- Well, hey, everybody. Man, it's good to be with you today. I am so excited to share with you that God is doing just incredible things in our church. So, with our teaching team, we had Pastor Craig and Pastor Mark last weekend. Hey, catch this, guys. We had 13 people give their life to Jesus last week. That's incredible, isn't it? Those guys did an incredible job this coming week so I can be at our Bluefield location. Pastor Steve Robinson is gonna bring the message and we're in a series called "Storyteller." I felt like Pastor Mark just did an awesome job kicking that series off today. We did this because we're looking at stories from the New Testament. And so many of you, you're reading through the New Testament, now we're over a third of the way there. It's been awesome. Thank you for all your emails, your encouragement. Man, it's just been so cool to see how God is using his word to help all of us get to know him better. That's really what it's all about, right? So, I'm excited for you. And in case you are behind, just get back in. I'm gonna be talking about that a little bit later in the message, but we are reading the New Testament in 90 days and it's just been totally amazing for so many of you. I'm excited for you, okay? So, today I wanna look at a story from the Gospel of Luke. Now, what I've learned from your emails is a lot of you are new to faith. And obviously, last week, 13 brand new believers, right? Luke is one of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that start out the New Testament. Those are the four gospel accounts of the story from eyewitness accounts of Jesus. So, as we go through the New Testament, I wanna help you understand it more. And today I wanna sort of focus in on Luke's ministry and how these gospel writers had a certain audience they were all writing to, right? Matthew, he writes to the Jewish audience. That's the reason he starts in his book with the lineage of Jesus. And then Mark writes for the Gentiles. John, for all of you new believers, I would encourage you to start in the Gospel of John because John writes his book with you in mind. He writes it with all of us who are new to the faith in knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Now, the neat thing about Luke is he actually writes his book for a friend. Oh, I love that, don't you? And we get to benefit from it. But actually, Luke had one individual in mind when he writes the account, the Book of Luke, and also Acts. And it's just so neat. This guy's name, we don't know a lot about him, but this guy's name was Theophilus. As you know, Luke was a doctor, so he could have been a physician, but it seemed like Theophilus had a mind that was more the engineering side. He was a little more skeptical. He had lots of questions. And so, Luke's account of the ministry and the life of Jesus tries to really help Theophilus understand who Jesus is. Notice what Luke says. He says, "Theophilus, I have taken the time to put together "a well-ordered account." In other words: I've been very thoughtful about it. I've done my research, my homework here, so, Theophilus, that you might have confidence in what I've written about Jesus in order to settle your spirit. Because it's really, really clear that Theophilus was one of these guys who had an unsettled spirit. He had questions that he didn't have answers to. Here's why I think that's important in our culture today, because we're in a year, we've just come through a couple years of pandemic. And as we start out 2022, we may need our own hearts settled. We may have questions we need to be answered as well. So, today's message, I pray, will really be an encouragement to you. We're gonna go to Luke Chapter 6, and in Luke 6, there is a message that Jesus preaches. He tells the story here and he gets real practical, okay? Let me just warn you. I want you to buckle up a little bit. He wants to strengthen your spirit, but Jesus, he's gonna get all up in your business today, okay? Jesus is gonna get really relevant, super practical in an area of our lives that for me and probably for you is super, super convicting. Here's what I want you to consider with me today. Think about this. What if the words that we said to other people in a thoughtless moment, a careless moment, maybe even an angry moment. What if those words that we say got permanently tattooed on their skin so that you could see them every time you ran across them? Now, I know that sounds crazy, but just what if? What if everything you said to other people actually got tattooed on their skin for their life for you to see every time you came across them and for everybody else to see? Let me just ask you, would that cause you to stop for a moment and give some more thought to what you're saying? I would hope so. 'Cause all of us have had these moments in our lives where words have escaped our mouths and it was just thoughtless. Maybe it was impulsive, extremely careless. They were hurtful, hateful, maybe mean-spirited. And I would imagine that you've had words spoken to you that have impacted you in that same kind of way. I mean, they impacted the way you saw yourself, they impacted your self-image. Because you see, words are really, really powerful. That's why the Bible says things like this. Look back in Proverbs Chapter 12, Verse 18. Catch this verse, what it says, "The words of the reckless pierce like swords, "but the tongue of the wise brings healing." And there are gonna be those moments where all of us will say things that maybe we didn't fully mean in the moment, but we just said it out of passion or maybe we were frustrated and we let it go. We didn't intend for it to have the kind of effect that it had on others, but