Sermon: The Heart And The Spring Of Life

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If you would open your Bibles to the book of Proverbs chapter 4.

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Proverbs chapter 4. We're in a series at Apologia Church.

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If you're new, wisdom from above. This is God's wisdom. The wisdom of God from God revealed to His people.

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Wisdom from above. Proverbs chapter 4, starting at verse 20.

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Hear now the word of the living and the true God. My son, be attentive to my words.

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Incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them in healing to all their flesh.

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Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

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Put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you.

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Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left.

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Turn your foot away from evil. Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word.

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Let's praise His people. God, thank You for the gift of Your Word. Thank You for Your revelation.

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You've condescended. You've spoken. Lord, You speak constantly. Speech that can't be avoided.

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Through all the things that You've made. They tell us about You and Your glory, Your kingship,

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Your power, Your might, Your knowledge, Your wisdom. And Lord, You've condescended to creatures that have offended

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You. And You've spoken Your words of love, mercy, and grace. You've revealed, Lord, Yourself.

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And so, Lord, we acknowledge as we open Your Word today that this is a gift. We don't deserve it.

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Lord, even the freedom that we have to hold it now. Lord, this is a gift of Your grace, and so we thank

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You for Your Word. Please speak to us by Your Spirit, through Your Word. We pray, Lord, that You would speak through the teacher, the minister today.

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To Your people, renew our minds, heal our hearts, lift us up. Be glorified in what

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You do through this message today. In Jesus' name, amen. Wisdom from above.

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It's interesting because if you've been with us since the beginning of this, you've noticed that we keep hearing a lot of the same things.

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Same principled issues, same themes, but new ways of expressing it. And we have the same here.

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It's a constant repetition. I think, of course, if God is repeating Himself to us a lot, it's because that's the very thing

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He needs us to not lose sight of. It's a thing we have to be fixed upon. We have to know this thing.

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It's a constant repetition. So this opens up now. We're at the end of the chapter here, but it opens up in the same way that it sort of opened up at the very beginning of the book itself.

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It's the same thing reiterated over and over again. It says, my son, verse 20, be attentive to my words, incline your ear to my sayings.

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Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your hearts. It's ongoing.

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It keeps that pressure on us. Why? Why? And I think the answer is obvious, right? I'm not instructing you here.

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It's obvious to all of us. Why is God, with His divine wisdom and His revelation to creatures, repeating the same thing to us?

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I think the answer is obvious, because we're creatures, because we get lazy, because we're undisciplined, because we sin.

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We do lose sight. We do lose focus. We do lose track. And I think in this generation in particular, we're dealing with something now that we've never dealt with at any time in human history.

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Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. Our young people aren't being taught to listen to long, sustained arguments and to work through logical arguments and to see something come from premises to conclusion.

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All those things, we just don't do that anymore. And with the technology that is being given to us, in many ways, of course, is a gift as a tool.

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We can get the gospel around the world live from Phoenix, Arizona.

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People could be watching us right now. They're watching us right now in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, all over Europe, everywhere.

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So it's a gift. But there's something about where we're at today where our attention spans and our ability to focus and to stay exactly pressed in upon what our goal is, is being taken away from us.

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Of course, you probably know, you've heard about how all the new technologies are robbing our children of their ability to think past 60 seconds.

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How did it start before? Was it like Vines? Someone just reminded me. There was a thing called Vines before. That was like, what, six seconds?

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You had to put together a quick video, six seconds, and it's just sort of six seconds, scroll, six seconds, scroll, six seconds, scroll, right?

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And I guess that wasn't quite workable as a tool.

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And so it went to like shorts, and we have reels, and now the big competitive thing with all the platforms is they're saying, well, this generation, these people seem to really thrive on the quick clips and on to the next thing.

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And so you're just trying to get that dopamine hit, right? Like the exciting video and switch to the next video, switch to the next video.

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And we're not even created, I believe, to be able to take that much different context all at once.

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And so it actually does damage. These systems are actually damaging our ability to think long, sustained thoughts.

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And the issue is this, is we're creatures and we lose focus. We don't see things through.

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We allow things to get in the way, and then we lose sight of it, and we even give up. We throw in the towel. And so what we have from the beginning of Proverbs in God's book of wisdom, before we get to like the real, not that this isn't meat, but the real meat and some of the complicated issues of wisdom that are coming in the book of Proverbs, we have the introduction.

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It's a father to son relationship. And of course, ultimately, we see that as father in heaven to sons and daughters, speaking his wisdom to us to change us, to keep us alive, to keep us from stumbling, to keep us out of darkness.

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We see that loving father -son relationship, but this comes from the parent to the child.

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Listen to your father. And the book starts, the book, we're four chapters in, and the book starts,

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Proverbs chapter one, verse eight, hear and do not forsake. So it's father to son, hear, listen, do not forsake this.

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Don't leave it. Proverbs two, verse one, receive this and treasure it up.

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Treasure it up. Bury it in your hearts like treasure. Take it in and treasure it up.

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See it as valuable, treat it as valuable. Chapter two, verse two, incline your heart to understanding.

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So you have to wrestle with that innermost part of your being, that central place of you and your passions and desires and your conscience.

