Thanks for joining us as we continue in our study of the gospel of Mark. So we've been in this now, this is our 33rd lesson, and we are in chapter seven, so if you wanna open your Bible with me, chapter seven, and we're gonna be starting in verse number 14. Mark 7, 14 is where we'll start, and we'll go down through the end of that particular passage. And our theme this morning, is the true source of our sin. The true source of our sin. And so it's been a couple weeks since we're in here, so we'll review a little bit and then jump into the immediate context where we find ourselves. So as we think about these things, what is the source of sin? That's the question before us. Jesus had just refuted the Pharisees. If you remember, they complained to Jesus because his disciples did not follow the ceremonial hand washing before they ate. Now that ceremonial hand washing, remember, was that part of the law or part of the tradition? Tradition, correct. So it wasn't written in God's law. God never intended that to be followed in a way that the Pharisees were following it. So remember, the 613 laws that God had given Israel had been greatly added to by the Pharisees, and that happened over the period, the intertestamental period, and that, when the Pharisees' sect rose to power, if you will, and they began adding these laws and these traditions. And the elders, of course, are those original Pharisees, if you will, that they were so zealous to not disobey the law. Remember, they had been in captivity and brought back into the land. And you read those minor prophets there, the post-exilic prophets, like Malachi and different ones, they're telling Israel, you're gonna get exiled again. God's gonna bring judgment. So I believe in an effort to not do that, the pendulum swung so far away. from the word of God, and they added all these traditions in. And they began to become self-righteous. And they believed that their self-righteousness and their piousness and their position as Pharisees, that's what God wanted to see. And anything less than that would be defilement. So they've already rebuked Jesus' disciples by talking to him about this. And of course, in the last passage, starting Mark 7, starting around, let's see, verse six or so, the Pharisees are like, why don't your disciples walk according to tradition? In verse six, he answers them and he quotes Isaiah and he rebukes them. And he basically says, look, you're making the traditions equal to the commandments and it's not supposed to be that way. And he reminds them of a tradition they have of allowing an adult child with an elderly parent take the money that should be used to care for the elderly parent and put it in the temple treasury. Say, well, it's for God and it can't be taken out. So it takes away the responsibility of honor your father and your mother. And so they were disobeying the law of God in order to keep these man-made traditions. And we talked about legalism and the dangers of it. So now Jesus is gonna switch, he's gonna pivot from talking to the Pharisees, and he's gonna begin to call the crowds, he's gonna begin to do this teaching. Of course, he's gonna show that the source, the true source of our sin is our own hearts. He's gonna make that evident, and then we're gonna walk from there. So Jesus, first of all, teaches the crowd in verses 14 to 16, then we're gonna see that he goes into the house and the disciples come in, and he then, reveals more truth to them as they were asking for it. And then we're gonna go back into the Old Testament, we're gonna look at King David. And we're gonna look at him and his life and how his choices, we're gonna focus on two choices that David made that illustrate what Jesus is teaching here in Mark. Before we go any further, let's ask the Lord to bless this time. Father, thank you for the opportunity to once again open your word together as a church family. And I pray, Lord, that as we do that, as we search the scriptures, Give us the Berean mindset, Lord, to search out and see if these things are true. Help us, Lord, to hold ourselves accountable to the word of God, Lord. It is our source. And so we thank you for giving it to us. Help us now as we continue to learn and help us to really apply these truths about our hearts to ourselves, Lord, in our lives and the way that you see fit and the way that you work in each one of us. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So Jesus, first of all, taught the crowd. So let's jump into the text. If you've got your Bible, Mark 7, we're going to start in verse 14. It says, when he had called all the multitude to himself, he said to them, hear me, everyone, and understand. So Jesus makes this proclamation. And of course, the context, he's been rebuking the Pharisees. And now he turns and he calls the crowd to himself. What is he setting himself up as when he does that? A teacher who has what? Somebody said authority, that's what I was looking for. A teacher with authority. He's calling them to himself. Who is he calling them away from? The Pharisees, right? He's making this distinction. Remember he said, I did not come to bring peace but a sword, a division. You're gonna choose, you're gonna follow me, you're gonna follow them. And so he's already rebuked them and now he's calling them to himself. Now remember, the Pharisees' complaint about the hand washing had some legitimacy to what they were hoping for, even though their view was skewed. I'll explain this. They were talking about defilement. Defilement, which is another way of saying unclean. It's dealing with sin. And we have to remember that sin is a true thing. And so we don't wanna just say, well, everything the Pharisees said, they said defile, so we can't be defiled. Well, the truth is that we can be. And I'm gonna show you the verses, the text bears that out. Jesus gives these commands. First of all, he says, hear, hear me everyone. So to hear, this word in the original means to believe something and to respond to it on the basis of having heard it. So it's not just hear, like hear a voice and then walk away. It's hear and respond. Apply the truth, in other words. That's what he's calling them to do. To believe it, believe what I'm telling you, he's saying, and I want you to make changes in your life as appropriate according to what I'm telling you. So the two commands here is the first one. Second command, hear me everyone and understand. This word in the original meaning is to employ one's capacity for understanding and thus arrive at an insight. He's saying here, engage your mind with me. Engage mentally. Engage spiritually, listen and apply and focus your attention, focus your thoughts and your mind on what I'm about to tell you. Hear me and understand. He wants them to understand what he's saying and to apply it, to arrive at insight. And so he uses these commands. He's actually expecting the crowds to listen. Just like God actually expects us to pick this thing up and read it and understand it and apply it to our lives. So it's great practical teaching here as we can make applications for ourselves. And Jesus is making this important distinction. I just rebuked the Pharisees over the ceremonial hand washing, that they're concerned about defilement causing or helping with, I guess. But we're not gonna throw out the teaching about defilement. I'm just gonna correct you now on how we are defiled. The Pharisees think, man, you do the ceremony of hand washing, it's all good. But Jesus is gonna drive deeper, he's gonna dig deeper into the heart and reveal the true source. Because God still, in the New Testament era, does he take sin seriously? Yes, you better believe it. While we're under grace and all this. True, God is love, true. The church that God's love is building has been kind of our theme. but that doesn't mean he doesn't take sin seriously. And I know I think more than I think all would hopefully agree with this, but we need to be reminded of it. God still takes sin seriously. He took it seriously enough to send his son to be murdered on a tree and shed his blood in the most brutal fashion, to be buried. as a commoner, to be treated, to be mistreated and lied about his whole life, to live in obscurity and poverty. He did that for us. That's how serious he takes our sin. And so even as believers living in New Testament age under grace, does God still take our sin seriously? Oh yes. Now positionally, we're under the blood, but we have a condition. We are commanded to be sanctified, to live holy. And so God takes Sin seriously however in the first the Pharisees idea of this ceremonial hand-washing to take care of it Jesus saying no Defilement or sin doesn't get to get washed away by physical water doesn't work that way guys. That's what he's saying The word defile itself let's do one more quick word study It means to make common and in the New Testament. That's the literal like dictionary kind of word-for-word But in the New Testament, the idea is often to profane, to desecrate, to render ceremonially unclean, to defile, to pollute. So we have to understand Jesus is not throwing away defilement along with the ceremonial hand washing. He's helping his audience, who were mostly Jews at this time, but also, as we read this, as Gentiles, I think most, if not all of us, understand that we need to be warned about this as well. Now, let's look in an Old Testament. This is kind of where the Pharisees were coming from, and this is what they had added to. This is in the law, this is in Leviticus 17.15. And every person who eats what died naturally or what was torn by bees, whether he's a native of your own country or a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening, then he shall be clean. This is part of the Mosaic law. Jesus fulfilled this. We no longer follow this ceremonial law. And we're not called to and God doesn't expect it. And there's so many more examples. This is just one verse. This is one example. There's many more. in the Torah. But this is what the Pharisees were concerned about, this washing. They had added this ceremonial hand washing and many, many, many