Scott Brown's sermon, 'A Heart that Trusts in Observances,' explores the message in Matthew 15:10-20, where Jesus teaches that defilement comes not from what enters the mouth but from what proceeds from the heart. Brown emphasizes the importance of examining the heart rather than focusing solely on outward religious observances. He critiques the Pharisees for their emphasis on external rituals while neglecting the inner transformation of the heart. The sermon underscores that true spiritual cleansing comes from God and involves a transformation that starts within the heart, impacting thoughts and actions. Brown discusses various sins that emanate from the heart, such as evil thoughts and false witness, and stresses the need for ongoing repentance and heart transformation. The sermon encourages believers to guard their hearts diligently, as it is the source of life and true spiritual cleanliness.

Please open up your Bibles to Matthew 15, verses 10 through 20. When he had called the multitude to himself, he said to them, Hear and understand, not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man. Then his disciples came and said to him, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant which my heavenly father has not planted will be uprooted Let them alone They are blind leaders of the blind and if the blind leads the blind Both will fall into a ditch Then Peter answered and said to him, Explain this parable to us. So Jesus said, Are you also still without understanding?

Do you not understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? For those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, Blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man. Father God, Lord, I am a man with unclean lips.

Lord, only you can cleanse our heart in a way that what proceeds out of our heart, Lord, will be edifying to others and that you, Lord, may also be blessed by it. Lord, as we approach this teaching, which is going to be expanded on and hopefully reach every man, every woman, and every child here today, Lord, may it just convict us to lean on You, Lord, to wash us clean of our unclean lips. Lord, as God proceeds, may You, Lord, just give him such an overwhelming filling of the Holy Spirit, Lord, that his lips will be blessed with your words and That it may make people Lord here just tremble at the thought That there's nothing Pure enough Lord that comes out of our lips without you Lord blessing it And we we ask you this Lord today for this blessing in Jesus name amen It often happens that people ask me, you know, what is the vision for this church? You know, where are we going? And really the first thing that always comes to my mind when I'm asked that question is that The central Principle of the leadership of our church is really found in in a fact that God leads His church through His Word.

So where are we going as a church? Well, here's where we're going this morning. We're going into the nature and the condition of our hearts. Here in this passage are revealed many details about our hearts. So where God is leading our church today is really to consider our hearts, to slow down, to take stock, to reflect upon the condition and the nature of our hearts.

So it's a very wonderful thing, isn't it, that God would lead His church that way, and that He would lead us to the most fundamental fountain of our lives, to consider that and to be so privileged as a people to be able to consider something so significant and so profound in all of its effect in our lives. So I'm grateful that God has led us here to this passage of Scripture and to the one who searches the hearts. We talked about that last week. And here we're contemplating this God who created the heart. He looks at the heart.

He can turn the heart of a father. He can turn the heart of a child. He can soften a stony heart. He can circumcise a heart. He can rule the heart.

He can even create a clean heart inside of a human being. He can write on the tablet of your heart. And so this is who we approach. This is the one I was just reading this morning, the woman at the well, who she went back into her city And she said, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Well, that's the God who searches the heart.

So here in this passage in Matthew 15 verses 10 through 20, Jesus is answering the question what it looks like to be far from God and what it means to draw near. And as you've been tracking with us in Matthew 15, you can see the outline before you that the Lord is exposing religious hypocrisy and how to detect it. And he's identifying the various ways that you can see whether you're a hypocrite. And The first way is that you can see that you're a hypocrite when you're exalting the traditions of man. Secondly, in verses 4 through 6, the commandment of God is nullified for the sake of your traditions.

In other words, you love man's traditions more than you love the commandments of God. The attractions of your heart are in the wrong direction, and it makes you a hypocrite. Then the heart is far away from God. In verses 7 through 9, Jesus said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." And then now in this section that we're in this morning, he's talking about a heart that trusts in observances. And he uses a parable about the mouth and the heart and the stomach.

It's this sort of physical, biological illustration that he uses. And he talks about what you put in your mouth, what comes out of your mouth, and then its relationship with the heart and the stomach. So he takes all these things in a parable and teaches us something about our hearts. And you know, the truth is, we are so much better at managing our appearances than we are at managing our hearts. And it's easier to have an outward life that's clean than an inward life that's examined and cleansed and brought before God, as the actual wellspring of all of life.

