What is in your heart?

HELLO and welcome to Thought for the Week. Do you like washing up, or is it a chore you’d rather avoid? When you do it (assuming you don’t have a dishwasher!) I’m sure you don’t just wash the outside of cups and bowls, leaving food remnants inside!

Jesus told people off for doing that:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.” (Matthew chapter 23, verse 25) He wasn’t talking about actual crockery. He was using picture-language to show how these people were keen to make a good impression, so they appeared to others to be very good and holy.

They made sure that everyone saw them when they put their offerings into the temple treasury, and they said their personal prayers, not at home, but in the street.

But Jesus went on to tell them:

“Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew chapter 23, verse 28)

It’s possible to be outwardly “good” so others say, “What a good person he or she is!”

Let me say straight away that it’s not wrong to be outwardly good.

But it is very wrong if the outward goodness is just a mask that hides inner badness in the form of greed, evil thoughts, selfishness, and the rest.

As those words of Jesus make clear, mere outward goodness may impress others, but is not enough for God.

God said to the prophet Samuel when he went to anoint the future king of Israel:

“The LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel chapter 16, verse 7)

When you know Jesus as your Saviour, amazingly, God looks at your heart, and sees not your evil, but Christ’s perfect righteousness! What does God see in your heart?

David Lamb is a South Devon-based lay Baptist preacher.