other laws added to what God originally wrote. To be defiled was to be ritually unclean. And so, man, we're not Jews, we're not living under the law, we're not living according to this ceremonial law any longer. So what can we glean from this? And this is where Jesus' teaching helps us understand that these laws were symbols. They were foreshadows of the truth that would come later. And Jesus being the ultimate fulfillment of the tabernacle and the sacrifices and the temple and all of that. But these laws help us, they were pictures, they were symbols that the people were commanded to live by. while they waited for the Messiah to come, the one that was promised back in Genesis 3.15, that would come and not just cover sin, but take it away, but remove it by his shed blood. So let's go back into Mark, let's look at Jesus' teachings. So go back with me to Mark 7, and we're gonna be in verse 15. And this is what Jesus said. After he calls the crowd and he says, here, engage your mind with me, understand, be ready to apply this to your life. There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him. But the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. Notice the definitive language. There is what? Nothing. It's not like, well, there's a few things. Or there's this one thing. It's nothing. Nothing is in this category. There's nothing from the outside that can defile someone by eating with ceremonially unclean hands, not going through this traditional hand washing. There's nothing that can defile him. Notice he doesn't say that people can no longer be defiled. And we have to keep it in context, it's pre-cross, they're still under the law here. But yet Jesus is correcting the Pharisee's wrong teaching. He's still looking at the theme of those laws was to show here's us living in sin, here's a holy God, there's a gap. There's a separation, that's the defilement. There's nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him. It's the things which come out of him. So God is not looking at what's coming in, he's measuring what comes out. And that's how he classifies if a person is, quote, defiled or not. Jesus is reversing the flow. The Pharisees, it was all the outside in. Jesus, remember back at the beginning of chapter seven, what were the disciples doing with unwashed hands? They were eating, right? Outside in. Jesus is flipping the script. He's reversing the flow. It's from the inside out. So back in Leviticus verses that we looked at, it's talking about unclean food that went in and defiled, ceremonial washing that cleansed them, it was symbolic. And these men had taken those laws and magnified them well past what God intended. But Jesus is saying it's about the heart. It's the things that come out of a person that God is measuring. So what's he saying here? He's saying that our words and our actions and our thoughts are a direct reflection of the heart. And we did a little mini series in this study on Mark a couple of months ago or so where we paused going through verse by verse and we looked at the heart. And so if you missed it or you wanna go back and catch that teaching, I would encourage you to do that and we're gonna touch on it again here. So what we think, what we speak, that's what God is looking at. We looked at this verse this morning. when the Lord rejected, and I think I mentioned, I thought this was David for some reason, but it's not. It's actually one of David's brothers that Samuel thought, oh, this is the guy, he's looking really good, right? But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance, do not look at the outside, or at his physical stature, I have refused him, for the Lord does not see as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. God is a heart inspector. And that's what he does with us, he inspects our heart. So our sanctification, our holiness, our obedience, has to begin in the heart. It has to begin inside. If you've got an apple tree in your yard, and you don't want any apples, so you pluck all the apples off, but you don't plant a different tree, what are you gonna get next season when the tree buds again? Apples, right? You're gonna get apples again, why? Because it's an apple tree. Out of an apple tree come apples. If you want peaches, you've gotta plant a peach tree. Silly illustration, but hopefully it helps us understand. If we want different fruit, we must have a different root. That's the teaching. And that's the work of God. God is the agent of heart change, not us. We can't change our own hearts and we can't change the hearts of the people around us as much as we sometimes want to. God is the agent of heart change. As we surrender to him, he is the agent of heart change and he changes our hearts. That's his role in our lives. That's the Holy Spirit's role. We'll look at some more about that in a few minutes. And then he concludes with this statement, to the crowds now. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear, Mark 7, 16. So he ends the same way he began. Remember what he said at the beginning when he called the crowds? Hear and understand. And now there's like a book-ended teaching. If you have ears to hear, let him hear. And this statement is meant to provoke the listener to be thinking. And what question are they supposed to ask themselves? He that has ears to hear, let him hear. They're supposed to be asking themselves what? Oh, do I have ears to hear? How do I get ears to hear? It's supposed to invoke thinking. It's supposed to invoke their mind to consider themselves and their own ears and their own hearts. Oh, do I have ears to hear? Am I really listening to this? This clarion call that Jesus calls out, he repeats this several times in his teaching. teaching the crowds. Now he's going to pivot away from the crowds and he's going to teach his disciples. So look with me at Mark 7, verse 17. Mark 7, 17. When he had entered a house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. So, The disciples asked him about it. What did he just commanded everybody that heard, including the disciples? He that has ears to hear, let him. Okay, so we've gotta give some credit to these guys. They come and ask him, did the disciples have ears to hear? Yes. They're coming to Jesus and asking, help us understand this parable you just taught. What is this about the things coming out of us? We've sat through synagogue, school, and we've been taught by the things that come in to file, but you're saying you reversed it, Jesus. What is it that you're talking about? And this is a little bit of an aside, but it's an application. This is the mark of a true student of the Bible. Because as we read through scripture, we're gonna have the same things come up as we read along. Some parts are kinda, okay, that's clear. Then we're gonna come to a passage like, what is this even saying? And so we're gonna need to go to God just like the disciples and say, Lord, I just don't get it. Help me understand your word. God loves to answer that prayer. That's maybe one of, I don't know if he has favorite prayers or not, but that's gotta be up there on the list for his child to come to him at the heart of faith and open hands and open heart and open mind and say, I've got ears to hear, Lord, fill me up. I'm reading your word and I'm not getting it. Help me understand the parable. Help me understand this proverb. Help me understand this narrative. Help me understand this epistle or this apocalyptic writing. Lord, I don't get it. Show to me. That should be our hearts as we read God's word. So a little bit of application as we go along here. So someone that hears the truth reads the truth in their Bible, they wanna know more. That's a true student of scripture. That's what God calls us all to be. So they enter the house, the disciples, with ears to hear, ask him concerning the parable. Let's go to verse 18. So he said to them, are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him? Because it does not enter his heart, but his stomach. and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods. So remember, think back, where did this all begin? The disciples were eating with unwashed hands, ceremonially. Now that doesn't mean their hands were dirty, remember. If you missed that, we talked about this. It's not that they were eating with dirty hands like when your kids come to the table after playing outside all day and their hands, it's not like that. There was no indication that they were physically, it was that they hadn't done this ceremonial, this ceremony of hand washing. And they were eating when they did that. So now these are the same disciples. They were eating with those unwashed hands when the Pharisees rebuked it. Notice it was the Pharisees rebuking them, not Jesus. Jesus never rebuked them for that because he wasn't forcing them, constraining them to follow man's traditions. When he says this, I don't think it's as much a rebuke, he's just, he's stimulating their minds even more. It's kind of a continuation of he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Are you thus without understanding? Open your mind to this, let me give you more truth. If you would have been defiled before, I as your rabbi would have told you this. I would have told you, I would have explained it. I don't know that he's rebuking them. He's encouraging them to listen more. Notice how he separates, as he explains it, the physical from the spiritual. So when we eat a meal, or you guys just maybe had a snack at the fellowship time, it goes into our stomach. It doesn't go into our spirit or soul. And I don't think that's any big revelation to anyone in here, but it's what Jesus is saying. It goes into our physical bodies, not our spiritual cells. So defilement, sin happens at the spiritual level. Physical food cannot affect the spiritual being. That's his point. Mike. About repentance? Possibly. Possibly, possibly, yeah. Yeah, and I'm gonna hopefully develop it a little bit more as we go along. I hadn't thought of it in those terms specifically, but I don't have a problem with teaching repentance out of this, especially as we