I want you first of all to turn
to the book of Matthew. I have several reasons for this
message tonight. First of all, I'll tell you how
it was inspired. Let's turn to Matthew 9. I was preaching last week over
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. for our black friends there,
the Sovereign Grace Tabernacle. The pastor is a man about my
age, maybe a little younger. He's never been here. You've
never met him. But he's an impressive gentleman.
And I ask him if he would lend me two or three of his tapes
that I might listen to on my way home. And Gerald, I'm enjoying
that tape player so much, I'm able to listen to other preachers
traveling, makes it go by so quickly, and yet it's helpful
to me. And so he loaned me several tapes. And I was riding over
the West Virginia Turnpike last Wednesday night, about midnight,
or Thursday morning at 1 o'clock, playing this message on the heart
by this black preacher. And I'll tell you, I haven't
been blessed more than that, I don't think, any time in my
life, from a message on a cassette tape player. It's just thrilled
my soul and my heart. He was preaching from Jeremiah
17 and the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord,
search the heart. I try the thoughts. And he was
preaching on human depravity. And I'll tell you, he took me
the lowest and raised me the highest of anybody I've heard
in a long time. And I thought while I was listening
to it, I've got to pick up some of that and preach it to our
congregation. And so I prepared this message
tonight on the heart, the deceitful heart. And I'm going to give
you five or six reasons why I'm preaching it. These are the things
that I saw from this man's message, not the things he said, but the
things I saw. The first one is this, God saves
sinners. Come ye sinners, poor and needy,
weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus, not the church, they won't
receive you. They'll look down their noses
at you. But Jesus ready stands to save you. He's standing. He's full of pity, love, and
power. Let not conscience make you linger. Well, I'm not good enough for
that church. No, bless your heart, you're better than one of them.
You're one of God's elect. You're one of God's chosen. You're
one of those Christ died for. Let not conscience make you linger. For fitness fondly dreams. Oh,
the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him. And this
he gives you. This he gives you. Oh, our Lord delights to show
mercy. I want to encourage those who are down to look up. I want
to encourage those who are lost to seek mercy. I want to encourage
those who have real guilt, real guilt, heart guilt, soul guilt. to look to Christ in this message. And secondly, I want to picture
us as we are, not as we claim to be, not as we think we are,
and not even as we hope to be. But brethren, I want to pull
off the veneer of piety and pull off the veneer of self-respect
and pull off the veneer of our religious profession and let
us tonight just look into these old filthy, guilty, sinful hearts
and see what we really are. Now we do not excuse sin and
we do not encourage sin, but we better admit it or we're going to hell. That's
right. We do not encourage sin, we do
not excuse sin, we do not justify sin, but we'd better face it
and confess it, because he that confesseth his sins shall find
mercy. Our Lord said if we say we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth's not in us. If
we say we have no sin, we make God a liar. But if we confess
our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive. The third thing,
I want to warn the strong brother. I want to warn you. And I want
to encourage the weak brother. I want that strong brother who,
like the Apostle Peter, stood there. Oh, how strong he was. When that soldiers came to arrest
our master, he whipped out his sword. He'd gone to battle by
himself. And he tore into the high priest's
servant and cut off his ear. I guarantee he wasn't aiming
for his ear. He was aiming for his throat mist. Peter was ready
to do battle. He was going to defend the honor
of his Lord. And he took out his sword. And our Lord said,
Peter, for the cock crows three times, you'll deny me. He said,
not me. Oh, not me. These other fellas, he even said,
these other fellas may. But not me. These other fellas
didn't, but he did. I want to warn, oh how I want
to warn the strong brother, and I want to encourage the weak
brother. And then fourthly, I want in this message tonight to discourage
phariseeism. There's no plague. There's no
plague. I tell you this, and I tell you,
I tell you compassionately and yet very, very strongly. There's
no plague that I fear. in any church I pastor more than
Pharisees. I think it's the deadliest plague.
It's the deadliest plague with which we can be attacked, Pharisees. Our Lord hated it more than he
hated any sin because he had stronger words for the Pharisees
than anybody else. And I want to encourage fellowship.
