The Abundance Of The Heart

The Sermon on the Mount as the Crescendo of Luke 6

Well, good morning, church. Man, do the three pastors of this church need your prayers this morning. We are all almost down with something and afflictions of different kinds. And it's a reflection, as me and Pastor Josh were praying earlier this morning, it's a reflection of our total dependence and need of Christ when, through various difficulties of different kinds, our flesh and the feebleness of our flesh shows through.

May the glory of Christ show all the more in these times. So let's pray. Actually, before we even pray, I ask that you turn your Bibles to Luke chapter six. And when you have that, please stand. For reading of God's word, it'll be in verses 43 to 49.

Again, Luke chapter six, verse 43 to 49. Hear ye this morning the word of the Lord. For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is grown by its own fruit.

For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of his heart, produces good. And the evil person, out of his evil treasure, produces evil.

For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like.

He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against the house and could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation.

When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let us pray. Father, we come before you humbly seeking thy direction, thy word, and we pray, Father, that you'd grant in us the gift of thy spirit to put aside every high and lofty thing that may so easily entangle us away from comprehending the breath of thy word.

We ask, Father, that you'd help us even now to turn our hearts and our attention to this word that you have provided, and we pray, God, that your name would be glorified, magnified amongst your people and eventually among the nations of the earth that they may come to know that you, whose name alone is Jehovah, are the most high God over all the earth.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. As you may have seen this morning in your bulletin, you're missing something. There's no insert this morning, and that's intentional. The reason why there's no insert, it's not so you don't take notes.

I encourage you, if you can, take notes. But the reason why there's no insert is because I want you to really hear the words that I'm preaching. I want us to focus intently on the words of Christ in a way in which there's no distraction, there's no following along in the kind of sense that we've been doing things over the last several years.

But I really want you to get the heart of Christ's message here. To remind you where we're at here in our sermon series in Luke chapter six, Christ has begun his great sermon, the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount.

And here we find in these verses, what I would say is the crescendo. It is what everything that he has been preaching, teaching, and saying on this mountain, this is where it all culminates to the big idea, the big picture.

And Jesus is very effective at reaching the heart of a matter. And he does so brilliantly here. As we look at what he's been doing over the last chapter here, he establishes himself as the Lord of the Sabbath.

He calls the 12 apostles into ministry. He then goes before the great multitude and the crowd, and he begins to teach them, blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who hunger. Blessed are those who are persecuted.

He teaches us the economy of the kingdom of God. He teaches us what it's about to be a disciple of Jesus. That is not all that it seems to be. That following Jesus doesn't always give you the grandiose blessings of this world, but rather that the blessings of God often look different than what is often expected.

He begins to pronounce woes upon the people for those who have gratification here and now, and who will eventually pay the price. He begins to teach us how we're to love our enemies by turning the other cheek, by being devoted to him under persecution.

And then he teaches us the valuable lesson of not judging others, of being careful how to judge others more carefully. And now here in verses 43 to 49, he makes what seems to be an obvious but also deep point.

The Tree Is Known by Its Fruit

For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. Now I know a thing or two about bad trees. It's the reason why I'm sniffling up here this morning. It's because of my allergies, I've been going haywire.

And what often contributes to that is, of course, the pollen and trees and certain types of vegetation. So I know all about bad trees. I'm living under the curse of it right now. But notice what Christ is saying here.

No good tree, okay, so there's a thing called a good tree, and good trees typically produce something. All trees produce something. And a good tree will produce good fruit. But then there's bad trees.

For me, all trees are pretty bad if they cause me allergies. But there's a bad tree that produces bad fruit. What is Jesus talking about? What's the heart of Christ in saying this? Verse 44 reveals it to us.

For each tree is known by its own fruit. Have you ever seen an apple tree, peach tree, pear tree? All these trees have similar characteristics. Maybe you won't be able to tell them apart right away just by looking at the tree itself.

