Spiritual Cancer

Good to have you with us. I hope it's a beautiful day where you are. It's a beautiful day here in Cincinnati. Very good to be with all of you here today as well. Let me thank Carly and Kristin for that special music. Very good to hear those words. Good reminder of the time of year we're in. We always recognize Jesus Christ as our Savior and everything He did for us, especially at this time of year as we're looking forward to the Passover as well and all that that meaning has for us. You know, the Passover and this time of year always did have special meaning to me because of the things that we do, the things that God reminds us of, and the physical things that we go through as God prepares us for that all-important time of Passover. You know, He told us before Passover we do this period of physical self-examination, which is really spiritual self-examination as well. He wants us to be looking at ourselves honestly through His eyes, through the eyes of the Holy Spirit. Who are we really on the inside? Because that's what He is about. Who are we? And do we remember, as you heard in the sermonette, who we are and what we're doing here? So we have that physical preparation that if we don't do it before Passover, we've missed the entire, we've missed everything about it. As we look to Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread, we go through this process of going through our homes, looking for the leavening that's there and the freezers and in the refrigerators and the cabinets. And I think all of us are probably really, really diligent in all those things that we do as we get the physical leaven out. Hopefully we're even more diligent in looking at ourselves as we go through this examination process of, are we getting the spiritual leavening out of our lives? Because that is the physical matches, the spiritual. It helps us realize the times we're in. And as much as we have leavening sitting in places we might not even expect as we go through our homes, there's leavening in our lives, as long as we're living and breathing, that God can make us aware of if we let Him and if we have our minds open to what He is telling us. So we have this mixture of physical that lends additional to the spiritual things that we're going through, and that's the real meaning of these things as we do that. You know, we're reminded, too, of the things that God has done as we eat that unleavened bread in a few weeks. You know, what it means. We will have gone through the process of putting leavening out just as important to put the unleavened bread in because when we are baptized and we receive God's Holy Spirit, He sees us as a new man living in our lives, living our lives in a different way than we did before, not going back to the way things were, but building, building what He leads us to into our lives and becoming like Him. And remembering all those things that we're doing as we go through those things. Now, as we look at the Ten Commandments, you know, some people might look and say, you know, well, I've led a pretty good life. I didn't kill anyone this year. I didn't commit adultery, at least physically.

I mean, some might forget that pornography in this day and age is also adultery and breaking that commandment. You know, the world will say, what's the real difference? You're not hurting anyone. Well, you really are if you read 1 Corinthians 6. You really are hurting someone when you do that.

And all these other things that we can look at, but it was, you know, ancient Israel physically adhered to those laws. But when Christ came, He didn't do away with them like the world wants to think or so many of the world want to think. He enhanced them. He magnified them. There's the spiritual element of what we do. So it's not enough to just not commit physical adultery. It's not even what's in our minds.

It's not enough to not kill physically. It's what do we do to other people? What are we thinking about? What are our attitudes like? Are we growing in that fruit of agape where there is the love that God wants for all of us to have? The true agape love that isn't just a touchy feely, make me happy type thing. But keep in mind where I'm going and what I'm doing and that we have a road to follow a straight and narrow path to the kingdom.

Not the wide, narrow path where everyone does everything they want to do. And you know, God always wanted and He always looked at our hearts. Even in Old Testament times, you know, reminded of the times in Deuteronomy where, you know, where they were going through the physical circumcision. In Deuteronomy twice, He said, it's really circumcision of the heart that He's looking for. He was always looking for the heart. Israel, ancient Israel couldn't do that, we learn, because He didn't have God's Holy Spirit. But you and I do if we've been baptized, we've repented and are baptized and are really being led by that Holy Spirit.

And He was always looking at our hearts. If we turn back for just a moment to 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel 16. You know, He did give some of the kings back then the Holy Spirit. And He was looking for them to obey Him in not just the physical, but the heart that He looked for. We know King Saul, the first king, failed miserably. He didn't do everything God said. He didn't do it the way God said. He kind of watered down what He thought was going to be acceptable to God rather than paying attention to all of the commands.

And at 1 Samuel 16 and verse... Oh, wrong book. 1 Samuel 16 verse 7. So the Lord said to Samuel, don't look. Don't look at Saul's appearance or at his physical stature because I've refused him. I've rejected him as king. He might look good on the outside, for the Lord doesn't see as a man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the eternal looks at the heart.

What do our hearts look like to God? You know, tomorrow, as a reminder, is the first of Abib. If you look at the Hebrew calendar that we monitor God's days or measure God's days by, it's the first of Abib. So two weeks from today, we'll be here on the 14th of Abib, the daylight portion of it. The night before we'll observe Passover and as we gather together in two weeks, you know, not the same day of the week, but the same 14th of Abib, Christ will have been going through a lot on that day.

And as we meet, He will be breathing His last. And we have that to look forward to, remembering in solemnity what He did on that day and all it meant for us and what He had in mind because it was with love, with love for all of mankind, that He was willing to humble Himself and become flesh and blood like you and me, give up being God, and then suffer the way He did.

And He deserved none of it just so that we would have the opportunity to have our sins forgiven if we truly claim His sacrifice, if we truly follow Him, if we truly understand it's putting away the old and living by the new and getting purer and purer and purer as each year goes by and not slinking back into our old ways or the ways of the world around us that we see and think are okay.

