The Kingdom Heart
Part 3 in series Hearing Jesus Again
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
May 17, 2008
People live from the heart. We just do. We were meant to. God created us to be people with emotions, with feelings, and those feelings were intended to guide us into living the “good” life – things that are good for ourselves and for others. But this usually does not happen. Look in your own life at your own experience. When you do the things that “feel” right to you, does it usually lead to good things? Probably not. In fact it’s so predictable that our hearts, our feelings, will often lead us into bad things that we have come to absolutely depend on it. Think first of soap operas. Is any character on any soap opera making decisions for their life on any basis at all, other than what “feels” right, or what their “heart” tells them to do? Of course not. And all the resulting drama we see in soap operas comes from the disasters that often come when we do what our hearts tell us to do – which often is some form of what you in fact see on soap operas – adultery, backstabbing, lying, stealing, stirring the pot and creating dissension, name-calling, bitterness, hatred, and revenge.
We live from the heart. And we were created to. Yet it almost always goes wrong. What does that mean? I’ll tell you in a minute. But let’s keep thinking. How about almost any movie or stage play you have ever seen in your life? If you have studied literature and theater, you already know that conflict is what drives any plotline. Have you ever tried to write a story without any kind of conflict?
Think about it. We live on a planet where, without conflict, there is simply nothing to say. And that in itself tells us a great deal about the kind of world we live in, doesn’t it?
Without conflict (and the resulting chaos) that is caused by people doing what seems right to them in their hearts, Hollywood could not function. Nor could most popular songs ever have been written. You and I are creatures who were made to live from the heart, yet when we do, all kinds of pain and problems are the result. Now listen carefully because what I am about to say is extremely important.
Very few people consider themselves to be immoral. They will say, “I’m a good person. I don’t always do good things, but in my heart I’m a good person.” This reflects the fact that most people, in their hearts, deeply desire to be good. They genuinely intend to do good things. The problem with our world is not that people do not desire to do right, the problem is that people are prepared to do wrong. The true goodness or rightness of a person is revealed by what he/she is prepared to do under certain circumstances. For example, I might consider myself a good person, even honest, but if my house is in foreclosure and money is tight, perhaps I am prepared to cheat on my taxes. Perhaps I am even prepared to lie to my own friends and family in order to get the money I need. My readiness to do this shows what is in my heart.
Or take the case of another person who claims to be a good person and generally is – but his girlfriend has broken up with him. He is in great pain, and is suddenly prepared to do great emotional or maybe even physical harm to his ex, and maybe even to her new boyfriend. Now he may do this harm, or he may not, but his readiness to do it shows what is in his heart.
Or another person who considers himself to be a good person, but who routinely sleeps with most people he dates, even though over and over he has seen how it devastates the girls he leaves behind. He basically desires to do good, but if he gets lonely or horny enough, he is prepared to do whatever he has to do to get those needs met.
And this is true of most people. Most of the evil in the world right now is being done by people who consider themselves good and who truly desire to be, but are simply prepared to do evil when they believe it is necessary. This is why in our world today people insist that you can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be in their position. People want to do right but are prepared to do wrong. Then, when they do, they defend it by saying that any reasonable person would have done the same thing under those same circumstances and that you can’t understand unless you have been there.
People live from their hearts. God created people to live from their hearts. But our hearts often guide us in wrong directions. From a Christian perspective, this is explained in the fall of the human race in the third chapter of Genesis. God had created a perfect world and perfect people. Adam and Eve were perfect insofar as they were completely free from sin. There was nothing in their mind, or in their hearts, that darkened their conscience or separated them from God. But just because God created them perfect does not mean they were created without the ability to choose to sin. In fact, we must assume they COULD choose to sin because being able to make choices is what makes us distinct as human beings from the rest of God’s creatures.
Genesis tells us that when Adam and Eve sinned, the whole creation came under a curse. We cannot underestimate the power or scope of this curse, nor can we fully explain it. But it was such that it altered the state of relations on earth between human beings and God. A force of evil was introduced into the world that had not been there before. The first temptations came from outside. Eve was tempted by the serpent, and Adam was tempted through Eve, but later on when their son Cain killed his brother Able, this had nothing to do with it. Cain was simply prepared to kill Able from something sick that was now deep inside of him.
Samuel Wakefield in his book A Complete System of Christian Theology says that when our original parents sinned, God withdrew the natural presence of his Spirit from mankind. And he says that “…from the loss of spiritual life followed moral inability, the dominion of irregular appetites and passions, aversion to restraint, and estrangement from God, and even enmity against him.” Wakefield goes on to say this loss of spiritual life “…extends to all the powers and faculties of the soul. The judgment, the memory, the will, the imagination, the affections, and all the moral powers of our nature, are depraved and polluted by sin.”
