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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Old Testament reading, especially these verses: “Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children.” So far the text.
Last Sunday, Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees that they were very good at honoring him with their lips. Every facet of the outside of their life, their actions and their words, all showed forth this great love for God. And yet their heart, their heart was dead toward God. Jesus said, “Remember? Remember? These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Interesting, isn’t it?
This week, Jesus picks this concept about the heart again. For he says in the Gospel reading, “It’s the things that come out of your heart that defile you. Hear me, all of you, and understand,” Jesus said, “for from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, come sexual immorality, come theft, come murder, come adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within, and they defile a person.”
So if last Sunday he said, “These people honor me with their lips… And yet their heart is far from me.” And then this Sunday he says, in essence, “These people do not honor me with their lips, for out of their mouth and their heart comes all these evil desires.” If he says he wants my heart, and then he says out of my heart comes all of this, does he really want and desire your heart then? And the answer is yes.
But does he desire every ounce of your heart? Yes. All of those attributes, all of those habits, all of those character flaws, all of those sins which dwell within us. And the answer is yes, he wants that. It’s when he gets that from you that he can cleanse you. It’s when you offer him that, that he can make you and give you a new heart. One that’s been made new.
As David said in the Psalms, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” But as long as we hold fast to our heart and all of those desires and do not give them over to the one who alone paid for them on that cross, then how are we truly keeping diligently our soul? As Moses said.
You see, our problem is that we don’t acknowledge everything that’s within our heart of which Jesus speaks. Come on, you don’t consider yourself sexually immoral. You consider the people who are down at the strip club sexually immoral, but you don’t consider yourself. And yet, are you? Your thoughts belie you. You see, you and I don’t think of ourselves as being proud. Not like those people who are self-absorbed, about whom we are so frustrated with at work or with whom we have to interact in our family. And yet, does it not come from your heart as well?
Is your heart not frustrated or angry when someone doesn’t acknowledge you and appreciate you? You see, if we don’t see it in such a manner, then it doesn’t exist, does it? I haven’t literally taken a knife and plunged it into someone’s heart. I’ve not shot off a round into someone’s head. So that I’m not like those people that we read about, or those others in the county or state or federal penitentiary, am I? And yet my thoughts belie me, for hatred wells up within me, anger and disappointment in others.
See, that’s the great fallacy of Satan. He loves to get us to think in terms that our person is so markedly different than those people. Because only those people show forth it in their outward appearances. Right? And I keep mine all cleaned up really nicely. I watch my words, but I can’t stop my thoughts. But I watch my words. I watch my actions, but I can’t stop my thoughts. So if we don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Is that what we think? And if we don’t accept it, confess it, and repent of it, how can we keep our soul diligently?
Because in order to keep our soul diligently is to realize and embrace God. This battle in which you and I struggle every day, every day. Not just those moments of which we’re ashamed when it all came vomiting out with words or all came out with our actions. Not just those times. But the times when we look like we’re pretty nice people to everyone else. There’s still a struggle. Did you hear what Paul said in this morning’s epistle reading? He said, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood.” I wish it was so simple as just flesh and blood because then you could shoot it and it would be dead. But not you and me. No. We wrestle against the rulers, against the authorities, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
You can’t see it. So does it exist? You know it does because you alone know your thoughts. Yes. And you alone know yourself. And you alone have been in constant affront with yourself by other people pointing it out. So you know what is inside of you and you know the struggle of which Paul speaks. But see, these enemies, these rulers, authorities, spiritual forces of evil, they’re all outside of us, aren’t they? We’re protected, insular, within our little shell.
And yet Jesus said, “For from within you come the things that defile you.” Are there degrees of sinfulness? Does the person who left the strip club or the bar earlier this morning, are they cut from a different mold than we are? What separates us from an unbeliever? It looks like there’s degrees of sinfulness because when you look at their life on the outside, it looks different than mine. It looks different than yours, probably. So are there degrees of sinfulness?
