Well, we were considering earlier the solemn and earnest plea of a father to his son in the words of Proverbs 4.23. And these are really the words of God to us. And he is saying to us, keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." So these are words that come to us from God and words that we cannot afford to ignore. I remind you again of the NIV translation, everything we do flows from our heart is the idea. And if that's the case, then if we're not guarding our hearts and keeping our hearts, then to some extent, everything that we do in our lives is going to be affected, negatively affected, right? So that's the logic. So it's vital that we keep our hearts and we need to understand even what that means. And that's what we're seeking to do here. So in this second message, I wanna consider what this vital heart work looks like. So I've entitled this message, How to Keep Your Hearts. Let's just have another brief word of prayer. Our God, as we come again to your word, we ask that you would open it up to us, help us by your Holy Spirit. We pray now that you would give us help to be attentive to your word, and we ask that you would Keep the evil one at bay, who would seek to snatch up the word as it's sown. And we pray that you would plant your word deep in our hearts. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, most people today enjoy and appreciate a good how-to video. Most of my Google searches will begin, I don't know about most, but an awful lot of them begin with how-to. Looking up how to do something. So whether that's fixing my toilet. I'm a homeowner now, so I got to fix the toilet now. I can't just call a guy that comes and does it. How to fix my lawnmower. How to make cold brew coffee. You want to do a good push-up and use right form. Well, you can watch a video for that. In any number of things, there are how-to videos everywhere. And you all know this. This is the generation that looks up, we look up how-to videos. There's a reason that how-to videos are so popular online, because people often don't just enjoy how-to videos, but they really do want and need good practical instruction, how to do this or how to do that. And that's true even in the Christian life, that we often not only want but need good practical how-to instruction. Think about the disciples with Jesus. This is recorded in Luke when we have the Lord's Prayer there, but we know that the disciples came to Jesus wanting to know how to pray. John taught his disciples, can you teach us how to pray, Jesus, because they knew he was a man of prayer. And so he's giving them a model prayer, which is very practical and very helpful. But when it comes to the Christian life, we need to also remember that it's not very often, and I would say it's rarely like a how-to video, step-by-step, do this, then do this. So whether it's you're wanting to know how to love your neighbor better or what we're talking about, keeping the heart, it's rarely just a simple follow this step and this step and then this step and then Here you go, you've done it. It's not like that. And I think that will be demonstrated as we are considering this idea of how do we keep our hearts. Now, before we get to this, just very briefly to remind us of the what. What are we talking about? There's the duty commanded in the text, keep your heart. We need to guard our hearts and watch over our hearts. And we considered how our heart is the core of who we are. our personal being, the center of our being, the, quoting again, the central dynamic core of your personal life. That's what we're talking about. The controlling source of all that you do in expression of what you are. Guard that. What was the manner? The manner is with all diligence. So we need to be diligent. And it is above all else that we ought to keep our hearts. That's the stress of the language in the original. Whatever you keep, keep your heart, guard it. And then the reason that is given is for out of it springs the issue of life. So that means everything that we do, every word that you speak, every thought that you have, every emotion that you express or don't express, all of this comes from your heart. So that is just briefly what we considered earlier today. But we want to think about now, how do we do this? How do we go about keeping our hearts? What does this involve? And I want us first to just think about two broad categories, and I did mention them earlier. But there is a positive focus to keeping the heart, and it's simply keeping the heart with God. So this is a matter of your walk with God, your communion with God and fellowship with Him. So the positive aspect, keeping your heart with God in close fellowship. The negative aspect, if you want to think of it that way, is keeping your heart from sin. So keeping it with God and from sin. But we can get more specific and talk about Some things that I hope will be very practical for you in thinking through, how do we do this? And again, I was using Flaval as a helpful guide in these headings. He gives what he calls some particulars. What are the things involved in keeping the heart? And there's five things that I want us to consider tonight. And even though as I go through these, you'll probably notice that the order is not arbitrary. I want to remind you again, it's not just, okay, do this and then do this and then do this. I think that will be obvious as we begin to consider these things. The first one of these is self-examination. So self-examination, and to put that in Flavel's words, he says, we need to frequently observe the frame or the condition of our hearts. Somebody today threw out the term spiritual audit, and maybe, I don't know, I've never heard that before, but maybe that's the same idea, similar, right? This is the spiritual audit, the self-examination. We need to be doing this frequently. Now what this doesn't mean is, if you're familiar with the term navel-gazing, that's not what this is. This isn't excessive self-absorbed observation and contemplation. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not what the Bible would encourage. But we need to ask ourselves, how are we doing? How can anything be kept and guarded if we don't have a watch over it? And we know this, if a father is going to protect his family, and not just from somebody who's going to break in and steal things, but I mean from the evil one and the influences of Satan in his family, he has to be watchful over his family. A farmer's got to be watchful over his animals. He's going to make his rounds around the farm and check on them regularly. A pastor needs to know his sheep, his flock, if he's going to guard the flock that has been put under his care. So we need self-watchfulness in our life, just like in these other areas. If something's to be kept and guarded, we need to watch it. If our hearts are to be well kept and guarded, we need to have this self-watch and self-examination. Be diligent, it says in Proverbs 27, 23, be diligent to know the state of your flocks and attend to your herds. And we could put that in the language of keeping the heart and say, be diligent to know the state of your soul and attend to your heart. Paul's words to Timothy come to mind as well. He says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4.16, now Timothy was a pastor, but this doesn't just apply to pastors. He says, take heed to yourself. Timothy, watch out for yourself. And that's a word for all of us too. We need to take heed to ourselves. How often do we really observe the state of our hearts? Do we really stop? Because we live in a busy world. We live in a digital age. There's many distractions. We could be distracted from the time we wake up, literally from the time we wake up to when we go to bed. And often it's this. And we don't even think deeply about our own hearts and how we're doing. So do we really ask these questions? So here I'm trying to encourage us, take the time to really ask yourself, how am I doing? How is my heart? Is it well? Now, the practical question is, well, how do we evaluate that? Well, there's biblical things that we can consider. We can't just look at the outward forms of religion. So for example, we go to church, we worship, you read your Bible, you pray. These things need to be in place. So, if you're not praying, you're not reading scripture, you're not going to church, if you don't have what we might call the outward forms, then that tells you, yes, there is something wrong here. But, just having the outward forms in place is not enough. You saw that with Jesus and the Pharisees, right? They were all about the outward forms, but they didn't have true heart religion. So it's not enough just to say, well, I've checked off all the boxes, therefore my heart is okay. We need to be asking ourselves, okay, when we're engaged in these things, when you worship God on the Lord's day and you gather with God's people, are you really bringing your heart? Are you coming before God? Are you diligent to prepare yourself for that, considering that you're here to meet with God and to hear from God? Think about those things. Consider, am I just going through the motions, which we all feel at times. We all get in those ruts and we feel like we're just going through the motions. I'm just going through the motions. Well, don't ignore that. Ask, is there something, is there something that I'm not, am I not keeping my heart? Why do I feel dull in these spiritual exercises as regular as you might be in all of that? Consider also the issues of your life. And remember, this is the things that come out of your life. Consider the issues of your life. So your speech, behavior, attitude, emotions, your patterns of thought, and especially in your interactions with others. If you have found yourself becoming more critical, more impatient with people, constantly talking about, maybe not constantly, but you find yourself more and more wanting to talk about others and what's wrong with them. You know, these kinds of things. If you find yourself being more volcanic and explosive in your temper or always going off on people, these are some issues in your life that are an indication that something's not right with the heart. There's issues that aren't good. Are you becoming more vulgar in your speech or worldly? Things like this. Do you find yourself, rather than speaking of the things that might edify one another, as the Bible says we ought to do, speaking more of things that are divisive. And these are the kinds of questions you can ask using the scriptures. Take Galatians 5. Here's another text. This is where you have the fruit of the Spirit. And before that, the works of the flesh are laid out. And go before God honestly. And I've done this many times and it can be painful because you look at the fruits of the flesh and you say, I see that in my life. And I don't see enough of this self-control or patience that are the fruit of the Spirit. But take the Word of God and get on your knees and ask God and say, Search me, O God, and really show me. Are these fruits of the Spirit abounding in my life or are there more works of the flesh? So I'm just giving some examples. There are ways biblically that we can evaluate the state of our hearts. And it's very helpful to have somebody who knows you well and loves you well to speak into these things because we're very easily self-deceived. And this is another reason if you're not part of a good church, find a good church and really become part of the life of that church, where you can be known and loved and cared for, because we need that. Maybe good friendships are gonna start here. And you have someone that knows you well and loves you well, and you can say, hey, are you seeing this in my life? Or what are you seeing that's concerning? Or maybe encouraging. Now your regular reading and meditating on the Word of