Trinity Baptist Church May 28, 2006
Guard Duty
Proverbs 4:23
Imagine a mountain village sitting at a high elevation. The little village is situated such that its water resources are very limited. Aside from collected rain water, it has only one source -- a sparkling clear, spring-fed lake just up from the village. Every person and animal in the village gets drinking water from that lake. Water for cooking, washing, crops -- and every other need, comes from that single source. There’s no where else to get the life-sustaining substance.
Because it’s the lone source, that spring-fed pool is essential and valuable. Every attempt is therefore made to protect it from any kind of pollution -- because of the significant impact the pollution would be so significant to everyone.
The Bible describes your heart in a similar way. It informs us that the heart is a critical center of life which touches and impacts all we are and all we do.
Scripture also paints a complex picture of human hearts. Your heart is the “real” you -- it’s everything we mean when we describe the inner person. The heart encompasses mind, emotions and will. But the Bible doesn’t ony address our hearts’ complexity -- it tells us they’ve been compromised and damaged.
Hearts are twisted because of the disease of sin. Jesus said in Matthew 15:19 -- it‘s the heart which churns out murder, adultery, stealing, lying, and slander. There’s more bad news.
In the OT Jeremiah wrote The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve. (Jeremiah 17:9, 10)
Jeremiah says, my heart is not just subverted by sin but it also has great capacity to deceive and be deceived. I can fool others. What’s even more amazing, I can even fool myself.
In it’s base state, God‘s Word says, no one can really know us as we really are -- we can’t even know ourselves.
So, I may assume I know my own heart -- but very often, I don’t. That’s why we say things, like, “I can’t believe I have such thoughts” or, “I didn’t know I was capable of that.“ Thomas Hobbes said, “The secret thoughts of a man run over all things holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave and light, without shame or blame.”
So my heart is complex -- and it’s twisted. But it also holds great power. The Bible describes the heart as inner capacity through which God connects us to Himself in worship and relationship or, my heart becomes the place where that relationship can be betrayed.
That happens when the heart is drawn away from Him. As a Christian, my heart becomes the core of God’s spiritual work. But all the way back in Deuteronomy 30 God warned us that the heart can get turned -- and move us toward sin, and finally it says, we’ll end up bowing to illegitimate altars.
So the heart isa critical component of our beings which we obviously can’t ignore. There’s a command tucked into Proverbs 4 -- and it provides us a major step to being “heart healthy”. That’s what I want to look at this morning. Jump back to Proverbs 4, with me, to verse 23. It appears as part of a plea for the reader to pursue God’s Wisdom: in the middle of that plea, it says, Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
First, the proverb tells us that
1. Protecting your heart is of highest priority.
The writer says Above all else. The original language is literally, above all keeping, keep your heart. Above everything else you might value -- value enough to take care of and post guard over -- your heart ought to be at the top of that list because of the vast consequences.
The most obvious reason for that top-of-the-list priority is that you have no other resource like your heart -- in nature or capacity or impact.
Let’s go back to that pristine lake. Why wouldn’t the village permit dairymen to let the cows graze nearby? Why not create jobs by letting a nice chemical factory build up there and dump their waste into it. Because the single, critical source touches all of life. The Proverb says -- listen -- that’s the issue with your heart.
Like I said, your heart is the most intimate and the most real part of you. It’s at the core of your being, the real component of who and what you are -- it sets your attitudes, drives your motives, determines your mind-set, houses your convictions and steers your emotions -- all of those and more are governed and stirred by the source that is your heart.
And, like I said, the heart is also where God’s Spirit dwells if you’re a Christian. As such it’s
the place, down deep inside you, where that most vital of determinations is made: whether you will walk with God, or not. Whether your God will sit enthroned in His rightful place, or whether some other will.
Somebody wrote this: “heart worship, heart love and heart obedience are far more difficult to recognize than the outward forms and duties of religion, because they are unseen, unrecognized and unrewarded of men. Not only is heart work difficult, it is constant.”
