I'm going to ask you to take
your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Proverbs chapter
20. Proverbs 20. I'd like to read verses 9 to
12. Proverbs chapter 20, verses 9
to 12. Who can say, I have made my heart
clean, I am pure from my sin? Diver's weights and diver's measures,
both of them are alike abomination to the Lord. Even a child is
known by his doings, whether his work be pure, whether it
be right, The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord hath
made even both of them." Let's pray together. Our Father, as we call this morning,
bless the Word by Your Holy Spirit. We ask, Lord, I pray that that
which is set forth and spoken might truly be according to Your
Word to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ for the good of
your people. Have mercy upon us. Pray for
those that are in the path of this storm, Lord, that you've
sent. Lord, have your way. We pray
these things for Christ's sake. Amen. I've entitled this message, Is
My Heart Clean with God. Now you know, we ought to all
just stop right now and just ask that question. Is my heart
clean with the Lord, with God? Am I standing before God Almighty
right now, accepted in the Beloved? That's going to become a very
serious question one of these days for sure. We're going to
stand before the Lord. We know that. Now I know that
the world, and when I say the world, I'm talking about the
world's vast religions. Now everybody and their brother
believes something. Now everybody can't be right,
I know that. Now you can't have two different,
you know, one say one thing, one say another thing and they're
opposing things and both of them be right. Now you know that ain't
gonna fly. So I wanna know this. I know
that everybody in their religions is saying, I'm right. Now how? How am I gonna know?
How am I going to know? Somebody is lying. Now just natural
conclusion is going to tell me that. Somebody is not telling
me the truth. But now, the Spirit of God moved
upon the writer Solomon, who penned this book. Solomon. Solomon didn't come up with it,
the Spirit of God. All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God. And so Solomon was moved upon
by the Spirit of God to write this question in verse 9. Who
can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? Who can say that? Now who can
say that when the scripture says in Isaiah 1 verses 5 to 6, the
whole head, all of our ability to be able to have any kind of
comprehension of anything as we're born in Adam. Now the whole
head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot,
even into the head, there's no soundness in it but wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment." Now here's what that's
saying. Man, as he's born in Adam, doesn't know anything spiritually
good. He doesn't think that way. His
heart is in rebellion against God. Crown of his head, sole
of his foot. Man is depraved. Spiritually
depraved. Totally depraved. Psalm 14.1
says, The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. That is, no God that I'm going
to answer to. No God that's going to do anything.
No God. So what he's saying, no. They're
corrupt. They've done abominable works.
There's none that doeth good. So here's what I know. Man born
into this world, and all men born in Adam are born this same
way. We don't know anything that's
right. We don't know anything. We can't do anything. We're just
sinners. The heart of man by nature is
unclean. Man can say, well, I'm not unclean. Well, God says we are. And I'm
telling you that His Word is going to, you know, trump ours. Believe me. There's not a pure
part in man, and all that is within a man is defiled, and
a man is a sinner. He's a sinner against God. Now, even by divine revelation,
the Spirit of God has revealed this, that God Almighty, and
this is in Ezekiel 36, God is going to have to remove A heart. Now the heart of stone is that
heart referred to spiritually. It's hard. It's rebellious. It's referred to as a heart of
stone. And God's going to have to remove
that heart that rules. Now that doesn't mean that after
God regenerates His people, that doesn't mean that we're not sinners.
We still sin. But there's not a heart within
a believer that rules Him. God has removed that even though
the presence of sin is there. God has given him a new heart. He's given him a heart that is
referred to as flesh. When we hear flesh, you know
how a believer hears that word flesh. And that means the old
nature, but now this word is talking about a heart that is
pliable. A heart that hears God, that vows to God. So there's
got to be something done for a man that man can't do for himself.
