[singing and clapping]
Over the last 10 years I've been to Ethiopia, now 9 times.
And it's just amazing to see Africa
and the continent of Africa and the people of Africa
and what Jesus is doing there.
I just think that you just see
a beautiful explosion of the love of Jesus, what he's doing there.
To me, you can see it very clearly.
Many times it just feels
like we're serving the Ethiopian church.
Actually I think it's just the opposite.
I think that we will learn and we will grow more as a church
by serving and loving on brothers and sisters.
Jesus is building his church;
he's absolutely building his church and we get to be a part of it.
I think there's an opportunity to plant 1,000 churches in Ethiopia
and 1,000 churches in India
that we can directly be a part of over these next 15 years
and to me that's just staggering to even pray about.
We're a family.
Mars Hill Global is a family of people
that are globally planting churches and making disciples
and just a great opportunity for everyone around the world
to be a part of what Jesus is doing through Mars Hill Church.
Honestly, I don't know
what Jesus is going to end up doing through Mars Hill Global,
but I'm really excited to find out.
[people singing]
All right, Mars Hill. This is really exciting.
Coming to preach for me is Dr. Wayne Grudem.
Good friend of mine,
somebody I've learned from for many years.
His systematic theology is really what we built
all of our convictions on,
of course based upon the Bible
at Mars Hill Church.
He has been a professor for us at various events,
coming in to lecture.
If you enjoy the ESV Study Bible
that I teach out of,
he was the general editor of that Bible.
Has his PhD from Cambridge
and when he was willing to come preach for me,
I was absolutely thrilled.
But let me tell you a little bit more about his family.
His wife, Margaret, is amazing.
She is super sweet.
They're really cute together.
The first time I met them, they were holding hands,
sitting together in an event, and she was snuggled up
with him, and they were as cute as can be.
They've been over to dinner at our house
on a number of occasions.
They always bring gifts for my kids,
and my kids really love the Grudems.
And they're just a warm, loving, gracious,
ministry-minded couple with the man
that I think is the most influential
living reformed teacher, theologian,
and writer on the earth today,
and we're glad to have him at Mars Hill Church.
Thank you, Mark.
Good to be here.
Good to be here with you.
Thank you, Bellevue.
Mark and I have been maybe two or three times to Seattle,
and it seems like every time we come the sky is blue.
Is this the way the weather is all the time?
No, once we came and it was snowing.
I remember that.
Well, it's good to be here with you.
We're going to talk today about what the Bible calls your heart,
from this verse, Proverbs 4:23.
"Keep your heart with all vigilance,
"for from it flow the springs of life.
"Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life."
Different translations have--in fact,
we could put that up on the screen now,
if you have that verse.
There it is, okay good.
Different translations, instead of "keep,"
they have "watch over" or "guard,"
but it's the idea of protecting, guarding,
caring for your heart,
and so that's what I want to talk about,
mainly from this verse this morning.
So, if you would pray with me.
Our Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you that it contains your words and the words
of the Bible speak to us from you, Lord,
in a way that no other book on earth does.
And so, we ask this morning that you would empower your words,
that you would teach us from them and help us to understand,
but also, Lord, I ask that,
for my own heart and for everybody else's heart here,
you, by the power of the Holy Spirit,
would make these words come alive to our hearts
and do the work that you wish to do
in each of our hearts this morning.
In Jesus' name, amen.
When we talk about your heart in English modern culture today,
we normally mean mostly your emotions, and affections,
and your feelings.
And in the Bible, your heart includes that,
but it's broader than that.
It really includes all of your deepest moral and spiritual
convictions, along with your feelings and emotions,
and especially your deepest moral and spiritual convictions
in relationship to God.
So, your heart is talking about what's really deep inside
of you, what makes you you and who you are.
And this verse says, "Keep your heart with all vigilance."
And verse 1 of this chapter,
"Hear, O sons, a father's instruction."
What this is, this is a father saying to his son,
"This is how life works.
"After living a lot of years, I just want to tell you something.
"What's really important in life is keep your heart
with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."
So now, I look back.
I've taught in a seminary-- one seminary or another--
for 32 years, and I've taught thousands of students,
but I've followed the lives of maybe hundreds of students whom
I've gotten to know somewhat better.
