The Whole Body, Part 7: The Heart

Well, this morning we continue on in the series that we've begun, the idea being the body parts that make up a whole body, that is a sound or a healthy body, a body that's complete, a body that's mature, a body that's not only perfect in that sense of completion or maturity, but perfectly equipped for every good work.

We've worked our way down after the introduction from the head to the eyes and the ears, the nose and the mouth, and this morning we come to the heart. Now, recently we've had opportunity to discuss the heart, and I was careful to look through the most recent sermons that have touched on the heart, on aspects of the heart, and that was even in November in Matthew chapter 7, we talked about the difference between saying and doing being the heart, keeping the heart, knowing that from the heart flows every issue of life.

We talked about the importance of the heart. Some of you even bought and have been reading John Flavel, keeping the heart, as a result of that. So I had no desire to retrace steps we've already trod so recently, and then I felt not only the freedom, but the importance of focusing on something very peculiar, very particular.

And so there's so much we could say about the heart, there's so much that has been said about the heart, and what I'd like to accomplish this morning is to consider one aspect of the kind of heart we need to have as a church body, the kind of heart we need to have as fellow believers in this church body.

We want to talk about two directions, where that comes from and what that leads toward, and we'll do those two directions in three parts. But by way of summary and reminder, let's just define heart at the outset.

What is the heart, according to Scripture? Well, it's not simply the muscle that circulates blood through our bodies. The biblical idea of the heart includes the mind, the conscience, the affections, the will.

Listen to John Owen as he defines heart for us. The heart in Scripture is variously used, sometimes for the mind or the understanding, sometimes for the will, sometimes for the affections, sometimes for the conscience, sometimes for the whole soul.

Generally, it speaks of the soul of man and all the faculties of the soul of man, not absolutely, but as they are all one principle of moral operation. In other words, the soul and all that belongs to it as it's worked out morally or in moral operation.

And so listen again to these different things as he says, As they all concur in our doing of good or evil, the mind, as it inquires, as it discerns, as it judges, the will, as it chooses or refuses or avoids, the affections, as they like, as they strongly dislike, as they cleave to or as they repel from, the conscience, as it warms, as it determines.

All this together speaks of the heart. You see, so it's not simply the faculties, but the faculties in operation. The mind, as it weighs and discerns and judges. The will, as it moves, as it strives. The affections, as they cleave, as they repel.

The conscience, as it becomes sharpened, sensitive, as it becomes dull. This is what we mean biblically by the heart. The faculties of the soul at work in our lives, in our walk. And so the heart is not merely the seat of our thinking or the government of our decision making, our affections, our desires.

It's actually what those thoughts, those actions, those judgments and desires look like in practice. That, biblically speaking, is the heart. We still speak of the heart in this way. We speak of the centrality of the heart.

We speak of the heart as the core, or the points, or the revelation. We get to the heart of the matter. Or, it may seem that way, but I really know their heart in this. Or, you might misunderstand, my whole heart has only been this.

We speak in this way. It's not merely the faculty, but the operation of that faculty. Now, Ephesians 4, 17 and following, we looked at last week. And I didn't want to leave that this morning, because the very thing I want to focus on happens to be there toward the very end.

Let me just pick up from verse 29, where we left off in Ephesians 4. We spoke about the mouth last week. Jesus says in Matthew 12, very importantly, that out of the mouth the heart speaks. And so by our words, we understand something about our hearts.

By our language, by our speech, if not by our thoughts, we know something about where our hearts are. I think we can hold this together meaningfully in Ephesians 4. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, so that it will impart grace to the hearers.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. So let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

So you can see what I'm going for here in Ephesians 4. This beautiful little word, tenderhearted, sometimes translated in Scripture as affection or affectionate, sometimes translated as compassion or compassionate.

Its use here is identical in 1 Peter 3. And the idea is a tender heart, something soft, sensitive, sensible, something that will bend, something that is yielding. That's the idea of a tender heart, a tender conscience, a tender mind, a tender will.

And this is what I'd like to focus on this morning. And we'll do that in, again, two different directions. Where this comes from and what it leads to, but in three areas. First, toward God. Secondly, toward one another.

And then thirdly, toward the world. A tender heart toward God, a tender heart toward one another, and a tender heart toward the world. So that's how I think we can meaningfully think about the heart as a whole body, as a church of Jesus Christ.

