You Shall Know Them By Their Fruit: Matthew 12:33-37

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Pastor Stan Bernstein May 3rd, 2020

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Good morning. It's so great to worship with you this morning. We're hoping that everybody's doing well
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Staying safe and how great it is to be able to worship this morning and to encourage one another
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So I hope that you will be encouraged this morning by our worship and the
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Word of God Let's open with prayer Dear Heavenly Father, we're thankful this morning to be able to worship through Jesus Christ And we just pray
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Father that you will bless each and every person that is able to Hear the message and worship with us and that Christ would be glorified in All we do we ask this in Jesus name
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Amen We Have some announcements
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Now we are still on a lockdown due to the corona virus
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We will keep you updated as we get more information May 3rd through 9th this
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Coming week is IFC a international week of prayer Let's pray for God's blessing on IFC a in our church as we do the work of the ministry and make disciples of Christ terms of prayer
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Let's pray for our state Country and world that God will be glorified in the corona virus and give us grace in this difficult time
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Let's pray for all those on the front line of the virus and all those who are sick
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And whose families have lost loved ones let's pray for wisdom and grace from God to open up our state and country and keep
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People healthy and for an end to this virus in terms of praise
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Of course, there's always something to praise God about right? Let us praise
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God for his grace with us at this time. Let us praise God for our church
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And what he is going to do and what he is doing let us praise
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God for his blessings and That we will take the
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Opportunities to serve him where he has us and get the gospel out this time
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We're gonna have our worship words are
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Important things They Come from our heart
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They are an indicator of what our heart is They can wound or they can heal none of us are
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Perfect with our words. The Bible says we all stumble with our words and That's why
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I Realize that I need to forgive others
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Because of my words because my words show me how human and how sinful
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I am and therefore I need to extend forgiveness to others and grace to others
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This morning we're going to see two kinds of people the
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Lord talks about trees and the trees represent people were either saved people good trees or We're unsaved people and we're bad trees
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And he tells us that That Fruit will come from our life.
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So if we're a good tree, we will produce good fruit If we are a bad tree
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We will produce bad tree fruit Just like we see it in nature we're going to see that The fruit of our life comes from the character of our life
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From who we are as a person and from our heart So our words and our actions come from our heart and those these are such important lessons
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The Lord is going to show us this morning that we shall know Them by their fruit.
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We're in Matthew chapter 12 turn with me to Matthew chapter 12 Verses 33 through 37
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Matthew 12 33 through 37 I'll read
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Either make the tree good and its fruit good or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad
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For a tree is known by its fruit Brute of vipers.
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How can you being evil speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things and So evil an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth
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Evil things but I say to you That for every idle word men may speak they will give account of it in the day of judgment
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For by your words you will be justified and by Your words you will be condemned how powerful
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How heart -searching are these words? We're looking at the fact that you shall know them by their fruit and The first point we want to look at is the character of the person
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We shall know the character of a person By the fruit of that person's life.
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Not only what they do but by their words And so we see that in verse 33
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Want to look at the good tree here Now we had seen something startling and something that really
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Talks to the point that Jesus is speaking of the Pharisees who?
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should have Received the Lord their Messiah Jesus who had an outward appearance of religion and righteousness were bankrupt
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They were bankrupt spiritually they were unregenerate people and That's sad when you have religious leaders
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That don't know the Lord and don't know Jesus Christ and that's shown by their words they accused the
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Lord Jesus of Doing his miracles by the power of Satan How startling that is how rough that is and that is what is known as the blasphemy of the
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Holy Spirit verse 31 and So in reaction to that Our Lord is speaking to the scribes and the
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Pharisees and all the Jewish people in the crowd that were listening to him
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And he said you'd be in in other words. You better make sure your your life is right
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You better make sure you know the Lord and that you are In other words a good tree
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And So in verse 33, he says either make the tree good and it's fruit good or else make the tree bad
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And it's fruit bad for a tree is known by its fruit and here the
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Lord is Representing people and basically this is the way
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I see it. There's two kinds of people You're either a good tree or a bad tree
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You're either a regenerate person who knows the Lord or an unregenerate person who doesn't know the
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Lord and The word bad in the
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Greek means corrupt and It refers to in scripture bad fruit and bad meat.