A lot that goes on at this time.

So today I want to talk about a melody, a physical melody, that we've all heard of and when we hear the word, if we ever heard it said of us, it would strike probably fear in us. Certainly would strike dread in us. And if we hear the word said about us by a physical doctor, it would change our lives forever. That word is cancer. Cancer. I know some in the room have had that diagnosis of cancer, and I know that if you ever hear a doctor say you have this, immediately when those words come out of his or her mouth, your life changes forever. It's never the same again. It's never the same again with your family. What you've been faced with is mortality in a way that you didn't expect, and it takes you by absolute surprise. You didn't see it coming. You didn't understand what was going on. You might wonder, why me? What did I do to bring this on? But cancer is one of those insidious diseases that you really never know the reason why. You can read all the medical journals, you can look online, it can say it's your lifestyle, it's your exposure to chemicals, it's, you know, if you're a smoker, it's smoking. But there's so many people who do those things who never get cancer. It is random, and it just happens. Now we can look back at our lives, and we can ask questions about ourselves, but we realize when that word comes out of a doctor's mouth, life changes. You don't go on the same way. There are things you have to do differently. You might choose some kind of medical treatment, your life changes as a result. You might decide to go the natural route, but you don't eat the same way you did before. You change your diet, you become a different person, you watch what you're eating, and you no longer look at all the sugar-processed foods and everything the same way. It's like those things aren't helping the situation. And if God is going to let you live, of course you look to Him as your primarily healer because He is the one who heals. We need to make some life changes when we hear that word as well because if we just kind of go on doing what we are doing without changing anything, pretty much the result is going to be known. You will die. That's the same as spiritual healing as well. You know, we may recognize, but without God's Spirit, we are powerless. We're powerless over the sins and the faults and the attitudes that we may allow to develop in our lives.

So you have this cancer that's there. And you know, you've read enough or you know people who have had it. And if it all stays in one part of your body, they say it's more treatable, right?

And they talk about early detection. And so all our health plans in America now have this provision that you can get an annual checkup. And they encourage you to get an annual checkup because for whatever it might be, cancer or any other thing, if you just are there and you can detect it early, there's treatment that can happen. Whether you choose medical or something, or just even trying to do it naturally and adjust your diet regimen, your exercise, or whatever it is you do, always looking to God, knowing that He is the healer. Ultimately, it's not what we do, it's what He does. You and I who know the truth and have His Holy Spirit. So early detection is important.

You know, I sometimes look at this examination period we're going through, and God has us go through this annual examination period. What are we doing? Are we really looking at ourselves? Is there an attitude in me this year that wasn't there last year? Has something happened that sent me into a different direction than was there before? Is there a sin I've allowed into my life? Have I become a little less astute in what I am doing and thinking, watching, talking about, whatever I do, have I just kind of become calloused, using a word from the sermonette, to some of those things and think it's okay? Are those things have they entered in?

So if it stays in one part of the body, doctors say, well, it's a little bit more treatable, especially if you treat it early. But if you let it go and cancer spreads, if it metastasizes in other parts of the body, it's much more difficult, much more difficult for that to be addressed.

Much more difficult from a physical standpoint. A lot of things that have to happen always can be cured, always can be healed because God can heal anything, but a lot of things happen when that happens. So, you know, if we're looking at all that and understanding that cancer is kind of a mortality diagnosis, if you hear it for the first time, you realize there's something in you that can kill you. It can kill you. And that's a wake-up call unlike any other wake-up call, physically. And so what you want as you go through whatever process you do and your life changes, what you want, you just want it all out of your body.

I want every diseased cell out of my body. I want to be pure. I want to be absolutely free of all these things that are in there that can kill me. That's a desire that you have physically. So you go through whatever it is you go through and suffer. God, please get all these things out of my body that can kill me. Get rid of it. I want purity and willing to do whatever it takes to get that purity physically and get that death sentence out of my body. And you know medical science, you know, you we know people that go into remission and whatever, but medical science will tell you, at least it used to, I don't know what they're saying these days, but a few years back, there's always this master cell, this master cancer cell that's in your body that no medicine can kill. It's there. So it may go into remission. It might be years, might be decades, but it's always there. It can't be killed, medical science says. So it's always there, and you're always aware, and that should motivate. I got to stay on the straight and narrow path. I've got to keep doing what I've done. I've got to do things differently than I did in the past, so that it doesn't get activated again. This death sentence that's in me.

So as we've talked about the physical things of cancer that I think most all of us know someone, or have been diagnosed with that, there's a spiritual cancer too. There's a spiritual cancer too that we need to be aware of. Something inside of us that can rise up, be present one day, and if not early detected, not identified. If we close our minds to it and try to forget it even is there, and just go on with our lives and assume everything is okay, it can kill us spiritually.

What's worse? Spiritual death is the thing we should all fear.