And I have seen this verse prove remarkably true,
because some students go on to lives of blessing, and ministry,
and faithfulness, and God's favor on their lives,
and their families, and their churches, and their ministries.
But others have gone on sadly to destroyed lives,
destroyed marriages, destroyed families,
and destroyed churches, I think because they didn't
pay attention to what God is saying in this verse.
God is saying basically that the inward spiritual and moral life
that you have will determine the course of your life
and ministry, whether it will be a life that knows God's favor
and blessing or not.
So, I want to talk about three things this morning.
I want to talk about what it is to keep your heart,
and number two, how you keep your heart.
Nope, I made a mistake.
What it is to keep your heart, why you should keep your heart,
and then how you should keep your heart.
There's only three, you think I could remember those.
Well, let's see if we can do better.
All right, what does it mean to keep your heart
with all vigilance?
So, I wanted to look at this phrase first:
"With all vigilance."
Literally, the Hebrew text says,
"More than all vigilance,"
or "More than all guarding," "More than all protecting,"
keep your heart.
So, what do you guard?
What do you protect?
I suppose you locked your car because you didn't want anybody
to steal it.
More than you protect your car, this is saying keep your heart.
I imagine you locked your apartment or your house
when you left this morning.
More than that, protect your heart.
If you're married and you've got kids,
you want to protect your marriage and safe guard it,
you want to protect your children and look after them.
Or now we have grandchildren.
When we're caring for them, we really want to care for them
and protect them.
They're so important.
But this verse says, "More than all vigilance,
"more than all guarding, more than all protecting,
keep your heart,"
more than your job, your health, everything.
Make this most important.
So, it's a challenge to us right off the bat.
Have we been doing that?
Have we been making the condition of our hearts
more important than any other concern?
And I think in practical terms, what that means is that from
time to time, you might have to give less attention
to some other good things, like family, or job, or exercise,
or church meetings, or car repair, or house repair.
You might have to give some less time to those other good things,
but you can't neglect taking care of your heart
and keeping your heart.
With all vigilance, more than all vigilance,
keep it and guard it.
Now, there's something else, this word, "Keep it--"
keep it, or guard it, or watch over it.
If you are to keep something, it implies that there's a goodness
to it, that there's a goodness that is to be protected
and guarded.
But as soon as I say that, some of you who know the Bible
pretty well are probably saying, "But wait a minute.
"I think I read back in the Old Testament,
"I think it was some place in Jeremiah,
the heart is deceitful above all things."
And you're right, Jeremiah 17:9 says,
"The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked; who can understand it?"
When I read the context of Jeremiah,
and then I see later in Jeremiah he predicts a new covenant
that's coming when God will write his laws on our hearts,
I just don't think that that description in Jeremiah 17:9 is
the whole truth about our hearts in the New Testament.
And another reason I think that's not the whole truth is
because the New Testament speaks in a much more positive way--
not entirely positive,
but a much more positive way--about the heart
of someone who has trusted in Jesus as Savior,
someone who has been born again.
Here are some verses that talk in a positive way
about the heart of a New Testament Christian.
Romans 5:5, "God's love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
Romans 6:17, "You have become obedient from the heart
to the standard of teaching to which you are committed."
Hebrews 10:22, "Let us draw near--"
that means draw near to God.
"Let us draw near with a true heart
and full assurance of faith."
1 John 3:21, "Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us,
we have confidence before God."
Several verses in the New Testament speak
in a quite positive way about the condition of our hearts.
If we've been born again and trusted in Jesus as our Savior,
there's a goodness to them that has to be protected.
However, that's not the whole New Testament story,
because we go over to James, and James warns Christians
about some things that can go wrong in their hearts.
For instance, James 3:14, "If you have bitter jealousy
"and selfish ambition in your hearts,
do not boast and be false to the truth."
Or James 4:8, "Purify your hearts, you double-minded."
So, even though the New Testament
talks about our hearts
as having been cleansed when we're born again,
yet James says you can have bitter jealousy in your heart
as a Christian, and you can have selfish ambition,
and you can be double-minded.