God will help you in this. So just again to encourage you in that. Recently I was reading through and meditating on Psalms 42 and 43. And there the context is the psalmist is isolated from the worship of God. And as the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for you, oh God. He wants to come before God in worship. And that for me was something I had to wrestle with before God and say, do I have this kind of longing for God and in particular the worship of God to meet with God? So you study the scriptures and you examine your heart as you do it. So we need to, do this, self-examination, regular self-examination. This is part of keeping the heart and how we keep our hearts. But that's not an end in itself, which leads us to the second thing. So frequent self-examination, but secondly, deep humiliation. Deep humiliation is part of keeping our hearts. And Flavel puts it this way, deep humiliation for heart evils and heart disorders. So by God's grace your self-examination has been fruitful and yet it's been painful because God has revealed some things maybe that aren't quite right and there's issues in your life showing that your heart in some way is disorderly and maybe there's something wrong. So what do you do to this? How do you respond? Do you just lose hope and despair and say, I'm never going to stop fighting this sin. I'll never get over this. And there's a sense in which that's true. But I'm talking about a defeatist attitude, say there's no hope. Or do you wallow in it? Well, no, obviously what we ought to do is to be deeply humbled when God in mercy shows us something of the state of our heart that ought to humble us, we ought to be humbled. before God. That is the right response, the broken and contrite heart, the weeping over our sins, which we find in the Word of God, and the remaining corruption that we find there. And yet all the time while you're weeping over your sins, not despairing at all that those sins are covered by the blood of Christ, and also that God can work in you to put those sins to death. Now, there's many biblical examples. One of them is Hezekiah. Hezekiah, we read, humbled himself for the pride of his heart. That's in 2 Chronicles 32, 26. Humbled himself for the pride of his heart. When God spoke to Solomon at the dedication of the temple, we have these words in 2 Chronicles 7, well-known words. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land. So you see the humbling. They have wicked ways, but they need to humble themselves and return to God. You think of Job's humbling of himself before God in chapter 40 at the end of Job. You think of the tax collector who would not raise his eyes to heaven, he just beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me, a sinner. That's something of what humbling ourselves looks like. But there's one example that I believe deserves special attention. And that is the example of King David. And I mentioned this earlier in the first session. But King David fell greatly into great sin. I'm sure he never imagined that he would be a murderer and an adulterer and be trying to cover all of this up. And it just, it got worse and worse and worse. So King David is an example. We look at his horrible backsliding and we see that this is a tragic issue or outcome or overflow of David not keeping his heart with all diligence. And so he ended up in this situation. And he remained in this backslidden state for at least nine months. So there was some time that David was backslidden until you remember the prophet who came to him, Nathan. And he says, you're the man, he tells him that parable. And then God struck him. And we find how deeply humble David was. And he's an example. And I want us to turn to Psalm 51. Because Psalm 51 gives us a pattern for us. And much of the Psalms, we have the Lord's Prayer as a model and a pattern for our prayers, but much of the Psalms are here to guide us. And really all the word of God is a guide for us in our prayers as we go before God. So here is David. And he has seen not only the evils of his heart, but he has seen all that has happened, and he says, God, I've sinned against you. If God has revealed something of the evils of your own heart, or maybe as you go and think of this, and you find out, you know, I've not been keeping my heart, there are things here that ought not to be there, let me encourage you to come to Psalm 51. Early on in my Christian life, somebody told me this, and it stuck with me, but to make Psalm 51 your own prayer, in those times when you need to pour out your heart to God in confession and asking for mercy. But look at Psalm 51, how David humbles himself. First of all, crying out to mercy for God, have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sins. So there's deep humility in this, even recognizing, God, I need to be washed thoroughly. He says, for I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. So take up that prayer as your own prayer, and not just to repeat it, but really pray that until you feel that that has become your own prayer and the cry of your own heart. So we've examined ourselves, and when we've done that and God has exposed things in our heart that isn't good, and we've truly humbled ourselves before God, there's still heart work to be done. And we even see it here in David. And that is on our knees in prayer. That's the third thing I want to consider is earnest prayer. So we keep our hearts by giving ourselves to earnest prayer, to repeated prayer, to persistent prayer. And we have several passages we could look at in this. We need to pray specifically flavor uses the language of grace purifying and he says rectifying grace and all that means is to set right what's wrong so we ask God in our prayers that he would pour out His grace upon us. Not only do we need mercy, so God have mercy on me for my sins. So we go to God, we have the throne of grace where we might obtain mercy and find