I invite you to turn with me
today to the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew chapter 15. And I'll begin our reading in that
first verse. Then came to Jesus scribes and
Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples
transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their
hands when they eat bread. But he answered and said unto
them, Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your
tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honor
thy father and mother, and he that curseth father or mother,
let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say
to his father or mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest
be profited by me, and honor not his father or his mother,
he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment
of God, of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well
did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto
me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me,
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. And he called the multitude
and said unto them, Hear and understand. Not that which goeth
into the mouth defileth a man, But that which cometh out of
the mouth, this defileth a man. Then came his disciples and said
unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended after
they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every
plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted
up. Let them alone, they be blind
leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind, both
shall fall into the ditch.' Then answered Peter and said unto
him, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet
without understanding Do not ye yet understand that whatsoever
entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out
into the draught? But those things which proceed
out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the
man. For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses,
blasphemies, these are the things which defile a man. But to eat
with unwashing hands defileth not a man." Now, the Pharisees
and the scribes, as they often were, are rebuked
here by the Lord Jesus Christ for their teachings, for their
doctrines, and mostly for their remedies which they set forth
to the people." You see, their remedies never worked. And they won't work today because
they were all external. They all had to do with external
things. And they did not have a remedy
for man's disease, his real disease, because they didn't know the
problem. And more than that, they didn't
want to know it. Because to know it would have
immediately rendered them helpless and unable and useless to do
anything about it. You see, it's not a hands problem. They were talking about the disciples
of the Lord Jesus Christ complaining about them eating without washing
their hands. But the problem is not a hands
problem, it's a heart problem. The heart, as we find it spoken
of in these verses, is not that physical organ that beats in
the bodies of all living people. The heart, as we find Christ
using it here, is the seat, really the seat of who we are. It has to do with our affections,
that is what we really love. It has to do with our understanding,
which he mentions in this text, and it has also to do with our
will. It is our hearts. And it is the same on every hand
in this day in which we live, whether it is in religion, or
whether we find it in the government, or whether we find it in the
news, we always get a constant daily reminder of this very thing. And the reason that men and women
can't see the real problem is because they are spiritually
blind. And it is a willful blindness. We have that saying that there
is no man so blind as the man who will not see. But we all are by nature so blinded,
and blinded by self-righteousness, blinded by our self-pride, and
blinded by this natural enmity or hatred against the true God. Paul said, the carnal mind, that
is, our natural minds as we come into this world, rather than
being for God, he says, the carnal mind is enmity against God. And so because of this blindness,
because of our natural self-righteousness, and our natural pride, and our
natural enmity against God, we are unwilling to admit the real
problem. And men and women demonstrate
this again and again by blaming inanimate objects for our problems. Blaming lifeless things as the
cause of all our difficulties. Lifeless things like a piece
of metal that a gun is made of, or a piece of cloth like a flag. And it goes on far beyond that
to blaming all the problems, or seeing as the source of all
our problems a person's environment, or maybe the circumstances under
which they have been raised, or brought up, or taught, There
are on every hand so many things that men take up to excuse and
cause as the problem of all that goes on. But in truth, all we
have to do is look back to the first man that was ever born
into this world. Adam and Eve were created. But through their union, there
was a child born, and he was born not in a ghetto. He was born not in the bad section
of town. There were no towns. He was born
in a garden paradise. And he was born at a time when
there were no guns, when there were no flags to incite, when
there were none of these things, nothing except a perfect garden
paradise, and yet, for some reason, he rose up. and he used whatever
instrument was at hand, and at his hand he slew his own brother."