Fellowship with all. All men. Actually, it's the needy
creature who needs our fellowship more than anybody else. And then,
fifthly, I want the honest believer to understand something of the
conflict that's going on within him. I want the honest believer
to understand something of the conflict that's going on within
him. Now, people who are not honest,
you can't help them. People who are not forthright,
people of integrity, you cannot help them. They're going to hold
to their tradition, they're going to hold to their position, they're
going to hold to their profession, they're going to hold to their
claim, and you're not going to move them. So Christ said, it's
like when he was talking to the disciples, he said, it's not
that which goeth into the mouth that defileth, it's that which
comes from the heart. And the disciples said, don't
you know that the Pharisees were offended by that? You see, these
Pharisees had a touch not, taste not, handle not religion. In
other words, it was a sin to drink this, a sin to eat that,
a sin to do this. Let's just be honest. It was
a sin to do these different things. And they were offended. It's
like somebody comes in your home and you have a deck of cards
on the table and they're offended. Or they come into your home and
you have something there on the table that they don't think you're
supposed to drink or eat, they're offended. And so you have to
get it off real quick, you know, hide it in the cupboard. You
got a television, they come in, oh, you watch television. You
know, this sort of thing. And these Pharisees were that
way. They had all these external do's
and don'ts and rules and regulations, and they were offended. Our Lord
said, it's not what a man puts in his mouth that defiles him.
Let me tell you now, you may ruin your health by eating certain
things, but you can't ruin your heart. There is nothing material
that can touch my heart. It can't do it. You may ruin
your stomach, you may ruin your lungs, but there ain't no way
you can defile your heart by putting anything in your mouth.
You may take alcohol, you may take drugs, you may smoke, you
may do these things, and I guarantee you, you will not defile your
heart with those things. Already somebody's offended.
Well, the Pharisees were too now. That was their religion.
You can't do this, belong to our church. And that's when the
master, see the master's honest, he ain't like us, thank God. But he said, it's not what a
man puts in his mouth that defiles him, what comes out of his heart.
And the disciples ran up and said, now you offended Dr. Sound
and Brass and Reverend Tinklin Semble. They were grossly offended.
Christ said, leave them alone. Just leave them alone. Leave
them alone. You catered to them long enough.
You've smoothed their feathers down long enough, just leave
them alone. They're going to hell, leave
them alone. Leave them alone. Just mark them off. Now that's
right. He said, it's what comes out
of the heart that defiles a man, not what he puts in his mouth.
He puts that in his mouth, it goes into the belly, and it's
out to drag. And I want to help honest believers find out what
struggles are going on. I'll tell you this much. Grace
never makes the old man better. Never, never, never. Creates
a new man and a new nature. But if you think the grace of
God is going to improve old Adam, you're dead wrong. Old Adam's
got to be put in the grave. That's the only thing you can
do with him. And you'll see that as we go along in this message.
I wish this. I just wish as we learn the gospel
of grace, we'd learn something about the grace of the gospel. Now, you can perish learning
the doctrines of grace and the gospel of grace, but you'll never
perish if God puts in your soul the grace of the gospel. That's
what's saved. We're saved by grace through
faith, all right? Now, let's look at Jeremiah 17.1.
Jeremiah 17.1. I'm going to be plain tonight. We must be. We're going to help our young
people who are tired of deception. We're tired of hearing one thing
and seeing another. When the Scriptures speak of
the heart, you see verse 1, the sin of Judah is written with
a pin of iron and the point of a diamond. It's graven upon the
table of the heart. Graven upon the table of the
heart. When the Scriptures speak of the heart, it's not talking
about this organ that's so big that's sitting here in our chest
cavity. But when the scriptures speak
of the heart, when we read here in Jeremiah 17 about the heart,
we're talking about the true nature of man. We're not talking
about the man that I let you see, or the man that I tell you
I am, or the man I profess or pretend to be. We're talking
about who I am. That's when we talk about man's
heart. We're talking about his true soul, the whole soul of
man, the spirit of man, the nature of man. That's what we're talking
about. We're talking about the whole man. That's what these
scriptures says when it says, thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, with thy true man. Not profess, oh,
how I love Jesus. That's not worth a nickel unless
that true man, true spirit, and true soul does love Christ Jesus. He says in Proverbs, keep your
heart, out of it are all the issues of life. Keep your real
man, your true man, your true spirit. Out of your true spirit
