Words From the Living God to You

[0:00] Father, we invite you, we give you permission, and we don't have any qualifications to this. We don't have any conditions. Father, just stand before you today, and we invite and give you permission to have your word enter deep into our heart, that you would speak, your word would speak and rule in the very center of who we are.

[0:23] Father, on one hand, part of our flesh wants to add conditions or maybe is a bit worried, but, Father, at the end of the day, as we gather here, we know that Jesus loves us so much that he died for us on the cross.

[0:38] And so, Father, trusting in Jesus, may your word come into us. May your words speak and rule in our hearts. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen.

[0:53] Please be seated. How is it that all of a sudden it's perfectly socially acceptable to be prejudiced against Russians in Canada?

[1:06] Why is it that very few people seem to be troubled by the fact? I mean, I don't know. There's so many different news sources in Canada that it's hard.

[1:18] Maybe you're all reading or listening to news sources which are trying to address this issue. But from what I can see, like the principal news outlets in Ottawa, they don't seem to actually say, by the way, why are we prejudiced against Russian people who live in Canada?

[1:34] It seems to be fine to put them down. It doesn't seem as if people complain if they're deplatformed, if they're cancelled, if their assets are frozen. Like, didn't something similar happen in the Second World War in the States with Japanese people?

[1:52] And now don't we look upon that as being a terrible evil that the American government did against people of Japanese descent living in Canada? Why is it all right right now and why is it that very few people talk about it?

[2:10] The scripture text that we looked at, on one hand, from the sound of it, it looked like one of those really boring sort of weird texts that Christians sort of talk about and Jewish people talk about defiled and unclean and all of that.

[2:27] And it seems to have nothing to do with our modern life and our modern experience. But the text that we just look at has a very, very profound insight about our human nature. And with that, why it is that there can be great prejudice by a wide segment of the elite and of opinion makers, prejudice against Russians, actions against Russians, which are probably immoral and unjust, and with very, very few people commenting on it.

[2:57] The Bible actually has what looks like a weird talk about rituals, actually has a profound insight into it. And so what we're going to do, we're going to look at it, but we're going to do something else, which is a bit to help you to understand both the point and to go back and after we've sort of...

[3:13] What I'm going to do is this. You know, one of the things you can pray about is if I ever have a sabbatical, one of the things I'm going to do on a sabbatical is I'm going to prepare a sermon series on the book of Job. I've never preached a sermon series on Job.

[3:27] It's a hard book to preach on, and it's long. It's 42 chapters. You don't want to do a 42-week sermon series, maybe eight. But one of the things I think I'd have to do if I ever preach a sermon series on Job, I'd need a sabbatical to sort of do almost like all the sermons done, and then I could just do them one after another.

[3:46] But those of you who are unfamiliar with the story of Job, God allows, in a sense, the devil to do a whole pile of terrible things to Job. And then you get a big, big part of the book is Job sort of complaining and meditating upon what's happened.

[3:59] And you get his three friends all basically dump, you know, saying different things. And then at the end of the book, you find out that all of Job's friends are wrong, and Job is right.

[4:13] So if you ever preach to the book of Job, you sort of have to tell everybody at the beginning what the ending is. Otherwise, you can't understand any of the texts you're going to. Like, if you don't understand, okay, we're reading this, it's going to sound really weird, because Job is saying all these things.

[4:27] But remember what God says at the end, that's our clue. So what we're going to do by looking at 7, 1 to 23, is we're going to begin with the end. So if you have your Bibles, it would be really great if you turn to Mark chapter 7, verse 20.

[4:41] Remember we read verses 1 to 23. I'm going to go back and look at the part, but it's the ending. Knowing the ending helps you to understand what's going on with this seemingly to us irrelevant discussion about what you wash and what you don't wash and how to interpret Isaiah and how to interpret Moses.

[5:00] And it just looks like yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Nothing important there for me. So we're going to start at verse 20, and here's what Jesus says towards the end of this sort of chunk, this story within the larger story of the gospel.

[5:15] And Jesus said, what comes out of a person, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man.

[5:27] Now, just before we go anything further, what you need to understand here about the word heart, heart, we use the word heart and we think of emotions. But the Bible sort of sees it in the center of what sort of makes you you, at the center of that, of what makes you you.

