The Problems in Our Hearts

Well folks, let me invite you to grab a Bible and come with me to Genesis chapter 27, which

Genesis 27 · chapter mention

is where we're going to be this morning.

And the Lord has so much to teach us in this section.

Just a heads up, we're going to read it together in about 10 minutes time.

I just thought it'd be useful to get a bit of a run up to it so that we kind of know

what we're looking out for so that we can see the wood from the trees.

So, there were 3,326 of them when I counted them this week.

That is episodes of the Jeremy Kyle show, which aired on British telly between 2005 and 2019.

Now, Jeremy Kyle was a show, if you don't know, that basically got people on to explore, and

you could argue exploit, their mess.

Okay, strained relationships, dashed dreams, neighbourhood dramas, and it was watched at

its peak by an average of 1 million people, they estimated, in the UK on a daily basis.

Now, here's the thing about shows like that.

Meet Jesus in the Gospels, and he'll tell you why they will never be short of guests nor material.

And encounter him in the Gospels, and he'll tell you why, in all honesty, any of us could

be on a show like that, and they would have plenty to talk about.

And it's all because of where Jesus says the biggest problem facing human beings is.

And it's not primarily the stuff that goes on outside of us.

Meet Jesus, and he says that it's the stuff that goes on inside each of our hearts,

which runs counter-cultural, doesn't it, in terms of what we are told each day in our

world, that the answer is inside of us, and the problems are outside of us.

Jesus says, no, no, no, you've got it all wrong.

And one of Jesus' most piercing and his sobering of remarks is that it is out of the abundance

of the heart that the mouth speaks, and human beings think and act.

And that might come at you this morning as a revolutionary idea.

And I take it it should, in every single generation and every single culture, that Christ should

never fit comfortably into any culture if we've got them right.

I think, though, it is one, if we are honest with ourselves in one way or another, we all know

this is kind of true.

Do you know there's a French philosopher called Émile Calais, I think I've got that right,

who was born in 1894, right?

This guy grows up with zero interest in the Christian faith.

He grows up with absolutely no interest in the notion of God.

But it was after spending time sitting in the trenches during World War I, makes him stop

and ask some pretty big questions of his atheistic worldview.

And I guess that kind of is what happens when you must have seen bullet after bullet and

casualty after casualty and friend after friend die.

It all made him ask, why, right?

Why do human beings do these kind of things to each other?

And he gets back to France after the war is finished and he goes searching for answers

and he's reading book after book.

He's talking to person after person on a quest to find it.

And he's got nothing.

And then one day a friend hands him a Bible and he opens it and he begins to read it and

he says of it, he says, at last, this was a book that would understand me.

So what he says is he opens the Bible.

It's a book that understands me.

In other words, Calais founded the pages of the Bible, a book that explained him, explained the world.

I must say it was one of my, my testimony coming to the Christian faith, met Jesus, heard him speak,

never heard anything like this before.

But the map that he's putting out in front of me seems to be what I'm seeing around me and is definitely what I'm seeing inside of me.

Here's a book that explains us.

And logically, we'd expect nothing else from the word of our creator.

Who made us in his image.

Right.

We are like if you go to the Louvre, you pick up a copy of the Mona Lisa.

Right.

We're like walking little copies of the Mona Lisa that people are meant to look at and think, oh, that's great.

But I tell you what, it really wants me to get to know the original.

OK, that's what we're meant to do.

We're meant to image God's greatness to the world.

But the problem is by nature, by very nature, we've all turned away from our creators.

What sin is.

It's our rebellion against and our defiance of our maker and his ways.

And if that's what sin is, then what sin has does is it has curved us in on ourselves.

And so instead of being that image that glorifies God, what we are about is self-seeking.

So our loves are disordered.

Our desires are tainted.

Our wants are twisted.

And here's what I love about Jesus.

He doesn't just tell me about my heart problem.

Right.

We've all got those friends, haven't we, who love to say after the event, I told you that was going to happen.

But Jesus does way more than that.

He doesn't just tell me I've got a heart problem.

He's come to die for my heart problem.