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We're going to get into all that today, but you have to wrestle with your heart, wrestle the heart to incline it, to understand what

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God is saying. This is his wisdom and we need it. We're his creatures, he's our

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God, he's our father, we're his children, he loves us. And he's saying, incline your heart to understanding.

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In chapter two, verse four, or verse three, cry out for it. God wants you to be crying out for this wisdom, this knowledge from God, this understanding.

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How do I live? Where is their life? Where is their joy? Where is their peace?

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God's saying, it's here. It's here in my wisdom. And so he says, cry out for it. You should be shouting out for this, wanting it, bending and yielding your heart towards it, listening, receiving it, treasuring it up.

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Chapter two, verse four says, seek it like treasure. Look for it like it's actually a valuable thing, more valuable than any treasure you can compare it to.

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We've done that message that God says that his wisdom, these words of life are more valuable than jewels, gold, silver, everything.

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And you know, let's be honest, you know how we would pursue that, right? I mean, in the last couple of years, of course, we ignore

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God's rules for economics. And yes, God does speak on economics and real money.

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We ignore that. And so we live in a time where everybody knows there's the problem of inflation.

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There's the destruction of our economy. We are hugely, massively, insanely in debt.

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We have a fiat currency, which is essentially a fake currency. It's not real money.

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And now we're reaping the rewards of that pursuit. So welcome to it. It's coming.

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It's coming. You can't disobey God in terms of a monetary policy, in terms of how you will hate your neighbor with money and not reap the whirlwind.

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You'll get it. It's coming. We will. But in the last couple of years, people have been saying, well, how can

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I make real money real quick? And so everyone knows the issue with Bitcoin and SHIB and all these crypto coin things.

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We've got crypto millionaires and billionaires. You know, somebody 10 years ago gave me 10 ,000

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Bitcoin if I would buy the pizza that night at the dorm. Did you hear that story? Wow.

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Dude, literally, years ago, somebody said, I'll give you 10 ,000 Bitcoin if you buy two pizzas or something like that.

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10 ,000 Bitcoin a year ago, you would be what? Billionaire?

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I mean, so we all recognize like when you see everyone is fighting for it, like get the app and let's buy some crypto coin and let's see if it goes to the moon, right?

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Let's see if I can get rich quick. And what's the Powerball at this week? What is it? What is it?

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How'd you know? It was a test, right? See, we know now.

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No, I'm joking. OK, it's obvious. It's like one point five billion dollars. And you say, I was at Fry's the other day grabbing some stuff, not buying

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Powerball tickets. And there was a line at the station for the Powerball, a line going around Fry's.

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People are just trying to buy those Powerball tickets. Why? Because they see that as treasure and they want it.

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People fighting for silver. And who's selling silver? There was a time, I think it was a year and a half ago, I was like, where can you buy silver in town?

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Like everyone's tapped out of silver. And there's a there's a shortage of silver. And like, where can we get silver? And silver is going to go up like hundreds, hundreds per ounce.

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Like it's coming. It has to come. It has to balance out. So everyone's like, where can I invest? How do I find treasure?

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You've got the lost Dutchman's gold, right? People are still looking for that because people know what it means to like find treasure.

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It's valuable. And God says this, my wisdom, these words of life are more valuable than any of that treasure. Here's the challenge.

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Truth be told, as creatures, we don't really believe that. Let's just be honest with ourselves, we don't really believe it.

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We don't believe that that wisdom from God is actually more valuable than winning the Powerball $1 .5

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billion this week. Congratulations to the

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IRS for winning half of that, right? Every time. But that's what God says.

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And it's repeated again and again and again. We're only a few chapters in cry out for it. Seek it like treasure. Avert chapter three, verse one.

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Do not forget. Don't forget. Don't forget. Why is God repeating this constantly?

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Receive it. Don't forget it. Keep your eyes focused on it. Seek it like treasure. Why? Because we do forget because we're sinful, because we're stubborn, because we're prideful, because we're selfish, because we let our hearts get out of control.

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We don't actually keep constantly pushing them back on the path. We forget.

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We do. And so God says, do not forget. Isn't it amazing? The book of wisdom starts off with like the prep stage, like father to son, please listen, listen, this is treasure.

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It's more valuable than anything. It's like last words on a deathbed. You want to tell your child, like, don't forget this. You need to know this.

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These are the important things. Like this is what God is doing. Preparing you for this book of divine wisdom. And he starts with that.

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Don't forget. Don't forget. Keep your eyes focused on it. Don't get off the path. Seek it like treasure. Cry out for it.

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Chapter four, verse 20, where we are today. Pay attention.

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Pay attention. Chapter four, verse 21. Do not let them escape from your sight.

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Keep them in your hearts. So here we are. Do not let it escape from your sight.

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These words of wisdom, this divine revelation. This is God speaking. This is the creator of everything. You're going to walk out of this room today and you're going to stand on God's dirt.

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You're going to drive on God's roads, under God's sky and God's universe. That's the creator.

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He, we owe him everything, everything, all of life is in his hands.

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And he's saying, do not let this escape from your sight.

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Keep your focus on it. Don't let it escape from your sight. You're constantly being told, reminded, don't forget, don't lose this.