Christ says it in such plain words when he says, don't save your life. He who loses his life finds his life. Don't do anything to jeopardize the Holy Spirit in you and the life that God has called us to. It's a precious, precious thing, and we need to be aware of it all the time. And we need to be aware of what might be going in at us, and God has given us this season. Not that it's the only season because we should be examining ourselves daily, but certainly during this season leading into Passover we should really be looking. Is what I do up to the standards that God has set? Is the attitudes, the things that I'm thinking, the choices that I make, have I become, as you heard in the sermon, tolerant of sin? That's okay. You know what? That's okay. If that happened or that happened, then you know what? I'm okay. If I did that, God's okay with it. He understands. Well, he understands, but he does say, repent when you see sin. Take the actions that he says. That's how you become spiritually more mature.

That's how you clear the sin out of you because you don't want that death sentence.

1 John 3, 3, we don't need to turn there. You know what it says? All of us who have this hope in us, what do we want? We seek purity. Purity. That means we ask God, I want all the wrong attitudes. I want all the sin. I want all the faults in me. Please reveal them so that I can rid them because every day of my life and every year of my life, I want to become more and more pure. I want life, which is your Holy Spirit in me, guiding me, directing me. Old man, totally buried. New man, new man living by every word of God, growing closer and closer to him, growing closer and closer in our standards and behavior to what he says and not just whatever it is that might come in and deceive us. Remembering our hearts will deceive us. They'll deceive us and tell us that's okay. It's okay. If everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I? So let's talk and compare physical cancer and some of the things that we do when we become aware of that to what we can do spiritually as we realize, you know, there is a cancer in all of us.

Every single one of us has cells in our body, things in our mind, things that we do, because none of us are perfect yet. None of us are, you know, all of us are susceptible.

To allowing these things to grow and overtake us if we're not aware or if we just forget it. Let me give you four points here. One is, like, understand there are many types of spiritual cancer, just like there's many types of physical cancer. There's colon cancer, lung cancer, cancer of the blood. Some cancers don't even bear the name cancer, but there's many. You know, science says there's more than a hundred types of cancer that you can develop. It's pervasive. It's everywhere. Well, there's many types of spiritual cancer as well. And the word cancer actually appears in the Bible in the New King James Version. Let's go back to 2 Timothy.

These spiritual cancers, they can go undetected for a time, just like physical cancer. You know, we live in a age now where you hear about turbo cancers. People are living along their life fine, and then all of a sudden, one day they don't feel well. They go to the doctor because they're just feeling really, really bad at all—stage four. And then they die within a few weeks. It's like it just sneaks up on you. But, you know, maybe they weren't paying attention to some of the symptoms because we have a way of human beings to just say, oh, I feel generally okay until you really, really don't. And we can fool ourselves spiritually saying, I'm okay. I'm okay until we really, really aren't. And then it becomes a problem. So in 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy 2, verse 17, Paul, when he's instructing Timothy here, talks about this thing that can happen to people—members of the church, not people in the world, but people in the church that have had this malady, spiritual cancer. Attack them, if you will. Verse 15, 2 Timothy 2, says, Be diligent. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Know the Bible. Understand the Bible. Live by it. Make it your instruction book. Make it the thing that you live by, not men's interpretations of it, not people who tell you, doesn't apply, not in this case, the Bible applies in every case in our lives.

Be diligent to present yourself proved to God. I read that. Verse 16, But shun, walk away from profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.

Walk away from those things. Don't listen to them. Listen to God. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Don't listen to babblings and unseeing things. That's okay. That's okay. You know what? God doesn't care. It's okay in this case. No. We're striving for perfection, blamelessness, purity, not anything less. It's a constant, ongoing goal that should be in our mind.

And their message, these profane and idle babblings, their message will spread like cancer.

Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, Paul says, cancer. And they left the church. Look at what their cancer was.

They've strayed, verse 18, concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already passed, and they overthrow the faith of some.

They let it develop in their minds. I have this little thought. Jesus Christ, He was the fulfillment of the resurrection. It's already passed.

To us, it seems like a bizarre thing for someone to believe that, but there are many bizarre things that people believe in doctrine today. They go off on their little tangents. It's an idea that they have, and all of a sudden it becomes a little bigger. We can talk about it.

We can talk about some of them, right? Sacred names is one. I'm always reminded of sacred names of a lady who has nothing to do with us anymore, and how she let a little thing she read just grow and grow in her. No matter how much counseling you do with her, oh man, I just want to hold on to this.

It's Yahweh, only Yahweh, to the point that when she left the church, she doesn't think the Sabbath is important. She doesn't think any of the commandments are important. Just Yahweh. Just Yahweh. If we just say Yahweh and not God or Jesus Christ and Yeshua, bizarre and sad. When you see that happen, same thing happened to Hymenaeus here. They let it. They let that cancer cell in there, rather than going back to the Word of God and looking to see what the truth is, and someone holding them accountable to that Word of truth, they let it kill them. But, worse, they infected others. They talked about it. They heard other people. They overthrow the faith of some.

People listened. Well, that makes sense. And it was tolerated. They were just among the people there, allowed to do whatever it is they do. And people thought, well, I guess it's okay.

They're still here among us. They are brothers, right? And they are saying these things, or they are doing these things, so it must be okay to do that. And it wasn't at all. So Hymenaeus and Phyletus, they left. And because sin was tolerated, others left, too. Because cancer spreads.