The problem was not a gun, and his problem was not any other
inanimate object that might have been around him at that time. The problem was not in the instrument
that he used to slay his brother. The problem was his own heart. And that is always the problem. And yet, in our denial of the
problem, in man's willful blindness and ignorance of the problem,
we want all kind of laws to fix it, or maybe more rules to fix
them. More and more. And when you stop
and think about it, if those things would work, maybe we ought
to make a law against drugs. Maybe. Or maybe we ought to make
a law against theft. Or maybe some other law. Oh,
wait just a minute. We already have those laws, don't
we? We already have more laws. and more rules than we even know
ourselves. And yet we still have all of
these murders, we still have all of these misused drugs, we
still have all of these thieves, and yet we know, and yet we find
out that none of them ever work. People still do the same things. I dare say that as a people,
in this country right now, we have as many laws and rules and
regulations on every level, more than maybe any people that have
ever lived. And yet, things change. But how do they change? They
always change in this way. They always get worse. They always increase. And men in what they do in response
to these things, and at the same time these things go on, they
make more rules and they excuse these things because that's the
only way they think they can deal with what is an obvious
problem. But I can tell you this, nine
men in a court, may rule what they will. And nine billion or
trillion people may vote in agreement with what they rule, but it will
not change one thing about God. It will not alter His Word in
one iota. It will not lessen who he is. It will not lessen what he requires. It will not diminish his law
and his character. And it will not help the problem. It will not. And nothing external
ever will help the problem because the problem is not in things
and hands, it is the heart. And since Adam's fall, you see,
we all trace our ancestry back to one man. Somebody in the midst of all
these genetic discoveries came up with this brilliant notion
and idea that maybe we all have one common ancestor. Well, surprise, surprise. But we got more from Adam than
just our genes. Because Adam stood in that garden
not only as the first of our lineage, but he stood as a representative
man so that whatever he did, it had a dramatic effect on us,
on all his race. So when he sinned, if you read
Romans 5, it says, "...in him all sin and death came upon all
because of sin." So that every one of Adam's posterity, Every
man, woman, every person born in this world, whatever they
think they are, they all have one common problem. That means
you and that means me. And that's a heart problem. It's
a problem of the heart. And in Genesis chapter 6 we read
something, and we know this problem came about because God said it
did. In Genesis 6 it says, and God
saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. It didn't
just start in 2015. The wickedness of man was great
in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of
his heart was only evil continually." That means that so-and-so can
say what our heart is, or we can say what our heart is, or
someone else can say, this is the problem, but God says, this
is the problem. that naturally speaking, every
imagination of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually. Continually. Turn back over to
Jeremiah chapter 17. Jeremiah chapter 17. The reason that all the remedies
fail, the reason that the Pharisees with their remedies failed, the
reason that all the governments with their remedies failed, is
because of a denial of the real problem. Jeremiah chapter 17,
look at verse 5. He says, "...Thus saith the Lord,
Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his
arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord." Now you see,
you can't separate these things. In other words, if we have a
heart that does not desire, that will depart from the Lord, which
is what we have, the natural consequence in that is that we
trust in man and make flesh our strength. Somebody say, well, how in the
world? Could people be led into such
stupidity, into such increasing bondage, into such things that
obviously are not helping our problem if we depart from the
Lord? If that is our natural heart,
which it is, the only thing we can do is trust the flesh. The only thing we can do is trust
man. But look down in verse 9. If there was ever a commentary
on the hearts of men and women, it is this that the Lord says
in verse 9. He says, "...the heart is deceitful
above all things." I hear these people always saying this, well,
preacher, if I know my heart, I'm this, that, or the other.
And I just tell them, you don't. You don't. You see, this deception
or this blindness is not only willful, it's personal. Not only has the God of this
world blinded us, not only do men and women seek to blind us,
we seek to blind ourselves. He says, the heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? You can't know your heart of
yourself. The last thing you want to admit is what you are.
The last thing I want to admit is what I really am. Because
if I do, it means that I'm totally, not only in this condition, I'm
helpless to do anything about it. We try a little cosmetic
effort. We try to reform ourselves a
little bit. We try not to do this or that
or the other. And that is exactly what we ought
to do. But he says, man at his best
state is altogether vanity. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Look back over
in chapter 16 of Jeremiah. In verse 12, he says, "...and
ye have done worse than your fathers. For behold, ye walk
every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they
may not hearken unto me." What do men and women do? What
do we do apart from the grace of God? We follow our own heart.
