We Need Open Heart Surgery - Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. The Rite of Hebrews says it this way, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of the soul and the spirit. Our word soul is suke, and it is a synonym of heart. It actually is the synonym suke, our mind, emotions, and will in our soul. And he said that it pierces as far as the division of the soul and the spirit and both the joints and the marrow.

And it's able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. He said that's what the Word of God does. The Word of God is designed to actually commit open heart surgery on all of us. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. This won't come as a surprise to you, but heart disease is the number one cause of death around the world. About nine million people a year die of heart disease. And heart disease is also the number one cause of death in the United States. About 700,000 people a year in America die of heart disease.

That's one every 36 seconds. Somebody dies of heart disease. And as alarming as these stats are, they don't compare at all to what the Bible calls spiritual heart disease.

It's an amazing thing. If you weren't aware of it, and I wasn't until this week, the term heart in the Word of God is used 960 times. God wants to talk about the heart over and over and over again. And it almost never does the heart mean anything other than something metaphorical. It means the inner man, your soulish nature, your mind, emotions, and will. That's the heart. He's not talking at all about the organ.

But there's a reason that he is because it's probably the single most important thing about a man or a woman. The psalmist said, the fool has said in his heart, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. And what's the death rate for that? One hundred percent. The religious person, they are people who give their heart to an icon or an entity or some kind of system of behavior that excludes simple faith in Jesus Christ. That's what all religion is. Jesus said, I am the way, we just sang it, I am the way, the truth and the life and no one will come to the Father but through me. So what's the death rate for religion?

One hundred percent. And even for those of us who have put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross and have been born again into God's family, the heart becomes an extremely important issue. In one way, when you came to Christ, you had a heart transplant. You're a new creature in Christ.

All the old things passed away. So it's like I have a new heart except using this metaphor, there's still a problem. You still have an old heart.

And that old heart is really the most important thing for you to deal with in your entire life. We all have heart issues and God really wants to have open heart surgery on each and every one of us. I want to start out in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12. Hebrews 4 and verse 12. The writer of Hebrews says it this way, for the word of God is living and active. It's a great way to describe the word of God. King James says alive and powerful.

And then it says and it's sharper than any two-edged sword. If the writer of Hebrews is writing today, he might say it's sharper than a scalpel because it's going to do surgery. The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as a division of the soul and the spirit. Our word soul is suke and it is a synonym of heart. It actually is the synonym suke, our mind, emotions, and will in our soul. And he said that it pierces as far as the division of the soul and the spirit and both the joints and the marrow.

And it's able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, the heart. He said that's what the word of God does. The word of God is designed to actually commit open heart surgery on all of us. And so I've decided to start a series today called open heart surgery. And what I want to do in the weeks to come is to talk about this in a way that virtually every problem in your life that's really bothering you is from your heart, every single one of them. And God has given through his word. He's operated on that problem and has told us in his word exactly how we should move forward. Now, the unfortunate part is and you'll see as I talk about the heart today, we usually don't listen to God. And so we keep reaping what we sow and we keep the sort of the misery index going in our lives. And so if you ask why are we going to do this series, you know, why are we going to do this particular series?

There are several reasons. I'm going to give you three right away this morning here. And I want you to turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 16. 1 Samuel chapter 16. This chapter's context is where Samuel, who is this great high priest and great prophet, he is going to anoint for the nation Israel a new king.

They already had one king. That was Saul. Saul forfeited his kingdom and God, in a sense, threw him off the throne. And so God said to him, I want you to go to Jesse's house and I'm going to show you the next king. And I'll show you how one of our problems, how innate it is to all of us, because Samuel is a great and deeply spiritual man. So we get to verse six and it said when they entered, he looked at Eliab and he thought, surely the Lord's anointed is before me.

That's interesting. Why? What did Eliab look like? King. I mean, you look at a king. That's what we look at that guy.

Now, let's think back for a moment. Why was Saul chosen? The people all looked at him. So that guy looks like a king. He was horrible, but he looked like a king. So here's someone, Samuel, a deeply spiritual man.

He says the same thing. That looks like a king. So the Lord said, but the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or the height of his stature because I rejected him. God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but God just looks at the heart. See, this work, God says, I only look at a man's heart.

That's all I do. I look at the way a man's heart reacts to me. This is diametrically opposed to us. We don't look at the heart. We look at the appearance. We don't even really value the heart. We value the appearance. That's the way this works for us as human beings.

We see things that are external, and we become very proud and very much enamored with the external. So everything is, I mean, golly, if you don't think that's true, how much money a year do you think the cosmetics industry takes in? How about plastic surgery?

What is that? That's going to change your heart? Nope. It's going to change the way I look. By the way, and I think all you people know that in the end you're dead. I just want to say that, okay?