apply it to ourselves as believers, right? So his point here is defilement happens at the spiritual level. Physical food doesn't affect our spiritual being. Notice that last phrase, thus purifying all foods. Now, there's a little disagreement in the manuscripts. Some believe that it's just like what we see here, Jesus said that, like that was part of his statement. Others believe that Jesus stopped talking at eliminated, and Mark, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, okay, it's still God's word, added that last, thus purifying all foods as a commentary. Remember, Mark is writing to mostly Gentiles, specifically Roman Gentiles, And do you remember who Mark's kind of teacher, rabbi was? Who was? Peter, right. So many believe as Mark is writing this, he's writing a lot of this as Peter is giving him the information. Now the Holy Spirit is inspiring that, of course. It's not just one guy telling another guy what happened. It's the inspired word of God. But God could use the record, the eyewitness account of Peter to help Mark be able to write this, and there's nothing unbiblical about that. And it kind of fits in with this idea of purifying all food. So Mark, being a student of the apostle Peter, perhaps had heard from Peter. Do you remember Peter and having a vision about pure and unpure and clean and unclean? So in Acts 10, Peter's on the rooftop and he's hungry, but he falls into this trance, and he has this dream of these animals being brought down in front of him, and Jesus says to him, Peter, rise and eat. Well, they weren't all kosher animals, they weren't all clean animals according to the Mosaic law. So, Peter's response, and I got the verse up here, Acts 10, starting at verse 14, but Peter said, not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And a voice spoke to him again the second time, what God has cleansed you must not call common. This was done three times, and the object was taken up into heaven. So why are we bringing this up? Well, it's kind of a parallel thought here, that as Jesus began teaching his disciples What was he preparing them to do? He's preparing them for the church age. He's preparing them to be leaders after he was gone. That's what the whole three years was about. He was bringing up disciples so that they could teach others. Who would teach others? As Paul tells Timothy at one point, it's that same pattern of discipleship that we want to emulate even in our own churches. So whether Jesus stated it or not back in verse 19 there, it really doesn't affect the meaning. It was God's meaning, God's intended meaning. We're gonna move away from the clean and unclean categories of food, and we're gonna start focusing on the inward heart. We're gonna focus on the things that those were just symbolic of, those were representations of. Now we're gonna look at the heart, and we're gonna see what God is really getting at. Because hasn't God always been a God that focuses on the heart? He used the laws he gave Moses as symbols to help them understand. And of course, some of those were literally for hygienic purposes. They didn't have antibacterial soap. So there was a lot of those laws you read through. It was to keep the people safe. It was to keep them healthy. But there was also symbolic nature, symbolic truth there. So people are not made spiritually unclean by the physical foods they eat. Let's go back to our passage. Mark 7, look with me at verse 20. And he, Jesus said, what comes out of a man, that defiles a man. What comes out of a man? So he's talking about what there? Our words, our actions, our motives, our thoughts. That's what God is measuring. That's what causes us to be in a sinful state. and because those words and actions directly reflect the heart. So then Jesus goes on in the passage to list the things that God hates. So he says in verse 21, for from within, out of the heart of men. Notice again, the heart is the source, not something on the outside. So as we start to now bring it back to ourselves, and apply it to ourselves, and we sometimes ask ourselves, why do I do the things I do? Why did I blow up and lose my temper? Why did I respond in sin when someone said that to me? Why was I so selfish about that? Well, it was just your heart doing its thing, and it was producing out of you those words and actions that are sinful, that are defiled before God. So that the heart are the source for our sin, We're gonna get to Jesus' list in a moment, but I wanna take you through some verses, and some of these we covered when we talked about the heart, and it's worth revisiting. How does God see the heart? Now, just to be clear, we're not talking about that muscle that's pumping your blood, of course. We're talking about our inner person, the spirit soul, sometimes heart and mind are synonymous in scripture, sometimes They seem to be different. So there's a bit of mystery in terms of our spiritual cells. Some people believe that the tripartite view, which is we're body, soul, and spirit. Some people think soul and spirit are one thing. And so