[Music] Matthew 12 beginning in verse 33 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 account for every careless word they speak for by
your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned this is the word of the Lord thanks God Amen you may be seated [Applause] thank you David of all the uh resources that I consulted for this message uh the commentary by NT Wright caught my attention when he said this we all like to play at being amateur detectives every year another crop of novels appears and sometimes plays and movies as well in which a wicked deed has been performed and nobody can figure out who did it and some of the greatest
names in fiction have created almost equally famous Heroes and heroins with Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes The Best of the distinguished list uh Heidi and I have a lot of differences but uh one of the things that we really enjoy is a good detective story and we uh especially like like the old black and white Perry Mason episodes and um uh I would have to say that over the course of the years probably our favorite has been Columbo in fact uh when I was on sabatical years back we would you know we took our camper up
into the Rocky Mountains we set up camp and we just soaked in all of the Majesty that surrounded us all day long it was just so amazing and refreshing and then we'd go in our little camper and watch as the sun goes down over the mountains we would watch reruns of Columbo it's how your pastor spend his sabatical if you've watched the show then you know how Columbo doesn't care care if he comes off as a frumpy uh somewhat bumbling detective in fact it's a part of what lowers the defenses of his suspects and what
he's particularly gifted at is being able to come up with something that not nobody else seems to be able to come up with that Cracks the Case and this is the reason that NT Wright brought up detectives in connection with our text Matthew 12: 33- 37 the ability of the detective right says lies mainly in this to spot the one or two most relevant Clues out of this whole mass of information most of which was is completely irrelevant but which all the the detective can find that one or two clues that blind the rest of
us because as we read the novels or as we watch the shows even if we are experienced at this kind of thing we all too easily get caught up in the plot and the lives of the central characters in 101 fascinating details and we miss the often quite obvious thing that would have told us the truth all along Jesus doesn't have to play detective when dealing with the Pharisees because earlier verse 25 we were told that he already knows their thoughts Jesus doesn't rely on techniques or hunches he is after all fully Divine God that
son the Alpha and the Omega and all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are already found in him but given the need that we have to be Discerning in the teachers and the leaders that we follow and given our need to have an awareness of the state of our own Hearts Jesus is going to to give us a little training in detective work here in our text and he does this not so that we can be critical and judgmental in the way that we look at other people but so that we can have an appropriate
[Music] Dependable discernment about ourselves and about others whom we might count among on our influencers don't just drift and surf your way into false teaching or counterfeit Christianity learn from Jesus his course begins in verse 33 with giving us the key evidence of someone's nature look at verse 33 either make the tree good and its fruit good or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad for the tree is known by its fruit Jesus has already used this word picture back in The Sermon on the Mount chapter 7: 15 to 20 and the point
he made then is the same point that he's making here that a person's true nature is able to be perceived by the way they live by the fruit that they produce in chapter 7 Jesus was warning his disciples about false prophets here he is calling out the Pharisees in both cases the tree is known by its fruit the prin principle good trees produce good fruit bad trees produce bad fruit examine the fruit and you'll know what kind of tree you're dealing with in our current text there is a slightly different Nuance because he uses the
word make make the tree good make the tree bad but in both cases it's the fruit that reveals the status of the tree in our text if you want good fruit then you have to make the tree good you have to properly care for the tree plant it in a good spot fertilize it water it expose it to plenty of good sunshine and prune it properly because if you want good fruit you need to make a good tree RC Sproul tells a story a few years ago to my astonishment some young people told me that
I had been quoted by name in a Hollywood movie and that pierced my interest and I wondered what I had ever said that could be considered worthy to quote on the Silver Screen well it turned out that uh uh I was quoted in a vampire movie appropriate this time of year I think we're just going to be inundated with that now for the next month it was uh a vampire movie entitled the addiction which he said took away quite a bit of my excitement but apparently the movie was about a philosophy student who became a
vampire and then tried to make sense of her condition and the writers of the film had the Stars quote various philosophers like Frederick nii saurin kirar and others and then toward the end one of the characters quoted me saying RC sprouls said we're not Sinners because we sin but we sin because we're Sinners and spru says when I heard that I thought well it's nice they gave me credit but now someone's going to sue me for plagiarism because that idea didn't start with me but it is true isn't it we sin because we are sinners
