The Heart Speaks Matthew 12:33-37

The Heart Revealed by Fruit and Words

You often hear it said that we cannot know someone's heart. In some cases this is true, but in other cases it is not. It is possible that someone may be faking it and you find out later that the person everyone thought they knew was a fraud.

It is also possible that at times we may misjudge someone who is better than we realize. For example, someone may appear rough on the edges, but once you get to know the person you find out that the person has a soft heart.

It is also true that God knows everyone's heart much better than any human can. God knows our hearts infinitely. But the saying we cannot know someone's heart is used far too loosely by people. More times than not we can know someone's heart, but people use this saying typically to give someone a pass when the evidence is right out there for everyone to see.

The proof is in the pudding, as another saying goes. As one's life is examined, what does it show? Does it show a deep love for God or a deep love for self? As finite as we are, we can know much about our own hearts and we can know some about other people's hearts.

Jesus Teaches That Fruit Reveals the Tree

I don't say this on my own authority, but on the authority of Scripture. In Matthew, we have already heard Jesus say in Matthew 7 20 that we will recognize people by their fruits. As we examine the lives of people, what course is one's life taking?

Whatever path people are traveling down is being driven by one's heart. One's deepest desires. One's deepest desires determine the course of one's life. Now this morning, Jesus is going to focus on one clear area where the proof is in the pudding.

And that area is the mouth. The mouth. It tells us much about a person. So this time I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 12. We'll be looking at verses 33 through 37. If you're using the right Bible in the pews, it's on page 971 and it spills over into 972.

The sermon is titled, The Heart Speaks. And here's our big idea. Understand that your words matter more than you know. And I'm going to read the text as we start this morning. 33 through 37 of Matthew 12.

These are the words of Jesus. Jesus said, Either make the tree good, and its fruit good, or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil?

For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give accounts for every careless word they speak.

For by your words, you will be justified. And by your words, you will be condemned. Once again, this is what the sermon is calling us to do. Understand that your words matter more than you know. And we'll see two reasons why.

But before we dig into our text, let me give you a little recap of where we were one week ago. We looked at the unforgivable sin. The Pharisees saw the miracles of Jesus. They could not deny that he was doing miracles.

The two options before them were either to believe that these miracles were from God, and that he was the Messiah, or falsely claim these miracles were from the power of Satan. We of course know that they chose the latter because of their hardness of heart.

What Jesus told them is that they would not be forgiven for making this judgment. To attribute the work of Jesus through the power of the Spirit to the devil was to commit the unforgivable sin. The question we asked is, can this sin still be committed today?

What I argued is that rejecting the obvious truth that Jesus is from God, and refusing to believe in him to the point where one's heart is unpenetrable, is to commit the unforgivable sin. This is so because when a person continues to reject the Spirit, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, as Hebrews 10, 26 says.

The call is to listen to the Spirit's voice, to believe in Jesus, and never reach this point of hardness of heart. That's what the Bible calls us today. If you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.

The Mouth Reveals the Heart

Now this leads us to our text this morning. Let's begin by looking at verse 33, where Jesus once again says, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.

So we're talking about trees here. What I should really do right now is just turn it over to Derek. He is a tree expert. I know Gordy is as well. I don't know much about trees, but I did a little digging.

And here's what I came up with. Trees live when they get rain, sun, and pollination. Pollen provides nutrients to trees, and in here in our context, to fruit trees, so that it can grow and people can pick the fruit and eat.

Bees are the primary pollinators. We don't like bees, right? But they really do a good service to us. And they do not pollinate on trees, though, when the weather is bad. Bees don't want to pursue nectar, that sugar, when the weather is bad, just like we don't want to go outside when the weather is bad.

So a lack of rain, sun, and pollen is what kills a tree over the long haul. And what Jesus is saying is there are healthy trees, and there are unhealthy trees. Even if you're not an expert on trees, you can tell a healthy tree from an unhealthy tree.

We had some dead trees behind our house that Derek took down a while back. An expert can spot a dead tree better, but even the average person can see when a tree is very unhealthy. In the region of Palestine, it was very common to have fruit trees.

So many of these illustrations that Jesus gives, he talks about these species of trees. And one source I was looking at said that in the region of Israel, there are more than 40 types of fruit trees. For example, they have avocados, bananas, apples, cherries, plums, grapes, strawberries, and many more.

