How is Your Heart?, Part 3

How is your heart? Some of you might be asking, are we still asking the same question? How long will we ask the question concerning the heart? How many more weeks will we examine the heart? Well, let me answer that by quoting to you from an 18th century preacher by the name of J. C Ryle. J. C Ry, according to Charles Spurgeon, was the best man ever in the Church of England And what he says about the heart, I bet the Church of England wishes they would have taken to heart today Because they did not take to heart what Mr Wiles said about the heart The Church of England is in shambles today

But listen to what he says about the question about your heart He says, Think not to say within yourself, there is no need for such a question as this There is no need to make such ado about the heart. I go to church or chapel regularly. I live a respectful life. I hope I shall prove right at last Beware of such thoughts, I beseech you Beware of them if you would ever be saved You may go to the best church on earth, hear the best preachers, you may be the best churchman or the soundest member of a chapel

But all this time, if your heart is not right in the sight of God, you are on the high road to destruction Settle down to quiet consideration of the question before you Look it manfully in the face and do not turn aside Is your heart right or is your heart wrong? Think not to say within yourself, no one can know what the heart is We must hope the best No one can find out with any certainty the state of one's own soul Beware, I say again Beware of such thoughts The thing can be known The thing can be found out Deal honestly and fairly with yourself

Set up an assize on the state of your inward man Summon a jury Let the Bible proceed as judge Bring up the witnesses Inquire what your tastes are, where your affections are placed, where your treasure is, what you hate most What you love most, what pleases you most, what grieves you most Inquire into all those points impartially and mark what the answers are For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. A tree may always be known by its fruit, and a true Christian may always be discovered by his habits, tastes, And affections

Yes, you may soon find out what your heart is if you are honest, sincere, and impartial Is your heart right or is your heart wrong? That's the question Is it right or wrong? Is it hard? Is it soft? Is it truly tender to the things of God? Or does it back away from the things of God? How is the condition? Of your heart So important to ask the question Because in our study of Hebrews, where we left off in Hebrews chapter 3, verses 7 and 19 That was the issue Today, if you hear his voice, do not hard your hearts, as in the day of provocation in the wilderness Don 't do that

So the question for us is, how is your heart? And are you on the process of hardening or in the process of hardening your heart? And how do you know you're on that downward spiral? Or how do you know your heart is really truly tender to the things of God? God That's what we're trying to help you see It's taken us a while to get through it It'll take us at least two more weeks after this one But hopefully after f weeks of answering and asking the question, how is your heart, you will have a better handle on the condition of your soul And that's what we're asking for all of us

What is the condition of your heart? The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the nation of Israel, Pharaoh Back in the book of Exodus, they had heard the message of God and seen the miracles of God, and yet they remained in unbelief They remained unrepentant They remained un They remained un in their hearts They remained They remain un to the things of God They remained un and unstir by what God said And what God did And so, what about us? Where are we? Is said they believed in God The Pharisees said, along with the Sadducees, that they believed in God But in the end, they died in unbelief

And that's what Hebrews 3 is all about Because if you harden your hearts, as Israel did in the day of provocation in the wilderness, and they all died not entering God's rest and died in unbelief How do we make sure we're not on that same path as they were? We know the Bible says in the book of Ezekiel, the 36th chapter, that man is born with a hard and stony heart And so in Jeremiah 23, God says, My word is like. A hammer, it shatters and breaks the heart It causes it to understand the error of its way

That's why we preach the word in season and out of season because the only thing that does a work on the heart is the word of God, it's not the story. I tell, or the jokes I tell, or the environment that we're in It's the Word of God and only God's Word that shatters the heart So when you come into the church, you come to a quarry, and God's Word is a hammer that breaks up the hard heart When you come to The church, you come to a surgical center where God uses His Word, the sword of the Spirit, to do surgery on your heart That's what we're here for

So God will open the heart, expose the heart, that we might see the condition of our heart and respond to Him In a way that truly glorifies Him That's why He said, Give me your heart Give me your heart God wants your heart more than you want to give it to Him That's why he says he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked And so we want to understand what is the hard heart

What does it look like? What leads it in that direction? And last week we tried to help you understand the difference between the hard heart of the unbeliever and the hard heart of the believer because there is a difference because the disciples had hardened their hearts in Mark 6 and Mark 8 and Pharaoh had hardened his heart in Exodus chapter 7, 8 and 9 And on to chapter 14, and Israel had hardened their hearts, and they died in unbelief And what's the difference? We said at the core there was iniquity in the heart of the unbeliever, but there was familiarity in the heart of the believer