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It's terrible when you you bring fruit home and It looks good on the outside and all of a sudden it's rotten inside You know bad thing.
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You got to throw it away It's bad when you get spoiled tainted meat and That's what he's talking about when he's talking about bad fruit here
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Now the principle here he had already talked about in Matthew in Matthew chapter 7 17 and 18 now, let's turn there
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Matthew 7 17 and 18 and he spoke these words regarding false teachers
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Saying that you will know them by their fruit and it takes discernment to spot a false teacher, right?
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They not only have bad teaching but they also have bad fruit in their lives and we got a beware
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And he says an important principle Even so every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit a good tree cannot bear
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Bad fruit nor can a bad tree bear good fruit So he's saying beware beware of false teachers
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We need to beware of false teachers these days because they look good They're spouting off things that sound good and make you feel good but they don't add up to the
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Word of God and it's bad doctrine and bad doctrine always leads to bad fruit bad fruit in our lives and so He's saying the same thing in these verses in Matthew chapter 12 that a good tree
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Which is a regenerate person a person who has received the grace of Jesus Christ and now, you know
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God and You have God's grace should produce good fruit We produce good fruit by the
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Holy Spirit for the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives And a bad tree or or an unregenerate person will produce bad fruit an unregenerate person cannot produce good fruit
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Because he doesn't have the Holy Spirit in his life doesn't know the Lord cannot produce spiritual fruit now,
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I like John 15 verses 4 & 5 It talks about in in those passages that Jesus Christ is the vine and he is
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Lord and we who are believers are branches and by virtue of being in the vine
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We derive our life Christ is our life and As we abide in Christ, it says there
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We will bear much fruit and So that is the way that we are to bear fruit through the grace of Jesus Christ so We need to know the character of the person the character of the person will show the kind of fruit the person
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Will bear in other words and so as we look at the fruit of a person's life
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We can see the character and the heart of a person natural You'll know a person by their actions and their words why they
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Come from there from the heart The person's heart comes right from our heart.
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So we want to look the next point Number two the condition of the heart verses 34 and 35 the
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Pharisees had a heart problem Verse 34
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Now it's Serious if we have a heart problem a physical heart problem
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You want to go to the doctor and we want to get it taken care of right? but in terms of a spiritual heart problem
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A doctor can't cure that he can't cure that with medication only the great physician
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Jesus the physician of our soul Can cure a heart problem
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He's the only one who can give us a good heart and cleanse our heart you see the matter that Jesus is talking about is the heart and And When you go to a doctor, it's really interesting
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He'll say to you. Well stick out your tongue And he'll look at your tongue.
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Well, why does he do that? because in your tongue, he can see the health of your whole body and It's the same in a spiritual way
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Our speech is an indicator of our spiritual health
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The way we speak Shows the condition of our heart and that's what we see here the
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Pharisees had a heart problem They didn't know Jesus Christ they didn't have
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The cleansing that Jesus Christ gives of the heart and the conscience and Jesus states
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The problem right in verse 34, why did they accuse him with such horrible words?
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saying that he was ministering by the power of Satan and Not by the power of God Because they were vipers
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That's what he says. He calls him brood of vipers. Wow.
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Well the word vipers means in the Greek It means poisonous snakes in general any poisonous snake
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So what he's calling them is poisonous snakes Wow religious poisonous snakes
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Those can be the some of the worst kind brood of vipers you know
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What we're seeing is that They're sinners, but you know, all of us are sinners, right?
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That's what the Bible says Romans 3 23 For all have sinned and what falls short of the glory of God Every person is a sinner every person born into this world were born sinners and because of our sin we are separated from God and So we all have a sin problem
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That's the basic problem that we have as human beings We have a lot of problems in the world today, and I don't underestimate those problems.
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We have problems with poverty We have problems with sickness. We have financial problems.
