Sunday, March 3, 2013 am
PURER IN HEART (2)
The Christian’s Heart
a.
The human heart is an amazing organ.
It beats about 100,000 times a day, pumping some 2000 gallons of
blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
Through this circulatory system, nutrients are delivered to every
cell of the body. Over an
average lifetime, the heart will beat about 2.5 billions times.
b.
Yet the heart we are discussing today is
NOT the blood pump, though I believe the author had that in mind because
of its essential purpose to survival.
As the heart pumping properly is essential to the survival of the
human, so the spiritual heart properly trained is essential to
sustaining our spiritual lives.
As the heart delivers nutrients to the physical body, so the
spiritual heart delivers elements essential to our spiritual survival.
Just as a neglected or diseased heart will affect the quality of
one’s life (and survival) so if we neglect our spiritual hearts it will
affect our spiritual lives.
It really is a great comparison.
c.
The whole of the inner man –
the heart we speak of in the Bible is
the control center of the inner
man as opposed to his physical body (which simply houses the
soul).
It is where religious life is rooted and the determiner of our moral
conduct. Jas. 1:26 –
speaks of vain worship because of a deceived heart.
Prov. 4:23 tells us that
out of spring the issues of life.
Prov. 23:7 says that as a
man thinks in his heart, so he is.
Jesus in
Luke 6:45 said, “A good
man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil
man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.
For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
d.
The
spiritual heart is the seat of our emotions, thoughts,
understanding, attitudes and will.
i.
Emotions – Joy – Acts
2:26, 14:17; Sorrow – Jn. 16:6, Rom. 9:2, 2 Cor. 2:4; Conviction – Ac.
2:37, 7:54; Concern – 2 Cor. 6:11 – “Our heart is wide open”, Phil. 1:7,
“I have you in my heart…”; Desire – Rom. 10:1;
Comfort – Col. 4:8, Eph. 6:22.
ALSO negatively – lust – Rom. 1:24, Matt. 5:28, Jas. 3:14
ii.
Understanding and thought
– Mark 7:21, Matt. 12:34, LK. 9:47 – Jesus perceived the thoughts of
their hearts. Heb. 4:12,
etc. ALSO negatively – Matt.
9:4, Rom. 1:21
iii.
Will and attitude – 2 Cor.
9:7 – give as he purposes in his heart; Ac. 11:23 – with purpose of
heart continue in the Lord.
ALSO negatively – Acts 5:3-4, Jn. 13:2 – Judas Iscariot – the devil put
it into his heart to betray Jesus.
a.
Prov. 2:10-13 – When
wisdom enters your heart, And knowledge is pleasant to your soul,
Discretion will preserve you; Understanding will keep you.”
b.
Prov. 3:5-6 – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct
your paths.”
c.
Prov. 15:28, “The heart of the righteous studies how to answer, but the mouth of the
wicked pours forth evil.”
d.
Prov. 21:2, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the
hearts.”
e.
Psa. 51:10
– David in one of his penitential
(repentance) psalms said, “Create
in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
f.
1 Sam. 16:7 – When the
Lord sent Samuel to find a replacement for King Saul, He said to him “Do
not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have
refused him. For the Lord
does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but
the Lord looks at the heart.”
g.
1 Chron. 28:9 – as David
is about to die he gives instructions to his son saying, “As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him
with a loyal heart and with a willing mind; for the LORD searches all
hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him,
He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off
forever.”
h.
Matt. 6:21 – IN the Sermon
on the Mount, Jesus spoke of laying up for ourselves treasure in heaven
that cannot be corrupted by this world.
Then He says, “For where
your treasure is, there your heart will also be.”
i.
Mark 12:30,
The greatest commandment, “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
j.
Rom. 6:17, “You obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine…”
Paul speaks of their obeying the gospel (cf. Rom. 6:3-4) and
notes that it was from the heart.
Therefore he continues, “And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”
(vs. 18)
k.
Rom 10:9-10 -
As Paul speaks of the gospel
being near to us he says that it needs to be in our mouth and in our
heart. “But
what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your
heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you
confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that
God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the
heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is
made unto salvation.”
l.