You have to look a little bit deeper. You have to look at the fruit that it's producing in order to know the difference in the tree. When I was a kid, grew up in Connecticut, we had a peach tree in the backyard.

And we had two peach trees, actually. One peach tree was fairly strong and produced good fruit. And we always expected when we could reap the benefits of that fruit, and it was always really just awesome, really beautiful, round peaches, really delicious.

And then there was another tree that struggled a lot more because it was planted later. And Connecticut weather is not very conducive to peach trees, which is why peach trees are normally found in the south.

But one tree produced good fruit. And I promise I'm not making up this analogy. We had two peach trees in our backyard. One produced good fruit. The other one, not so much. It struggled greatly. And at times you begin to see that it would bud, that it would start, and then it would just wither.

And it wouldn't be able to produce the right fruit at the due season. That's an analogy here that Jesus is building to distinguish between those who are truly Christians, truly called to be disciples, and those who are not.

In life, you will be tested. Trees are often tested. They're tested by their environments. They're tested by the soil that they're put in. They're tested by the care that is given to them to see whether or not they can produce.

Maybe here in Silicon Valley, we're aware of a guy who has a lot of influence and power. His name is Elon Musk, and Elon Musk is on a mission to get man to what planet? Mars, he wants to get us to Mars.

And I was studying this and what his plan is, and one of the practical things that one has to consider is, well, how are they gonna eat? How are they going to produce food? And it's not so easy because there's no Walmart up there.

There's no Starbucks. There's no McDonald's in Mars. And so how do they get food up there? One of the ways is they're gonna have to produce agriculture. And what's interesting is that if you try to produce agriculture on Mars, if you try to plant a tree, for instance, it would quickly wither away because it's not conducive for life.

In fact, one of the issues of Mars is that the atmosphere is so different from ours that just by the way that the winds blow there, trees would not naturally grow. Just by virtue of the way the wind blows.

Think about that for a moment. Just by virtue of the wind, certain things would not be able to grow. The same is true of us, brothers and sisters. God's word says that the Holy Spirit is that wind that blows into our lives, and the Spirit blows wherever He wills according to John chapter three.

And without the Spirit, there can be no spiritual life. Without the Spirit, there can be no spiritual fruit. Therefore, Jesus says, for no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.

For each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes. So He's distinguishing between certain kinds of trees. Nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. And here's the point that Jesus brings out in verse 45.

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good. Now that statement from Jesus may get your brain flowing, your brain juices flowing a little bit because you might be asking yourself a good theological question.

If you're a good Calvinist this morning, which I assume many of you are because you're here in this church, you might be asking yourself, good person? A good person? Who is good? The Bible says in Romans chapter three, there is no one good, no, not even one.

So how can Jesus say the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good? And the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil? Well, how can there be a good person and an evil person?

Well, brothers and sisters, here's the truth. We are that evil person. Think about this for a moment. This is, we were studying this morning in Sunday school on the doctrine of justification. We are in a spiritual deficit, so great, so grand that we can never crawl out of it on our own efforts.

We have used that spiritual credit card to the max and there's no way we can pay it back. We will default. Yet, God in his kindness, in his mercy, in the great love of which he loved us, gave us the solution in Christ Jesus.

Jesus is the only one who can rightfully be called good for even when Jesus was confronted with this very question, he says, who do you call good? There's only one who is good and that is God. That is not to the exclusion of Christ being good, but rather to the magnification of his goodness and that he is the God man, that he is truly good.

He is the true good teacher and the one to whom we can look up to as our advocate with the Father, who alone is righteous, so much so that when John the Baptist saw Christ, he says, behold, the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.

We are all this evil person. You might be asking yourself, well, I'm not that bad, pastor. When we usually do so, when we usually try to compare ourselves to others, we say, well, at least I'm not Hitler.

Just by that comparison, you put yourself on the same spectrum as him. Just by comparing yourself to other sinful humans, you are admitting you are sinful. No person can even draw a comparison to Christ because Christ alone was perfectly, magnificently perfect in every way.

There is no one like Jesus. He is unique, so much so that the Bible gives us a term for Christ. He is the monogenesis theos. He's the only, one and only God, or the only begotten God in John 118. He's one and unique is another way of translating that term in the Greek, monogenesis theos.

He is unique. He's one of a kind. There's no one like him. Jesus is holy, set apart. Again, he is the only one who can be truly called good. Yet, part of the doctrine of justification is knowing where justification leads.

And justification leads to sanctification. And it is in that process of sanctification that God, through the Holy Ghost, through the Holy Spirit living, reciting in us, is able to help us produce good treasure, good fruit.

So you go from being a bad tree producing bad fruit to now becoming a good tree that produces a good fruit because in Christ, you are a new creation. The old is gone, the Bible says, and the new has come.

He fundamentally changes your life and your trajectory and where you are going. But we can't always change the past and where we've been. And as a Christian, that can be sometimes hard to wrestle with because sometimes when we come to Jesus and we recognize the brokenness of our life before him, we may try to reason, well, why would God choose me?

Why would he love me? Why would he save me? And the Bible tells us he doesn't save us by any works that we've done in righteousness. We didn't earn it. But it's by grace, to the magnification of his own grace, to the glory of his own name.

He saves a person for himself and for his glory's sake. It's all to the glory of God. And so, beloved, know this. God is able to make treasure and good fruit even where there was once evil and bad. Because the whole story of redemption is God turning bad, ugly people to sons and daughters of glory, that's good news.

And so though we were once in darkness, now we walk in light, Paul says in Ephesians 5. Though we were once dead in our trespasses and sins, now we are made alive and seated with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, Paul in Ephesians 2.

Though we used to walk according to the prince of the power of the air, now we walk according to the prince of the power of the heavens, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. Jesus is indeed the one who changes the very fruit of the human life.

He changes us from evildoers to people who are sons and daughters of light. The good person, the good treasure of his heart produces good that can only be accomplished in Jesus. This is not Christ teaching a workspace justification or salvation, rather this is Jesus speaking of what happens when Jesus comes into a human heart.

He is that good that can now be produced in the human heart rather than the evil that is produced in evil hearts. For Jesus makes a statement, for out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

The Heart as the Source of Speech and Worship

What an astonishing statement Jesus is making here. Your heart is a factory, did you know that? Maybe you've heard the old saying that the heart is a factory of idols. And really it's a factory of worship.

The heart is a factory of worship. It is looking and producing things for worship. The question is, who are you worshiping or what are you worshiping? The Bible says in Jeremiah chapter 17 verse nine that the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful.

Who can trust it? The heart is in its natural state, cold, stone-like, producing evil, yet there is a promise of a new heart. In Ezekiel 36, God says I will give my people a new heart made out of flesh, not stone, but flesh.

Flesh so that it can feel, so that it can beat, so that it can be alive. And this is what Jesus calls in John chapter three being born again. You can be born again of a new heart, with new fruit, with new treasure that produces good, not evil.

Because your heart produces things for life and for worship. That's why Jesus could then say out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. What is your heart producing? The heart here is like the tree that was mentioned at the beginning.

There's the good tree and there is the bad tree. And both produce, the heart is that which produces. It either produces good fruit or bad fruit. Now how do we determine whether the heart is producing good or bad?

All one has to do is examine themselves, is look at their lives under the light and scrutiny of Scripture. Which is why Paul makes this astonishing statement in second Corinthians chapter 13 verse five.

When he says test yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Or do you not recognize this about yourselves? That Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test. There's a test that has to be taken.

To see whether or not you are in him. If you are in Christ. If Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test Paul says. The heart is that tree that produces either good fruit or bad fruit. It is indeed that which produces either good treasure or bad treasure.

Therefore examine yourselves as Scripture calls us to. What are some ways in which we can examine ourselves to see whether we are in him? Beloved, it's the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is the blueprint for the Christian life.

Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God. We remember from previous teaching on this that the poverty that is spoken of here is one's spiritual condition. Acknowledging that you are indeed poor and needy before the throne of God.

Blessed are you who hunger for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep for you shall laugh. And blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you or avow you and spurn your name as evil on the account of the son of man.

Rejoice in that day. For yours is the kingdom of heaven. Love your enemies. This is the evidence of good fruit from a good tree, from a heart that is producing good treasures, not evil treasures. To delay gratification for the eventual glory of God's fame.

To love your enemies, even when it's difficult, even when they revile you, even when they spit at you, even when they smack you, you turn the other cheek. It's the evidence of a good heart. It's the evidence of good fruit.

Again, this is the crescendo of all that Jesus has said previous to this. To love your enemies, to be merciful, just as your Father in heaven is merciful to you. He also says not to be overly condemning or judgmental of others, but to use the same measure that you use for your life to others so that you're not judging people hypocritically.

This is good fruit from a good tree, producing good treasure from a good heart that's been transformed through new birth. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Think of the heart also as a container, something that contains water, for instance.

Out of the abundance, if it overflows, it'll either overflow for evil or it'll overflow for good, but it'll be one or the other. May your heart overflow with goodness and mercy, just as we are taught and we see in Psalm 23 where there's a cup that runneth over, and it's the mercy of God.

May that cup overflow in your life. And now, Jesus, we turn our attention to what Jesus says in Luke chapter six, verse 46, which I think is probably the scariest verse in all of Scripture, where Jesus says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you?

Think about that for a moment. Why do you call me Lord, Lord? It's a scary statement. Why? Because every single person in this room calls Jesus Lord, every single one of us. We sang the hymn today, crown Him with many crowns, the Lord of all.

We sing about this Jesus. We pray to this Jesus. We confess Him with our mouth that He's Lord. Yet, He says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you? Think about what Lord and lordship means.

The term Lord is not just simply one of respect. It's one of ownership. It's one of authority. Jesus says, why do you call me Lord, but do not do what I tell you? That is showing that if you claim to follow Him, you must do as He commands.

Because He says in verse 47, everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what He is like. As in the previous statements and also what He's about to say. The one who follows Him is that good tree that bears good fruit.

It is that good heart that produces good treasure. But those who produce bad fruit, those who produce evil out of their hearts are like those who say Lord, Lord, but do not do as He commands. He says, I will show you what this one is like.

The one who hears and does, in verse 48, is like a man building a house who dug deep and lay the foundation on the what? The rock. The one who follows Jesus, who hears Him and does what He says is like the man who builds his house, his life on the rock.

Every structure needs a firm foundation. Otherwise, it will crumble under the weight and the anxiety and the stresses of this world. And so it is like the man or the woman who trusts in Jesus fully. He is like that person who builds his life, his house on the solid rock of Christ.

And the one who does so gains a great reward. Why? Because notice what it says in verse 48. Then when a flood arose and the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built.

Not maybe when the storms come or when the streams break or when the river floods. Friends, it's not if, but it's when. Being a Christian is not a call to a life of ease or one devoid of hardship or pain or suffering, but rather it's when those storms come, not if.

It's when the flood arises, not if. It's when the stream breaks, not if. When that times of testing come in life, will we be found having a house built on the firm foundation or a house built without a good firm foundation?

Verse 49, Jesus says this. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell and the root of that house was great.

Now we live in an earthquake country here in the Bay Area. I lived in the mobile home park just up the road in a manufactured home and there's a little cubby that you can kind of open on the outside where you can look in to see the bottom of the house and you can, there's a kind of a crawl space so you can go in there if you need to.

And when I first opened that, I was horrified because I saw what was holding up my house was like five cinder blocks and a couple of little things to absorb a shake or two and I'm not sure if you remember back in October, I think, of last year, it was a 5 .0 earthquake and I was standing in my kitchen and I thought I was having a hot flash or something because everything was starting to shake and I could see the fridge move and I felt like there was like a truck right outside like ramming into the house and it was an earthquake.