A Tender Heart from God

So let's begin with where a tender heart even arrives from. It arrives from a relationship with the Lord. A tender heart toward God is a tender heart from God. That's the first point. The need for a new heart is spelled out throughout Scripture.

You think of it in this way. It's helpful for us not to simply use the word heart, but to remember all the faculties that that can describe. Our conscience, our will, our affections. So when you're speaking of a stony heart, it might be helpful for you to also speak of a stony conscience, or a will of stone, or affections that are stone.

To think and to speak in this way is usually a little more insightful. A heart can be so generic that it almost doesn't hit us. But when you start to speak of a stone conscience, or a stone will, or stony affections, now we're getting closer to the dilemma that Scripture holds out.

What do you do with a stony heart? What do you do with stony understanding, so dull it cannot hear, it cannot yield? What do you do with stony affections? These people, they come, they worship me with their lips.

Their hearts are far from me. That's a stony heart. That's why the prophets cried out for Israel to circumcise their hearts. That's why the promise of the New Covenant said, I'll take away that heart of stone.

I'll put a new heart within you. I'll cause you to walk in my judgments and statutes. So the predicament of a stony heart is the problem. And that problem is addressed by the Lord. A tender heart is not something that a worldling can produce.

A tender heart is not something that we can conjure up. A tender heart is not something that follows the consequences of sin being regretted. A tender heart is something that's actually granted by God as a result of applying the finished work of Christ by His Spirit.

There's a tremendous sermon. I'd highly encourage you to read it. It's perhaps more of a booklet than a sermon by Richard Sibbes called The Tender Heart. Let me just pull out a couple gems from this little booklet, this little sermon that Sibbes put together.

And what I want to do is show how Sibbes understands the problem and the answer. And it's really just holding out how Scripture speaks of the problem of our heart and the answer to that heart. The problem is this, according to Richard Sibbes, a tender heart, so soon as the word is spoken, will yield to it.

That's a glorious truth. Here's the issue. A stony heart will not yield. A heart of stone will never yield to the word. When his heart was still flesh, Adam fell into sin. And his heart, in a flash, became granite.

And the progeny ever from Adam were born with this condition of a stony heart, of a granite heart. That is the problem. It cannot yield. It cannot receive. Only those who are spiritual, only those born of the Spirit are able to yield, are able to receive.

This is the problem. A heart that is tender will yield to the word. It will quake at the threatenings. It will obey precepts. It will melt at the promises. The promises will sweeten the heart that is yielding, that is tender.

But hardness of heart is quite the opposite. For as something dead and insensible, it cannot yield, not to touch, not even to strike. Listen, he says, such a heart may be broken into pieces, but it will not receive any impression.

You can shatter a stony heart, but you can't get it to yield. You can't get it to melt, to bend. He says, a stone may be broken indeed, but it will not be pliable. You see, that's the dilemma. Can you break a stony heart?

Can the weight and the pressure of God, of the holiness that His law requires, of the judgment that stands over against man, can that shatter a stony heart? It certainly can. It certainly can. It could break a stony heart into a thousand pieces, but can it cause any of those pieces to yield, to melt, to bend?

No. A stony heart may be broken, but it will not be pliable. If you grew up as I did, one of the great blockbusters was Terminator. You think of the—and I'm probably going to lose everyone in this. I'm trying to salvage a good metaphor.

But in my mind, it's like when T -1000 breaks into a thousand little pieces,.

And what good is that?

It's just shattered hard pieces, but the fire in the factory begins to melt, and it all begins to pool together, and then he gets reformed. I was going to say, formed into a new man, made in the likeness, but that doesn't quite fit the storyline of Terminator.

But you get the idea. Something hard, something broken. What good is shattered pieces spread abroad? That you can break a stony heart under conviction doesn't actually mean anything in terms of the grace or redemption of Jesus Christ.

It's those shattered pieces actually becoming soft, actually being flesh, actually yielding, being impressionable. That's what is needed. And so Sibbes puts it this way, a hard heart is like wax to the devil, but a stone to God.

A hard heart is like wax to the devil, but a stone to God. It will yield somewhere. It will yield to someone or something. It will yield to the father of lies, but not to the father of lights. It will yield to the murderer from the beginning, but not to the prince of peace.