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We have there's marital problems. There's all kinds of problems but the essential dilemma of the human being is
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We are sinners by nature and because we're sinners by nature
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We are alienated from the life of God and that's what we see with the
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Pharisees and the only way that we can come to know God is through Jesus Christ and the precious atonement that he gave us on the cross when he died for our sins and rose again and When we trust
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Christ as our Lord and Savior by grace and Receive him as our
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Savior. We are then forgiven of our sins and Cleansed and made new creations in Christ, and I hope you have trusted in Christ this morning and so He's saying the basic problem with the
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Pharisees is the basic problem with human beings It's the basic human problem.
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We have a heart problem and That's what scripture says scripture talks about the heart so much
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Jeremiah 17 9 says the heart is
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Deceitful and desperately wicked who can know
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Well as believers we should know that We know our own hearts
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God knows our own heart God knows the corruption of our own hearts but praise
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God we have Christ and he is our advocate and so the the scripture says that the heart is
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Evil and desperately wicked and Deceitful and but praise
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God That Jesus Christ Cleanses the heart his precious blood
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Cleanses us from all sin look at first John 1 7 first John 1 7
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Great great verse first John 1 7, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ his
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Son cleanses us from all sin So we have precious fellowship with God Through Jesus Christ our mediator and through Jesus We have precious fellowship with other believers by the blood of Jesus and it's the blood of Jesus Christ his son that cleanses us from all sin notice also the verb tense of cleanses
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It's present present active his blood
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Continually cleanses us from all sin So that's the way to have cleansing and justification before a holy
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God And the Lord if you go back to Matthew 12 verse 34.
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He says a Precious thing a very important truth for us to remember about our words
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Where do our words come from They come from our heart. They come from the overflow of our heart or out of the abundance of the heart
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He says the mouth speaks And it's from our heart that our our words come and our words
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Speak And that's so important to remember well,
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I want to share with you about a man who I Went over to visit as a pastor
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When I was pastoring our little country church and I Was always so encouraged by this man
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He was very sick and his wife was very committed to him and was always by his His side and I would go there and this brother had so much faith
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That when I left I was like on cloud nine. I'm so encouraged and He was so sweet he had such a sweet nature
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And I thought wow, here's a man that really knows the Lord but then
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His wife told me something that shocked me She said my husband wasn't always like this.
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I Want to tell you something? When he was unsaved
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He was an abusive guy He was abusive with his speech
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And he was so bad and so hurtful in his speech That his own sons didn't want to talk to him.
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I go Wow but now Christ has changed all that Christ has given him a sweet spirit and faith
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You see he's the only one who can transform our lives and give us new life
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We don't need Reformation we need Regeneration we need new life and it comes through Jesus Christ And that's what we see in this verse out of the heart the mouth speaks the very words that we
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Say They come from our heart So they're an indicator of the state and condition of our hearts good words
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Show a good heart bad words unkind words Show a bad heart as believers who have received the grace of Jesus Christ We are admonished in Colossians 4 6 and this is something that is always very important to me to understand that our words
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Should be gracious Seasoned with salt
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We are to speak loving kind words that are wholesome and build up Now if you're a believer in Jesus Christ this morning
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As I am by the grace of God God is doing a work in you of sanctification in other words sanctification means
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That through the Holy Spirit God is making you and me more like Jesus Until the day when he comes and a big part of that refinement work
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Is not only our attitudes but our words and He convicts us of our words
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So if we have received the grace of Jesus Christ Let us seek to Speak words of grace to others that will show our spiritual maturity that will show the
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Lord working in our lives Let's not cuss Let's not take the name of the
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Lord in vain Let's not use unkind abrasive
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Cutting words to others. Let's not put other people down With our words, but let's seek to build
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Others up with our words and seek to be kind And that shows the love and grace and work of Jesus Christ in our lives one look at the treasure of the heart verse 35 a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things and Contrary wise it's true that an evil man out of the evil treasure
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Brings forth evil things the word treasure in the Greek Means storehouse.
