Our Hearts Matter

Matthew 15 and 16

 

Looking at Matthew this morning, the theme that repeats over and over is that our hearts matter. The beliefs that we hold, the thoughts that motivate us to act (faith) and the relationship we foster with Jesus are what make up our “hearts”. Jesus addresses our hearts over and over again in these two chapters to help us understand that our actions aren’t as meaningful to Him as our motivation for choosing those actions is to Him. He cares about our hearts and why we chose to do what we do more than the face value of our actions.

 

Matthew 15: 8-9 tells us Jesus’ response to the Pharisees when they ask a question trying to lead Him into a verbal trap so they can appear smarter and more Godly than Jesus does. Jesus quotes Isaiah’s prophesy, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” Jesus’ point is so simple. The question doesn’t even matter to Jesus…it doesn’t deserve a response because the Pharisees hearts were so far off base. They were looking to elevate themselves over seeking Jesus. Jesus doesn’t want us to be smart rule followers, He wants us to love Him and seek Him. Next Jesus turns the Pharisees underminded question into a learning opportunity for the crowd around. He explains to the crowd that the state of their hearts is what gets them in trouble, not the breaking of the rules of the day. He says that the words we speak come from our hearts and that is what defiles us. “From the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander.” The ugly actions come after the decision to do wrong is decided in our hearts. It is easy to tell our selves that a poor choice or selfish action just “happened”. We often lie to ourselves in believing that we had no control over a choice. The situation was moving fast and we didn’t have time to think, we just responded. The truth is two fold in these cases. One, if we are seeking God on a daily basis, our hearts are more likely to react as His would in a given situation. Two, there is always a choice made.

 

So lets look at Jesus’ heart in the remainder of the chapters. Jesus knew the heart and faith of the woman coming to Him for healing in her daughter. He told her that her faith was great and granted her request. He saw the hunger needs of the crowd listening to Him speak for three days, and met their physical need of food to sustain them on their trip home. He called out the deceptive and accusing hearts of the Pharisees a second time and then used their selfish hearts as a real life lesson to His group of disciples. Jesus renamed Simon Peter the “rock” that He will build His church upon when Peter voices that Jesus is the Messiah, Son of the living God and two paragraphs later Jesus called Peter “Satan” for seeing the situation merely from a human point of view, not from God’s. It may appear that Jesus is contradictory or hard to figure out in chapter 16 if you only consider His words. His words are contradictory! For a person to go from a “rock” to “Satan” is a 180 degree turn. So we have to look at Peter’s heart, the motivation behind those contradictory words to see the explanation for the abrupt change in Jesus’ response. When Peter’s heart is understanding who God is and what He is capable of, Peter is very much aligned with God’s heart. When Peter is speaking against what Jesus said (with the best of intentions) and saying that circumstances will be different than what Jesus just told them, Peter’s heart is putting himself in authority over God, and Jesus calls it out.

 

Our hearts are what matter to God. What we believe, who we have faith in, the motives that lead us to act and the desire we have for relationship with God is what God is looking at in each of us. He wants us to be His. He wants our hearts to be aligned with His heart.