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Stay focused on it. I was thinking when I was reading this, reflecting on the fact that I live in South Phoenix.

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And it's interesting, like when I first got there like 10 years ago, coyotes, like we're right by the mountain.

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And so it's coyotes everywhere, but they would really only come out. And it was consistent for years. They would only come out at night and they would come out in packs, you know, at night.

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And as soon as they saw a human, it was just scurry away, get away as quickly as possible.

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But man, a lot of coyotes in South Phoenix, a whole lot. But it was mostly nighttime. You had to contend with them.

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And of course, when they saw a human, they would run away. And so it seems like these coyotes are eating well, by the way, because they used to be super skinny.

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And that was like the common real skinny, you know, fearful looking coyote. Now, I went to my neighbor's house because he called me and said he thought he had a water leak.

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And so he said, hey, can you go check? I said, absolutely. So I go out. It's like noon or one o 'clock. So sun's shining, right?

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You know, everyone's out and about. Don't expect to see it. But I turned the corner into his front yard.

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And this massive, thick, thick coyote comes running out from behind a bush because he has a lot of rabbits in his yard.

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And this coyote was eating well. I mean, this thing had muscles like out to here. Right.

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He came out. He sees me. And all he does is he just runs and does one jump over this massive brick wall and takes off.

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And I'm thinking to myself, you could have easily killed me. I don't know what you're afraid of. I mean, the thing was eating well, huge.

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But, you know, it's kind of terrifying in terms of like, what do you do about this? Because actually,

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I'll just share this with you. When COVID was, you know, doing its thing and when everyone's sort of on lockdown,

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I was like, you know, I want to do I want to get some chickens. I'm going to get some chickens. I'm going to get some laying hens and I'm going to get some meat chickens.

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And, you know, we're going to get the eggs and have these for meats. And, you know, might as well, you know, stuck at home a lot.

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Let's raise some chickens. And so I bought like 24 chickens, like 12 laying and 12 meat.

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And I'm gonna make this happen. Right. And I even bought one turkey for Thanksgiving. And this turkey,

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I think we called him Gobble Gobble. He was getting big. And I'm loving these. It's fun being like a little a little farmer, a little pasture farmer.

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That was me. Right. Well, pasture farmer. And so I've got a little, you know, a little farm, a little garden going on in my backyard.

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And then I come out one day after having all these chickens and a turkey. And I recognize like, wait a second,

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I'm missing a turkey. And so I'm searching my yard everywhere. I'm looking. I'm like, how could this turkey jump over the fence?

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Like, it's not possible for this turkey to get away like that. It's not that big. And so I can't find the turkey. So now, you know, shed a tear.

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I don't know. Maybe one of the chickens ate the turkey. I don't know what happened. And so then next day

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I go, I'm like, OK, I had 24 chickens. I'm going. I verify with the family. How many chickens do we buy?

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About 24 chickens. Dad. Great. We have 22 chickens now. Where are they going? Right.

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Do I have a neighbor stealing chickens for me? I don't know. Next day, 20. Then it's 18, 16.

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I'm down to 12. And now I'm like, something's up. Thank you.

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It only it only took to get to 12 to realize something's up. And so so one night it's like two in the morning.

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And now I'm thinking coyotes. And so I hear something outside and the light comes on.

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Motion detector light comes on. And I got a 22 rifle. And so I'm ready for it. And so I peek out the blinds and I see, yes, it is a coyote.

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And he has one of my chickens in his mouth. And so I touch the doorknob and I didn't even jiggle the handle.

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There was no sound. But these are such good hunters. I touched it and it immediately looked over at me, grabbed the chicken again and just jumped over the fence.

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And so these coyotes wiped out all my chickens. And that's brought me to a place of like,

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I have to be vigilant. I have to be really vigilant and not let these things escape from my sight.

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I did buy some more and I'm working on it again. OK, so pray for us and the coyotes. All right. We're going to make it happen.

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And I'm going to kill some coyotes, I promise. But here's here's the thing. In that context with these predators.

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Who are dead set on death are all around my neighborhood in broad daylight, running down baseline road in my backyard, killing off this flock of chickens.

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Is that what you say, flock? Is it flock? OK, we're going to go with flock, OK? I have to be so vigilant because I also have a three year old and I've got a small granddaughter and their best friends.

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And so I'll tell you what my life has been like at my house in South Phoenix. Even in the daytime,

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I got these small toddlers outside my front yard. I have to be vigilant and keep my eyes on them at every moment because they're so small.

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My little granddaughter is so small. This coyote would take her in an instant and jump over a wall with her. And so I am vigilant.

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I keep my eyes on these kids constantly. I don't turn my back. This is the truth. I don't turn my back for a second. If they're outside in the backyard or in the front yard, one of us is with them and we are vigilant and we don't let them out of our sights because all it takes is a moment for a predator or to death for death to come in and to swoop in and take even a small child or a chicken or an animal.

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You stay vigilant. And so God says, do not let them escape from your sight.

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Keep them in your hearts. In chapter verse 22 through 23, the text says, for they are life to those who find them in healing to all their flesh.

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Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life.

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So again, you have this repetition again, not just the reminder, incline your heart, treasure it up.