Listen to what Sibbes says going on. It's a supernatural disposition of a true child of God that he would have a tender, a soft, a melting heart. Naturally, our hearts are of an entirely different temper.

They are stone. There might be tenderness in regard of natural things. In other words, some pagans are kinder than others. Some dear little old atheist grandmother might still bake cookies for the neighborhood paperboy, but the idea is there's still a stone heart.

There's still the condition of Adam's fall at work within her ribcage. The idea is a stone heart may have natural tendencies toward goodness, observable at the surface, but as John Owen says, a heart is a hornet's nest of evils.

That's the reality. A conscience that has become sensitive will recognize the truth of that. That's already a sign of tenderness, a sign that there's some recognition, some function, that what God's Word says is true of my life, of my condition, of my peril, of my problem.

So there may be tenderness in regard to natural things, but in regard of grace, the heart is a stone. It beats back anything that's put to it. Think of how rugged a stone is, how much abuse a stone can take, how many strikes and hits can have no impact upon that stone.

And if Sid says, say what you will to a hard heart, it will never yield. A hammer will do no good to a stone. Again, it can break it into pieces, but it can't mold it into a form. So to a stony heart, you can break it into pieces, but you can't work upon it.

It's only the almighty power of God that can cause the stony heart of man to yield. There's nothing in the world so hard as the heart of man. Adamantium, he says. The very creatures will yield obedience to God, like flies and lice, to destroy Pharaoh.

But Pharaoh himself was so hard-hearted that even after ten plagues, he was ten times more hardened. There's nothing as hard as a hard heart. That is the problem. So that means we have to know our hearts.

This is why Proverbs says, listen to me. And part of that listening is understand every issue of your life will flow out of your heart. You better know your heart. You better pay attention to your conscience, to your affections, to your will.

Every aspect of your life is going to flow out of these things. We remember what the Lord said. He doesn't look at the physical stature as a man might look, 1 Samuel 16. The Lord does not see as a man sees.

The Lord looks at the heart. If you don't understand a lot about Scripture, that's like something you'd put on a coffee mug. It's like a warm font. The Lord looks at the heart. If you're a Calvinist, that is a sobering thought.

The Lord looks at my heart. He doesn't see as I like to see. He doesn't see with the flattery I give myself. He doesn't see with the scant I look out on others. The Lord sees the heart. So that's the problem.

And what's the answer? Well, the answer, of course, is the Gospel. How does the almighty power of God cause a stony heart to become flesh and to yield? Well, again, He applies that saving work of Christ by His Spirit.

The answer begins with Christ. God gives Christ to the church. That's the first great gift of God. And when God has given Christ, Sibbes says, then comes the Spirit. And He works in the heart to a gracious acceptance of the mercy of Christ.

So the Spirit now causing that heart of stone to become a heart of flesh, causing that to yield and to receive and to become aware of this finished work of Jesus Christ for the sake of one's soul. And then it produces assurance, love, mercy, awe, wonder.

Now the heart is pumping. It's beating. It's sensitive. It's responsive. It's being molded. It's able to yield. And so from the heart now, mercy is felt. I hope you understand the imagery here. Stony hearts don't receive mercy.

They can't feel mercy. They can't comprehend mercy. To comprehend the mercy of God in Christ is already to have a heart of flesh. A heart of stone cannot do it. It takes a heart of flesh to begin to produce these kinds of sentiments.

Did the God of heaven and earth, the maker of all that is, not withhold His own Son, but send that Son to die for my sake? Would He humble Himself upon a tree of agony for my soul? Has He let angels alone and left many thousands in the world to choose me rather than let me starve and be ruined everlastingly?

Has He sent His people as ministers and witnesses to give me the assurance of pardon and of love and of mercy? You see, it's a heart of flesh that begins to be caught up in the awareness of who God is and what He's done.

It's able to yield. The heart is now not just pliable, it's dissolving, as it were, into the very love of God. What does Paul say in Romans 5? It's the Spirit of God pouring out that love in our hearts.

It's the love of God, as we understand it from the Gospel, that's now being poured into a heart that's capable to receive it, capable to yield to it. It's no longer a heart of stone. So the heart begins to contemplate, to be caught up in the wonder of God's love.

The heart is now melting, melting in conviction over sin, in that humility and meekness, also being aghast at the pardoning love of God in Christ. And listen to what Sib says. So then finally, when our souls have been persuaded that God's love is for us, we begin to reflect our love toward Him, and our hearts begin to say, Speak Lord, send me, what will you have me do?