In our area, the most common fruit tree, I believe, is apples. It's also enjoyable to go to an apple orchard. But if you go to an apple orchard, you're not going to grab a rotten apple to take home with you.

You want the well-grown ones, the fresh ones, the ones that look good and taste good, the ones that aren't brown. It's very simple. Jesus wants us to understand this. If a tree is healthy, then it's a good tree.

If the tree is unhealthy, then it's a bad tree. And he applies this to people. He applies this to people. What he is telling them is either I am a healthy tree. He's talking about himself here in verse 33.

He says, either I am a healthy tree from God and do the works of God, or I am an unhealthy tree from Satan and do the works of Satan. That's what he's saying when he says either make the tree good and it's fruit good or make the tree bad and it's fruit bad.

For the tree is known by its fruit. What he's saying is make up your mind about me. Remember, in the previous passage, they just accused him of coming from Satan, that he was doing these miracles through the power of Satan.

But he put them in their place by telling them it can't be. I'm working against Satan. I'm healing people. I'm forgiving sin. I'm raising the dead. I'm working against Satan. How can I be doing this through the power of Satan?

So he's telling them either I'm a good tree or I'm a bad tree. Make up your mind. And he, of course, Jesus, made it clear last week that he is from God. So all of his works correspond to the holy source from which his works come.

And what Jesus is saying in verse 33 is make up your mind. Who am I? And the answer is obvious. I cannot do these good deeds and also be from Satan. Right. The Pharisees could deny the good things he was doing.

He was healing people, people who were blind, people who were mute, people who were crippled. How can my works be from Satan? But then in verse 34, Jesus turns it on them. OK, so he talks about his good fruit in verse 33.

Now he's going to talk about their bad fruit. In verse 34, he says, you brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. What Jesus is doing here is he's changing the metaphor.

In verse 33, he compared a bad person to a bad tree. And now he's comparing the Pharisees to something that's not very flattering. A brood of vipers. We already saw this phrase used in Matthew 3, 7, where John the Baptist described the Pharisees and Sadducees with the same dark description.

Now, when I read these passages about snakes, I'm always grateful that we don't live in those places where they have these terrifying snakes. Right. I know, Keith, you used to live in that neck of the woods, right?

The winters do some good things, right? They keep them away. We don't have rattlesnakes, at least not very many. We don't have vipers in this neck of the woods. What Jesus calls the Pharisees, though, in verse 34, are vipers.

I'd much rather have a gardener's snake than a viper. The most feared snake in the world may very well be a viper. Scientists say that the viper is more responsible for human deaths than all other snake species combined.

This is not a good snake. It's a dangerous snake. Its bite is poisonous, and if left untreated, it may very well lead to death. Think about how strong this condemnation is from Jesus. This is not flattering to the Pharisees.

It's insulting. It's condemning. Of all things that Jesus could compare the Pharisees to, He compares them to vipers. Now, who do you want to be compared to, right? We think about a dove, a lion, you know, these wonderful animals out there that we enjoy.

And the Pharisees get compared to vipers. Not good. Not just a snake, which is bad enough, but the deadliest of snakes in the world. And what Jesus is telling them is that they are disgusting human beings, as snakes are.

They're these slithering creatures. It's not by accident that Satan possessed a snake. Of all animals, this dangerous reptile. And this is what Jesus said about them in Matthew 23, verse 13. He says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. So the Pharisees are not only sending themselves to hell, they're leading others down the same destructive path.

The Pharisees, and not just the Pharisees, but the entire Jewish leadership, the scribes, the chief priests, the Sadducees, had very dark hearts, largely speaking. And yet they were unaware about how evil they were.

They thought they were good. They thought they were the righteous people before God. They thought that they should be held up as an example of what a follower of God should look like. But how wrong they were.

What Jesus says in verse 34 is, How can you speak good when you are evil? Now, this is interesting. When Jesus addressed fruit in chapter 7, he focused on the whole of the person. And in verse 33 of our text, this morning, he focused on the whole of his work.

That his work is righteous. But now he is focusing specifically on what? One's words. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. What he's telling the Pharisees is that good, God-honoring words cannot come out of your mouth because you're not good.

You're evil. Even if their words appear good to another, they were not. Every word that came out of their mouth was from their sinful heart. So that even when apparent good words came out of their mouth, it came from a selfish and prideful motivation making the words evil.

If your works are not done for the glory of God, then they're sinful. Romans 15 says that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. And all of these words come from deep inside of a person. The depths of one's heart.