We kind of think that our life, we're so deceived, we think that the wellspring of our life is sort of how we appear. And that's not true at all. The wellspring of life is far deeper than that. What makes us who we really are. And so we go to great lengths to do things outwardly to make us feel good about ourselves.

And Jesus here is talking about these outward observances and how we trust in outward observances that are designed to show us and other, show ourselves and other people that somehow we're clean. And so that's the subject that's on the table. Now, the Pharisees were teaching that If you did outward things, you would be clean. And specifically, if you were with the Gentiles, you would get dirty and you had to wash your hands. Or if you touched certain things, you would have to wash your hands.

They took the laws for the priests in the Old Testament, for the cleansing of hands and things like that, and applied it to all people. And in doing so, they misapplied the law of God. So anyway, now in verses 10 through 20, our Lord is diagnosing the problems of man and he's diagnosing me and you and and how we how we try to be reconciled to God through our outward observances. And what he says here is that the defilement comes from within and not from without. And that there's really only one solution to the pollution.

And that is to go to the heart of the matter, which is the heart of man. And so that we would not be deceived and think wrongly about who we really are and how cleansing happens in our lives. And so This is the whole matter of the heart before us. John Flavel said this. He said, the greatest difficulty is to win the heart to God.

I'm sorry, the greatest difficulty before conversion is to win the heart to God. The greatest difficulty after conversion is to keep the heart to God. Now I think that's absolutely correct. He says that the heart of man is his worst part before he's regenerated, and it's his best part afterward. And particularly when it's kept well, because it is such a fountain.

Well, in verse 10, we can see the setting when he had called the multitude to himself. And so the multitude is being brought back to him. He's been speaking to the Pharisees. I think the Pharisees have been kind of getting in the way a little bit here. And now he brings the multitude, seemingly apart from the Pharisees.

You notice how Jesus is constantly directing traffic. He's the governor of the way things are going on. He serves the food. He arranges everyone in groups. He tells people what to do.

And now he's bringing the multitude to himself. He was with the Pharisees. And then here he calls the multitude back, seemingly because their hearts have some affection for what he's saying in contrast to the Pharisees. So Mark in Mark 7 uses the word again. So this crowd is being moved around.

Jesus is speaking to different people at different times. And so he calls them to himself. You know, there's just nothing more wonderful than to be to be at the feet of Jesus and to receive his instruction. And So that's what's happening here. It's a very wonderful moment.

As they've now come, the Pharisees seem to be set aside, at least momentarily. And then he makes an appeal to them, in verse 10, and he said to them, hear and understand. So he's really calling them to pay careful attention to what he's been saying and what he is going to say now. And you know, it's necessary that we not only hear with our ears, but that our hearts are engaged. Come hear and understand that there's real hearing.

There's two kinds of hearing that we always have. You can hear sounds. You can detect the level of the decibels as they flow by your ears. But there's a different kind of hearing that he's asking for here. And that's to hear and understand others to really think about this, to really consider this whole matter of the heart.

Slow down, stop everything, and hear. Just take a moment and set everything aside. Let's do that ourselves as well. I mean, we can do that right here. Let's just stop and obey this command.

Hear and understand. And then this whole matter of understanding, he's really compelling them to use their capacities, to use everything they have to try to understand this. Their mind, their memory, their hearts, their emotions, use everything. Use your entire body to try to understand this. That's the way that we should hear the words of Jesus Christ.

And so we can do that right now. We can engage in this kind of hearing and understanding to be hungry. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. That's the kind of hearing and understanding that he's calling for here. And you just might think of how easy it is to waste the moment, to waste the sounds that come to your ears from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Instead, rather, to hear with understanding, to try to engage the mind, to let the mind run, to discipline it, and to focus it on the Word. So he's saying, hear and understand. And then in verse 11, he tells the parable. Now, this is another parable. He's been speaking to the crowds in parables, but to the disciples he's been interpreting it.

And we'll see, this is a very short parable, and he'll do the same thing. He'll explain, he'll give the parable, and then he'll explain what it means. So the parable goes like this. Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man. So this is a parable about the mouth and the defilement.

Those are the two issues that are in at least this kind of cryptic vision of this parable that he has not explained yet. And what he's saying is that there's no food that can bring moral uncleanness. Food goes into the stomach and it has no impact on the soul of man. And you might think, well what about the food laws in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy? What, You know, weren't these things clean and unclean of themselves?