we've got bipartite body and soul spirit. But however you wanna look at it, however you wanna divide yourself up, we all have this inner person This heart, it is the core of who we really are inside. It is our spiritual self. It is out of that that all of our actions and all of our words emanate from. In Jeremiah 17, nine, it says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? So this heart of ours has a tendency to be deceitful with us. So it can trick us, it can tell us, and of course, we have what's called our sin nature, our flesh is still part of us. Until we get to glory, it's still gonna be that battle. Romans 7, Paul describes it vividly. The things I wanna do, I don't do. The things I don't wanna do, I find myself doing. So I find this law that there's this war, this battle constantly within me, inside of me, the flesh and the spirit. And they're fighting each other. So we have this deceitful heart. James 4 verse 1 talks about the source again. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members or in your heart? So why is there conflict in relationships? It's because either one or both people in the relationship have taken a problem and made it a conflict. It's not every problem has to be a conflict. But every conflict starts with a problem of some kind and they've made that problem a conflict. And one or both of them is demanding their pleasure. I want my pleasures met in this relationship. And so there's conflict. And where does that happen? It happens at the heart level. Jesus spoke about the heart in Matthew 5, 28. But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his, what? Heart. So these hearts of ours are prone to this. And so that's why we're told to guard the heart. And I didn't put those verses up, but to guard our heart. Out of it flow the issues of life. Out of it spring everything that we do. So we have to guard it and be careful of it. Because we can, well I didn't commit, and the Pharisees could have said, Well, I didn't commit physical adultery. Well, but what about your thought life? Pastor Rich just preached a great message on thought life recently. If you missed it, go back and listen to it. It's excellent. I believe it was last week, because I wasn't here. I listened to it online. But our thoughts, it's so in tune with our hearts. Let's look at a couple more passages. Ezekiel 14.3, Son of Man. These men, speaking of Israel, have set up their idols in their hearts and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity. Notice the source is the heart, the end result is iniquity. Should I let myself be inquired of? at all by them. So we tend to do this as well, don't we? We set up these idols in our hearts. We've got to move along here. Isaiah 29, 13, Jesus again rebuking Israel, they honor me with their lips, but they've removed their hearts far from me. Well, Jesus goes into, in verse 21, he gives this list. of sins, and I'm just gonna quickly go through this. From within, out of the heart of men, what comes out of our hearts? Notice, it's not from the outside in, it's from the inside out. Evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, and evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. So he gives this list. These are the things that come out of our hearts, and I have definitions for all these. I'm gonna skip that, because I wanna get to this illustration. Does anybody have a water bottle with them? Can you hold it up? Okay, Carl's got one. I mean a disposable one. You got that one, Carl? Okay. If you were to take the lid off that, Carl, and anybody can answer, and he was to squeeze that water bottle, what would come out of there? Why do you say water? Because that's what's in it. And it would be the same if he had Kool-Aid in there, or iced coffee, or tea, or anything else, right? Whatever's inside is what comes out. Life has a way of squeezing us, doesn't it? The pressures of life have a way of constricting and crushing in on us, and it tries to squeeze out, and it will squeeze out, whatever's inside. So when we go through pressure-filled situations, we go through the trials of life, they crush around and they squeeze us. What's gonna come out of us? Well, whatever's inside. And so, as we think about that, I wanna quickly look at the life of David to show you this. So first of all, I want you to see how David revealed his heart. He's in a cave. He's on the run from Saul. He's already been crowned, or anointed king. He hasn't been crowned yet, he's been anointed king. But now he's running from his life, from a madman named King Saul. And he's hiding, David is hiding in this cave with his men. Saul happens to come into that cave. His guys are like, David, this is the day of which the Lord said to you, behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand. They're using God's word and kind of twisting it. That you may do to him as it seems good to you. And David arose and secretly cut off a corner of Saul's robe. Now what happened afterward, notice David's heart here. It says it right in the text. Now what happened