That's where the words come out of. As Jesus says at the end of verse 34, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So we have a window into the deepest parts of every human. And that window is the mouth.

What comes out of your mouth? This morning, we already read in Matthew 15, 19, where Jesus described the sinful heart in this way. He said, for out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

We can know people's hearts to a certain extent. And the first one that Jesus mentions in that list is evil thoughts. What evil thoughts produce is evil words when they come out. Sometimes you might have an evil thought and you don't have a filter.

It just comes out. It's like, well, where'd that come from? Well, it came from your thoughts. But even having the thought itself is sinful. But how much worse if words come out as well? And he says that these evil thoughts and evil words describe the Pharisees.

But the words of a person also provide us a window into every human heart. Both Christians and unbelievers can have evil thoughts and evil words. James 3 explains how much of a crisis the wrong use of one's mouth is.

In James 3, verses 5 through 10, James wrote,. The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind.

But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it, we bless our Lord and Father. And with it, we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

My brothers, these things ought not be so. As we hear this, we should be hit by a ton of bricks. The Bible does that. It'll hit you. We sin with the tongue because our sinful desires lead us there. The depths of our heart, our deepest desires lead us there.

There are many ways that one can sin with one's mouth. And what are some of those ways? We can use the Lord's name in vain. Exodus 20 verse 7 tells us not to do that. This can be done by using the Lord's name as a curse word, like saying, I swear to God, but having no plans on following through with the promise that you are making.

Any filthy words can also be a way that one takes the Lord's name in vain. And I mean, it's kind of kind of comical to think of this, but it's also very sad. And if you were to go to a sporting event on a Sunday morning, you might hear Jesus name more there than in a church service.

But it's in a very unholy way, very sinful way. I once heard a story of a pastor. He was on the subway. And when he was on the subway, there was this guy who was using all these words. He said, Jesus Christ.

He said, hell. He said, God. He said other words as well. The word holy, I think you threw in there. And the pastor was so offended by this guy that he turned around to him and said to him, he's like, you said this, this, this, this and this.

I can't even get that all in a sermon. And you just got it in this one conversation. It's kind of comical. Yes, but also very sad. You may come across someone who just about every other word is a swear word.

What you learn by this person's words is that he or she has a filthy mouth. And we say, but he has a good heart. No, he doesn't. What's coming out of his mouth? People also sin with the mouth through expressing one's anger.

We are to be slow to speak and slow to be angry. As James 119 says, we are to quench the flame of anger. But too often evil thoughts about another take hold. And angry words come out and another is hurt by our words.

But there's still another way that people sin with their mouth, and that is through tearing down others. Curse words are not typically a huge problem for Christians, but gossip and slander are. Gossip and slander are closely related, but they're a little bit different.

According to Jerry Bridges book, Respectable Sins, gossip is when you tell true information to someone else, but that party that you shared with had no business knowing that information. We say, well, it's true.

Well, you're not supposed to say it, though. Slander, on the other hand, is similar, but a little different. Slander happens when one spreads false information about another, whether privately or publicly.

So you just make things up and attribute it to a person when it's not true. As Bridges mentions in his book, the sin of gossip and slander is a respectable sin too often tolerated in churches. And I would argue that gossip and slander is the number one way that Satan hurts churches.

And we have to be aware of that. When we tear down others in private, it really hurts churches. We need to understand his schemes. God calls us to love each other. And one of the ways we love each other is by speaking well of each other in private.

This means treating others with care. If we're honest, we say things sometimes that we shouldn't say. I know I do. And this is a sin that we need to put to death. As Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, this is a sin that they were engulfed in.

We know this because they were unbelievers who had filthy tongues. Remember, these were the religious people, so they probably didn't use swear words, but they gossiped, they slandered, they showed where their heart was.

And as Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, they would have no doubt taken part in this. Thinking a bad thought is itself sinful, and speaking your thoughts increases the seriousness of the sin. The tongue, speaking it.

They slander Jesus in their thoughts, and we can be confident they mouthed this publicly. Remember the passage last week where they were thinking these thoughts about, oh, he does these works by the power of Satan.

Remember, they didn't even say it with their mouth. They were thinking these things, but Jesus was able to read their thoughts. But you better believe that they spoke this publicly to others as well. And what I just mentioned were the sins of the mouth.