I don't have the ability to take out my old nature. When I take,
you know, I remove a heart of stone, that's like a cat deciding,
I'm just not going to be a cat anymore. I'm going to be a dog
from now on." Well, no, you're a cat and you have no ability. Man is a sinner and has no ability
to remove out of himself what he is. So now here's the question,
who can say, I have made my heart Who can say that? Who can say,
I am pure from my sin? I'm absolutely clear from having
any type of impurity. You know, 1 John 1.8 says, if
we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. The truth is not in
us. If we say we've not sinned, we
make Him, that is God, a liar, and His Word is not in us. Job 14.4 says this, who can bring
a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. So who can say, I've
made myself right, I've made myself clean before God. Who can say that? Nobody. Let
me just end it. Who can say that? Nobody. Only
God Almighty can cleanse a sinner. Now, of a believer, it can truthfully
be said that he has been washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That an atonement has been made
for him. Whenever you hear these words,
you know they're biblical, but you think an atonement. Now what
does that mean? A covering. There's a covering. I am a sinner
against God. There is a covering for me. What is it? It's the blood. When
I see the blood, is there anyone in this congregation this morning
that is born again, that can say, I have no sin in me, no. You know what we need? I need
an atonement. I need one to cover for me. I need for God Almighty to see
the blood shed on my behalf and pass over, pass over me. So I know this, there's none
that can say I've made my heart clean. My heart is pure before
God. But now where did that thought
come from? Where a man can say, I have made
myself. Because I'm telling you, I'm
telling you, man by nature, says, just look at the wording there,
who can say I have made my heart clean? You know what they're
saying there? Who could say that? But you know
what someone is saying if they think they have? That they've
done something to make their heart clean. They're admitting,
I was, you know, a rebel against God, but I have made, I have
made my heart clean. That's what they're saying. Who
could say that though? So where did that idea come from? Who
came up with that idea? Well, back in the garden, This
is where, you know, if you don't understand what happened in the
garden, you don't understand what happened at Calvary. If you miss the beginning of
it, you're going to miss the finishing of it. What happened
in the garden? Well, Adam and Eve were in the
garden and God gave Adam instruction. of all of the fruit that's in
this garden you can eat except of this one fruit, the fruit
of the knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat. In the day you
eat that fruit, you're going to die. You're going to die.
Satan comes in the form of a serpent and he comes to Eve and he asks
this question, hath God said that you shall not eat? Yes,
the Lord said that we shouldn't eat, that we shouldn't even touch
it because in the day that we eat we're going to die. Now listen,
listen to this lie. Here's where it all started with
a man thinking that he can make himself clean before God. Satan told Eve in Genesis 3-5,
God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes
shall be opened. You're going to see spiritually.
See, right now, he was telling her, he said, there's some things
you just don't know. I know them and God knows them, but you don't
know them and your husband doesn't know them. Adam, you know, he's
like you, he's blind too. But now, if you will eat, of
that fruit, then your eyes are going to be open and you're going
to be as God's. Knowing good and evil, you're
going to be able to do something you can't do right now. You're
going to be able to do as God does. You know, Almighty God has set
forth that He is God and there's none else The lie of Satan is
to say, you can make your heart clean with God. And it's going
to be by your ability. Has God told you, you can't do
that? Yeah, you can do it. You can
do it. Go ahead and do it. You'll be
as God. So the problem, the problem,
where man came up with that, it started in the garden. that
a man thinks he can make his heart clean. And every man, every
woman born into this world that came out of the loins of Adam,
which is everybody, everybody, we all by nature believe the
lie that Satan told Eve. You don't have to obey God. You
can do for yourself. What God says only He can do. God's lying to you. Now, let
me ask you this. Concerning that problem, what is it? What is the great
problem about a man thinking that he can make his heart clean
or that he is pure from his sin? Where does that manifest itself? I know where it came from. It
came from Satan. I know where it came from. And
when Adam and Eve died spiritually, everybody and their brother now
believes that. I can make my heart pure before
God, clean before God, by me doing something. And I'm telling
you, every religion teaches that. I've told you before, there's
only two messages being preached. You call them whatever you want
to call them. The lies that are being told is that somebody is
telling somebody else. All you have to do is ABC, whatever,
and you will make your heart clean. Now, what is the basis
of that? How do they base that? I know
where it came from, but what is the basis? Now listen to this
next verse. Diverse weights and diverse measures, both of them
are alike. Abomination to the Lord. The
problem, here's the problem. Man says, I can make my heart
pure before God. I can make my heart clean before
God. But the problem is that man measures
his purity or his cleanness from sin by his own standard. and not by the revelation of
Holy Scripture. And that inequality of measuring,
that difference of standard as to God's requirement, that is
disgusting to Almighty God. Now, in the Old Testament, God
set forth His pleasure. by that standard by which men
would deal with other men. Now, listen to this. I'm going
to show you how Almighty God set forth this truth concerning
things being equal in measurements and stuff. Listen to Leviticus.
