"Self-Examination" Matthew 12:33-37 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning, Matthew chapter 12 is where we'll be looking at verse 33 through 37.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

You see in front of us the communion table.

Our service is building this morning towards communion.

1 Corinthians 11, verse 26, is where the epistle of the Apostle Paul describes how to take communion.

1 Corinthians 11:26

He says, you take the bread, it's broken, you eat it, and you remember the body of Christ.

You take the cup, you drink it, and you remember the blood of Christ.

By doing that, you're proclaiming the death of Christ until he returns.

But then Paul says that you should not take communion in an unworthy way or with a lack of self-examination.

That's his phrase.

You need to examine yourself first and then eat the bread and drink the cup.

Because anyone who eats the bread and drinks the cup without examining themselves fails to discern the body.

That's the expression in 1 Corinthians 11.

Fails to discern the body.

Well, what does that mean?

Well, if you're not examining yourself, you're just taking the bread and you're doing it ritualistically.

You're just eating the bread, drinking the wine, and moving on as if it doesn't mean anything.

The bread is representing the body of Christ.

What that means is that Jesus, who is sinless, took our sin from us and was punished by God for our sin to the point that he died.

He was lifted up on the cross that overlooks Jerusalem.

In a sense, it overlooks the whole world.

His body was broken for us.

Now he was the sinless Lamb of God.

The bones in his body weren't broken.

It didn't keep with the kosher laws of how the Passover lamb would be killed, but he had nails driven through him.

His life was taken from him.

In that sense, he was broken.

And he did that because of our sin.

Without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sin.

And so the scripture also commands that animals would be killed to show the penalty of sin.

But the shedding of the blood of bulls and goats can never truly take away sin.

It's the blood of the ultimate Passover Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, that fully atones for the sins of those who would believe.

And so when you are taking the cup, you're declaring that Jesus was truly killed and his blood was truly shed for our sin.

You're born into this world loving sin.

You're born in this world speaking boastful things.

As soon as you learn to talk, you talk about yourself.

You're born in this world loving yourself, serving yourself.

As you grow up, you give over to the lust of the flesh, the pride of life.

Your speech all reflects that.

You're living for yourself, apart from God.

And then at some point you're confronted with the gospel.

You give your life to Christ.

Now, the moment you give your life to Christ, you place your faith in Christ, your heart is changed, your life is changed, you receive a new nature.

The old is passed away, behold, the new is come.

Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.

You're changed from the inside out.

But that change is not total.

That change is incremental.

You receive a new nature, unlike the old nature, but you are not perfected.

You spend the rest of your life growing in godliness, fighting flesh, fighting sin, confessing sin, striving to grow in godliness, being aware of your own frailty, aware of your own shortcomings.

You know, you've lived your life, especially if you weren't raised in the church, you've lived your life living one way, speaking one way, loving one way, and then you're converted to Christ, and your loves change, your speech changes, your whole disposition changes, but not immediately.

Also, not just in one week.

It's a process that takes the rest of your life.

What you're looking at right now is not the glorified Jesse.

I still have work to do.

And so this is the process of self-examination.

Every time you take communion, you're to examine yourself, which means looking at your own life, identifying sins in your life, confessing them to the Lord, then asking the Lord to help you fight those sins.

That's self-examination.

That's what a believer should do every time they take the Lord's table.

If someone does not do that, they are failing to discern the body.

What that means is you're failing to identify that your sin put Jesus to death.

It becomes a ritual.

It becomes just something you're doing.

You're entertaining sin in your own life, not confessing it, not fighting it, which diminishes what Jesus did on the cross.

In fact, Paul says, for this reason, some of you, the Lord will put to death.

The Lord will purify his own church then.

So don't take communion that way.

That's why this morning, as we look at Matthew chapter 12, it is a powerful passage about self-examination, beginning in verse 33.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

Jesus says, either make the tree good and his fruit good, or make the tree bad and his fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.

Jesus declares that he is, at this point of his ministry, kind of over the lukewarm follower thing.

He's pretty much had it with those who are bad trees but pretending to be good.

And he's talking about the Pharisees, of course, who all through chapter 12 have been hounding him.