And so our hearts aren't perfect,
but there is a goodness in them still by Jesus' work within us
that needs to be protected and guarded.
Keep your heart with all vigilance
because it can go astray.
Now in England, in the 1600s, there was a Puritan writer
named John Flavel, and he wrote about this verse.
In fact, he wrote over 100 pages about this verse,
because that's just what Puritans did.
But in it--I didn't read all 100 pages,
but I kind of went through it,
and in that writing on Proverbs 4:23,
he said, "Our hearts are like a musical instrument."
You tune it, and you've got it just right,
and then you hang it on the wall for a few days
and it goes out of tune.
Or you tune it, and then something bumps it
and it's out of tune again.
And he said, "You know, our hearts are like that.
"They can be right with God and then something disrupts them
or we neglect them, and they begin to stray."
I saw this happen in my own heart one time.
It was while I was part of a 12-member committee
working on the translation of the ESV Bible.
So, from 1998 to 2001, we worked to produce this translation,
and most of the time,
we worked in Cambridge, England at a research library.
And we worked from 9 to 5, and you say,
"Well, that sounds like a normal workday," and it was,
except it was the most intellectually, emotionally,
maybe even spiritually draining time
that any of us had ever had.
Even though it was amazingly rewarding and exciting
professionally, it was just really hard work,
because here's what was happening.
We had an agenda.
We would go through the Bible book after book,
and we had certain suggestions that had to be voted on for how
a verse should be translated, or leave it how it was
in the text that we began with, or change it.
And let's say you had something you wanted to suggest as
a change in someplace in Matthew 15, and you say,
"You know, if we change this word,
"it would make it a little more accurate
to the Greek text."
But if you go out of the room just for a rest stop,
or take a phone call, or something, and you come back in,
and they already voted on Matthew 15, it's done,
it's in the Bible, you lost.
So, I mean, yeah,
there was a procedure for getting reconsideration
of something that was decided.
It required 2/3 vote of the committee to reconsider.
It was hard, but could be done, but basically, once it was over,
it was over.
So, you couldn't ever snooze or fail to just be concentrating
all the time to try to make the right argument
and vote right on the words that are supposed to be there.
And day after day, we were just tired.
So that was fine.
We could have managed that, but this very nice hotel
we stayed at had sold-- the publisher, Crossway Books,
had sold us a package where breakfast and supper was
included with the hotel, which we thought was a great deal
because, you know, that would all be taken care of.
But we'd walk a half an hour from the library back to
the hotel, and we'd get there, and we'd be ready to eat,
but they could not figure out how to get supper finished
in less than 2 1/2 hours.
Could not, don't ask me why, but every--you know,
the soup had to have the right spoon,
and then the salad had to have the right fork,
and they had the lettuce sit between each course.
And it was beautiful, but we were just tired.
And I wanted to spend some time with Margaret,
I wanted to catch up on some e-mail,
and so we'd go back to our room, and we'd spend some time
together, and I'd get all this personal stuff done,
and get to bed, and the nights were getting shorter and shorter
and I was getting more and more tired.
So, I decided what difference does it make.
I set my alarm a half hour later, and I said, "You know,
"I'm spending so much time reading the Bible already with
"these other guys 8 hours a day, why do I need to get up early
"and spend time alone with God, reading the Bible, and praying,
and asking God to apply the word to my own heart?"
So, I let it go, 3 days, 4 days, and then Margaret said,
"Wayne, something's just not right with you.
What's going on?"
And then I realized I'd neglected my time with God
and my heart was straying,
so I made a note that I carry around
just to remind myself.
"Results of missing personal Bible-reading and prayer time:
"pride, talking about myself a lot,
"often inwardly hoping people will praise me,
"lack of love for friends, irritability,
"relationships with friends just stall or put on hold,
"general inward feeling of unease, unsettledness,
"hard to concentrate on Scripture and prayer,
self-reliance, no peace."
I had to say, "Margaret, I'm sorry.
"Here's what's happened.
I just--I wasn't spending time with the Lord."
And then I had to go to God privately and say,
"God, I'm sorry I didn't put you first."
And the next morning when the committee met,
I asked if I could have a couple of minutes just to say
what had happened.