grace to help us in time of need. Well, this is where we say, God, now I need your grace to set right that which is not right in my heart and to purify that which is not pure and holy in your sight. So as we're thinking of this, we're reminded of that phrase of Flavel's that the duty is ours, but the power is of God. And that comes out especially as we're laboring in prayer, because real prayer is labor. It's work, as you know. And yet we're utterly dependent on God. We're coming before him and saying, we need you to do something in us and for us that we cannot do in ourselves and for ourselves. So if you take nothing else away from what I'm saying, I hope you take away how vital prayer is in the keeping of our hearts. If we're not giving ourselves to prayer, regular prayer, even focus prayer, persistent prayer, we are probably not keeping our hearts very well. And certainly if you find yourself being prayerless, you are being careless in keeping your heart. You can be sure of that. So this is a vital duty in the keeping of our hearts. And again, we can turn to David's prayer, Psalm 51, where he not only humbled himself confessing and pleading, but look at verse 10. David understood What was at the root? He says, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. You might even want to memorize portions of this psalm or the whole psalm, but that's essentially what I'm talking about. This kind of prayer, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. That's the kind of earnest prayer for a better heart that we need. And it's hard work to be earnest and persistent in prayer, but we have every encouragement to give ourselves to this. Think about it. Who are we going to in prayer? We're going to God. Who is God? He is the creator and sustainer of everything. He made you. He upholds you now. And not only that, He's your Father who loves you. So you can come to Him as a child to a father. He's ready to help you and He's able to help you. He is the one guiding all things. He's sovereign. This is who we're coming to pray to. And He loves you. And so he's ready to listen. What is he like? You ask questions like that. What kind of access do we have to the Father through Jesus Christ? It's a bold access, that access to the throne of grace. And then we have many scriptures that would encourage us in prayer. You think of James 5.16, the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Let me read a portion. You can turn there if you like. This is Matthew chapter seven. We're thinking about encouragements to give ourselves to earnest prayer because it's not easy. But this is a text that encourages us. In Matthew chapter seven, verses seven to 11, Jesus is speaking here, sermon on the mount. He says, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him? So we have encouragement to keep knocking and to keep seeking. It's possible that we can get discouraged. Maybe some of you tonight are because you say, there's this sin in my life. Maybe it's a sin of the heart that nobody else knows, but it's persistent and you feel that you cannot put this sin to death. Well, keep seeking, keep asking, keep knocking, keep crying out to God and keep fighting it. You have to remind yourself as long as there's a throne of grace open, There's hope and I ought not to despair. And remember what God wants to do in your life. If he's begun a good work, he's going to complete it. And remember, as he's making you more and more like Christ, think of that. He's making you more like Christ. That's his goal in saving you, not to just save you and then leave you. and in a pathetic state and not growing and not thriving and not joyful and enjoying God and your salvation, He wants you to be more and more like Christ. So that should encourage you too. When you say, I feel like I'll never get over this sin, you say, God has saved me. Christ has died for me that I might not live in sin, but no longer live in sin. died with him and been raised. So these are the kinds of things you should remind yourself. And I'm just trying to encourage someone here maybe who's discouraged about some sin in your life. Keep praying and crying out to God and do not despair because God wants to work in you to sanctify you. That is his will to sanctify you and make you more holy like Jesus. Now this isn't gonna be easy. And this is where this how-to idea breaks down because, you know, when you look up these videos online, they can be relatively simple. You follow these steps. But there's nothing easy that I can give you when it comes to these sorts of things. Heart work is hard work. If we're really going to pray and humble ourselves, there's just no way around it. This is flesh-withering work. difficult work. It requires our whole being and it's impossible apart from the grace and power of God. in us. You have so many things in the Word of God to help you in your prayers. If you feel like you've gotten in a rut with your prayers, turn to the Scriptures. Spend some time reading Scripture before you pray and that might help you and pray through Scripture. But there are specific prayers other than Psalm 51 that can help you specifically here as we're talking about keeping the heart. Cleanse me from secret faults. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. That's Psalm 19, verse 12, and then verse 14. There's a prayer. There's something for you to memorize. Many times I'm going to meet with someone, I might even pray that. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Unite my heart to fear your name. That's Psalm 8611. That's a prayer. That's something to memorize and to pray to God and to really pray it. Lord, unite my heart to fear your name, that I might walk in the fear of you and shun evil. Flavel says this. This is a prayer. Oh, for a heart to love God more. to hate sin more, to walk more evenly or consistently with God. Lord, deny not to me such a heart. Whatever you deny me, give me a heart to fear you, to love and delight in you. But I want us now to consider that joining to our fervent prayers, we should have a fresh resolve. So this is the next point. So self-examination. deep humiliation, earnest prayer, but fresh resolve. And Flavel puts it in these words. He says that we should impose strong engagements upon ourselves to walk more carefully with God and to avoid the occasions whereby the heart might be induced to sin. I know that's a lot, but he's saying impose strong engagements upon ourselves to walk more carefully with God and essentially to avoid sin, to avoid temptation. Now, I believe this is just a further application of with all diligence. So as you're meditating on this text, what does it mean for me to be diligent and keeping my heart? Well, part of it is the imposing of what he calls strong engagements. We might say holy commitments, imposing those commitments upon yourself. We might say resolutions, solemn resolutions, whatever language you want to use. This can be very helpful in the Christian life. And when we look to the Bible, we find, for example, in Deuteronomy, there's several commands for God's people to be very careful and to, quote, be careful to do or to observe the commandment of God. Joshua, Moses had died, Joshua's gonna lead the people into the promised land. Well, his words to Israel in his farewell address before his death was to take careful heed to yourselves that you love the Lord your God. What he's saying is you need to make a solemn commitment and be careful that you keep yourself in the way of obedience. That's essentially what he is saying there. Psalm 119, if you want to turn there, is just an example that I thought of, one of many places in the scripture where we see godly men and godly women making these kinds of solemn resolutions. In Psalm 119, I should tell you where, because it's a big psalm, verses 10 and 11, and then verses 15 and 16. I believe we see here, resolve. With my whole heart, I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Look at verses 15 and 16. I will meditate on your precepts and contemplate your ways. I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. So there's resolve here. The most striking example, to me, is found in 2 Kings. In 2 Kings chapter 23. You can just listen if you like, but this is the example of King Josiah. When the law had been rediscovered in Israel, and King Josiah The law is read and he humbles himself and there's these reforms and he restores true worship. But listen to the fresh resolve of King Josiah to keep his heart with God and to keep his heart from sin. And he brings all the people in with him. Now the king sent them to gather all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to gather them to him. The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah. And with him all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant, which had been found in the house of the Lord. Then the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and with all his soul to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people took a stand for the covenant. So you see, he's saying, I am committing, and in this case, even publicly, to walk closely with God to keep his commandments and statutes with all of his heart. Those are the kind of holy commitments or fresh resolve that can be very helpful in the Christian life. And I'm calling it fresh resolve because this is when we have discovered that our hearts are not really right before God. And we've humbled ourselves and we're crying out to God. But then, fresh resolve that you are going to keep your heart, God helping you, keep your heart with all diligence, keep it with God and from sin. Now, I think for myself, and you probably will find this to be the case, that it's often helpful to be specific so that it's good to say, I'm going to obey the Lord. Or I, you might take up the language of Ezra, which really animated me, The first time I read through the scriptures where Ezra, he set his heart, basically he devoted himself to study the word of God, to do it and to teach others. And it's good to say, I resolve to do that. That's what I want to do. God, I want to study your word. I want to be obedient. I want to help others. But it might also be helpful to be more specific and say, OK, how am I going to do that? What kind of commitments am I going to put myself under? These strong engagements that you impose upon yourself. It might be very simple and just say, I'm gonna make this a priority. I'm gonna set my alarm 30 minutes earlier, get to bed a little bit earlier, so that I can get up and spend time in the word of God and really begin to hide it in my heart. So it might be helpful for you to have some specific commitments. And you say, God helping me, I will resolve to do this, that I might keep my heart with all diligence. You might even simply resolve and say, you know what? I'm not going to check my phone until I've spent time with the Lord and let the world just bombard me with all kinds of distractions. So you just keep that aside. Those are just some examples. There's no one size fits all here, but there are resolutions. resolutions to keep our hearts with God, but the other part of it is to keep our heart from sin. So you might need to make resolutions, commitments, to somehow keep yourself from temptation. And this is where you have to know yourself. This is where the self-examination helps too. And you know the ways that you have fallen and when you've fallen and how you've fallen, and you can respond and you can make commitments to avoid those temptations. You're probably not in Proverbs, but you could turn back to our text or you could just listen to me, Proverbs chapter four, not long before our text on keeping the heart, The father still speaking to his son is telling him essentially to avoid situations in which you will fall into sin. Do not enter the path of the wicked