Essentials, Part 3

Teaching #3. October 1, 2006.

I am posting my notes on Pastor Tom’s teaching from Sunday, October 1st. These are MY notes. Not a transcript. Not his notes. Any misquotes, mistakes, or mystifications are my fault (or something like that). All verses are from NASB 1995 unless noted.

Also. There are several times in the notes below that Tom quotes a passage without necessarily giving the scripture. I put the scripture and/or scripture reference in.

The Heart of Man

Review of Essentials #2 on evil.

We do not like to look at ugliness, and that includes evil. I do not like to look at these things. But it is important to understand these things.

Evil is not the opposite of good or God. Evil is the absence of God Himself. Sin is the action of evil on the goodness of God’s creation.

The satanic question, “Has God said?” [Genesis 3:1] is really, “Does God love?” “Does He really have my best interests at heart?” It is the accusation, the question that separates and divides.

The arena of our battles is in our heart.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh,
4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ...

Ever try to change your thoughts? To stop thinking certain thoughts? We can’t. We are immune to change.

The goal of evil was to divide our heart, to separate us from God.

Where does evil act? Where does it actually happen? I can learn about all of this, but it is not enough. I do not need more information, I need a revolution.

We are born in sin, divided, separated from God.

Rightness vs. wrongness has to do with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Righteousness has to do with the tree of life. Righteousness is connected, throughout the Bible, with life. We ate from the wrong tree.

Ephesians 4:17-20
17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,
18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;
19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
20 But you did not learn Christ in this way,

Futility, separation, ignorance, hardness. This is the way we are before we “learned Christ.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. A benediction:
23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.

God will sanctify us entirely. He will do it. We cannot change ourselves.

“Spirit and soul and body” - we are 3-fold beings.
The body is the exterior visible part. It is the part called the “temple.”
The soul or “psyche” (Greek) is the mind, will, intellect, emotions, our personality, or character. It is who we are, our uniqueness.
The spirit.

Donut analogy: The outer ring of the donut is like our body, our flesh. It is easily damaged. The inner ring is the soul. It is sturdier, harder. The “hole” is where the spirit should be. This is what died in the Garden of Eden. The place of unity with God, of fellowship, of communion is dead and empty inside of us.

Ephesians 2:1-3
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

What we were like before we met Jesus. When you cry out, “Jesus, I want You to be Lord of my life,” the Holy Spirit comes in to live in us. It is then that our spirit comes alive.

Where does the heart fit into this? We live in the futility of our minds. “If it feels good, do it.” Have you ever heard that? Isn’t that they way we live without Jesus?

Hebrews 4:12. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The word of God shows us reality. It judges the thoughts and intentions.

The heart is the centrality of our psyche. The part that we cannot control, the innermost part of our soul.

How did the heart get this way? The action of “sin on the goodness of God’s creation.” We are evil before we met Jesus. We are corrupt, and no amount of “buffing us up” is going to make us acceptable in God’s eyes.

The damage to our heart is irreparable. It cannot be fixed. Our heart can only be exchanged.

Jeremiah 17:9.
“The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?”

Mark 7:17-23
17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples questioned Him about the parable.
18 And He *said to them, “Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him,
19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?” (Thus He declared all foods clean.)
20 And He was saying, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.
21 “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,
22 deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.
23 “All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.”

Out the heart proceeds the evil things that defile man. Our heart is corrupt. We cannot change ourselves. We need to be changed by God.

We have a dead spirit. We have a soul that can see good and evil. And we have a hardened and deceitful heart. What is the result?

1 John 3:19-20
19 We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him
20 in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

We have a process operating inside of us to condemn us. We do not need someone else to condemn us. We condemn ourselves because we know good and evil, and know that we are evil.

Psalm 73:7b. The imaginations of their heart run riot.

Hebrews 3:12. Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. (NASB)

Hebrews 3:12. [Therefore beware] brethren, take care, lest there be in any one of you a wicked, unbelieving heart [which refuses to cleave to, trust in, and rely on Him], leading you to turn away and desert or stand aloof from the living God. (Amplified)

“An evil, unbelieving heart.” Evil is linked to unbelief. Unbelief is sin, grinding away at the perfection of God’s creation.

“Has God said?” Adam and Eve went from belief to unbelief. Belief and unbelief are not opposites. Unbelief is the vacuum, the emptiness that remains when one does not believe.

The unbelieving heart refuses to cleave to the living God. It rejects life, the tree of life. It stands aloof and refuses to trust in God. These are the symptoms of the unbelieving heart.

The bad news is that we have a damaged heart. The good news? Next week.

Jeremiah 17:9-10
9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?
10 “I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give to each man according to his ways,
According to the results of his deeds.

The heart is sick and deceitful. And after God searches the heart, He will judge.

Ephesians 1:15-17
15 For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints,
16 do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers;
17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.

We need a spirit of wisdom and revelation.

Revelation happens at the level of the spirit. It is spirit communing with Spirit

Romans 12:2a. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind...

John 7:38. “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’"

The squeeze play. We know and learn with our minds, and our minds are being renewed and transformed. And from the inside, the spirit begins to flow with living waters, out of our innermost places.

Ephesians 3:14-19
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Romans 10:9-10
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

Despite all that is wrong with the heart, the only place that “saving faith” can occur is in the heart. The heart was created to believe. The tragedy of the heart is that it is believing the wrong things. The heart is going to believe whatever we fill it with.

Do you see why the heart is such a battleground?

The Lord has called us to the daily battle of giving our hearts to Him.

We do not what to get a little better. We were mastered by sin and evil. We need to learn, day by day, to triumph in the Lord.

1 John 3:1. See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

What great love You have that You would reveal all these things to us.