WTH? Walk, Talk & Heart of God
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Pillars 3 & 4 | Righteousness & Justice require the Walk, Talk & Heart of God
Proverbs 21:3 NIV
To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.Amos 5:21-24 NIV
21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. 22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. 23 Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24 But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!1 Corinthians 6:15-17 NIV
15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.Matthew 9:13 NIV
13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”Hosea 6:6 (NIV)
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.Without a heart for God, sacrifice loses its soul
Proverbs 29:27 NIV
The righteous detest the dishonest; the wicked detest the upright.The Wise Walk
The Proper Talk
The Pure Heart"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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[Music] hi my name is Dean Dora and I serve as the lead Pastor here at Real Life Church our mission is to engage real life Embrace real people and ENC counter the real God I want to take a moment before we jump into the message just to say thank you first of all for engaging with this message we believe that this message has the power to lift you up and your faith and lead you to encounter God and the power and presence of the Holy Spirit if you haven't already we would love for you to take a second to like
And subscribe this way you can stay engaged and up to-date on the latest messages again thank you so much for joining us from Sacramento and Beyond we trust you'll be blessed by the message today I love the ministry of the choir being able to come and minister to us today hey I want to ask real quick we are we are running out of room in the second service and so if there is a seat next to you would you please scoot over to make room and if you do have a seat next to you would you just lift your hand for just a moment our ushers are
going to be looking and they're going to be able to find uh those seats because we have some more people trying to come in how know is it a good problem there a god problem right here I want to remind you that tomorrow is a very important day it's the day that we get to the day that we actually celebrate uh Martin Luther King Jr and his legacy and I want to encourage you uh do something go out of your way to honor the life of do Martin Luther King Jr in your words and in your Deeds uh also it's inauguration
day for our nation that's a big deal and I want to remind each and every one of us to do your kingdom Civic duties and that is to pray for our nation pray for our leaders of our nation pray for the leaders in our local community and those in our neighborhoods and our schools uh and lastly it's a big day cuz tomorrow is my son's birthday he's turning five my oldest son so there's a lot of things happening tomorrow praise God today we get to look back and celebrate the Legacy we get to celebrate
the achievements the work the effort that Dr Martin Luther King Jr put into place he was a man that truly walked out what he talked about he was was a man who walked out the principles of Godly living in both his words and his deeds now part of what set sets Dr Martin Luther King Jr apart is the fact that he did not simply walk out what he had envisioned or hoped for the world around him could you imagine a world today that we did not get to encounter or experience the gifting of his speech and oration the humility of his methodology
to see change happen in the lives of those around him and in our nation as a whole could you imagine that we would not be celebrating here today if it wasn't for the fact that he did not just simply walk out his life with humility that was a direct link to his relationship with the Lord but the fact that he didn't just walk it out but he also talked about it he also invited other people to go on the journey with him it would have been the worst uh uh or the best I should say kept secret if he lived his whole life the way he did
but never talked about it so that other people could catch on to what is happening thank God that Martin Luther King Jr didn't just walk but he also had the talk now on the flip side of that we've all encountered that person who's got all to talk and don't back nothing up man they be running that mouth all week and it finally gets to the moment where everything you've been talking about we we ready to see it because you've been talking a good game but you ain't got no walk with it
my wife and I our little our guilty pleasures we love to watch TV shows that are about marriage it's just it's I don't know it's bad it's bad that it's funny to us but we're like man these people need Jesus and therapy I don't know if we do it cuz we're like man we we doing all right if that's what they're dealing with but we was watching this show and and uh this newlywed couple and the husband he's just talking he's just running his mouth about every I used to I grew up riding horses and
I'm so adventurous and I love to do all these things and I don't think he knew and in about two days they were actually going to go ride horses and do these other things that he had been talking about he's done his whole life growing up as a child that brother ain't never ridden a horse in his life he was scared of the water he was scared of the wind she like you you said you Mr adventurous you you do all these things but in the moment he he could not walk the walk he simply was just a person who had a lot of talk none of us
want to be that person now that said we have to be careful to not assume that all we need to be successful is to walk the right walk and talk the right talk because there's actually a third layer to that and that is as believers who want to walk in principled living we must also possess the right heart it's not just about the right walk it's not just the right talk but we have to have the right heart disposition or we're missing it hear me to do the right thing things and to say the right things with the wrong
motives is not acceptable to God hold on Pastor you mean I could say everything right in the moment uhhuh and I could do everything right in that moment yeah you can but my heart didn't want to do it for the right things it's wrong and unacceptable to God exactly and see often times some of us we could fake it and talk it right when we know we need to talk it right others of us can be disciplined enough to even walk it out because we know that's what the Christian is supposed to do but God knows the condition of our
heart in which we are talking and walking God knows and he is concerned with the condition of our heart not just what is seen on the outside so we don't want to get caught up and having just the walk just the talk and not the heart title of my message today is WTH I remember as a young teenage boy when I first got my phone I had the Nokia phone that had the snake on it and see the way the phones work back then you had a prey your minutes I'd have to buy the little minutes card you have to go to Walmart
and buy it and and usually I can only get $15 or $20 and you know they charge you by the minute and everyone under 25 hear me they actually charge you for every text message 10 cents a text message and so quickly as I got my phone I was met with this dilemma one is they got this low character count like how am I supposed to really communicate I don't have enough characters but two it's costing me too much money I can't afford to text people so there was a real need that came to that that we needed that
young people needed we needed to have a shorter way to communicate just as much and so boom here came the text message acronyms that we live in today and now the younger gener they don't even text it anymore they talk it they just say it BRB Mom it's like what BT dubs it's like we don't and so we got these different things you know the the G2 GS the got to go to be right back if you're really old you still use LOL laugh out loud that's a good way to age yourself I'm guilty of it I'm guilty of
it thank you sir I'm guilty of it I always feel weird as a man texting lol to another man but I do it sometimes I'm just G to be honest all right moving on now if we are not in the know of what these things mean at their conception we can make the wrong assumption leading us to believe we understand what in fact we don't understand the meaning of it to see the same thing can be true for our lives as Believers we can make the wrong assumptions thinking that we are really one place when in fact we are far from
it as we continue in the Seven Pillars for principal living I want to give us pillars number three and four and it's this righteousness and just Justice require the walk talk and heart of God righteousness and Justice require the walk talk and heart of God if you were to take the time to study in the Book of Proverbs every account that you would see righteousness and Justice and you began to categorize them in which uh what was the context that it was said you will see a theme very quickly appear you will see that when righteousness and
Justice is mentioned a lot of the times it's mentioned when it comes to how we walk and it'll say righteousness goes down a right path or a straight path it will talk about our direction it'll talk about in the way in which we move from point A to point B likewise we will see that it'll talk about righteousness and Justice will transform our speech and talk in fact one of the Proverbs would say that the righteous person when they speak their words give nourishment to everyone who listens righteousness and Justice impacts our
speech and our mouths and thirdly you would see the category that righteousness and Justice leads to a transformed heart leads to a transformed mind it leads to God doing something inside of us that we could not do on our own accord and so because of this we want to find out how can we live righteously and with Justice and when we are doing it it does transform our walk it does trans transform our talk and it does transform our heart I asked I have a group of young men I do discipleship with on Monday nights and so I I asked
them I said hey I want you guys to answer me this what does righteousness and justice mean to you I said if it's good I'll share it on Sunday if it's not I won't even mention your name I got two today DJ said this to live a righteous life does not mean living perfectly that's impossible to live up to that thinking that following all the laws is your salvation it means to live a life faithful and just that honors God and brings glory to his name both privately and publicly doing this you display
God's light and set a holy example for other people to witness now as we've been meeting uh uh one of the weeks that we met I have to make a confession I had a coffee cup that was sitting on my desk now that coffee mug had been there for about two to three weeks it still had coffee in it now when we were were talking we were talking about the matters of the heart and the condition of the heart and and from the outside it was shiny it looked good it's that Yeti mug it just that stainless steel looks good feels good
and they're like oh okay that's cool and I said now if I open this lid y'all gonna see all this it was so bad it wasn't even a liquid anymore it was just a solid that's how some of us live though we like hey look at the righteousness on the outside look at look at the justice and how I talk on on the outside but please do not lift up that lid and look at the condition of my heart on the inside that's why I was so proud that DJ DJ recognized that it's not just about living righteously and justly in the
outside publicly but it's about doing so privately Houston helped us out he asked the question how do we walk in righteousness I think it's a question a fair question asked he said it's easy if you know how to listen to the correction of the holy spirit for righteous ways will be written on your heart it's easy if you know how to listen to the correction of the Holy Spirit and what is the byproduct of that that God's word would be written on our hearts Lord we thank you for this day I pray that you would help us God in our
walk and our talk and in our hearts Lord would you speak to us holy spirit in Jesus name amen Proverbs 29:27 says the righteous detest the dishonest and the wicked detest the upright it's important to see that there is a battle Waging War Between The Godly or the righteous and the detestable and the two of them hate each other the two of them had nothing to do with each other in fact where there is dishonesty there will not be righteous living on the flip side where there is righteous living there will not
be or there will not be dishonest gain or there will not be ill intentions and so if that is true that these two things are at odds with each other that means they both can't live inside of us that means we are either operating in unrighteousness or or or dishonesty or we are operating in a just righteous lifestyle how do you know which side of the battlefield you're on you have to look and truly examine at your walk your talk and your heart why would you want to be righteous I hope this is a question you ask yourself especially if
you're new to church please do not come to church and just listen to whatever that bald Pastor on stage said and take it as God's face value you need to go and read it why do you want to be righteous why do you want to live a righteous life I know why I want to live a righteous life because Proverbs 15:29 tells me that the Lord is far from the wicked but he hears the prayers of the righteous somebody's about to get Revelation for many of us sometimes you are wondering why God is not answering your prayer you've been praying you've
been crying out you've been pleading but it doesn't seem to get through it's because you might be on the wrong frequency and you're not focused on a righteous living and therefore he can't hear your prayer it's not that your prayer needs to change it's your lifestyle that needs to change it's not that you're saying the wrong things is that you're doing the wrong things I don't want my prayers to be hindered and there therefore I'm saying God help me to live a righteous
life because I want to hold on to what your word says Proverbs 213 the heart of this message says to do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice to do what is right and just is more acceptable than sacri think about that God is teaching you and I what his love language is come on y'all you ever have anybody try to try to bless you in a way that you just don't like being blessed this happens all the time I how many times you do marriage counseling pre-marriage counseling they're like
well I I I I cooked all these things and I cleaned and I did all these things for you to show you I love you and their their love language is not acts of service so to them it's like you didn't show me you love me because you didn't buy me anything it's gifts can I can I get you locked in on something God's love language is not gifts that's what the scripture just said his love language is not us bringing him gifts his love language is not us bringing him a a sacrifice his love language is not saying you can do
whatever you want Monday through Saturday but as long as you come in on Sunday and bring a little offering that he's going to be pleased with your life it's not gifts it's living right and living with just means that God is Desiring after each and every one of us that is his love language that we would do the right things and say the right things and be the right kind of person he is working inside of our Lives now sacrifices and offerings are not to be bribes to try to get God to overlook our character we cannot try to sacrifice our