And because there was iniquity, In the heart of the unbeliever, it caused him to turn away from God, whereas the familiarity in the heart of the believer causes him to tune out God and not listen to what he has to say There's a difference At the core of the unbeliever is hostility and animosity But at the core of the believer, there is still tranquility because he's at peace with God, because he's been reconciled to God At the core of the unbeliever, he tests God But the believer, he doesn't test God, he trusts God to do what he's going to do

And so the unbeliever, he would be ultimately abandoned by God, where the believer would be continually admonished by God So the question comes, can you know that God has abandoned you? Can you know that you've experienced the wrath of God's abandonment in Romans chapter 1? Hebrews chapter 6, where it's impossible to renew you again to repentance Can you know that? And how do you know that? My job as your pastor is to help you see that and show you what the Bible says

Have you ever talked to somebody when they came out of the church service? And one guy says, Wow, boy, man, that was a great sermon That was so good And the other guy says, Yeah, it was alright What's the difference? They heard the same message from the mouth of the same preacher They came out of the same room And one says, Wow, that was so convicting, that was so rich, that was so deep, that was so good, that was so amazing And the other guy He yawns at what he just heard What's the difference? You see, in the life of the unbeliever, you show him the glories of heaven, and he yawns

You explain to him the horrors of hell, and it makes no difference But in the believer, it does Number of years ago, I was talking to someone in their church, and they said to me, Pastor, that was a great ser. I said, I'm not so sure how to take that Does that mean all the other sermons weren't great? He said, well, no, I didn't mean it that way. I said, no, no, no. I mean, does that mean the other sermons were kind of sub-par? Just okay, but that one was great And what would make those sub and this one, this one great? Can you help me understand that? Well, they hid the hall around

Well, they're all great, except this one This one was especially great And I said, could it be that your heart was prepared to receive something today that maybe your heart wasn't prepared to receive before? It could be Probably is And so that's why it's so important to prepare your heart so that you're ready to receive what God has for you. I want to give you a series of words, ten of them to be exact, to help you understand the downward spiral of the hard heart To help you see where it's going

So you can ask yourself this question: Is am I on that downward spiral that's leading me to a hardened heart against the things of God? So if you've got your Bible, turn me to the book of Jeremiah We'll begin there Jeremiah Jeremiah chapter 19 Jeremiah chapter 19 Jeremiah is prophesying to the nation of Israel He goes down into the Chin Valley Okay? There are three valleys that surround the city of David, the city of Jerusalem You have the Kid Valley, the Tyro Valley, and the Hinnom Valley

And those three valleys, if you take an aerial picture of them, Provide for you what is commonly called the Hebrew letter Shin, which stands for God the Almighty So, when God says in the book of Isaiah that He's placed His name on the city, He literally placed his name on the city Those three valleys, in the form of a Hebrew letter Shin, are the three valleys that surround Israel The nation of Israel or the city of Jerusalem On the east is the Kid Valley In the middle is the Tyro Valley or the Central Valley

And towards the south side of the city, Is called the Hinnom Valley or the Valley of Gehenna or Top, the burning, smoldering place It was a steady dump And Jesus would refer to it on a regular basis called Gehenna And using that as symbolic of the fires of hell, the smoldering resentment or the smoldering aspect of the fires of hell, the fires of death Gehenna That all took place in the valley of Hinnom, the Hinnom Valley And God told Jeremiah to go and purchase a pot, and he would go and purchase that pot because he was going to take that pot and throw it

Down and shatter it to show Israel the effects of their sin How, once the pot is shattered, it cannot be rebuilt again What has happened is that you put yourself in an unred situation Can't put yourself back together again because of all your immorality, because of all your sin, because of all your abominations, because you would take your children and you would sacrifice your children to Baal, because you have committed so many abominations Jeremiah, you go down and you tell them Exactly what I want you to tell him So Jeremiah did And Jeremiah said these words in verse number 14

Then Jeremiah came from Toth, which is the Hidden Valley or the fire pit Where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the Lord's house and said to all the people, Thus says the Lord of hosts The God of Israel, behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have declared against it Because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed my words The phrase stiffened their necks is the same as hardening the heart When someone stiffens their neck, they just They rebel against the things of God

