Christ Reorients Our Heart

QUOTES FOR REFECTION

“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second…. Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.”

~Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

“What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.”

~John Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

~Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées

“Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system.”

~Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), Scottish minister, professor, and social reformer

“Here’s a thought for my revolutionary heart

Take a deeper look at history, it’s there to pick apart.

See the people at the top, they get to do just what they want,

‘Til after while the people at the bottom finally get smart.

Then they start to holla revolution, tired of living here, destitution…

See, if we destroy the system that means we’ll have less of greed. But see, it’s not that simple.

I got to thinking ‘bout the history of human nature…

Look at the power, but you know what power does to man.

Corruption always leads us to the same…again.

So when you talk about revolution dawg, I hear just what you saying.

What good is taking over, when we know what you gon’ do?

The only real revolution happens right inside of you.”

~J. Cole, rapper and record producer in “High for Hours”

“The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their Life, their dwelling-place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. …In these things the redeemed have communion with God; that is, they partake with him and of him.”

~Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) in “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence”

SERMON PASSAGES

Proverbs 4

23 Keep your heart with all vigilance,

   for from it flow the springs of life.

Deuteronomy 10

12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Mark 7

6 And [Jesus] said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

 ‘This people honors me with their lips,

 but their heart is far from me;

7 in vain do they worship me,

 teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’…”

14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.… 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Matthew 22

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.”

Romans 1

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.