Cancer spreads among a body. And we are the body of Christ. We are His body. And while cancer can do in our individual bodies, it can spread through the body as well if we are not cautious, if we're not examining ourselves, if we're not holding ourselves to the standards, the standards that God gives us, which we adhere to if really we do want to be part of that kingdom because it won't be our standards in the kingdom. It'll be what He wants, what we do, how we adhere to what He says, and how we, through our lives, become more and more like Him, more and more doing things His way, even when it really hurts. And we really, really have to deny self or do things we don't want to do because we stand for His truth. If we really want to be there, then we will do what He says. Let me read to you a couple of commentaries on this verse of 17. This is from the Adam Clark commentary, and I think he did a very, well, let me, before I even mention that, cancer there in the New King James is from the Greek gagriana, which means gangrene. Let me tell you what that word means in the Greek. It says, it's a disease by which any part of the body suffering from inflammation becomes so corrupted that unless a remedy be seasonably applied, the evil continually spreads, attacks other parts, and at last eats away the bones. So it is cancer. That's the word that we use today. But let me read what Adam Clark says as he talks about this verse and what his and what his read on what Paul is saying here. He says, speaking of what Hymenaeus and Phileida said, he said, such is the influence of false doctrine. It fixes its mortal seed in the soul, which continues to corrupt and assimilate everything to itself, to itself, about self, continues to corrupt and assimilate everything to itself till, if not prevented by a timely application of the word of life under the direction of the heavenly physician, it terminates in the bitter pains of an eternal death. To such a gangrene, the apostle compares the corrupt doctrines of Hymenaeus, Hymenaeus, and Phileidas. That sentence. Let me read what the Barclays commentary says. He says, this will spread over and consume the healthful parts, this false doctrine, but it doesn't have to be false doctrine. It could be anything that spreads. You know, it's not just one sin. There's all sorts of sins. There's attitudes. There's faults. There's weaknesses. There's tolerance. There's all sorts of things that are against God's will that can spread. This just happens to be one. It will spread and consume the healthful parts. It will not merely destroy the parts immediately affected, but will extend into the surrounding healthy parts and destroy them also. So it is with erroneous doctrines. They will not merely eat out the truth in the particular matter to which they refer, but they will spread over and corrupt other truths. The doctrines of religion are closely connected, and they are dependent on each other like the different parts of the human body. One cannot be corrupted without affecting those adjacent to it, and unless checked, the corruption will soon spread over the whole.

Pretty serious stuff. Pretty serious stuff. And so many times, maybe, we listen to things that even people in the church, right? It doesn't have to be just the internet. It doesn't have to be necessarily listening to Sunday morning servants on TV. That can spread. Hymanias and Phyletus, they were in the church, and they infected other people because those other people listened.

They didn't know the Word of God. They didn't go back and cling to what God said.

Well, talking about the many types of things out there that can corrupt us, you know, as we're in this time of Passover, often I like to go back in the Bible and see, what did Jesus Christ do? What did the apostles do? What was he facing, Jesus Christ, in his days leading up to Passover? He knew in his last Passover that it was coming up, and he faced many, many things in those last days. Many things that he saw in his own people, because remember, he came to his own people. God didn't put him in a Gentile nation. He brought him to his own people, and Christ encountered many things that were happening there that led to his death, but also spiritual death of where it was there. So let's look at a few of those things leading up to that time of that last Passover. Let's go to Matthew 21 and see some of the things that he was seeing among his own people that were there. Nothing uncommon in what they had. All the things that he encountered were there in times before, were there in times after, could be among us, could be among us today, because they are common human foibles, common human traits, if we allow them. So in Matthew 21, we find him... we see him in the early part of this chapter riding in on a donkey, symbolizing his humility. And it didn't come as a king on a horse with all his armor and all these armies with him. He came as a humble king, and the people loved him. They saw who he was, and they saw his heart everywhere he went. He preached truth. He healed everyone who was brought to him. So this all happened. And then in verse 12, he went into the temple. This is the house of God, the temple. You know, you and I are the temple of God today individually and collectively. So he went into the temple. Jesus went into the temple of God, and he drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. Wow. Here's a temple courtyard, the house of God. It had been turned into over the years. Not that wasn't the first time it happened, but it had become a place of merchandise.

Now we can do this. These are nice courtyards. Let's just set up some tables here, and let's worry about money and all the things that we can have and all the physical things that go on. And as Jesus looked at that, as he's nearing that final Passover, he's seen it before. But this time he's got—he has righteous anger, and he overturns everything. He goes in there. What are you thinking? What are you doing? How have you polluted the house of God? Why have you allowed this to happen?

The house of God, he says, is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you've made it a den of thieves. How dare you do that to God's house? How dare you allow these things to be in there? And he might say the same thing for us. We don't set up commerce, but God's house is a spiritual house. It's for spiritual building. It is a house of prayer.

And that should be the primary thing that's there, not the physical part, like the Pharisees had turned it into. They love the money. They loved all those things that were going on. And somehow, along the lines, little by little, they got to the point where it's like, this is okay. Yeah, set up your tables here. Go ahead and sell this and do that and whatever. It's okay. But Christ came, said, no, it's not okay. You've lost the purpose. You've lost the purpose for why you are here.