I said, "Look, I'm sorry if you've noticed something wrong
"in my attitude the last several days.
This is the reason, I'm sorry, forgive me."
Our hearts can so easily stray.
And 8 hours a day of looking at the Hebrew and Greek text
of the Bible and trying to translate
verse after verse into English correctly,
there's no substitute for time alone with God
and private prayer.
So, what does it mean to keep your heart?
To guard it above all things.
It's paying attention to what's going on in the deepest core
of what is inside of you.
Now, why should you keep your heart?
The first reason is what is said in this verse:
"For from it flow the springs of life.
For from it flow the springs of life."
The Hebrew phrase is not the easiest thing to make into
understandable English.
"From it are the outflowings or outgoings of life."
And so to make that understandable in English,
most translations, maybe all now, say
"For from it are the springs of life"
or "the water springs of life."
The picture is that your heart is like a stream of water that's
continually flowing out to touch and impact people around you
that you come in contact with.
And so when we've got that picture that your life is
continually flowing out from your heart to impact other
people--when we have that picture,
then I think it makes sense to expect that probably Jesus had
this verse in mind when he talked about our hearts.
He said in Luke 6:45, "The good person out of the good treasure
"of his heart produces good,
"and the evil person out of his evil treasure
"produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart
his mouth speaks."
Someone cuts you off in traffic
and you open your mouth to bless
or to curse, your life is flowing out of your mouth
to impact others.
I think Jesus also had this idea in mind when he said in
Mark 7:21, "For from within, out of the heart of man,
"come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder,
"adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy,
"slander, pride, foolishness.
All these evil things come from within."
So, it gives us an indication of why people do evil things.
And sometimes even Christian leaders neglect their hearts
and then they do evil things.
I read, not too long ago, a news headline,
pastor of a megachurch in some city in Indiana,
it was discovered that he was in an adulterous relationship with
a woman that he wasn't married to.
Why?
It brought great destructiveness to his marriage, to his family,
his pastorate was basically over, people couldn't trust him,
and great damage to the church, and great damage
to the reputation of the gospel and the reputation of Christ.
But let me tell you, that wrongful relationship
did not occur just in a moment or two.
That occurred over a course--I don't know anything about it,
but I just am telling you in general.
That kind of thing doesn't happen instantly.
It happens over the course of weeks and months where,
in a relationship with a woman that he wasn't married to,
there were feelings in his heart,
attractions in his heart that were of a nature that only
belonged to the marriage relationship and should have
only been directed towards his wife.
And when he was aware of those feelings,
rather than prolonging the relationship,
he should have distanced himself from it immediately,
because he should have kept his heart with all vigilance,
but he didn't and it went on and resulted in actual physical,
adulterous relationship.
He didn't keep his heart with all vigilance.
So, it makes sense, doesn't it, why the Bible tells us to keep
our hearts more than all vigilance, above all guarding,
above everything else?
Every time you encounter a new situation,
out of your heart come the outgoings of your life,
and what is in your heart is constantly flowing like a spring
to affect other people.
The quality of your inward moral and spiritual life is impacting
others around you, for from it flow the springs of life.
Last week, just a week ago tonight,
Margaret and I were with some friends in Illinois,
long time friends, and we love to be with them because their
hearts are full of love for Jesus and faith in Jesus,
and when we're with them, our faith and our love
for the Lord is just built up.
From their heart is flowing just an infectious love for the Lord.
Many of you here have responsibilities.
You have, perhaps teaching responsibilities
in the children's program.
Maybe you have responsibilities to welcome people
on Sunday morning.
Maybe you're leading a neighborhood group,
or a home fellowship group, or maybe you're leading
a Bible study, or something else.
In all of those responsibilities,
if your heart is full of self and pride,
then your interpretation of the Bible may be perfect,
your doctrine may be sound, but self and pride will also
be what you communicate.
Like a virus, it'll flow out and touch other people.
If your heart is full of anger and bitterness,
it will flow out and infect others around you.
If your heart is full of fear, it'll flow out of you
and others will have that fear.
They will be touched by that fear.
If your heart is full of love for Jesus and faith in him,
then love for Jesus and faith in him will also be what you
communicate to others.