way into right standing with God I'm going to give you some scripture before y'all start looking at me funny here we go Amos chapter 5 Amos chapter 5 I want you to understand the context of what's Happening Here is the Israelites are being Israelites they're being rebellious and what was happening specifically that the prophet Amos was coming to speak about was that they were not concerned with the poor they were not concerned with the people who were had needs they were living as elitists who would have their religious festivals
and their feasts they would hang out they would Fellowship they would be all to themselves meanwhile those around them were in need but they were living it up large see there was a difference in classes and they were accepting that hey we're just the upper class and we're going to be the upper class and we're not going to look at the needs of those people and it was in that context that God sends a prophet to say this in Amos chapter 5 starting in verse 21 prepare your hearts I hate and I despise your
religious festivals your assemblies are a stench to me even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings I will not accept them though you bring Choice Fellowship offerings I have no regard for them away with the noise of your songs I will not listen to the music of your Harps but let Justice roll on like a river and righteousness like a never failing stream I wonder where we have heard that quoted before Amos chapter 5 verse 24 was one of the few or the many uh scriptures that Martin Luther King Jr would often
quote it's a scripture that he would quote when he's addressing those at Washington in 1963 he would quote that in saying let Justice roll on like a river and righteousness like a never failing stream when he said these words what Amos was saying was that God is not concerned with all these gifts we try to bring him with all these sacrifices what he's concerned learned is are my people living as a river flowing over all those around them of righteousness and justice for all people this word righteousness
that he says in the Hebrew it literally means right and Equitable relationships between one another despite social differences Justice Means concrete actions you take to correct injustices so if we want to live righteously and and justly we have to understand understand this one is that we have to look past what are our social differences and treat people equal but secondly we have to have concrete actions to correct injustices around us Justice is not simply you doing what's right in your own little life and you
just cool and I'm I'm good Justice is seeing an injustice and having verifiable actions that you're taking to correct that that's what God is looking for the people of the people of God to do to live see we want to be be in the right standing relationship with both God and each other and we want there to be solid actions that would accompany our words that we'd be able to testify and say this is how I'm living out a righteous and just life I want to drill this point home a little bit further by giving you
this illustration I want you to imagine with me if you would there's a spouse who goes away on a business trip and while they are gone on the business trip they return to their significant and other only to present them with a brand new car in the driveway say honey look at this vehicle that I got you there significant other ask well it's not my birthday it's not our anniversary why why did you surprise me with the brand new car and to their surprise the response is well you see while I was away on my trip I was unfaithful to
you and now that I'm back in your presence I feel guilty and so I thought I could bring a gift to help make up for how I was living when I was away from you I think I just summed up the American Church oftentimes when we're away from God on a Sunday morning or we're spending time not in his presence we will live however we choose to live but we know Sunday is coming and all of a sudden we feel a little conviction or condemned and we say well God I well I better drop something in the offering I mean even it's just a little bit because
I got to make sure I'm in right standing with God or you know what I've been living bad I need to serve Pastor what do you need me to serve I'm going to start serving so I can feel better about how I'm living or you know what I went to the the women's Fellowship it was great we was hanging out we was talking and we tried to bring all these things to God to justify how we were living when we were away from God it's more acceptable to live right and to do right than it is to bring a sacrifice to
God without a heart for God our sacrifice it loses its Soul David said I will not give to the Lord that which cost me nothing if we do not have a heart for God in the things that we are doing it's like sacrifice without a soul there's there's no human to it there's no nature of us there's no part of us that's intimately connected to what we are doing we're just being robotic we're just performing acts God is Not Looking for our religion friends he's just looking for those who
will do right and do just things sometimes I think we over complicate it we try to overp spiritualize it it's just hey just let's live right let's live just let's honor the Lord with what we say and what we do and let's let him transform our hearts it's getting a low heavy we're going to go to the New Testament let's go to the New Testament let's go to Jesus cuz you know Jesus is softer right Jesus is Kinder Yahweh the Old Testament man he he cold blooded but we going to go to we going to go to