You say you're God's own people, but what are you doing? What are you doing that you are tolerating?

This stuff. And so, you know, he, you know, some people will say, well, he was really mad. Well, he was righteously indignant. Did he do it because he disliked those people? Well, he disliked what they were doing. But what do we remember about Christ? Everything he did was out of love.

Everything he did was out of love. Love isn't always just touchy and feely. Make me feel good. Tell me I'm a good boy and everything like that. Love means I want you in the kingdom. I'm concerned about your future. And when you need to be told something or go in a direction that God wants you to do, you just accept that and think, oh, humbly, humbly, thank you for setting me in the right direction. That was what Christ was doing here. The love was supposed to...

he did it out of love. He didn't do it out of anger or because he had any issues with them.

Then you go through the verses here and you see him healing the blind and the lame. He was a person of the people. He just didn't hobnob with the Sanhedrin and all those things. He was a person who loved people. He died for all of mankind, not just a few, not just the people that are in the church today. He died for all of mankind. His will, like God the Father's, is that none would perish, but all would come to what? To repentance. Because it is the first step toward eternity. Without it, there is no eternal life. Without that, there is no life in you.

It's one of the lessons of these days that we're in, an annual reminder of what we are here to do and making sure we are still on that path and having somehow strayed from it.

So as you go down through here, you see him doing these things. If you go down to verse 20... well, verse 15 I have here. Let's... when the chief priests... oh, we begin to see something that, you know, has already been developing, but now it's becoming apparent.

As Jesus is looking what's going on with the people in the temple, he sees verse 15, the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that Christ did and the children crying out to the temple and saying, Hosanna to the son of David. Did they say, praise God? No.

They were indignant. And they said to him, do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said, to them... we made his response. What was going on with them? Ah, we know what Pilate said as they brought Christ to him and said, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate, not a Jew, not one of Christ's own that he came to said, he knew, it's out of envy. Wow. The people are listening. They're flocking to him. They're seeing what's going on. And it just made them mad. It just made them mad. And so you see envy, another sin that Christ was seeing in his own people happening there. If we go on to verse 23, you see them beginning to challenge his authority. He's teaching. When he came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted him as he was teaching and said, well, who gives you the right to do these things? By what authority are you saying these things to us? Christ answered.

So they developed in their enmity of him. We go down and actually it'd be very good. I think we missed something on the Bible reading program this week as I was reading through it and I saw we did three chapters in a row that said the same thing. I think we meant to have Matthew 21, 22, and 23 as part of the reading leading up to 24 and somehow we didn't do that. So you might want to go back and read 21, 22, and 23 and see what Christ was facing in those days leading up to it. He saw the sins of the people and he was trying to warn them of what was going on. His message was always out of love, turn back to me. Turn back to me. Turn back to the God you say you worship and do things the way he said. If you go down through here, he's got the parables of the vine dressers and how they killed the people that God sent to them or that the vine the owner of the vineyard sent to them. In 22 he talks about the wedding supper, people that had excuses. Well, I don't really have time for that right now and others who didn't come with the proper garments, who weren't there with the right attitudes, understanding what it was to be called to that supper and what a privilege it is to know the truth and what a privilege it is to do the things that God says to do and to be part of what he has called us to. And then in chapter 23, I mean, he just lets the Pharisees have it. He calls them hypocrites. He talks about everything they have to do. And you might read that thing and think, well, he really hates the Pharisees. No, he loved the Pharisees. He was warning them, this is what is the problem. You need to change what you are doing. You've made yourself your own commandments that in their minds superseded the commandments of God. He talks about all those things that we might do ourselves. That some things it's like, you know, this is more important than what God says. No, what God says is the preeminent thing. He's God. He says the standards. He's the words that we follow. Christ didn't do it because he was mad and hated him. He did it because he loved them. He loved them, and he wanted them to turn back to him. So if we read just a couple things in here, you know, he says in verse 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Wow! You look good on the outside. You say all the right things. You kind of look at it. You're there at services every week. You're there at the holy days. You pay your ties, but what's really going on in the inside? Christ sees. God sees. We can fool each other, but we don't fool God. He looks at the heart. So he goes on and says, blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup. Examine yourselves. Look at the things that you do. Honestly, through God's eyes, not through a pat on the back or having someone else say, oh, you know what you did was okay. It's okay. We don't have to worry about a blind Pharisee. First cleanse the inside of the cup and dish. That the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, verse 27, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. And he goes on in verse 28 to say the same thing. And then he says to those scribes and Pharisees, you've allowed this cancer to grow in you. Look what it's turned you into. You may not have realized the path you were going on, but this is Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, saying this is what you become.