It'll flow from your heart, and refresh us,
and will refresh everybody who hears.
I think this verse also gives insight into why people,
and churches, and seminaries, and denominations sometimes
stray away from faithfulness to the Bible and faithfulness
to its teachings.
I think it starts when their hearts grow cold toward God.
Let me give you an example, a story that talks about this.
Charles Hodge was a professor at Princeton Seminary
from 1820 to 1878.
Now don't worry, I'm not going to say anything negative
about Charles Hodge.
I'm going to say what happened when he found out something
about another situation.
But he taught at Princeton from 1820 to 1878.
Do the math, that's 58 years.
I've been teaching 32 years.
I've got 26 to go, and then I won't be able to walk up
these steps anymore.
But he was faithful for that whole time.
Well anyway, he was well known.
He had a great impact on the world.
And during that time,
Princeton Seminary was very conservative
in terms of its view of Scripture and actually
reformed theology, so it was just his--you could have had him
come and teach here.
He was doctrinally sound in that way.
But after Charles Hodge had been a professor at Princeton
for 6 years, in 1826
he decided, "Why is all this unbelief flowing out
"of German Universities?
"All these people that are denying that you can believe
"the Bible, denying the miracles in the Bible,
"denying the virgin birth, denying many other parts
"of Scripture, why is it all coming from Germany,
"which was the birthplace of the Reformation?
"After all, in 1517, it was Martin Luther in Germany
who began the Reformation."
Why had Germany strayed?
So, Hodge decided that he would go to Germany,
and he went to Germany for 2 years, 1826 to 1828,
and studied in Germany universities to sit
under these professors and find out what was going on.
Then when he came back in 1828, he gave a talk to the students
in Phoenix--sorry, Phoenix Seminary--in Princeton Seminary,
and he used this verse in the King James version.
And he said this--he said in deciding what he thought about
why Christianity had ceased to be even the nominal religion
in Germany, he said it was the decline of vital religion.
And so even today, as it has been throughout history,
God allows different attractive wrong teachings to arise
in the culture from time to time,
and it's different teachings in different centuries.
But I think God allows some error to prosper in the world
and eventually in some parts of the church in order to test
our hearts and see if we'll be true to him and to his word.
Mark, you weren't here for the first two times I did this
message this morning, but what I said and I'll say again,
I'm so thankful for you.
I'm thankful for your courage
to speak the truth of the word of God
even when it is contrary to what is commonly believed
in the culture today and it's not popular,
but it's the word of God and we have to be faithful.
So, the first reason we are to keep our hearts is for from it
flow the springs of life.
But now I want to take a detour for a minute,
and I want to take a quick overview of the whole Bible from
Genesis to Revelation and say, you know, in the whole Bible,
God puts a high importance on the condition
of people's hearts.
You start way back in Genesis 1 and 2.
Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden.
God put them there to test their hearts.
Would they be faithful to him or not or would they eat
the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
that God had forbidden to them?
And they failed; their hearts weren't true to him.
And then the Bible goes on, chapter after chapter,
and evil multiplies on the earth.
So, we find by the time of Genesis 6,
in Genesis 6:5 the Lord saw that every imagination
of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.
Heart, the thoughts of man heart was only evil continually,
and God brought the flood on the earth in judgment.
God started again with Noah and his family,
and then God raised up the nation of Israel
to follow him and be his own people.
God chose Saul, raised up Saul as king over Israel,
and Saul had promise, but then he failed
and he wasn't true to God.
So then Samuel came to him, the prophet, and Samuel said,
"Saul, it's all over.
God's going to take your kingdom away from you."
He said in 1 Samuel 13:14, "Now your kingdom shall not continue.
"The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart,
"and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people,
because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you."
So, God raised up David as a king, and David was,
for many years, faithful to God.
He was a man after God's own heart.
And then everything was going well,
but then David fell into sin, horrible sin with Bathsheba,
committed adultery and had Bathsheba's husband murdered.
So, David failed.
Then Solomon came after him,
and Solomon was a good and wise king
for many years, but then 1 Kings 11:4,
"When Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart
"after other gods,
and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God."
So you begin to think, "Well, wait a minute.
"Everybody is falling away.