it did. And there are gonna be those times when we actually meant every word of it, right? I mean, we've gotten our anger up and we say things and we know it's really not gonna be the things we should say, but we know full well the impact of our words in the lives of other people, and we go ahead and we say them anyway. Well, here's the thing. Once we let those words fly, we don't ever get them back, right? I mean, we can't tell the person, "Oh, you know, I never said that." No. We can say we're sorry. We can actually apologize. But we can't ever get those words back. I mean, we just can't. Once they go, we can't get a do-over. And like a bad tattoo, these words aren't ever gonna go away. Hopefully, we can ask for forgiveness, we can apologize. But those words stick in our minds. Little research on the message today before I get into the story of Jesus, did you know that we speak 16,000 words every day? 16,000 words a day. The average lifespan of a human being on planet Earth, actually, we speak 525,600,000 words in our lifetime. It's actually equal, those who have researched this out, that we every day are writing a 60-page book with the words we say. Now, let me ask you, I bet if you were to actually write a 60-page book that you probably would take the time to have that book edited. You'd want that book spell-checked. You would wanna be thoughtful about the sentences you're putting together in your book. You would wanna be sure those sentences were complete. You would want those sentences to be thoughtful and grammar correctly, and you would have thought what you're putting in a 60-page book. With that many words being spoken, think about this, 16,000 every day, there's gonna be some slipups, right? They're just, there's gonna be some slipups. Have you ever said something so mean-spirited and cruel that it even surprised you as it came out of your mouth? And immediately you caught yourself and you were like, "No, wait a second. "I didn't mean that. "I'm really sorry. "I don't even know where that came from." And yet, one of the hardest lessons when it comes to the words we speak is that we just can't get them back when they're out there. I can remember saying things I wanna, they're already out there and I wanna try to catch them and force them back in. It reminds me of when I was in Africa one time, and I'd only taken one tube of toothpaste. And somehow on the flight over, my toothpaste got squished. Here I am, I'm gonna be there for three weeks. I've got one tube of toothpaste and it's all in this little plastic bag. And I remember trying, have you ever tried to put toothpaste back in a tube? You can't, can you? I mean, it's just messy, it's impossible. And finally, you just have to clean it up the best you can. I've said some things in my life and I know many of you can relate to me, to people who I know and who I love that I immediately regretted. And sometimes, things I've said, actually, I was embarrassed by those things. So, I've learned over time as I've gotten older that whatever I say actually comes from a deeper place. And that's true for you as well. And this is what Jesus is getting at in the story. The passage today, I wanna look at Luke Chapter 6. It's only three verses, but let's look in Verse 43. He packs a ton into these verses. This is what he says. He says: A good tree can't produce bad fruit and a bad tree can't produce good fruit. A tree is identified by its fruit. Figs are never gathered from thorn bushes. Grapes are not picked from bramble bushes. A good person produces good things from the treasury, catch this, "Of a good heart." Now, it's Valentine's Day. I wanna talk to you about your heart, right? Valentine's weekend, tomorrow's Valentine's Day. And he says, "And an evil person produces evil things "from the treasury of an evil heart." Catch what he sums up here. He says, "What you say flows from what is in your heart." I want you to catch this, this may be transformative for some of you. Our heart is the source of our words, not our mind. We think it's in our mind, but it's really our heart. And what you say will actually reveal what's in your heart every single time. I want you to have a great Valentine's Day weekend, so trust me, here. Say the right things. Get that evil stuff out. You'll have a much, much better Valentine weekend with those you love. Now, I don't know about you, but it really frustrates me that something so small as my tongue can have so much influence and so much impact on my life and all my relationships. You ever thought about this? Did you know that your tongue only weighs about 70 grams? Think about that. Matter of fact, science tells us that 70% of our tongue is actually water weight, 70%. Only about 20% is called soft muscle, and 10% is nothing but fat, okay? I mean, that's what our tongue is made up of. It's really a weird combination of muscles. Did you notice that your tongue, my tongue, it never gets tired. It never gets sore. Did you notice that? I mean, I can talk for hours today. I do that every Sunday. But I don't ever have to warm up my tongue. I wasn't backstage before I came out or this morning on my way to church, I wasn't doing tongue stretches today. When I used to run, that's been a long time ago, jog, I never really ran, I would have to warm up, stretch out my hammies so I wouldn't pull something. I gave that up, but I don't ever have to do that with my tongue. I've never had to put some kind of ointment on my tongue because the muscle got so sore. I'll wag that thing all day long and it seems to recover really well. And I know from experience that I need to pay much more attention to this small little muscle in my body than any other muscle