Heart Cleaning

INTRO: We as Christians are called to seek transformation - from carnal, cynical, burned-out shells of human beings into Spirit-filled, life-affirming, faith-walking servants of the Living God. In short, we are seeking a clean heart. How can we develop a spiritually clean heart? How important is our heart to God? What does God expect our heart to be like

BENEFIT STATEMENT: Could you have a spiritual heart attack? That we don’t want to have. How sound is our heart spiritually? Could you and I be suffering from spiritual sickness? What makes for a sound, healthy, spiritual heart? How can you tell if your heart is sound spiritually? Now if you want to find out if your heart is sound normally, go see a doctor, you might have some tests run ….but we need to be able to look at ourselves and be able to see what makes for a sound heart.

SPS: We are not alone in our daily and seemingly frivolous struggles …so let’s discuss a good heart cleaning and how that works. Yes …Heart Cleaning

Body: Responding to God involves not just repenting of our individual sinful acts. It also involves a recognition that our hearts and minds have been corrupted by the world and the devil, "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2).

We must see the need for a new heart, a different way of thinking, a right spirit and attitude—a new mind. We must see that the human heart is deceitful and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). We should desire to replace our mind with the mind of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:5).

Like King David, we should cry out to God to “create in me a pure heart” (Psalms 51:10). Our heart—that is, our inner mind—is the main source of our problem with sin. Actions begin as thoughts. Our thinking is a deeply ingrained part of who and what we are. We must cry out to God for His divine help in cleaning us from the inside out.

1. “Thoughts of the heart” can become sin.

One of the attributes of a bad heart (spiritually), Notice why God brought the flood on the earth and destroyed everyone before the flood except for eight individuals.

Genesis 6:5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

BUT …HOW could this happen. Did God put the thoughts there. Did Satan make these people do it?

When God looked at mankind as a society of whole, He found that the inclinations, the intent of the heart was only evil. Not only was it evil but it was continually evil. It was something that people perpetually did.

The time of Noah in Matthew and other places is compared to the end time.

The bible says as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be when the Son of Man comes.

We find that we live in an age and a time in society where what was going on back before the flood, you can see being duplicated today. Man cut off from the tree of life since under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and as a result of man’s ways tend to be a mixture of good and evil and man over a period of time left to himself, not connected to God, tends to degenerate, tends to go down. After sixteen hundred years you’ll find before the flood God finally came to the point where He said: “I’m going to destroy this generation.”

After the flood Noah and his sons and their wives offered up an offering to God, a sacrifice to God out of thanksgiving for their deliverance, the fact that God saved them.

Genesis 8:21: And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; (so from man’s youth up is the imagination of his heart is evil) nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. (Mt 15.19: For out of the heart proceeds (what?) evil thoughts …)

The heart has an imagination too. It seems as though …it acts just like our outward mind, but in the background until it “speaks” through your mouth.  (Luke 6:45 (NKJV) 45  A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.)

“Walking” (how we actively live) while being unwittingly “worked” as a son of disobedience (thus thinking and believing we are doing right) …dulls the heart from actually giving proper motivations and reactions.

Ephesians 2:2 In which you once walked according to the course of this world, (so every human being has walked according to the course of the world, the way of the world) according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,

Verse 3: among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

So Satan is constantly working on a diet of disobedience that allows us to partake of the forbidden fruits just like Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit.

Human beings eat of the forbidden fruits of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the mind and they’re driven by those things.

Matthew 13:13 “Therefore I speak to them in parables, (notice Christ saying) because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

Verse 14: And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:

Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive;

Verse 15: For the hearts of these people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their heart and turn; so that I should heal them.”

The word dull in the Greek means to make thick, fat or to fatten. This condition can lead to spiritual death. What we’re talking about here is hardening of the arteries where you find you become dull, the heart becomes dull, the motivations become dull and that they don’t follow the right way. Those that resist God can harden their hearts.

Romans 2:5 (NKJV) 5  But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,

So what is the human heart like naturally cut off from God? Just a few scripture quotes for you.

Read {{{{Psalms 39:5 “Man in his very best state is altogether vanity.”

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

Isaiah 64:6 “All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.”

Romans 8:7 “Man in the carnal state is enmity against God in the fleshly state.”