"Is there ever going to be anybody whose heart is
wholly true to the Lord?"
And through the Old Testament,
the answer is no,
but there was a Messiah coming.
And so we get to the New Testament,
and we find that Jesus comes,
and Jesus is truly a man after God's own heart.
He is purer than King David.
He is wiser than King Solomon.
He is the one in whom the Father
continually delighted.
And then, for those of us who have trusted in Christ,
the New Testament says the Holy Spirit
has cleansed our hearts.
Our hearts aren't completely pure,
but they're cleansed because we're joined to Christ.
Then the New Testament looks forward to a time in the future
when Jesus is going to return.
And when he appears, we shall be like him,
and one day,
then our hearts will be perfectly pure and we will know
the favor of God resting on us forever.
But now, in this time between Jesus' resurrection
and his second coming,
we're in what is called the New Testament
or New Covenant age,
and in this time, God still tests our hearts.
Why do I say that?
I say that because the Apostle Paul was living
in this same period of time in history
in terms of God's overall work,
and Paul said that even for himself,
as he went from city to city, God was testing his heart.
So, 1 Thessalonians 2:4, "Just as we have been approved by God
"to be entrusted with the gospel,
"so we speak, not to please man,
but to please God who tests our hearts."
Paul would go to city, after city, after city.
He'd be persecuted.
He'd be beaten with rods.
He'd be thrown in jail.
He'd be stoned. He'd be whipped.
Why?
Because he was speaking God's word and it was unpopular,
but at the end of the day, I think every day, he's saying,
"God, was my heart true to you?
"Was I faithful?
I'm speaking to please God who tests our hearts."
And so I think that's true today of us as well.
I think God is testing our hearts.
There's a verse from the Old Testament
in 2 Chronicles,
spoken by a prophet named Asa, and I think it's still true.
2 Chronicles 16:9, "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro
"throughout the whole earth, to give strong support
to those whose heart is blameless toward him."
I think that's true this morning.
"The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout Bellevue,
"to give strong support to those whose heart
is blameless toward him."
So, the second reason that keeping our hearts is important
is throughout the whole Bible, the condition of our heart
before God is very important to him.
God will let different heart tests come into our life.
Margaret and I were traveling a month ago and we had a plane
delayed, and then delayed and delayed again, and in it all,
we were saying, "Now, are our hearts right before God
or are we becoming grumbling and resentful?"
Or just last night, we went to a restaurant to eat and we were
with our son, Alexander, who'd driven down from Vancouver, BC.
And I had in mind, you know, how the dinner would go
and everything, and we got into a restaurant
and the seating was not very good for conversation.
And I was just trying to guard my heart.
Am I going to grumble about this or say,
"No Lord, this is how you ordered it.
"There's nothing we can do about it.
Be at peace."
So, God lets tests come into our heart from time to time.
A pastor that I know said to me, "I used to go to this
"same restaurant several times a month
"and I have breakfast there, meet people.
It just was a nice place to work."
And he said, "One day, I was walking out of the restaurant,
"and I was putting the change back in my wallet,
"and I noticed I had $5 too much.
"And I went back in and gave the $5 to the manager
"who was there at the cash register.
"And she said--she just smiled and she said,
'Just testing you, Pastor.'"
But I think God does that from time to time.
He allows things that we don't want to happen to come into our
lives to see if our heart is going to be faithful to him.
I have a former student who went through 3 years of seminary.
He did well.
He went on and got a PhD in New Testament studies.
And there was only one job that opened up,
so he interviewed for the job, and they got in touch with him.
And they said, "We wanted to give you this job.
"There's only one condition.
"We'd like you to change your view on this one thing
that the Bible teaches."
They didn't say, "The Bible teaches,"
but this one doctrine which he firmly believed
the Bible taught.
And he said, "I'm sorry, that's what the Bible teaches.
"I can't change my mind.
I can't change my conviction on that."
And they said, "Okay, I'm sorry, we can't hire you."
So he lost the job and they went back to the drawing board.
And he was just finishing his PhD,
it had cost him a lot of money, and he didn't have a job,
and he didn't have a job prospect.
