-Transcript-
00:28 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the Cafe.
00:31 Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Hopefully you’re doing good. Have you a coffee or a tea with you? I wish I had one, amen, but you enjoy it for me.
00:41 Hopefully you’re having a wonderful day, a wonderful week as we get into God’s Word. And today we’re going to dive right into the second part in a two-part series on the heart.
00:53 And don’t worry if you missed part one, I’ll sum it up for you.
00:58 We are dealing with a vulnerable heart, amen. We have a vulnerable heart, a tender heart, and the Lord advises us to keep our heart, to protect it, to think about it, to ensure nothing bad is happening within our heart.
01:19 Proverbs 4:23, keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.
01:26 Proverbs 4:23, keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.So here the writer of Proverbs, Solomon’s telling us to keep our hearts with all diligence.
01:39 And, you know, diligence in itself means careful and persistent work.
01:56 I always think of conscientious or detail-oriented, a diligent person is someone that’s really crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s. And we’re told with all diligence, keep thy heart with all diligence.
02:02 So even more than just a little diligence, all diligence, we should keep our heart for out of it are the issues of life.
02:07 And we talked about last episode, the climate that we’re trying to keep our heart in. And I think that is what this proverb is related to. If I imagine as a young person, as it mentions, listen, you know, son, listen to your father and so on and so forth.
02:25 In a tumultuous world, in a sinful fallen world, in a world where they are going to face opposition and temptation and peer influence and all the things that even adults face. I believe that is the context of this proverb.
02:40 This proverb is not written for people in heaven because once you’re in heaven, you won’t need to keep your heart because you will have a pure heart because sin cannot enter into heaven.
02:52 So there’ll be no problem there. Okay. But this is here for earth.
02:57 This is for today. Amen. And so we talked about the world last episode and how we’re tossed and turned.
03:02 And when I was a little boy, my dad would drive in a like kind of like a sports car. It was a Saab. I mean, it looked like it was a hatchback and it didn’t really look like a sports car, but it was a manual transmission and he’d run through those gears and he’d take a tight turn, a tight turn.
03:15 And we’d be in the backseat. I said, dad, we’re tossed like salad back here. You know, you know, we loved it as little boys.
03:21 But truly that is kind of how the world is. Or how about this? The tumble dry. Imagine you’re in a dryer and it’s on the tumble feature there, boom, boom, boom.
03:30 As you go through life, you know, a bill to pay, boom, an unexpected medical issue, boom, a stress at work, boom, a problem with a family member, boom, and on and on and on. Is that not how we are living this life? Amen. It is challenging.
03:47 And in that context, I believe Solomon’s advising us here, Proverbs 4:23, to keep our heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. And in a minute, we’re going to get to what the issues of life are. But just to touch on a little bit more, that our heart is vulnerable and tender.
04:09 You know, of course, the writer here, as in much of scripture, is not referencing the organ, the heart, but to reference the deepest part of you, right? And it can go either way.
04:19 It can go either way. The heart can be awful, or it can be wonderful.
04:27 It can lead you to ruin, or it can lead you to salvation. And I’ll give you two verses here, Jeremiah 17:9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
04:38 Who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9. I always think of that when I get a good idea, and because I’m an idea person, I’m constantly getting ideas.
04:49 The Lord made me to have an idea every single day. I thought of this, if I ever wrote a biography, and I won’t, I promise, I won’t write a biography. It would be a short biography too, amen.
05:00 I haven’t done anything that notable. But if I wrote a biography, the title would be, I have an idea, because I always have ideas. And a lot of times I’ve got to run them through the Jeremiah 17:9 filter, the heart is deceitful above all things.
05:09 And wait a minute, is my heart tricking me here? Because it’s the latter part of this verse, desperately wicked, who can know it, right? And so we’ve talked about last episode that the devil isn’t the one that has a good idea for you.
05:23 The devil’s the one that wants to get you off track. The devil is the father of all lies.
05:29 The devil is the author of confusion. So there’s nothing more great than a real big lie the devil can do to get you off track. That would be the greatest thing for him to do.
05:39 He’s very subtle. And if you would like a, to go to instant replay, so to speak, go ahead and open the book of Genesis. Look at Adam and Eve.
05:49 They’re beguiled by the serpent. They’re set in a awful situation after eating that forbidden fruit. They’re tricked by the devil.
06:00 Sin enters the world. Death enters the world. The Bible says the wages of sin is death.
06:05 Amen. So the payment for Adam and Eve sin was death. The payment for the sin of this world today is death.
06:10 Amen. That’s why we need to be born again onto new life in Christ Jesus alone. And so the heart can lead you down a bad track, but here the heart also is a very big part of salvation.
06:16 Romans 10:9 that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
06:26 And I love Romans 10:9, because it’s dealing with the deepest part of us. And so people often will say, oh yeah, I’m a Christian or, oh yeah, I went and, you know, I jumped in a baptismal pool in the parking lot one time.
06:37 Yeah, I’m a believer, right? But is it in their heart? In their heart, did they realize they’re a sinner and did they understand what Christ did for them on the cross, dying for their sins so that they could be saved?
06:50 Do they see that picture of needing a savior and then understanding that it was Christ’s finished work on the cross that saved them, that without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sin, that it’s the perfect atonement, the substitutionary death that Christ offered on the cross, obediently and willingly, God himself in human form, dying for mankind and being risen again on the third day.
07:15 And when you believe in your heart, then you confess it with your mouth. So we see the heart can be for good and the heart can help with salvation and be a big part of it.
07:25 And what we need to think about now is in the storms of life, is our heart protected, right?