And the Lord Jesus is saying this. No, no, there really isn't anything inherently unclean about these foods. At least not spiritually. They don't defile you in any way. The food laws were given to establish a principle of separation and holiness of the people of God.

The people of God eat differently. They do everything differently. They wash differently. They eat differently. They talk differently.

They walk differently. They dress differently. They work differently. They are different in every way. The food laws are just a picture, a type of the holiness that God requires of his people.

We know when we get to Acts chapter 10 that Peter says, well, there really was nothing unclean in themselves of these foods. They were all clean in reality in terms of biologically, but they were designed to help the people of God recognize how critical it was that they be separate from the rest of the world, and they do everything differently, because they are a holy people. So there are not better foods, relatively speaking, in terms of spiritual matters. That's what he's trying to say. But it's about separation.

So What he's saying here in this verse is that it's not the food that defiles a man. It does not enter into the soul of a man. It enters into his stomach and it goes out. So stop thinking about food making you holy. I don't really know people who think that your food makes you holy today, but that's the whole idea.

There's this outward observance, okay? What Jesus is saying, he's identifying an outward observance, and he's saying, these outward observances do not make you clean. And so if you think you can be a better person because of what you eat, you're just sorely mistaken. If you want to be a better person, you have to understand the significance of the power of your heart in that matter. And so the Lord is speaking of these traditions of men.

And Now, you know, what's the big principle here? Well, there are probably several. Here's one that we talked about at length on Tuesday morning, and that is this. The way that you know where you are with God is not what you do in your outward observances. It's not even what you say with your mouth, but it's how you are in your heart.

It doesn't matter what you do in your times of worship, whether you dance or lift your hands, or you don't, out of your spiritual convictions. It doesn't matter what you do. What matters is in your heart. That's what tells the truth about you. Anyone can fabricate an outward spirituality.

That's easy to do. You can go to courses on how to manage your anger. You can go to courses on how to fix your marriage. You can do all kinds of things to sort of shine the outside of the cup and fix yourself up. You can go to an etiquette class.

There are all kinds of things you can do. You can appear so genteel and polite and gracious and loving and magnanimous just by force of discipline. Anyone can do that on the outside. So it's these observances that our Lord is bringing to the surface here. And he's saying that the chief source of defilement is in the heart.

And he says that it defiles a man. It's interesting that the Lord uses this term, koine, for defile. In other words, it's common. You've heard of koine Greek, common Greek, just sort of the profane common language. It's just everyday talk.

And he's saying it's just that everyday defilement that runs through all of humanity. It's just reflective of common man. It defiles a man just like every other man. It's just a reflection of the fall. It is every man.

So what he's saying is that what's defiling you is not what's going into you. The problem is inward corruption, and it does come out through your mouth. And then there is this offense that is taken. And now with this, now in verse 12 we get to the offense, but then his disciples came and said to him, so now it seems like the disciples are with him. So he's been with the Pharisees, then with this large crowd, Now he seems to be speaking directly to his disciples.

And his disciples came and said to him, Do you know what the Pharisees... Did you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying. Now, Mark says that they went into a house and Peter asked the question. So that's what happened. And so, but Peter is saying, did you know that they were offended When you said that about the mouth and the stomach and the Lord hears that.

Now why would the Pharisees be offended? I mean We have to think for a moment who are these people. The Pharisees were a group of people. They were a group of people that had a certain message. That's basically what they were.

You had the Pharisees, the Essenes. You had the Sadducees. You had the scribes. The Pharisees were like a sect. They were really more like evangelicals or something like that.

They were a broad group of people that had certain opinions about things. And if you said certain things to them, they would be offended because it crossed up the things that they were teaching. So it was just sort of a group of people that had an opinion and were teaching it. And then the followers of those people, of the opinions that were being communicated, That's who the Pharisees were. And of course, they emphasized outward religion.

As the Lord Jesus said, they cleansed the outside of the cup, but the inside was full of robbery and extortion. And it was normal for them to be involved in all kinds of pretendings, doing all kinds of religious things, but their hearts were far from him. That was their big problem. It was just normal for them to just write off the pollutions of their hearts and cover them up with outward appearances. That was what they did.

And as long as you maintained your outward righteousness, then everything was fine. And they did not also embrace the idea that Jesus was the promised Messiah, that he would fulfill all righteousness. So, you know, they were offended at Jesus anyway because he was challenging them and he was proclaiming himself to be the Messiah that they had read about in their in their Old Testament. The other thing is that the Lord was doing things that were difficult for them in the sense that he was always messing with their revenue. He was always saying things that would slow down their cash flow.

