Sermon On The Mount: The Heart
Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.
Proverbs 4:23 (NKJV)
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9 (NKJV)
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.
Ezekiel 36:25-27 (NKJV)
If 'The Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and Spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart' (Hebrews 4:12), Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is such a Sword.*
It cuts our selfish soul from God's Spirit, so we’re clean and ready to walk with God.
It’s been labeled, 'The Great Manifesto,' 'The Gospel in 3 Chapters,' and 'Our Medicine.' The Sermon on the Mount is heart-breaking, mind-bending, and difficult to stomach.
After reading Chapter 5, we're sweating the impossibility of these Words. In this light, look at His closing sentence:
'Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in Heaven is perfect' (Matthew 5:48).
How can sinful little us be perfect? (Note: ‘Shall be’ refers to a future action. We ‘shall be’ perfect… eventually.)
'Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith, Who for the joy set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the Right Hand of the throne of God' (Hebrews 12:2).
How can Christians today look at Jesus? Isn't He presently invisible?
No! He’s visible. Open the Book and see 'The Word of God' (Revelation 19:13)… Including His great Sermon on the Mount.
'I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount' (President Harry S. Truman).
'When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries, but those of the whole world' (Gandhi to Lord Irwin, former British Viceroy to India).
The Sermon on the Mount starts in the heart. We must CHOOSE to believe or deny It.
But the moment we step up and say YES, Its rational impossibility becomes Its doubtless actuality! A tiny Seed takes root within our hearts and begins to grow.
Sermon On The Mount: Our Hearts (Part 2)
* Overview of the Sermon on the Mount: http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/sermon-on-the-mount.html?p=2
NOTE: This is a 2023 update of a 2013 Carey Lewis Devotion. You may see notes to 'Actors, Models & Talent for Christ.' If you think you're not in show business, think again. Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a stage and all its men and women merely players. Mostly true. But you're not merely players. You are messengers and ambassadors for the King of kings.