Heart Conditions.
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Pray.
Deep inside your rib cage, there is an organ that is responsible for carrying blood to every other part of your body. We call it your heart.
The Hebrew people understood the heart as being both your emotion and your intellect. The word was meant to describe your inner self, something you had control over and could manipulate, but that dictated the way that you were. We know from 1 Samuel, when the prophet Samuel anointed David as king of Israel that the Lord looks at our heart – so it must be a pretty important thing!
Last week when we gathered, I shared with you that the enemy is a liar. That is one of the most important things to know about the enemy – we saw it going all the way back to Genesis with the way that the serpent approached Eve, not with a direct question – but with a lie packaged like a question, with a bow on top, ready to deceive. Today, we are going to look at another lie of the enemy. This lie, in my opinion, can be blamed for most of what we see in the world around us. It is responsible for a great deal of sin in the world. And for so many people, even believers, that lie is a fundamental truth.
There are over a hundred verses in the Bible that talk about your heart - the heart of people.
The lie is this: “You should follow your heart”
Some of us in the room just cringed. Some of us are wondering whats so wrong with that. We are going to talk about it.
If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to the book of Jeremiah 17.
Jeremiah was a Prophet - and in this chapter, He is speaking to and of the nation of Judah. After Solomon died, the nation of Israel split into Israel, the Northern Kingdom, and Judah - the southern kingdom. Here, Jeremiah is talking to that Southern kingdom.
The first few verses of this chapter, Jeremiah is describing Judah - they had gotten to this point of idolatry - something God has already said many many times that He hates - and they didn’t seem to care.
The sin of Judah is inscribed with an iron stylus. With a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts and on the horns of their altars,
while their children remember their altars and their Asherah poles, by the green trees on the high hills—
my mountains in the countryside. I will give up your wealth and all your treasures as plunder because of the sin of your high places in all your borders.
You will, on your own, relinquish your inheritance that I gave you. I will make you serve your enemies in a land you do not know, for you have set my anger on fire; it will burn forever.
God was dealing fiercely with the sin of the people. He had no tolerance for sin. And then starting in vs 5 you see a time of teaching.
This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the person who trusts in mankind. He makes human flesh his strength, and his heart turns from the Lord.
He will be like a juniper in the Arabah; he cannot see when good comes but dwells in the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land where no one lives.
The person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord, is blessed.
He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.
The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?
I, the Lord, examine the mind, I test the heart to give to each according to his way, according to what his actions deserve.
In verse 9, in almost a message all to itself, God says this: The heart is deceitful.
What does the world say? Follow your heart!
See the problem?
There are a few people in my life, that I love, that are what I call pathological liars. They can’t seem to help themselves - if they are talking, they are probably lying. Im not saying they are what you would call big lies - just little ones. Like they have to make every situation more interesting.
Every story is exaggerated. Every single one. Flavor text is added to every possible situation. They have experienced every single thing that could be experienced. They just have to. They have lied so many times that those stories probably seem real even to them.
And it is frustrating. Because you can’t really trust anything that they say.
That is the nature of the heart.
The Bible says it is more deceitful than anything else…
The heart - the one that you were born with - is a liar. The heart that we are born with, it is sick. It is messed up. How?
Our hearts desire is to serve itself.
And it does this in two ways.
Write this down. Our hearts deceive us in two ways… the first is that our hearts inspire us to sin. And it fails to inspire us to do good things.
These two things summarize much of the new testament instructions.
Encourages us to sin: Our heart within us - makes excuses for why it is okay to do things we should not be doing. Things we know we should not be doing.
Lets make it elementary - I know I should not eat a pound of chocolate. But in my heart… I can excuse it away… because yesterday I worked out a lot. And the day before I did too. And I am even PLANNING to workout next thursday. And I probably won’t have any chocolate the rest of this month anyway. So I should go ahead, this one time, and eat the chocolate.
And it fails to encourage us to do good things.
The enemy knows all of this. And so he goes to work. Full time.… with movies about how special life would be if you would follow your dreams. Hallmark teaching us every December that women are just one vacation trip away from true love and saving christmas. Cartoons teaching children to disobey their parents - everything will be okay, just go on this cross the ocean trip to save the world. We watch one of those movies daily in our house - because the music is catchy and its colorful and it keeps the little ones attention for a little while. But the message is there. Follow your heart!
He goes to work in the culture… you do you! Do what makes you happy. Do what makes you feel good. Do things that make you special and important! How can it be wrong if it feels good??!
Look at the world around us - you see what I am talking about right? The enemy is working full time out there to convince us to follow our hearts.. and our hearts - right here inside us are inspiring us to do evil things. Our heart encourages sin, and it fails to encourage good works.
We can’t follow our hearts. they are deceitful and sick by nature.
So what do we do...
First We should know that God is at work too. The enemy has no final victory here. Not in me, and not in you. My heart is deceitful, But God promises a new one.
For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
We also have to know - that we have work to do too.
Invite the Lord to work
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns.
Keep and protect what God has given. Put your Faith in Christ.
Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.
The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.”
Know that we have deliverance.
We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Communion:
Today with communion - we remember these things, we celebrate these things.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.