And thankfully, there was no damage and most folks didn't have any problems and it was a small earthquake. But I imagine, what if this was the big one? There's not much holding this house together. This house would probably be slammed into my neighbors and to the other side and there'd be nothing left.

The foundation, there's a foundation but it's a small one. It's not strong which is why I put earthquake insurance on that house because you never know. But friends, a good life, a good structure, a good home needs a good foundation.

Without it, you will fall. Without it, when times of testing comes, you will be like that house that will be tossed to and fro, back and forth by the waves and destructions of this life. Do not be like the unwise that you build your life on your career or you build your life, here's a big one, on our children.

Parents, we love doing this, don't we? We have children, we love them. They're made in God's image. We wanna foster them and we wanna bless them and encourage them and build them up but there are times in which this world turns parenting into a form of idolatry where we live for our kids.

No, we live for Jesus and we need to teach our kids also to live for Jesus. When the times of testing comes, when a child is grown and he leaves the house, what do we have left? What foundation is left?

Brothers and sisters, it's in times of testing where we see what our true foundation actually is. Is it Christ? The solid rock? The rock of ages? Or is it something else entirely? Jesus beckons us and calls us in his word to test, to examine, to see whether we have truly built our lives on the good foundation.

Another thing that I did, may it wise or unwisely, the first house that I purchased, I was so eager to buy the house, I didn't do an inspection. I said, no inspections. It was the time where the market was kinda crazy.

And I said, okay, no inspections. We're not gonna worry about it. And it comes, after I bought the house, it was an older house, about 100 years old. There were parts of the house that had really sunken in.

The foundation was very, very old. And there's no earthquakes in Wisconsin, but what happens is, over time, things kinda settle in and parts of the house were just uneven. I didn't bother to check the foundation because I was so eager to get a house.

Sometimes in life, we make the same mistakes spiritually. We're so eager for the blessings of God, for what seems to be a call of God in our lives, that we fail to check the foundation. Are we actually pursuing Christ or are we pursuing simply what Christ can give us?

Is the treasure the treasures of this life or is it the treasure that we're seeking, the treasure of knowing Christ and being found in Him, not having a righteousness of our own, but a righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus?

Jesus, again, challenges us with this call in verse 46. Why do you call me Lord? If you call Jesus Lord this morning, I call you to examine yourself. Do you call Him Lord but do not do what He tells you to do?

Let's be honest. There's times in which we do that, where we call Jesus Lord with our mouths, but our hearts are far removed from Him, whether it be by our actions or by our thoughts, by temptations, by giving into sin.

There are times in life where we do not do what He tells us to do. Now, what's the evidence here of a Christian, of a good life, of a good tree, of a good heart, is one that is producing, out of the abundance of his heart, a life for Jesus?

Doesn't mean that you'll be perfect. Doesn't mean that you won't fall. Doesn't mean that you won't even backslide sometimes in life, but that the overall tenor of your life should be one marked by sanctification.

And that's how you know justification has taken place. When the life is fundamentally changed, not only do you know the truth, but the truth has set you free in such a way that you can now live it authentically for the glory of God.

Jesus is beckoning us here in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount to live an authentic life for the kingdom of God. He's calling us to live a life that is different, that is marked out differently than everyone else.

So though you're not perfect, though you'll fail, there'll be times of trials and temptations, the wind, the storm, the flood will come, but how will you respond to that? After all is said and done, after the waves, after the stresses, after the anxieties, what will remain?

May it be that what remains after all is said and done is the foundation of Christ as Lord. Because no statement is more foundational in the history of the cosmos than this, Jesus is Lord. I think I've told you before, I put some thought into what I want said on my tombstone.