That's what we're always told to do by society, just follow
your heart. But yet in doing so, we follow
that which is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,
which always departs from the true and the living God. And so the part of man that men
say remains good regardless of what one does, is really the
part which is the source of all the bad and all the evil. You see, it's not only calling
something what it is which is evil, it's acknowledging that
that's what we are. All our thoughts. You see, refusal. To believe God is because if
we believe what God says of us, if we really believe what God
says that we are and what the problem really is, we'd seek
His remedy. If you think all you've got is
a headache, just a slight headache, a sinus headache, you might take
a decongestant or an aspirin or something like that. But if
all of a sudden in your heart, this physical heart, you find
it seized with pain, if you're unable to speak or hardly breathe
or walk and you fall down, you're going to look for an aspirin
or... No. You see, if we really knew the
problem, we'd seek the only remedy that there is. And we'd stop
playing the fool. In Proverbs 28, he says, "...he
that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. But whoso walketh wisely, he
shall be delivered." What is it to walk wisely? It is to walk
by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Ecclesiastes 9, he writes,
"...this is an evil among all things that are done under the
sun, that there is one event unto all. Yea, also the heart
of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their
heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead." Their
heart is full of madness. and evil. It's madness to think
that God would ever accept us in ourselves as sinners. It's
madness to think that we could ever do, being the sinners we
are, anything that would please Him, or able to establish any
righteousness upon which He could declare us righteous. We're so bound up in sin. We're
so fixed in ourselves, so self-righteous, and that self-righteousness is
the absolute worst. Let me tell you what a great
problem is in our day in light of the events of this week. The great danger is that in the
midst of all that has gone on, the blatant, outward, immoral
wickedness that has been flaunted in the face of all this week,
there is a great danger. grabbing ourselves by the lapel
and looking down on individuals and saying like little Jack Horner,
oh what a good boy am I. Don't you imagine it. Because
the same evil heart, now listen to me, the same evil heart that
has unleashed all of this public Wickedness in individuals is
the same heart you've got. You say, no. Oh, but yes. He makes no distinctions in the
hearts of men. They're all deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked. You say, well, I'd never do that.
Don't say what you won't do. If I've learned anything in the
last 35 plus years trying to preach the truth to men and women,
it is that there is not one person who could ever say what they
would never do. But I'll just say this, if you hadn't
done it, you better thank God for it. If you haven't done it,
Whatever was the most wicked thing that you saw on the news
or saw by your eyes this week in others, if you haven't done
it, number one, thank God for it. And number two, it's only
because of His restraining grace. He didn't let you do it. You
say, wait a minute, oh yes, that's right. There was a king that
was about to take Sarah, Abraham's wife, for his own self. And he would have too. But he
didn't. Do you know why he didn't? Because
God stopped him from doing it. God kept him from doing it. We
can blame all of our sins on our doing. But all that we haven't
done, we can thank the grace of God. We've got the heart to
do it. That's right. And brought into
a certain circumstance, number one, that you never thought you'd
ever be in, or never planned to be in, or maybe even tried
not to get in. But being in a certain circumstance,
you'll find out what kind of heart you've got. You say, I
love everybody. I don't want to kill anybody.
Wait a minute. In that time when you think you've
done wrong, or maybe someone has done wrong to one of yours,
and before you even know it, that murder that is in your heart,
you've already thought in your mind, I'd like to do that. If it wasn't against the law,
just kill him. That's your heart. Don't look
at me like you'd never do that. Number one, you haven't ever
had kids maybe if you hadn't done that. And they've never
had, well I won't go and say that. I started to say wives
or husbands. But that's right. That's what
you are. I don't expect that Cain got
up that morning and said, I think I'll kill my brother today. No,
but when Cain found himself rejected of God because he refused the
way of God. And his brother, in obedience
by God's grace to that which was commanded, offering up that
sacrificial lamb, and God accepted him, it made Cain angry. He rose up and slew his brother.
