How is Your Heart?, Part 4

We are looking at the scriptures and answering the question, how is your heart? The Bible says that we are to give our heart to the Lord We read that in the book of Proverbs Son, give me your heart Once you give your heart to the Lord, you are to guard your heart But the question comes, why is it people don't give their hearts to the Lord and remain in an unbelieving kind of state? And then why is it when those who do give their heart to the Lord refuse to guard their heart? And like similar to the unbeliever, they can develop a hardness Of heart

How does that happen? That's the question we are trying to seek and understand that we might come to grips with the fact that we Have hearts that not only are given to the Lord, but are guarded from the things of this world that we might truly serve the Lord in all of his glory and all of his splendor. I guess as we gather together to partake of the Lord's table, it's always imperative that we exam the condition of our heart The unbeliever, he doesn't give his heart to the Lord, and he moves further and further away through the hardness of his heart

For the believer, he gives his heart to the Lord, but because he doesn't guard his heart, he too can develop a hardness of heart, as the disciples did in Mark 6 and Mark chapter 8 But the unbeliever, he will be eventually abandoned by God, where the believer will be continually admonished by God And the unbeliever, because he's abandoned by God, will turn completely away from him and perish in his sins, whereas the believer will turn back to God because the Spirit of God has drawn him back to him

So how do you know that you have developed a hard heart? We began last week by talking to you about the fact that the first principle was heedlessness The desire not to hear Pharaoh did not listen to the voice of the Lord He would not listen to the voice of the Lord The Bible says he would not heed what God had said The prophet Jeremiah also tells us in the book of Jeremiah chapter 19, as he would come from the valley of Gehenna, the valley of Hennom And exhort the people because they had refused to heed what God had said in His W He always, always leads to the hardness of heart

If you hear what God's word says and do not respond, You are in danger of hardening your heart If you're in an unbelieving kind of state and you hear the gospel, And don't respond to the gospel, you begin to harden your heart to the things of truth If you're a believer and you come to church and you sit in church and you hear what God says in his word concerning your responsibility to be obedient to his word and don't heed what he says, then you become in danger of hardening your heart Because you haven't guarded your heart And so it's imperative that we heed the words of the L

Not only heedlessness, but we saw last week that point number two was foolish Heedlessness always leads to Foolishness because Psalm 14: tells us that the fool says in his heart, No God No to God In other words, the unbeliever says no to the path of truth No to the way of salvation No, God, there's another way The belie will say to God, No, I don't want to obey that No, I don't like that. I don 't want to forgive. I don 't feel like forgiving. I don't want to submit. I don't feel like submitting Whenever that happens, you begin to develop a hard heart to the things of the Lord

The Bible says in Proverbs chapter 19, verse number 3: The foolishness of man ruins his way The foolishness of man ruins his way The Bible says in Proverbs 10, 22, or 1, 2, excuse me That fool hate knowledge They don't care to know about God or know what God says They could care less And foolishness always leads to the hardness of heart Then we saw, number three, it was boastful If there is a heedlessness, a refusal to respond to what God says, then there is a foolishness that says no to God That leads to a boastfulness that my way is truly better than God's way, and it's the way of arrogance

And we saw in 2 Chronicles 3 that Zedekiah, the king of Israel, was a very arrogant man He boasted in the things that That he thought was right, and because of his arrogance and because of his pride, he developed a hard heart and led the nation of Israel to follow in his footsteps So ultimately, the temple on the Temple Mount was destroyed, and the nation of Israel has lamented that ever since. B It's a killer And then we saw in point number four, lawlessness Lawlessness

Matthew 19, verse number 3 and following: the Pharisees came to the Lord and they had reinterpreted the law, they had reinvented The way they thought the law should state, and said that did not Moses permit us to divorce our wives for any cause And all that did would allow them to continue in a lawless state Allow them to continue doing what they wanted to do without any effects upon them Because they believed that their way was the right way, and therefore they had reinterpreted the law, and it led them into more and more lawlessness

It would be Christ who would say in Matthew 2 that the Pharisees were filled with hypocrisy And lawlessness They lived as if there was no law They lived as if God's law didn't matter to them And therefore, They had a hard heart to the gospel That's where we left off last week Let me give you point number five Told you last week there were ten We'll get to them this morning That's the plan Okay? The fifth point Is blind You can call it darkness if you want Blindness Dark Listen to what the Bible says in the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse number 3

Paul says that even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing In whose case, the God of the world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the im of God Earlier in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul would say these words He says, Therefore, having such a hope, verse 12, we use great boldness in our speech And are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away, but their minds were hardened

