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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.
“How to Keep Your Heart”
Series Singles’ Conference 2024
"How to Keep Your Heart"
Prov. 4:23
| Sermon ID | 91724152833298 |
| Duration | 45:07 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Bible Text | Proverbs 4:23 |
| Language | English |
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