5-18-2014

Good Morning All,

         Matthew 15:19; “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”

       It is always fascinating to me when I listen to the parents of teenagers, especially young teenagers, like 13-16.  They will be relaying and bemoaning some of the latest things which their children did.  They will tell of the foolish, dangerous, ill-advised, poorly thought out, and downright stupid things their children did.  The parents are usually most upset because when they ask the child, “why did you do that?” The child will often answer, “I don’t know.”

    I will usually tell the parent, “that might actually be the very honest answer; he may not really know why he did it because he really didn’t think it all the way through.”  Teen-agers really have developed their critical thinking skills fully and sometimes that really matters.  I am not excusing actions but sometimes the answer, “I don’t know” is as accurate as it gets.

    We don’t often think about the root cause of our actions.  Too often our answers are either, “I don’t know” or “The devil made me do it.”  Yet in our verse, we see that sinful actions (actual sins) are born out of our heart; that is out of our sinful desires (original sin).  It is our sinful desires which cause us to sin.  When the devil tempted Adam and Eve and they fell into sin, they perfect “image of God” nature was destroyed.  So instead of their heart desiring to follow God’s perfect will; their heart’s desire was now curved inward so that they only wanted to satisfy their own selfish and self-centered passions.

   So in order to feed these desires, the actions (the sins) are committed to fulfill those desires.  We steal, lie, slander, etc. in order so that we can have what we want, regardless of who gets hurt along the way.  This sinful and selfish desire was so strong that we cannot shake it by our self.  We need God to fix it and he does.

    By the washing of Baptism, God washes away this sinful desire and instills in us faith which is the desire to trust in God’s promises.  So through Baptism the sinful desires are replaced by faith which desires to follow God’s will.  Now while we have faith, we still battle our old sinful nature which wants to lead us back into that destructive and selfish nature.  Therein lies the Christian battle; we often do battle daily as we fight against those sinful desires and strive to follow God’s will.  Sometimes we win but sometimes we lose.

    It is this battle that can cause us to feel guilt.  Our faith reminds us of God’s will and we are saddened when we fall short.  Yet God’s mercy is amazing and he continues to forgive us and he continues to renew in us our desire to follow his will and to trust in his promises.  We will battle but faith will help us to win most of the battles most of the time.  God’s grace is always present and always faithful.

Father, your tender mercies bring us new life.  Your tender mercies give us hope.  Help us to fight off the selfish desires which van often control our heart.  Strengthen us so that we can fight the devil.  Strengthen us so that we will live according to your loving will.  In the precious name of Jesus, our risen Savior, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret