Beth Moore - Minding The Store - Part 3
Here's what we're learning, and we're turning, I'm asking you to have open Luke chapter 6, verse 45. I wanna read it to you again, a good person, now, remember from our previous lesson, what we're talking about when we say good. It is that which emanates from God, it is that which is reflective of God. God is the one in whom all goodness resides. He is goodness. And so, whatever is good, in gospel terms, means it is drawn or it is in the image, reflective of God. "A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart". In other words, our hearts will always be productive. Does anybody get that with me? Always, you have a productive heart, I have a productive heart. The question becomes: What is my heart producing? Because my heart is productive. Is everybody on that page? And so, "A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart".
Our state of mind, which is involved in this whole idea of the heart, because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he, so it's a thinking heart, because it's representing everything that is in our inner man that rationalizes, that praises, that worships, that perceives, that learns, that feels, all of those things, the base of our personality, all of those things. That our state of mind is a direct result of our store in heart. Our state of mind is a direct result of our store in heart. What we have stored has a direct result on our state of mind. How we're gonna think, how we're gonna perceive situations. So let me say this to you, if we constantly store up controversy, so we just love that, we just love that, so we're just like on social media, on the news constantly to see what is the latest controversy.
Now, if you know anything about me, I think you know, I don't live unplugged from what is going on in the news. That's not, I don't believe that God's people should be uninformed. We're meant to be a light in the world, we are not of the world, but we are in the world is what scripture tells us. So I'm not advocating that we have no glance at it whatsoever. I'm saying that we are a people who are so numb, we are so numb from so much overstimulation that we are constantly looking for a great argument, some kind of controversy, some kind of gossip to get us going, because we have numbed ourselves with so many things. So if we are constantly storing controversy and conflict, how do we really think that we're going to have peace? So we just keep saying, I have no peace, I don't have any joy.
Well, let me tell you something, when we feed our minds constantly on that which is malicious or angry rhetoric, that we just constantly take in angry rhetoric, that we constantly have on the screen all these people hollering at one another, talking over one another. I wonder, was there a day, I don't know. I've decided, maybe I don't remember correctly. But was there a day when the news was actually the news? I don't know. What it seems to me on all sides that we have today is that the only news is what the other side is doing wrong. You go to either, either extreme and all your, I'm just going like, can someone tell me the current events without commentary? I'd like to know what happened, not everybody's fault in it because the opposite team is gonna say it's yours. And I'm just like, I'm so tired of it.
How in the world are we gonna just soak ourselves in everybody's opinions, but we think we are gonna live out of the values of Jesus. We're not gonna do it, because we're living out what we're storing up. We think there's this big disconnect, I don't know, I see joy in her, but it's just not something God's given me. What are you storing? What are you storing? When we store up hate, how do we expect that we're ever gonna love or feel loved? So, I want to just be blatant with you because I have to talk this way to myself, this doesn't work for some of you, and it does work for others. For those this works for, let me say this to you, how in the world do you ever expect to feel love when you just fill yourself constantly with hate? And you wonder, you go, "I don't think anybody loves me".
Do you love anybody? Because you're fixated on hate, and then you're wondering why you don't feel like people love you. They can't even get in there. You've defended yourself with hate. What's happened to us? When we store up violence, how in the world do we think we are not going to feed the spirit of fear? We constantly, constantly, this is what we're feeding on. What we're feeding on, what we're storing is what's coming out in us. Porn. We store up porn, and then we become less and less capable of human intimacy, even just like friend to friend, person to person, because it traps us in isolation with a fantasy, with a fantasy. Something that involves no commitment or emotion, just animal instinct. Y'all, how do we think we'll ever be people capable of real life, human, God-blessed intimacy like that?
I was thinking that I love social media, I really do. I give myself this much leash, in other words, I don't let myself spend the day on it. I don't get on it before I've had my quiet time in the morning. I'm not trying to be legalistic with you. I'm just simply telling you I get a lot of hate, and I cannot start my day until Jesus tells me he loves me. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? I can't, I gotta know that my God loves me and finds me of value before someone calls me a heretic, and they're gonna call me a heretic in five minutes. So, it's just like that kind of thing, but how do we think we're gonna just spend all of our time on Instagram and ever feel like we are enough? Don't make me say, I think Facebook's of the devil, don't make me say it. I really don't, but I've never seen so much hate in my life. I've never seen so much gossip in all of my life, never.
Do you know what we call gossip now? Re-tweets. I wish God wasn't getting in our business, I think he's come to mess, I think he's come to mess with us. All right, so here is another big question that we're gonna have steer us in this morning's session. And it's this, y'all, our big overarching question is what's in my store, but then this is a really good question, and this was like about midweek, God just turned this light on in my mind, and I got to talk with my staff about it and we just like, we had lunch together and just threw this concept all around, and I love, I love the impact that they have and the insight that they bring. And so, I asked them this question, and we all talked about it together.
