And if you would, please be turning
to Matthew chapter 15. As you all were turning there,
I don't know if everybody realizes or not, but a year ago, the first
Sunday of the month, I first stood up here and started speaking.
Walter was gone then and he's gone today. I don't feel any more sufficient
to do this thing than I did then. I do thank God he's given me
everyone here to encourage me, others, Paula to support me in
doing this. So I'm very thankful to have
the encouragement because I do need that. There are things he's given me.
He's allowed my nerves to calm down a little bit. A little bit. But anyway, it's been a year. This is the start of a second
year for me standing to speak. Matthew 15 verses 10 and 11. 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. We read that what goes into the
mouth does not defile a man. And Christ tells us to hear and
understand. What goes into the mouth goes
in and then comes out. Matthew 15 and 17 says, Christ
says, do not ye yet understand that whatsoever entereth into
at the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into the draught. That word for draught means privy. I think everybody knows what
that is here. So we understand what our Lord
is telling us here. Man is defiled before anything
goes in or comes out. It is evidenced in this passage.
Things do not defile a man or a woman. That is, things that
go into the mouth do not defile a man. They teach these things
as is being referenced here in our passage about the apostles
eating without washing their hands. These are men's doctrines
that they make out to be the commandments of God, and they
are not. It is simply man spreading forth
his lies, giving lip service to God, and changing God into
something that resembles man. They serve a God, but it is not
the God of Scripture. They serve God in such a way
that fits their schedules and their ideas. Even then, they
put these rules and commandments on men, but they themselves do
not even follow them. When these kind of things are
said, that is when those who speak the truth call out those
lies that men teach as commandments of God when they are not, it
makes those of this world mad. What did our disciples say to
Christ in this passage in verse 12? Then came his disciples and
said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended after
they heard this saying? What does our Lord tell us? Does
he tell us to be careful and try not to offend those around
you? Try not to say things in such a way as to not offend those
who may not do things or believe things the same way as we do.
No, he says, leave them alone. They will ultimately fall in
the ditch. There is no doubt about this.
They will both fall in the ditch because they are all blind. When
the blind lead the blind, they all fall in the ditch. But not
only this, it also says in verse 13, that if they are not planted
by God, then they will be rooted up. When it comes to God's word,
we must declare it as God has spoken it, no matter what may
come. There will be those who are offended,
so be it. There will be those who think
you are mean, so be it. There will be those who think
you do not care about men and women's souls, so be it. It is God that we should fear
and not men. It will be made manifest because
those that are blind will both fall into the ditch, so we do
not have to waste our time with them. Yet there are others who
by God's grace have had their eyes opened, their understanding
enlightened, who have been given ears to hear, and they will love
to hear what God actually says. In fact, they will have it no
other way. So when we speak, that is those who speak the truth
of God, we are speaking to believers. It makes no sense to speak to
unbelievers, does it? What I mean by this, I hope,
will become more evident as I go along. I want to be clear. I'm not sure if someone is a
believer or not. But I speak to those who will
hear me. If I am speaking to people and they will not hear
me, I shake the dust off my feet and go on. But the traditions of men, even
back then as well as today, these traditions manifest themselves
in touch not, taste not, handle not. But what does Paul tell
us about this in Colossians 2 and verses 20 through 22? It says,
wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of
the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject
to ordinances? Touch not. taste not, handle
not, which are all to perish with the using after the commandments
and doctrines of men. Most of what you hear about in
religion today is just this, touch not, taste not, handle
not. But this world's religion knows
nothing about what defile a man. Why? Because they are blind. They can do nothing different
because they cannot see this. But man as he is born in Adam
is totally defiled. That which I do even today, that
which I do by my flesh, even standing up here and doing what
I'm doing today, is tainted with sin and nothing but filth in
God's eyes. Isaiah 64 6 says but we are all
as an unclean thing and all our Righteousness says are as filthy
rags and we all do fade as a leaf and our iniquities Like the wind
have taken us away Two points I want to cover today why is
it that what comes out of the mouth defiles a man and What
remedy do we have for this defilement? I? We do not have to guess at this
or come up with some things on our own. Our Lord has already
told us why this is so, and that is, why is it that what comes
out of the mouth defiles a man? Verse 18 says, but those things
which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and
they defile the man. So it would seem to me it is
the heart that defiles men and women. Nothing good will ever
come out of the heart we are born with. Even the righteousnesses
that come from this heart are totally corrupt and evil. They
are a stench in God's nostrils. It is the heart that controls
everything about us. Our will, our doing, our saying,
our hearing, our seeing. Someone might say, does our heart
really control our will? Yes, it does. Exodus 35 29 reads
this way the children of Israel brought a willing offering unto
the Lord Every man and woman whose heart made them willing
to bring forth bring for all manner of work Which the Lord
had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses. I Know there might
be some that will immediately say well see there man can be
willing and But that is not what it says. It says their heart
made them willing. It does not sound like the heart
that we are talking about in this passage does that. If that
is what you were thinking, then you would be absolutely correct.