HOW do we Do that?: It is possible to deceive your own heart, AND ultimately your heart will feed that deception BACK to you so you believe it to be true. You will come to believe your own inaccurate self-evaluations as true!

James 1:26 (NKJV) 26  If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless.

1 Corinthians 8:1-3 (NKJV) 1  Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. 2  And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. 3  But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.

We actually believe that if we gain knowledge, we are in the know and therefore righteous. But we know nothing we ought to know …that way. The ability to follow what true submission and the humble Christ IS to be known by God.

Our hearts have to be healed in order to become clean. We sit here today going through that healing process.

1. We will need to turn on the one we have been and do love so much. We would give up all for that person to continue (in secret) to live, [that is an evil heart at work]

…but God Guides this process, but WE are not to be passive in the cleaning and healing of our hearts …God repeats that HE is God and we think because we know OF Him, we’re good.

Job 42:1-6 (NKJV) 1  Then Job answered the LORD and said: 2  "I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. 3  You asked, 'Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 4  Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, 'I will question you, and you shall answer Me.' 5  "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. 6  Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes."

Romans 7:18-25 (NKJV) 18  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19  For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20  Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 21  I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22  For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24  O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25  I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Luke 23:33-35 (NKJV) 33  And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. 34  Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." And they divided His garments and cast lots. 35  And the people stood looking on. But even the rulers with them sneered, saying, "He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ, the chosen of God."

Isaiah 55:6-9 (NKJV) 6  Seek the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near. 7  Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. 8  "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. 9  "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

But how does God go about healing the human heart? Well the first thing He does is to begin with surgery.

How is God going to deal with people in the Millennium, specifically Israel?:

Ezekiel 36:25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, (so God starts out by cleaning us up) and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.

So you and I have to be cleaned up, we have to repent of our sins; we’ve got to acknowledge that our ways have not been right, they’ve been wrong. WE are wrong in OUR approach and judgments. WE self-justify, and that makes us deadly.

Verse 26: I will give you a new heart (so figuratively speaking we get a heart transplant. God takes the old out and He puts the new in, you get a new heart.) and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Here again, the analogy is the heart of stone being hard-hardened, resistance, stubborn, rebellious like flint against God and then all of a sudden, God softens us. We become pliable; we become useful in God’s Spirit.

Verse 27: I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”

So God starts out with a radical procedure, a heart transplant. He puts a new heart, a new spirit within us. You’ll find we do not have the spirit of this world.

When God begins to work with us and to convert us God cuts away the hostility, the rebellion, the self-will, the hardness of our heart and He makes us pliable where He can use us, where He can reach us, where we can be softened where His Spirit can touch our minds and we can be sensitive and repent, we feel guilty when we do things that are wrong.

Romans 6:6 “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”

Verse 12: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.

Verse 14: For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

So sin is no longer to control us, to dominate us. When we have God living in us we have a new mind, a new approach.

Verse 16: Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

Verse 17: But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

Verse 18: And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”

So you and I have been freed from the shackles of sin. We have the power of God living in us that frees us from that. So God breaks the grip that Satan had over our lives.

Now Satan is still out there, he’s still influencing but yet the domination is broken. We are no longer just his slaves. We’re no longer slaves to our own nature.

God changes our diet just like a doctor will recommend to a heart patient. If you’ve gone through a heart attack, the doctor will say o.k. you’ve got to stop eating certain foods.

1. All this changing and cleaning is done through emulating the humble Christ …

Let’s take a look at who had a right heart. The best example I can think of is Jesus Christ

Matthew 11: 28 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Verse 29: Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Verse 30: For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Here was Jesus Christ saying that He was gentle or He was meek and He was lowly in heart. He wasn’t all puffed up, inflated with vanity over who He was. He knew He was God in the flesh. He knew that God the Father was His Father, but He had humility, not vanity. He served; He said I didn’t come to have you serve Me. He came to serve them.

The PRIORITY was NOT what HE knew that humanity did not know, but what needed to be sacrificed by HIM to be God AND to advance God’s Plan.

He always gave His Father the credit. He said what My Father said, that’s what I do. He was under His Father’s authority.

Therefore Jesus Christ’s example is the best example we can follow; that He was meek and He was lowly in heart showing the attitude and the approach we should have.

Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

You and I are to be pure in heart. We cannot be involved with things like pornography, weird T.V. programs, some which are on today, wrong sexual approaches, lust, adultery, and these types of things. We are to be pure in heart. To be pure in heart means you’ve got to look at things with a perspective that God does. Verse 28 goes on and says:

Matthew 5:28 “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

So we sin in our heart, in our minds, in our innermost beings, in our desires so you find that people can lust and have wrong desires.

Matthew 6:19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal;

Verse 20: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Verse 21: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

You find this is an indication of the direction of your life, your motives; if our treasure is in God’s work. We pray about it, we fast about it, we tithe, and we give offerings. If you believe in a cause, if you believe in something and you know that it’s right, you will support it and you will be involved in it.

Well then …HOW do we come to this process and HOW do we do it?

FIRST allow the WORD into your inner being …

In Hebrews chapter 4 beginning in verse 12 we find the type of heart-healthy diet God begins to give us:

Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

You and I now brethren begin to feast on the word of God. We begin to eat God’s word. We begin to fill our minds with it. We have a different standard to live by. We have a different way of life to live. But we feast on God’s Word to be corrected personally and the allow our great SELF to be cut away by it …NOT to become somehow entertained or “enlightened” by it. We can leave that to the self-professed scholars of the Bible who think themselves wise but are fools.

Verse 13: And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”

God opens our minds to understand the truth and when we begin to study the scriptures, God’s Spirit working with our minds gives us spiritual awareness, spiritual understanding. God begins to reveal to us the very intents of our heart. All things become naked before Him. We begin to understand more clearly where we need to change. Our minds are to be filled with spiritual things, spiritual attitudes, approaches, thoughts and desires.

Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it,

Verse 26: that He might sanctify (set apart) and cleanse her (how does God clean us up?) with the washing of water by the word.”

There are things people can do to begin to clean their arteries, to begin to get the wrong deposits out of their body, out of their heart, out of their system and God’s word is what we use. It begins to wash us, clean us and it begins to show us where we’re deficient. 

The Bible uses the word perfection. It means maturity. We mature, we grow up, we don’t stay babes forever and we have to die, the old man has to die.

Now you would never think as a human being about eating only once a week. Rarely when we skip a meal and we get hungry, we come back and we eat.

Well the physical is always given to us to teach us the spiritual. We must eat daily spiritually. We must be on a regular diet of spiritual food. We don’t just eat once a week, you don’t wait until the Sabbath to get you bible out and study it and then come to church and say well I’ve done it and that’s all I need to do.

No, if you want to grow spiritually, if you want to have the right attitude, the right diet, you’ve got to do it a little on a regular basis so that you can begin to become like God. Our spiritual batteries have to be recharged all the time so therefore, God will change our diets and our diet must be that we must eat more of that then we do of this world’s diet, otherwise one will dominate the other. We also have to exercise. Now the doctor will begin to get heart patients out, get them to walk. Pretty soon they’re walking a mile, two miles, they begin to exercise.

I Timothy 4:8 “For bodily exercise profits a little, (maybe for a little while, it profits as long as you’re physical so it will profit you for a little while) but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”

You and I must begin to exercise Godliness in our lives. The more we do though is the more we strive to live a Godly life, live like Christ lived, the more we practice that way of life, the more it becomes us or we become it, it becomes second nature to us.

God’s Way of life, His thinking, His approach is etched into our minds and into our hearts and we begin to practice that way of life. Even if we didn’t have this Bible, God’s law is there, we know what God wants us to do and the standard thankfully we do have. So you and I must grow to love God’s law and we’ve got to love God’s way.

There are just times that you and I must insure that our spiritual health is what it should be. So how do you do that?

Second – FASTING: God has shown us in one way that we can begin to ensure our spiritual health is by occasionally fasting and seeking God. Fasting is one way that God has given us to help clean up the heart.

The purpose of fasting spiritually is for us to get closer to God, so you and I can walk with God, be more attuned to Him because when you fast you take the time that you normally would be eating or pursuing other things. You simply study and pray.

One of the major facets of fasting is found back in Isaiah 58 where God clearly shows that it doesn’t do any good to fast, you can fast all you want to and still hate your brother, still have animosity against your brother, still not go out of your way to help them, to serve them, to give to them.