And he goes on and he says, you know what? People look at you, Pharisees, and you're making them as bad as you are because they see your example. They see what you've done, and they think it's okay. It's okay to do whatever it is. Someone does. I mean, it's something for all of us ministers to remember. I know people watch our examples, and if they see us doing something, I'll see, okay, well, he's done it. I can do that. I can do this. I can say this. I can say that. I can react however I want to react because I saw a minister do it. We need to be aware. And as we go through our lives to look, look at those things as we examine ourselves. Here at the end of chapter 23, we see Christ's heart. It's always a verse that I always look at, and I think it's a beautiful, beautiful thing that God has put there when you see what was in Christ's heart. Here he's gone through this diatribe, if you will, of the Pharisees. But in verse 37, he says, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. Why were those prophets sent? You know those prophets. You know Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, Isaiah. God didn't send them to be a curse to Israel. He sent them to make them aware of what was going on in their lives and to say, turn back to me. But they didn't listen all too, well, all the time. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you weren't willing. I just wanted to love you. I came because I loved you and because I want you to have eternal life. I want you to do that, but you have to do the hard work of examining self, turning from our way to his way, and doing all those things. So point one, I could go on and on. You can go on and on and look at the things that the Bible shows you is there of these things that Christ faced Himself as He saw it among His own people. Not the Gentiles, His own people. Point two, early detection, we mentioned, is crucial. Knowing the symptoms, paying aware of the symptoms, doing that annual checkup.

Early detection is crucial. Let me just turn to a few verses here that talk about this early detection when we see something wrong to weed it out of our lives and not allow it to fester. Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12.15. I read verse 14 where the sentence begins. Hebrews 12.14, pursue peace. Pursue peace with all people and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

Looking carefully, there's one of those adverbs, examine yourself carefully, looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up, cause trouble, and by this many become defiled. That little root, something that gets planted in our mind that we allow to just sit there. We don't ask God, pull out this root, pull out this thing that keeps bugging me. You know, if we, in our lawns or our gardens, if we just let those little weeds sit there and think, nah, whatever, pretty soon those weeds overtake the garden, right?

Or they grow into something so big that it's like, wow, now it's a monumental challenge to get rid of this weed and everything that's been infected. If I had just pulled up that weed back when it was a little, I knew where it was going, but I didn't take the time to do it. And that's what he's saying here. Don't let bitterness. You know, we've talked about some of the things that I saw with the Pharisees, the people that he was dealing with, and not even the Pharisees, the people of God who were in that temple, defiling the temple by turning it into a place of commerce. And here he sees, you know, here we're told bitterness. Don't let that happen.

When you see it and feel it, ask God, give me your Holy Spirit. I can't get rid of this, but you can. Pull it up and don't let it become something that defiles me and takes me out of your grace, life, that it isn't something that takes away the Holy Spirit from me because I let it envelop me like a cancer and not only infect me but others around me who may see it going or growing.

Little bitter, do it right away. When you detect something, when you're examining yourselves, now ask God, get rid of it. I can't do it, but with your Holy Spirit, I can. Not my strength, your strength. I can't overcome any of this, except your Holy Spirit can, and I believe that, and I ask for it, and I desperately want it gone. I want those death cells, those spiritual cancer cells, out of my body. I want them out of my mind. I want them out of my heart.

We can look back in Matthew 5. Matthew 5, verse 23. Again, the Sermon on the Mount. Christ said so much in the Sermon on the Mount that we, you know, can look back at it and see what He has to say there in Matthew 5.23 as we are approaching Passover. You know, He tells us, don't take it in an unworthy manner. Do the work. Do the work that it takes to be there with the right attitude. I've sinned along the way. I recognize my sin and repent, and in humility I come before you and ask for it to be removed. Matthew 5.23, if you bring your gift to the altar, and you there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Do it then. Do it now. Don't wait one year, two years, three years. Do it now, God says. When you realize it, do it. Don't let it grow. Don't let it continue to extend. Don't let it begin to take over everything about you, individually or collectively. The temple of God, the body of God. Matthew 5.29, He says something that we would look at and say, well, that's extreme, right? If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it's more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Get rid of it. I don't care how important it is, God says. Get rid of it. If it's the death sentence, get rid of it. He doesn't mean physically do that. He's making an extreme thing. Get it out of your life. If that's the thing that offends, get it out. Don't let it overtake you. Don't let it overcome you. Overcome evil with the spirit that God gives us. We can talk about forgiveness, right? Matthew 6.14, if you forgive men, their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you don't forgive men, neither will he forgive your trespasses. Do it. Do the things that God says to do. I'm not going to take the time to read Colossians 3 as part of your reading program for next week that talks about those things that we are to get rid of. That God says, put these out. If they're part of you, when we look at ourselves honestly, get rid of them. But then also put in these other things that include the fruits of the spirit. So, you know, early detection, get rid of it.

Number three. Like physical cancer, if we don't get rid of it, it grows over time.

Might not be the next day, but over the course of weeks, months, years, it continues to grow.

John 12. John 12. Another, you know, Jesus Christ as they're approaching Passover.

He runs into some things that he sees here that are going to have some disastrous effects for the people, you know, that are there. John 12 verse...

Let's just read the first six verses. John 12 verse 1. Six days. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was, who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead.

And they made him a supper. Martha served. Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him. And Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenerd, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray him, said, Well, why wasn't this sold for three hundred denariae and given to the poor?

Sounds like a very nice sentiment, right? On the outward, that looks really nice. Yeah.

Good thought, Judas. Why didn't we just sell this? Shouldn't this be given to the poor? That's a noble thing. But what was in his heart? John tells us, This he said not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the money box, and he used to take what was put in it.

