Jesus Teaches: On the Heart
Luke 6:43-45
July 13, 2025
Theodore Dalrymple is a British medical doctor and psychiatrist who has spent his life with the worst of the worst people; he has spent the last 15 years of his life working in British prisons treating “serial killers, petty thieves and everything in between.” Much of his life has been spent trying to figure out why people do what they do. He has found some easier than others:
Your garden-variety convicts, he contends, are [relatively simple] subjects…To ask them why they steal, he says, “is like asking you why you have lunch.” They want something, so they take it. [Frankly,] “the question is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few.”
The more mysterious to him are those who commit the most horrible crimes — mass murderers and the like. Yet even here he has a theory:
“…[Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has triumphed,” by which he means that “we believe ourselves to be good, and that evil, or bad, is the deviation from what is natural.…Most people,” Dr. Dalrymple says, “now have a belief in the inner core of themselves as being good. So that whatever they’ve done, they’ll say, ‘That’s not the real me.’”
Yet people who say, “that’s not the real me,” are actually doing criminal and heinous things. And few people understand why.
It may be that you also sometimes look at your life and ask, “Where did that come from?” You’ve said or done something that you have thought is contrary to your belief system and convictions. And it has caused great harm to others around you. Where does that stuff come from?
In His well-known Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses this very topic; He helps His disciples be discerning about their own lives (helping them self-examine) by revealing to them why they do what they do.
Be spiritually discerning — our words and actions reveal what we want and believe.
Our words aren’t contrary to what we are; they expose what we are. Our words and actions come out of us. Our words don’t happen to us and our words aren’t our natural response to our hard circumstances. Our words (and everything else we do) reflect our inner convictions: what we believe and what we love. Every time we speak and act, what we love in that moment is on display. In these three verses, Jesus gives a three-fold process for self-examination by giving an illustration, explaining a principle, and making an application…
- A Picture of the Spiritual Life (v. 43)
- A Principle of the Spiritual Life (v. 44)
- An Application to the Spiritual Life (v. 45)
Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 6:43-45.
Words of Grace 