He goes into the temple, and he turns the money change over, and he says, you know, This is a house of robbery. The house of God is not a place of business, because they turned it into a place of business. Jesus was messing with their cash flow. In the previous passage, He was messing with another part of their cash flow called Corbin, where you could dedicate, like put in your trust, funds for the temple and not give it to your parents who should have received it. And he was messing with that.

He's challenging Corbin. He's really encouraging people, quit giving money to the temple for this. And it was very offensive. You know, yesterday my son and I walked by a church and on the schedule of this Roman Catholic Church were these different masses that were scheduled for people to deal with their sins. They come in and they pay money and it's cash flow for them.

This was the sacrament of reconciliation, you know, so the people are going to come in and make this happen. And Jesus is messing with their cash flow. Whenever you mess with a religious sex cash flow, it's really problematic. It always has been, and it always will. Now that's what Jesus is doing here.

And so with sort of the evangelicals of His day, with the Pharisees, with this sect, he's challenging their instruction. And he's taking them back to Scripture. And then what Jesus says in verse 13 is he responds with more of This parable. He says, but he answered and said, verse 13, every plant which my heavenly father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone.

They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, they will both fall into a ditch." So here the Lord is uprooting the false doctrine that the Pharisees were promoting. He was saying that they are blind. The Pharisees had planted things that needed to be uprooted in verse 13. His father, Jesus is saying, my father did not plant these things.

They needed to be pulled out and uprooted. There were all these foreign, you know, growths, weeds, you know, in Phariseeism that needed to be pulled up. And Jesus was just explaining that's what this was all about. And so, He says a number of things to them. He explains it this way.

He says, first of all, that they will be uprooted, that their doom is sure. Every plant which my Heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. He's just prophesying that it is not going to work out long term. It will be uprooted. And then secondly, he says, let them alone.

I don't know why he said that. Why would he say, leave them alone? The Lord Jesus didn't seem to be always leaving them alone, but he was encouraging his disciples to leave them alone. Maybe it was to just focus on others, focus on those hearts that were really turned toward God. We don't really know why he said leave them alone.

And then third, he says that they will self-destruct. They're blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into the ditch. And So the Lord is here responding to this offense that the Pharisees had in their hearts. So then Peter requests an explanation in verse 15.

And then Peter answered and said to him, explain this parable to us. And then Jesus explains the parable in verses 16 through 20, which is really the heart of the whole message that's here in this text. So Jesus said in verse 16, Are you also still without understanding? Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man." So again, he's saying that food passes through, it does not affect the soul or the heart.

And then he explains the significance of the heart. And here, the Lord, he just shows us who we really are. He shows us how we work, how life really works. You can read so many books and listen to all kinds of messages about how to make your life work. Here the Lord in a very short set of words tells us more about how your life works than you can get from any book that's ever been written.

And look at how short it is. You don't have to go read ten self-help books to figure this out. It's so important and so wonderful. It goes right to the core issues. And so he says, for out of the heart proceed.

So these things of our lives, the things that make us who we really are, they come out of the heart. And they proceed from us. And then he makes this list of the things that proceed out of the heart. And What the Lord does is he draws from the sixth to the ninth commandment in this illustration. If you go to the Gospel of Mark, he mentions many more.

He mentions 13 things that come out of the heart. Here Matthew mentions only seven. Matthew's just giving a representative sample of the kinds of things that go on in the heart. It's not a comprehensive list. And the first thing he begins with are evil thoughts.

He said, for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. This is one of the most helpful penetrating analyses of what we're up against in our lives. Now again, remember, The most difficult thing to do before you are converted is to have your heart changed, to repent, believe in the gospel, and to receive a new heart. That's the first part. But then once a person has repented and believed in the gospel and trusted in Christ and His resurrection and His righteousness for the forgiveness of their sins.

Once they have done that, they still, though they have a new heart, it still produces these things. So the non-Christian has an absolutely impossible challenge with his heart, because the power of sin has not been broken. In the converted heart, the power of sin has been broken. And God in His kindness progressively sanctifies us one day, one month, one year after another. In other words, we don't escape all the pollutions of our hearts, but we have at least the power of sin that's been broken.

And so that's why we continue to come back and repent. That's why the whole Christian life is a life of repentance. Like you don't repent once and then that was it. You did the big repentance. Now you don't have to repent anymore.