Remember, they ambushed him at the beginning of chapter 12 about plucking grain on the Sabbath.

Later in chapter 12, they're upset about that he healed the man with a withered hand.

They wanted him condemned for that, violated their Sabbath rules.

Then when Jesus rebukes them, they go out and conspire in verse 14 how to kill him.

Jesus then withdraws from them and avoids them and goes out to the wilderness.

He's not trying to provoke a showdown yet.

He goes out to the wilderness to avoid the confrontation.

They follow him.

Meanwhile, they're in their own self-righteousness, declaring themselves to be right.

They're the custodians of God's law.

They're the custodians of the promises.

The patriarchs belong to them, they would say.

The temple worship belongs to them, they would say.

And they're trying to put to death the Son of God.

It's just rank hypocrisy.

Jesus accuses them at the middle of verse 12.

We looked at this last time we were in Matthew 12, which I know is a while ago, but he accuses them of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, of taking the works of Christ and saying that's actually demonic.

That's how confused and upside down they were.

They saw him heal the man with a withered hand, and they thought that's got to be the devil because it happened on Saturday.

It doesn't make sense.

And so Jesus here, kind of with the tone, I'm Americanizing this a little bit, but with the tone of a gate agent who's giving the last call, and there's the person who should be boarding sitting just in the gate area.

You know the tone I'm talking about?

It is the last call.

Get on the airplane now.

Are you coming or not?

That tone of voice.

Either make the good tree good or be the bad tree with bad fruit.

Choose.

Stop being a bad tree pretending to have good fruit.

You don't fool anybody and you look ridiculous.

Now, of course, there are good trees that have some bad fruit.

Good trees are good trees because they have good fruit, first of all.

That's what makes the tree good.

It produces if a fruit tree is not producing any fruit, it deserves to be cut down.

Jesus himself says that.

If a fruit tree is producing bad fruit, it should be cut down and the ground salted.

A good tree is a good tree because it produces good fruit.

But good trees can still occasionally produce bad fruit.

If the good fruit isn't pruned, it becomes bad fruit.

You have to prune the rotten fruit off the tree in order for good fruit to grow back next year.

So that's the analogy here.

Good trees produce good fruit.

Bad trees produce bad fruit.

Decide if you are a good tree or if you are a bad tree.

You don't become a good tree with your own work ethic or anything like that.

You don't make yourself better.

You become a good tree by placing your faith in Christ, who gives you a new nature.

But with your new nature, you begin to produce spiritual fruit.

From an ethical standpoint, Jesus is saying it is better to frankly just reject the gospel than it is to follow Jesus around without a transformed life.

So to make it more modern for us, because we don't have Pharisees following Jesus in the wilderness, he is rebuking the kind of person here who comes to church Sunday after Sunday but is not dealing with sin in their life.

They're just going through the ritual.

They're in church.

Some people are in the church to be critical, they're in the church to find contradictions in the Bible and things to dispute and to argue with to justify their own sin.

Of course, those kind of people are condemned by the Lord.

But this morning, around the Lord's table, I want to focus at a different category of person, the kind of person that's just at church week in and week out, but is not examining themselves, is not looking for the bad fruit to prune.

It's just going through the motions.

That kind of person, Jesus says, enough.

Look at your own life.

Look at your fruit.

Examine yourself.

The Pharisees were unwilling to do that.

They were speaking murderous speech.

And yet justifying themselves as good people.

And Jesus says in verse 34, you brood of vipers.

You brood of vipers.

How can you speak good when you're evil?

A brood of vipers is not a kind thing to say.

It's generative language.

What I mean by that, he's talking about fruit from trees.

A tree produces fruit according to his kind.

That's generative language.

Now he looks at the Pharisees and says, You are children of vipers.

That's generative language.

You are like your mom, who is a snake.

Again, not polite language.

You want to know why you're a snake, Jesus tells the vipers?

Because your parents are snakes.

In the passage we read earlier for a scripture reading in John chapter 8, he says that to them again, only the devil.

John 8 · chapter mention

You're children of the devil, he says.