Jesus real quick let's see what Jesus had to say about this topic I know that's what some of y'all thinking he preaching the Old Testament what's the New Covenant say I got a new covenant for you here you go in Matthew chapter 9 Jesus is Calling Matthew to be his disciple and upon calling him to be his disciple he's having dinner in Matthew's house with a bunch of other tax collectors and Sinners and all the religious people are tur in their noses up how dare your Rabbi be eaten with all these Sinners
and Jesus says this in verse 13 but go and learn what this mean tell me I mean that's important if he tells us go and learn I desire Mercy not sacrifice for I have not come to call the righteous but Sinners Jesus was quoting Hosea 66 for I desire Mercy not sacrifice and an acknowledgment of God rather than a burnt offering Jesus doubled down on this principle that saying God is Not concerned with our sacrifices he is concerned with an acknowledgement of who he is in our life and how we walk and how we talk and how our heart is
transformed Jesus is saying look you need to go learn and figure out what this means it's important that you understand that I'm not Desiring sacrifice I am Desiring to pour out Mercy to those who are unrighteous I was struggling to prepare for this message because there is no possible way I could get up here in front of each of you and preach on this type of topic and not have to allow the Lord to do something in my own life because you know who's the most susceptible you know who's the most susceptible to this
pastors church leaders those of y'all who here every single Sunday and Wednesday because we can become so routine and I don't ever want My Worship or my offering to God to be just lip service I had to ask God to search my own heart out of fear as Pastor Dean talked about in the first message the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom out of fear that what would what would my life be if I got up here and didn't allow him to do the heart surgery to me first allow him to examine my walk James
how are you walking how are you talking and what is the condition of your heart because your job is requiring you to walk and talk all day but I'm concerned with your heart this is what Jesus is saying is I desire Mercy not sacrifice because it leads me to have to cry out to him and say God I need Mercy for this in my life I need your mercy in my life for my unrighteous Acts or thinking or my unjust scales that I have have I'm not exempt none of us are but God is looking for us to acknowledge Him rather than just bring a
burnt offering or a sacrifice righteousness and Justice possess these three things I'm going to give them to you I'm also giving you homework I ain't got time to go through them so you're going to have to go research in Book of Proverbs for yourself that's good that's that's the best thing a pastor could say you got to go read your Bible for yourself here we go three things that righteousness and Justice possess number one is there is a wise walk the righteous have a wise walk about them
they are on straight paths not crooked paths the wise know to go in the right direction they know where to go and they know where not to go there is a walk that accompanies the wise number two is that righteousness and Justice if you're living that out you have to have a the proper talk there is a sanctification that happens to your speech I'm not just saying stop cussing some times I'm just saying talking with faith that's what I love about our pastor he is the most Faith dude I know he talks Faith all day
he be saying stuff and I I know he knows it sometimes he be saying stuff we're like all right because he speaks out with faith it's one of the giftings that the Holy Spirit has given him as a man of Faith so you have to have the proper Talk number three is the pure heart and this is the one that we can Overlook because when we when we get the talk down we got to proper talk we got that wise walk and people are seeing our wise Walk we're like oh I'm good I don't have to keep digging deeper but God wants to unearth
something in us he wants to mine deeper than what we thought possible and he wants to produce in us a pure heart so you got to go into the Bible I promise you there scripture references all of those getting Proverbs hopefully you're already a part of our Proverbs reading plan a day and you've already seen some of these I want to close with this Martin Luther King Jr once said this Our Lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter Our Lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter you have
a choice today I have a choice today will we remain silent about the condition of our walk our talk in our heart but we just try to dismiss it look past it stay silent and not address it or will we make another choice to allow the Lord to do the work in our lives see so often we can we can just silently pass up or skip over the things that are so obvious and glaring to what the Lord wants to do in our Liv see for MLK the silence that he was speaking out against was the racism that was happening in America he refused to be silent about