Why would we store rather than just throw away? This is a question. We're talking about how the heart stores. Well, I'm asking you, and I'm asking you to ask me: Why do we store in the first place because we're perfectly capable of throwing some things away? We instinctively store up what may need pulling out. Now is that making sense to anybody before I even expound on it? This is why we store up, because I need it right here. I may need that, I may need that. That's what that screenshots about, I need that close by, I need that close by. I'm gonna store up what I may need again. What I instinctively know, hm, that may come in handy later. Remember when we went through some of our Greek definitions in our previous lesson, it seems like, you know, what's the use of those?
Well, because there are some really wonderful, we want to know what the intent was, what we believe to the best that we are able to discern it, what the intent was, in that cultural moment, in that language. And so, that's why we will look back at the biblical languages. I want you to look again at the word that we have for storing up a treasure, the one that looks so much like thesaurus, and I want you to see this part. I held out this part of the definition until now so that you could see it for yourself under this point. And our point is what? We instinctively store up... What may need pulling out. All right. Look at this definition of our wonderful word that is translating things like storing up, laying up, treasuring up, it says, "To lay, store or treasure up goods for future use".
I mean, we're putting it right there because I mean, we may need that. I'm gonna need that the next time I go to my mother-in-law's, I'm gonna need that. We'll have a good thought, this is what I'm saying next time, I'm gonna have it handy, I'm gonna have it handy because I may need it. And this is the thing, y'all. This is a beautiful thing. Definitely, we wanna learn how to do that. We just want to learn how to do it with the right things, not things that tear us up or tear up our relationship. We keep it on the shelf of our store, in our storage unit, so that we can pull it out when we need it or want it, and there's wonderful connotations with that, and we're gonna get to a number of them in our remaining time together, but I want to revisit some.
You remember that we talked about some that were negative last time, I wanna remind you, we learned that, biblically speaking, things like wrath gets stored up, anxiety gets stored up. We know instinctively that resentment is stored up hostility. We know that bitterness is not, we don't just in a moment become bitter, we get a bitter root and it grows. So it's something that is stored up. We know that love is stored up, we know that truth is stored up. But let's think about a couple of things we store up here because sometimes the purpose of using it later is for ammunition to win an argument. Oh, this is ammunition. Mhm, I knew this. This is the third time they've offended me, and I'm putting that, I need to put it in their box, and I've got their box labeled with their name. We think this is going into an iCloud, when we take all these screenshots and we keep all of these things, but it's not, it's going into an iHeart, and it's causing us pain. Okay, suspicions.
Now, this is a tricky one because there is a difference, and sometimes we do not know it until we really pray it through and really try ask God, help us to operate in the spirit here, because there is a difference between something being suspicious, us just being suspicious of someone, and us discerning or getting a flag that something's wrong. We need to mind a warning, but that's not how this will often go. Often, we'll just get suspicious of somebody and we'll just stack it up, stack it up, stack it up, stack it up, stack it up, stack it up, stack it up, and we're just like, uh-huh, I knew it, I knew it, that's another evidence that my suspicions are going to prove correct. I don't mean concerns, concerns are appropriate. I don't mean discernment, discernment is very much needed. Flags that we get, I don't know if y'all call it that, I don't know if our regions call these the same things, but where I come from, we would call it, man, I'm flagging.
In fact, in Texas we go, I have Six Flags over Texas right now. I mean, like I got my signal, my bull radar is all the way. I mean, like it is 60 feet tall. Anybody know what I'm talking about? But I'm talking about stockpiling for the sake of keeping a record of wrongs or rationalizations for just our bad feelings toward one another. Try to distinguish between, and only the Holy Spirit can do this, the Holy Spirit, and through the Word of God, it's what divides, Hebrews chapter 4 tells us, it's what divides bone from marrow, and spirit and soul. It's what comes in and helps us to know. So we have to ask him, help us discern between the two. But let me say this, if this helps anybody, there might be something giving us a bad feeling, but that's different than us having a bad feeling towards someone. Someone may be giving us a bad feeling. But what we're looking for is: Do we have a bad feeling about the person? That is what has gone over to the side of the flesh and gone over into sinfulness.
We stockpile about someone we envy, someone we're jealous of. I mean, everybody in this room has probably got them like a rival, whether it's the other grandmother, whether it's somebody at work, whether you know, there's then, you know, you've got a group of friends and you find out that, you know, there's three or four of you, and they got together without you. And I mean, after that, it's like, you know what? I just, I don't think she's always real. Does anybody knowing what I'm talking about? Like, all of a sudden, it's like, I don't know, she just kind of, there's something that's not symmetrical about her facial features? All of a sudden it's all, because we're just stockpiling reasons not to like them.