And in by doing so, he's come to change and transform my heart and free me and free you from the things that naturally grip and have a stranglehold on our hearts.

But talking of heart problems, here's what we're going to read.

Come with me to Genesis 27.

We'll start at the end of 26 and we'll work all the way through to the beginning of chapter 28.

This is where we're going to be.

This is what we're going to see today.

You might remember a few weeks ago we said that Moses, as he writes this, doesn't want his generation of Israelites who are wandering in the desert, nor does he want any of the readers of this book in the years to come to watch this and look at this like a play or a movie.

Remember that?

But sitting back, popcorn out, laughing and cringing away, what can only be described as we read it in a minute is absolute car crash telly.

No, he wants us to look deep into this like we would a mirror.

And he wants us to ask, do you see your heart?

Do you see yourself?

And I think the big message of this is that the only hope for human beings is not that we'd get our act together and start playing happy families.

Because that's never going to happen.

No, Moses' point is our only hope is that this God would keep his promises.

And he would send the serpent crusher promised in Genesis 3 who would come and who would defeat the devil, who would defeat our sin and our darkness and would free us from these things.

That's our only hope, that God is true to his promises.

So here's what I want you to do as we read this together.

And Sarah and Olivia are going to come up.

You guys can come up just now.

And they're going to read us this for us in a moment in kind of two sections.

Here's what I want you to look for.

There's four characters in this section.

We've got Isaac.

We've got his wife, Rebecca.

And then we've got the two boys who are Esau and Jacob.

And all make, you've got that phrase in our culture, a pig's ear of things, okay?

They get it completely wrong.

Here's the challenge.

See if you can count and try and name the problems in the hearts that are arising as we read about these people here.

Okay, folks, I hope you got that.

Imagine this family on Jeremy Cowell.

Imagine the viewing figures for this episode.

Imagine these four on a psychologist's couch being told to,

how are you feeling?

What's going on?

You would be there for a long, long time.

The kind of passage I remember first reading this to myself as a new Christian and thinking,

are you seriously telling me that this is in the Bible?

And it's times at this that we're reminded that the Bible is not first and foremost a moral guide, right?

It's about what God has done to save people from the effects of their sin.

What are the problems?

Well, here's, let's rattle through them quickly.

Isaac.

Isaac is so stubborn that he won't obey, right?

Verse 1 of chapter 27.

Come with me.

Let's explore this guy a bit more.

Isaac's getting older.

And he knows that his days are few.

Now, remember that God had said to Rebecca in the context of this story,

back at verse 23 of chapter 25,

that these two boys in the womb,

the older shall serve the younger.

Remember that?

The blessing was to pass from the,

to the youngest son and through his line.

But Jacob,

verse 28 of chapter 5,

he loved Esau.

Do you remember that implication?

He loved him more than his other son, Jacob.

Now, why did he love him more?

Well, I think you can read between the lines

that Jacob's a hunter.

Jacob's got muscles.

Jacob's good at catching animals.

Jacob's good at cooking.

And Isaac loves to eat.

Yeah?

And that's why he wants one more taste of this stew.

And it's unsurprisingly then,

when it comes to officially passing the baton of blessing on,

that he is backing Esau.

He wants this line to continue through Esau.

Now, custom in this day was to gather the whole family together for the blessing.

And I guess that way you know where everyone stands.

Everybody's heard everything.

But do you notice in the text how Isaac's gone ahead

and he's arranged a private one-to-one?

Do you see that?

Because he's so determined that Esau's getting this blessing,

not Jacob.

Now, what's his heart problem?

He's just really stubborn.

I know what God has said,

but I'm going to go with my gut on this one.

Subtext, God,

I'm pretty sure that I'm smarter than you.

I've got to say as we read this,

it's a mirror.

Do we see that in our own hearts?

I know what you've said, Lord,

but I'm backing myself to make a good decision here.

As Isaac, what about Rebecca?

Rebecca is so bitter that she won't trust.

So verse five,

while this little one-to-one is going on,

Rebecca is eavesdropping at the door.

Right?