proceeds the real issues of life. And in that verse in Matthew
15, our Lord, I quoted it a while ago, it's not what goes in a
man's mouth that defiles him, it's what comes out of his heart,
what comes out of his true nature. His real nature, his true spirit,
his true soul, that's what defiles. That's where it is. And man has
an evil nature, an evil heart. Now let me show you that in the
scripture. When God created Adam, you can go to Genesis 3 if you'd
like to, for a moment. When God made Adam, he created Adam, we know this,
in his image. He created Adam in the image
of God. And Adam had a pure heart. He was a pure man. He had a pure,
holy nature. He was created in the image of
God. Adam's true man, true spirit, true soul, knew no sin. He had
no pride. He had no envy. No envy. He had no jealousy, he had no
malice, no hate, no guilt, no shame, no covetousness, no fear. None of these things. His true
man, his whole soul, his true spirit was holiness unto the
Lord. Holy, holy, holy. Righteous and
pure. God made man upright. Now, I
can't imagine such Absolute immaculate purity, but Adam had that purity. Now, I cannot account for where
the sin came from or how it came in, but I do know that the Scripture
said God made man in his own image. He became a living soul
and he was without sin. He walked with God. He was naked
and felt no shame. He had no shame, he had no pride. He was a brilliant man, but no
pride, no arrogance, no haughtiness. But Adam sinned, and what a change. Now here's what I want you to
notice. Here's something that I don't have skipped over this
long, and I guess I knew the truth of it, but I never have
expressed it to you. In Genesis 3, sin found its way
into Adam's nature even before he took the fruit. He sinned
even before he ate the fruit. We talk about Adam ate the fruit
and fell. He ate the fruit because he had
fallen. Now think with me a minute. If he hadn't have had a heart
that doubted God's word, he never would have even reached for the
fruit. He never would have listened to Eve. His heart was, his ear was
tuned to Eve and the serpent because his ear stopped listening
to God. That's exactly right. Here's
pride. Look here, it says in verse 5,
Satan said, God doth know in the day you eat of the fruit,
your eyes will be opened, you'll be as gods, knowing good and
evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it
was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desired to make one wise.
You see what's going on in her mind? Adam's tooth, covetousness,
dissatisfaction with their place God had put them, pride, desiring
to be wiser, ambition, wanting to be like God. Doubt, doubting
God's Word, all of these things were already going on. This is
the sin, here it is. The other is nothing in the world
but the consequence. This, Charlie, is the cause right
here. This is the cause. The consequence is what we call
sin. They took the fruit. Brother,
that's the consequence, that's the product, the cause, the moving
cause of this rebellion, the moving cause of this attack on
the throne of God, the moving cause of this taking of forbidden
fruit was a proud heart, an ambitious heart, a covetous heart, a wicked
heart. That's where it is. The heart
is deceitful. That's where our problems are. You can get a man to quit drinking,
quit smoking, quit doing this, quit doing that, quit doing the
other, and you do no more for him than if you fence in a mad
dog. You fence in a mad dog, he'll
never hurt anybody, but he's still a mad dog. That's what
our Lord says. He said you cleanse the outside
of the cup and the platter, but within you're full of extortion
and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, blind to
what? Blind to what your whole problem
is. Cleanse first that which is within. Cleanse first. Now, look here at Adam. They
took the fruit, and then it says, and the eyes of them were opened,
and they knew that they were naked. What's the first thing
they knew? Shame. As a result of their sin, they
suffered shame. What God had created and called
beautiful embarrassed Adam. It didn't embarrass him before.
What God had made, what God had blessed, what God had created,
what God had called good and beautiful, he didn't embarrass
him. He was in full agreement with God before. He's out of
agreement with God now. He's out of touch with God. And
his perspectives are all wrong. His values are all wrong. Now
he knows shame. Now he knows fear. He runs and
hides. He runs and hides from God. And then his self-righteousness
made him blame others. He said, well, it's really not
my fault, it's the serpent and the woman's fault. And this led
him to hate because he was willing for them to bear the wrath. My
friend, what I'm saying is this. Turn to Matthew 15. I'm sorry,
Matthew 5. This is the very heart of the
thing that our Lord is saying in Matthew 5. And what Jeremiah
said, he said, your sin is engraved indelibly on your nature. Your
heart is your nature. My heart is my nature. And Adam,
when he was standing in this garden, before he ever made a
frontal assault on the throne of God, he planned it in his
nature. He planned it in his heart. He
desired it. He coveted it. He sought it.
He thought it in his heart. And that's when he became a sinner.