The only willingness in the heart man is born with in Adam is evil. Again, we must turn to Scripture
and see what God says about the matter. What else does Scripture
say? What does Christ say? Verse 34
of Matthew 12 says, O generation of vipers, how can ye, being
evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh. So something has to change. We
have to have a heart that makes us willing. So this heart, the
one Christ was speaking of in our text here in Matthew 12,
is not a heart making someone willing to do something toward
God in his way. Let's be clear. The kind of heart
is one that is willing to bow down to God. The heart that makes
them willing is one where it is made willing to put your face
in the dust before a thrice holy God. But this kind of heart also
believes God in what he says in his word. But let's look at
some more at this heart, this one that is evil as given in
scripture, the heart. So our heart is what causes those
things to come out of our mouth. Everything coming out of our
mouth, coming from this heart is defiled and it defiles us
because the heart is the seat of where our affections lie.
This heart with which our mouth speaks. Matthew 15 in 19 and
20 says, 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 unwashing hands defileth not a man. So
this flesh, that which we are born with in Adam, that has these
evil affections and lust, These coming from the unwilling heart,
it is very willing to come to God of the imagination and do
those things for which they have contrived up in their traditions,
but is not a willing heart towards the God of Scripture. There is
no changing this heart. The heart we are born with will
never change. What does Scripture say? That
which is born of the flesh is flesh. It will never be anything
other than flesh and it is only evil continually. God allows
me to see this to some extent from time to time. That I even
as a believer who has been given a new heart, I still have this
old nature which will raise its ugly head from time to time.
Thinking I can do something myself, thinking that I can make up for
wrongs or serve God in some way that satisfies him. What are
we to do? Can we somehow clean up this
heart? Scripture says, who can make their own heart clean? Proverbs
29, it says, who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure
from my sin? The answer is, no fallen man
can. No man will ever make his own
heart clean. You will not be able to prepare
this old heart to receive God's word, nor will you be able to
prepare someone else's heart to receive God's word. Jeremiah
13, 23 says, can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard
his spots? Then may ye also do good that
are accustomed to do evil. It is posed as a question here
in Jeremiah, but the answer is obvious. An Ethiopian cannot
change his skin, and the leopard cannot change its spots. That
would be the whole world. That is everyone born in fallen
Adam. Again, I say the answer is obvious.