because even though it's small, Jesus says, and James, his half brother, says, it's the most powerful muscle in our entire body, more powerful than our big biceps, or, some of you have big biceps or whatever. The tongue is small, but dude, it's powerful. James, he says a lot about your tongue over in his book that we'll eventually get to in our reading. This is what James says in Chapter 3, Verse 8. "No one can tame the tongue." You're like, "Uh, I think I can." No, you can't. Nobody can fully tame what comes out of your mouth. James is challenging us to go deeper, and Jesus here in Luke is challenging us to go deeper. He says, listen, if you want control of your tongue, the only way to do that is you've got to submit your heart. That's the only way to get control of your tongue. You see, many of us what happens, maybe on the day of our conversion when we actually got saved and we gave our life to Jesus Christ, honestly, what happens is our questions have been answered. And we, on that conversion day on salvation, we give our heads to Jesus, right? We had some questions. We were able to get through those questions. We got our answers, we reasoned it through. And we came to the point where it just made sense to us to give our life to Jesus, and we prayed a prayer. And hopefully we follow that up to where we got publicly baptized, and that's how Jesus starts. He starts with our head, but I want you to understand something. What he's really after, he's really after your heart because that's the core of who you are. And in most of our spiritual journeys, we get saved from our mindset, from our head, and then in our salvation, that's true. We're saved by his blood. But then as we understand salvation, it becomes a heart thing. How do you know if you've fully given Jesus your heart? How do you know that? Well, Jesus actually says two big things in all of his teaching in the New Testament that are indicators of whether or not he has our hearts or not. And the first thing that Jesus would say, and this is not a message about this at all, but first thing he says is look at your finances. If you wanna know where your heart is, look at your finances. Look at your checkbook. Our finances, according to Jesus, will reveal where our heart is every time. In fact, Jesus said this in Matthew 6:21. "Wherever your treasure is, "there the desires of your heart will also be." So, he says the desires of your heart always follow your treasure. And the reason why Jesus talks about money so much is because he knows our hearts follow it, right? And if you send your treasure to where you want your heart to be, then your heart will follow it. It's never in reverse, never. And he talks about it over and over and over. Ha, you know the second indicator? If you submitted your heart fully and he has control of your heart, it's our tongue, our tongues. It's your speech. That's what he says. "For whatever is in your heart determines what you say." Now, I don't want you to misunderstand this, because our situation and our salvation in Jesus Christ is not dependent on the words we speak, so don't, I don't wanna confuse you, there. Thankfully, right? Otherwise, we'd all be in trouble. However, just because we're saved by Christ through faith, I can't say: Well, I'm gonna give that person an earful! I'm already saved. My name's already written in the Lamb's book of life. I'm not perfect and I'm gonna make mistakes every now and then until I get to heaven. So, I tell you what, they've ticked me off. I'm gonna give that person an earful. No! No, that's not what Jesus is saying here at all. He says, hey, that reveals the condition of your heart. And the condition of our heart is often revealed with our tone of speech. That's why he uses the analogy here in Luke 6 of a fig tree. He says, "A healthy fruit tree is gonna produce healthy fruit, "but an unhealthy tree is gonna produce unhealthy fruit." It all springs up from the condition of our hearts. Our words spill out from our hearts. And Jesus is saying, hey, listen. Those words that surprised you when you said them that you know you shouldn't have? Well, I'm gonna tell you something. They've been marinating in your heart for a while. They've been down there. Those words that you said that took you by surprise like a seed that's been in the soil of your heart and it's been growing there for a while, and it finally took root and it blossomed, and all of a sudden, boom. It came out through the surface of your tongue because the mouth can only speak what the heart is full of. It's controlled by here. I mean, we gotta pay attention to our inputs, then, right? I mean, this is so important, what we're putting in. What is it that we're taking in with our eyes and our ears? What are we filling our heads with, our mind with? This is all important because all of that, it germinates in our hearts, and then whatever fruit we're producing reveals it. So, here's the real question of the day. I want you to think about this. This is the question. What do you wanna come out of your mouth? Well, whatever you wanna come out of your mouth, then you gotta start putting in your heart, okay? That that's how it works. And that's why we're reading through the New Testament together. This is the reason this is so important. The Bible is really God's information on himself. This is where you get information about God. This is God's Facebook page to you. This is his Instagram. If you want information, how you establish a relationship, and all your relationship, most of you probably stalked those people before you ever introduced yourself to them or something like that. Well, this is how you can find, you can stalk Jesus right here. And he gives