And Christ corrected him, Leave her alone. Leave her alone. She's anointing me for my burial. What she's done is fine. But we're told something about Judas. Judas, who walked with Jesus Christ for three and a half years every day with him, for how often they were together. But he never got rid of something and a fault that he had that would be the thing that killed him.

Why did he not get rid of greed? Why did he not get rid of the love of money? Certainly, he heard Christ talk about it. Certainly, he heard the words that he said, but he just harbored it.

I go back and I think of the temple that we talked about where there were all these money changers and the Pharisees who say they loved money. Did he think, well, you know what they're doing at the temple? Money's okay. It's okay to do that. And hey, if I just go sell Christ for 30 pieces of silver, what difference does it make? The Bible tells us he didn't really think that they would kill him, but he thought, you know, something in it for me. Why not? Why not? Well, why not became Judas? You should have paid attention. You should have weeded that out. You shouldn't have let it happen. And how many times did Christ give him the opportunity, even that that Passover supper, to turn from what he was doing? And it always boggles my mind how Judas could have sat there that night and Christ's talking about someone was going to betray him. Someone was going to betray him. And he said, he'll be the one who puts his hand, you know, in the bread with me.

They watched. Probably Judas heard that. And then when he turned to Judas and he said, what you do, do quickly, he absolutely knew that Jesus knew what he was about to do.

And he could have made that decision at that time. What am I thinking? Why would I have done this? Why would I have done that to the Savior? And I know he's the Savior. At least I say he's the Savior. But he made the choice, do it anyway. He did it anyway.

And it pierced him through with many sorrows. He died, killed himself that night. That cancer, that cancer that's there, that can be there. He wasn't the only one. For him, it was extreme. He committed a heinous sin. That any one of us could do the same thing. If we allow whatever fault it is, doesn't have to be greed, doesn't have to be envy, doesn't have to be whatever it is.

If you look at Galatians 5.19, any of those works of the flesh that we know when we look at it, that's some of who we are. Some of that is still in there in us. And it can kill us if we let it, if we don't knock it out. But the Pharisees had this, too, right? So, you know, here it is. Lazarus had been resurrected just, you know, maybe a few weeks before this, again, approaching the time of that last Passover. And you have the Pharisees who, at the end of chapter 11, once Christ resurrected that, resurrected Lazarus, it says in verse 53, they plotted from that day on to put him to death.

That's it. That's it. Resurrection from the dead? How could they have thought it's anything but of God? But their minds had become so calloused, so close that they couldn't even see what they were thinking because it was just, He's taking something away that we want. He's taking something away that we want. And therefore, we have to stop it. And of course, they had their reasons, as you read through here, that were all false reasons. But as you look through there, let's look at verse, let's look at verse 19. I mean, John 12. They talk about it again, you know, here in John 12. It talks about the, you know, Christ coming into Jerusalem on the donkeys. In verse 19, it says, The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, You see, you're accomplishing nothing. They still like Him. We're supposed to be ending this. We're supposed to be quashing this Jesus Christ. You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him. And then you see other things they do as you read through that chapter as well. Let's do look at Luke, Luke 16.

Because the sermonette touched on this, and we'll touch on it briefly as well.

Why did they not see Christ? Why did they not see the truth? Why did they not do the things to weed those things out? Why did they let it happen? Luke 16 verse 14, The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard these things, and they derided Christ. And He said to them, You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Again, some strong words not spoken out of hate, spoken out of love. We go back to Matthew 13.

Matthew 13. Jesus Christ earlier on in His ministry saw what some of the problem was. In verse 15, verse 15, Christ's quoting from Isaiah. He says, For the hearts of this people have grown, dull. Their ears are hard of hearing. Their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them. They had a calloused heart. They had closed their minds. They had determined we're not listening to any of it. We don't want to hear it. We don't want to be touched. We don't want to feel anything except we just want it. We just want to close our minds. What a dangerous malady that is to come to the point where we just say, we don't want to hear it. Our minds are closed. Our clients are played up. We don't care what is right and what is wrong. It's the way we want it. Over time, that cancer, that cancer led them to do something they would have never thought they could do in their lifetimes. Who would ever think if you were of the people of God in that time, New Testament times, well New Testament once Christ died, that you would ever put to death the Savior just for self, just because of the pride that's there. The pride does kill.

Attention to self and what's in it for me does kill. It is a cancer that has to be rooted out because if it's not rooted out, it's deadly. It's deadly and it will infest. Many, many more things.

Okay, number four. It is us. It's us that kill ourselves and allow the cancer to grow.

God has given us the power to overcome. He has given us the power to overcome these things. That's the sin that does so easily beset us, as it says in Hebrews 12. The sin that does so easily beset us is just there. And we can justify it in our minds and we can let it in our minds and we can think we're the right ones and we have all these things that we're doing that we can justify self, but it's not there. Let's look at, well, I won't turn to 1 Corinthians 15, 33. There it says, evil company, evil company corrupts good habits. A modern one is, you know, birds of a feather flock together. I want to watch, you know, if we're with people who are saying things that are obviously apart from what God says, we might not want to hang around them, right? 1 Corinthians 5 is certainly a days of unleavened bread and Passover chapter. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 5. Here we have in the church, you know, someone, as you remember, sexual immorality, such as was not named among the Gentiles. Paul says, even among the world, this doesn't happen, and yet you're tolerating it in your church, is what Paul tells the Corinthians. He tells him in verse 2, you're puffed up. You should have mourned that he was done this disease, this deed might be taken away from among you. And he says down in verse 5, deliver such a one for Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

Man, those are hard words, right? I mean, really put someone out of the church. It's not good to just mercy, mercy, mercy that becomes tolerance. No, but he doesn't say because you don't like him.