But the truth is, every word that comes out of our mouth tells us something about our hearts. As Jesus said in Matthew 15, 19, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And as he says at the end of verse 34, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Our mouth tells us what we are in love with. If we never or rarely talk about God, if we never or rarely pray, if we never or rarely have words of praise and thanksgiving toward Him, if we never or rarely think about what God thinks about the words we use toward others, do we think, what is the Lord going to think about me saying this?

If we don't think about these things, it tells us something bad about our hearts. Our hearts can be idolatrous. Every heart is an idol factory where God is trying to rip us from those idols and bring us to Him where we worship Him alone.

And if we're talking about things other than God all the time, we have to wonder, where is our heart? Is it truly in love with God? So as unbelievers are engulfed, they call it idol chatter. I listen to the radio.

Do they talk about God? They talk about just about everything about God, but they don't talk about God. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. But if we think about the sin of our mouths, believers can change this.

We can grow in this. We have the Holy Spirit. But unbelievers in their present state cannot. Jesus says this in verse 35. He says, The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

The evil person, as we have seen, will only produce bad fruit. Right? A bad tree only produces bad fruit. A dark heart will produce dark actions and dark words. But a heart changed by the Spirit is able to do good.

Now, this doesn't mean perfection, right? It's not the perfection of your life, but it is the direction of your life. You still sin, but that sin is not to have mastery over you like it did before. As Paul wrote in Romans 6, 14, he said, Let not sin have dominion over you.

He says, It does not have dominion over you. Now, genuine Christians who have the Spirit in their life can turn from the sins of the mouth. Romans 8, 13 says, If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

So you can do this. You can kill the sin in your life with the Spirit's help. The Pharisees were a slave to their sin, and any unbeliever is a slave to one's sin. But believers can change. In John 15, 2, Jesus said, Every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

As the Spirit changes one's heart, it will show in one's mouth. Your words will be glorifying to God, and others will be blessed by your words and not harmed. Don't we want to be that way? As we yield to the Spirit, you will be that way.

Instead of your words bringing destruction, your words will give life. As Proverbs 10, 11 says, The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of wicked conceals violence. Ephesians 4, 29 says, Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Do your words give grace? Do your words build up? This must be the aim of our church. May the words that come out of our mouths be honoring to God and give life and not be violent toward others. May our words build up and not tear down.

And as I think about our church, what I see is that we like each other and we love one another. And I believe that this is growing each day, each week, each month. But it is good to hear this word from Jesus because we all have a sinful nature that can lead us down a bad path.

And when we do fall short, we need to confess that sin and turn toward righteousness. May our words give life and not tear down. May our words aim at building up and not destroying. May our words demonstrate that we have a sincere love for God.

Words Will Be Judged at the Final Judgment

So what do your words tell you about you? Ask yourself that question. Understand that your words matter more than you know. And the first reason why is that they reveal the depths of your heart. All right.

And our second reason why this morning we are to understand that our words matter more than we know is this. They will be evaluated at the final judgment. They will be evaluated at the final judgment.

We'll see this in verses 36 and 37. And this is a very sobering two verses where Jesus says, I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak. For by your words, you will be justified.

And by your words, you will be condemned. So Jesus here, he looks ahead to the future judgment. And I've shared with you before in this sermon series about the two future judgments. The two future judgments are the great white throne judgment and the judgment seat of Christ.

It's also known as the Bema seat. And Jesus describes these two distinct judgments in John chapter 5 verses 28 and 29 when he says, An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.

Those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. The judgment for unbelievers is described in more detail in Revelation 20. And it goes by another name, the great white throne judgment.

And verse 12 of that chapter says the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done. There's one book, the book of life, and then there are the books. What are these books?

These books record every deed you've ever done. They record every word you've ever spoken. So your life is being written down right now. Think about that. It'll make us think twice before we speak. It'll make us think twice before we do things.

And that's good. And at the final judgment, the works of unbelievers will be evaluated. And believers, but I'm not there yet. But first here, unbelievers. What the works will show is that none of the works done by an unbeliever were done for the glory of God.

The verse I already shared with you, whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. Romans 14, 23. What this means is that even the good works of unbelievers are considered sinful because of the motive behind the works.

If it's not done out of a sincere love for God, then it won't. It's not a good work, technically. In a superficial sense, it is. But but according to God, it doesn't please him. So it doesn't pass. And as these works are read from these books, many of the sinful works done by unbelievers will be through the tongue that showed the darkness of their hearts.