2 Cor. 3:3 – Paul speaks
of the brethren being their “epistle”.
He then proceeds to describe it NOT as a physical book written
with ink, “but by the Spirit of
the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that
is, of the heart.”
m.
Eph. 3:17 – Christ is to
dwell within our hearts through faith.
n.
James 5:8, “You also be patient.
Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”
o.
Heb. 10:22, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having
our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with
pure water.” Our
“purification” involves both our bodies and our hearts – outwardly we do
what we are told – namely we are baptized (cf. 1 Pet. 3:21, Acts 22:16),
but it also is to involve a change of heart (i.e. repentance before,
which leads to the NEW man afterwards).
p.
Heb. 3:12 – “beware lest there be in you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from
the living God.” This is
one of many WARNINGS about the heart.
a.
In Luke 8:4-8 Jesus told what has become
one of His most famous parables.
IT is called “the parable of the sower.” (cf. Matt. 13:18)
In it Jesus describes a farmer who broadcasts (sows) his seed in
a field. IT is noted that
the seed lands on different types of soils with different results.
READ the parable.
b.
Jesus then explains this parable in Luke
8:11-15. The seed is the
word of God (vs. 11). The
sowers are those who broadcast the seed (preach the word – Jesus is
speaking to His disciples).
The ground or soil is the HEARTS of men.
Jesus then describes the different ways men’s hearts RESPOND to
the gospel.
c.
What type of heart do you have?
Jesus describes four types of
hearts. EVERYONE as they
hear the gospel will fall into one of these four categories.
i.
Hardened – the wayside is descriptive of a heart that refuses to
receive the word of God. The
message is preached and outright rejected.
Before it can do anything, Satan comes and snatches it away.
Tragically, this is most of the world.
Jesus spoke OFTEN of this hardened heart: Matt. 13:14-15 – In explaining
why He spoke in parables, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 6:9-10, a passage
that describes Israel’s rejection of God’s message through the prophets.
He said, “Hearing you will
hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive;
For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they
should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.”
Jn. 12:40 quotes the same Old Testament passage, as on another occasion
Jesus is rejected by the leaders.
An interesting observation to be made is that at times Jesus rebuked His
own disciples for hardened hearts.
Mark 16:14 notes that when Jesus appeared to the eleven after His
resurrection He rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart.
We need to take this seriously as we too, even as His disciples,
can become hardened in heart (cf. Heb. 3:7-12)
ii.
Stony ground – descriptive of one who hears the word and responds by
obeying the gospel. He
serves until there is trouble.
At the first sign of problems he either drifts away or quits.
The problem is he has no firm rooting because his obedience is
superficial. Often times one
response to the gospel is emotional or an impulsive reaction.
He doesn’t fully understand what he is doing or why.
Thus, it doesn’t take much for him to become discouraged and
wither away. THAT IS WHY we
need to ensure that someone UNDERSTANDS the commitment required to
become a Christian. And
AFTER one responds, we need to continue feeding that babe “the
pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2).
iii.
Thorny ground – describes one who obeys when he hears, but even in
his obeying the commands, he is not fully committed to serving the Lord.
HE still has worldly desires that he doesn’t want to let go of.
As a result, while the seed may take root, because it is
competing with the weeds (worldliness – the parable mentions cares,
riches and pleasures of this life) that are present (and thus
undernourished), the
word of God is chocked out and there is no fruit.
This describes one who has divided interests.
Sadly there are many believers who fit into this category.
James 4:4 warns about them saying the friendship with the world
is enmity with God.
iv.
Good ground – the final soil is the good and receptive heart.
The heart is good and honest (shall we say – PURE?) and thus it
receives the word of God, takes DEEP root and then begins to produce
fruit. This is the heart we
are seeking to have!
v.
NOTE: I am convinced that hearts can change.
Just as soil can be changed – stones and weeds removed, hard
ground tilled and fertilized – so hearts can change from one condition
to another. BUT IT TAKES
GREAT EFFORT!