It really isn't going to matter too much. But we look at that. We want to impress people on the basis of how we look and act.

We want to impress people on how much we make, how much we own. Everything for us is judged externally. You look at the externals, and then you say, that's how I judge things. God says, I never judge things that way. I just look at the heart. See, I just look at, and no other reason. I mean, even in a practical way like this. Some of you will probably have the impression, well, you know, I don't really sing much on Sunday morning because I can't sing at all.

Let me explain something. God doesn't care. He doesn't care how you sing at all.

Not at all. And if you have a beautiful voice, he doesn't care. That doesn't mean a thing to him. You see, it's your heart. That's why he uses the term joyful noise. And many of us are noise makers.

That's fine. But he doesn't care about the externals. He doesn't care about the externals of anything in your life. He cares about your heart. Nothing else but your heart. That's the single most important thing. That's how God relates. And this becomes problematic to us.

Not only do we have a different worldview of the heart versus externals, but there's something else going on. Move me now to Jeremiah chapter 17. Jeremiah chapter 17. And just verse 9. Jeremiah writes this.

This is God's perspective. He says, the heart, that's your heart and mine, is more deceitful than all else. I want you to think about that statement. What does all else mean? Don't overthink it.

Everything, right? The heart is more deceitful than all else. That means your heart is more deceitful than Lucifer. It's more deceitful than anything. Who does it deceive?

You. Your heart is deceitful above all things or all else. He then goes on and says, and it is desperately sick.

You could almost say the prognosis for it, it's almost fatally ill. Those are the kind of Hebrew words that are used. It's desperately sick. God's assessment of my heart is it's desperately sick and it deceives me.

That's one of the reasons I look at externals and not internal things. Why? My heart.

That's just the way this works. He even goes on and says, who can understand it? Why no who can't?

Us. I can't understand my heart. How many times do we use the expression too, and I know we don't always mean it, my heart's telling me.

Is that really reliable? We say it sometimes differently. I'd just like to go with my gut. I almost want to go with, that's what I'm going to follow. I don't mean in every case that's wrong, but notice we give it a lot of credibility and God says, look, next verse, I the Lord, I search the heart. I test the mind.

I want to search the heart. That's the way that I see this. This is a deceitful thing. When God talks about the idea of what he wants to do in our heart, my heart says, I don't need that. Guess what?

I believe it. Yeah, yeah, I don't need that. I have a good, healthy perspective of life. God says, you know what?

You really look at the outward part of life, you never really look at that issue of the heart. There's a different thing here. So that's a warning from him. Now go with me to Proverbs chapter four for just a moment. Proverbs chapter four. And here comes a warning from God through Solomon. Verse 23, the numerical standard says here, watch over your heart with all diligent.

Why? For from it flow the springs of life. This is what all life flows from.

The NIV I like better here. The NIV says that when it comes to that verse, above all else, guard your heart. Your heart, which is desperately wicked or sinful or sick and is deceitful above all things, you better watch over it.

You see, you've got to do that. And that's what he's saying with all diligent. The reason is everything about you, every way you act, all your actions and all your emotions come from your heart. That's where it all comes from. You see, even our heart doesn't believe that. Even our heart thinks that no, everything, all my emotions are based on the circumstances I'm in.

But that's not true. But it is to us because that's what we really want to believe. He said don't do this. He said whatever you do, you better guard your heart no matter what you do. So Jesus then wants to direct this whole idea in a little story he has. And I want to go to Matthew 15 to look at this.

Matthew chapter 15. One of the ways that the heart is deceitful is that by our very nature, the nature of our heart, and I've said this before at times, when you become a Christian, you bring two things with your old heart into your new life. All of us have different degrees of both. The one thing we bring in is we still have a pension and a desire to sin.

I don't think any of us will argue. We like sinning, and that's why we sin. Our heart has a sin, and we're happy with it. You know, and even if we're unhappy with it, does it stop us from sinning?

No. We just keep sinning. There's another pension we have. We have this incurable pension to be religious. We want to be.

In fact, in Evangelicalism, we wouldn't call it religion, we'd call it legalism. We just set up rules. And that's what you have to, you have to follow the rules. That's a very important thing.

This is what you have to do. Jesus wasn't very impressed with that. Rule following doesn't mean much to him because there are rules. Here's the story about it. Then some of the Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus in Jerusalem.

They want to get into a discussion with him. And it says, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders, for they do not wash their hands when they eat bread? This is big.

This is really big. They're lucky God hasn't killed them on the spot because that is bad. That's one of the worst things you can do. You cannot eat with dirty hands. I know my mother told me that, but you know, the point is that's a very important thing to them. And they had heard that they walked through fields, remember, and they picked wheat off the thing and ate it. And he said, they broke the Sabbath.