That's just not the way God has made us. He's made us to be progressively repenting of our sins. To continue to have our eyes open to our sins. To continually show us who we really are. Because when He first shows you who you really are and you repent of your sins, he hasn't shown you everything.

Lest you would be so crushed with who you really are. And that's why it's normally the case when people walk with the Lord longer, they're more sensitive to their sin than they were when they were first converted. They are aware of more of their sin and they hate it more, if they're walking with the Lord and being sanctified. Whereas at the beginning of your Christian life, He just continues to reveal these things over time. So these are the two great challenges.

There's the challenge of the unbeliever, who has no power over sin at all. And then there's the challenge of the believer, for whom God is kindly revealing sins. He reveals it through the trials that He takes them through. He reveals it sometimes through their own sins and mistakes that they make and the hardships and the judgment that comes, he chastises us that way. He does it through all kinds of things.

He gives us a wife who shows us that we're not exactly as perfect as we thought we were. And he gives us children to show us the same thing. He puts us in a nation to show us other imperfections. So God is so kind to do that, but these are the two challenges that people in the world face. This hard-hearted person who has no power against sin is just open season for the devil to destroy them.

And their only hope really is outward observances. That's all they have. But they will be uprooted. The gig is up. Their doom is sure.

It's coming. At the same time, you have believers who have this other challenge before them to continually be repenting. You know, it's so important that we understand this. If you don't understand it, you might think about what church life is like if you have a people who are not aware of their sin. You have a proud church is what you have.

You have a self-righteous group of people who somehow think that whatever they've been able to pull off on the outside of their cup is going to make it. It's not. And so these are the challenges. Now as the Lord shows us about our hearts, the first thing that he speaks of are evil thoughts. I want us to camp on that phrase, evil thoughts, because this is part, this is a critical aspect of the diagnosis.

I think it's really the summary aspect of it. And it's a general statement that has to do with the way you think. It's your reasoning methodology. It's the way the synapses of your brain operate. Thankfully, God is in the process of renewing our minds.

He's changing the synapses of our brains. For example, when someone says something that displeases us, the synapses of our brains, you know, might go into anger and attack mode. When actually they ought to go...as God sanctifies and cleanses, And as he renews the mind, those kinds of things change. The synapses of your brain are in a process of healing if you're a believer. And they are in a process of healing.

So we should expect synapses to go haywire. This is the reckoning, sort of the reasoning. Jesus uses the word dialogus mos, You know, these secret deliberations that we engage in. We talk to ourselves. The English word dialogue comes from this word.

And it's the way that you reason within yourself about how you're going to respond to someone. And it can happen just like that, can't it? These dialogus, logis mos, just happen so quickly. It's sort of the format, it's kind of like the operating system of the way that we think. It's just how everything moves around in terms of the way that we are.

And so we need the Word of God to teach us to renew our minds, to teach us to respond differently, to sort of rewire our brains, get the synapses working in a way that's more consistent with the Kingdom of Heaven. But it's the heart that does this. And it's the way that your mind works. Now, when you're unconverted, It works in the way that the Apostle Paul spoke of when he said, their foolish heart was darkened. So the synapses are just going crazy in the wrong direction with the unconverted.

That's really probably the big difference between the converted and the unconverted. The unconverted have darkened reasonings. The converted have received life that begins a new reasoning capability that they never had before. They actually become able to choose what's right, to desire what's right, which came from God, which arose out of their hearts. They actually have that.

It's a wonderful thing. Now, it's not perfect, but it's at least happening in your life, whereas the unconverted are continually being plunged into darkness progressively. That's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. It's not necessarily that a Christian has everything together, but at least he has capacities within his heart to please God because of the power that's working within him. Now then there's a listing of particular kinds of sins.

And I just want to point this out that these are in the plural. So these are categories. There are all kinds of sins that are in the range of this one sin that he mentions here. For example, sins against the sixth commandment, murders. It's not murderers, it's murderers.

It's different kinds of murderings. Now, the Lord Jesus said that murder is hating your brother in your heart, That's a kind of murder. There are different kinds of murder out there. I mean, you can shoot someone, stab someone, you can set a trap for them, you can hate them, you can slander them. There are all kinds of ways.

There are probably, if there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there are 50 ways to murder, right? So that's the way it is. These are plural. So there are these different things that happen that are classified under this category of murders. And remember when we were going through Deuteronomy, where Moses, he gives the law.

And then from chapter 5 to chapter 26, about midway in 26, he moves from one commandment to the next systematically and he gives several case laws of Examples of the breaking of that commandment and how to deal with it So he the first commandment has has several different ways that that commandment is broken. It's not just broken in one way, because the heart is so deceitful it manufactures all kinds of ways to break God's commandments. So it might look different in one person than another. So there are murders, there are different kinds of ways that you murder. You can murder your children and they'll still be walking around alive.

You can murder your wife and still crawl into bed with her every night. I mean, there are just different ways that you can commit murder. And these come out of the heart. And then there's sins against the seventh commandment, adulteries, various kinds of adulteries. Remember, again, take us back to the Sermon on the Mount where the Lord Jesus says that adultery includes looking at another woman to lust for her in your heart.

That's also, it's not just the physical act. There are all kinds of ways. There are 50 ways to commit adultery as well. It's not just one thing. The law penetrates deeper and it goes wider than you thought.

It's not wooden. It's spiritual. It goes everywhere. It touches every single part of your consciousness, what you do with your body, with your mind, with your heart, your emotions, your social life, everything. God wants everything.

He doesn't want you to think of this in terms of obeying ten wooden commandments. It's not about washing your hands or doing some kind of outward observance. God wants your entire soul, everything about you. And so there are all these different ways that your soul rebells against God. There are 50 ways with murder.

There are 50 ways with adultery. And then he mentions fornications. The term that he uses there is the word pornea. We get our word pornography from that word. And then there's sins against the eighth commandment, thefts.

Again, it's plural. There's so many ways that you can steal. You can steal someone's time. You can steal someone's money. You can steal someone's ideas.

There are all kinds of things that you can steal. But there are thefts. There are 50 different ways that you can be stealing from one another. And then there's sins against the ninth commandment of false witness. Jeremiah said, Their tongue is an arrow shot out, it speaks deceit.

One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart he lies in wait." So you can even use nice words. You can even form your sentences and be so kind and gracious. You've seen this. You live in the South. When somebody calls you honey or dear, look out.

You just never know what lies behind that. Darling, when you hear darling, just understand. There may be more behind those words, darling. And so false witnesses happen in a lot of different ways. You don't even often know.

Self-congratulatory things, you know, spinning...we do this all the time. And there are 50 ways to break this commandment. And if it's got a grip on your soul, you need to understand what has happened. And then, sins against the third and the ninth commandment, blasphemies. So, Matthew lists seven things.

Mark lists 13. Things like foolishness and all kinds of things like that. What Jesus says in verse 20, look at verse 20. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man. Now, you know, The Pharisees should have known this because the heart is spoken of over and over and over again in the Old Testament.

And they had really rejected the whole teaching of the heart in the Old Testament. They rejected Genesis 6.5 where the Lord looks down and he sees the wickedness of man that was great in the earth, that every intent of the heart, thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. They knew that this was the nature of the heart from the beginning. And now they're pretending like it doesn't exist. You can clean the outside of the cup and not even deal with the heart.

In Jeremiah 17, they would have been reading, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord, search and test the heart. I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings." So here what the Lord does is he takes this whole culture of outward observances and He's correcting those who are thinking that somehow the cleaning of the outside of the cup can get them anywhere at all with God. And so that's the whole principle.

Now I want to move into, I want just to talk about a lot of different ways to think about this, a lot of different ways to think about this, a lot of different ways to apply this. And there are so many insights into the heart of man. And I've got quite a number of them here just to consider. Of course, what we've read here makes it so clear that the heart is the seat of everything. Motives, attitudes, emotions, intentions of the will, desires, loyalties, it's the source of everything.

It's really who you really are. That's what we've learned here. And of course that physical pollution cannot bring spiritual pollution. Spiritual pollution brings spiritual pollution. And so there's, first of all, just consider the power of the heart, just in general, the power of the heart in your life and how critical it is that we as a church really stop and consider this of where we are in our hearts, whether we are a true and genuine people.

And whether if there's someone who's unconverted, their heart needs to be broken, and the power of sin disarmed through repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, or there's always more hard work to do for us. There's always more hard work to do. And you just consider the power of the heart. I was talking to a man yesterday who runs a large health food company and he told me, here's what he said, he said a person, you can take two people And the person who eats the very best food is often the sickest person. He said, because they're so fearful of what they eat.

