Taking Out The Trash – Part 1

“I Can’t Believe I Just Said That!”

INTRO:

-         Anything ever slip out of your mouth?

o       I have a saying that there is a little bit of truth in everything we say

-         Ever do something and wonder why you did it?

“Where did that come from?”

In order to answer that question, we must study the heart.

-         We are going to spend several weeks talking about our hearts.

Two kinds of hearts:

A. The thing that beats inside your chest

B. Your other heart

§        The thing that broke in Jr. high when the girl of your dreams dumped you

§        The thing that swells with pride when your kids do something great

§        That thing that you felt when you met your woman for the first time

-         In the Bible, the heart is used as a symbol to describe the part inside us that makes us human. 

o       A doctor could not point it out in an x-ray, but it is there.   

o       It is within the body but it is not part of the body. 

Psalm 73:26 does a good job showing the difference between the two:

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever”

The flesh = the physical body

The heart = the invisible part of us that no amount of medicine can fix, no surgery can fix

The heart is “what makes us tick.”  

-         The heart is what the Bible uses to describe such things as personality, the intellect, memory, emotions, desires and will. 

o       We are unique from everyone else because of what lies within our hearts.

-         The heart is the part of us no one else can see (not even our wives)

-         The heart contains those desires and struggles that we hold back

o       I have often said, “I have to make a daily effort to hold back the parts of me that are not honoring to God.

§        I have to get up every morning and choose to be nice to people

§        At any given time I feel like I could lose it and let the real me show its ugly face

o       You can only hold it in for so long before the real you comes out

-         for many years I thought that was the Christian life…holding back the dark side

o       but that’s a wrong view of such things

-         Instead of holding back the dark side, we should be removing the dark side from within us

o       We should be taking the trash out from within our hearts

Matthew 12:34.  You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

EXAMPLE: Remember Erkle?  He used to say, “Did I do that?”

On giving instructions for life, a father tells his son…

Proverbs 4:23.  Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

o       If you get the heart right, the rest will follow

Let me explain this more in detail:

Matthew 23:25-28. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.  "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

-          Jesus was upset because their hearts were not right. 

o       Everything on the outside looked right but the inside was rotting away

§         EXAMPLE: (LIKE MY DONATED CAMPER!  The deeper I dug the more rotten wood I found)

I don’t ever want to hide what is inside of me. 

I want who I am on the outside to match who I am on the inside. 

It wears me out trying to be what I am not.

This is what we usually do:

We usually focus on behaviors instead of the causes of our behaviors (the heart)

-         When you are a kid, you are taught not to say certain words or you will get your mouth washed out with soap. 

o       When we were kids we were taught not to say words that sounded like certain words or we’d get our mouths washed out with soap. 

-         This procedure taught us to control our behavior but at the same time never dealt with the real problem that was lurking beneath…

o       …We were kids who wanted to swear but couldn’t. 

o       …Now we are adults who can swear whenever we want to (unless mamma is around) and nobody is going to stop us! 

The Bible gives us an example of what Jesus thinks about learning appropriate behaviors on the outside while still being messed up (and full of trash) on the inside:

Matthew 15

1Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"

-          In the days of Jesus, the religious leaders had developed many extra rules to keep people from breaking the real rules…the Laws we find written in the Old Testament.

o       EXAMPLE: not that different from rules churches make today.

§         No dancing because dancing leads to…

3Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' 5But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' 6he is not to 'honor his father' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

-          the religious leaders were giving Jesus a hard time because he was breaking one of the extra rules, but he turned it back on them by telling them that they were following one of the extra rules and yet breaking one of the Real Laws

Jesus was not real happy with the condition of their heart.  Look at what He says:

7You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
 8" 'These people honor me with their lips (the outside appearance),
but their hearts (who they really are) are far from me.
 9They worship me in vain;
      their teachings are but rules taught by men.'^[d]"

Jesus proceeds to explain why He is so upset with them:

10Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' "

 Peter does not get it.

15Peter said, "Explain the parable to us."

16"Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. 17"Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' 19For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.' "

Outside behavior is not a good indicator of who we really are on the inside.

Jesus can see who we really are

Jeremiah 17:10. "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

-          For God, the actions are not worth rewarding unless the heart is connected to them

This is what we need to do/ where we need to start:

We need to examine our own hearts

          Ignore the outside and look at the inside…what are you holding back?

Over time, your heart has changed.  You are a different person on the inside. 

It is time to open our eyes and see what is really there.  

It is time to move the stove away from the wall and clean out the dirt.

You have spent all your life focusing on your behaviors while your heart has been rotting away.

Stop the rot by locating what is causing the rot. 

Psalm 139:23-24.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Ask God to show you the condition of your heart.

Over the next few weeks…

…we are going to be poking around in some sensitive places

…we are going to dig deep within us and get the trash out, the infection out

…the stuff, that if it remains left alone will kill us, will kill our relationships, will kill our faith. 

Just as cancer undetected can take a life “instantly” so an uncared for heart can kill a marriage, a relationship with friends, a witness. 

Closing

Look within yourself and ask yourself…”How’s my heart.”  If you are honest with yourself as I have been with myself, you will find that you and I both need a lot of work.  We got a lot of trash to take out. 

Walk on this journey with me the next few weeks.  Make it a priority to be here and see what the Word has to say that can change your life forever!

Ezekiel 36:26 tells us that God is capable of giving us a new heart.  Do you want one?

This can’t happen at the end of one service.  It is a process that takes place over time.  Today is just the beginning.

Decide today that you want to be on this journey with me.

*This series of sermons was partially taken from It Came from Within by Andy Stanley*