Of course, God is concerned about our outward behavior. External obedience -- doing what’s right -- is high on His list. But it all begins here, if it is to be authentic and long-lasting..
Therefore -- says our Proverb: prioritize the protecting of this most vital component.
Guard it, understand the kind of onslaughts which will come against it.
I mean, what more critical place could Satan ever strike? Where more will your our old fleshly urges go to again subvert and seize control?
Satan’s attacks and fleshly attacks are usually aimed at the heart -- repeatedly, subtly and deceptively; the attempt is made to draw the heart off course. Paul said to the Corinthians, I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:3)
The battle for your heart is like deceptive, guerilla warfare. It is unprovoked, relentless, hidden and crafty. That’s why the urging to recognize the crucial need to protect it. The word guard contains the idea of being both constant and determined. It’s not our inclination to think first of standing guard over our hearts. The summons is: you must think differently, you must take into account what God says about this resource. Not just sometimes, not just occasionally. Time will flash past, our heart habits will deep and determining the rest of life.
The proverb tells us secondly, that
2. Protecting your heart is a critical necessity.
What’s the big deal? Why must I protect my heart? The verse puts it like this: it is the wellspring of all of life. Other versions say, out of the heart flow the issues of life. There’s no thought, no direction, no motive -- certainly no behavior which don’t either pass through my heart.
This concept is a tough one for many of us. We’re 21st century materialists. We usually view life from the physical and material perspective. We think of life as the people we know, the houses we inhabit, a job, cars -- our physical environment: the sum total of all of that, we think of as life. We view the internal realm -- mind and emotions and other stuff -- as kind of driven by the outside world.
The Bible says that view 180 degrees out of sync. It’s not the external which governs the internal, it’s the unseen which is central and impacts everything visible. The Bible says, what comes out of me, has a beginning place inside me: this wellspring -- my heart which defines and shapes my life.
So what comes out -- reflects of what got in there -- either good clear pure stuff, or bitter, poisonous stuff. For instance: our communication -- Jesus said,
out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Our behavior isn’t isolated bits of unconnected, superficial brain activity; it’s by far not as simple as programmed responses. Behavior reflects what’s in my heart. My actions originate from what I’ve felt and thought and the things on which I’ve been meditating.
The words we say and the actions we perform don’t begin at the mouth or hands or the rest of the body -- they don’t originate in our environment. We can’t blame people for it.
They begin in my heart attitudes. It’s there where decisions get made. Decisions like, whether or not to worship God and walk with Him, or not, whether to live for Him, or for myself.
So, if I play around with lusts, if pride, or faulty assumptions about others, or any kind of garbage goes on, down in there where no one can see, sooner or later my heart betrays me -- it will come out, in some form or other. A pastor we had in Germany said “people like to play with sin -- but they wake up one day and find that sin now plays with them.”
The biblical principle is sowing and reaping. I will reap what I sowed. And therefore, I should not put into my heart what I don’t wish to get out. Paul said, sow to the flesh and you will reap the actions of the flesh.
That’s not a threat, it’s just a principle of the way things work. So if you hear yourself say things like "just this once" or “a little won‘t hurt me“ or "those kind of movies don’t affect me” realize, you’re putting seed in and you will get out what you put it.
Jesus said, the heart is full -- either of right things or wrong things. We don’t like to think in those terms? Because it means huge responsibility, more than ever before, maybe, for avoiding junk and pursuing right input.
A few months ago, I had some weird symptoms involving my heart. I went out to Nebraska Heart Institute and they used lots of different ways to check out and look at my heart. When they were through they knew what was there and what wasn’t.
Let me ask you? If we were able to do a thorough exam on your heart today, what would we discover? The signs are there to read. Issues in relationships. The kind of thoughts you think. The way you treat people. The words you speak. The progress you’re making toward Jesus Christ. Your struggle against sin. The obedience factor. What you value: your money, your time, your heart to serve. It’s when we wrestle with the outcomes, that we begin to realize how critical it is that the input into our hearts be good ones.