They are so paranoid that somehow They're going to eat something that's going to destroy their life. They eat the very best food and they're always the sickest because they're full of fear. That's what he was telling me. It was just yesterday. I mean, this is a person who sells.

He makes a living selling good things, right? He likes them. He thinks it's right. But he still says often the people who the people who are the most fearful about food are the sickest even though they eat the best food in the world because they're fearful about what they put in their mouth. And then he said, this is what he said, he said, the person who eats pork and beans every day but trusting God and has no fear is always the healthier guy.

Hey that's all about the heart. It's a heart full of fear, it's a heart full of, or the lack of it. And it has an enormous effect on your life. The heart has an enormous effect on your life. You know, it was funny, I was with a doctor and he said that he asks people about their sins when he meets with them.

When was the last time your doctors asked you what sins you were struggling with because that's the source of a lot of the problems. Anger, greed, malice, you know, immorality has enormous effects on your body. Why? The heart is the seat of everything. That's why.

That's what Jesus is telling us here. It's out of the heart that creates the life. So I want us to consider the power of the heart. Also, you know, our words, our words can often misrepresent our hearts. And So what I think we should do is just, we're going to be talking to each other a lot today, hopefully.

And so what are we going to say? Here's what Psalm 55 says, The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you. He shall never permit the righteous to be moved." This is the whole struggle with how you talk to people, and often the evil heart that exists when you're saying sweet words as smooth as oil.

Let's just recognize that this is not about other people necessarily. You remember the RC Scrolls, two rules of hermeneutics? Number one, if you see someone doing something stupid in the Bible, don't say, look at how stupid they are. Say, look at how I'm often just as stupid as they are. And if there are two people in a passage of scripture that are doing stupid things in that passage of scripture, you identify with both of them.

So, but here, let's just consider our words and whether they properly represent the heart. Now if they don't, like let's say you find yourself speaking smooth words, but you have you have hatred in your heart. What a wonderful blessing God has given you to repent of your evil thoughts toward your brother. And quit speaking those smooth words, or at least get those smooth words connected to a smooth and gracious heart of love from God. Let's also recognize that he can create a clean heart.

When David said, create in me a clean heart, he was praying something that can happen to some degree. And there can be progress, there can be sanctification. Creating me a clean heart. Next, recognize that God sees into the heart. It would be very harmful if all of the thoughts of our hearts were broadcast on the screen.

Imagine that. But God sees into the heart. Thankfully, it's Him that sees. And that we don't all see one another's raw hearts. It would be so harmful and so damaging.

But God does see. And If we can somehow better learn how to live with the recognition that God sees into our hearts and that we're in those moments, we are crying out to Him, we're worshipping Him, we're repenting, we're seeking Him to be a blessing, That would be the right way to see our condition as God looking into our hearts. If you go to Job 23, you learn something else about a heart. He can make your heart weak. Job says, for God made my heart weak, the Almighty terrifies me.

The heart also is subject to the sovereignty of God. Next, he can circumcise my heart. In Deuteronomy 30 verse 6, and the Lord God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. And he can give you a new heart. Ezekiel 36, 26.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." So he can give you a heart transplant, can give you a new heart and make you a new creation. He can make your heart a treasury of good, Luke 6, 46. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." So as we let the word of Christ dwell richly within us, as we meditate on holy things, as we fill our minds up with the knowledge of his will, as we train our thinking and our feeling and our doing by the word of God, then this treasury, this treasury can be increased over time.

This is the great hope for the Christian. Remember the hardest thing for the non-Christian is to have that heart converted. And the hardest thing for the Christian is to have it change. But this is the promise of the Christian life. That he will take your heart and he will make it a treasury of good things.

And you can be bringing good things out of the treasure of your heart. So before you were converted and you had a heart that was only evil constantly, he puts a new heart that begins to heal that actually becomes a treasury of good. That's the good news for the Christian. There's a whole new capability that you never had before, and you can love people that you never loved before. I've seen that happen so many times, where somebody becomes a Christian and all of a sudden they have love for somebody they never could love before.

It's because they got a heart that was a treasury and the treasury was beginning to be filled up. It's such a blessing. We also know that God can give a pure heart. The Lord Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart. And that blessing is that they see God.

We know also that a proud heart causes a lot of trouble. Proverbs 28, 25, he who is of a proud heart stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the Lord will be prospered. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered." So There's a very foolish management of the heart that every person can experience. And a proud heart causes trouble. You might just think of that for a minute.