I always remember trying that as a kid,

that old cup against the wall trick

to try and hear what people were saying in the next room.

Still to this day,

no idea if that works or not.

But Rebecca's having a shot.

You see it?

It's what she's doing.

She's paranoid.

She's listening.

She doesn't trust anyone.

And how did she get there

is the question I think we're meant to ask.

Well, not only has she had years and years

of living with Isaac's favoritism of Esau,

but she's had years and years

of living with the hurt of Esau's flagrant disregard

for the things of the Lord.

Notice the details we're told in the text.

You see it verse 34 of chapter 26.

How Esau took Hittite wives.

So Esau knows what God has said

about how he's to only marry an Israelite gal

so that his heart would not go astray.

But he thinks I'm wiser

and I prefer it my way.

And he thinks nothing of it

as he goes and marries these people outside of Israel.

And these women,

what do they make life for Isaac and Rebecca?

And I take it they're just flaunting the fact

that they've got the heart of his son.

They make her,

do you see the word?

Bitter.

So whatever they're doing,

they're ripping her apart inside

to the point that she says right at the end of verse 46.

She says,

I loathe my life.

And you've got to hear the angst in her voice

as she says that.

Rebecca's really deeply hurt.

And she's carrying wounds around with her.

And we've all got hurt wounds in our lives,

but I think this is what we need to see

from how Rebecca acts here.

What the hurt has done

as it eats away

and burrows itself through her heart

is it's birthed in her

a deep hardness

and a cynicism

towards the Lord

and his care of her.

You know, Alex, my wife,

she spends a long time each night

brushing our girls' hair.

Right?

Daddy's been told so often,

I don't get to do their hair.

Okay?

The girls, let me do their hair.

Alex is brushing their hair.

So the jobs at night are,

I do brushing of teeth,

Alex does brushing of hair.

And every night,

let me tell you,

she gets the far harder job.

Because we sit there

and every single brush,

you hear it,

ow, ow, ow,

ow, why are you doing it?

Ow, why are you doing it?

And the reason that they're ow-ing

is because their hair's got so knotted.

You kind of brush the knots out

and it's sore,

but it's just knotted everywhere.

And that's Rebecca's heart.

It's just knotted.

It's callous.

Right?

She's wearing the religious t-shirt,

but deep down she's thinking,

I'm wasting my time

praying and trusting the Lord.

It makes zero difference.

Friends, that might be exactly

where you are today.

She thinks,

I'm taking this into my own hands

and she comes up with this scheme,

channeling her inner Lady Macbeth,

Cruella de Vil,

mashed into one

to outwit her husband.

And it centers on,

and see her manipulation here,

it centers on what she knows

is the way to her husband's heart,

which is through what?

His stomach.

And she'll have planned this

in her mind for years

and years and years.

Rehearsing every move,

fine-tuning the conversation,

playing it out.

So when the moment comes,

she takes her opportunity.

And you've got to say,

that's what hurt does

so often in our lives.

We just rehearse conversations.

We play out how we're going

to speak back to people.

I know what my own life is so true.

What is her heart problem?

It's bitterness.

What about Jacob?

Well, he's so weak

that he won't challenge.

His mum's come up with this plan.

And do you notice how he doesn't say,

mum, you're a genius.

I would never have thought of that myself.

Let's go.

What does he say?

He says, verse 11,

mum, this is never going to work.

I might bring a curse on myself.

He knows that he's in the wrong,

but he doesn't have the courage to say,

this is not the right thing to do.

The ends do not justify the means

before the Lord.

Knowing what the right thing is to do,

but being too cowardly to do it,

that is how he has so easily

been led astray.

And what happens in this guy's life

is that lie that he tells

because he's been led astray,

what happens to it?

It spirals and it spirals

and it spirals out of control.

And he finds himself in a hole

that he cannot get himself out of.

And it resorts just to bare face lying.

Right?

And time and time again,

like a jet pilot,

he could have pressed that ejector seat button

and boom, he would have got out of there.

But he chooses not to do it.

It's so often what we say of politicians,

isn't it?

Right?

Imagine the hypothetical situation.