It doesn't say that you because you don't love him. It says because you do love him. You do love him do this because true agape love has the person's eternal life at stake. And so you do this for his own good. You can't be part. What you've done, you need to recognize, you need to acknowledge, you need to repent, you need because you're not on the road, you're not on the straight and narrow path anymore. You're on a different path. To the Corinthians church, to the Corinthians credit, they did what Paul said. Had to be a difficult thing to do. They had tolerated it for a long time, but they did it. And we won't take the time to look at 2 Corinthians 7, but, you know, it was a wonderful, wonderful thing that happened. When he came back, when he had repented, look at the zeal, look at the inspiration, look at the joy that was there.

Could have never happened. Could have never happened unless it was done God's way. Only God's way results in joy, true peace, true unity, all the things that we say we want and that God wants for us. So that in verse 6, he says, your glorying isn't good. Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? A little leaven leavens the whole lump? Well, that kind of sounds like a little cancer in my body can envelop my entire body if I don't take care of it. If I don't take care of it, if I don't do what I am supposed to be doing all the time, 2 Corinthians 13, 5, and certainly headed toward Passover in 1 Corinthians 11. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, therefore purge it out. Purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened for indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Ah, we allow it to develop in ourselves without taking the hard action to deny self and do what God wants, or if it's in the body to do what needs to happen in order that the body becomes purified and the person has a chance to see themselves for what they have done and repent. Number five, spiritual cancer can be cured. That master cell, that master cancer cell that's in the physical body, science can't be killed. Medical stuff, it'll mask it. It may treat it. It may do, you may well do. Go well into remission. That's a wonderful thing as God leads. Can't be killed is what they say. Among our own cells, the cancer cells, the spiritual cancer cells in us, can't be removed. Only with God's spirit. Only with God's spirit. Without it, we are as powerless over our own faults, actions, attitudes, sins as anyone else. Only with God's spirit, but we have to make the choice.

We have to make the choice to ask Him, to ask Him to over, to give us the spirit, and then make the choices to deny self and follow Him and do that all the time and let God weed it out. As long as we're alive, I say, as long as we're breathing, we have things to overcome. We have things, and through this, you know, through this time of preparation, we can ask God, as David did. Search my heart. I really want to know what's in my heart that needs to go away. I want to understand that and get rid of it. I don't want it there. If we really, if we really pray that prayer, God will let us know, then we have to take the work to do it. It only happens with humility.

It only happens with humility, one of the hallmarks of someone who is following Christ.

Pride and self-interest and woe is me will get us into trouble every time. It has to be weeded out. It has to be done what is right. So we have self-examination before Passover. That takes humility to listen to what God has to say. As we open the Passover service, the very first thing we do is wash each other's feet. What does that picture? The humility we need to come before Him and to take that Passover in a worthy manner. When we take of that bread, that pictures His body beaten for us. Think of that wine that pictures His blood that was spilt for us to have the humility to come before it and do it the way He says with the right attitude, with the right commitment, and to march forward in the way that He wants us to.

You know, Hymenaeus, Phygelus, or Phyletus, back in 2 Timothy 2, 17, they never did that.

They never did that. They left. They left. They spiritually died. And every minister, every minister, every pastor, there is something there that just is so sad when you see members dying spiritually, and they won't listen. It's the toughest thing you go through, because you love them. Just like God, we'll know He loves them more than we do. We have that to work on, but you love those people, and you want to see them there. But they just won't listen sometimes. In John 13, John 13, 1, as we close here, John 13, 1, as they came to that Passover service that night, and Jesus Christ, who saw all these things and so much more as you read through those chapters, you know, as they came to that Passover service and they were eating at me on verse 1, John 13, it says, Now before the peace of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come, that he should depart from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. He is agape. Everything he did, everything he said was out of love for them, even giving his life. And when it says he came to his own, it's the same thing it says in John 1 when it talks about them, that God sent him to his own, to the people who called themselves the people of God. And yet they were the ones who just didn't get it. They didn't pay. They had their minds, pay attention. They had their minds closed to the things. They were all about self, all about every other thing. And yet they thought on the outwards thing, wow, look how good we look. But they never delved into the heart that Jesus Christ wanted him to do. So he came to them with love. The agape love you and I are supposed to be developing with each other. That isn't just the way the world defines agape. There are some hard things that happen and choices that have to be made if we truly are growing in that spirit of agape. Over in John 16 then, the last words that Christ said before he went into his prayer that we'll read on Passover evening a couple weeks from now, he says in verse 32, John 16, 32, indeed the hour is coming, yes has now come, that you will be scattered each to his own and you'll leave me alone. You're not strong enough to stand with me yet. You're going to scatter when the things come and yet he says I'm not alone because the Father is with me.

Always want to remember let's be so that the Father is always with us doing his will. These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.