You cannot do this. It says here if you could do
this, then you would be able to do good. Those of you who
do evil. but you cannot. Even as a believer,
because I have this flesh, which always will be flesh, and will
never be anything other than flesh, including the heart, I
still must cry out to God, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. The heart we have is desperately
wicked, and I've used this verse a lot, but it's still in there,
so I'm gonna use it again. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? This old Adamic
heart which we are born with will tell us we are serving God
when we are serving self. It will tell us we are praising
God when we are praising men. It will tell us we are willing
to bow down to God when we are really bowing down to men. It
deceives us all the time. Why? It is desperately wicked
and we cannot even know it. This old heart seeks out its
own way. We see it in scripture. We see
it all around us in this country and around the world. Man is
seeking out his own inventions, not wanting to bow down to the
God of scripture. How many ways do we know about
in this world that they can say you can get to God? Many different
ways. They espouse some of the following,
just to name a few, and there are many more. Man has many inventions. Free will is by far the most
predominant. And most others fit into this
in some way. But we also have keeping the
law of God for righteousness before God. Doing good works,
in quotes, to outweigh the bad works. Paying money to get special
acceptance before God. Self-flagellation, and this one
really makes no sense to me, but self-denying, that is denying
oneself from things to purge their sins. These ways are just
some of the ways that this world has come up with in their own
imagination that they think will get them to God. The problem
is the God they are trying to get to is not at all the God
of Scripture. It is in their imagination. All
their ways are the ways of men and not God. Proverbs 21.2 says,
every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth
the hearts. Even those for whom Christ has
come to lay down his life for, even they turn to their own way.
God's people are no different than anyone else by nature. Isaiah
53.6 says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned
everyone to his own way. and the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all. Christ in our chapter tells us
that man's heart is not close to God. In verse 8 of 15, this
people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoreth me with
their lips, but their heart is far from me. Man by nature as
he is born in Adam will defy God and his son and his word. Psalm 14, one says, the fool
hath said in his heart, and it has, there he is, it's put in
there. This is what it really says.
The fool hath said in his heart, no, God, they are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good.
It is clear from scripture, man as he is born in Adam does not
have a heart that is willing to serve God. He does not have
a heart that has the ability to bow down to God. He will devise
his own ways and it will result in his destruction. So something
has to happen. Somehow we have to have a heart
that can do this. We cannot do it because we cannot
become righteous on our own. We are nothing but evil in God's
eyes. So what remedy do we have for
this defilement? Man has many ways, but God's
way is one of singleness. One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one spirit, one mind. The scripture talks about an
eye that is single. God only has one way for salvation,
it's clear. That way is the Lord Jesus Christ. The oneness comes in Jesus Christ
the Lord who hath made us one with God. But why is it this
way? Why would God not just destroy
all of mankind since man is always only evil continually? For the
glory of God is why anything would be different for anyone. God was pleased to give himself
glory and he will. He will cause men to praise him.
He says in his word that even the wrath of men shall praise
him. He has been pleased to purpose
all things unto the honor and praise to his name to glorify
himself. He is the self-existent one. He does not need anything from
man. But thank God he was pleased
to give glory and honor to his name, else we would all perish. There is nothing in me that would
cause God to act in such a way in grace to me. It is all for
His glory and up to His good pleasure and will. So something
has to happen because God will not at all acquit the guilty.
He is not going to just sweep sin under the rug. Sins, sin
and sins must be dealt with in justice before Him. This he did
in his only begotten son. God himself came down. As we
read in Isaiah, the Lord has laid on him, that is, impinged
him with our iniquity. This is the one single basis
for how God can do anything for us in grace. Had this not taken
place, we would have to answer to God for ourselves. And who
shall stand before God guiltless with a heart that is only evil? No, this our Savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ, paid the price. In His dying for His people,
He took care of the justice of God. But He then raised from
the dead, and those in Him raising with Him in newness of life,
Joe. In Christ Jesus, we are a new
creation. Based on what our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ did, we are now the recipients of grace in Him. that we might be made something
that we are not, that we might be found when we were not seeking.