There's a PR manager for the PM

who takes a drive

to another part of the country

to test their eyesight, hypothetically.

And when quizzed on it,

they just will not say,

I got it wrong.

I got it wrong.

I'm sorry, I made a mistake.

And it just gets further

and further and further,

deep down into the hole.

And before you know it,

everyone's falling out over this lie

that could have been sorted like that.

The devil will convince us,

dear friends,

that it's safer to live in the lie.

It is better to be in the darkness.

It is safer to live your life in the hole.

But the gospel says

that while the consequences for that are real,

and hear me right on that,

true freedom is to be found

by coming into the light

and saying,

God, I've got it wrong.

I am coming to you

and asking for your wisdom

and forgiveness and grace.

What is his heart problem?

His heart problem is fear.

It's fear.

I know the right thing to do,

but I'm too scared of my mom,

too scared of human beings

to do the right thing

in the sight of the Lord.

And what about Esau?

Well, he's so angry

that he won't change.

When he learns he's been double-crossed,

this is like the ultimate version

of the hustle, right?

He cries, verse 36.

He cries.

He's angry.

But I think you read the New Testament

and it forces us to see

that his tears are crocodile tears,

not true repentance before the Lord.

Right?

He's way more upset

that he's been conned

than it is that he's sinned

against the Lord.

And so hear and feel the ice

in those three chilling words

you get at verse 41.

How did he feel towards his brother?

He hated Jacob.

And there's murder in his heart

and there's revenge in his mind.

And Rebecca gets Jacob out of there

because verse 42, she says,

Esau is comforting himself

by planning to kill you.

Why did she send him away?

Verse 45, what's her hope?

That buying time

will mean that he will do what?

He will forget.

Forget that he was angry

against his brother.

We've got that phrase in our culture,

don't we, that time is a healer?

Friends, if you've ever been wronged,

you know that that is not the case.

Yes, it's wise not to hit send

quickly on an angry email.

Don't hear me wrong.

Sometimes it is wise to step back

and just cool down.

But hear me right in saying that

amnesia is never the cure to anger.

And so do you see yourself

in the hearts of these people?

Imagine these four on Jeremy Kyle.

Imagine these four trying to talk out

their problems.

Pride, deceit, cowardice, lies, anger, doubt.

And what we're going to see

in the rest of Genesis

is that this stuff,

it spreads like wildfire

through this family

and it causes utter chaos everywhere.

This is in the Bible,

you better believe that it is.

And Moses is saying to this generation

who are wandering in the wilderness,

our hope is not that we are going to get

our hearts act together.

Kidding ourselves into thinking,

and we do this every single year,

don't we,

in January the 1st,

thinking this year is going to be different.

This year I'm going to turn over

our new leaf.

No, our hope is in the Lord

and Him alone being faithful

to His promise to save

His wayward people.

To bless the nation,

says Moses,

not because of who we are,

but despite of who we are,

to send someone to both deal with

and free us from the sin

that ravages our hearts.

And here's what I love

as you read the prophets

in the Old Testament.

One of the things that God says

He's going to do for His people,

the blessings of the new covenant,

what Jesus is going to bring in,

is He's going to give them,

He's going to give them new hearts.

Hearts that long not to live for themselves.

Hearts that long to lovingly obey Him

and worship Him.

And that's what Jesus is.

And that's what Jesus does.

He comes from this line

into this mess

and He sets His face like flint

to go to the cross

for all the dross,

for all the ugliness

that centers in my heart

and in my life.

He dies for it.

That sin that I should have been paying for

before a holy God,

Jesus pays His penalty on my behalf

and your behalf.

And in so doing,

He breaks,

and if you picked this up

in the first song that we sang,

He breaks the power of sin

and darkness.

He wrestles control

from sin that it had on my life.

He wrestles control

and He says,

you are mine.

I set you free to live and worship me.

And here's what I mean by that.

He changes us.

He's in the business

by His Spirit living in us

of transforming our hearts

to be more like His.

It's what they often say,

isn't it,

that happens when mothers,

they hold their infants

close to their chest.