07:33 In the storms of life, is our heart protected? James 1:3, I love this verse and there’s several verses here like this in the Bible, but James 1:3 says it so succinctly, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
07:42 The trying of your faith worketh patience. And so as I mentioned, we don’t live in a vacuum, we don’t live in a bubble.
07:54 I mean, our little kids, five and six years old, I asked them the other day, I said, what problems you guys have? And they looked around and they smiled and said, we don’t have any problems.
08:02 And I was just like, that’s awesome. So unless you’re five or six, in which case you do live in like a parental bubble and you don’t have any issues, but in some five or six year olds do, of course, but these kids have it pretty good, I guess, Lord bless them.
08:17 So I said, we don’t really have any problems, you know, of course, they’ll be crying 10 minutes later, you know, they stubbed their toe or can’t find their toy. But generally speaking, if we’re not little children, we do have problems. We’re not living in a bubble, we face adversity.
08:27 And so the idea is that we need to guard our hearts in the face of this adversity, knowing this, the trying of your faith worketh patience. And so we have to understand that, look, we need to guard our hearts when our faith is tried.
08:40 When we say, God, are you really here? Or is this really what you’ve called me for? It seems like the more that I’m doing for you, the harder things are getting.
08:49 What’s up with that? The more that I’m living for you, the more the world hates me, right on and on. Well, that trying of the faith, it works patience, which is a very peaceable fruit. I mean, it is a wonderful thing, amen.
09:03 And it comes from that trying. And so we need to guard our hearts. You know, we deal with godly chastening, Hebrews 12:11-13.
09:11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
09:25 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and feeble knees, and make straight the paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed.
09:35 And so Hebrews 12 is telling us something very similar to the proverb here, to Proverbs 4. If you get into Proverbs 4, the whole thing is about being on a path, and certainly the latter part is about, hey, don’t turn to the right hand or to the left, remove your foot from evil, ponder your path, let your ways be established.
09:56 What’s it talking about here? It’s the idea that when we are living under affliction, that we are chastened by God, that God either allows it or God’s the one doing it, we can’t have those feeble knees.
10:09 We can’t let ourselves be guided off of a godly path. And that is something I believe happens all too often to Christians.
10:17 Again, it just seems like lately there’s been a whirlwind of problems, and I’m not gonna put all my problems in your lap, I promise. I’m sure you got enough of them on your own, amen.
10:26 But what does that do to your faith? It’s challenging, is it not? And you go to God in prayer, and the Lord, for whatever reason, will allow certain things to come your way, and you just, you beg, and you beg God, and it persists, and there’s great affliction.
10:42 The Bible says the righteous face many afflictions, and God delivers them out of them all. But it doesn’t say when he delivers them out of them all, right?
10:49 And so what the Bible’s saying here is that we can’t be weak-kneed and let our hearts go and then end up being bad, end up being unfruitful, end up being a soiled testimony, end up being not productive for God, end up being, failing whatever it was the Lord was trying to instill within us, which is faith and patience oftentimes.
11:12 And so the issues of life, that’s what’s coming out of your heart, amen? And so the issues of life could be all those things that are sinful, right? You know, maybe you’ve always had a problem with somebody, but it never really came out until there was all of these things coming up, amen, issues coming up.
11:34 Well, what happens? Now all of a sudden you lash out, all of a sudden your heart was not guarded, you were not on guard from the wiles of the devil, the temptations of the devil, and now all of a sudden you go off on this person, and you’re their example of what a Christian should look like.
11:49 Or your parents are now grieved, or your spouse, or whoever it is, and whatever the issue is, it wasn’t worth you losing your cool over. But because your heart wasn’t guarded, that sin came bubble to the surface.
12:05 Or it could be another issue, it could be the opposite, where you’re intoxicated by success, or by some kind of pride, and you’re yoked up in some kind of vain thing,
12:20 and you’re not guarding your heart, you’re not seeking the Lord, you’re not repenting before him, you’re not getting into why things are happening the way they are biblically,
12:28 you are just living by the moment, and you’re not guarding your heart. And now the issues of life are presenting themselves, that sin is presenting itself, right?
12:37 And so if we’re not guarding our heart, all manner of sin will creep in, amen? And then what? Well, you may be ashamed, you know, you may become backslid, you may say, I need a little break from church, you may resent the preacher, you know, whatever it is, God knows, these are simple examples, and for time’s sake, I’ve got to keep them simple.
13:03 But the point is, we must guard our hearts, we must understand Hebrews 11.1, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, okay? So faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
13:12 We cannot see God here on earth, we’ll see him one day in heaven, amen? We can’t see him here on earth, but we can trust his word, and we can guard our hearts, and we can be diligent in guarding our hearts, and we can understand that the issues of life come out of our heart, and that with that guarded heart, and with that biblical foundation, we can then serve God wholeheartedly.
13:34 We can serve him with a fervent spirit, we can have a heart for the things of the Lord, and ministries can be born out of a soft and tender heart for God, and love for our brethren can be born out of a soft and tender heart for God,
13:50 and maturity, and long-suffering, and patience in these things will be born out of a soft heart for God, but we have to guard that heart so it doesn’t go the other direction. And most importantly, trust God, we have to continue to seek him.
14:05 This is not done on our own, but by the working of the Holy Spirit, and we don’t want to grieve the Holy Spirit, so we want to stay in his word, we want to stay close to God,
14:11 we want to stay on fire for God by being around the things of God, saturating our life in the things and ways of God will make this so much easier and make it accomplishable.
14:21 I thank you so much for listening, I appreciate you listening to these messages, tune in next time, take care, God bless, and amen.