afterward that David's heart troubled him because he had cut Saul's robe. And he said to his men, the Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is anointed of the Lord. David was in a situation of life that was crushing him. He was running from his life, from a man that hated him, even though David had done no wrong to him. Saul was filled with jealous rage and contempt for David and wanted to kill him for no reason. You ever have anybody not like you for no reason? Except for John, John's the only one. But seriously, we have that, don't we? We have people treat us wrongly. We have people treat us unfairly, unjustly. And that pressure crushes in. What comes out when that happens to you? Let's see what came out of David when he was pressured. He revealed what was in his heart in this moment. He revealed that he had a heart that we see here out of Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Which ones of these came out of David's heart in that cave? Just say them, what do you see? I saw long-suffering. Anything else? What? Self-control. Big time. Peace. Love. Reverence for God. Joy even, potentially. That kind of inner joy. David got squeezed. What came out? the fruit of the spirit. Now David, the spirit wasn't indwelling like he is now, but God never changes. These things are what we see come out of David in that time. Now David, as we close here, there was another time where something else squeezed David, something else pressured him, and that was not a trial, but it was actually success. You know, success will squeeze you as well. It will test you to see what's really in your heart. happened in the spring of the year at the time when the kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel, and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah, but David remained at Jerusalem. And if you know the rest of the story, the rest of the account, David, of course, had experienced great success. Now he was king. Saul was dead. David was king. He had, He was a long way from those shepherd's fields in Bethlehem. He was a long way from that cave where he cut the corner off Saul's robe. He was finally king. He had multiple wives. He had riches. He had a throne and a crown and unprecedented power. Great military success at this time. And all of that began to squeeze David's heart. And what came out? What did success squeeze out of David? Well, then David sent messengers and took her, Bathsheba, and she came to him and he lay with her. For she was cleansed from her impurity and she returned to her house. And he wrote in a letter, I'm fast forwarding, jumping, set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and retreat from him that he may be struck down and die. Let's go back to Jesus' list. Which ones do you see here that got squeezed out of David because of his success? I see adultery, covetousness. How about murders? Several, right? You say, how could David do that? How could he? Man, God gave him everything he wanted. He was at the pinnacle of his power, his career, and he had all these blessings from God. How could he do that? Well, it's just that's what was in his heart. Over time, as success pressured him, he began to lose his love for the Lord. And he began to allow these things that Jesus lists in Mark 7, 21 and 22 into his heart. And as success squeezed him, that's what came out. So it answers the question, why do we do the things we do? As we conclude this morning, verse 23, all these evil things come from within and defile a man, defile a person. We need to take this warning seriously. God takes sin seriously. Yes, it's under the blood. Positionally, we are in the heavenly, seated with Christ, but conditionally, in this moment of time, we have to take sin seriously. Let's not be like the man in James 1 who was a hearer of the word but not a doer, he observed, observing his natural face in a mirror, which is the word of God, he observes himself and goes away and immediately forgets what kind of a man he was. If David would have only looked into the law of the Lord, like he wrote about in so many Psalms, and been reminded of the dangers of that kind of sin and that kind of position, perhaps he would not have made those choices. Let's pray as we close. Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you that it does act as a mirror. It does act as a two-edged sword like a surgeon's scalpel that has precisely cuts us open and shows us who we really are inside. Father, I pray that you'd help us with our hearts. Help us to be dedicated to you with our lives. Help us to be walking with you. Help us to be continually under the authority of your word so that we might have a a spiritual heart checkup every single day and that we might continue to walk with you, Lord. So let the pressures of life come. Let the things come around us as they squeeze us. May your fruit be what comes out that we can experience it and the people around us even can experience that. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you so much for being here, guys. Have a great day.