I am yours. That is a new heart. That is a heart from God. So a tender heart toward God is a tender heart from God. When the heart is worked upon by the Spirit of God, it must become tender, it must begin to yield, it must become sensible, it must become sensitive.

We begin to understand every aspect of our lives in light of this work of God's Spirit. And our hearts are made sensitive to not only His work in our lives, but His work in the world, His work around us, His judgments, His word, His beautiful providence at display at every turn of our lives.

Our hearts are made capable of receiving that, of even yielding to the most difficult providences in our lives. That's a heart of flesh. And this is what Paul was getting at in Romans 12. We were there some weeks ago.

I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you would offer up your souls, offer up your bodies to be a living sacrifice. You can't do that with a stone heart. You wouldn't want to with a stone heart.

You could care less with a stone heart. You only yield yourself if you have a heart that's been tenderized by the Spirit of God. Because He has given me a new heart, a heart that can yield, a heart made tender, I want to offer myself up to Him.

Holy and acceptable in His sight. I was on Tuesday at a nurse meeting, and Paul Wanamaker, some of you know Paul Wanamaker, he preached a wonderful sermon where he was getting at the issue of compassion, which again is a cognate for this word, tenderhearted.

It could be translated that way. Sometimes it is. And he was looking at compassion through the lens of the sons of thunder,.

John and James.

Luke 12, when they want to call down fire from heaven upon the Samaritans. And Jesus rebuked them and said, you don't know what spirit you're of. And so Paul was getting at, you know, in our dark days as a society, our dark days in this nation, are we closer to the sons of thunder than the spirit that Christ is looking for?

So much zeal, so much righteous indignation about the rejection and the debauchery of the world around us that we're almost pleading, Lord, will you send down fire? Can we actually call down fire? And one of the things that Paul noted was, it's interesting that John, one of the sons of thunder, would become, as it were, the theologian of love.

If you read 1 John, you read even his gospel. And of course, in the book of Acts, later accompanying Peter to go preach the gospel in Samaria. Preaching to Samaritans. He brought up again this image of a heart of stone being made hard flesh in one pass when we consider the thief on the cross.

Of course, there were two thieves on the cross, and they were both mocking and scorning Jesus. What happened to cause the one thief to go from heaping scorn and mockery and derision upon the suffering Savior to then asking him to be with him in paradise?

And Paul, in his sermon, he said, the only thing we could point to is the compassion he saw in Christ who asked his father to forgive his tormentors and executioners in the midst of his worship. And that was enough to turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, to make it pliable, to make it yield, to make it earnest, to say, can I come with you into paradise?

To begin to rebuke the thief on the other side. We deserve this, but he doesn't deserve this. Do you see? And so that is the example that's laid down for us as we sort of bridge to our second point now.

We're to walk in this kind of mercy, compassion, love. We're to have this kind of tender heart even as Christ has had this kind of compassion, mercy, tender heart toward us. He gave himself to be our example.

That's what 1 Peter 3 is getting at. He was tenderhearted, full of compassion. And so we're to walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us. So it's this apprehension of God's love in Christ that the Spirit applies, and it begins to cause our hearts to yield.

Our hearts become pliable, impressionable, sensitive. Again, not just our heart, but what? Our affections, our conscience, our mind, our judgments, our will, our discretion. Do you see? All that comprises the heart.

And that means that this tender heart we've received from the Lord is now soft to the Lord, yielding to the Lord, but now also soft and yielding toward one another. That's the second point, tenderhearted toward one another.

A tender heart is able to exhibit this kind of fruitfulness, this kind of light and peace toward others. That begins in the church. If you can't be tenderhearted here, I don't think you can be tenderhearted anywhere.

The people sitting around you that you are joints and ligaments together with are far more your neighbors than almost anyone else in this world. There's a prioritization of love toward the body. Especially the household of faith is a formula in Scripture that helps us understand this thing.

We're to be neighbors to all, but we can put it this way, we're to understand especially what that means toward each other in this body. And if we can't do it here, we can't do it there. We can't do it anywhere else.

So we're to be tenderhearted toward one another. Our motivation, again, is toward the Lord because of what we received from the Lord. Our affection for the Lord becomes our affection for one another. It's based on what we've received.