[5:45] Sometimes it's called the heart, sometimes it's called the soul. But out of that one, in a sense, out of that one heart, out of the heart comes your thinking, out of the heart comes imagination, out of the heart comes your will, out of the heart comes your emotions, out of the heart comes your longings, out of the heart comes your desires, out of the heart comes your affections, out of the heart comes your memory, out of the heart comes your creativity.

[6:15] So we tend to think of, there's your mind, there's your emotions, you know, there's your creativity, and there's sort of all these separate things. but the Bible has this singular word and says it's out of this one, in a sense, organ that the imagination, the will, the emotions, the thinking, the rational bit, all that comes from, in a sense, this one organ.

[6:40] And what we'd also now say that in some ways it's your heart that's your you. Don't want to go too far about that because your bodies are important. My body is very important and, you know, you don't have just a heart without a body and all that.

[6:53] But in some ways your heart is your you. That's how we'd sort of, in the same way that when you meet a man or a woman who has dementia and they no longer recognize them, you, in a sense, feel a little bit like they've gone.

[7:10] They've become lost. They've vanished. Their you has gone. So I'm going to read verse 20 again. And he said to them, what comes out of a person is what defiles him.

[7:23] For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts. Now, I thought about this a little bit. I'm going to take a sort of a few seconds with several of these just so you understand it.

[7:36] And I know it's going to be a bit of an offensive shock to some people maybe who are watching this online to hear this. One of the things I heard very, very many times is that Jesus never spoke about LGBTQ plus issues, that he never spoke about it.

[7:54] But that's not true. It's absolutely, absolutely not true. He speaks about it right here. And because the first thing that he mentioned, I mean, evil thoughts, and the very next thing he mentioned, sexual immorality, that's in the Greek, the word porneia.

[8:08] And the porneia word, what sexual immorality says, what Jesus means right here, is that any sexual knowing or sexual stimulation outside of the marriage of a biological male to a biological female is porneia.

[8:26] That's what the word means. Any sexual knowing or sexual stimulation outside of the marriage of a biological male to a biological female is porneia.

[8:39] And I'm not going to talk about that particularly. I just want to let you know. It's a bit of a shock. But by the way, if you understand the expression here, you understand that this is speaking. Remember, what Jesus is saying here is he's not saying, oh, there's these nasty gay people over there, and there's all these self-righteous heterosexuals here.

[8:57] No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's saying that what, in a sense, makes us not right is coming out of us. And this way of describing what comes out of us sexually describes every human being.

[9:11] This text isn't an us versus them text. This is a shocking description. You know, this is us. This is us.

[9:23] Not an us versus them. This is us. Actually, and I know there's some homeschoolers here. So this isn't a put down of homeschoolers.

[9:36] But what you need to understand here, what he's saying is, you could have the most godly parents, and you could homeschool your kids, and you could make sure that nothing bad from the internet or popular culture comes into their lives.

[9:53] And you know what? They're still going to be sinners. They're still going to do bad things. And in fact, they might do absolutely horrendous things. They might become a murderer.

[10:06] Or a racist. Because it's not that evil comes from outside. Evil doesn't come because you have your social... I mean, social structures can be evil.

[10:18] They can be evil. And social structures have consequences. They can break down human beings and encourage human beings to do terrible evil.

[10:35] So the Bible isn't just saying that social structures don't matter. But what the Bible is saying is that human beings create social structures. And because there's things which are evil that come out of human beings, there are all social structures.

[10:51] You're going to have something about them that just aren't right and that encourage things that just aren't right. But even if you could somehow or another protect your kids, your little precious baby, from all social influences, the fact of the matter is, is you actually don't get away from the problem because things which are wrong emerge from within people.

[11:12] And I'm going to say a bit more of it in a moment. But so this very, very first thing, and this isn't an us versus them text. It's really lamentable that things in our culture have come so that there can be wars on this in our culture.

[11:26] And it's lamentable. Because what we really need is to have a humbling of ourselves and say, how shall we then live, given that these are human problems, rather than saying it's all black people or all white people or all Asian people or all rich people or all educated people or all uneducated working class truckers.