That's the human heart. You see, unbelief. That is, refusal to believe God
is the root, it is the seat of all evil. And men and women may
look at all the perversions of our day, and don't get me wrong,
they're wrong. And God will deal with them.
But let me tell you, just as our text demonstrates, the one
thing He hates more than that is this self-righteousness. The thought that I'm better than
so-and-so because I don't do that. He, as we say from the country,
He laid it on the Pharisees and the scribes more, much more than
He did the harlots and the publicans. He laid scathing words on them,
because they thought they all had good hearts, hearts that
loved God. When in truth, they were the
same as everybody else. And the wickedness of their heart
had taken one route, when the wickedness of the other heart
had taken the other route. But it was all sin to God. Look back at our text in Matthew
chapter 15 and look back at what he says. He said, don't you know that
what goes into the mouth, he says, that's not what actually
defiles a man. That goes to his stomach and
then out in the bowel. But he said it's what comes out
of the mouth that defiles. You've heard me say so many times,
whatever's in the well, that's what comes up in the bucket.
Whatever's in the heart, that's what comes out in the mouth,
in the words, in the confessions. But those things which proceed
out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the
man. For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts." Does that mean just naturally
pornographic thoughts or whatever? Well, it certainly includes that,
but it doesn't end at that, especially these evil thoughts as to how
you and I can stand before God. I saw somebody post on one of
the social websites, a preacher, supposed to believe the grace
of God. He made this statement in light
of the events of the week. He said, it's time, the time
is now to preach the law to the Christian. I usually never respond a bit. You don't play on the devil's
playground and win. But I couldn't stand it. I had
to respond, the time is now to preach the gospel. The gospel. Our Lord said, for out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Paul, before the Lord Jesus Christ,
tracked him down and saved him by his grace. He was one of the
Pharisees. But he said, I was before. A
blasphemer. You mean to tell me with the
religious education he had, with all the advantage he had, with
the natural heritage he had as a Jew, with all of his religious
experience, with all of his knowledge of the Scriptures, that he was
a blasphemer? He said he was. He said he was. You see all the perversions of
every generation. I mean, when it starts getting
really bad in the streets, when men and women in their sin against everything God says,
when they begin not only to do those things, but it says, and
have pleasure therein. They have no fear of God before
their eyes. What happens to a nation or a
community or people that they fall so low? The roots of it
lie in idolatry. When they worship not God as
God, when they stood looking at His witness in the creation,
when they refused His gospel, God gave them over to a reprobate
mind to do those things which are natural or convenient to
their own way of thinking, to their own hearts. The murders
of late, along with the misrepresentations of the media, the foolishness
of the politicians, public figures, the stupid opinions and response
of people in general, they all flow out of the same cesspool,
the heart. It's a heart problem. Men and women have been told
by religions all over the world longer than I can even imagine.
That you can accept God or reject Him. That it's your decision
whether or not you're going to allow Him into your life or what.
That it's all based on what you do. He'll hang a little scale
of justice out there, and He'll put what you do good on one side
and what you do bad on the other, and the good outweighs the bad.