That's exactly right. That's when he became a sinner,
when that sin was present in his heart. The cause of it, in
Matthew 5, our Lord said in verse 21, you've heard it said by them
of old times, thou shalt not kill. Whosoever shall kill shall
be in the danger of the judgment. Now, it's a great sin to kill
a man. No question about that. You take a person's life, destroy
their life, that's a great sin. But our Lord said, but I say
unto you, verse 22, here's where it all starts. Whosoever is angry
with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.
Whosoever shall say unto his brother about Rekha, that is,
vain fellow, shall be in danger of the council, who shall say,
Thou fool, shalt be in danger of hell and fire." This is where
it is, nature. Nature. That's where our trouble
is, that's where our fault is, that's where our sin lies, is
in our heart. The sin of a man is written on
his heart, it's engraved. Turn back to our text. Then he
goes on and talks about other things there. We've got to move
on. Jeremiah 17, watch this. In Jeremiah 17, verse 1, you
know, when I read that, I wondered, where have I seen that before?
The sin of Judah is written with a pin of iron with a point of
a diamond. Where have I seen that before? Then it occurred
to me in Job 19. You want to turn over there?
In Job 19. Job was saying this. When he gave his testimony about
his faith and confidence in Christ the Redeemer, He said this in
verse 23, O that my words were now written, O that they were
printed in a book, O that they were graven with an iron pen,
and laid in the rock forever, I know that my Redeemer lives.
Boy, we say, that's so. We exclaim it to the high heavens.
Christ is the Redeemer. His throne standeth sure. His
blood is sufficient. His sacrifice is complete. All
these, my Redeemer living. On the authority of God's Word,
He'll stand on this earth. Mine eyes will see Him. All of
these things. Jeremiah uses the same expression
about our condition. Write it with a pen of irons.
Record it with lead in the rock forever. Write it with the hardest
object you know at the point of a diamond. Your sins in your
heart. That's how it's written there. It's there. Turn to Jeremiah
13. And here's the terrible thing
about it. It cannot be altered. It cannot be changed. Our natures
cannot be changed. It's engraved permanently on
our nature. Verse 23 of Jeremiah 13. Can
the Ethiopian change his skin? In other words, can the black
man make himself white? Can the leopard change his spots?
A man's skin is black because that's his pigment, that's in
his genes, isn't it? That's in his bloodstream, that's
in his nature, that's in his ancestry. He's going to be black,
he is black, can't change that. A leopard, everything brings
forth after its kind. A mama leopard's going to give
birth to a baby leopard, and that leopard's going to have
spots, and he can't change it. And even so, look at the next
line. Then may you do good, when the Ethiopian can alter his species
and change his nature and change his skin, when the leopard can
change his spots and his nature and his heritage and skin, then
you'll be able to do good that are accustomed to doing evil.
It's our nature. It's born in me to sin. It's
my nature to sin, and to deny it is to be a liar. So sin is engraved permanently
on our natures. That is my nature and your nature.
Let me just show you a few verses of Scripture. I'll turn to them
quickly and read them to you. Listen to this. Genesis 6, 5.
The Lord God, listen to this, God saw the wickedness of man
was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thought of
his nature, his heart. was only evil continually. Don't
be surprised, it's just something. Listen to this one over here
in Job 15 verse 14. Listen to God here. He says,
What is man that he should be clean? Or he that is born of
a woman, that he should be righteous? God puts no trust in his saints.
The heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable
and filthy is man who drinks iniquity like water? Psalm 51, 5 says, I was shapen
in iniquity, conceived in sin, brought forth speaking lies.
The wicked are strained from the womb. Listen to Psalm 94,
verse 11. Listen to this, 94, 11. The Lord
knoweth the thoughts of man that they're all vanity. Man at his
best state is vanity, evil. Isaiah 1 says, from the sole
of our feet to the top of our heads, there's no soundness anywhere.
Isaiah 64, 6 says that even our righteousness is a filthy rag.