So, the very first word I want you to see is heed They would not heed what God said God has spoken, spoken over and over again, yet they did not he my words Heedlessness You want to know whether or not you're on the downward spiral of hardening your heart You hear what God says, but you do nothing about it That was Israel That's why, over in Psalm 81, these words are spoken

Verse 8: Hear, O my people, and I will admonish you, O Israel, if you would listen to me, let there be no strange God among you, nor shall you worship any foreign God. I the Lord am your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt open your mouth wide I will fill it but my people did not listen to my voice and Israel did not obey me so I gave them over to the stubbornness of their hearts I gave them over to the hardness of their heart. I gave them over to their own devices

To walk in their own devices, it says, Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways. I would quickly subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries Adversaries, verse 16, I would feed you with the finest of wheat and with honey from the rock. I would satisfy you If you would just listen, if you would just heed what I'm saying We're not talking about just hearing what God says, the listening aspect in scripture Is listen, you hear it now, you obey it

That's why, over and over again in Revelation 2 and 3, he who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches Not just, okay, I heard it But you obey it That's why, listen, that's why the last words, the last admonition in the Bible, in Revelation 22, is not the preachers Is not to church or churches, it's to hearers Hearers, listen to what God says He says this: the spirit and the bride say, Come, and let the one who hears say, Come In verse 18, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book

If anyone adds to them, God will add to them In the plagues which are written in this book And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in this bo In other words, He writes to hearers If anyone hears this, don't take away from it Don't add to it Obey it Listen to what I say You see, everything about what God says is important So, are you listening? Israel would not listen And therefore, they turned a deaf ear to the things of God In two thousand and two

One of the leaders of our church came to one of our leadership meetings and gave me this welcome mat It's still in my pew today Because I had preached on 1 Thessalonians 2, verse number 13, the importance of putting out the welcome mat to the Word of God Because that's the literal translation of the word in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse number 13 For in 1 Thessalonians 2:1, this is what it said

For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe In other words, you Accepted it, you put out the welcome mat to it See, that's the heart of the believer He puts out the welcome mat to the Word of God So when you come to hear the word of God, the heart needs to have a welcome mat at its doorstep That welcomes everything that God says and heeds all that he hears Heedlessness

That begins the downward spiral of the hard heart You hear the gospel, you don't respond You hear the admonition and you refuse to obey You turn a deaf ear to the things of God You do not heed what he says And that begins the downward spiral of the hard Heart The next word is foolishness From heedlessness to fool Fool, a failure to weigh the consequences of what you've just heard That's what a fool does. A failure To consider the truth and accept it, whether it be reward or consequences That's the heart of a fool Why? Because the Bible says in Proverbs 1, verse number 7: fo des wisdom and inst

They despise it Proverbs 28, 26, he who trusts in his own mind is a fool In other words, the reason I despise wisdom and instruction is because I trust in my own mind. I trust in what I think is to be true And so I hear what God says, but you know what? I question the truth and the validity of what God has said That's why the fool says in his heart, No God No to God Psalm 14, verse number 1 Not only does a fool say in his heart, no, there is no God, but he also says, Not only is there no God, but no God No, God, I'm not going to do that

That's the fool because he despises wisdom and instruction In Proverbs 11:2, it says, The fool hates Knowledge He hates it Why? Because the opportunity to know God is not something that interests him And so that's why the Bible says in Matthew chapter 7 that the foolish man is the one who builds his house on the sand Because a foolish man is likened to the man who hears the word of God and does not do what it says He doesn't heed it And the reason he doesn't do what it says is because in his own mind, there's a better way than what God says There's another way to heaven Than what God says

He can't mean there's only one way There's got to be more than one way He can't really mean what he says about the family because what he says about the family doesn't really apply to my family So it must be something else So we doubt what God says, we doubt the validity of what God says, and we begin to question everything He says That's the heart of the fool Instead of believing what God says, accepting what He says, obeying what He says So He moves from heedlessness to foolishness Nehemiah chapter 9

Nehem chapter 9, God says as he rehearses for them through the preacher the history of Israel Verse 6, you alone are the Lord You have made the heavens You give life You are the Lord God Verse 7, verse 8, you found. his heart faithful before you Verse 9, you saw the affliction, you heard their cry, you performed signs, you knew, you divided, verse 11

Verse 13, you came down on Mount Sinai, you made known to them your holy Sabbath, you provided for them, you brought forth water from the rock, Verse 16, but they, our fathers, acted arrogantly, they became stubborn and would not listen to your commandments They refused to listen, and did not remember your wondrous deeds which you had performed among them So they became stubborn, and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt But you are a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kind, and you do not forsake them