[11:50] We're all columnists. We're all people who like the New York Times. No. What comes out of a person is what defiles them.

[12:02] For when out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, that's stealing, murder, taking of innocent human life, adultery. That is specific.

[12:13] A husband cheating on his wife or a wife cheating on her husband. Coveting. Coveting is another word for greed.

[12:25] And it probably is a better word. For just being greed. Greed. Always wanting more. Always wanting more and more and more and more. Where was I on my list of things?

[12:40] Greed or coveting. Wickedness. Another way of understanding wickedness here, maybe a better word would be malice. Malice.

[12:50] And what that means is you look at people from a perspective of wanting to harm them or see bad things happen to them. I'll be very honest.

[13:03] When I was a young man, I was very, very radical left wing. And I hated Nixon. I hated those guys. And I was really happy when bad things happened to him.

[13:20] Like I was happy. I was a Christian. And I wasn't praying for his conversion or his repentance or his amendment of life. I was glad that he was getting bad things happening to him.

[13:34] That's malice. That was in my heart. Deceit. That means just deceiving people.

[13:49] Saying to a person, gosh, you really are well-dressed and sniggering and then telling everybody about how gauche they are and they don't know how to put clothes together.

[14:01] That's deceit. Yes, boss, you're a great boss. Then you go around and you badmoth your boss. And the next sin is sensuality.

[14:13] That's the sin where basically you sexualize. It's where you increasingly sexualize all relationships and more and more of reality.

[14:28] In fact, that's a very, very, very big problem right now. Our schools, I mean, one of the arguments for Christians and others to get out of the school system is that, in fact, the popular movement of our thought is to sexualize children in terrible ways.

[14:45] They're terribly sexualizing everything about relationships in schools and very, very young kids. And it's not good. And there's very few people in Canada seeming to speak out against it.

[15:04] But that's what's happening. Everything is being sexualized and that's sensuality. Envy is looking up at another person and envy is a really dangerous sin.

[15:16] And I think it's in Matthew and maybe in Luke where it explains that the reason that the Jewish leaders wanted Jesus to be crucified, it says it was out of envy that they wanted him crucified.

[15:28] See, envy is looking up at somebody who has something that you, some higher position or some virtue that you don't have and you feel inferior to them and you resent it and you want to bring them down.

[15:43] You want to bring them down. You want to see them fall. It fits very easily with malice. Slander is another way of, I mean, deceit is deceiving people.

[16:01] Slander is attacking their character. Slander is another way of sharing sharing pieces of gossip or information in such a way that will make the other person look really bad.

[16:14] In churches, it can often happen in the form of sharing prayer requests. You share a prayer request for another person and really what you're doing is slandering them. Now everybody knows how bad they are.

[16:27] All in the guise of praying for them. In fact, it's part of the evil of the heart that you can feel virtuous for slandering somebody because you're a person of prayer.

[16:41] I'm a person of prayer. I pray for this person. Do you know what they did? This is why we need to pray for them. Pride.

[16:59] Feeling you're better than everybody else. Believing that. One of the ways that we know we're proud is the more that the pride of somebody else bothers us, the more it's probably a sign that we are proud.

[17:15] If another person's very obvious pride just sort of bounces off us like water off a duck's back, then that's not our particular sin. If it deeply offends you, it probably is an indicator that you have a problem with pride.

[17:27] I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, you cannot look up to God if you're looking down your nose at other people. Foolishness, or is folly, it's sort of an Old Testament type of word.

[17:46] It's the opposite of being wise or being prudent or being careful is foolishness. is foolishness. Now, just remember how it began.

[17:56] We spent some time on it, but you know what's important? Often in sinless, we just rush over it and then we think, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yada, yada, yada, yada, yeah, got that, all those things are bad. But what we really do is we're not really thinking about it as being us.

[18:11] You know? And by the way, don't you see how this all fits with our current problem of why is it that they're so easy for people to jump on the bandwagon of cancelling innocent Russians who've left Russia and live somewhere else like in Canada, United States?

[18:27] Don't you see how easy it would be if I'm envious of somebody, let's say a pianist or a business person, to now all of a sudden to mask my envy or to feed my envy.