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Don't lose sight. Listen, receive. Not only having that repetition, but you have this repetition again that wisdom is life.

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Wisdom sustains you. We just saw fairly recently in this study that God refers to wisdom as a tree of life.

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It's the thing that's going to sustain you and feed you. And God once again does that here with wisdom. This is where your life is.

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You want healing for your flesh. You want to be sustained. Do you want to tap into where life is? Then you must receive these words.

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You have to live your life as a child of God, receiving wisdom, keeping your attention on wisdom, focusing your eyes, listening for it, crying out for it.

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And this is interesting because here's this is the bulk. This is the bulk of it. This is the answer. This is what I want to impress upon myself and to God's people.

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This is the issue is that this is not a pill. We do. We've talked about this. We live in the kind of culture that wants the easy.

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We want the push of a button. We want the fast. Right. I mean, think about it today. You've got DoorDash and you've got

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Postmates and you've got everything that's literally I don't have to work for this. I don't have to work.

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I mean, it's a great blessing. I confess to it's a huge blessing to go. I can have somebody that's 45 minutes away.

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Get that food from that restaurant that I want. And they're going to drive it to my house and place it at my feet.

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Right. It's easy. It's a push of a button. It's easy. We want the quick, the easy, the snappy.

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And that's just not how wisdom transforms us. Accept it. Receive it into your hearts.

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Incline your ear to it. Incline your heart to it. That's not how wisdom works. It doesn't transform like a pill or like a button.

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It's not that quick. It's something that actually takes wrestling with the human heart, wrestling with your eyes, wrestling with your minds.

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Now, the glory of all this talking to God's people about wisdom is this, is that you only right now are receptive to what

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I'm saying about divine wisdom transforming life. You're only receptive to it if your heart and your mind has been changed by God and his grace in the gospel.

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Only people with new hearts and divine desires that God has placed there want what

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I'm telling you. So if you want wisdom and you're saying, I want it. I have to speak to you in my own heart and say this.

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God's telling his people this is something you have to wrestle with. Wrestle your heart.

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Wrestle your desires. Constantly remind yourself, set your focus on it. Stay on the path.

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You must fight for this. You have to stay disciplined. Transformation is a gift from God.

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It starts from the bottom. New hearts. Ezekiel 36. God takes the heart of stone out and he replaces it with a heart of flesh.

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It's now moldable, malleable, soft towards God. But it's still a heart that has to be wrestled.

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New desires and regeneration, that's a gift. But regeneration, here it is, does not mean perfection.

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It does not. You're not born again, given a new heart and dwelt by God's spirit.

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And all of a sudden you've got all the wisdom down. You're fully transformed. You're renewed.

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You're the best wife. You're the excellent wife of Proverbs 31. Why? I believed in Jesus. So now

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I'm the excellent wife. Or I believed in Jesus and so now I know how to be a father.

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And how to properly discipline. Or how to use money. Or love my neighbor.

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That's not how it happens. You now are indwelled with God's spirit with new desires, new passions, new affections for God.

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A desire for renewed heart and mind constantly. But it is work. It's not a button.

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It's not a pill. And there has to be a fight in our hearts and our minds. You don't just see this in wisdom literature.

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You don't just see it in the book of Proverbs. You see it throughout the New Testament. This is from the inspired apostles who walked with Jesus.

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Who have actually watched this whole redemptive story play out in front of them. His life, his death, his resurrection.

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The outpouring of the spirit of God. And they still emphasize throughout the

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New Testament God's word. Colossians chapter 3. You've been raised up with Christ.

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So keep seeking what is above. Where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. And then he says, therefore, if you're in Christ.

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If you're seated with him. You must put to death, mortify all these sins.

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He names a number of sins. Sexual immorality which is idolatry. You have to put it to death. Why? Because you're new.

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You're raised up with Christ. You're a new creation. But you're still being told you're not fully sanctified.

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You have to kill this. Not slap it. Not poke it. You must put to death what is earthly within you.

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You have to put to death these things. And put on, Paul says, the graces of Christ.

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The constant pressure you see from the apostles, the inspired apostles. To warn

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God's people that you've got to wrestle with your heart. Put these things to death. Mortify the flesh and all of its desires.

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And you have, of course, word even from the apostle Peter. Famous one. You know this. 1

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Peter chapter 5, verse 8. Be sober. Be vigilant.

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Be sober. Be vigilant. Because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour,

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Peter says. Who's that being said to? Generally the world?

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It's being said to a church. It's being said to Christians. The assumption is you have faith in Christ.

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You belong to Jesus. And so Christian, child of God, be sober. Be vigilant.

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Your adversary is like a lion. He is seeking to destroy you and devour you.

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So be sober. Be vigilant. The call of God's wisdom. The call that is within all these details of sanctification is stay focused.

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Stay on the path. Wrestle your heart. Put things to death. Be vigilant.

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And that's how wisdom comes. You can almost hear it. Can you hear it? The father to son relationship.

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The pleading with the child. I only want what's good for you. I only want you to experience hope.

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I only want the best for you. I want you to experience peace and joy and happiness.

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And that father is coming in with wisdom. Listen, don't lose focus. You must treasure this up.

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You've got to seek it. You've got to cry out for it. Keep your eyes set on it.