The baby's heartbeat

begins to match

the pace of mums.

I always love that scene in Narnia.

Maybe you can think of it

this way as well.

The place in Narnia.

I love C.S. Lewis.

You might have picked that up

over the years.

Lewis writes to the Narnia,

it's always winter

but never Christmas.

But when Aslan comes on the scene,

things begin to melt.

And it's the warmth of his breath

as he goes around the statues,

it's the warmth of his breath

that begins to free

and bring statues to life.

What is the cure for people like Isaac

with hearts who are just full of pride

is knowing the forgiveness

and the changing power

of the effect of the humility of Jesus.

What's the cure for deeply hurt hearts

like Rebekah's?

It's knowing the peace of Jesus

that transcends all understanding.

What's the cure for people

who are weak like Isaac

is the truth of Jesus.

What is the cure for hearts

that are brimming with anger

like Esau's?

It's the forgiveness

and the melting grace of Jesus.

And on that one,

let me just do some pastoral

and apologetic work

on this whole issue of forgiveness

because I understand

that it's really hard

for many of us.

I say as Christians,

we want to really care about justice.

I think we're called to do that

as we read the Bible

to really care about justice.

But all wrongs being put to right.

We really care about justice.

But we should also really care

about forgiveness.

These should be like two train tracks

running right next to each other

in our lives.

Our culture says it's one or the other.

Pick which one you're going for.

But the Christian says

we want to and we can do both.

Is forgiveness just brushing things

under the carpet?

Does it ignore the wrongdoing?

Can I suggest that it doesn't?

Forgiveness doesn't undermine it.

No, it underlines it.

The cross of Jesus says to you

that what happened to you

is not trivial.

That it was so serious, in fact,

that it required the suffering

and death of the Son of God

to pay for it.

It really matters.

But we should look at Jesus

on the cross

and we should almost hear him say,

I know what it is to be wronged.

I know what it is to have people

who were closest to me betray me.

I know what it is to have family

think I'm crazy.

And it's only because of our belief

in the eternal justice of God

that one day we can know for certain

that he will come back

in the person of Jesus

and he will have all wrongs righted.

And that's why we can

leave it with him.

And it's only the grace of Jesus

that says it may be a very long

and it may be a very painful road.

But today can be the day

as we look to him

that we turn

and we say,

I do not want my life

to be dominated by anger

and bitterness

and hate.

Dear friends,

that may be exactly

what you need to do

off the back of this sermon today.

To come to Jesus

and say,

Lord Jesus,

help me with this.

So much of my thinking

on this has been shaped

by two people.

Firstly,

by Tim Keller.

He's got a great book

that he released

before he died

called Forgiveness.

I lent my copy away to someone

so I can't get it to you.

I don't know what it is,

but wonderful book

thinking about this whole topic.

And another lady

is called Amy Orr Ewing.

She gave an address

at the National Parliamentary

Prayer Breakfast

this week down in London.

In the audience

was a complete mixture

of church leaders,

parliamentary leaders,

and she's speaking

about this whole issue

of forgiveness.

And she said this,

and I think she is

bang on the money.

She said,

I believe the power

to forgive

and receive forgiveness

may just be

the greatest power

the Christian story

can offer

our age.

And into a world

that seems to be

increasingly divided

and just becoming

more increasingly

polar opposite

on things

and just throwing rocks

at each other

rather than lovingly

dialoguing

with each other.

Do you see how we've got

a wonderful opportunity here

as the church of Jesus

to demonstrate

the difference

that he makes

in our lives?

I always love it

and you can have this

for free.

I was thinking this week,

we get,

as Jesus works

in our lives,

I love how Paul

in Galatians chapter 5,

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

just to stretch you a bit,

he contrasts

the works of the flesh

with the fruit

of the Spirit.

Right at the end

of chapter 5.

And my attention

had always gone to

the flesh and the Spirit,

but actually

I was encouraged

this week

to think about

the adjectives,

right?

The works

and the fruit.

Have you ever wondered

why he doesn't call them

the works of the flesh

and the work of the Spirit?