that he refused to just accept that as the status quo and in fact he decided to push past to the point where we are celebrating the life that he lived and the Legacy he left because he decided to not remain silent we can choose to not remain silent about our own righteous living our own just scales that we live by so I want to invite you today to no longer be silent to no longer accept that it's the end but to choose another path to choose another choice and that is to speak to God and sayl I need you to examine my
walk today I need you to be honest with me about my talk and God I need you to perform surgery on my heart I need you to replace what is not of you and instill in me your principles your wisdom your love for righteousness and Justice God for all people so how does one become righteous can I tell you we can perform righteous and just acts but we can never work up our righteousness that we ourselves become righteous on our own sake the only way we become righteous is we place our Faith and Hope in Jesus Christ and he
covers Us and gives us his righteousness so that when God looks down at me he does not see James the one who did this this and that but what he sees is the righteousness of Jesus Christ that is covering me that is my atonement that is The Mercy Seat of Jesus covering me and saying it's the righteousness of Christ you're here today I want to give you a simple invitation to start walking in righteous living to start walking with Justice for the things God cares about I want to invite you to accept Jesus Christ as
your lord and savior would you close your eyes and bow your heads with me today I want to make an appeal for two types of people one you're here you've never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior but you want to do so today I want to give you that invitation or number two you're here today you've known God but you've walked away from God and today you're ready to return not halfway in halfway out but fully return to Jesus today I want to pray for you real quickly if that's you you're one of
those two would you just slip up your hand so I know who I'm praying for anyone at all thank you I see that hand thank you I see that hand thank you anyone else want to join these thank you I see that hand thank you right here thank you anyone else want to join these hallelujah thank you Jesus this is what we're going to do we're going to pray this prayer together it's going to be up on the screen I'm going to invite you to just join me as we pray this together on the count of three 1 23 dear Lord Jesus I know that I
am a sinner and I ask for your forgiveness I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead right now I turn from my sins and invite you to come into my heart and life I want to trust and follow you from this day forward I confess you as my personal Lord and Savior thank you for saving me in Jesus name amen come on can we celebrate and say amen for those who place their faith in Jesus Christ if that was you today uh our Usher should have placed something in your hand but we have an I have decided Banner in the back we would love to
place this I have decided packet in your hands has a new testament new believer's Bible in there we would love to pray for you but we are so glad that you may that decision today church family can we all stand to our feet I want to tell you these good news I gave you an illustration I was an ugly one to hear about a spouse returning saying they were Unfaithful with this car but I want you to know the way Jesus responds to that is very differently than how you and I respond to that see you and I would it would be a problem
let's just say that but what Jesus does this is the the the Majesty of who he is with his grace and mercy is Jesus looks at us in that exact condition and he says while you were out being unfaithful I was I was faithful while you were out doing what you were doing I want you to know I already took that to the cross and died for that and so we there is no therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus so please hear me don't let condemnation get you out of the Walk talk and heart race that God
wants you to be in but walk in the fullness of what he has can I pray for all of us I'm going to ask our prayer ministers to come up front I'm going to pray for all of us and then let us out father we thank you for what you're doing in our lives we thank you for your grace and for your mercy we thank you God that it's new for us each and every morning Lord I just pray for everyone under the sound of my voice that you God would do the heart surgery in our own lives that you would speak to us that
you would reveal to us areas in our lives in which we need to surrender to you God Lord let nobody walk out of here feeling condemned but let them walk out feeling convicted and empowered emboldened by the Holy Spirit to walk differently talk differently and have a heart God of gold and so Lord we thank you for what you're doing in Real Life Church God and we pray all these things in Jesus name thank you so much for watching this message we pray that it encourag you and strengthen your walk with God we also want to say thank you
to our generous donors through your gifts we're able to make a difference for God's Kingdom in our community and around the world if you'd like to partner with us in giving you can text and give the amount to 84321 or you can visit our website also catch up with all our social media platforms to stay up to date on all that's happening here at real life we'll see you next time [Music]