I remember standing in the street outside
the research library in England where he'd done his PhD,
and I said to him when he told that story--I said,
"You know, God sees that,
"and I think he's going to take care of you
and he's going to be faithful to you."
And you know, that happened.
Shortly after that, he got another 2-year research
fellowship to stay at a prestigious university.
After that, he got a major teaching job in a seminary
in the United States.
God tested his heart, and he was faithful, and God honored him.
For you, what will it be?
Friends might turn against you.
It might be illness that goes on for some time,
no evident solution.
It might be a financial setback that you didn't plan for.
It might be difficulties with children, or with parents,
or with in-laws, or neighbors,
or a thousand other things.
It might be a temptation to do wrong for the sake
of great gain.
In all of this, in all of these situations, God is watching.
Will you continue to trust him
and not become bitter or resentful?
Will you keep your heart with all vigilance?
Now, the third point, how can you keep your heart?
See, when this verse says to us, "Keep your heart,"
I think it implies that you can know something
of what's in your heart.
I think it implies that you have some ability to examine your
heart, otherwise there'd be no sense in telling you to keep it
or guard it.
So, here's the question.
What do you see in your heart?
If you're nervous or tense, ask, "What is it, Lord?
"What's troubling my heart?
Lord, will you make it right?"
Or if your heart is fearful and worried about something
in the future, tell it to God and say, "Lord,
"help me to understand this fear and help me to trust you
in my heart."
And don't pollute your heart.
If you know that there are books, or movies,
or Internet sites that pollute your heart, don't go there.
Keep your heart with all vigilance.
You know, I think one aspect of growing in Christian maturity
is learning to know what's in your heart,
learning to know what it feels like when your heart
is not right before God.
When you're arguing or pushing for something in the strength of
the flesh, as I've done from time to time in faculty meetings
at the seminary, and then God says to me,
"Wayne, shut your mouth."
I mean, he doesn't quite say that,
but that's the sense that comes to me.
And I've just got to be still, because I was trying in the--
I just wanted to prove that I was right,
and it wasn't from the Lord,
and it wasn't the Lord's leading.
Maybe you know what that feels like too.
Know what it feels like when the Holy Spirit
convicts your heart.
Sometimes, when I'm in conversation with someone,
I'll get this pain right in here some place.
I see somebody nodding.
And I think it's the Holy Spirit saying,
"Wayne, the words that just left your mouth were gossip.
"They were slander.
You shouldn't have said that."
And I have to say, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.
That was wrong. Will you forgive me?"
Know what that feels like.
But know what it feels like also when the peace of God
is guarding your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.
Know what it feels like when your heart is
in constant communion with God,
and learn to stay there more and more
in that place spiritually.
Sometimes, in the middle of a church service,
a stillness will come on the room
and there's a sense of the presence of God,
almost a heaviness or a weightiness.
Recognize that and rejoice in it,
and let God do his work when that happens.
A lot of this I think is just taking a few quiet moments
during the day and thinking, "Lord, now what's in my heart?
Help me to know what's happening in my heart."
And then, I think another great help in keeping your heart is
just the old fashioned disciplines of the Christian
life, what sometimes have been called the means of grace: just
Bible reading, prayer, privately and with other people, worship,
obedience to God's word, caring for the needs of others,
sharing Christ with those who don't know him,
giving to the Lord's work, fellowship with God's people,
just those old fashioned disciplines
of the Christian life.
Now, before I close, I just want to take a parentheses here
as well and I want to say something
in case any of you are new here to Mars Hill Church,
or you maybe came with a friend,
and maybe you're not sure that you've ever trusted in Christ
for forgiveness of sins.
Maybe you're not sure that you've ever been born again.
Maybe a lot of this doesn't make sense.
Let me just say to you,
the pastors here and I am just glad you're here,
but before you do any of this stuff
I've been talking about,
the first step is trust in Christ first
for forgiveness of sins.
The Bible says, "If we confess our sins,
"he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
And there's another sentence from the New Testament
that Jesus said that I think he is speaking to you right now.
If you've come in this morning and there's kind of a burden
in your heart, kind of a heaviness, and you just feel,
"I can't get my life straightened out.
"I can't make things right.
"I don't know if I'm right with God.
"This is too heavy for me.