[18:38] I'm both masking my envy and feeding my envy by thinking that that person should be cancelled. Don't you see how easy it is for me to in a sense be slandering them to say, well, you're Russian, therefore if you're Russian you must support Putin and you must support what's going on with that.

[18:51] There's something defective about you Russians, isn't there? And all of a sudden you see a whole pile of other type of stuff. You see lies and all this other stuff which is going there and it comes effortlessly out of human beings.

[19:03] It comes effortlessly out of human beings. It comes effortlessly out of the woke, out of the anti-woke. It comes effortlessly out of conservatives. It comes effortlessly out of liberals.

[19:13] It comes effortlessly out of Christians and Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus. The well-educated and the uneducated. There's just these things which just come effortlessly out of us.

[19:28] All these evil things, verse 23, come up from within and they defile a person. See, this is a very profound teaching of Jesus. Jesus. And it's a very unique teaching of Jesus.

[19:46] You know, Paul will put it, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and he's capturing what Jesus is just teaching and making very, very, very clear that Jesus isn't saying that your heart is purely evil.

[20:02] evil. But he's also not saying that your heart is perfect. He's saying it's fallen. He's not saying that every single thing you do is thoroughly evil. That would just be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

[20:14] But what he is saying is that evil comes from within. It's not coming from social structures. It isn't coming from because you have a certain color of skin.

[20:24] It isn't because you have a certain type of parents or lineage. It isn't from all of the normal way. And it isn't just because you haven't learned the right things. And it isn't just because you haven't mastered certain types of willpower things.

[20:38] You see, because the fact of the matter is, is that we, and all of the different philosophies and all of the different ideologies and all of the different religions are very, very clever at coming up with different types of things. It's because of your lineage.

[20:50] Oh, it's because your mom didn't nurse you. Oh, it's because your mom did nurse you. Oh, it's because your dad was distant. Oh, it's because your dad spent too much time with you. Oh, it's because of your education. Oh, it's because of your skin color.

[21:01] Oh, it's because of your social class. Oh, it's your lack of social. It's very, we put all of these types of things and Jesus says, no, no, it comes from within. It comes from within. There is something in every human being.

[21:13] We, we are fallen. We are finite. We are creatures. We don't want to acknowledge that we're finite. We don't want to accept that we're creatures. And, and, and, and, and, and we always seem to be like a, a drunk person trying, a very, very, very drunk person trying to, to sit in a chair and, and one, one hand they fall off on one side and they, or on the other hand they fall off on the other side.

[21:34] They're either, we, we keep falling, oh, okay, because I'm not perfect, I must be completely and utterly, everything about me is evil. And, and then the next thing you get on the chair for a brief second, you fall off, and oh, no, no, I'm actually perfect and it's all their fault.

[21:46] Right? Isn't that, that cup? After years of therapy I finally realized that all of my problems, that all of my faults are somebody else's, what, all of my problems are, all the things I do wrong are somebody else's fault.

[21:57] Something like that, right? After years of therapy it's a great cup. And, and Jesus is saying something very, very profound. Your heart is not evil or perfect but it is fallen. That you are a fallen finite creature.

[22:09] that the heart is consistently has a bent towards different types of sin and that all of us are broken.

[22:23] And if you just think of all of those different things that it mentioned here it affects our sexuality, it affects our imagination, it affects our will, affects our speech, affects our thinking, it's not like just, okay, my thinking's perfect but everything else is broken or my will is perfect but everything else is just a bit off of whack or my sexuality is perfect but everything, no, no, no, no, no, no, you listen to Jesus it comes out of us.

[22:53] There's something about us. It's in light of that that Jesus is going to come at this and by the way this is something that, you know, it's a very unpopular doctrine but it's one that we all on a deep level it's funny because we read we read things like critical theory which deny this and accept it where we read power of positive thinking things which deny this and we like it and we read we, you know, we read other types of political philosophies and which we like which deny this because there's this we have this addiction to thinking that there's going to be some type of philosophy that human beings have developed or some religious practice that human beings have developed that somehow it gets over this problem or it has supplant just doesn't deal with it and it presents a different picture and we have this continual desire for it but at the same time

