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For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. (Mat 15:19)

We need to keep laying a predicate, a foundation for our look into the heart of man and the heart of God. Fast forward a few thousand years, Jesus teaches the same thing that the Father first sounded the alarm about in Genesis. This heart can be the source of some bad stuff. The translation here is from the Greek word kardia, from which our modern terminology, cardiac is derive, for matters relating to the heart. Similar to the Old Testament word leb, kardia can refer to heart as the blood-pumping organ of the body but more often it communicates a much broader and deeper spiritual reality. We generally associate the brain, the central nervous system, as carrying on the function of thinking. However, the Bible attributes to the heart “thoughts, reasoning, understanding, will, judgment, designs, affections, love, hatred, fear, joy, sorrow and anger,” which medical science of today confirms affects man’s physical heart for bad or good, depending on the moral character of the attribute. According Thayer, the term embraces what is the center of all physical and spiritual life, “the vigor and sense of all physical life,” and “the center and seat of spiritual

life…” This includes “the soul or mind as it is the fountain seat of thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavors, understanding, faculty of intelligence, will and character.” The point is this. What the Bible says about heart and soul is big-time important. We just thought the physical heart was important to life. Think about what life really is and it sort of comes down to those attributes listed above, some good, some bad. Christ says that evil thoughts defile man. They make man unclean. It is not what we eat or drink. He says it is what we think and say that make us unclean, causing evil actions and that the source of the problem is the heart. (Mat 15:18,20) Well, we don’t run down to the pharmacy for liptor, crestor or any other heart medicine to address this condition. Grace, mercy and forgiveness do not come in the form of capsules and pills but they do enter the blood stream through faith to make us pure. Christ says this: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Mat 5:8) Umm….Pure Heart… “Christ in you the hope of glory.” In the 1930s, American historian, author and philosopher, Will Durant was approached by person who proclaimed that he would commit suicide if Mr. Durant could not give him some reasons

why life was worth living. This prompted Mr. Durant to seek the meaning of life from noted luminaries, leaders and philosophers of his day. Many would not respond. Many said they did not know. Others stated that if he found out to let them know. People still want to know. One person responding observed this: “Men kill one another at first with sticks and stones, then with arrows and lances, then with phalanxes and cohorts, then with cannon and musketry, then with dreadnoughts and submarines, then with tanks and planes; the scale and grandeur of construction and progress are equaled by the scale and terror of destruction and war. One by one the nations rear their heads in pride, and one by one war decapitates them.” Now to that list of man’s killing art, we can add nuclear warheads, terrorists strapped with suicide bombs, and the like. One could argue that the scale has been tilted toward destruction and war. What continues to defile man has not changed. It’s a heart problem. Christ came to make our hearts pure. He wants to bless us with seeing God. He is near, not far away. Let’s look to Him through our hearts and keep company with Him there. Have a blessed day, today and every day. Steve

Faith

Hope

Love

A DAY OF PROMISE

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