This understanding is confirmed throughout scripture.
Isaiah 1:5-6 (NIV)
5 … Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted.
6 From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness…
Jeremiah 17:9 (AMP)
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick! Who can know it [perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind]?
Years ago a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time called my office and said, “I hear you have MS.” I said, “That’s correct.” He said, “My wife was just diagnosed – can I bring her to you and have you advise us on getting treatment?” I said, “Sure, come on over.” An hour later they were there and I was shocked by what I saw. I had been diagnosed years earlier and was doing quite well. This young woman, newly diagnosed, was unable to walk without leaning hard on her husband, and she walked with jerking, spasmodic movements. Her eyes periodically crossed from dizziness and they struggled to correct the vision that her MS was attacking. It sounds terrible, but she had a kind of crazed and desperate look to her and indeed as I talked to her, I realized she was desperate. She was newly diagnosed and none of the treatments were working for her. She was going downhill quickly, losing function every day, scared out of her mind at what was happening to her, and was nearly begging me for some word of wisdom that might help her find relief. Of course I had nothing to offer.
This is the picture I get in my mind when I read about the moral condition of human beings in our natural state without God. Scripture describes it as a sickness, an injury, an affliction. We are lacking soundness in our minds and hearts. Our hearts deceive us because they are perverse and corrupt and we often do not really understand what is happening in them. Because of this we find the truth of the scripture that says:
Proverbs 14:12 (NASB)
12 There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
We don’t know what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. We are morally flying upside-down in the world, morally dizzy, and cannot see or walk straight. Created by God to live from our hearts, we have been corrupted by sin and our hearts do not guide us effectively. We are sick-hearted. The best efforts of our psychologists and doctors and scholars cannot set us straight because our deepest problem is sin. Most of the psychologists and doctors and scholars in the world do not accept the reality of sin, so they are trying to improve the human condition without diagnosing the problem properly.
1 Corinthians 1:20-21 (MSG)
20 So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense?
21 Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.
Now I’ll say again what I said when I began. People live from the heart. We were created to live that way, but that is now the exact problem with human life. The heart does not guide us properly – it is sick and does not serve us well. Instead it is awash with desires that come from selfishness, defensiveness, greed, lust, hate, bitterness, jealousy, and all the other things that you can clearly see haunting human life and lying like decay at its center. People deeply desire to be good, but without God we are continually deceived about what is really good, and we will always be prepared to do evil, believing that ultimately we must make our own good in this world. And in that belief, what is good for me will not be good for everyone else and I will harm others as I make my way through life. As I harm others they will become my enemies and will seek revenge. Consequently my life will be filled with even more difficulty and strife and I will see it as necessary to do more evil to others in order to put things right for myself.
Had enough? I mean, what a depressing picture! It’s a hard thing to get a grip on the state of a person who is living without God. Basically, it’s all relative. It’s all how I feel and what I want and how I will make my way through this world and how I will make sure to fulfill the desires of the heart. Over against this way of living we have the words of scripture:
Psalms 37:4 (NASB)
4 Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Jesus came announcing the availability of the Kingdm of God to all people, and his message was exactly that – delight yourself in the Lord and allow him to provide for you all you desire. With this message, Jesus provided a way out of the insanity that you can see at work in our world just by looking casually.
In the ancient world, King David had a vision of this kind of life under God when he wrote the exquisite 23rd Psalm:
Psalms 23:1-6 (MSG)
1 God, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing.
2 You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from.
3 True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction.
4 Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure.
5 You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing.
6 Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I’m back home in the house of God for the rest of my life.
There is so much beauty described in this way of life, and it begins with these essential words, “God, my shepherd.” My leader. The one who provides for me, protects me, and meets my needs. The kingdom of God is all about living with God as our leader, provider, protector, and sustainer. My friends, this is the kind of life Jesus came to tell you is available to you! But we must look at the facts. If God created us to live from our hearts, and if the human heart is no longer a trustworthy guide for us and will often lead us to do evil, what are we do to?
Jesus understood this condition that we are in of being guided by hearts that lead us in the wrong direction. He understood it better than anyone ever has. Here’s what he said to those people gathered on the mountain that day listening to him teach:
Matthew 5:20 (NIV)
20 …I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Pharisees and teachers of the law were the people who were living by an elaborate and very strict system of religious rules, believing that the more obedient they could be to these rules, the more of God’s favor they would secure. The problem is no rules can ever assure that the rules are followed for the right reasons, and consequently most of the Pharisees and teachers of law were puffed up into a sense of arrogance and superiority because of how meticulously they followed every rule and how much better that made them than the majority of less educated and less disciplined people. And in this one sentence, Jesus sets the stage for the rest of the Sermon on the Mount and addresses the problem I have been talking to you about.