we sin because because there is something in us that needs to be changed and what needs to be changed is not on the outside but deep down at the very base of our lives inside that's right inside us sin is the symptom but the source of that outward often observable Sy uh uh symptom is an Inward rottenness and if you want to know someone's true nature Jesus says then you examine the fruit of their lives and this may give you insight into what is below the surface what is on the inside the condition of their
heart Jesus goes on verses 34 and 35 to get more specific in how to assess the heart verse 34 you brood of vipers you snakes he calls the Pharisees 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 if this imagery sounds familiar to you it may be because we've already heard these charges against another reputable uh or from another reputable character in Matthew's
gospel John the Baptist back in chapter 3: 7 to1 here's what we read when John saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism he said to them you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the Wrath to come bear fruit see the connections in keeping with repentance and don't even presume to say to yourselves well we have Abraham as our father because I'm telling you God can raise up from these stones on the ground here children of Abraham even now the axe is being laid to the root of the trees
every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire so we've got the same imagery snakes and trees we've got the same intended target the FES we've got the same message address the pride in your heart and start producing good fruit and in our text today 12 uh 33-37 Jesus makes the connection between the fruit that comes from someone's lips and the condition of their heart end of verse 34 it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks and so a person's
heart is like a deep well and when you go to the well for water and you drop your bucket all the way down into the well whatever is in that well is what's going to come up in your bucket so if it's fresh clean spring water then that's what you're you're going to get fresh clean water and if it's rancid contaminated water that's what you're going to get in your bucket but there's more imagery to unpack here in verse 35 because Jesus says that the water in that well is made up of what you treasure
each of us has a treasure chest buried in our chest filled with what is most important to us there is good treasure and evil treasure and whichever kind of treasure is found in your heart will be indicated by the words that you use good treasure brings forth good and evil treasure brings forth evil so how will I know if that buried treasure in me is good or evil listen to how you talk how will you know the treasure in someone else's Heart by listening to what they say because the talk reveals the treasure now I'm
intrigued by just how enduring this teaching is from Jesus how it speaks to the selfhelp self-improvement obsessed culture of our day where we care so much about maximizing our lives about never missing even one thing off our bucket list but striving for self-development at every level physically think of what goes in to developing ourselves and looking good physically and mentally and emotionally and even spiritually but Jesus has a timely message for our age that is so obsessed with these things Frederick Dale Bruner summarized summarizes that message for us and here it is good things in
life do not spring primarily from your calculations I shall be good they don't spring from your resolutions I shall be good no no the good things spring from your being what Jesus here calls our internal desire doing comes from being fruit comes from Roots speech comes from Hearts Jesus is aiming deep and he teaches here authoritatively that goodness is more spontaneous than it is pumped up goodness is more overflow than willpower good people are just good and while they too try hard to be good they don't have to try to get something that they don't
already have have by faith inside themselves what we need we cannot manufacture by Jesus's standard we may just have an entire generation or two with their ladder leaning against the wrong tree we are not a culture that lacks effort there is no shortage of effort today but Jesus would say to us that our effort is misplaced some would say it's just the old lipstick on a pig still leaving you with a pig or as Charles Spurgeon said in 1887 a hog in a silk waste coat is still a hog isn't that profound better goals better
resolutions better strategies and better commitments to those goals and strategies do not address the deeper problem and fail us in the end or even make things worse and think about this when you misdiagnose the illness all the state-of-the-art treatment in the world recommended by all the top experts in the world will still leave you ill Douglas Donald concludes most people think their heart is okay but that they just struggle a bit with their tongue but Jesus says you struggle with your tongue because your heart is not okay and this is true because of what Jesus
teaches here that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks as if all of this was not challenging enough enough Jesus instead of uh wrapping it up by assuring us that you know everything's going to be okay don't really worry too much about these things no no no no Jesus that's not Jesus Jesus instead raises the stakes exponentially and then universalizes the principles that is applying them not just to the up Pharisees that we all love to hate but now making sure that we understand that what he's teaching is true
of each of us and you see this in verses 36 and 37 where we are now given the key measure of someone's justification so now it's getting deep and personal verse 36 I tell you that on the day of judgment people will give an account for every careless word they speak for by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned and so on the day of judgment who is going to have to give an account for every careless word they've ever spoken Pharisees yes but Jesus would say not just
the Pharisees but you too all people every word but it's not just that we're going to go back through our lifetimes and recall each word and each conversation but that this uh he's telling us that this uh somehow stored and reviewed data is going to be presented at trial as evidence that will either justify me or condemn me me isn't that exactly what he's teaching here you feel the weight of that now as you process it it is really important to understand that Jesus is using this word justify in a different way than Paul uses
it usually when we think about justification we think of Paul we think of like Romans when Paul says that Christians are Justified he emphasizes the sense of being declared righteous by God through faith on the basis of Jesus's shed blood as payment for our sins as by Jesus's atoning sacrifice so we are declared not guilty we are Justified the verdict has already been rendered but Jesus here in our text seems instead to emphasize that our words don't so much justify us as if they earn something but they show that we have been Justified that we
are shown to be righteous by the words that we use so our words don't earn any Merit this is not now being made acceptable to God by the words that we have spoken instead of by the blood of Jesus but that our what our words do is they reveal what is in our hearts whether or not we have been given a new heart that's what our words reveal they open up the treasure chest and they examine the evidence to see if the treasure is good or evil and the words that we have used throughout our
lifetime will provide sufficient evidence to render a verdict another RC Sproul story illustrates this he said when I was teaching at College the college level I had this brilliant student who went on to graduate school at Harvard and he was studying the physiology of the brain which seems to be the Last Frontier of scientific inquiry and I saw him on one occasion while he was still in graduate school and he said to me RC I think I know how the last judgment's going to work and when I asked him to explain he said the brain
is an amazing thing it's a gigantic computer that records every thought and every impression and every incident of your life awake or asleep it's all there indelibly etched on your brain and then I read in Scripture that at the last judgment every tongue is going to be silenced and there will be no protests as the whole world is brought before God and shown to be guilty and I think that God is just going to take each person's brain and push play on the controls so that the brain will pour out all of its memories and
then we will just stand there listening to ourselves condemn ourselves RC's conclusion well that's an interesting idea I don't think God needs needs to tap our memories to know what we've done or said or thought in our lifetimes however I do think that my friend was close to the truth in saying that our words will condemn us on the other hand if the words that came out of The Treasure of our hearts reveal our affection for Christ and our love for the things of God then God is going to bless us on that day none
of us is perfect we all stand guilty and condemned before God the question will be do the words of my mouth when I look back at them show that I have trusted and treasured Christ that's the I found myself getting a bit disturbed uh when I first read this illustration it reminded me of how Isaiah fell apart in Isaiah 6 when he was given a vision of the Lord Seated on the throne high and lifted up as the holy holy holy Lord of hosts and remember Isaiah's response when he had that Vision remember how he
responded his response focused on his mouth and the way he talked and the words that he used and here he sees the Lord of hosts on his throne and his response is woe is me I have unclean lips and it's worse than that I live among a people who all have unclean lips what should we do if we feel the conviction of Isaiah we should recall that Isaiah his confession was met with the cleansing forgiveness of a burning coal from the alar of God and we should remember that those of us who are trusting Christ
are not hopeless because we too have a way to be forgiven and cleansed Jesus Christ is our substitute sin Bearer and he is even now our Advocate before for the father we confess our sins to him and trust him for our forgiveness and if the Holy Spirit brings to mind anyone we have personally sinned against by the words that we have used then we confess it to them to and ask for their forgiveness why not because this will make us uh uh more lovable before God but because now hearing the teaching of Jesus we understand
a new just how serious a thing it is to speak words that are intended to tear someone down or mislead people or hurt another person and we tremble at that and we take responsibility for it in 1980 Lee Atwater some of you will remember that name a political campaign manager inflicted terrible pain with his words his staff learned that an opposing Congressional candidate from South Carolina had once experienced severe depression and had undergone electric shock therapy and when Atwater heard it he released the information to the press and it absolutely humiliated the candidate and cast
doubt on his ability in anguish the man questioned atwater's campaign ethics and Atwater responded by saying that he had no intention of ever responding to a man hooked up to a jumper cable 10 years later Atwater was afflicted with an incurable brain tumor and he was confined to bed and he was attached to machines and tubes and wires every everywhere and before he died he wrote that candidate a letter and asked him to forgive him his eyes had been opened to how cruel and heartless his words had been and as Believers in Christ we have