And he talked about that. But he said, we've heard they eat bread and their hands aren't clean. They haven't been telling me that this is wrong. Now why is it wrong? Notice it's in the verse. Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

There it is. It's the tradition of the elders. Now you say, what is the tradition of the elders? It's called the oral Torah. The Torah is the written word of God. They decided, because they're so bent religiously, to have an oral Torah. Now they were forbidden to ever write down the oral Torah.

It was a tradition orally given to everybody. And the Pharisees, they had an expanded oral Torah. And in that was all the rules and regulations of how you have to live your life. And they knew them.

The people didn't. But they let them know when you violated it. And this is the upper hand that religion gets on you. They'll start setting up these rules, and you're not even sure where they come from.

Give you an example. Many of you come from a very religious background, OK? And in that background, there's all these behaviors you must do. And then you come to Christ, and then you get into the word of God.

And I can't tell you how many times over all these years someone's come to me and say, I can't believe this. And I said, what? They said, all these things that I was told to do, they're not in the Bible. They're not in the Bible.

There's nowhere to find them in the Bible. That's right. Why? It's the tradition of the elders. They decided. It's an oral tradition.

This is ours. We make you religious. So they said that to Jesus. Now, Jesus answers them and says, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? Why would you violate God's direct word for your tradition?

I'm sure they're scratching their head wondering why. He said, let me give you the example. God said, honor your father and mother. And he who speaks evil, a father or mother, is to be put to death.

Pretty serious. But you say, whoever says to his father and mother, whatever I have that I would help you has been given to God. He is not to honor his father or his mother. And by this, you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. They had a tradition for this, a good religious tradition. If I dedicated all of my estate, all my wealth back to the temple, no one could have ever have any right to any of my wealth until I'm dead.

So tough luck, mom and dad. I'm not giving you anything. I gave it to God so I can keep it.

You see, and he goes, what in the world are you doing? God told you directly to honor them and you're saying, no, no, I got around that. I don't have to give them anything. I've given it to God. Notice what Jesus thinks of this next words, you hypocrites.

He said, rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you. Now watch, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. That's religion. That's honoring God with your lips. There's all kinds of ways we honor God externally. I say the right bow, I cross my, whatever it is, we honor God this way, but our heart's not near God at all. We don't care about that.

I don't care. And our heart's so deceptive that we believe it's still right not caring, dishonoring the word of God. He said, in vain do they worship me, teaching as the doctrines of precepts of men. So if you said to Jesus, do the Pharisees worship you, he'd say, no, no, they don't.

So after Jesus called the crowd to him, he said, hear and understand. It's not what enters the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth. This defiles the man. Nothing you put in your mouth will defile you. It's what comes out of your mouth that defiles you. The disciples came and said to him, you got to love this. Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement? Yes, I know. I intended to offend them. They're like, you can't, you offended those men.

Yeah, that was my intention. So he answered, and he said, every plant which my Heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind guides of the blind, and if a blind man guides a blind man, they both fall into the pit. They're not of me. Let them alone.

God didn't plant them, no matter what their externals are. This isn't unusual because in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on Mount memory, he said, if your righteousness doesn't exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you're not going to heaven. And they were all aghast. Like, how can this be? They're not of God.

What is it? They're religious. Everything about them is based on an outward external perspective of life. All God cares about is your heart. Where is your heart in this situation? And you got to love Peter. He always gets involved in situations just like this. Peter says to him, and you can just see them, like, I don't understand this. He said, could you explain the parable to us?

Got to love Peter. See, Jesus didn't give them enough explanation. It's like in verses 13 and 14, Jesus just drops the bomb.

Just imagine what the crowd thought. They thought the Pharisees are the most religious people closest to God in their world. And Jesus said, they're blind guides of the blind.

Let them alone. They're in the pit. So he drops that bomb, and then he just drops the mic, and he's done. He's not talking to them anymore. So Peter jumps in and says, could you explain this to us? He said, are you still lacking understanding also? This is one of those, I'm guessing now there must be 20 incidents in the gospel where Jesus had to roll his eyes. He had to. Peter comes up, and he's like, oh, gosh, how many times?

How many times I keep repeating this? He said, you're still lacking? He said, do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated? That's basic biology. That's right, right?

You put it in, it goes through your system, and out it comes. That's it. I think Peter's like, I think I got that. He said, but the thing that proceed out of the mouth, what's the next phrase say? Comes from the heart. The thing that proceed out of the mouth comes from the heart. Those defile the man. Wow.

Isn't that interesting? What defiles a man is what comes out of your mouth. But more importantly, because this is one of the things we deny all the time, what comes out of your mouth comes from your heart. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.