But here he goes with snakes.

Snakes are dangerous, poisonous, etc.

They're not good.

They have venom.

You're not going to get fruit juice from a viper.

You're not going to get good works in a true moral sense, truly good works, done out of fear and worship of the Lord.

You're not going to get good works from a person who is a snake.

How can they?

How can a bad, rotten tree produce good fruit?

It just can't.

And here's why he says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Out of the abundance is one Greek word.

It's a somewhat unusual Greek word.

It's translated by William Tyndale, out of the abundance.

And Tyndale was great.

He had these cool word phrases that became English sayings, English expressions.

And this one lives on in English today, out of the abundance of.

But the Greek word, it's in the Greek world, they had these saunas or spas that were, you know, filled with water.

And when you got in, especially if a bunch of people got in, the water would overflow the side.

They had a word for that.

That's this word.

It's what overflows the side of the spa.

Or it's a wine glass filled to the top and wine overflows the side.

The word for the wine, they have a word for that, what flows down the side.

It's the same word.

Rendered into English by Tyndale is out of the abundance of, but you get the idea.

If you have a coffee cup filled with coffee and you, you know, it shakes, it's coffee that comes out of it.

If you're a guy, it is black coffee that comes out of it.

If you have a cup filled with water and it shakes, it's water that comes out of it.

If you have a bad heart and you are shaken, it is bad things that come out of it.

That's the axiom in verse 34.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Now, heart here is representing your character, it's representing who you truly are.

Your emotions, your affections, your thoughts, your will.

That's your heart.

I know that biologically, all that stuff doesn't reside in your heart.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrews often used your guts for that.

Your bowels.

Some of the old translations say guts is better than that.

And we don't say that in English.

We don't say, you know, I love you from all of my guts.

But we keep it for hatred, don't we?

Like I I hate your guts.

You have that expression.

What does that even mean?

You hate their guts.

Who knows?

The Greeks ditched that, and the Greeks replaced it with heart.

Your heart is where you love.

And we keep that in English too.

You tell your wife, I love you with my heart.

You recognize that you know the enzymes that are firing and all that are in your glands and your brain.

But you wouldn't tell your wife, I love you with my pituitary gland.

You wouldn't say, I love you with all of my mind unless you followed it with all of my heart.

Otherwise, it's rude, right?

Like, babes, I love you with all of my mind.

Period.

There's no Valentine's Day card that says that.

I love you with my heart, because the heart represents the totality of your thoughts and your affections and your being.

And it's true in the Bible that way as well.

That's what he means.

Out of the abundance of your heart, out of the abundance of your character, out of the totality of who you are, you're going to talk.

Your words reveal who you are.

Words are also a metonym.

They're also standing in for the whole.

Words here represent the whole of your character.

All of your being, all of your conduct, all of the kind of person you are are represented by your words.

How do you get to know somebody?

Well, you listen to them, and the more they talk, the more you know who they are.

Your heart defines who you are.

Your speech reveals who you are.

Your speech is connected to your heart.

There's a biological way in which the tongue is almost connected to the heart.

I know it's not really stitched to your heart.

I get that.

But it goes deep down into your mouth, deep down into your chest, and that's where your heart is.

So that's the expression Jesus is going for.

That your life is captured by your heart, and when you're shaken, your speech comes out, and what comes out of your mouth reveals who you are.

So if you have not given your life to the Lord and you are shaken, it is bad speech that comes out.

So don't pretend that you are a good person when your speech is wicked.

That's the idea.

Don't walk around telling everybody that you're a good person.

Because you can ask yourself like this is lying bad?

Yes.

Is slander bad?

Yes.

Is lust bad?

Yes.

Is greed bad?

Yes.

Is materialism bad?

Yes.

Is divisiveness bad?

Yes.

Now look at your speech.

Do you lie?

Do you talk about lust?

Do you talk about greed?

Do you talk about materialism?

Is your speech slanderous?

Is it divisive?

Well, yes.

And so now your speech is starting, your speech knows more about you than you do.

That's the point.

He says it differently.

The same thing in verse 35.

It's the same exact thing, but he just words it slightly differently.