[24:00] I mean, a very simple thought experiment if tomorrow we woke up and every single social media platform and every legacy newspaper and media platform all said nothing bad happened in the world today we'd all know that it wasn't true we'd all wonder if the Russians or the Chinese or Fox News or something had hacked us and if somebody if one of your if your sister or your best friend said they joined a commune or a community somewhere out in the bush and I love this community it's perfect there's no like everybody there just loves each other all of the time nothing bad ever happens it's completely and utterly perfect bing bing bing bing all these red flags and alarm bells are going off in your mind and you're saying whoa whoa whoa whoa brainwashing cult great evil right that's what you'd think and that's what you'd think if you're a secular person too you'd go no no no no no no this there's something that just whoa the smell test whoa it's just not passing the smell test why because we know that that's not true we know that

[25:15] Jesus is true like that's a shock Jesus is true so we'll go back and very quickly I I've spent a long time on this and but maybe I won't do all of the the verses that lead up to it because I want to get to our pre primary points if we now go back and look at it at verse one mindful of this is where Jesus is going to lead them right in a sense to try to get us modern Canadians to understand the problem I began with prejudice against Russians in Canada because we don't have a big issue about how to wash a couch by and large okay so but Jesus has to get them there in their context but it still has something important to say to us let's look at very briefly in verse one now when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem and by saying scribes or intellectuals from Jerusalem it's like saying a group of intellectuals who all either went to Oxford

[26:17] Harvard or Stanford right these are elite who've come in verse two they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled that is unwashed so it's not talking about what we would it's not talking about hygiene it's talking about ritual okay how you make yourself acceptable to God verse three for the Pharisee and all the Jews not eat unless they wash their hands properly holding to the tradition of the elders and when they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash and there are many other traditions that they observe such as the washing of cups and pots and copper and vessels and dining couches okay just sorry I have to do this I'm really I don't know if I have to say confession after this or not if you look at verse four again and there are many other traditions that they observe such as the washing of cups sorry just above that and when they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash you know what the word wash actually is literally baptize I'm sorry it's possible to be baptized biblically without full immersion otherwise you're saying that every time they come in from the market they get completely baptized

[27:27] I'm sorry a bit of an aside just for those of you watching maybe there's something about Anglican and other practice of just pouring over it just saying that's the word baptize but here's here's the thing which is going on you know very very briefly in the text that Jesus isn't being a Canadian because Canadians don't like the tradition of the elders it's sort of we're of two minds if you have a person from one of our First Nations come and very reverently tell you all about how they obey the traditions of their elders people will all nod okay but if you have another person come and say you know listen my great grandfather told me to live this way and my grandfather told me to live this way and my dad told me to live this way so therefore I'm going to live this way and we'd all wonder if there was something wrong with them right because Canadians say I gotta be me doesn't matter what my great grandfather my grandfather and my dad said they don't know me right so Jesus isn't being a Canadian here what he's just saying is this that what's happened is that they've added a suggestion about how you know the Bible will tell you let's say the Bible tells you don't commit adultery and so

[28:58] I may give you a couple of suggestions as to how to protect yourself from that if you're married and then somebody else takes my suggestion and they make a suggestion on top of my suggestion and then somebody else adds a suggestion to your suggestion to my suggestion and then somebody else comes and adds another suggestion to that suggestion to that suggestion to that suggestion by the time you get to 20 suggestions down nobody even remembers what the Bible text is anymore you've completely lost the Bible you've completely lost God's word and that's going to be important when we get to I'll explain why that's very important at the end so verse six and the Pharisees and the scribes asked him why do you disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands they're not divine doing anything that's wrong from the Bible but they're breaking their traditions and so therefore they're sort of unacceptable you know in

[30:03] I have a person in my congregation who always asks me why I often use American examples rather than Canadian and I said to him I think if I use Canadian examples I'm going to get in trouble so I'm going to risk getting in trouble how's the secular equivalent of this pronouns you don't use the right pronouns hell hath no fury in much of elite culture the fact that I did not begin this talk by acknowledging or claiming to acknowledge that I'm on certain ancestral lands I'm defiled those are the secular equivalents things it's a human thing to create insiders and outsiders and Jesus is getting rid of it all in this human lust to create insiders and outsiders based on external things and the culmination of this whole text is saying that there's a human problem and it's not to do with these rules and it's not to do with these external things that there's a human problem of the heart and all it could be those who wear

