Matters of the Heart-

We’re going to begin this morning by looking at a short video clip. For the sake of
illustration, we’re going to call the people you will see, John and Mary Smith, and say
they’re members here at Foster. It’s about 9:30 in the evening, and they are making
plans for a family vacation. I want you to watch and listen closely. We want to find
clues to help us answer the question “why do people do what they do”?

(**Video clip** Vacation planning-wrong) 3’30”

Are these rare Foster members, or is their behavior all too common? I’m afraid it’s
so common that it follows a predictable pattern: (**PP**)
A frustrated desire becomes a demand, and if our demand is not met, whoever got in
the way, we judge as bad, and we punish them.

And often, the original desire was good or even godly. Is it bad to want to visit aging
parents, or to desire quality family time on a vacation? Of course not! Sometimes our
desires are evil, but very often, especially for Christians, the problem isn’t the desire.
The problem starts when “I wish I could have this” turns into “I must have this.”

We saw lots of demanding, judging and punishing on the video: sarcastic tones,
“eye-rolling,” “you” messages that came across as put-downs, and several attempts
to use guilt to manipulate. And all that in just 3 minutes!! Finally John punishes Mary
by refusing to come to bed. John can’t rest, but I guarantee that Mary isn’t resting
either. I want you to keep that visual picture of “no rest” in your mind” – we’re going
to come back to it later.

So we’ve answered the question of “what” they are doing: they are demanding and
judging and punishing in various ways. But we haven’t answered the question
“why”? The video ended with John asking “why”? “Why does it always have to be
this hard”? Why do people do what they do?

For our answer, lets first go to the Apostle Paul. Turn in your Bible to Romans
chapter 1. (**PP**) This is a long passage, so even though it will be on the screen,
you may want to look it up. (It’s found on page __ of the blue Bible under the chair in
front of you.) Paul never visited the church in Rome, so the letter he wrote to them is
his most complete explanation of the sin problem and its solution. Paul has his own
list of “what.” Let’s look at that first. In verse 27 he mentions “indecent acts” but he
really gets going in verse 29: I’ll be reading from the New American Standard
version this morning
. . .being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God,
insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without
understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they
know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of
 death, they not only do the same but they also give hearty approval to those
who practice them.
That’s quite a juicy list! But this is still the ‘what”. Let’s back up to vs. 18 and look for
the “why.“ (**PP**)
Rom. 1:18-26
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness, of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that
which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and
divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been
made, so they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not
honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations,
and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools,
and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of
corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their
bodies might be dishonored among them. They exchanged the truth of God for a
lie, and worshiped and served the creature, rather than the Creator, who is
blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, OK here comes the “why”.
Why? because they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. For
this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions . . .and then we are back to
that awful list we already read. (**PP**)

So what is Paul saying here?

First, God is the Creator and everything else, including us, is created. And anyone
can look at the creation and know there was a creator behind it all.
Second, people are worshipers and we have a worship problem. We either worship
our Creator or something in his creation. Period. There’s not this neutral in-between
group that doesn’t worship anything.
And Third, the part of us that has the worship problem is the “heart”. This is the part
of us that desires & demands & judges & punishes.

Scripture divides human beings into 2 parts, the inner being and the outer being.
The synonym the Bible most often uses for the inner being, is “heart”. It
encompasses all the other terms that the Bible uses as well, such as spirit, soul,
mind, emotions etc. These are all aspects of the inner person, the “real you”. And
the heart is one of scriptures most dominant themes. In fact, my concordance has
over 800 entries.

So Paul’s answer to the question “why do people do what they do?” is that we have
lustful, desirous hearts that demand to be satisfied. Instead of waiting on God
and trusting Him, we turn our back to our Creator and focus on created things to get
our demands met. When we do this, Paul says we are fools who believe a lie. And the
result is that whole list of ugly behaviors. But before we leave this passage, we need
to notice that Paul gave us the answer to this dilemma before he even outlined the
problem. And what would we expect Paul’s answer to be? Well, the Gospel of
course!! Look at verses 16 and 17: (**PP**)
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to
everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the
righteous man shall live by faith’.” So the Gospel, the “good news” is the answer. But
before we see just how good the good new really is, lets make sure we clearly
understand our problem. Let’s see what Jesus says about our hearts. (**PP**)