For until this very day at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because it is removed in Christ In other words, blind, dark, an unwillingness to see What God has done Pharaoh was unwilling to acknowledge all the miracles that he had seen were truly from the one true and living God The nation of Israel, they lived in blindness, they lived in darkness, and they would not see that what was before them was the light of the world You see, men love darkness rather than light, for their deeds are evil They like to remain in the darkness

They can't help but remain in that state because their minds are depraved In fact, over in the book of Ephesians, the second chapter, Paul says this: You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince. of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of dis Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath Even as the rest

Paul was speaking of the condition of man's heart, his unwillingness to see what God has for him Because he lives in darkness He lives blind from the truth You ever talk to somebody who's involved in some kind of cult? And they come to your door and they talk to you about what it is they believe And you share with them the gospel, but they don't see it They don't understand it. A number of years ago, some Jehovah's Witnesses had come to our door and they said to me, We would like to talk to you about how you could raise your children in the image of God

And now you can understand how you can be a part of God's glorious kingdom And I said to them, Well, I'm already a part of God's glorious kingdom And I already raised my children in the image of God So I know that what I do is different than what you do And they say, well, why do you say that? I said, because the foundation by which I do what I do and the foundation by which you do what you do is completely different Because you believe in another gospel You don't believe in the true gospel because you've been blinded by Satan You don't see the truth

You don't see the glorious image of Christ in the beauty and the glory of his person because you've been blinded by the darkness But I would like to share with you how you can raise your children in the true image of Christ But they don't want to hear that because they've been blinded by Satan You see, Satan has created this system in the world, this world's evil system, that we so easily fall into and can be led further and further into darkness And that blindness, that darkness comes because we are unwilling to see what God truly wants us to see

And that's because of our desire for la, to live without a law Our desire to live in arrogance and pride, to follow our own direction But there's another aspect to why it is people's hearts become hardened You know, isn't it true that 1 Peter 2:9 says that we are to declare the glories of Him, the excellence of Him? Excellency of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light We are about to partake of the Lord's table, and we do that because we have been called and led out of darkness

And now we're able to see and embrace the true light of the gospel, Christ Himself, by the power of Almighty God But the sixth element I want you to see is simply this: wickedness Wickedness The Bible says in the book of Ephesians, the fourth chapter Verse number 17, these words: So this I say and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer, just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility or the emptiness of their mind Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their he

And they, having become call, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness The book of Proverbs says this: Proverbs 21, verse number 29: A wicked man hardeneth his heart. A wicked man hardeneth his heart Some translations say that a wicked man displays a bold face In other words, the countenance of the faith, of the face, excuse me, decl the condition of one's heart The bold faiths, the arrogant faith is because of the condition of the heart It's a hard heart So Solomon says that a wicked man hardeneth his heart

In other words, you no longer feel the pain and the sting of sin You become so callous that you are unable to respond because of the hardness Of your heart The more you sin, the harder your heart becomes The harder your heart becomes, the more you sin And the more insensitive you become to sin And call only leads you further and further away from the Christ And then there is Vindictiveness This is in Mark chapter 3 with the Pharisees as they come to Christ It says that Christ entered again into a synagogue, and a man was there whose hand was withered

Verse 2 of chapter 3 of Mark, they were watching him to see if he would heal them on the Sabbath, that they might accuse him And he said to the man with the withered hand, Get up, come forward And he said to them, Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath? To save a life or to kill? But they kept silent And looking around at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of heart He said to the man, Stretch out your hand And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians Against him as to how they might destroy him

In their minds, because of their Wickedness, because of their lawlessness, because of their boastfulness, because of their unwillingness to heed what God said It led them to a vindictive spirit And you read on in Mark's gospel, you see where they attribute all of Christ's works to Sat And att that what he has done, trying to convince the people to turn them away from the living God, that what Christ does, he does under the power of Beelzebub

But they committed the unpardonable sin because in the face of overwhelming evidence, their hearts were so hardened to the truth that they attributed everything that Christ did to Satan. and their vindictive spirit, their unwillingness to believe Christ was angry in the inside, but grieved at the same time over the hardness Of their heart In the midst of overwhelming evidence, they refused to see They were blinded to the truth because they loved to live in their sin Thus the hard became harder and harder, more and more callous in the end for them Was irreparable

And then not only is there vindictiveness, there is selfishness Listen to Romans chapter 2 Romans chapter 2 It says, verse 4: Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience? Not knowing the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God Who are rendered to each person according to his deeds? To those who, by perseverance and doing good, seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life