Now, you turn to Romans 3. I'm talking about the nature,
the nature, that with which we're born, that which is within us. The heart of man, the nature
of man is desperately, desperately wicked, Jeremiah the prophet
says. You know what the word desperately
means? Incurably. Incurably wicked. Romans 3, verse
10, as it is written. Let's go back to verse 9. What
then? Are we better than they? No, and no wise. We're before
proof. Both Jews and Gentiles, they're
all underseen. As it is written, there's none
righteous, no, not one. There's none that understands
it. There's none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out
of the way. They all together become unprofitable. There's none that doeth good,
no, not one. My friends, I'm not preaching
a doctrine. I'm preaching an experience. I'm not preaching
a doctrine, I'm preaching a condition. Even the Apostle Paul says, in
my flesh dwelleth no good thing. In the flesh, no man can please
God. We see this incurably wicked
condition in the worst of men. Cain rose up and slew his brother. Pharaoh crushed Israel in chains
and bondage. The sodomites, we read about
them described in Romans 1, those who crucified our Lord. We come
on down to history, men like Hitler, Stalin, men in China
who purged multitudes. We see the nature of man in these
men and in these situations, how incurably wicked. But brethren,
we pick out the best of men and find out they're still men. Have
you learned that? And the best of women are still
women. I see Noah. I tell you, I'll count it a great
honor and privilege to shake the hand of Noah someday, or
even be introduced to him. But then I see Noah in a time
of excess and incest. Tragic, isn't it? It'd be an
honor for me to meet a man like Abraham, to even be allowed to
worship God with him, maybe sing in the same choir. But here's
a man who gave way to lies and doubt and deceit, laid the plans,
Moses, self-will, intemperate, Aaron. Here's Aaron. Wasn't he the first priest? And
here he is with that bunch of Israelites carried along with
their dissimulation, making and molding a golden calf. That just
sends cold chills up and down my back. Boy, I'd never do that. Aaron did. And then David, Solomon, Peter. What do you think Paul's talking
about over here in Romans 7? Turn over here a minute. You
know, I've learned this. I brought this out in a message
not long ago. There's some things, when a person
is converted, a new believer, Or even really, I don't know
whether it's a new believer that has as much trouble with it as
an older believer, but a believer. I say this to people who really
know Christ. Now, I'm not talking about folks
that make professions of religion. They're good, and they want you
to know it, and they believe it, and everybody else to believe
it. So Christ said, leave them alone. But I'm talking here,
if I can talk to somebody tonight who's dead honest and truthful,
about who God is and who you are and who Christ is and what
salvation is and all of these things. I would say you're going
to be surprised to find out some things. Number one, it's going
to surprise you to find out that everybody doesn't rejoice when
you come to know Christ. Now, that's right, they won't
rejoice. In fact, if you really come to know the Lord and stand
for the truth of his word, your greatest enemies will be people
who claim to know the Lord. Again, that'll surprise you,
that'll trip you up if you're not careful, it'll overcome you. But you're going to find out
the very people who holler the loudest about holiness and righteousness
are the people who have a self-righteousness and a self-holiness and hate
the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And they'll hate you for telling
them so. They'll be your enemies, and that's going to surprise
you. The very people you think or thought would just say, whoopee,
glad you found the Lord, are going to say, I liked you better
like you were. And then secondly, you're going to find out this,
that spiritual growth is very slow. It's just not mechanical,
it's not something you master overnight. Some of you brilliant
men can take the books on carpentry or books on mechanics or books
on electricity or books on something else and read through and you
can reach a plateau of expertise or excellence. But there ain't
no way. The only way you're going to
grow in grace is to experience it. And that'll come in God's
good time, in God's own way. He'll teach you. He'll teach
you patience, and long-suffering, and love, and faith, and hope.
And he'll enable you to grow. And you watch these little fellows
around here growing, and they grow so slow. It seems like one
day you wake up and they're grown. But they're slowly... I thought
I never would get to be a teenager. I thought I never would get to
be 21. I thought I never would get to be 40. I can't remember
now when I was. You see what I'm saying? But
this thing of spiritual growth is so slow. You can't speed up
the process. It's in God's own time. It's
according to God's own will. You just have to be faithful
to what he shows you and what he teaches you. The third thing
you're going to find is trials. Oh, the trials are so heavy.
These preachers get on television and say, God will prosper your
business. He's a liar and the truth's not
in him. That's exactly right. They get on television, they
say, if you'll give your heart to Jesus, your trouble's over.