Again, walk in love. That's what we are to be, toward one another, as Christ has loved us and given Himself for us. We've received that, therefore we reflect that. We have understood that, therefore we apply that.

The more we know of God's love, the more that love makes us love others. The more our love becomes like the love of Christ. And what is the love of Christ? The love of Christ is not some mild, tepid thing.

It's a fierce love. It's a fervent love. It's a constant love. It's a never-failing love. Our failures to love in this way actually just bring us back to His love. And we see more and more of the perfections of it, the constancy of it.

We begin to thank Him that His love is not like our love. His faithfulness is not like our faithfulness. You begin to understand what Paul said we could never fully understand, the width and the depth and the height of the love of Christ.

Christ's love for you is not some mild, distant, politely disinterested, disengaged kind of love. It's this ferocious, yearning, protective, soul-stirring kind of love. And that's the kind of heart a church body needs to have.

That's the kind of love that covers not just three sins, but a multitude of sins. That's also the kind of love that's willing to faithfully wound, willing to faithfully bear whatever comes from loving someone in a way they don't want to be loved, being watchful over a soul in a way they don't want to be watched.

This kind of love doesn't erase sin. It just covers it. It buries wrongs. It doesn't harbor offenses. It doesn't cause a festering, but it rather causes a cleansing, a healing, a freedom, a release. This is a new commandment that Christ has given His people.

Love one another even as I have loved you. They couldn't fully understand that in John 13. They probably thought they did. I don't think Peter even understood it in the resurrection narrative. He's still cut to the heart when Jesus is saying, Peter, feed my sheep.

He still hasn't understood the love that he's called to. This is what it means to belong to Jesus as His disciples. By this all men will know you are my disciples, that you love one another. So this is going to bridge to our third point, which we're not quite there yet, but I want you to see how closely the heart we have toward one another is held to the heart we have toward the world.

In fact, there's something about the witness we give to the world that exists in the love we show to each other in the body. There should be something radically other than. Your love for brothers and sisters in the body should not look like your love for coworkers in the workplace.

Your love for brothers and sisters in the body should not look like love for distant and estranged family members or kin. This is a unique love, a spirit-wrought love, a set-apart love that becomes a witness in all of those areas.

This is a holy society, a royal priesthood. This is something that the world doesn't quite understand or grasp. That contrast becomes a powerful way of being salt and light. Who loves in this way? Where does this love come from?

We ought to be able to say it comes from God. It exists because of God. We love Him who first loved us. We love each other because He loved us. And you are willing to stick around, we'll love you too.

Paul in Colossians 3 says it's as the elect of God, holy and beloved in this way, that we put on tender mercies. We have a tender heart. Kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another.

You see, this is all the conditions that God brings about in the heart. And so Christians, of course, have to work at this. This just doesn't come naturally. Even for those that we are naturally comfortable with, as fellow believers, we see it requires hard work.

We see that the flesh wars against the spirit. We see that we truly are against not just the world, but the devil and even our own flesh. There's all sorts of temptations, snares and pitfalls. Sometimes it's hardest to love fellow Christians.

It's easier to love the co-worker. Easier to love the estranged relative. And Christians have to work at this kind of affection. It's why every apostolic letter has something of this come in, something of this call or this rebuke, because it doesn't come naturally.

No church has ever found this to be natural. And, of course, as Sinclair Ferguson says, churches find it very easy to deal with false teaching, find it very hard to deal with differences of opinion. Those are some of the things that at a basic level, just how different we are, makes it very hard for us to love each other as we ought to love each other.

It's easy when we're galvanized against some political prospect or some error, but it's usually not that external threat, that political pressure, that economic devastation that's causing any differences or grievances between us.

What is it? It's usually our personal differences. It can't be, as we've said in times past, that the primary thing that holds our fellowship together, which is the gospel, is secondary things by which from the gospel we have distinctive congregations, distinctive traditions, but it's those third-level areas.

Not quite adiaphora, because the differences really do matter, but they're not differences that ought to define our gathering or our fellowship. They're rather just personal, perhaps family differences.

And these things will often sow seeds of bitterness. Or they'll become central issues rather than being seen as third-level issues. And when a third-level issue becomes a central issue, it sucks all of the energy out of the gathering and all of the momentum out of the fellowship.