With that in mind, let’s consider that 3. Protecting your heart requires practical vigilance.
Some of you are thinking at this point, “I’m convinced: so how? If my heart is deep and potentially deceived as the Bible says -- and if it’s as full as I know it to be of the remains of my life before Christ, how do I deal with it to keep it moving in God’s direction?”
First,
Keep it full (Psalm 119:9-11, Colossians 3:16, 17)
The passages here on your outline address the idea of letting Scripture become our sustenance, our heart’s food, our filling. Psalm 119 promises that if we’re treasuring God’s word in our hearts, it will keep us from sinning against God. Colossians 3 says, let God’s Word live in you richly.
The saying is, “nature abhors a vacuum“. Our hearts abhor a vacuum. It’s like the big bare spot we had in our back yard last year. I knew if we didn’t fill that bare spot with grass seed and water it, it would get filled with weeds. If you don’t have a plan to fill your heart up every day, something or someone else will.
Your flesh and your enemy will give you a hand. The father of lies will work hand in hand with your flesh to keep your heart fat and satisfied on the "junk food” of empty deceptions which lots of us buy and consume like indiscriminate hogs. The substitute food pantry is never be empty. You’ll never have to go out and look long before your flesh will find ways to satisfy itself. And just like junk food kills your appetite for good food, junky thinking and emotions and entertainment and inputs will certainly suppress your appetite for the good nourishment of God’s Word.
If you think Bible study is boring or you never get anything out of it, or you don’t have time for to get into a class or a group, those are probably signs that you’ve been consuming at the wrong feeding station. Keep your heart full. Read, study, meditate, hear, memorize Scripture.
Keep it pure (Philippians 4:8)
Philippians 4:8 has tell us Paul understood the nature of the heart. He writes whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praise-worthy, think about such things.
Because of where my heart was before I met Christ, it gravitates to the lowest reaches of thinking. Purity requires engaging God’s pure, believing it, claiming it when competing thoughts come along.
Pure thinking will require me to pursue a close relationship with Christ, who is pure and holy and allowing His Spirit to transform my heart.
Purity comes from an outside source. I can’t just clean up my act. God’s Word and God’s Spirit will act together on my heart, cleanse it, fill it and then controlling it.
Keep your heart pure.
Third, Keep it undivided (Psalm 86:11-13)
Scripture tells us: reserve your heart for God alone. Psalm 119:2 says, Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek Him with all their heart.
Psalm 86, verses 11-13 say, Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. 12 I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. 13 For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths of the grave.
How do I get an undivided heart in practical ways? My intent and decision daily must center on getting time before God in the Word and prayer and asking God to become the focus of my mind and emotions and heart. Paul wrote, it’s involves taking every thought captive to the knowledge of Christ. Wrong thinking and wrong emotions simply cannot rule me anymore.
Truth must rule. Significant spiritual warfare will need to occur at this point. That means knowing the Word, claiming God’s promises, standing on Truth and standing my ground. An undivided heart means that my heart becomes my servant rather than the other way around.
It means directing it toward God every day, as David writes in the Psalms, filling it up and keeping it aimed along the lines of what God says instead of allowing the world to squeeze it and shape it. It will mean refusing to allow other things to keep me busy and other priorities to consume me.
Steps I need to take
So will you do a heart exam this week? Take a look at what’s there, what’s been coming out. And pointedly, examine what defines what you’re putting into it?
Ask yourself: is it still held captive by old emotions, historical relationships, lies? Are you feeding from the garbage cans of popular cultural? Sowing seeds that you really don’t want to reap someday in the form of words, habits, relationships?
Would you break the patterns today? Just begin. Determine that your heart will no longer belong to whoever and whatever offers to fill it for you. Begin today directing it to Christ.
Let God and His Word and Holy Spirit have control today. Do whatever it takes. But begin protecting the most complex and vital and far-reaching part of you.