In Matthew chapter 15, the Pharisees are complaining to Jesus that his disciples
aren’t following the proper hand washing rules. In verse 8, He quotes Isaiah 29
saying, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”

The Pharisees would have known that the context for this passage was the prophet
Isaiah, warning God’s Old Testament people about a coming devastation, because
even though they gave lip service to God, they were making alliances with heathen
countries, trusting their safety to creation rather than their Creator. So Jesus puts
His answer in a worship context, and then goes on to explain in verse17:

“Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the
stomach, and is eliminated? But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from
the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts,
murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things
which defile the man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.”

Jesus says the heart is the reason people do the things they do. Jesus says all
behavior problems are heart problems, and heart problems are worship problems.

In Ezekiel 14, God says this about the O.T. elders of Israel, “These men have set up
idols in their hearts.” Like us, the elders must have responded “Idols! What idols?
I’m not a pagan, I don’t bow to gold and wooden statues!! (**PP**) But God was
saying that the human heart takes created things and what created things provide,
and turns them into ultimate things.

So, you don’t have a smoking problem – you have a worship problem, I don’t have an
over eating problem or an anger problem,” I have a worship problem. But it isn’t
really the food or the cigarettes or the TV programs that we worship, it‘s the
comfort that they bring us. It isn’t the money we worship, it is the security or
prestige or significance that it gives us. It isn’t people pleasing, or pornography or
polygamy that is my real issue. It’s my foolish, lustful, demanding heart that is
unwilling to trust God to give me comfort, security, power, and my sense of
identity in His time frame instead of mine.

This is spiritual adultery or idolatry. These are our “functional” idols. This is how we
have learned to “function” in life. An idol is anything apart from God that we depend
on to be happy, fulfilled or secure. In biblical terms it is something that we set our
hearts on, that we love, trust, serve or pursue more than God.

(**PP**) This is a picture of my grandson, Landen. Isn’t he precious! At age 2,

Landen loved, trusted and pursued his pacifier. Even though he was already
supposed to have stopped using it, he still had it for naps and bedtime. He named it
“Bobby” for some reason unknown to anyone but him, and would often ask for
“Bobby”. He loved Bobby and would ask to play in his crib just so he could get to
Bobby. If he was sad, or tired or sick or sometimes just bored, he wanted Bobby.
This is all very understandable for a 2 year old, but in order to mature from a baby
to a little boy, and then to a young man, he has to learn how to function in life
without depending on Bobby.

And the real question is how are we going to function in life without our Bobbys,
without all the functional idols we have come to depend on, but that only leave us,
immature, addicted and empty? Do you think we need some “good news” at this
point? I do too. And since my problem is my heart, I need to hear some good news
about that.

Jeremiah tells us that the heart is more deceitful than all else and desperately sick
and only God can understand it. Our hearts aren’t fixable. We need new ones. And
this exactly what God promised in Ezekiel chapters 11 and 36.
Lets read in Ezekiel 36 (**PP**)
“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you
from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new
heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from
your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My spirit within you and cause
you to walk in My statues, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. Notice
all the “I will’s”. This is what God promises to do for us and the 1“you will” is a result
of all the “I will’s.” Now that’s really good news!!

The Apostle Paul tends to focus on 2 (fingers) foundational themes about the Gospel
or the Good News. The first is the reality of the person and work of the indwelling
Holy Spirit. Our condition is so desperate it was not enough for God to just forgive
us. He had to unzip us and get inside us where He can do battle for us and mold this
new heart he has given us. The second reality is our union with Christ. I have been
crucified with Christ. When Christ died, I died. When Christ rose, I rose to a new life.

Last week, Eddie talked to us about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Hebrews
tells us that Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses and interceded for us
because He was tempted in all things just as we are but did not sin. And we often say
well, I’m not so sure about that, they didn’t have chocolate or the internet back then.
But when we evaluate His temptations we find that they were all exactly what were
are talking about today.
Underneath, it was about worship. It was about waiting, and trusting the plan and
provision of the Father, or demanding, and humanly taking matters into His own
hands in a human way and getting His human desire met. He was hungry. He was
thirsty and lonely and He certainly knew about fear and anxiety in the garden of
Gethsemane “But He chose “Thy will be done.”