I'll read this. Leviticus 35, 36. He said, You shall do no
unrighteousness, no unrighteousness in judgment In this word, M-E-T-E-Y-A-R-D,
meteored, meteored. What it is, it is being able
to measure something by how tall it is or how wide it is. He said, you shall in no unrighteousness,
you'll do no unrighteousness in judgment. In meteored, you're
going to measure something, you make sure your ruler is right,
you know. In weight, are in measure, and
when he said in weight, it's a word that meant dry measurement. in measure, meaning liquids,
in balances, just weights, a just ephah. Now an ephah was like
a, it was a container, it was like measuring bushels. It was
like a, it was a basket like thing and it, you fill this up
and you scrape it right off the top. You make sure that when
you're going to measure, if you're going to heap it up for somebody,
you heap it up for all of them and make sure it's not, measured. A hen, H-I-N, that was a receptacle
for measuring liquids. He said, that is the way you're
going to measure. He said, you measure everything.
He said, I'm the Lord your God, which brought you out of the
land of Egypt. Almighty God was so specific
He said, I don't even want you measuring anything you buy or
sell or anything else by anything other than my measurement. Everything
else that is not according to my measurement is an abomination
to me. So here's what the Lord said,
you shall not act contrary. to the strictest justice in any
case, in measures, in weight, in quantity. Everything is going
to have to be done according to the same standard. I, the
Lord, that delivered you out of the hand of bondage in Egypt,
require it. All right? He said in Deuteronomy
25, 13-16, Thou shalt not have in thy bag various weights, divers' weights,
various weights, you know, a great and a small. He said, Thou shalt
not have in thine house divers' measures, a great and a small. Thou shalt have a perfect and
just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have, that
thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God
giveth thee for all that do such things and all that do do unrighteously
or an abomination to the Lord. Here's what he said. He said,
I know the tendency of man. Here's what's going to happen.
He said, you'll have, you know, a stone is the way. I even read
where the Lord, it couldn't be made out of metal. Because if
it started to rust, it would kind of change the weight. But
a stone, it had a stone, and it had to be a just weight. It had to be the right weight.
He said, now I don't want you having two stones and having
these two stones that they don't weigh the same. You know, you
might take it and kind of somehow, you might kind of chip out a
little part out of the bottom down here. And you look at it
on the top, it looks the same. But now you look at this one
down here, and this one down here's got a hole in it. You know? And
he said, what you'll end up doing, he said, I know what man's tendency
is. If he's going to buy something,
he's going to take a scale right here. And he said, I'll put my
heavy stone over here now. He said, load me up with wheat
on here. And so here's the stone. He said,
they start loading him up with wheat. And finally, when it starts
to balance, he said, OK, there you go. This is how much wheat
I get. But he's got another stone over
here, and it looks the same. but it's got a hole in it, you
know? And he said, now I'm going to sell you some wheat. And he'll
put that lighter weight and he starts loading up the wheat that
he's going to sell you. And you know, and all of a sudden
it's not quite that much wheat on there because it don't weigh
as much. Lord said, that's an abomination to me. You're going
to measure a just weight. That was forbidden for some to
have stones that looked the same but they were different weights.
You're going to buy something, you buy it according to the same
measure that you sell. Likewise, in the context of our
scripture, what a man thinks that he has done as far as making
his heart clean, it better be according to God's standard.