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But this word here, here it is. Here's what's thematic. It's everywhere throughout the Bible. It's always in front of us.

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And we have misunderstandings about what exactly does that mean? It says, keep your heart with all vigilance for from it, this is verse 23, flow, some translations say the issues of life, the springs of life.

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Keep your heart. Now this is a challenge. And this is one of the things Dr. Bonson pointed out when he did a message on this particular passage.

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I think he did a good job of saying, look, if we're gonna talk about this issue of the heart and wrestling the heart and keeping with all vigilance, we have to sort of dispel the modern

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Western myths about the heart and what's being talked about because we tend to think about the heart in our culture as very romantic, right?

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It's the place of romance. It's that place of emotion, right? And we've sort of, we've done it to ourselves.

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I mean, it's what we do. It's how we talk about the heart. It's like the emotions. And we say things like, you think with your head and like you feel with the heart, right?

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It's head versus the heart. This is the place of feeling. And this is the place of thinking. That's not biblical.

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That's not biblical. That's not how the Bible defines these things. That's not consistent with scripture at all.

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And we're gonna talk about that in a minute. But you know, you get it. I mean, think about songs, okay? Like Total Eclipse of the

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Heart, right? What was her name? Bonnie what? Tyler, yeah,

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Bonnie Tyler. Only old people answered that, right? I'm one of them, I guess, you know. Bonnie Tyler, I like the techno version of that song.

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It's the best. You're Breaking My Heart, right?

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You know all these emotional, gushy songs of, you know, some of you, you know, might know

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Quit Playing Games with My Heart, Backstreet Boys, right? Conover knows a lot about that, right?

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Yeah. Or, okay,

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My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion. No one can hear that song and not see

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Leonardo DiCaprio like this, right? Nobody can. It's impossible now. My Heart Will Go On.

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Tell It to My Heart by Taylor Dayne. You get the point. This song, you could just look up songs about the heart, all romance, all emotion.

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It's all about love and romance and emotion. And that's how we typically view the heart in modern

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Western culture because of songs and poetry and story and all those things.

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But that's not biblical. It's not biblical. The Bible doesn't make the contrast between the heart and the head so sharply distinct like that.

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As a matter of fact, and again, this is one of the things that Bonson points out, in scripture, there's more of a distinction between the heart and the bowels, the guts.

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Like more, your feeling is in the guts and the heart is far more than simply the place of the feeling, right?

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And we know this. Actually, this is still something we use today. Like, I had a gut feeling about that guy.

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You know what I'm saying? Or I was walking down the street. I see this guy over there. I had a gut feeling. Or I had a gut feeling something was gonna go wrong.

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We feel in our guts. And so that's oftentimes how it's portrayed in scripture between the heart and the bowels.

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But scripture actually defines pretty well the hearts. And so just some passages to go through together in terms of how does the

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Bible define this? Because God says here, keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life.

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Okay, so what is it? What's the heart? Like, I think we did the debate with Antifreeze guy.

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What was his name? Dr. you forget. Okay. We did a debate.

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We were in Utah. We're talking to this hardcore atheist materialist. He believes all there is, what's that?

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Dr. Clark, yes. So he's really angry at God, doesn't like us. Pastor Zach almost killed him.

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Not really. But clearly Pastor Zach will not let you mess with Pastor White.

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He will not. But one of the things brought up in the discussion with him is you said something like your heart needs to be changed.

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Something to that effect. And because he's a materialist, all he could hear in that was,

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I'm sorry, your heart just pumps in your chest sort of a thing. All you could hear as a materialist was like, you're talking about that fleshly pumping thing in my body because there's nothing transcendent in the atheist worldview.

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There's nothing spiritual in the atheist worldview. It's just matter in motion. It's just flesh and blood in front of me.

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And so he didn't get it. The Bible doesn't do that in terms of it's just the pumping thing in your chest. Yes, there's a pumping thing in your chest.

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And yes, that sustains you. And yes, that provides life. But the Bible talks about the heart in terms of inner thoughts.

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Go to Deuteronomy chapter seven. Deuteronomy chapter seven. Deuteronomy chapter seven, verse 17.

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Scripture says, if you say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can

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I dispossess them? You should not be afraid of them, but you should remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all

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Egypt. And so the heart is clearly here being identified as a place of where your inner thoughts are.

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This is where your inner thought life is. So that's Deuteronomy seven, verse 17.

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You also have it in Deuteronomy chapter eight, verse five. Know then, know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the

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Lord your God disciplines you. So know it. This is the place where your inner thoughts are.

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Your heart is a place where there are inner thoughts. You're thinking. The heart is also the place of the center of thoughts.

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In Romans chapter 10, verse 10. Go to Romans 10, verse 10. Romans 10, 10.

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Sorry, I was just in November 10. Isaac is never gonna live that down.

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Romans 10, 10. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

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So the heart there is the place of the center of thoughts. The heart is the place where our outlooks and attitudes come from.

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Defines our outlooks and our attitudes. Psalm 27, verse 14. You're gonna get to know your

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Bibles today. Psalm 27, verse 14. The text says, wait for the

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Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage.

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Wait for the Lord. That's a place where courage is being called upon that place of the heart.