He's a liar and the truth's not in him. If you'll profess faith
and believe on God, he'll heal your body and your cares will
be over, you'll be the happiest person in town. He's a liar and
the truth's not in him. That's right. Now, I'm saying
this, if you're a sinner and you come to Christ, he'll save
you and give you peace and rest and joy and grace. And I'm telling
you, the trials of life are not over. They get more severe as
we get older. The burdens get heavier, and
our Lord says, in this world, you shall have tribulation. God
may prosper you. He may, and he may not. But all
things work together for good to them that love God. Then the
next thing that a believer finds is his old nature is the same.
Now, this will trip you up if you're not careful. Turn with
me to Galatians 5. This will cause you trouble if
you're not careful. I'm saying this, that the salvation
and grace of God does not change or alter the old nature. Now,
he gives a new nature. He creates within us a new nature.
But that old nature of fear, of hate, of lust, and envy, that
old nature is there. And God never changes it. That's
just so. He never changes it. Now, the
new nature grows, and the new nature strengthens, and the new
nature has a conflict with that old nature, and the new nature
subdues it. But he doesn't change it. Those eyes that look, still
look. Those minds that think, still
think. Now, sin may take a different direction. Sometimes Spurgeon
says, when we think we're closest to God, we're furthest away.
And sometimes when we think we're furthest away from God, we're
really closer than we've ever been. Sin takes a different direction. He says here in Galatians 5,
verse Verse 16, I say unto you, walk in the Spirit. Feed the
new nature. Walk in the Spirit of God. Walk
in the light of God's Word. Walk in the fellowship of believers.
Keep your body and bring it into subjection, into submission.
For if you walk in the Spirit, you'll not fulfill the luster
that is there. The desire is there, the passion
is there, the temper is there, the ill feelings are there, all
of these things are there. That nature has not changed. I don't care what, who preaches,
the old nature is not eradicated until God kills our bodies. That's when it will be eradicated,
when God kills us and puts us in the grave. I go back in the
Old Testament and I see that some of these greatest men of
God had their greatest trials, not when they were young and
vigorous and strong, but when they were old. When they were
in middle life, they had their greatest trials. Now, if that
old nature had been eradicated and they'd been baptized with
the Holy Ghost and filled with the Spirit of God, and I know
they were because they wrote the scriptures. Then how could
this old nature get out of the cage? It never was in a cage. It was in them. It never had
left them. They had had the strength and
power to overcome. God permitted it according to
his will, but it was there. Now look at the next verse. For
the flesh, it never has been anything but flesh, it lusteth,
it does battle against the Spirit. And the Spirit is against the
flesh, and these are contrary miles and poles apart from one
another. But they're still there. And that surprises a new believer. He's thrown sometime into shock. He thinks, I'm saved now, I belong
to the Lord, I'll have no more of these thoughts, I'll have
no more of these conflicts, I'll have no more of these wrestlings,
I'll have no more of this flying off the handle, I'll have no
more of this ambition, I'll have no more of this pride, I'll have
no more. It may not take the same direction,
but it's still there. It's still there. The old nature
is still there. Now look here at Jeremiah 17.
It's still there. And he says in verse 9, this
nature, this heart, I've established what the heart is. It's the old
nature. It's the old man. And brethren, your pastor has
an old man. There's no question about it.
I have a new nature, too. I have the nature of God. I have
a new heart that God gave me. You see, God doesn't take the
old heart and change it. He gives a new heart. He doesn't
take the old man and reform it. and shape it up and improve it
and patch it up. He ignores the old man and makes
a new person in Christ Jesus. And that's the reason that conflict's
going on all the time. Don't expect anything else out
of anybody except a conflict. And verse 9, and this old nature
is deceitful above all things. Not only wicked, but deceitful.
What does the word deceit mean? Well, when I think of the word
deceit, I think of this. It's not what it appears to be. It's not what it appears. It's
not what you want me to think it is. In other words, man, this
is what my black preacher friend says, man's nature, man's evil
nature, deceives himself. It deceives himself. Who can
know it? As Peter said, Lord, I'll die
with you. He didn't even know he was capable
of denying his Lord. He didn't even know it. It deceived
him. He was as fool as much as...
Few men really know them. Few women really know themselves
or care to admit what they really are by nature. That's sad, but
it's so. Man's nature. deceives himself,
and then we deceive other people. We draw a curtain across our
hearts in the presence of others. I know there's a sense in which
we have to. There's no way that you can be totally, completely
honest with any other human being. He couldn't stand the shock again
with. I'm not asking you to do that.
The Bible never tells you to confess your sins to anybody.