It was about living by faith. Remember? That’s how Paul described the Gospel In
Romans 1. He said it was the power of God for salvation, it was for everyone, and
that those who accepted it would live by faith. In Romans 5, Paul tells us that
although we have been reconciled to God by the death of Christ it is the life of Christ
that saves us.
The Good News is not a set of facts or beliefs about God. The Good News is a person:
our living, powerful, sacrificing, sympathizing, grace giving Creator God, who
comes to dwell within us. And because we are united with Christ in his death and
resurrection, we can stop demanding that others bow to our idols and we no longer
have to bow to them either. What wonderful, gracious good news!!

We don’t have time today to talk in depth about how we live this life of faith. But
what I want us to understand this morning, is that although we have asked Christ to
be our Savior and are called by the name Christian, we can be blinding serving
functional idols.
As long as we only focus on our bad behavior and pray “Dear God, please help me
stop . . . (you fill in the blank), even if we do stop, we usually just trade that “Bobby”
for a different one, or trade one demand for another, because we haven’t really
repented of the real problem,
which is turning our back to God and opening our arms to our functional idols.
When we repent at the deeper level, we turn our backs to our functional idols and
open our arms in faith to God.

If an idol is only an object that I can physically bow down in front of, then great
portions of the Bible are useless to me because the Bible is peppered with
references to idols. Yes, I experience powerful emotions and desires. And yes, I
am strongly influenced by my experiences and my biology.
But it is what rules my heart, is that ultimately determines how I respond to life.

And repenting at this deeper level, repenting of loving, trusting and pursuing
comfort or security instead of repenting of my bad behavior is not just semantics.
It is making a difference in my life. I’ve only been thinking about faith in this way for
a month or so, but it‘s already making a difference for me.

And recently I was sharing these ideas with a friend who’s a new believer and who
wants to quit smoking. She had already told me that she had cut back a lot, but
quitting totally was hard because smoking is comforting. When she thought about it
as a worship problem instead of a smoking problem, she wrinkled up her nose and
said, “Ooogh, I don’t like that!!” Suddenly something comforting is seen in a much
more negative light, because as a converted person she really wants to worship
God above all things.
And for Seventh-day Adventists who believe that they have a special mission to the
world, this takes on even greater significance. We say we are called to take the 3
angel’s messages of Revelation 14 to the world.( **PP** )What is the first message?

“And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having the an eternal gospel to
preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and
people; and he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give Him glory, because the
hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the
earth and sea and springs of waters.”

If we are to take the good news to the whole world and teaching people to worship
the Creator rather than creation, how can we do this authentically if we really are
worshiping creation-supplied things ourselves? It just becomes something
superficial about which day to go to church! (**PP**)

And the third angel tells us they have no rest day or night who worship the beast
and his image,” The Sabbath is all about rest. Resting because God did all the work
of both Creation and salvation and continues to work in us for our transformation.
The writer of Hebrews ties rest to faith in speaking about the children of Israel who
God brought out of slavery in Egypt (**PP**)

Therefore, just as the Holy Sprit says, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden
your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness,
where your fathers tried and tested Me, and saw my works for forty years.
“Therefore, I was angry with this generation and said, ‘They always go astray in
their heart, and do not know my ways’; As I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not
enter My rest.’”
Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart
that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as
long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the
deceitfulness of sin. (**PP**)

And this brings us back to where we began. Back to John and Mary Smith and their
hard-hearted kitchen discussion about vacation. Back to good desires that became
demands, back to judging and punishing and no rest. What do you think their
functional idols were? And what would it look like if they worshiped their Creator
instead of their idols. I’m going to show you that in just a minute, and then we will
have another opportunity to worship our Creator God in song.

But more important than John and Mary, are you and I. For those that would like to
pursue this topic in a more in-depth way, I have a sheet on the table in the lobby
with a few questions that you can ask God. I promise that He will delight in giving
you the answers, and I pray it will be the kind of encouragement the writer of
Hebrews was talking about.

(**video clip** Vacation planning-right)