In these books, these simple words will be recorded. And so Jesus says in verse 36 to the Pharisees and anyone not covered by the blood of Christ, that you will be judged for every careless word you have spoken.

This verdict is delivered in verse 15 of Revelation 20, which says if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. So they will pay the just penalty for the words spoken.

These words not forgiven. Will pronounce will hear the pronouncement of guilty from the Lord Jesus Christ. But unbelievers are not the only ones who will have their words evaluated. Believers will as well.

As we know, Christians before conversion, we spoke careless words. We speak speak careless words after conversion as well. But Christians will be at a different judgment known as the judgment seat of Christ.

Second Corinthians 510 describes this judgment for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

In this letter, Paul is writing to Christians and what he tells them is that judgment is coming. But this judgment, as John 529 says, is the judgment of life. So nobody is going to pay for their sins in hell.

Because Christ already did that at the cross. So and I don't want to miss an opportunity. If you're not saved, believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved. And your words will not be used against you to judge you in the future.

Christ paid for them at the cross. But they will be evaluated. There will be rewards based on what you have said. Now, we can't be sure exactly how this will look at the judgment. But imagine every bad thing that you ever said replayed to you as you tried to hide as it is played.

Back in 2015 in Virginia, a man was getting a colonoscopy. And before he went under from the anesthesia, he hit record on his phone. And the reason he did this is because he obviously you're loopy when you come out.

And he wanted to understand the instructions. So he figured once I feel better, I'll be able to hear the instructions. So he hit record. But little did he know what was going to happen. While he was under the doctor performing the procedure and the medical staff with him made fun of him.

They mocked him. They said some things that I don't even want to say from this pulpit. So this man, after his procedure goes home, he listens and he couldn't believe what he was hearing. And the damage these words caused was enormous.

They were sued by the man. And he received $500 ,000 in damages. And as you might imagine, this was very costly to the career of these medical professionals. It was one journalist looked up whether the doctor was still working up there and she wasn't.

So we can assume she probably was fired. These careless words caused tremendous damage. And this ought to motivate us to be very careful with the words that come out of our mouths. We should ask, what would others think?

And most importantly, what does God think about our words? At the judgment seat of Christ, we will either gain reward or lose rewards based on our words. So here this warning for every curse word, we will lose reward for every promise we made that we had no plans on keeping.

We will lose reward for every hurtful word that flowed from our anger. We will lose reward for every word of gossip or slander. We will lose reward for every vocal expression showing that our satisfaction is more towards something else than for God.

We will lose reward. So I hope this is a motivation to us to yield to the spirit, kill our sin and be rewarded in the age to come, that our thoughts and our words would be pleasing him. King David wrote this in Psalm 1914.

He said, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Jesus tells us about the future judgment to motivate us to live godly lives so that we would store up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

Your life here is short. Every day we are moving one step closer to the end. May we live a life that will be celebrated by the Lord Jesus as we stand before him at the final judgment. Do we think about that?

We want to live a life where he's excited to see us like you did what I told you to do. I know you didn't do it perfectly, but you did what I told you to do with the ministry that I gave you. You honored me with your mouth, even though it wasn't perfect, but you did.

That's what we should aim for. Understand that your words matter more than you know. We have seen two reasons why in this text. The first reason why is that they reveal the depths of your heart. And the second reason why, as we just saw, is that they will be evaluated at the final judgment.

One rule to live by is to remember that God is always watching us. He notices every thought and every word. So may we live each day with that in mind. And may he be glorified through our thoughts and our words.

And to live this way is the best way to live. The reason we sin is we want to indulge the flesh. Anger. We want to indulge it. It feels good to let anger out. It feels good to let a curse word out. It feels good to have idolatrous words come out of our mouths.

Because we're indulging our sinful nature. But God calls us to kill that. And to honor him with our thoughts and our words. So may he be pleased with that. And we will experience the joy of living that way.

Now, next Sunday, the Jewish leaders ask Jesus for a sign. And what we will see, once again, is Jesus' remarkable response to them. So this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, the Bible does hit us right between the eyes.

We need to hear from you, Lord. We have a lot of growing to do in our lives. We have a lot of sin to put to death and a lot of holiness to pursue. And so my prayer is that we would take this seriously.

And that the Holy Spirit would use this in our lives to transform us in this way. In Jesus' name, Amen.