an obligation before God to assess to evaluate the impact of of our words idle angry hateful words can inflict Untold harm for which make no mistake we will be held accountable but we can learn from Isaiah and from Lee Atwater we can learn that as long as we have breath it is is not too late to be made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ nor is it too late to be made right with a brother or sister for the harm that your words have caused them and so there's our training as detectives right
there knowing what to look for in Those whom we would follow and those who would influence us and especially that training gives us insight into our own hearts and the things that we treasure there our careless even casual speech reveals deep realities within us it's a detail that we far too often excuse in ourselves as insignificant we say oh I didn't really mean that when I said it but actually it is the very overflow of our being it is the primary indicator of who we really are Jesus taught it long before Sigman Freud with his
legendary Freudian slip when our words inadvertently expose what we may have been trying to hide James was right James 3:8 no one can tame the tongue it is restless and evil full of deadly poison this is the biblical view of the tone we cannot save ourselves God must be the one to change us and he will and he does and if you ever find yourself questioning God's desire to change your heart I want you to remember what is the essence of the promised New Covenant through the prophet Ezekiel six centuries before Jesus came then I
will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean and your filth will be washed away and you will no longer worship idols and I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you and I will take away that Stony stubborn heart of yours and I will give you a tender responsive heart and I will put my spirit in you so that you will be careful ful to follow my laws and do whatever I command that's the New Covenant promise and if that is what you desire then you
need to talk to Jesus about that today you need to ask him to give you a new heart not just forgive you for your sins but give you a new heart and change you from the inside out connection points to life number one tend your heart Jesus doesn't want just different words he wants good Hearts if your view of being a Christian doesn't major on the heart but if it focuses primarily on what you're doing on the outside then you need to become reacquainted with Biblical Christianity it's a matter of the heart not just Behavior
heart Proverbs 4:23 Above All Else guard your heart because from it flows everything else in your life so when you hear this teaching of Jesus don't just think to yourself yeah I got to work harder on the words that I use now I got to walk I got to be be a little more careful with my words that's not the you will miss the point ask God to change your heart and then guard that heart tend your heart number two don't be fooled by imitations genuine Christianity always manifests itself faith without works is dead trees
without fruit are cut down and thrown into the fire the person whose heart is connected to Jesus is like a branch connected to the vine New Life from God will produce change in you and that change will be evident to you and it will be evident especially to those who are closest to you because the life of God that flows through that vine enters that branch and it will bear fruit in your life number three the warning is real every word will be accounted for on the Judgment Day Christians need not fear condemnation but we
are included in the accountability for our words but don't just ask God to change your speech patterns ask him to change you on the inside and fourth imagine the possibilities I want you to leverage the imagery that Jesus uses here for blessing others because this potent life of God offered to us in the gospel that we experience giving us giving us a new heart New Life new fruit new desires changing us completely we're a new person now that shines most brightly against the backdrop of all of these threats and warnings but think of the imagery
now Proverbs 18:21 says that your tongue your tongue has the power of life in it and the power of death and those who love it will eat its fruit so if you're the kind one way or another the words that you speak will will bring death to people or they will bring life to people we destroy or we bring to others life with the way we talk to them and the way we talk about them and just imagine the blessing that you can be through Jesus with this new life new spirit and the power in
that tongue and as you speak those words we're not talking about naming and claiming things I mean speaking words to people that bring life and then as we look back on your life and analyze those words we say we recognize those words that comes from the spirit of Jesus this man this woman has been given a new heart they're one of ours enter the joy of your master the words don't they don't Merit anything but they reveal that new heart this is the word of the Lord to you can you imagine a church where we
where this is filled with people with new Hearts we speak life to each other rather than death death rather than gossip and backbiting and criticism and negativity all the time words that just take motivation away from people may the Lord make it so let's pray well Jesus once again you hold up an impossible standard for us and grant us Grace to hear the weight of this teaching but then as it drives us to our needs I pray that you will hear our pleas for those who right now are outside of you that they would cry
out to you for a new heart and those of us who have that new heart but may have neglected it and not tended it and not guarded it and calluses may have built up on that heart I pray that this teaching would be used to rip off those calluses and restore a sensitivity to your spirit and to begin to see the possibilities of speaking life into each other Jesus you are the master teacher you tell us just what we need and it lasts it's it's enduring truth thank you for your word let it now produce
in us that of which you are worthy in your name we ask it amen