But to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness What is Zee and for them? Only wrath and indignation Their selfishness, their selfish ambitions Leads them to the callousness of heart, leads them to store up wrath for themselves in the day of judgment In the indignation of God, because they will not capitulate They will not submit They will not relent They will not rep They will not follow And that's because Romans 1 tells us that God has given them over God has abandoned them to their own devices He's left them in their sin

And what does Job say in the book of Job, the ninth chapter, the fourth verse? Who has hardened his heart against the Lord and prospered? Answer, no one But the next point's very important because We think we do And that is because of deceitfulness And that's what Hebrews 3 was all about We covered Hebrews 3, verses 7 and 19, several weeks ago in our study of Hebrews, helping you understand these words, book of Hebrews, third chapter It says this It says, take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God

But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened By the deceitfulness of sin That's the ninth aspect of a hard heart, the deceitfulness of sin What is sin? Or, how does sin deceive you? It deceives you into thinking that you have more time Today is not the day, you have tomorrow There's no hurry to repent There's no hurry to turn You have all the time in the world The seaful of sin says it's okay It's going to be okay You can do this thing, and the effects of your sin are not that b

It's okay, and sin deceives, which allows us to continue in a state of unbelief It allows us to continue moving Further and further away from God because we really think that everything is okay, but we're not prospering The wicked heart is being ruined day after day after day, and yet we don't recognize it Because of the deceitfulness of sin That's why the Bible talks about the pleasures of sin for a season Sin is very pleasurable That's why we sin If it wasn't pleasurable, we'd never sin But because it is, we do sin And we enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season

But it was Moses who refused to enjoy The passing pleasures of sin, but instead to endure ill treatment with the people of God because he wanted to follow his Lord So important So you see this downward spiral You see these different characteristics that allow people to move further from God and to harden their heart Pharaoh was one who hardened his heart against God But the last one is Is crucial because you need to grasp this, and that is because what God is doing If you continue not to listen to what God says and not to heed, His voice

If you continue down the foolish path of unbelief that says no to God, and if you rise up within your spirit and become very angry and arrogant against God to live a lawless kind of life because you are dark By the deceitfulness of sin, and live a selfish ambition, you are in danger of what we will call the purposefulness of God The purposefulness of God And that's what? That God hardens your heart God hardens your heart In other words, you say no to God, and God says no to you That's what happened to Pharaoh Pharaoh kept saying no to God, no to God, no to God Seven different times is recorded

And Pharaoh hardened his heart, and Pharaoh hardened his heart, and Phara Harden his heart He became more and more arrogant, more and more lawless He would not heed What God says He became more, more selfish in his ambitions He became so angry and incensed with God He kept hardening his heart He said no to God, no to God, t finally God says that he now would Harden Pharaoh's heart because the will re of man leads to the judicial reject of God And God says no And God abandons you And you are left in your sin And you are left to fulfill your own desires Because God has abandoned you

We call this the purposefulness of God because even in that, God has an ordained purpose It's very important to understand that when God hardens a man's heart, His just Is always known, and his judgment is always shown That's the purposefulness of God His just will always be known For his judgment will always be shown In fact, the psalmist said in Psalm 9 That God is known by the judgments that He performs In other words, the way you best know God Is how he judges man

In fact, the Bible says In Jeremiah chapter 9, a verse that you know well, verses 23 and 24: let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, or the mighty man boast in his might, right? Or the strong man in his strength But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the God who exercises what? Loving kind and just In other words, if you say you know God, then you know the God who was always just He's always right He's never wrong So when God hardens the heart, he is always right When God hardened Pharaoh's heart, he was always just

Why is that? Because God has a purpose. A purpose that we can't even see most of the time But the purpose is outlined in the plan of God Turn to me to Romans 9, real quick Romans chapter 9. I want to show you something about the justice of God And I love what Paul does because Paul never explains the just of God, but only proclaims the justice of God Because you can't explain it It's inexplicable That tension between listen, that tension between God's sovereignty and human responsibility Is inexplicable Inexplicable You cannot understand Paul never tried to explain

God's sovereignty and human responsibility He just proclaimed it. I don't have to explain it. I just got to proclaim it We want to understand the tension between the two, but you can't How do you understand that Pharaoh hardened his heart, yet God hardened his heart? Which is true? Both are true Who did which one first? Does it make a difference? God's in charge. I can't explain to you those things How do you explain this? How do you explain this? No one comes to the Father Unless, of course, he's been drawn by the Father, John 8