You'll make it in. Not so. Why? Because the hearts we have do
no good. Do no good. And it is utter stupidity
to think that we who are the problem can fix the problem. Laws can't. Governments can't. False religions can't. Self-reformation
can't. Programs can't. We can't give
our dead selves spiritual life. We can't muster up faith. We can't change anything by an
act of our will. That's what God says. He says,
can the Ethiopian change his skin? Or the leopard his spots? If
that could happen, then may ye also do good that are accustomed
to do evil. Can't do it. You and I cannot
change our hearts. You see, only God can. And God must give a sinner a
new heart. He must act in grace and power. He has to, in the power of His
Spirit, give it to us. And He's promised to do that. He's promised to do that very
thing to a people in Christ. He's promised to do it, and these
are the words of his covenant promise to his people. Ezekiel
36, a new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I
put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your
flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh." You remember when
the Lord was confronted by a man in the night by the name of Nicodemus. Nicodemus thought he knew something
about God, had a heart for God. He said, Master, we know. that you could not do the things
that you do except you be sin of God. When he called him Master,
he was equating the Lord Jesus to his own self. He too was a
Master in Israel. That shows the human heart. And
our Lord said to him, Nicodemus, you must be born again. You must be born from above. You must be given spiritual life
and faith. You must be given an understanding. Because except you be born again,
you cannot see, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. Now, Billy Graham wrote a book
on how to be born again. But the Lord Jesus Christ never
said how. As a matter of fact, He said
just the opposite. He said it's like the wind. The
work of the Spirit of God is like the wind. You don't know
where the wind comes from and you don't know where it goes.
You just see the effect of the wind. There are no books on how
to be born again. because it's something that God
has to do, that God the Spirit has to do. And He does it for all His people. He does a work in them because
Christ has done a work for them. Turn back over to Jeremiah 32. Jeremiah 32. Now listen. Verse 37. He's talking about
His spiritual people. Jeremiah 32 and verse 37, "'Behold,
I will gather them out of all countries, whether I have driven
them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath, and
I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause
them to dwell safely, and they shall be my people, And I will
be their God, and I will give them one heart and one way that
they may fear Me forever for the good of them and of their
children after them. And I will make an everlasting
covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do
them good, but I will put My fear in their hearts that they
shall not depart from Me." He says, I'll give them a new
heart. The Bible speaks of a pure heart. The Apostle calls it a true heart. And it is simply the heart of
faith which the Lord gives to all His people that they might
believe Him. That they might be enabled to
receive the things that are freely given unto them of God, that
they might have a heart toward God rather than against God. He does it by his Spirit, and
he does it using his gospel. You see, James uses that same
word having to do with birth. or bringing forth from above. He said, of His own will, whose
will? Not yours or mine, not a decision
of our will. Of His own will, begat He us
with the word of truth. You see, when God gives that
new heart, as I said, it's the heart of faith. And faith has
only one object, and that one object is the one that is manifested,
declared, and revealed in the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ. Somebody said, preacher, when
will I know if I ever have a new heart? When your heart looks
no longer to yourself or to these externals, or to anything else,
or anyone else, or any other experience, or anything past, except to Christ. When your heart
can sing that song, on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other
ground is sinking sand. You see, only when God gives
a sinner this heart of faith can we see and know God as He
is. And only through believing what
He says we are, do we know what we are. That's why we've had
so many failed remedies. You don't go to the quack who
has a little room in the back somewhere to get a heart transplant. And only by faith will we then
seek His remedy, which is Christ. Only by faith do we cease imagining
that we can achieve righteousness. Only by faith, that new heart,
do we receive the righteousness that is only in Him, and submit
to the righteousness of Christ, to rest in a righteousness imputed
to us, to look to His cross and to His blood as the only way
of salvation from our sins, and see the only way. that God can
be just and justify us. Paul says in Romans 10, for with
the heart man believeth unto righteousness. That's why I say
it's the heart of faith. He gives this new heart, not
a sinless new nature which the Bible says nothing of, but a
heart to believe God, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
to seek the Lord and bow to His Word. The heart that cries out
to God and says like Peter, Lord save me or I perish. I'm helpless. And I'm hopeless. And I've got a bad heart. I'm a sinner at heart. Naturally
a sinner. Give me faith. Have mercy on
me. And we look around us. We're
not only crying, have mercy on me. Have mercy on us. I felt that cry a lot in my heart
this week. Lord, have mercy on us. Open our eyes. Open our understanding. Open our hearts like you did
Lydia. So what do we do? What are we
doing these times? What do the Lord's people do?