us all this information, so I thought, man, the best thing we can do is we gotta get God's word input into our heart. And that's why we're doing this reason, this daily Bible reading, that you input his word into your life every day. It's so encouraging to your Christian faith. It is so encouraging to our church. And I know some of you are saying, "Well, I didn't do that. "It's already too late." No, we can still give you that Bible reading every day. Just pick up where we are. Just let us know, sign up for it, go to our website. And man, we'll send you a Bible reading every single day. Just takes a few minutes and you start your whole day out right. It's not just about knowing all the content of the Bible, although that's helpful. But really, what it's doing when we put ourselves into God's word is it's giving God an opportunity to actually speak into your life, to reveal himself into your life. Have you ever thought about this? The creator of the universe wants to have a personal relationship with you, and the way you understand that relationship is you get into God's word. It's the question of being discipled and being encouraged as we read and study the word of God. And I'm afraid in the day and age in which we live that many of us are being discipled by social media much more than we are God's word. Many of you are so stuck on Fox News or CNN, that's really who you're giving hours of your input to and only a few minutes to the word of God. So, who's really discipling you? This is, again, where Jesus gets up in your business a little bit. Some of us are being discipled more by our coffee conversations or our music that we listen to or the entertainment we give ourselves to than we are God's word. It's not that any of those things are bad in and of themselves, but then something that comes out of your mouth and you're like, "I don't know where that came from. "Where in the world did that come from?" It's been in your heart for a while. It really has. Which is why Proverbs says this. "Above all else, guard your heart, "guard your heart, "for everything you do flows from it." It's so important to guard your heart. And what we take in and what we think about in our mindset, those are seeds. Basically, they're like seeds, according to Jesus. And eventually our inputs, these seeds, are gonna produce fruit. So, in an unguarded moment, when maybe words surface that are crass and cutting and crushing, and we think to ourselves, "I am not sure where in the world that came from. "That is not me." And you know what? The Spirit of God, his Holy Spirit, very gently, very lovingly, but extremely directly comes to us and says, "I know where it came from. "It's been in your heart for a while. "It's been down there for a while." So, guard your heart by being proactive. I love another scripture all the way back in Psalm 119, Verse 11. This is what the psalmist says. Longest chapter in the Bible, this is what he says. "I have hidden your word in my heart," why? "So that I will not sin against you." When we put God's word in our heart, it helps us to stay on track of where he wants us to be. It seems so simple, but it is a challenge. It's a challenge. And the reason I know it's so challenging is because so many of you Highlanders, over a thousand of you, you really had good intentions to go all the way through the New Testament in 90 days. But that number quickly begins to fade because the enemy hates for you to put in God's work. And all of a sudden, he starts telling you: You don't have time to do that. You gotta get to work. Hey, you don't have time to give yourself to a couple of chapters today. You just don't have time. It would be good, but you just don't have time. He gives all kinds of excuses. And then all of a sudden we're off on our day and stuff starts coming out our mouth. And we're like, "Where in the world did that come from?" Come from our heart. You wanna change that? Then you have to input God's word because our heart controls our tongue. Now, think with me as we wrap this up. Maybe for you, the words that have actually caused hurt and pain in your life are the words that you've longed to hear from somebody, but they never came. Maybe you wanted your dad to tell you, "Hey, I'm proud of you. "Man, I love you. "I am for you." But for some reason, your dad could never bring himself to say those words to you. And it hurt. Maybe some of you, you just wanted to hear your mother say: Hey sweetheart, I love you. No matter what, mom's with you. You're beautiful. You are precious. You're a treasure. But you know, mom was never quite able to say those words to you, probably because her mom was never able to say those words to her. And maybe right now you're in a relationship, possibly married, or maybe you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. And the words that are often spoken to you are so careless and hurtful and cutting and degrading, and it hurts. Maybe you just long to hear somebody, anybody, maybe a coach, a teacher, an authority figure of some kind say, "I want you to know I'm with you. "I'm cheering you on. "Hey, I believe in you. "You got what it takes." But right now, for some strange reason, nobody is in your corner saying those words that in your life you desperately need. You know, the opposite is true as well. Especially at the beginning of this year where everybody is just emotionally exhausted and spiritually beat down, worn out, and weary. I think we need more than ever before to be speaking words into each other that are encouraging and helpful. 