AUG 2, 2009  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace and peace to you from God our heavenly Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, AMEN.

20 years ago, in Ann Arbor, MI. on the West side was a food co-op which many people frequented. It was started by socialist students in the late sixties. As devout socialists they believed that people were essentially good, but the capitalist system had corrupted the good heart of people.

So, at this co-op you weighed out the various foods yourself, added up the cost yourself and on the way out you simply gave them the money you owed. No one weighed or checked your package and no one questioned the amount you paid. They believed the environment of trust and tranquility would insure the goodness of the heart.

A short time later, some changes were made. They began looking at the items and checking your list before you paid. Soon another change came. They re-weighed your jars and sacks. They checked your arithmetic. Soon another change came, an adding machine.

The reason? A lot of good people were stealing and the food coop was losing money.

The socialist experiment failed. It failed because it did not understand the human heart.

Jesus said, For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’"

It was not just the socialist experiment that failed, but every religious experiment which does not have an adequate assessment of the human heart is doomed to failure. Take as an example the Jewish religion at the time of Jesus. They believed they could be righteous by conforming their lives to rules which governed their behavior.

God gave them the Law and worship regulations and the Jews thought that if a little Law is good, then a lot of law must be better. And so they expanded on the Law of God and on the worship regulations. They added the "traditions of the elders."

For instance, God commanded that the priests should wash their hands before doing their priestly service. The rabbis greatly expanded this simple washing. They made it a requirement for all pious people, not just the priestx. They expanded what must be washed to include things such as eating utensils, cooking utensils, chairs.

The washings were not for the purpose of killing bacteria. They did it so they would be righteous.

Their religion failed because it did not have an adequate assessment of the human heart.

What is true for socialism and for Pharisaism is true for you. If you have an inadequate assessment of your own heart, you will fail to receive the gifts of God, the forgiveness of sins, righteousness, the Holy Spirit. If you hold on to the notion that there is some good in you, then, you will hold on to the hope of saving yourselves or at least helping to save yourselves and in so doing you will lose.

Jesus said, "What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’"

The heart is the mainspring, the engine of behavior and out of this engine comes evil thoughts. Sin is not just an action you perform. Sin is the flower that grows from the seed of evil thoughts.

Evil thoughts is kind of a general statement and from the general statement of your condition, Jesus moves to a sampling of what is meant by evil thoughts. Sexual immorality. By this is meant a broad range of sexual activity. In fact it means any kind of sex act which is not done within the safety of the marriage bond between a man and a woman. And so the sexual activity includes homosexual acts, or acts between unmarried couples.

Please notice that thought and action cannot be separated. Jesus speaks of evil thoughts but his examples include actions. The two cannot be separated. The sexually immoral thoughts are already sin and already condemn us before God.

What about theft? Theft is the act of taking something that is not yours but once again, the action and the thought are treated as one and the same thing. The moment you plot to take something that belongs to someone else, you have stolen it. Even if you do not actually steal it, it is as if you had. At least, in the eyes of God.

What about murder? I doubt any of you have murdered another person, but how many times have your evil thoughts stabbed and ripped another person.

The same with adultery. I pray none of you have actually committed adultery but how many times have you done it in your evil thoughts.

From within, out of the heart come evil thoughts and especially the evil thought that your thoughts are not evil. Sin has deceived you into thinking things are not so bad in your heart.

And from that deceit comes a human religion which puts you at the center of things, gives you laws and rituals and deceives you into thinking, I am righteous and I thank you God that I am not like others.

You see, in that way of thinking, sin is always what someone else is doing.

The Apostle Paul knew better. It was Paul, the Apostle of Jesus who cried out, "I know that nothing good lives in me,"

The prophet Isaiah knew better. He cried out, "Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted."

The prophet Jeremiah knew better. He cried out, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?"

Beyond cure! A little religious dressing is not going to save us. A few good rules, some clean living and a bit of religious activity is not going to heal our wound. The injury called sin is unto death.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. Pastor must have had a bad week. All this negative talk. First that Luther hymn about grief, shame and sin and now all this talk about how corrupt we are. He must have had a bad week and he is letting us having it with both barrels of the law.

That’s not really true dear friends.

Jesus did say that "Out of the heart comes evil thoughts" and we are lost.

But we are talking about Jesus Christ who came from the heart of God.....to save us.

What all the man made religious rules cannot do, Jesus did. To put it in Paul’s words, Romans 8:3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

All man made religions are powerless to take away sin because they depend on a corrupt heart. But what our heart could not do, the heart of God did in the person of Jesus.

Out of the heart of God came His own Son. He took on human flesh and a human soul and His body and soul became a sin offering. His body was crowned with thorns, pierced with nails. His soul was pierced with the sorrow of rejection. He was rejected, thrown out, abandoned by His own Father because His beloved Son had become sin.

On the cross, Jesus became what you and I are, liars, thieves, murderers, adulterers.

He became what you and I are so that you and I might become what He is, righteous, clean from sin.

His wretched body was pierced and out of His heart came blood and water. The blood was the price of your redemption. You were redeemed, dear friends, not with silver or gold but with blood, the holy, precious blood of a lamb without spot or blemish, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The water was the water of rebirth, renewal. The water from His side was the water of life flowing out from the heart of God to each of you.

Out of the heart of God came Christ Jesus. Out of the heart of Jesus Christ came blood and water and into your heart comes forgiveness and renewal. That is what the prophet Ezekiel meant when he spoke the words God had given him to speak: I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 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.

In Baptism you were washed, but not with an outward Pharisaic washing. You were washed by the Holy Spirit of God who entered into your being and put within you a new heart which trusts in Jesus Christ alone.

As we sing in one of our communion hymns,

O Jesus, let your precious blood
Be to my soul a cleansing flood.
Turn not, O Lord, your guest away
But grant that justified I may
Go to my house, at peace to be:
O God, be merciful to me!
Christ Is Risen.

AMEN!