The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good.

The evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

When you put your food in your pantry and then you want to go get it, what you get out of the pantry is what is in the pantry.

That's all he's saying.

If your heart is wicked and you go to get stuff out of it through the form of speech, you're only going to be able to get the stuff out of it that's in there.

The person with a changed heart has good things in their heart, so when they speak, it reveals a new nature.

That's the idea.

Your speech demonstrates who you are.

Now, salvation is, of course, not produced by your speech.

Salvation is not produced by your works.

But it is revealed by it.

And that's his point in verse 36.

On the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak.

Your words will be evidenced against you.

He's talking specifically to non-believers here.

Your words will be evidenced against you at your day of judgment.

In the American legal system, for you to be convicted of a crime, there has to be a prosecutor.

There has to be a witness for the prosecution.

There has to be evidence introduced.

I learned this lesson early on in life.

My dad got a speeding ticket.

I went to court with him, and the police officer didn't show up.

Case dismissed, victory for justice.

My dad was never a bigger fan of the American judicial system than that day.

That is not true in God's courtroom.

When you stand before God for judgment, there doesn't have to be a prosecutor.

The devil who is the accuser is not necessary there.

Your own words are evidence against you.

Because you know that it's wrong to lie, your own words reveal lies.

You know that it's wrong to be lustful, your own words reveal your lust.

Your vanity, materialism, deceit, greed, foolishness, falsehood, pride, vulgarity, hatred, gossip, all of those things are all over your speech.

So what evidence is needed to condemn you?

Only your own words.

Because they reveal your heart.

The word there is careless.

And there's a you know a really true sense that every word a non-believer says is careless because they don't have care for the right person.

It's not speech in light of God and his triune holiness.

It's just talking.

And that talk is absent a care of the Lord, and so it is all careless speech.

There's another sense in which careless speech just, you know, when you're not thinking about what you're saying, that's going to reveal the true you.

All that is evidence against you.

And God, who is holy, will not just blindly pass over sin, but he will punish every sin.

And so for those who die outside of Christ, their own speech is enough to condemn them.

You're not condemned categorically by God, although there are categories of sin, but it's not as if God just condemns you.

You know, nobody's going to hell because they don't know Jesus, although that itself would be a sin for not loving the Lord.

But people are sent to hell for every single sin they do.

It's not just their nature, their nature produces sins, and it's all their sins that they're condemned by.

That's what he's getting at in verse 36.

Every careless word deserves an eternal judgment.

And you think that's an overreaction.

I wasn't even thinking when I said it.

Well, your unthinking words reveal the true you.

That's the problem.

On the flip side, in verse 37, by your words you will be justified.

Speaking now of believers, if you are a Christian, if you've given your life to Christ, you've believed in the gospel, the Lord has given you a new nature.

That new nature changes your speech.

It changes all of your character.

Of course, it changes your hearts.

It's called a new heart in some places.

It's a new creation in 2 Corinthians 5.

There's all kinds of new language that's used for it, but the idea is that when you come to faith in Christ, you're made new.

You're not made perfect, though, remember, you're not made perfect.

So it's an ongoing process.

Your speech is still tainted with pride and with lust and with greed and materialism.

But the point is, as a believer, your speech patterns have changed because your affections have changed.

They're not perfected yet, but they're on their way.

So your speech should be better this month than last month, and better next month than this month, kind of thing.

It's trending upward.

Of course, you know, in sanctification there's ups and downs.

There's some periods of time where you feel like you went 10 steps back.

But the idea is that over the course of your Christian life, you're trending towards maturity.

That itself is evidence of salvation.

You can't make yourself godly or make yourself holy.

So it's the Lord working in your heart.

The Lord's work in your heart empowers your own actions.

You are working out your salvation with fear and trembling because it's the Lord who works through you.

Sanctification is synergistic.

It's God working and you working together, but it's the power of God that is energizing your work as you are fighting against sin in your life.

That is producing.

Changed nature in you.

That changed nature should be evident to you.

So you're supposed to examine yourself then to see that.

By your words, you'll be justified.

Conversely, by your words, you'll be condemned.