It says confess your faults, though. That's the potential. That's the possibility. You see
what I'm saying? It says confess your fault. Now,
John Wesley used to make his religious man confess their sins,
everything they thought that week or said that week or done
that week. I bet those was fun sessions, don't you? I bet there's dishonest sessions,
too. I bet there's some of those good ladies there didn't tell
the truth. But we're to confess our fault.
But here's what we do. God help us. We give people the
impression that we're holier than we are. That's so sad because
it not only hurts us, but it hurts them. We give people the
impression that we deceive others. Our hearts are deceitful. I'm
not telling us to use people's ears for garbage cans and lay
out our wickedness. I'm not saying that at all. But
let's not try to give the appearance to others that we don't have
any problems. It's not fair. It's not fair
to that person. He goes around mourning his sins and mourning
his thoughts, and he thinks you don't thank him. He thinks, oh,
if I could just be like her, if he only knew. See what I'm
saying? Oh, if I could just be like him,
if he only knew. But you won't let him, and therefore
it hurts him. You pretend to your own destruction
and his too. And then we try to deceive God.
Let me ask you this. I'm saying this, and I say this
To anybody here, I don't care how evil you are, if you can
be honest with God. How long has it been since you've
been honest in prayer? Honest. Now, I know we, there's
no way, I'm not much of a public prayer. I just, I just, the praying
that I enjoy and the praying I do is by myself in these motel
rooms and in my study and other places when I can shut the door
and I can tell the Lord just what's on my mind. I can even
mumble and complain sometimes, because he understands. And I
can lie on the floor before him and say, Lord, I said this and
thought this and did this. You know it. I know it. We all
know it. Here I am. Here I am, just like
I am. I need mercy. I need grace. I need forgiveness. I need cleansing.
I need Christ. Would you save me? Have you ever
done that? If you ever just, if you ever,
before God, just unburied your soul, call it by name, here it
is, Lord, here's what I am. Lord, here I am. What I am, you know. What I do,
what I think, what I see, what I say, what I, everything about
me. He said, look here, verse 10,
I, the Lord, I search the heart. I search the heart. I search
the nature. I see it. Oh, I see it. I try your mind and your thoughts,
and I'm going to give you just what you deserve. I'm going to
judge you according to your ways and the fruit. Don't do it, Lord.
Please don't do it. Give me Christ. That's what I'm
saying. This is what I'm saying. What I'm trying to say, not doing
a very good job of it, But, oh, if we could just reach out and
just strip that old religious veneer off, that old religious
profession, that old tradition, that old, that old fruitiness,
and just lay us bare before God. Here I am, Lord. Be merciful
to me of sin. That's what a Republican did.
He wouldn't even lift his eyes. That Pharisee would say, now,
Lord, I thank you. I'm not like other men. I tithe,
and I read my Bible, and I pray, and I go to church. And I don't
do this, and I don't do that. I've never done this, and that,
and the other. I thank the Lord I've never done that. Went to
hell with his shoes on. Isn't that a sight? And here
an old publican over there, wouldn't even lift his eyes to heaven,
way off there in the back, smote upon his breast, and he cried,
God, let your blood be propitiation now to me. T-H-E. Definite article,
the sinner of sinners, the lowdownest sinner, the most hell-deserving
sinner, the most undeserving. Here I am, God help me. My Lord
said, on the authority of my Lord's very word, that man went
home justified. I want to go home justified,
don't you? And I'm coming clean before God.
You go on playing, pretending, or whatever you like. But I'm
going to take the place of a sinner and see if I can find the sinner's
savior. That'd be it. One other thing, and I'll quit,
I've preached too long, but Romans 7, I've got to let you go. But
let me give you one more thing. I'm getting at the heart of it.
This is where God, if you're going to play games, you better
play something else. Because you're playing, you've got high
stakes rolling in this game. You're sold. You've got high
stakes. I tell you, you don't stand but
one loss, one box of cards, and you're out, or whatever that
means. All right, Romans 7, verse 20. Now, if I do that, I would not. It's no more I that do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me. I find in a law, Paul said, when
I would do good, evil is present with me. I delight in the law
of God. after the inward man. That's
that new nature. I do, nobody can say that except
man that does. But I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, bringing me into captivity
of the law of sin which is in my members, O wretched man that
I am. Who's going to deliver me from
this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. That's where it is.