Think about the sin of pride and how much trouble it can cause you. You know, you could probably count a lot of your problems and trace them right back to some level of pride. I'd like to know how many wars were started out of pride. I mean, There's a lot of trouble that gets stirred up just because men, they're proud and unyielding and right. Pride causes pride in the heart.

Can cause you enormous trouble. Can cause you enormous trouble. Proverbs four says that the heart makes the life and guarding it is the most important thing you'll ever do. He says in Proverbs 4, verse 4, let your heart retain my words and keep my commands and live. Get wisdom, get understanding.

So the first part of this is go Get the wisdom. Take it and put it in your heart. Why? Verse 23. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

It's really interesting the way that Solomon worded this. The language that he uses is really helpful because when he says keep your heart or guard your heart, he uses a word that's often used in the whole context of a besieged garrison, where you have enemies coming from the outside you have traitors on the inside you have treacherous citizens and he's saying you guard that like you guard a city you have to guard it that hard that diligently because within without and anywhere there's there there's a threat guard your heart with all diligence for for out of it spring the issues of life. So guarding that heart is the most important thing you'll ever do. Now the Pharisees were guarding the outside of the cup, and therefore They had such bankruptcy and emptiness in their hearts that that's all that they could do, is cling the outside of the cup. Through observances.

Wash your hands right, You know, do this, do that, and don't touch the heart. That was their religion. That's not the Christian religion. So A neglected heart is the most dangerous thing to your life. You might think, you know, the economy is really bad, I don't have a job, or I have this threat upon my life, or something like that.

None of those are your greatest threat. Your greatest threat is an unguarded heart. Absolutely. Because out of it spring the issues of life. And if your heart is properly guarded, you'll be able to handle anything that happens.

So that's the most fundamental thing. Nobody knows what's going to happen in your life or my life tomorrow or the next day or the economy or whatever. Honestly, I don't care. I know this though. If God's people are guarding their hearts, they'll know what to do.

They'll just know what to do in a moment. That's all they need to know. Here's why you must guard your heart. For times of temptation, carelessness makes you easy prey for the devil. Here's another reason.

Times of prosperity. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. In times of adversity, I mean, you think of Rachel, who refused to be comforted. That was a heart that was not prepared for adversity. One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is to help them understand how to operate in adversity through the management of their heart.

So that when it comes, suddenly they'll be wildly successful on autopilot, as I heard somebody say one time. In times of trouble in a church, in times of need when you're barely operating at the necessity level, in times of duty when you need to do something, in times of trial, in times of temptation, in times of doubting and spiritual darkness, where it just seems like the comforts have been withdrawn from you, the presence of God. This is why you must manage your heart. This is why you must guard it. This is why you cannot trust in an outward religion Because it leaves you with no resources when all the big things happen in life Including the next person you meet you don't even know how to talk to him right because your heart is not right So it's this whole issue of the heart is so critical for everything.

Well, everyone needs to think about their heart. The non-Christian needs to recognize unless you are born again you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Unless your heart is circumcised, unless it's softened, unless He rules your heart and creates a clean heart within you. You have no hope against the sins that are assaulting you. You just don't have any hope.

And the devil will destroy you. And you may be able to clean the outside of the cup and have a pretty nice life. You really can. You can have a great life right now cleaning the outside of the cup. But inside, you're totally bankrupt and subject.

So be converted, Believe in the Gospel. Cry out to God to give you a new heart. You need a new heart because you cannot make this life happen. Your only hope is that He would implant within your soul a new heart. And then just consider the blessing that the Lord Jesus does as he enters the heart, as he turns the heart, as he softens the heart, as he writes his words on the tablet of your heart to carry you on for another day.

I pray God would give us such a heightened interest and concern in our hearts as a church. Why are we here? Why are we in this passage today? It must be because God knows that every single person here needs to examine their hearts and to consider these things before God, and to give thanks for what He has done by breaking the power of sin, by giving a new capacity that you never had before. What a blessing it is to have that, to have a new heart.

And so the Lord has spoken to us. I pray somehow God would help us to so examine our hearts, that our lives are genuine before Him, and that his love is able to work through us. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, I thank you for the way you have completely analyzed our innermost being and shown us who we really are. And now Lord, that you would give us such hearts within us that we might fear you and always keep all your commandments that it might be well with us and our children forever.

Amen.