'Cause here's the truth, guys. We serve a God who still rules regardless of this crazy pandemic. Our God is still on the throne. He is still sovereign. And right now, maybe you just need to resubmit your heart to him. Because with all the negativity in the world and all the inputs over these last couple years, somehow, even as a child of God, you have allowed your heart to become callous. And you say, "Well, how do I know that?" Because what seeds and words you're producing are nothing like you want them to be. They're not encouraging. You've gotten negative and you've gotten hopeless. We need to pay attention to what we say. Let me close with three little questions. You probably heard this, but before you say things in your life, just run it through these three questions. Here they are, all right? First thing is, is it true? That's a good one in our culture, isn't it? Before you say anything, just check, is that true? And if it's not true, it doesn't need to be said. Can we agree with that? If it's not true, why in the world would we say it, especially as children of God? First question, is it true? The second question is, is it helpful? If I say this, is it helpful? Is it gonna be helpful to somebody else? If it's not helpful, again, why would I say it? And then the third question that we really need to consider is, if I say this, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? Is it kind? And when we answer all three of those with yes, then hey, for the sake of Almighty God, start saying those things to other people. Our world is desperately in need of encouraging communication. Be a lifter of people. Speak positive into their life. Believe in people, 'cause we want that so bad in our own life. I think for all of us, we just need to slow up a little and be more thoughtful about the words that are coming out of our mouth. Here's the truth, guys. We don't have to agree on everything. We don't, in order to be brothers and sisters. We really can be unified together and we can really be civil and truly care about others and not see everything the same way. We're very capable of doing that. We can be great examples in our society today as a church that we may view things differently, but man, we love each other. We're gonna look out for each other. We're gonna believe in each other. In fact, Jesus says it's one of the marks of somebody who's fully given him their heart when our communication is truthful, helpful, and kind. Can I just say, as somebody who's still in process, I sure don't have this down, right? I'm still right there with you. I don't get it right all the time. I'm in this battle with you. Can we just today resubmit our hearts to Jesus so that he can help us produce the kind of fruit in our lives that we'd be proud of so that when we're speaking out to other people, we're saying things that are true, we're saying things that are helpful, we're saying things that are kind. Man, that's the kind of church I wanna be a part of. Would you pray with me right now at all of our locations? Hey, just pray with me. Jesus, Thank you so much that you're just an amazing God, that here on this Valentine's Day weekend, I understand, Lord, probably folks wanted to come and hear a message about relationships and all those kind of things. But honestly, what we've looked at today is the greatest relationship, our hearts to you. And if we've allowed the culture in which we live to cause our hearts to be callous, we easily know that today because of the words that we are saying on a constant basis. So, Lord, just help us run through that filter. And if our hearts have gotten callous, God, we just resubmit our heart to you today. We ask you, God, to fill our hearts with your love, your compassion, your forgiveness. God, we're so thankful that you're the one who stood by us and said you will never leave us, you will never forsake us, no matter how bad we've messed up our life. The words that we may have never heard from our mom or our dad or some other figure that we wanted to hear so bad, you say you believe in us and you love us and you value us so much that you gave your life on a cross so that we could be forgiven, and the promise, and have the promise of eternity with you. That's amazing. I'm convinced that if we really understood your love for us, that God, we would wanna surrender and spend time with you more and more every day. So, God, I just pray right now, you're changing hearts. You're helping us to review how we've been speaking lately, what's been coming out of our mouth. And just remind us, God, that what has come out of our mouth has been marinating in our hearts for some time. And so, some of us need to have some heart surgery today. And God, just help us. I wonder if there is one here, like last weekend, we had so many give their life to Jesus, and you've never surrendered your life to Jesus. You've never asked him to forgive you of your sins and come into your heart and life. Hey, would you just simply ask Jesus Christ to do that for you today? Just say: Jesus, I've made mistakes. I ask you to come into my heart. I ask you to save me from my sin. I submit my life to you. I surrender to you today. And hey, if you prayed that right now online, would you just click that little raised hand button so we can rejoice with you? And on TV, if you're watching by TV, let us know. Send me an email. And we are so grateful for what God's doing in your life. Lord, we love you today. Thank you for loving us. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, hey, guys, thanks so much for being with us today. I look forward to being with you guys in Bluefield next weekend. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna have a great time together and invite some friends and it's gonna be awesome. Pray for Pastor Steve. I know he'll knock it out of the park. Love you guys.