Do you have a heart condition?
Joe Bedy
Central Christian Church
St Petersburg, FL
March 7 2002
Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Gal 5:23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Kindness_ chray sto tays, from G5543; goodness, excellence, uprightness:-- meaning the goodness that is in one’s heart.
The word heart is used 726 times in 677 verses in the NASB.
What does the Bible have to say about our hearts?
Do you have a heart condition? Yes! Everybody Does!
All of these heart conditions are described in the Bible.
Naturally what is in our hearts?
Gen 6:5 Man’s heart was evil all the time.
Gen 8:21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.
Deut. 8:14 hearts are proud, our hearts turn away from God, they are unfeeling, hearts can gather wickedness, the harlot’s heart can be cunning, hearts can hold bitterness, anger, anxiety, pain, rage, perversity, derision, division and discord.
Supernaturally, what is in our hearts?
The heart can be pure, glad, joyful, cheerful, pleasant, trusting, loving, steadfast, blameless, gracious, it can be wise, it can be a hiding place for the word of God. It can be tranquil or it may be in painful turmoil.
Yet is with this very heart that we called are to love God with all of it.
The heart can be watched over, it can hold fast to the word of God, it can be tender, it can be broken or it can be hard? The heart can be healthy or the heart can be sick.
What Kind of Heart Condition Do you have?
Prov 27:19 As in water face reflects face, So the heart of man reflects man.
Prov 15:13 A joyful heart makes a cheerful face, But when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken.
Prov 15:28 The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, But the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.
Do we have a heart condition? Of course we do!
Jesus said. Mat 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Then he said this, " For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart."
It is not what goes into the body that makes us unclean, it is what is in our hearts. I tell you that what is in your heart will ultimately come out of your mouth, if your heart is truly hard, unkind words will come from your mouth.
Luke 6:45 "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.
Mat 15:18 "But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.
Mat 15:19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
James says it this way "
James 1:26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
See James is telling us that we are deceiving ourselves, if we think we can speak unkindness and have a pure heart.James is saying your religion is worthless if we speak unkind words.
James 3:8 But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison.
James 3:9 With it we bless our Lord and Father; and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God;
James 3:10 from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.
James 3:11 Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water?
James 3:12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Neither can salt water produce fresh.
About right now you are asking yourselves what does this heart condition sermon have to do with kindness?
EVERYTHING
Kindness carries a cost that most of us are not prepared to pay.
It is simply too demanding, too likely to interfere with self and what I need to do. Kindness messes with my own cherished plans, I must give up self to be kind to you.
Lady MacBeth believed her husband was way too kind. In the pursuit of her self-centered goals there was no room for kindness which was inconvenient, time consuming and counter-productive. Why spend the time to be kind to someone who has no usefulness in the completion of your goals?
To her people existed until their usefulness was exhausted.
The Spirit led life however demands that kindness is not an inconvenience to be avoided, but moreover is a characteristic we must embrace.
Joani Tabor said this and I quote "some of the meanest most unkind people she has ever met were in the church." What a sad commentary that leaders in the church would tolerate more than once the unkindness perpetuated by one person in the body on another. It is a sin to treat each other unkindly. That is one of the reasons that we examine ourselves before we take communion to make sure we are rightly related to the Body, that is us each other, we are the Body of Christ.
Even on that day when every one of us will bow and every tongue confess, I do not believe Jesus will be unkind to those who hear "depart from me I never knew you." I do not believe he yelled "you brood of vipers." I believe Jesus will be kind and compassionate because that is who God is when He says with sorrow and tears, compassion and empathy, when he says nothing can separate you from my love, but depart from me (you made the bad choice) and I never knew you. Not with anger, but with kindness "depart from me I never knew you."
Last time I told you patience "long suffering" is what holds open the door to salvation. This time I tell you that it is God’s kindness that draws men to repentance.
It is kindness that breaks or at least softens people’s hearts.
My Sicilian mother would say "Joseph, you will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
Yeah, mom, but what do I want with flies?
I think I finally know what she meant, she meant what Jesus means.
The facts are still the facts, the truth is still the truth, but kindness will lead men to repentance, like nothing else.
Can you ever remember a time when you regretted having said a kind word?
When I met Cathi she had a little girl, from a previous marriage, the apple of my eye, who is about to break my heart and go off to college and meet some boy who will never love her, like I love her.
When I married Cathi this little princess was 6 years old.
And one day after a tough day on the building site, as I sat in my easy chair, just relaxing before dinner, she strolled up to me to pronounce that I was not her dad, she was not my daughter and she did not love me and that she would never love me. OUCH!
I looked that little blonde haired blue-eyed cutie in the eye as I SHOULD have been debating whether to throw her off the dock and drown her or restrict her to her room for the rest of her life.
Hatred and anger are powerless when met with kindness.
But I set my newspaper down and I turned to her in a very gentle very kind way and I said " oh honey, that is OK, because I am going to love you regardless of whether or not you will ever love me or even how you treat me.
Do you think that led her to repentance?, you better believe it and it is that love and kindness we show her that has brought her to a point in her life to love us and she expresses that love for us, by her obedience towards us.
Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
The same way God’s kindness has brought you and me to repentance. We obey Him now because we love Him, but it was His kindness, because He first loved us, that drew us to Him.
He demonstrated that love for us in this while we hated Him, while we were yet sinners, He sent His Son Jesus to die for us.
Flies catch fish!
If you are like God you want us flies, try a little kindness, be like God and see if you don’t catch a few fish for the kingdom.
One kind act will teach more love of God than a thousand sermons.
Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power that seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel’s song that had lost its way and come on earth. It seems as if they could almost do what in reality God alone can do—soften the hard and angry hearts of men. No one was ever corrected by a sarcasm—crushed, perhaps, if the sarcasm was clever enough, but drawn nearer to God, never.
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER (1814–1863)
Kind words toward those you daily meet,
Kind words and actions right,
Will make this life of ours most sweet,
Turn darkness into light.
ISAAC WATTS (1674–1748)
6648 Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence, or learning.
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER (1814–1863)
Tell the story of King David, his relationship to Saul and his kindness towards Mephibosheth.
Kindness takes the time to find out what the other person is feeling.
I want to close with Paul’s words from: Eph 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Eph 5:1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children
Eph 5:2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,
Help to make earth happy like the heaven above.
JULIA A. FLETCHER CARNEY (1823–1908)
6637 Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
let’s pray.
Work’s Cited
Briscoe, Stuart D. Spirit Led, Minneapolis: Worldwide, 1983.
Draper’s Book of Quotations