Here is where it takes the eyes of faith and faith alone. Not these things that we have to wear glasses for or contacts. It takes the eyes of faith inspired by what God has revealed to you in the Scriptures that give you this insight. According to your eyes of faith, you know there is a difference between you and the unbeliever. So what is it? And the only thing your eyes of faith had better say is trusting in his forgiveness because that’s the only thing that differentiates you from an unbeliever.
If what Jesus said comes out of our hearts, it comes out of a believer’s heart in as grandiose or as hidden of a way as it does when it comes out of an unbeliever’s heart in as grandiose or as hidden of a way. There is no difference. So you and I may not have moments of stealing, shoplifting from the store, and yet have we helped our neighbor protect and improve his property and business or possessions and income? You and I may not have necessarily coveted our neighbor’s wife or his manservant or maidservant or anything else, but have we helped them, strengthened them in their possessions? Or is that someone else’s job?
You see how it is? It’s always that there is no marked difference spiritually. You can’t see it. Outwardly, you and I can make all kinds of differences between those people and ourselves. The only difference there is, the only difference there is, is by God’s grace. You trust in that, what Jesus did for you. That’s the only difference. It doesn’t make us prettier on the outside or more holy.
That’s why Jesus said what he said last week, and that’s why he said what he said this week. He does want your heart. He wants all of that sexual immorality. He wants all of that theft and murder. He wants all of that pride and self-absorption, foolishness and deceit, sensuality and envy, coveting and wickedness, so that he can do what to it? Forgive it. That’s the difference.
You trust in that forgiveness. You lean on that forgiveness. You close your eyes at night in that forgiveness. Because that’s all you and I have. We don’t have anything else. We don’t have the perfect parents. We didn’t grow up in the perfect household. We don’t have the perfect family. But we have Jesus. And that’s all. That’s what makes us different as believers. Nothing else.
In order to keep your soul, your eyes of faith have to continually hear this about what you are without Christ and what you are with Christ. And you’re in a parish family that supports that in your life. You are supported in that practice of hearing and receiving it again and again. And when God blesses you, or when you are a part of a family… what God gifted you is that you heard it as a child, if that’s what God gifted you with. But not everybody does, do they?
We’re thankful to God that somehow, by hook or crook, God brings you into this body that he has called the church. But we are diligent in supporting the parents of our parish family in their telling their children… and you and I aren’t as if we’re disconnected from their children. You see these children throughout this church. You know they need to be supported in the same thing that their parents need to be supported in. This proclamation that there is no difference between us and an unbeliever except faith. That’s it.
Your children need to know that parents, teachers, pastors, and grandparents make mistakes. And we have to confess to one another. Children need to be taught how to confess, “I’m sorry,” to one another. And they and we need to be taught how to say, “I forgive you.” Not “it’s okay.” Not “it doesn’t matter.” Not “no big deal.” Not “no problem.” But “I forgive you.” That’s what a church looks like. That’s what a family looks like. That’s what this parish family looks like.
But only if we’re continually engaged in this word that proclaims to us what we are, that out of our heart comes these things, but here and here alone is where we’re given forgiveness, where we give him all of that, all of that heart that he desires, all of its ugliness, that we may be given a new heart, a living heart, not a heart of stone, a heart that breathes and beats Christ for us. Not Christ against us.
Oh, we would love to make our life look different than the rest of the world. It won’t. There are divorces in the church. There are repentant pedophiles in the church. There are homosexuals who are repentant in the church. There are broken families in the church. There are odd and weird and definitely quirky people in the church. It looks the same as outside. It looks the same as outside.
But here there is forgiveness for such people who are repentant. Here there is hope for those who have not been given it outside these walls. And here is where children learn that the thing that does matter, that differentiates us from all of this world, is not what’s on the outside, but what God has done with what is on the inside. Here he forgives it, makes it clean, and feeds it himself.
In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