He says,

the works of the flesh

and the fruit of the Spirit.

In other words,

the works of the flesh,

these things,

are the things

that we just work out,

just come naturally to us

and what comes out of us,

that's works.

But fruit

is something

that grows

and comes

out of us

as Jesus changes us

by his Spirit.

Because all glory

goes to him

and you start reading

those words

in Galatians chapter 5,

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

the fruit of the Spirit

is love

and it's joy

and it's peace

and it's patience

and it's kindness

and it's gentleness

and it's self-control.

And you read those words

and you think,

I want them in my life.

And the only way

that it can happen

is if the Spirit of God

works in us

and we produce

the fruit

to Jesus' glory,

that he would come in

and he would change my heart

because I see this stuff

all over my heart

all the time

and I hate it.

And I take it

the very fact

that you see it

in your life

and you hate it

is a sign

of the Spirit

working in you.

Now just as we close

and

can I just tell you

about what I've been

really struggling with

in June?

And lots of you

will be in the trenches

with me here

as we bring Lys to a close.

I have been struggling

so much

with my hay fever.

Anyone else struggling

with their hay fever

in June?

Right?

I feel like I'm

every night

I'm hunting

for an antihistamine tablet.

I feel like

the Met Office website

is now in my bookmarks

on my phone.

My nose

was like a tap

in June.

Felt like I was Rudolph

walking about everywhere

with a red nose.

But the question is

why?

Why was that

happening in June?

Right?

And the answer is

really simply

I think

that the sun

was out.

And because the sun

was out

the flowers

began to open.

Yeah?

And because the flowers

began to open

pollen began to spread

everywhere.

And it only happened

because the sun

was out.

Now

think about

Genesis 27

the verses

that we've taken

in today.

Here is the response

I think we need

to make to this

today.

Keep that image

in your head.

Sun hits the flowers

flowers open.

The only thing

that's going to birth

this kind of stuff

in our lives

that's going to

help us change

is us

like the flower

looking at the sun

and allowing the sun

to open us.

That's what the Bible

means when it says

behold the sun

behold the glory

of God

in other words

look at him

and as you take him

in allow him

to transform you

into his likeness.

And so that's what

we need to do

off the back

of this today.

Not try harder.

Right?

Not come up with

a swear jar

so that every time

we get something

wrong we chuck

something.

No, no, no.

The application of this

is to look to the sun

and to live.

In case you're wondering

where I've got that

imagery from

I've nicked it

from one of the

greatest Christian hymns

down the ages.

It goes like this

joyful, joyful

we adore you

God of glory

Lord of love

hearts unfold

like flowers

before you

opening to

the sun above

melt the clouds

of sin

and sadness

drive the dark

of doubt away

giver of

immortal gladness

fill us

with the light

of day

they don't like

writing like the old ones

now do they?

How incredible is that?

Fill us with the light

of day

that's what we need

to do in response

to this.

We're going to pray

and then we're going

to spend a little

time taking communion

together

to allow us a bit

more time to think

about the gospel

today

and listen

if you want to pray

about anything

that we've talked

about there

because I realise

we covered a lot

of ground

and I take it

one of the reasons

that this is here

is to say

it's okay

to come to me

as in God

with your mess

and I care enough

this is real life

to transform you

we'd love to

as an elders team

or anyone

that you've seen

here today

we'd love to pray

and think about

that more with you

so please do grab us

after the service

and we'll make that

happen

but let's pray

will we?

Father we thank you

so much for this

morning

we thank you

for your word

Father thank you

that you love us

and Father thank you

for your commitment

to us

your people

in the person

of Jesus

and so Father

we look to him

today

our all conquering

champion

we look to him

today as the one

who has paid

the penalty

of our sin

on the cross

as we're going to

remember in just a moment

and we look to him

as the one

who is able

to transform

our hearts

that we would

bear more

of his image

in our lives

and so Father

by your spirit

be moving amongst us

this morning

be convicting

be challenging

be comforting

as we pray

for the glory

of Jesus

in our lives

and in this city

we pray

in his precious name

Amen