As the Lord says, if you want to live upright before me and walk with a perfect heart, then you have to look at yourself. Look at your heart and say, “Lord, take away everything that is not perfect, take away everything that is displeasing in Your sight and Lord remove all the high places from my life. I will remove it.” God is not going to turn you around and God is not just going to open your heart and take away lying, throw away stealing and God is not going to do the cleaning work for you. We have to clean, we have to cleanse our temple, we have to do it. It’s our job. And that is the reason why we see in the New Testament that Jesus Christ when He went to the temple when He saw the money-changers sitting there, what He did was, He took a whip and He whipped everything that was there basically and He overturned the table and the money was scattered all over the place. Do you know why? Because nobody did that and He did it. He had to do that because nobody did it, nobody had the zeal that Jesus had and so He had to do that. He didn’t say “Oh, My Father will cleanse this temple and I will just wait” No!
So the same way, in our heart, our body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, in our heart, we have to look at our heart in God's presence and say, “Lord, as You cleanse me, I will cleanse my temple.” And look at the motives, many times why you do certain things? What is the reason behind why you are doing what you are doing? May the Spirit of the Lord speak to you and may He examine your motives. If Jesus is standing in front of you and your heart is an open book. He is standing. But if you can just see it, will you do things the way you are doing? We can be tithing, we can be going to church regularly, we can be going to bible studies, we can be going to fasting prayer, we can be taking Sunday school, we can be taking youth meeting, we can be preaching, we can be doing all kinds of things. Those are the right actions. But is your heart perfect toward the Lord? May the Lord speak to us. May that question ring in our ears, and in our hearts and in our minds throughout this week, “Is my heart perfect toward the living God?” I can have the right actions but my heart may not be 100 % loyal to the Lord.
When there is a divided allegiance, we are bound to fall somewhere down the road; we will fall. So we have to make sure that our allegiance is 100% to the Almighty God and to Him alone we will bow and not to anything else. Not to fame, not to vainglory, not to vanity. And we can say, I can excuse these things, certain things I can excuse - “Ah that’s no big deal.” But those are the things that the Father in Heaven will look at and say “These are your high places. Remove them from your life”. And when we remove them from our lives we will experience true freedom. Up until then, we will never, we will never experience that because we are still bound by certain things that we have allowed ourselves to be bound to. So let’s give ourselves 100% percent to the Lord, 100% percent, and say, “Lord, I am all yours. All to Jesus I surrender. All to him I freely give.” The reason why I freely give everything is that I cannot hold anything. And if I have anything, that's not going to profit me because He is the one Who Is Everything. And a lot of times I think to myself, “He is God, who are we to give ourselves to Him and Him even taking us.” He is the Almighty God and He is such a Holy God and He is so great. And yet He says, “Come to me and I will take you. Give yourself to me 100% and I will take you”. Isn't that a privilege for us to give ourselves 100% percent to the King of kings and the Lord of lords?
So let’s look at it from an honest heart, an honest heart like we saw several weeks back, is good ground. An honest heart is a good ground or the good ground is the honest heart that will bear 100 fold fruit. So that honest heart, that good ground will be a ground that will be perfect toward the Lord. Their heart will be perfect toward the Lord. That means when something is not right, their heart will say, “There is something wrong about this, even if I do not know whether it is fully right or not, I am not going to go that side.” But a heart that is not perfect towards the Lord, a heart that is not loyal to the Lord what will happen is, it’s going to look at the same thing and it’s going to say, “I don’t know if this is right or wrong, so I am going to go with it.” That’s the difference. A perfect heart will say, “If I am not sure that if this is pleasing to the Lord, then I will not do it.” But a heart that is not loyal to the Lord will say, “I do not know if this is displeasing to the Lord, so I will go ahead and do it”. So it will look for excuses. So we have to see, “Lord, if I have the slightest doubt, like Apostle Paul says, “whatsoever is not of faith is sin”. So if we know something is not right, and if we do not know that something is not right, but if we have an uncomfortable feeling, which is given to our hearts by the Holy Spirit; when we have that discomfort, a perfect heart will say, “I am not going that way, even if it will cost me, I am not going to go that way”. So may the Spirit of the Lord speak to us tonight and may our hearts be perfect, not just our actions but our hearts be perfect to the Living God.
