And you are alive, and you love it. Jesus says, “I come to give you joy. Joy, that is complete.” That’s what he’s talking about.

I read the Bible ‘cause I like it. I pray ‘cause I like it. I yell at you ‘cause I like it. You may not like it; I like it. I’m gonna be married to my wife for my whole life ‘cause I like it. I’m gonna pray over my kids ‘cause I like it. Because God has given me a new heart. And he has been kind with his spirit to wage war against my stubbornness and my unrepentance. And he is ripping off, every day, callousness. And he enables me, by his grace, to enjoy it. And I’ll tell you what. It is a lot easier to do something you love if you have a new heart that is nothing but desirous of those things. Aren’t you glad that we have a living God? Aren’t you glad that we have a God who has come to us in humility? That he has brought wisdom into folly, and light into darkness, and life into death? And that he has placed within us his heart and his spirit?

And even when we sin and rebel, and we’re stubborn and unrepentant, he keeps hounding us. That he hears and answers prayers, and that he cares for his kids. That he dies for or stubborn, unrepentant, rebellious heart, and that he rises to conquer enemies of Satan, sin and death. And that he gives us life to enjoy. We have a living God. Now we respond to him. We have to, right? I mean, how can you not? This is what God has done? We sing. Every good party has a band. We take communion to remember Jesus’ body and blood, shed for our sins, and risen from death, coming again, to judge the living and the dead. We stand up to take communion because, at the end of the age, like Christ, we will all rise from our graves and walk into the kingdom. And now we see in part, and then we shall see in full, and he will wipe every tear from our eyes. And he will be our God, and we will be his people.

And we stand up to take communion because it reminds us of our resurrection. We’ll take an offering, which is an indication of our heart. And we’ll leave here to go live our lives to God’s glory and our joy.

So, Father God, thank you for your word. Lord God, thank you so much that we do not have to wade through hundreds of therapeutic systems; that we do not need to analyze and introspect and judge our own hearts by some fabricated criterion that we invented. Thank you, Lord God, that no mere mortal is able to actually rightly assess what is normal, what is abnormal, what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. Thank you, Lord God, that you have made us, and you have created us in your image and likeness; that you have given us an identity in you. Thank you that you speak truthfully to us, and you reveal yourself to us; and you reveal us to yourself. Lord God, we ask that you would take out our hearts of stone; that you would give us hearts of flesh; that you would take off our stubborn unrepentance, and through the work of your Holy Spirit cause us to repent and yield. So that you could take away the callousness and the justification and the self-deception that we are so prone to embrace. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the living God; that you are revealing the heart of the Father to us, his children. We come to you now, seeking all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and we love you so much. Lord God, we pray that you would enable us to squeeze every moment of our life for every ounce of joy, so that we might delight ourselves in you. Lord God, would you please put your desires in our heart so we could do exactly what we want, which is exactly what you want us to do; that there would be harmony and synchronicity between our hearts? Amen.