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In other words, we we have little treasure boxes at home here
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My wife has a treasure box and I love it and in that box we put special Things that people have said special memory things
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Encouraging things in that box. It's it's a it's a treasure box of things that we we treasure that we can look in and the heart is a
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Treasure box it stores up things It also has the idea of a casket in the
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Greek And so the question is is what is your heart treasuring this morning
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What is it holding inside of it good things or bad things
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What's coming out of your heart Jesus says a good man or a good tree or One who has the grace of God in his life
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Will now bring forth good things or good words but a bad man who
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Doesn't know Jesus Christ Or an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart evil things will come out
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So important the heart the heart
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Maybe I'm not a doctor, but it may be the center of the physical life of a human being
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But it's certainly the center of our spiritual life
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The heart in scripture Always is the main organ of life of a human being from which all things come
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That's what the Bible says the heart is It's the center of our being the center of our life
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Therefore I like what Proverbs 4 23 says Keep your heart with all
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Diligence for out of it are what the issues of life
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Isn't that so true the issues of life? Come from inside from the heart
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Something bad can come from the outside but we can
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Respond to it in a good way by the grace of God Now there's some people
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Who feel and say Even as believers that I can't control myself.
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I There's no way I can control myself Well, yes, we can
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If we're believers in Jesus Christ, we can control ourselves
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Maybe we don't want to but we can
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Why? because We not only know Christ, but we have the
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Holy Spirit he lives inside of us and the fruit of the
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Spirit is Self control Galatians 5 22 and 23
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Tell us about the precious fruits of the Spirit the love joy peace
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Those things you see those are the things that make a spiritual person the fruit of the
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Spirit and We can control our
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Selves We live in a society
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Today that is very undisciplined and People are not controlling themselves
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But what we see here is If we have the grace of Jesus Christ in our lives by the grace of God We can control ourselves
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And we have the Spirit of God and when we're operating Through the
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Spirit of God and not the flesh We will exhibit the precious fruits of God and one of them is self -control and the greatest is love and so It all comes
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From the treasure the treasure of our heart We have a heart problem as human beings.
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That's the center and I hope you know
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Jesus Christ now And you have cleansing of your heart because that Is the most important thing?
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Cure that kind of heart problem Only the great physician the lord can do that lastly the caliber of the words
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Versus 36 through 37 be careful of your words
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Now that gets us right where we all live we all
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Deal with our attitudes which Sometimes need control and we all
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Deal with words That we need to control So this really
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Speaks to us verse 36, but I say to you that for every idle word men may speak
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They will give account of it in the day of judgment. Now, that's powerful. This is something we really need to consider
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Because We will give account for our words Not only that The lord jesus says we're going to give an account for every idle word
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Wow this word idle in the greek means every word that Is not profitable
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And it has the idea to me Of even those times in those unguarded moments when we let
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It rip And we scream at someone Or use a bad word or something like that That's an idle word
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And it says we will give account for that in the day of judgment
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So as one bible commentator said about this and I like it because I didn't always think about it this way
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Okay, of course when we stand before god As believers and at the bima judgment that will be a judgment of reward
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Okay so we can lose reward as well, but What We're going to be judged for it says here is not only what we do, but what we say
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Are words What does that mean Well, that means to me
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That we need to be very careful about what we say We need to be very careful about our words
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I remember I was interviewing For a church for a pastoral position
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In a church not this church And one of the brothers said something about me
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And I can't say it's always true But he says I've noticed that you're very careful with the words that you say
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So I told him I said I need to be and I have to be
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Because if i'm not I'm in trouble Not only as a human being but especially as a pastor
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Because to whom much is given Much is required and so We're going to be accountable for our words
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And in those unguarded moments when we might say something that we don't mean or We don't want to say that we want to take back
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The problem is Words are like birds Once you say it they fly away and you can't get them back
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And you may regret it And there's things I have regretted that i've said
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In moments of anger or passion or whatever and i've hurt people
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And it's sad so let's Be careful I like what
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Ecclesiastes 10 12 says That a wise man will speak gracious words
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Or the words of a wise man are gracious that's been such a powerful verse to me
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Because I know that I always have to work on my speech in my words my attitudes
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And I want them to be gracious and so What we realize is that a wise person
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Who's tracking with the wisdom of god? Will seek to be gracious with his words will seek to be kind be kind To people these days, especially during this virus
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People need kindness now people always need kindness be kind To your husband or your wife be kind and gentle and loving
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And encouraging and build up others build up the weak
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Build up the believers in the church Realize that god has you in our church for a reason he's placed you there
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He's given you the gifts that you have the spiritual gifts that you have to build others up In christ and use your words
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To build up others and not tear down an important lesson for us all right
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Because what we see here Is we're going to give an account for every idle word
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Wow serious stuff Lastly our words show our heart verse 37 we've talked about this already but Look what it says for by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned
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Well, why? Will we be judged by our words? Well, it says it right here and it says it in the context of these verses
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Because our words indicate our hearts our words
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Are a conduit Through which our heart is seen
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Whether it's a good heart or a bad heart and that's why
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We will just be just justified or condemned by our words
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Because they show the condition of our heart Wow I like that word justified for by your words you will be justified
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Well, what does that word mean we have a doctrine a theological doctrine called justification by faith
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What does it mean? to be justified How is a sinner or a person justified?