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It's also Leviticus 19, 17, the place of hatred.

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What we hate. 19, 17. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor lest you incur sin because of him.

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So that's Leviticus 19, 17. The heart is also the place of the conscience in Scripture.

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The place of the conscience in Job 27, 6. Sorry, this is a newer

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Bible. Pages are sticking together. 27, 6. I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go.

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My heart does not reproach me for any of my days. My heart does not reproach me for any of my days.

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That place of the conscience. You see it in Romans 2, 15. You don't have to go there now. The place where the

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Apostle Paul was talking about Gentiles who did not have the law, but they do the requirements of the law. The law is clearly being seen in their heart, written on their hearts.

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They know this instinctively. They have it buried within them by God in their own conscience.

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They know right from wrong, right? The atheists can't justify, can't justify why you should love your neighbor rather than eat them.

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But they know instinctively, I should love my neighbor rather than eat them. It's embedded in their conscience by God.

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They're in the image of God. They know it's the place of the conscience. The heart is also in Scripture, the place of the seat of the emotions, whether it's

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Psalm 4, 7 with joy, Psalm 13, 2 with sorrow, and we'll end with this one.

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You know this one. Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6.

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This is the famous one. The great commandment to love

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God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Deuteronomy 6, verse 4.

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Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your, what?

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Heart. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

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And so there's that great commandment Jesus is quoting. Greatest commandment, love God. Second greatest, love your neighbor.

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But you're being called to love God with what? Your heart. And so Scripture defines the heart in a variety of different ways, but we can see, and this is something, again,

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Dr. Bonson pulled together, I think, quite well. Scripture talks about the heart as the place of the inner thoughts, the place at the very center of our thoughts, the place that defines our outlooks and attitudes.

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It's a place where it is the center place of our conscience. It is the seed of our emotions. It is the place of our volition and our will.

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The heart is central. And finally here, Dr. Bonson, I think, summarized it very well.

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I don't think I could do it better. He said, the whole inner life of image bearers, the whole inner life of image bearers, the controlling center of our lives is the heart.

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The whole inner life of image bearers, the controlling center of our life is the heart.

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It is the thing, here it is, it's the thing that distinguishes us, image bearers of God, human beings, from the beasts, from animals, from machines and rocks and dirt.

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Human beings have that place, the heart. And God says in Proverbs chapter four, go there, he says that, keep your heart, verse 23, with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life, flow the springs of life.

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So it's, we're being told here that there's a source within each one of us.

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That is flowing out of us into the world. And it's a spring.

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And it's coming from that place that is central to all of us. It's your hearts, it's your hearts.

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So it's that place where we can say it's the greatest blessing, but it's also the place of greatest indictment.

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It's what's to blame. It's what has to be wrestled with. And so you're being told with God's wisdom, look, you want this wisdom, stay vigilant.

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Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life.

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I couldn't help but think about Kauai.

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In Kauai, in Poipu, some of you guys on our missions team that went there, you saw this in Poipu, there's a little blow hole.

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You just pull off the side of the road and there's this amazing rock formation and little hole.

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You just sort of sit there for five minutes. And then all of a sudden, like 50 feet, 50 feet in the air is just this boosh.

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And then it falls back down again. You wait a few minutes and then it is boosh into the sky and then falls down.

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It's actually epic to see all of a sudden just water just shoot to the sky like this. It's called spouting horn.

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And it literally shoots 50 feet in the sky. Little hole there in the rocks. And then before you know it, it's just this blast of water that shoots out.

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And that's a good portrayal of our hearts. God says, keep it with vigilance for from it flow the springs of life.

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It's coming out of there. You can't avoid it. Now this, by the way, is something that is picked up throughout scripture in a number of different ways.

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But you know, all of you know, the famous words of the Lord Jesus from the

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Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is correcting their abuse of the law of God.

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Right? They were abusing God's law. And so Jesus comes as the perfect law keeper and the law giver.

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And he tells them about their misinterpretation and their abuse of scripture. He tells them, here's how you're saying it wrong.

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And he corrects them. And so the famous scene in Matthew 5, 27 through 28, Jesus tells us what?

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Go there. So we read it together. Matthew 5, 27 through 28. When Jesus is dealing with the issue of adultery and lust, he says, you have heard that it was said, you should not commit adultery.

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But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his what?

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In his what? Those are the words from God. Same words from God in the wisdom literature in the book of Proverbs chapter four.

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Now here's God incarnate, wisdom incarnate walking among us. And he says, no, it's like this. If you have lust in your heart for her, you have already committed adultery.

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They wanna say, religious people always wanna say, well, I haven't actually done it, right? Played around the edges with it, but haven't actually engaged in it.

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Jesus says, no, that's not how the law of God works. If it's happening in your heart, it's sinful.

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It's happening. That's where it begins from the heart flow, the springs of life, the issues of life.

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It's in your heart. You have to wrestle your heart. That's the source of it. So Jesus, of course, is wisdom incarnate and wisdom tells us it begins in your heart.

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And by the way, we have to address this. It is common today for people to abandon God's revelation in scripture and what

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God says about sin and to say, well, you can engage in, you can sort of have sinful passions and sinful desires within you as long as you're not acting on them, right?