Matthew 5:20 (NIV)
20 …I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Remember, in the Beatitudes Jesus had communicated clearly, “This kingdom is for everybody – everybody is offered a seat at the table. The mourning, the meek, the peacemakers caught in the middle, the perfectionists – you can all come!” And in this one sentence Jesus lays down the one condition for entering into this kingdom. “Your righteousness must surpass the righteousness of the most righteous people you know.”
At first you think, “How can that possibly happen? I can’t even be as good as that, much less BETTER!” But today and in the next few weeks you’re going to see that Jesus goes on to say, “Here’s the deal – the people you think are so righteous and who are so convinced of their own righteousness – they’re not really even righteous at all. Their hearts have led them in the wrong direction. You have to learn to think of righteousness in a new way. Not a righteousness of rule-keeping, but a righteousness of soul-tending.” I’ll show you that in these upcoming weeks.
In Matthew 5:25-48 (what we’re dealing with today and for the next four weeks), Jesus compares and contrasts his concept of rightness with the commonly understood idea. He does this by setting up a series of contrasts. “You have heard it was said…., but I tell you.” “You have heard it was said to the people long ago…but I say…” And in each case Jesus shows that a rule-keeping heart is cold and dead, but a God-pleasing heart is warm and alive!
The word Jesus used for “righteousness” is the Greek word “dikaiosune,”and that word is best understood as what it is about a person that makes him/her really good. Remember earlier I talked about modern scholars and doctors and philosophers and scientists who cannot come up with real solutions to the human condition because they do not acknowledge sin? This is not to say their motives are bad. As I said, most people desperately want to be good, and many well-intentioned people devote their lives to helping humanity live better. But these efforts are doomed to fail because they come from those who are crazy-eyed with moral confusion and are tested and tried by those who are crazy-eyed with moral confusion.
What Jesus was saying in this verse was, “Unless you can somehow become morally better than those who are considered the moral superstars of your day, God’s kingdom will be closed to you.” And then for the next few moments in his sermon, Jesus explains what passes for morality (righteousness, dikaiosune) with the Pharisees, and contrasts that with true righteousness from God.
Many of the Pharisees truly wanted to be better people. But ironically, the system they were using led to superiority and vanity and self-righteousness. Jesus says no, there is a better way – a way of living rightly before God that is really right. It is the way not just of right behaving, right speaking, or right appearing, but the way of a right heart. Do you hear me? The way of a right heart. A right heart.
See, Jesus knows we have hearts that desire to do right, but that are prepared to do wrong. So what Jesus proposes is nothing less than renovation of the heart. This is completely in line with the prophecy God gave to Ezekiel hundreds of years earlier:
Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV)
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
And that’s what Jesus shows us in the Sermon on the Mount. Who can be at home and live comfortably in God’s Kingdom? The one with the right heart – a kingdom heart. What does the kingdom heart look like? Jesus goes on to show us in the rest of the sermon but particularly in this section where he shows us by comparing and contrasting the rightness of the Pharisee (the ultimate example of religious, outward righteousness) with the rightness of the Kingdom heart.
The reason most religion doesn’t work for people is because it ignores the heart almost completely. It tells us what to do and what not to do, but it ignores the plain message of Jesus – that what we do and do not do comes from hearts that are shaped in a certain way. If that is true nothing is more important than the shape of our hearts. I have had many people sit in my office on various occasions telling me all kind of things based on what they think they should believe, think, and say – but clearly that was not the shape of their hearts. In other words, what they were saying did not represent how they really felt. And the danger here is that no matter how noble our words may be, we will always act from our hearts. Therefore we must give nothing more attention than what is in our hearts.
Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)
23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
That’s what you will see in the coming weeks.
Today I talked to you about the absolute importance of the heart when it comes to how we live and make choices. I talked to you about what has gone wrong with the heart and the predicament we’re left in. And I talked to you about heart surgery – how Jesus shows in the Sermon on the Mount that living a kingdom life will require radical heart renovation. Next week we will look at how a right heart (dikaiosune) understands and handles anger and contempt versus how we handle it if our heart is simply to be religious or get by with the letter of the law, or impress people by looking a certain way. And for the rest of our study on the Sermon on the Mount, we’ll be looking at the kind of heart that is comfortable and at home in the Kingdom of God, that can really please him and enjoy the place he has given us in his universe. Let’s pray.
Jesus, you are God of Gods and all glory is yours. Holy Spirit you are the one who instructs us how to live through the preaching and teaching of your Word. Father I pray the Word has gone out today in a way that you can use it to draw people to yourself. Show us how to have hearts that are shaped like yours – hearts that are kingdom hearts – hearts that will allow us to live completely at peace in the universe you have created for us. May your name be exalted in our hearts and in this world – Amen.