And secondly, when we give diligence, heed to what God will say through Gods' people. And never say, “I know everything. Who are you to tell me this?” Even if you say something that will save their life, there are people who will say, “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear you speak. Leave me alone. I will do what I want to do”. That is the way of a man who is determined to go downhill. So we have to see, Is the Lord sending a Nathan in your life? Is the Lord sending a prophet, as He said to Amaziah, “Take heed, take heed, stop!” We can't just run and keep running like a horse that does not have a sense that has to be stopped by manpower. But we have to stop ourselves and we have to say, “God is sending somebody my way, I better stop. I better listen. I better listen to what they are saying and repent.” Because that is the very grace of God that is the grace that is being revealed through that person in your life.
And those are the people who will continue in the path to glory, like King David. King David fell miserably- he murdered, he committed adultery, he did what was displeasing in the sight of the Lord and in the sight of the people. But what David did was, David confessed and he never went back to it again. He died as an upright man; he never went back to do it again. So there are people these days who always point out David and who are living continuously in adultery, who are watching pornography, and who live a filthy life but they say, “Oh David! David committed adultery and God said he was a man after God's own heart' ”. Not when he was in sin. David sinned, but only once. So we have to realize that David came out of it and that was it. He was a perfect man before. He did not guard himself therefore he fell. But not after that.
So let’s not make excuses to sinning. Let's stop where we are and let’s look to the Lord with an honest heart and say, “Lord, I have failed you miserably. Lord, I have not been walking right before you. Father, forgive me, let me turn my course completely, completely around.” A complete U-turn before the Lord and face the Lord. If we had our backs facing the Lord, may we turn and turn around completely and look to the Lord, and ask him for help and mercy because only He can give us. Only He can give us that grace and that mercy that will continue to take us home to glory.
So, let’s just read the last few verses from this passage. Let's read from verse 17, 2 Chronicles 25: 17 to 24 [King James Version].
17 Then Amaziah king of Judah took advice, and sent to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us see one another in the face.
18 And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.
19 Thou sayest, Lo, thou hast smitten the Edomites; and thine heart lifteth thee up to boast: abide now at home; why shouldest thou meddle to thine hurt, that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee?
20 But Amaziah would not hear; for it came of God, that he might deliver them into the hand of their enemies, because they sought after the gods of Edom.
21 So Joash the king of Israel went up; and they saw one another in the face, both he and Amaziah king of Judah, at Bethshemesh, which belongeth to Judah.
22 And Judah was put to the worse before Israel, and they fled every man to his tent.
23 And Joash the king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, at Bethshemesh, and brought him to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits.
24 And he took all the gold and the silver, and all the vessels that were found in the house of God with Obededom, and the treasures of the king's house, the hostages also, and returned to Samaria."
So we see here about a man, whose actions started well, but see how he completely went away. Disobedient, went to idolatry, and did not listen when God sent him the prophet. And he went to war and his whole country lost because of him. So we are to take this as a lesson. When we do not listen, what happens is; our heart gets proud and we sin, pride enters. When pride enters it says, “I am not going to listen to what the Lord is saying”, then defeat comes. And when the defeat comes, not only you, your family, your neighbors, everybody around you, they all go through that defeat. So sin does not only affect you. Sin is never personal. You can never say “Ok, I am sinning; you don’t have to worry about it because I will pay the consequence. I will face it.” But sin will not only cost you, but it will cost your husband, it will cost your wife, it will cost your children, it will cost your parents, it will cost everything, it will cost your soul.