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So somebody actually has the audacity to rob somebody who is engaging in a sinful sexual choice of the gospel itself and the hope we have in the gospel.

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And we'll say to them as evangelicals today, well, this person is homosexual, yes. They have those desires within them, but they're not acting on them.

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They're not living in that lifestyle. So they're not actually sinful. They're just, you know, internally they're homosexual, but they're not acting out on it.

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What would Jesus say about that? What would Jesus say about that? Where does sin begin according to Jesus?

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Where? It's in the heart. If the desire is there within you in the center of your being, if it's part of your passions, it's what you desire, it's what you want, it's sinful and it's within you.

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It's an issue of the heart. And so Jesus is telling you, you have to deal with the issue of the heart. You have to wrestle the heart.

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Keep it with vigilance. Keep it with vigilance, wrestle it, because that's where the issues of life come from.

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Jesus deals with the issue of the heart with lust. Jesus, of course, says in Luke 6 45, go there.

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Luke 6 45, the Lord Jesus deals another time with the issue of the heart and sin.

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Luke 6 45, Jesus says, well, actually, let's start at 43.

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Better to go there. For no good tree bears bad fruits, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruits.

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For each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.

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The good person out of the good treasure of his, what? Heart produces good.

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And the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks.

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So Jesus is saying, you're only seeing the opening of the blowhole. What comes out of it had a source behind it.

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You're only seeing this portion with what's flooding out of it, shooting out of it, but really it had a source behind it.

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And that source is the human heart. It's where it comes from.

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It's where the issues of life are. It's where you start that sin. It's where you treasure up.

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There it is. It's where you're treasuring up wisdom and righteousness and love and justice and holiness and truth.

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Or you are treasuring up sin, lust, evil desire, injustice, hatred, pride, disobedience, warring against God's order.

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It's there and it flows from the heart. The Lord Jesus teaches us that.

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Our actions, here it is, our actions clearly according to a number of passages in scripture, but at least where we are now in Proverbs chapter four, our actions are a reflection of our inner character, our inner thoughts, our inner desires, your inner life.

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Jesus says, by their fruit you shall know them. In other words, ready? What you see happen, what

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I present to you in my actions with my mouth in my life, what you see is now a display of what's really going on in my inner life.

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Now don't think about somebody else when I say that. That is, isn't it tempting? We are so sinful and so prideful, so selfish, that you hear something like that and the first thing your mind starts doing, it starts going to the guy out there, right?

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Like what comes out is a reflection of what kind of tree it is. What comes out is a reflection of what's the inner life of that heart.

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And so you start thinking about, well, yeah, I know a guy that's like this. Well, that reflects exactly what's inside his heart.

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You start thinking about this person and that person and this guy on TV and Kamala Harris and President Biden and all, right, you just go,

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I'm gonna think of the most evil person that I can imagine and what's coming out of their mouths and their life and I can say, aha,

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I found the inner life, I know the source. The truth is that's not how wisdom's supposed to come to us.

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If you're getting this word as a child of God today and I'm getting it today, this is for me. It's for you.

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So what's coming out of your life is coming from that spring of the heart and what you see in your life and mine, what you see is what you have as a spring.

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What you see coming out of your life, husbands, is what you have within you.

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What you see coming out of your life, wives, is a reflection of that source within you.

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That's the truth. What you see is what you have. So let's try it.

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Anger, it's easy to say, right? Well, I'm an angry person or I had an outburst of wrath or I had an outburst of anger against my kids, against my friend, against my loved one, against my mom, my dad.

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I had an outburst of wrath because they did this and so I'm angry because they did this.

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The truth is if you had an outburst of wrath, if you lost control of yourself, it's because you have anger in your heart.

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It's inside you, right? That came out of that spring, that hole, it came out and it's in front of you now and it's filled the room up because it had a source.

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The source was your hearts. That's what Jesus teaches. We're told to keep vigilance around our hearts and the source of all of it is from within us.

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Or how about sexual morality? Whether it's actual physical sexual morality, maybe you're in a relationship right now you shouldn't be in, you need to repent of it.

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You've toured with things with a lady at work or a guy at work or with a neighbor. Sexual morality, you treasured up lust in your heart.

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You treasured up lust within you and so it's starting to pour out. Or you were on the computer without accountability, lost, right?

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You can blame the computer all you want, but that's a tool, right? It's your fingers and your heart that went to it, right?

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So if you're struggling with lust, it's because lust is treasured up where?

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Come on now, talk to me guys, in your hearts. You can't keep blaming the circumstances and the environment and all the rest.

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Yeah, you're driving down the road and there's a place where you can lust, you pass by. You can blame the location all you want, but the truth is it only got you because lust was treasured up within you and there's a spring from which that lust is pouring forth.

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There's another path you could have taken. There's always another path of righteousness that you can stay on, you can keep your eyes fixed on, but the truth is if it's anger, it's because it's within you.

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If it's lust, it's because it's within you. If it's prideful actions that are spilling out of you, it's because there's a source from which it came and that was your heart.

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And God says, keep it with vigilance. Selfishness, laziness, cowardice, defiance to God's order of authority, right?