What he said, who can say that I've made my heart clean? I'm
pure from my sins. Diver's weights, diver's measures,
he said both of them are alike, an abomination to the Lord. Man's
problem is this. He thinks that he's met God's
standard. as far as making his heart clean
before God. You know, whenever Almighty God
sets forth His standard concerning making a man's heart clean before
God, let me ask you this. What does a man or a woman have
to do Now don't tell me, don't start talking to me about walking
down an aisle and coming down here and praying this, that and
the other. Don't tell me that. Let me tell you what it's going
to take for a man to have his heart clean before God. You must
have A. Never sinned. Never. Never. Number two. You must be holy, holy before
God. And you must have always been
holy. And number three, what you do,
it better be absolutely perfect in God's sight, obedience. In fact, I'll go ahead and tell
you how strict it's got to be. You best be as holy as God. Now
let me ask you this, who can say, I have made my heart clean
before the Lord? Somebody say, I walked down an
aisle or I prayed through or I got baptized. Let me ask you
this, was it perfect? Can the Lord say unto you as
He said to the Lord Jesus Christ, this is my beloved Son in whom
I am well pleased. You hear him, you hear Marvin
because Marvin is perfect in my sight, in myself. That's an abomination to God.
Don't tell me you made your heart clean before God. That's a lie.
And it came straight out of the mouth of Satan. Don't tell me
that. Look at verse 11, even a child
is known by his doings, whether his work be pure and whether
it be right. Now here again, staying in the
context with what we're talking about, we realize that the Holy
Spirit is telling us something. concerning those that foolishly
say, I've made my heart clean, I'm pure from my sin. What the Spirit of God says is,
even a child, just look at the wording, even a child is known
by his doings, whether his work is right or pure. Whenever a
man says, I have made my heart clean before God, Men will watch,
they'll listen, they'll behold. Even a child is known by what
he does. And I can tell you this, a man before God, before others,
he's going to be recognized also. God Almighty has already said
what he knows. And concerning his walk before
others, listen to this, Matthew 7, 15, 17, Beware of false prophets. which come to you in sheep's
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You shall know
them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns
or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth
forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A child is known by his actions. I'll tell you this, when a child
acts obediently and is rewarded for his obedience, he just wants
to be obedient. You know, whenever he does something
wrong, and here again, I've got four kids, and I know a little
bit about kids. I can tell you this, you let
one of your children be disobedient, and immediately he begins to
excuse himself, vindicate himself, and profess his innocence. It
wasn't me, it wasn't me. I had one of my grandchildren,
one of my grandchildren, and it was, I won't tell you which
one it is, they show up here periodically, but it was one
of them. Someone in the house dropped
a glass and broke it. And it was not this one that's
always in trouble. And when she heard the glass
break, she cried out, I didn't do it. You remember that? I didn't do it. She knew. I'm going to be accused of this.
Even a child is known by his doings. So, you're going to know
them by their fruits. Who can say I've made my heart
pure? Whoever convinced the Lord Jesus
Christ of sin, whoever did, whoever beheld him one time, he was accused
of it. But whoever convinced him by
what he did or what he said of being a sinner before God, I'll
tell you this, Almighty God has set forth, a child is known, and a sinner before God is too. The hearing ear, verse 12, the
hearing ear, in closing, this is how I'm going to know if what
I believe is so. The hearing ear and the seeing
eye The Lord hath made even both of them. A man that has a hearing
ear, spiritually hearing ear, spiritually seeing eye, this
man is going to know something of himself. A true believer will never, never,
never say in his heart, I mean, he's tempted to say this because
we got an old nature about us. But a man that knows God, he
will never say, I made my heart clean before God. He'll never
say that. I'm pure from my sin. He'll never
say that. You know why? Because he knows
that the measure by which a man by nature measures his purity
is different from what God says. And a believer is going to say,
I've never met his standard. I am a sinner saved by the grace
of God. Even a child, he'll say, is known
by his doings. And for a truth, I know something
of myself. I might fool you, but I'm not
fooling me. I'm not fooling God. Almighty
God knows. How do I know that? How did I
ever come to that conclusion? Well, the hearing ear and the
seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them. I know this,
I was born spiritually dead. I know that I was born with no
spiritual eye to see the glory of God, no spiritual ear to hear
the glorious gospel of God's free grace. And Almighty God
came to me in mercy and in compassion and called me out of darkness
and revealed to me, myself, and taught me something of me and
showed me without Him I can do nothing. I pray that Almighty
God teach us today. I pray that the Lord bless the
Word to His glory and to the eternal good of those he's everlastingly
loved in Christ. And I pray these things for Christ's
sake. Amen.