The Unfortunate Truth

“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are [the things] which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” (Mt 15:19-20 AV)

We don’t like to think of ourselves this way, but that is what we are.  We are losing our sense of how evil sin is.  For the last few decades, we have focused on the emotional needs of the saints.  What we have failed to do is to keep the LORD and His righteousness front and center.  Almost all of our trouble can be traced back to sin.  Some of it, perhaps not.  Sin is not always the cause for unfortunate circumstances.  But it is the major factor.  We don’t like to think of ourselves as inherently wicked.  We want to be affirmed.  We want to be loved.  We want to be accepted just the way we are.  We don’t want to be told we are wrong, that we have done wrong, or that we deserve divine judgment.  But the ugly truth is stated above.

I know this example is probably going to stir a pot, but it is true nonetheless.  Many years ago, I had this fox hound that we tried to domesticate.  Fox hounds are hunting dogs.  That was what they were bred for.  We tried to raise him as a house dog.  This only frustrated our poor dog.  He would sit for endless hours staring out our back patio doors at the birds and squirrels at the bird feeder.  One particular time, we had a flock of guinea birds in the back part of our yard.  He was fascinated.  This dog was intense.  He was super focused.  We socialized him.  We got a second dog thinking the laid-back nature of our blue healer would tame this fox hound a bit.  Not so.  Our fox hound bit a couple of people who did not know how to approach dogs.  Breeds have characteristics.  Sometimes the owner is successful in training those instincts out of the dog.  But they still remain.  The Dog Whisperer is as successful as he is because he understands breed types.  He trains them to refocus their natural instincts in a constructive way.  But the characteristics of the breed still remain.

Mankind is not basically good.  We are basically evil.  The verse above is Jesus’ rebuke of those who think conforming to godliness on the outside makes one godly on the inside.  The reason this was so hard for the Pharisees to hear was that they considered themselves righteous people.  Not so.  There is none righteous, no not one.  We have all come short of the glory of God.  Our wickedness is by nature and by choice.  We are what we are because we choose to be.  The condition of our hearts is fallen and terribly wicked.  That is the cold, hard truth.  Only by the grace of God and the blood of Christ can that change.  And that is the good news.  We can be discouraged at the condition of our hearts.  But we are not without hope.  We have hope that we will not remain so.  There is change.  It starts at the moment we receive Christ.  It continues our entire lives and culminates in heaven.  Our wicked hearts will be no more.  Until then, avoiding what we are thinking we never have to deal with it is not wise.  That is what we are.  It is time to fall before the throne of God and seek His converting power.  Time to plead the blood of Christ as yield to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  It would be one thing to admit to our evil.  Quite another to ignore it.