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Before a holy god, it's a good question, right? We're justified by a holy god not by our own works
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But solely by faith in jesus christ So when we put our faith in jesus christ
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By the grace of jesus christ We are then justified from our sin by god
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And the picture is is that god is the judge Who now declares us righteous?
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Or justified Not by our own righteousness Which we don't have any
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But solely by the righteousness of jesus christ That's what it means to be justified
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Praise god that we're just But still
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We're still sinners. We still have indwelling sin And we still have problems with our words, right?
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So we have to control our words And so what what this passage is teaching this morning?
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is You shall know them by their fruit The fruit of our lives will show the character of our lives or our heart
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Our words And our actions Will show our heart and our character because They come from our heart
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Sometimes it's hard to see a person's real intentions in his character
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But the bible says we're not to unfairly Judge people and their motives but we are
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To look at people the fruit of people's lives the fruit of a ministry
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And judge it According to scripture and see what kind of fruit
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It's bearing Whether it's good fruit or bad fruit Let me just say
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If there's a bible teacher pastor church That's not teaching the word of god accurately
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And is twisting the word of god And there's bad fruit and bad doctrine
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Stay away from it commit yourself Not only to jesus christ, but consist commit yourself to good sound doctrine and a church that teaches and preaches
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The word of god and is committed to sound doctrine So important and so This morning our lord.
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Jesus Is showing us Important truth that we need to consider and that is
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There are two kinds of people and He represents people
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By trees. I love it You're either a good tree
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Or you're a bad tree In other words you either know jesus christ or you don't know jesus christ you're either saved or you're unsaved
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We either have the grace of jesus or we don't and he's saying
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If you don't know jesus christ You need to come And get right
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And come to christ And get saved And come to know jesus christ and live for him and to live by the grace of god
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Because that is the only way to live we were created by god to know him
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And we're saved through jesus christ by the grace of god only and the only way we can live
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And please god and bear good fruit is by the grace of god So jesus is teaching us this morning
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That if you're a good tree you will Be a good tree by virtue of his salvation
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And by god's grace and you will bear good fruit in your life
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That doesn't mean we're not going to sin Okay And if we do sin, we know
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God is faithful and just to forgive our sins when we confess them but also if you're a bad tree
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You don't know jesus christ. The opposite is true.
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He will bear Bad fruit let it be
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Not only the desire of our lives, but let it be the great
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Purpose And diligent effort of our lives to always seek
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To glorify jesus christ in our lives Let it be the paramount thing in our life above everything to seek to please god in all things
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And to be used by god though. We're so frail and small for his purposes
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And to bear fruit for him for You shall know them by their i'm gonna have a closing benediction closing prayer and after that We will have our closing song
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Let's close with a word of prayer dear heavenly father.
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These are searching words this morning from scripture Oh, may you search our search us and know us our hearts may
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May you lead us And may you enable us
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To live for you. I just pray father that Those who don't know christ as their savior who are not good trees will come to know him by the grace of god and and Those of us who do know christ
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Will seek to bear good fruit in our lives lord Help us to be people
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Who are careful in our words to glorify you to please you
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With the things we say because we know our words Come from our hearts and are indicators of our hearts
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And father Let what we do Be pleasing to you.
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May we seek to please you in all that we do and so Just pray for each and every person
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That's listening to us father that your your spirit will be upon them
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Your grace will be upon them And they will find peace and joy and blessing and hope in their lives
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And they will seek to serve you with everything In their lives in every aspect.