Which he had said a second ago in verse 36, same same concept.

In verse 37, your speech can condemn you, but it can also be powerful evidence of a changed life.

So, how does this all tie together?

Before you take communion, I always say examine yourself, confess your sins, but that might be a bit abstract.

So before we take communion, you're going to look at the kind of things you've been saying.

Ask yourself, what has my speech been like in the last month?

Your speech is a pretty good revealer of who you are.

Now, a proud person, this is impotent on a proud person.

A proud person has a hard heart and they're not teachable, and their speech is just fine.

Thank you very much.

But a contrite person looks at their speech and says, What has my speech been like last month?

Where are areas I'm slipping?

Where are areas where sin is being manifested in my life?

You identify those weaknesses and you say, Lord, I recognize that pattern of speech.

It reveals this in my heart.

I recognize that in my heart is sinful.

I confess it to you and ask that by your grace you would sanctify me in the month ahead.

That's pruning the tree.

And over the course of their Christian life, you're going to see the tree being more and more fruitful.

Sometimes we don't do that.

The people around us know more about who we are than we do because they listen to us more than we listen to ourselves, it seems like.

People around you think, oh man, this person is struggling because, you know, they're look at their speech, listen to them.

And that's kind of a sad place to be when the people around you know more about your heart than you do.

So communion is a moment in your spiritual life where you can examine your own heart and catch up to what your friends already know.

If you're going through a trial in life, trials are good.

By God's grace, they reveal character.

Now, nobody says the trial is good when they're going through it, of course.

You're not going through a trial and you're like, oh, praise God for this suffering.

Yay.

But the trial is ultimately good because it reveals character.

As you're shaken, what's in your heart comes out in a way when all is stable.

You know, when you're on the cella and none of your coffee is spilling, it's when you're on the regional train where it's going everywhere.

That's trials in your life.

When everything's humming along, you don't know what's in your cup.

But when it's shaken around, when the trials come, now you get exposed what's in your heart.

And so when you're going through the trials, you examine your speech to reveal character.

It's not that speech is the only thing you should be examining, it's just that speech is the easiest and probably the most powerful.

Because the other sins you have in your life that you're tolerating, they're going to affect your speech.

And your speech is going to reveal them.

That's why self-examination really does start with speech.

And when you examine yourself and you see growth in your life, that growth is powerful evidence of your salvation.

You're saved by faith, not by speech.

You're saved by faith, not by works.

But seeing changes in your speech and changes in your works provide evidence of your salvation.

Not the ground of your salvation, but evidence of your salvation.

That's why the Christian speech should reflect the changing work of the Lord in your life.

Are you in a difficult marriage?

Examine your speech.

How do you speak about your spouse?

How do you describe your marriage?

That's going to reveal characters in your heart, and probably you'll get to maybe a root of why you have a difficult marriage.

Are you in a difficult relationship at home or with coworkers?

How do you talk about that?

That's going to start to expose issues in your heart.

Are you dealing with trials in your life?

How do you speak about them?

Your speech reveals your heart.

And where you find sinful speech, that reveals what the Lord is working on in your life.

Confess it, receive forgiveness from it, prune it, and move on.

This is Psalm 141, verse 3.

Psalms 141:3

Set a guard, O Yahweh, over my mouth.

Keep watch over the door of my lips.

Do not let my heart incline to any evil.

The psalmist praise, God, put guards, sentries on patrol in front of my lips.

Don't let wicked things in and don't let wicked things out.

That should be our prayer as well.

Lord, we're grateful for Jesus Christ who gave his life for us so that we can have a changed nature.

We're thankful that he works on our hearts from the inside out, that he prunes the branches.

Lord, I do pray for anyone here today that has never given their life to you.

For anyone here today who has been living for themselves, I pray that today this they would take an honest assessment of what kind of person they are.

I pray that their speech would be used by you to reveal their true character to their minds.

They would confess their sin and trust you for salvation.

Pray for believers here today.

Lord, help us be circumspect about our hearts.

Help us be aware of what's really in them so that we can go to war in the right places.

We're grateful for this time around your word.

We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.