[31:19] MAGA hats and those who don't like you know if you're in maybe certain parts of Alabama or the states and everybody's coming to church wearing MAGA hats you know and if you don't wear a MAGA hat oh you're unclean right or if you're you're going to another part of the United States and you are wearing a MAGA hat oh you're unclean right it's a human problem it's a contemporary problem Jesus going right after it verse six and he said to them well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written and he quotes Isaiah the people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me in vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men you leave the commandments of God and hold to the tradition of men and the word vain here has this double sense that it is both at the end of the day the rules are self exalting and also that they're futile so the

[32:27] MAGA hat in the right content is self exalting creates self righteousness and proper pronoun usage or making claims about native lands fills you with pride and self righteousness and looking down your nose at others and creating us versus them in division so it's vain because it makes you go like this and it's futile because it's not dealing with your heart here's I think if you could if you could just actually we'll read a little bit further notice by the way what

[33:31] Jesus says here in verse eight you leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men and he's just quoting what's in Isaiah and then in verse nine he said to them you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition for Moses said honor your father and your mother and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die so notice the commandment of God is Isaiah and the commandment of God is now Exodus I think in Leviticus but you say if a man tells his father or his mother whatever you would have gained from me as Corban that is given to God then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother thus making void notice what he says the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and many such things you do so that it's a bit of a technical thing that he's doing here here would be and the purpose of the foundation is to avoid paying taxes and to allow you to keep a lot of your own money under your own control for your own pleasure your own ego and your own vanity and it creates this double thing it means poor working stiffs like truckers or just a wage slave for you know some company you poor people you got to pay all your taxes but there's a way with clever lawyers to get a foundation where

[35:07] I don't pay the taxes and I get to be virtuous because I've created a foundation and that's what Corban is roughly going on it would be like a thing at the time that was roughly the same which I understand is possible in American law and I'm not going to name any particular corporations that probably describe that so it's a point of Jesus point is the Bible is very clear honoring your mother and father means you have to be doing something and you can't just say oh no no no no no no no no no I you know working class stiffs they have going on so let's just wrap it all up if we begin to grasp the problem of the fact that the human heart is the source of these different types of sins sins that affect the imagination that affect social relations that affect our that are touching our creativity our religious sentiments our emotions the way our mind works and can analyze things if we understand that there's something in the very center of that generates these problems being out of whack then the first point only the triune only the triune

[36:45] God could act to bring you to himself you need you need God to do it sorry I don't hope this doesn't offend because you're screwed modern language if you grasp this you just realize there's nothing you can do like if there's no God then that's just really depressing but if there is a God and we believe as Christians that Jesus has revealed that the triune God really existed unless he does something you can't do anything you can't leave yourself to save yourself and it doesn't even matter if we say maybe my little bentness if I combine my bentness with Matt's bentness with Chris's bentness with Diane's bentness with

[37:45] Lisa's bentness well maybe you know we'll all sort of straighten me no no no no you multiply those ten I'm sorry if I've picked on some of you we're only going to we haven't fixed the problem nothing personal multiplied the problem might not be balanced it might be adding to imbalance and so we're completely and utterly up we're completely and utterly need you see that's the thing that the religious people don't get is they think they can keep just if they just get this right they just get this right they just get this right and then they have this basic sense when they see other people doing something wrong that's going to affect them not getting it right so you can even have more justifiable anger at people who don't just get it right because you gotta get it no only the triune God could act to bring you to himself and here if you put up the second point you need the triune

[38:47] God to tell you what he has done for you how to receive what he has done for you and the Bible being inerrant come from comes from Jesus the commandments that you read when you're reading Exodus and Leviticus and Genesis and Isaiah they're they're gods and when you're reading that you're reading you're hearing God speak that's what the text that's what Jesus is telling you that's why I believe it I I believe it because Jesus he died on a cross and he rose again and the grave is empty and they never found the body and his resurrection he predicted that he was going to do it it comes in the context of scriptures from 1400 years earlier earlier and earlier and earlier promising that something like this was going to happen and all these scriptures get fulfilled you read