And if we listen, it will come out because, so number four, I want somebody to remind me what it is, we instinctively store up, what, what? What may need pulling out. What may need pulling out, so, number five is this, and boy, do you know this is the truth? Our words eventually advertise our stores. Oh, this is a miserable, isn't it? Oh, our words eventually advertise our stores. Now here is some really fabulous news. It was James, the Lord's half-brother who wrote that, listen, if someone can tame their tongue, they are a perfect person, able to control the whole body as well. Because I mean, it is just like the untamable thing, but if we will listen carefully to what comes out of our mouths, sometimes it's like, whoa.
Sometimes we won't even realize how much of something we've stored until in an argument or in this moment, it just flies out. Just flies out of us. Like, where did that come from? Where did that come from? This is, I wanna show y'all something, go with me to Psalm 41:6. This is such a fascinating passage: 41:6. I guess, maybe I had never seen it in the CSB or, well, I had to have, because I've read through this whole copy of the Bible, but it just never hit me the same way. 41:6, 41:6. I think I'll start at 4. 41:4 through 6. So listen to this, in the CSB if it doesn't say it the same way in yours. "I said, 'Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you.' My enemies speak maliciously about me: 'When will he die and be forgotten?'" Verse six, "When one of them comes to visit, he speaks deceitfully; he stores up evil in his heart; and he goes out and talks".
Y'all, does yours say it like that? Okay, I want to talk about this again, someone comes to see us, comes to have lunch with us, Facetimes with us. We're with them and they're just speaking deceitfully, like they like us and they don't, like they don't know what they do, like their motive is pure for being with us, like they're not trying to find out what they're trying to find out, like they're not trying to take a census of how much does she know, how much does she not? And then it says, they speak deceitfully, store up evil in their heart, because they're thinking I can't wait to tell so and so this. I mean, they're pulling out of the driveway already texting, already texting. Anybody with me? Leave that place, and go out and talk. God help us. I'm gonna tell you something, we cannot stop anybody else from doing that to us, we can stop doing it ourselves. We can catch ourselves in it. Well, we just cannot wait to tell somebody, "You cannot believe what he just said to me. You cannot believe", to ridicule them.
Whatever it may be, but here's... What was our point number five? Was, our words are what? They eventually advertise our store. Hearts are volcanic, that's the thing. Hearts are volcanic, and it's this way in the good and the bad, anything that heats us up, and that like I get heated up during praise and worship, I get heated up during Bible study, praise God, I love like the... is the Word not like fire? So eventually, there's enough heat in there that the heart's gonna be volcanic, but it's also that way about our hates, our displeasures, about all our opinions, and listen, I'm talking to myself here. All of these things that just are in there, stored up, and then it's enough heat, and finally that thing blows, and we might be blown sky high with praise to God, with gratitude, or it could be with fury and anger.
Have you ever realized in a moment, my word, that person must have some very hostile feelings about me, because of something that came out of their mouth. Now, listen, sometimes things just fly out, like I really don't think a lot about smoking joints. I don't know where that came from, but it came from somewhere. I'll work that out later with the Lord. But other things, like you're just going, like, whoa, and it's fair because sometimes it... can we all say, some of us we just flat out say things we don't mean, but that's where we go, you know what, I didn't mean that. I just, what I felt was is, I'm gonna lose this fight if I don't say that, and that's just the truth of it. I'm just in the flesh, I'm having a hard time, and I'm so sorry, I did not even mean that.
Other times it's like, oh. And we realize that somebody has got a whole shelf of their storage dedicated to us, but we can't help that. I'm just simply asking you, who's got a whole shelf in your storage? That you just devoted all this space in your storage unit to this person that drives you crazy continually. And we got it always here, because we're not gonna forget, lest I forget what she did, what she said.
I want you to turn with me now to Isaiah 33:6, and let's begin to shift over to a different way of doing this. Isaiah 33:6. Isaiah 33:6 is so marvelous that I couldn't even decide what translation to bring it to you in. The people of God are in a situation where they have taken on more and more of the habits of other nations. He warned them about that, they have taken on the practices, and not only the practices, but some of the gods, some of the idolatry of the other nations. They've begun to do things that were not of God at all. They've lapsed into dealing with one another deceitfully, oppressively, unjustly, all of the things, extortion, perversion, everything under the sun.
And he has said, over and over again, you will be led captive by these that you are imitating, because what one of the things that the scripture tells us is, we're gonna be like what we worship. And so then when we start getting all dragged off into all manner of things we're enamored with, then we become like that. And so he began warning them and warning them and warning them and warning them, and he's doing that here, and he's telling them they are about to be in some serious trouble. He's foretelling, through the prophet Isaiah, the captivity they have to come, but he is also telling them what will be on the other side of their repentance, and it's a beautiful thing.
33:6 says, "He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the LORD is the key to this treasure". So picture it with me, that there's this treasure that is the Lord. It is a rich store of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge, and how we unlock that treasure is fear of the Lord. Well, you think, what is that? Well, obviously, awe and respect, but think more in terms of our lesson that we're talking about. It means, we have fear of the Lord and we go, you alone are God, you alone are God. When we look to him for salvation, wisdom, and knowledge, and not another god, not another idol of this world.