Wow, what a tremendous testimony! They became stubborn and hard-hearted They became foolish because their way was better than God's way We're going to appoint another leader because God's leader has taken us to this promised land, quote, promised land, and there There are so many giants in the land that if we go in there, we'll be destroyed So let's appoint another leader Let's go back the other way That's foolishness because it hates knowledge It hates wisdom It hates God It hates truth And they acted stubbornly But amidst all that, you see the heart of God

He was gracious, he was kind, he was forgiving You know, those who walked in the wilderness for 40 years were 40 years of opportunity. to rep But they did not How sad is that? They only stiffen their neck all the more and hardened their heart all the more Foolish, heed Number three, boast Boastfulness. 2 Chronicles 3. 2 Chronicles chapter 3 Zedek Last king of Judah was 21 years old when he became king He reigned 11 years in Jerusalem He did evil in the sight of the Lord, verse 12 He did not humble himself before Jeremiah, the prophet, who spoke for the Lord

Verse 13, but he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord God of Israel Boastfulness He became arrogant He would not humble himself If you don't heed what God says, you're a fool And that foolishness always turns to boastfulness, arrogance, pr And would not submit to the Lord God and His W because He had a better way And poor King Zedekiah had his eyes goug out right after he saw his son slaughtered It would be the last thing he ever saw because of how he led Israel. I sin, and he caused the nation to sin

And thus you have the ending of the Hebrew Old Testament with the book of 2 Chronicles chapter 36 with the destruction of the temple on the Temple Mount and the people lamenting the sins of their fathers Because they would not listen and heed what God said because of the arrogance of their lives The next word you need to see is the word lawlessness Lawlessness Matthew chapter 19 Matthew chapter 19 says, Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing him Verse number 3 Remember, the heart of the unbeliever is to test The Lord, not to trust the Lord, but to test Him

Believers don't test the Lord because you don't put your Lord God to the test That's what God said Book of Deuteronomy, Christ quoted that to Satan, You shall not test the Lord your God But the unbeliever fears Feels free to test God because of his boastfulness, because of his foolishness, because of his heed, leads him to lawlessness That he writes his own law because God's law is not good enough For him He doesn't have to meet that standard because he's an arrogant fool So the Pharisees come to Jesus to test him This whole section is about divorce and remarriage

And they know what Jesus' view is on divorce They heard a sermon in Matthew chapter 5 So they know, which was the Serm on the Mount So they know about what Jesus is teaching on divorces But they came to him to test him because there is a passage in the Old Testament, the only passage In the Old Testament, dealing with divorce and remarriage, Deuteronomy 2, verses 1 to 4 And so they know that verse or set of verses, and they come to test Jesus So, it says, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? Because that's what they believed That's what he believed

The book of Deuteronomy says that if you find some indecency in your wife, you can divorce her That's what they taught And so they use the phrase indecency, which, by the way, is a word never used in the Old Testament to speak of adultery It speaks of nakedness, shamefulness, and lewdness, but never speaks of adultery Never And so they would say, as it was translated in the Talmud, that you could divorce your wife for any sort of indecency or any sort of obnoxiousness So if your wife was obnoxious, you could write her a bill of divorcement If she burned your food, write her off

She didn't dress properly, write her off She responded to you properly? Write her off Because Moses commanded that you could divorce your wife For any cause That's what they taught That's what they believed They wanted to follow Rabbi Hillel Which took that portion of scripture and translated it to the point where you could divorce your wife for any cause at all So they asked the question of Jesus After all, that's what Moses taught, right? It's out of the book of the law Moses must have taught that So, what does Jesus do? It takes him back to the beginning

He says, Have you not read? That he created them from the beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one flesh What therefore God has joined together? Let no man Separate, what did God do? He took them back to the very beginning to reinforce the validity of the union The impenetrable nature of the union The two shall become one For this cause, a man shall leave and he shall cleave, and these two shall become one flesh

This is the way God designed it to be So they said to him, Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? Aw Did Moses actually do that? Well, the answer is no Book of Deuteronomy says this: When a man takes the wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency or some obnoxiousness in her He can write her certificate of divorce That's how they translated it And puts it in her hand and sends her from his house, and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife

So your wife is obnoxious, your wife is can Your wife is burning meal, burning food Your wife is not being what she needs to be to you You write her certificate of divorce That's what they taught Because they wanted to be able to get rid of their wife and sleep with somebody else, marry somebody else So she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife

And if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and if the latter husband dies and took her to be his wife, Then the former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord And you shall not bring sin on the land, which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance The command in Deuteronomy 2 is not about divorce The command in Deuteronomy 2 is not to remarry

You cannot remarry the person you divorced for obnoxiousness Because that was never permitted in Israel You see, it's a word that doesn't mean adultery Because what's the penalty for adultery in the Old Testament? Death Stoning So we know the word is not talking about adultery It's some kind of shameful. behavior, some kind of lewd behavior And they dumbed it down to such a degree that you could divorce your wife for any cause And they're saying Moses commanded that we could divorce our wife for any cause They rewrote the law They reinterpreted the law

Because the grammar in Hebrew and Deuteronomy 24 explicitly states That the only command is that you cannot remarry the wife you sent away Why? Because you sent her away without biblical grounds to leave her, to divorce her She remarries She's now defiled You take her back, that's an abomination Because not only did you add to her defilement, she's already defiled Now you would be defiled if you married her That's the command You cannot take her back Yet they wanted to rewrite the law and make it appease their sinful lifestyle So Jesus says in the book of Matthew these words

Verse 8, they said, Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? He didn't do that Moses never made that command Moses only commanded through the inspiration of God not to rem the person you sent away for obnoxiousness That's the only command in Deuteronomy 2:1-4 He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives But from the beginning it was or has not been this way And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for immorality and marries another woman commits adultery There's your grounds for divorce

Unrepentant immorality Moses permitted it because of the hardness of your heart Moses permitted it because there was a Plethora of adultery happening all throughout your country, your nation So Moses permitted it because your hearts were so hardened to the law and the truth of God From the beginning, it was not this way So Moses permitted it, and God condones that by saying You can divorce her, but only for one reason And that is for unre, ongoing immorality in her life And that then allows you to remarry because she or he has broken that bond that God has set

You see, we want to take God's law and we want to fit it into our culture and our situation So we'll reinterpret it to fit us That's what the Pharisees did That's the way they lived their lives They had all kinds of laws, but none of them really truly were the laws of God The laws of God they had a hard time obeying because they were the truth But they couldn't obey those So they dumbed them down to a point where they could accomplish obeying them because it gave them a status above the people, and they thought a status with God

And so you begin to see this downward spiral that's happening in the hard heart It begins with heedlessness He hears But does nothing It moves then to foolishness because I hear about the consequences of sin. I hear about the rewards of obedience But I don't think that's true. I don't believe what God says. I doubt the verity and the validity of all that God says So fools hate and despise wisdom, knowledge, and instruction And that foolishness can only lead to boastfulness Arrogance, an unwillingness to humble myself before the living God and repent of my sins

And that boastfulness will only lead to lawlessness, a more and more breaking of the law of God You, here's a fact Okay, the more you engage in sin, the harder your heart, and the harder your heart, the more you engage in sinning It's cyclical The more I sin, the harder I harden my heart, and the harder I harden my heart, the more I sin Why? Because I don't think I'm subject to any law except my own And that's the way I live my life Wow Time just flew by. I have six more I need to give you. I'm going to have to wait till next week

Some might say, well, what do I do? You know what? You need to always adhere to the warning that God gives Today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart Don't disobey what God says Don't be like those who hear and turn away and walk away Don't do that today If you hear his voice, do not be a fool Don't act fool Today, if you hear his voice, don't become arrogant in your mind and in your soul Today, if you hear his voice, don't turn away from the law of God, rewrite the law of God, reinterpret the law of God Just listen to what he says and obey Adhere to the warnings of God

Believe what the Word of God says and always confess Always confess you're wandering from God For all we like sheep have gone astray, each has turned to his own way And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all You know, even in spite of Israel's disobedience, God continued to show himself gracious and kind Because he is ready to forgive He's ready to forgive you today He's ready to forgive you of your sins if you'll come to him, bow before him in submission And humbly believe all that He's said We pray with you Father, we thank you for today, for truly, Lord, your word speaks to us all

And our prayer, Father, is that you would begin to do a mighty work in us as a church that begins with our hearts individually Lord, please do what only you can do to turn our hearts toward the Christ And our prayer, Father, is that there be one person today, just one who is here That does not know you, that you turn their hearts Turn their hearts Use your word to shatter The crust around their heart Cause it to be soft and supple to the things of God, that they might obey you and follow you We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.