I cannot do it,"
I think Jesus is saying to you right now
Matthew 11:28.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest."
I think you should picture him as being in this room right now
and saying to you, "Come to me, come to me all you who labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
The burden of trying to make your life right is too great.
The burden of trying to make yourself right with God
is too great.
He's saying, "Come, I'll give you rest."
And then he says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me,
"for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls."
When I say that, if you sense in your heart
that Jesus is speaking that to you
and you need to make things right with him,
then any of the hundreds of people here would love
to talk with you afterward,
and especially I think there'll be a prayer team
here in front.
So, there'll be people who will just talk with you
and chat with you about it.
And just say, "Look, I'm not sure things are right
"between me and God.
Could you talk with me about it?"
And there'll be people here to talk to you.
Conclusion:
will you keep your heart with all vigilance
today, this week, for your whole life?
If you will, then Proverbs 4:23 is saying to you
that from your heart will continually flow
a life of blessing
and a manifestation of the presence of God,
and God will look and be pleased, and his favor,
and his blessing, and his delight will rest on you
through all your days, and your life will bring him
glory and honor, more and more,
until the day he says to you, "Come home.
Well done, good and faithful servant."
What I would like to do is I'd like to spend a few minutes
sort of in quiet prayer,
just asking God to work in everybody's heart
in this room in the way he wants to work.
So, would you pray with me?
Lord Jesus, thank you for everybody here
at Mars Hill Church Bellevue
this morning, or this afternoon.
Lord, you say, "Where two or three are gathered together,
there am I in the midst of them."
Well, we believe that you are here present with us.
Lord, you've lived here on earth as a human being.
You know the struggles, the kinds of struggles
that each person here is going through.
Lord, will you search our hearts now?
You know us better than we know ourselves.
Lord, if in anybody's heart here there is fear--fear of
a financial situation, fear of something else in the future,
fear of a job situation, or other kind of fear,
fear in school perhaps--Lord, I pray that you would take that
fear away, forgive it, cleanse it,
and replace it with peace and deep trust in you, Lord,
with a deep sense of your presence and your protection.
And Lord, if there is anybody's heart here,
if there is jealousy, or envy, I pray that you would forgive
and cleanse that.
You've said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."
Keep your life free of love of money and be content
with what you have, for he has said,
"I will never leave you nor forsake you."
Lord, if there is jealousy or envy, will you remove that,
and let there be deep peace, and replace it with deep peace,
and trust in you, and a sense of your presence
and your care.
Lord, if there is bitterness or resentment because of a wrong
that's been done in the past that can't be made right,
Lord, will you remove that.
Take it away, please Lord,
and replace it with your love and your peace.
Lord, we give that situation into your hands.
We know that you will one day settle all accounts.
You are the judge of the universe who will make
all things right and we release it to you.
Give your presence and your peace, Lord.
Lord, if there's wrongful lust or coveting,
we ask your forgiveness, and Lord,
we ask by the power of the blood of Jesus that you would wash
our hearts and consciences clean.
Forgive that, Lord,
and replace it with joy, and contentment,
and again with delight in your presence.
Lord, if for anybody here there's just a delight
in the things of the world more than delight in you,
if we've put other things ahead of you and they've become our
gods, Lord, delight perhaps in material possessions,
in money, in clothing,
in where we live, Lord,
perhaps even in good things that you have given, Lord,
if those have become greater importance than you
in our hearts, forgive us.
Lord, replace our delight in those things with
a greater delight in you, and a joy in you,
and awareness of your presence.
And Lord, if there's been a pattern of deceptiveness,
or lying, or falsehood, I pray that you would forgive that,
and you would remove it, and you would fill those hearts
with delight in truth, and the resolve to love
the truth and speak the truth.
Lord, if there's wrongful pride, Lord, forgive that pride.
We have nothing that has not been given from you.
We ask your forgiveness for boasting in things that are not
of our own doing and we ask that you would give us humility,
and humility in your presence, and trust in you.
Lord, for all these things,
Lord, for anything else that you are bringing to mind,
I pray that you would take those things away now
and fill our hearts with your presence.
Complete your work now this morning--this afternoon, Lord.
Complete it, amen.
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