I grew up in New England, and if you know anything about New England history, we had a lot of Puritans, a lot of good preachers have come out of New England in the 1600s and 1700s. In Hartford, Connecticut, where I grew up, there is a cemetery that is from the 1600s, and it is a kind of a museum heritage site now, and I love going through it because the Puritans had the best headstones.

Not because they were elaborate, matter of fact, they were very simple, but they had the best inscriptions. Many of them read something like this. So and so lived this date, died on this day, and it says when they died, but alive and risen with Christ.

I love that. And I thought to myself, what would I want said and written on my tombstone? And I think I can just boil it down to this one simple statement. Jesus is Lord. Because it's by that statement, it's by that proclamation with the mouth and with the heart that one is saved.

And it's with that declaration that one day we know that there shall be a resurrection from the dead is because Jesus is Lord. He's Lord over life, he's Lord over death, he's Lord over believers, he's Lord over unbelievers, he's Lord over the earth, he's Lord over the heavens, he's Lord over hell, and he's Lord over everything.

And because of that truth, I know that I shall live. And I know that though I'm a sinner, though you're a sinner, if you be found in Jesus today, there is hope. Hope not just for your circumstance, hope not just for your depravity, hope not just for whatever you may find yourself in today or tomorrow, but there's hope for the future.

And there's hope beyond the grave because he is Lord and is Lord indeed, amen? Amen. Jesus Christ being Lord over all things is the assurance of all things promised to us in Holy Scripture. Jesus Christ's Lordship is the foundation of all things for the believer.

That's the rock. Therefore, brothers and sisters, hear him, know him, and obey him, for obedience is better than sacrifice. If you call yourself a Christian today, make it your aim not just to know good theology, but that you would be shaped by good theology because good theology produces good fruit if it is observed by one who has been radically transformed by Jesus.

Because there are many who know good theology, yet their lives may not be marked by that theology. Therefore, brothers and sisters, make it your aim to know him, to be found in him, not having that righteousness of your own, but the righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus, be transformed by this rock, even Jesus Christ our Lord.

Brothers and sisters, again, the call is simple. Just in a couple moments, we're gonna be coming and partaking of the Lord's table. And it's an opportunity for us to do just that, to examine ourselves under Scripture, to see whether we are in the faith, and also to give opportunity for repentance to play a role.

Because though we've been called to repent of our sins, many of us attribute that to the moment where we gave our lives to Jesus, and I repented of my sins already. Brothers and sisters, God calls you to repent daily, especially as we come to this table, to examine yourself and to repent of your sins.

Because at the table is where we're reminded of the future redemption of our bodies, and the redemption that we have now tasted in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So friends, examine yourselves today.

If you call Jesus your Lord, are you doing what he tells you to do? May you be found in him again, and may you know him, and may he give you peace. Let us pray. Sovereign Lord Jesus, you are indeed Lord over all things.

And we thank you, Father, in the name of Jesus, that you have given us in Christ a new heart. Therefore, Lord, we pray that out of the abundance of that new heart, goodness would flow, mercy would flow, grace would flow, for the praise of your glorious grace and the riches of your kindness expressed to us in Jesus Christ.

Lord, help us to forgive those who have sinned against us. Help us, Lord, not to be hypocritical in the way that we judge others. Help us, Lord, to put into practice the beatitudes, that we would know our spiritual condition and poverty before you, and beg, as good sinners do, for your mercy and your grace.

We pray, Lord, that you would help us to see the need for mercy, not just for ourselves, but for others. Help us, God, to live out these precious and radical truths so that in these things we glorify you and we make known again your kindness and grace to a world that so desperately needs it.

Father, we pray, even when we fall short, that you would help us, Lord, to remember that salvation is of the Lord. There's nothing that we can do to earn it, but thanks be to you, there's nothing we can do to unearn it if we have truly received it.

So, Lord, help us to be like that good tree that produces good fruit. Help us, Lord, through the new birth to have a heart that produces good treasure and out of the abundance of it, may we speak your truth in love for the glory of your name.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.