[39:56] Psalm 22 and it describes crucifixion when crucifixion hadn't even been invented and Jesus fulfills these prophecies and he fulfills these texts of profound wisdom and insight about the human heart profound insight there is no better remedy to racism and prejudice and the oppression of other classes than that God has made every single human being in his image there is no better remedy to our mistreating other human beings or treating people as second class citizens and that very simple profound statement in Genesis chapter 1 every human being is made in the image of God every human being is made in the image of God the down syndrome child and the Olympic athlete the richest the most brilliant and the most foolish and the ones with the lowest IQ all made in the image of God and hence having a dignity and value and worth and integrity that comes from God not from the state in which the state if it is wise and if it is just and is moral will recognize the state doesn't bestow this the state when it's wise recognizes what God has done when he made human beings but you see understand now when as Jesus describing the problem of the human heart you start to understand what's happening when Jesus he's proven that he's

[41:27] God with his walking on water with his fiend of the 5000 with his raising the dead which we're going to come to which we've already seen with Jairus' daughter and he's proven that he's God and so we understand that when Jesus dies on the cross it's God dying on the cross it's God doing something for human beings that human beings can't do for themselves and we can't really understand it all and so we are completely and utterly dependent upon God revealing through his word what it is that he has done so that we can be reconciled to him that we can belong to him and that we can start to keep and live in step with him we're completely dependent upon God to tell us what he has done and that leads us to the final point you could put it up you and I need to be reformed transformed and renewed by God's word written you need to be reformed transformed and renewed by God's word written you see my mind is going to keep getting things wrong

[42:34] I'm going to keep and I'm sure I'm going to get things wrong in my heart and my mind and my affections my imagination are going to keep getting wrong and that that's why I need to constantly be reading God's word and I need to be in things like discipling and friendship relationships centered around God's word or small groups centered around God's word where I need to come to church on a Sunday where God's word is opened in the context of celebrating Holy Communion so we remember that Jesus died for us we remember the gospel we remember that he's coming again we hear the word in light of the gospel and we hear the gospel in light of the word and we need to come again and again and again and again to God's word to have God's word speak to us so that our sin is revealed so that we recognize our prejudice our racism our envy our deceit our proneness to slander our proneness to sexual sins that it comes to us and that we're confronted by God's word because God's word is a means of grace for us to hear again and again and again and again so that as we give our lives to

[43:37] Jesus as we trust his word that Jesus is God's great provision for your great need to make you at one with God there is no other means that God has done this profound act of love and sacrifice and service in the person of his son he's done it for you he didn't have to do it for himself he's done it for you he loves you and his word communicates that to you and his word says given that you are now with that you now are at one with me through what Christ has done for you you still have sinful tendencies you need to come again and again and again and again and again to God's word to be reformed by his word transformed by his word renewed by his word so that we are transformed and those things in our heart that are prone to slander or put to death and by being nurtured by God's word our love of the truth and our hatred of lies that that might grow and that we might learn to repent of lies and repent of idols and to love the truth and love true affections and love the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of the world and we need to constantly come together in the presence of other redeemed sinners to come under God's word heart and have it come into our hearts and our minds brothers and sisters

[44:51] I need that I need this please stand let's bow our heads in prayer father we thank and praise you that you see the heart of every single one of us here you see father the precise particular history of virtue and vice of everyone who is here and still you love us and still your son died on the cross for us and we give you thanks and praise that he didn't just die in general for humanity in general because we don't live in general I am me and each one here is a me and we give you thanks and praise that Jesus died for each me each I in our particularity in our tragic sinfulness goodness and in our bright potential for glory when we reflect your glory and your goodness and your love and we thank and praise you that you died for each of us as individuals that you did what we could not do for ourselves and we give you thanks and praise that you did this and you tell us about it that your word is this public open truth and we ask Lord that you would make us disciples of Jesus gripped by the gospel learning to come daily to your word father to be transformed to be reformed to be renewed to be revived as we read your word in the power of the

[46:42] Holy Spirit father we ask that your word would do that ongoing wonderful work of grace in our hearts and our minds and our lives we ask all of this in the precious name of Jesus your son and our savior amen