It is from Jesus Christ and him crucified that God has been pleased
to give us a new heart. This is a heart that makes us
willing in the day of his power, a new heart. God must create
in man a new heart, that one that can and does submit to him
as all in all. that one that knows that by nature
man is an abomination in the sight of God apart from him doing
this for them, that heart that will believe God and the record
he has given of his son. Psalm 51 10 says, create in me
a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. God has judicially satisfied
the justice of God by Jesus Christ's blood. Because of that, he by
his own power and might comes to his people in the time of
love and gives them a new heart. We have heard this before, but
again, it's still in the Bible. God says in Ezekiel 36 and 26,
he says, 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. It says
he will take away the stony heart. That is that heart that is hardened
against God, and will give you a heart of flesh, or that is
a living heart. That is what the word heart of
flesh means here. A heart that is enabled to believe
God. to bow to God, to trust God,
to love God. What this new heart does. So
then once we are given this new heart and by the power of His
Spirit, we are enabled to believe Him. We are made willing in the
day of His power. So that when we are instructed
by God to do things such as Colossians 3.2 says, and it says, set your
affections on things above, not on things on the earth. What
does this new heart enable us to do? It is enabled by God through
the power of his Holy Spirit to love God, to worship God,
to serve God, to believe God. God commands all of his people
to do things. Not only does he command them
to do this, but he also gives them the right, the ability,
and the will to do so. He forces this on us. Because
if he leaves it up to us, we will not come to him. He must
do this and he will do this if he died for you. None but his will be given this
and those who have been given this have been given this in
Jesus Christ the Lord. This world and their religious
fervor talk about the commandments of the elders as we read in verse
two. Why do thy disciples transgress
the tradition of the elders as they wash not their hands when
they eat bread? Instead, they should be looking
at the commandments of God. They try to make God's commandments
of none effect by changing it to their own way and not God's. Because man knows he cannot do
that which God commanded him to do. So what do they do? They
change His laws into their own laws, which they still do not
keep, by the way. The problem we have is a heart
problem. By nature, as we were born in
Adam, the heart we have is stony and hard against God. It deceives
us into thinking we, by our own way, can satisfy the justice
of God. It deceives us into thinking
that God does not really want justice, but to just let sin
go. All man has to do is open his mouth and it manifests where
man is. He is in darkness and unable
to come to the light that he might have life. God will not
just sweep sin under the rug. He is too holy, too just, too
perfect to just let sin go. He must be satisfied. Because
man does not have the ability and man cannot recover himself
out of the fix that he is in, all he does when he tries is
dig himself deeper into the pit. But God bethink that he made
a way. He made a way by himself and
to himself in order to bring sinful man unto him in a way
that his justice would be totally satisfied. Because of this, that
is what Christ has done, he then gives us a new heart. That is
those who are in Jesus Christ have been given a new heart in
that time of love. That heart which can then see,
understand the things of the spirit of God. But even though
we have been given this new heart, that is believers, we still have
this old nature so that we must continually cry out to God. Lord,
I believe. help thou mine unbelief. But
this new heart given by God will cause us to acknowledge that
if we do or to do anything for God, the power, the authority,
the willingness has to all come from him. It will cause us to
bow our head in the dust and acknowledge our sin and sins
against him and him alone. just as he did with David. And
if you would, turn with me to Psalm 51. Psalm 51, and I will
close with this. This is that which God does for
every believer, and they will come to have these thoughts,
these prayers. This is what they think. Psalm 51. Have mercy upon me,
O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude
of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. Wash
me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For
I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have
I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest
be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me. Behold, thou desirest truth in
the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me
to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall
be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness,
that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy
face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in
me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit
from me. Restore to me the joy of thy
salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I
teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted
unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,
O God. Thou God of my salvation, and
my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open
thou my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou
desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest
not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in thy good pleasure
unto Zion. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
with burnt offering and the whole burnt offering. Then shall they
offer bullocks upon thine altar. Oh, make us cry out to him, create
in me a new heart. Oh, Lord. Amen. Dear Lord God, all might, all
power comes from you. Even as we go out today, dear
Lord, you must be with us to protect us on our way. Please be with us and protect
us. Protect Walker and Penny as they're traveling back and
forth from Rocky Mount. Be with those who might be listening
to us, comfort them, give them a word of your son, dear Lord. All these things we ask in Christ's
name, amen.