Introduction
This is going to be the last of three sermons on personal ministry as we start a new year. Last week I proposed to you that we make transformation our resolution for this year. As I said last week, I hope that we can get to the point where we, sinners redeemed by the grace of God, are able and willing to help other sinners saved by the grace of God to become more like Jesus for his glory. The model for this sort of transformation is this: God transforms people's lives as people bring his Word to others.
Today, we will consider the place where this transformation must take place: THE HEART!
I. The Treasures of the Heart
A. Four principles that flow from Mt. 6:19-24
1. Everyone seeks some kind of treasure
a. Notice that Jesus doesn't try to prove that people will seek a treasure in their lives.
b. He considers it a self-evident given – that's what people do.
c. Therefore, the truth that people will seek a treasure is Christ's operating assumption.
2. Your treasure will control your heart (for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also), 21.
3. What controls your heart will control your behavior (no one can serve two masters), 24.
4. There are only two types of treasures: earthly and heavenly.
a. The heavenly treasure is just one: Jesus Christ.
b. The one we choose will become our master.
c. Sadly, we are more able to notice the presence of earthly treasures in others than we are in ourselves.
d. One of the most tragic things that could happen to a human being is to invest his/her life in pursuit of the wrong treasure.
"For me as a boy, one of the most gripping illustrations my fiery father used was the story of a man converted in old age. The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up when my father was preaching. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone's amazement he came and took my father's hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the Gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life. But that did not stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face—and what an impact it made on me to hear my father say this through his own tears—'I've wasted it! I've wasted it!'" John Piper in Don't Waste Your Life
B. Earthly treasures take over our lives without our planning it.
1. We rarely say, "I am going to set my heart on this thing and let it completely control my life," but that is often what happens.
"The person you met and mildly enjoyed becomes the person whose approval you cannot live without. The work you undertook to support your family becomes the source of identity and achievement you can't give up. The house you built for the shelter and comfort of your family becomes a temple for the worship of possessions. A rightful attention to your own needs morphs into a self-absorbed existence. Ministry has become more of an opportunity to seek power and approval than a life in the service of God. The things we set our hearts on never remain under our control. Instead, they capture, control, and enslave us. This is the danger of earth-bound treasure." Paul Tripp
2. James uses the language of desire (instead of treasure) to explain this same concept.
Jam. 4:1-4 – Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires forpleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
a. Desires in sinners very quickly morph into demand(I must).
1) We decide we must have what we set our heart on and nothing can stand in the way.
2) We are no longer comforted by God's desire for us and we are threatened by his will because it may be contrary to our will.
3) We can no longer conceive of a good life without this thing.
4) This morphing changes our relationships with others because we now relate to each other with this silent demand: you must help me get what I want. (This affects every relationship we have)
5) If you are in any way uncooperative I will immediately be angry and impatient with you even though you don't have a clue what it is that I am demanding.
b. Demand quickly morphs into need (I will)
1) Now the thing/situation we want is viewed as essential to life.
2) How often do we live with a sense of need for things we don't need at all?
a) How does this change the way we view ourselves, our lives, others, and God?
b) How much envy, discouragement, bitterness, and doubt of God come from being convinced that we are being denied the things we need to live life as it was meant to be lived?
c. Need inevitably produces expectations (you should)
1) This is how it goes: I am convinced I need something and you said that you love me, then I can rightly expect that you will help me get it.
2) The dynamic of need-driven expectations is the source of myriad conflicts in relationships.
d. Expectations will give birth to disappointment(you didn't)
1) There is a direct relationship between expectation and disappointment.
2) Much of our disappointment in relationships is not because people have actually wronged us, but because they have failed to meet our expectations.
e. Disappointment will lead to punishment (because you didn't, I will…)
1) We are hurt and angry because people who say they love us seem insensitive to our needs.
2) So we strike back in a variety of ways, punishing them for their wrongs against us.
3) What we are really saying is that we are angry because they have broken the laws of my kingdom.
3. At this point our heart has been captured and this can only result in chaos and conflict in our relationships.
4. Applying this principle so far
a. Our hearts are always being ruled by someone or something.
b. Whatever controls our heart will control our responses to people and situations.
c. Therefore, the most important question to ask when examining the heart is, "What is functionally ruling my heart in this situation?"
d. God changes us not just by teaching us to do different things, but by recapturing our heart to serve him alone.
e. The deepest issues of the human struggle are not issues of pain and suffering, but the issue of worship, because what rules our hearts will control the way we respond to both suffering and blessing.
"Every human being is a worshipper, in active pursuit of the thing that rules his heart. This worship shapes everything we do and say, who we are, and how we live. This is why the heart is always our target in personal ministry." Paul Tripp
II. Real Transformation Happens at the Heart Level
Lk. 6:43-45 – For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. 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.
A. In this illustration, fruit equals behavior (particularly words).
1. Jesus says that our words are literally our heart overflowing.
2. People and situations don't make us say what we say, or do what we do, though we tend to blame them.
B. What control our words and actions is not people and circumstances, but our heart (the root in this illustration).
1. Here Christ calls us to humbly accept responsibility for our behavior.
2. He calls us to humbly admit that relationships and circumstances are only the occasion in which our hearts reveal themselves.
C. If our heart is the source of our sin problem, then lasting change must always travel through the pathway of the heart.
1. It is not enough to alter my behavior or to change my circumstances, though it may be necessary.
2. The Spirit transforms people by radically changing their hearts.
3. If the heart doesn't change, the person's words and behavior may change temporarily because of external pressure or incentive, but when the pressure or incentive is removed, the changes will disappear.
D. Christ's illustration of root and fruit establishes three principles that guide our efforts to serve as God's instruments of transformation in our own lives and in the lives of others.
1. There is an undeniable root and fruit connection between our heart and our behavior.
a. People and situations do not determine our behavior.
b. People and situations provide the occasion where our behavior reveals our hearts.
2. Lasting change always takes place through the pathway of the heart.
a. Fruit change is the result of root change.
b. Any agenda for transformation must focus on the thoughts and desires of the heart.
3. Therefore, the heart is our target in personal growth and ministry.
a. Our goal is not just having well-behaved kids, or men and women who don't use pornography, or marriages that a free of conflicts, etc.
b. Our goal is that these things would spring up from hearts that treasure Christ far above any earthly treasure.
Conclusion
Transformation is the goal for 2016. Lasting transformation happens at the heart level. We saw from Mt. 6:19-24 that whatever we value will control what we do. From Jam. 4:1-4, we learned that that controlling desire for earthly treasure will give rise to destructive conflicts in our relationships. Lastly, we considered the truth that just trying to change the fruit without changing the root will not produce lasting transformation.
So here we have it. 2016 has arrived. 2015 is now in the past. What will your treasure be in this year?
http://olympiabp.blogspot.com/2016/01/its-matter-of-treasure.html
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