Pray. Call upon the only one who can
do anything. Oh, we maybe ought to march,
or maybe we ought to band together, and maybe we ought to lean not on the arm of the flesh.
Because of all the people who have so manifestly done all of
these blatantly ungodly acts this week, if they all stopped
them today, they would still be lost. They would still be on their
way to an endless eternity in hell. You see, if men weren't
sinners, you could lay a loaded gun on every square foot in this
world and nobody would kill anybody. You could raise any kind of flag
you wanted to raise. Nobody would be offended. You
see, we like to point fingers. Compare ourselves, Paul said,
in that dangerous way, which is to compare ourselves with
ourselves, so we can feel better about ourselves. That doesn't
change the heart. I'm not using any gimmicks to
cry to get anybody to come to church, I'm not going to use
the salesman method. I'm not going to use the bait
and switch. I'm not, when they get here, try to put pressure
on them, or try to get them to do something, or try to get them
to join something. I want to preach the gospel and
ask the Lord to give us a new heart. A new heart. No metal. No cloth. No other thing such as that,
no external. These things are not sin. We
are. Man is sin. And it needs a Savior. There's only one. He needs a
new heart. There's only one can give it.
But thank God He's given it to some people. The Apostle in Hebrews, Chapter
3, he says, take heed, brethren, and use those Israelites that
saw so much. And yet, he says, they all died
in the wilderness. They all died in unbelief. So the apostle says, take heed,
brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief
in departing from the living God." Believe God. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Look to Him alone. And think about His soon coming. This week when I saw the responses to the Supreme
Court's decision. It was all so in your face. It was all like the people on
the news. They delighted in it. Why? Because it suited what they want
to believe. Because it suited what they are.
And you just feel like you kind of smothered in. And I thought about a lot. You remember
Lot? Lot lived out his last days in
Sodom. It says that he was a righteous
man. There's only one way a person
can be righteous, and that's made the righteousness of God
in Christ. He was a righteous man the same
way that all the Lord's people are made righteous. in Christ. But it says he vexed his righteous
soul with the filthy conversation of the wicked. And when all that
was coming to a close, God said, I'm going to deliver Lot out.
I'm not going to destroy the righteous with the wicked. And
as he began to do that, to get Lot out, his family out, the
citizens of Sodom, they demonstrated what they were. When they went
to try to get those two angels that had come to Sodom to deliver
Lot, they beat on his door. They tried by force to take those
two men that they might use them for their own sexual pleasure,
that we may know them. But they didn't get them. And
they didn't get Lot. Because God smote them with blindness. And He delivered Lot and his
family out. And then he rained fire and brimstone
on all the cities of the plain and destroyed every living thing." I've heard so many who hate God,
who hate the Bible, use the Bible this week. Well, doesn't the
Bible say that you're to judge not? Let me tell you what the Bible
says. The Bible says, judge righteous judgment. Now how do you judge
righteous judgment? You don't judge anybody on the
basis of your standard or yourself. But to judge righteous judgment
is to judge everything based on the Word of God. That's where I stand. On the
Word of God. It's not a matter of particular
persuasion, as people say. It's not a matter of one thing
or another. It's because of what thus saith
the Lord. God gives some folks a new heart. Because it's a heart problem.
Not a hands problem. Not all these external things.
It's a heart problem. And only He can give us a new
heart. And when He does, if He does, we'll look to Christ alone. We'll believe what He says. What
would change all the immorality All the murders. A new heart. A new heart. Our Father, this
day we give thanks and praise and glory to Your name. And we pray that we might continue
to do so no matter what others may do. We pray that we might
look not only outside of ourselves, but beyond this earth. to the
standard that you require, which is the man Christ Jesus. And
look to Him at the same time as all our hope and salvation. Look to Him as the Lord our righteousness. Be comforted in heart. Decease
from being afraid of all that men could do. And even in the
midst of all these things, be able to rejoice in the Lord Jesus
Christ, to have hope in you. We thank you and we pray in Christ's
name, Amen.