And this really is a test of our heart as a body. How do we love one another? How do we love one another? How we handle our differences will be a bellwether to the condition of our heart as a body. Am I tenderhearted toward those that are my brothers and sisters that I gather with routinely?

Am I tenderhearted toward them? What does that tenderheartedness look like? Is that a word, tenderheartedness? What does that look like in practice? Am I kind? Do I seek to impart grace? Am I willing to yield?

Am I long-suffering? Am I forbearing? Am I in encouragement? Is there any refreshment of love? As Paul says in Philemon, he talks about Epaphroditus being this refreshment of love to him. I hope we can be a refreshment of love to one another.

You slung through difficult weeks or difficult trials, it should be a brother or sister who's that breath of fresh air. Oh, it's so good to be around someone who understands the Lord, who understands a little bit perhaps of what I'm going through and is seeking to impart grace, is seeking to encourage me.

Praise the Lord for that. What a refreshment of the love of Christ. This is what Paul's getting at Ephesians 4. It's the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to that effective working by which every part does its share.

And this causes the growth of the body. And what does that growth look like? The edifying, the building up of the body in love. The heart of that body is the heart of the whole matter. Our eyes, our ears, our mouths.

That doesn't mean anything if we don't understand the heart rightly. The way that I think, the way that I discern, the way that I judge, what my affections are drawn toward, what my conscience is sensitive to.

Do you see? The heart is behind all of those things. That will make or break the body of Christ. John Owen says, a church full of love is a church well built. I would rather see a church filled with love a thousand times than filled with the best, the highest, the most glorious gifts and parts that any man in this world could be made partakers of.

Do you see what he's saying? He understands Ephesians 4, 11 through 13. The growth of the whole body, the maturity, the perfection of the whole body is a body edifying itself in love. And he said, I'd rather see a thousand times a church being edified in love, a church with a yielding, sensitive heart, conscience, mind.

I'd rather see that a thousand times than have a gathering of the best and the brightest and the most gifted lacking that. Because that will be an immature church. That will be a herd of cats. A mature church, a whole church will be a church that has a tender heart from God and therefore a tender heart toward one another.

And this is why Paul can say, therefore let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking be put away. And again, the standard is how God in Christ has forgiven us. We're to forgive one another.

Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, the imagery is replete. That's our standard. That's our measure. If you think, and perhaps we'll look at the church at Corinth, they wanted to have the best and the brightest, the most gifted.

They were willing to split into factions for the sake of striving for the best gifts. And Paul says, you're seeking the best, I'll show you the best way. Whatever way you've been seeking, I'll show you a better way.

The better way is not in the way you're going. It's not in the things that you're striving for. It's not to be the best and the brightest or to mold everyone into your own image. It's actually to build up the body and all of these body parts in the love of Christ.

He talks about what that love is not. This is why you can go on, perhaps we'll look at it in a moment. A symbol that's clanging if you lack love. All of the gifts of revelation, of charisma, of speech, to understand and fathom all mysteries, but to lack love is to be useless.

It's to be in vain. So what does that mean for Paul's conception of the body? What does that mean for us to understand what's the most important thing about this body? How do you present striving in the flesh?

Seeking out of pride? Or being hurt out of pride? What's the kind of thing that ought to unify us together? These are matters of the heart. And so a tender heart from God is a tender heart for the body.

And a tender heart for the body will be ever sensitive. Again, think of conscience, will, affections. This is what we mean by heart. A tender heart, a tender conscience, tender affections, a tender will, will become increasingly sensitive to any hardness, any friction between brethren.

It will be, as Scripture says, a bone out of joint. Have you ever had a bone out of joint? I remember I was demolishing a friend's attic with him one summer. His dad was paying me, and I was making buck.

During the summer it was great, because I was like 15 or 16. And I had all this horsehair plaster. It was an old, it was on the third story in the attic. We actually found some really cool stuff that, watch Houston Antiques would probably love to have behind some of the plaster.

And we pulled in, there was this old abandoned brick chimney. And, you know, we wanted to get the job done pretty quickly. And so we started not just taking brick by brick, but stacks of brick, and throwing them out the window into a dumpster.

And my friend got a little over-eager, and he went to go take a rather massive stack. And all of a sudden he sort of froze and started yelling. And I instantly dropped all my bricks. And he's like, ah, I dislocated my shoulder, ah.