and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it. Do not travel on it. Turn away from it and pass on. He's saying don't even go down there. Don't go down that road, that's where it leads. And then just a little bit after that in Proverbs chapter five, he is speaking to his son and he says these words. Remove your way far from her. This is verse eight of chapter five from the Immoral Woman. Remove your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel one. This is very vivid. He's saying, don't even go near the door of her house. So you apply that to all sin. Whatever sin you might be battling, you need to think of it. Don't even go near the door, whatever that is. So there might be some engagements to impose upon yourself here. The words of Jesus, and these were very helpful and practical words for me early on in my Christian life, and continue to be words that we need to hear and take seriously. Jesus says, if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into the everlasting fire." And he also talks about your eye and so forth. Now, he's not talking, of course, about self-mutilation. What he's saying, are there things in your life, even things very precious that you would not want to do without, and yet, if they are causing you to sin, he's saying, get rid of them. far better to be, it might be your phone, I don't know, saying far better if this is causing you to stumble or keeping you away from God and pursuing God, saying pluck it out, get rid of it, however precious it might be. So we need to hear those words. And you might need to have some fresh resolve, some solemn commitment with God that you're going to not put yourself in the way of temptation. and also fresh resolve to pursue God and to keep a close walk with Him. The last thing that I want us to consider is we're thinking about how do we keep our hearts, self-examination, deep humiliation, earnest prayer, fresh resolve. But here I'm calling it godly fear. But the idea is that we need to live our lives in the presence of God. Some of you that live in your ministries, R.C. Sproul, if you're familiar with the phrase quorum deo. And that the idea of that Latin phrase is that we live our lives before the face of God, in the presence of God. Now, this is true whether we realize it or not. But the point is that we need to cultivate this realization that in fact we do live our lives in the presence of God. So Flavel puts it this way, realize God's presence with you, set the Lord always before you. Think about King David. When King David first saw Bathsheba, there was nobody there maybe. I don't know who would have been with him, but what he didn't have in that moment was a godly fear. Because if he really had a sense of God's presence with him there, he would not have even entertained that sin. And so if we're living with a sense of God's presence, that we're living out our lives in his presence, everything we do, even everything we think, God knows it all and sees it all. If we really have this awareness, then this will help us in the keeping of our hearts. These are all basic things. These are the kinds of things I'm trying to teach my kids now in the catechism. Does God know all things? Yes, God knows all things. Nothing can be hidden from God. So we learn these things as little children sometimes. But we have to meditate upon these truths until they really practically affect the way that we live. And we say, yes, that's right. God does know all things. He sees all things. He sees everything in secret. And that's where, again, we pray, God, unite my heart to fear your name, that I might live with this sense of your presence always, so that I might walk more closely with you. Nothing can be hidden from you. When you're tempted to sin, preach that to yourself, that God is there with you, and that will help you to turn from that sin. I'll just give you a bit of homework. We're not gonna look at it now. But Psalm 139 is a very helpful psalm to study and meditate upon in this regard. As you're thinking about how do we cultivate this godly fear and this sense of God's presence with us? Well, a lot of times it's through looking at the scriptures and reminding yourself simply of who God is. But Psalm 139 is one of those places in scripture that can really be of help to you. Flabel says, when the eye of our faith is fixed upon the eye of God's omniscience, he knows all things, we dare not let our thoughts and affections to vanity. Holy Job dared not suffer or allow his heart to yield to an impure vain thought. And what was it that moved him to so great circumspection? Job tells us, he asks himself this question, does he not see my way? Speaking of the Lord, does he not see my ways and count all my steps? Job 31, four. So there you have another godly example to consider. So how do we keep our hearts? How do we go about this? We've considered several things. The frequent self-examination of our own hearts, the state of our hearts. How are you doing? How is your heart? And then deep humiliation before God when he shows us something of the remaining corruption in our hearts. earnest and persistent prayer for better and purer hearts, fresh resolve or holy commitments to walk more carefully with God and to avoid temptations to sin, and then living our lives always in the presence of God in godly fear. And may God use these meditations for our good, for his glory, that each of us might keep our hearts with all diligence, to the end of our lives. So let's pray. God, we thank you that your holy word gives us so much light. It's a lamp to our feet and a light for our paths. And we thank you that tonight we've been able to open and briefly consider some of your truths. And we pray that you would help us now as we think about these things and discuss these things. Pray that you would help us to keep our hearts with all diligence. We ask your blessing upon the time of discussion, in Jesus' name.