Right? But in John 5, it says that unless you believe in me, you will die in your sins, which is right Both are tried Well, how can both be right? Because God said them How about this? John 1:1 To as many as received him, to them give you power to become the sons of God Right. I got to receive Jesus, right? Absolutely And then it says in the very next verse, verse 12: who are born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God, which is right Both are right Well, how do you explain it? Can't explain it It's inexplicable You'll have to explain it

You just have to proclaim it Because both are true How can both be true? That's up to God. I'm not here to try to explain to you everything that God says. I'm just here to proclaim to you exactly what God says So Paul in Romans 9 never tries to explain why Isaac, not Ishmael Every time I do that, why does he explain it? He didn have to Because God said so And so he says this Shall we say, what should we say then, verse 14? There is no injustice with God, is there? It may never be Because God is just, God is right There is no injustice with God

For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion So then it does not depend on the man who will, on the man who runs, but on God who has mercy It 's all about God and what God's going Going to do And God will have compassion on who He has compassion He will have mercy upon whom He has mercy But there is no injustice with God There is no partiality with God He is an impartial God This is this For the scripture says to Pharaoh, Exodus chapter 4, for this very purpose I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you

And that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth God raised up Pharaoh Made him ruler over Egypt so that God would have his name proclaimed over all the earth Pharaoh hardened his heart against the things of God Then God hardened Pharaoh's heart But God raised him up This is the purposefulness of God So important because we know we know of one particular person Who came to the saving knowledge of Jehovah God because God raised up Pharaoh and demonstrated his power in the death of Pharaoh and the hardness of his heart And that was a prostitute in Jericho named Rah

Listen to what it says in the book of Joshua, the second chapter Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof This is Rahab to the two spies And said to the m, I know that the Lord has given you the land How did she know that? How did Rah the prostitute know that the Lord had given Israel the land? And that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you

How did she know that? Remember the song in the book of Exodus? 15th chapter, verse 11? Who was like you among the gods, O Lord? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in praise, working wonders? This is the song of Israel, the song of redemption after they crossed the Red Sea, and Pharaoh and his army were drowned in the Red Sea You stretch out your right hand, the earth swallowed them In your loving kind, you have led your people whom you have redeemed In your strength, you have guided them to your holy habitation The peoples have heard, they tremble

Anguish has gripped the inhabitants of Philist Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed the leaders of Moab trembling grips them All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away, terror and dread fall upon them By the greatness of your arm they are motionless as stone That was a song of Israel that was led by Miriam, the sister of Moses, as they sang the song of redemption that the horse and rider has been thrown into the sea And now the prostitute Rah says The terror of you has fallen on us, and all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you

How did she know that? She had heard the song She didn't hear it sung, but someone had to tell her Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by a word about the Christ For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea Really? Who told him that? Before you, when you came out of Egypt And what did you two of the kings of the Am who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and An, whom you utterly destroyed? When we heard it, our hearts melted, and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven, above, and on earth beneath God had a purpose

God had a purpose through the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, who had hardened his heart against the voice of the Lord, that God would abandon Pharaoh and destroy him in the Red Sea for the purpose Of a prostitute who would come to the saving knowledge of the Lord God of Israel, who would spare the two spies so that Jericho could be conquered and Israel could enter the promised land God has purpose in everything He does And God is absolutely just and righteous in doing what He does And when God abandons a heart because it's hardened toward Him, and God hardens that heart

He does it for a purpose. A greater purpose than you and I can ever begin to imagine But God does that That we might see that our God is absolutely just and righteous in all that He does And so Paul would say in Romans chapter 9 very clearly these words So then he has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he Desires God has a purpose And so the question for us is: this, what is the condition of our heart? Is it tender to the things of God or hardened toward the things of God? We gather together to celebrate the Lord's table

If you're here today, and that's the desire of your heart to celebrate what God has done for you on Calvary's tree, yet you have a tender heart If you hear this table means nothing to you, it's insignificant to you, you have a hard, callous heart And so my prayer for all of us is that we would be tender to the things of God, open to the voice of God, to heed all that He says, to obey His glorious word Because in his word, he speaks to us about life and death He speaks to us about his truth and wants us to be his children My son, give me your heart

Have you given your heart to the Lord? Have you given it to the Christ? If so, you want to guard the heart from all the evils of the world That you might best serve the King of Kings and Lord of Lords Let me pray with you Father, we thank you for this day Lord, it's a great day to celebrate you We are a blessed people Thank you for your truth Lord, so many things in your word That Lord, we could spend a lifetime studying and never truly fully understand you because you are infinite

But our prayer this day is that our hearts would be prepared to receive that which you have given to us, that we might honor you explicitly In Jesus' name, amen.