Fasting should help us to have the proper attitude of service and giving to help others. So it has a two-fold approach; it helps us to get closer to God, it helps us to have a right approach toward our neighbor so that we can serve them and help them.

There are a lot of scriptures that we can quote but let’s go back to one of the classic ones is the example of Ahab. Ahab was one of the most wicked kings in all Israel and I want you to notice, God told him he was going to die, your wife is going to be thrown off the wall, the dogs are going to eat her, all kinds of dire things are going to happen to you.

I Kings 21:25 But there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up. (Behind every good man there’s a good woman; behind every bad man, I won’t say that but behind Ahab there was a bad woman, her name was Jezebel.)

Verse 26: And he behaved very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites had done, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel.

Verse 27: So it was, when Ahab heard those words that he tore his clothes (in this case he did rend his garments) and put sackcloth on his body and he fasted and he lay in sackcloth and went about mourning.

Verse 28: And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,

Verse 29: “See how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the calamity in his days; but in the days of his son I will bring the calamity on his house,”

Ahab humbled himself by fasting. Ahab could have walked around and said: “Who do you think you are Elijah? I’m going to get you, I’ll cut your head off or I’ll boil you in oil. How dare you come and tell me this.” But instead, he listened and he fasted.

Humility is a quality that we all strive for and that we need to be able to help serve other people. Humility is the basis of our approach toward God and the proper service and treatment of others. It provides the springboard for having the right attitude of helping and serving and giving. Well here Ahab humbled himself by fasting. You can go through the Old Testament and do a study and you will find that many of the servants of God, the bible says, humbled themselves and they fasted and they sought God.

Growth will occur with an honest and good heart, and a right heart. You and I have to have an honest heart, a right heart.

Matthew 22:36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37: Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God, (half-heartedly? No) with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our might.”, Verse 39: We are to love [AGAPE] our neighbor as ourselves.

So you and I are to love God with our whole heart. It turns our heart from the father of this world who is Satan the devil and his ways so that we no longer cling to that or to him and we cling to God as our Father. We love Him with our whole heart and His ways with our whole being. Another example we could site is the example of David.

{{{{{{{{{Acts 13:21 “And afterward they asked for a king; so God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. 22: And when He had removed him, He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave testimony and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, (so David was a man after God’s own heart. Notice the last part of this because normally we skip over this) who will do all My will.”)))))))

David was a man that God knew would do His will, whatever God willed for him, that he would do it with his whole heart and so you find that David did.

In Psalm chapter 40 and verse 6, notice here a psalm of David as it says; it’s talking about David but also a prophecy of Christ. David was a type of Christ in many cases.

Psalms 40:6 “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You have opened; burnt offering and sin offering You did not require. 7: Then I said: “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the Book it is written of me. 8: I delight to do Your will, O my God, (so Christ also delighted to do the will of God) and Your law is within my heart.”

CONCLUSION:

So brethren, ultimately if we’re going to have the right heart we have to have God’s law written in our heart. Now why? Because God’s law is simply a reflection of His nature, of His mind, His approach. God is love, God’s law is a way of love; how to love God, how to love our neighbor. So you and I need to know constantly the state of our health, we need check-ups. You may get an annual check up.

You say: “Doc, how’s my blood pressure?” They may put you on a stress test and you may have a stress test to see how your heart functions. They can take an x-ray and they can do all kinds of testing.

Well David asked God to do the same thing of him.

Psalms 139:23 “Search me, O God, (or examine me) and know my heart; (So he prayed and asked God to know his heart) try me and know my anxieties; 24: And see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

• “Thoughts of the heart” can become sin …
• Turn away from the one you have loved and sacrificed all for …your own inner self.
• Permanently CHANGE …by imitating the humble Christ

CLOSE:

Brethren we need to pray daily that God will search us and know us, that He will know our heart. We need to ask God daily to show us what might be hurting our spiritual heart, our spiritual growth, our spiritual approach. We certainly don’t want hardening of the arteries to set in. We don’t want gunk accumulating in our heart. We want to clean it out, our thoughts, our approach, our attitudes, our desires, our motives, our whole being. We want to be white and spiritually healthy before God.

We should do as David did in Psalm 51. You might remember there’s a beautiful song written by this when he said in

            Psalms 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God.”

2 Corinthians 13:14 (NKJV) The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.