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Like we can have marital strife as believers. We're being sanctified, we're growing, we're seeing this in our marriage, where we're being sanctified and having moments where we crash and burn and we collide, but at a certain point as believing spouses, husbands and wives, we have to contend with this.

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If this is happening in my marriage, where's it coming from?

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Where's the source? And the truth is you'll heal when you finally recognize, oh, it's my heart.

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Oh, this is happening, there's this conflict because I'm authoritarian as a husband.

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Oh, because I'm prideful. I won't be corrected. I will never confess sin in my house.

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By the way, can I just say as a side, if as parents, we are not repenting of our sins to our husbands, wives and our children, our children will think we are hypocrites and they will not buy it.

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Because if you're asking your children to repent of their sins and then you're sinning and not repenting because you're so prideful, you will not confess sin when you fail.

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Your family will not believe you when you talk about Jesus. They won't. They won't.

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Because if they don't see you with a heart of brokenness and confession and humility, they're not gonna buy the fact that they have to do that to Jesus or to others.

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But the truth is what would lead to that? Well, pride, right? Pride, pride, pride. And if you live a life of pride, if it's spilling out of you and it's all over the room, you gotta deal with the fact that it came from a source.

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It was within you. That's what the Bible teaches. Keep it with vigilance. For from it flow the springs of life.

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So if you're in a relationship, husband and wife, and you're having constant conflict in the home, you have to ask the question.

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Just be real and humble with each other and say, where's my sin? What am I doing? Like, how am

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I sinning against my wife? Or how am I sinning against my husband, right? Constant conflict and strife. Ask the question, like, am

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I in a place where I'm defying God's law and his word and his wisdom about how this is supposed to work?

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And how am I sinning, right? A wife might be in a position where there's conflict in the home because she just refuses to submit to her husband, even in the things where they're just insignificant and maybe they are fully biblical and she just has a heart of defiance towards her husband.

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Deal with your hearts. Because ultimately, if that's happening in your home, the defiance is first and foremost to God, amen?

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It was all men that answered that. Hear the deep voices with that amen? Husbands, it goes the same way.

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Same way. If you're being prideful, mean -spirited, domineering to your wife, you're sinning against God.

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Stop acting like that's what a man does. Men don't dominate their wives. They don't wield a sword of authority over their wives to dominate them.

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They love their wives. They sacrifice for their wives. They lift their wives up. They pour into their wives.

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Don't act like you're being a man to your wife when you are just rude and mean -spirited, unkind, unloving, not gentle.

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You're prideful. And the problem is, you have a prideful heart. That's where it comes from. Your heart is full of pride.

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You've been treasuring up pride. Repent of your pride. And you better deal with it, not just with the externals.

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But you better get on your knees and repent before God over the pride that is in your heart. And then you keep it with vigilance.

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Guard it. That's what scripture tells us. That's wisdom from God. Children to parents.

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Disobedient to parents. You have to recognize that there is a propensity in all image -bearers of God to resist and to defy and to defy

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God's law, right? Because we're sinners, we have a propensity to sort of want what we're not supposed to have or to defy

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God's law. And so children, if you're sinning against your parents, not honoring your parents, being disrespectful to your parents, you have to recognize that's just defiance and sin and pride against God and it's within you, so deal with your hearts.

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Know that you have a savior that says it's finished, your sins are forgiven. Yield to God and to your parents and deal with your heart.

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God, fix my heart of pride. Fix my heart of defiance, but it's within me, God. Lord, deal with my heart.

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We can go a long time on this, but I'll finish with these examples.

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You've heard me give you that picture, it's a popular one, about the glass of water or this, right?

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If you take this and just ask the question to somebody, you take this, you've got a glass of water or a bottle of water and you hit it, it's just water.

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It'll be okay. Now, ask the question to the average person, you hit it, spill the water and you say, why is water on the floor?

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Now, most of the time when you ask that question to somebody, room full of people, hit the bottle, hit the glass, water spills out, say, why is water on the floor?

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And the answer is because you hit the bottle, because you hit the glass, water's on the floor because you hit it.

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But listen to it as I ask it again, why is water on the floor?

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Why is water on the floor, right? You could also ask the question in a different way.

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Why is milk on the floor if it's a glass of milk? Or why is Coke on the floor if it's a glass of Coke?

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I asked about water, why is water on the floor and not milk or Coke? And the answer is, well, water's on the floor because water was in the cup, water's in the cup.

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That's why water's on the floor, because water was in the cup. It's not because somebody hit it, it's because water is the element inside.

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And so what tends to happen as sinners, when sin pours out of me, it comes from that hole, that spring goes forth, it gushes out, the instinct of a sinner is to say, it's because you, it's because you hit me, it's because you provoked me, it's because you did this to me, sin poured out of me because you did this.

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The answer is, nope, nope. Pride came out of you because there is pride in your hearts.

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Lust came out of you because you have lust in your hearts. A lack of self -control came out of you because that's what's in your heart.

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All these things are issues of the heart, and so God says, keep your heart with vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life, that's the source of it all.

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And so brothers and sisters, we are being called in godly wisdom to keep our hearts guarded, treasuring or storing up sin of any kind will not hide them.

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You could deal, you could be, you could be toying with lust in your heart daily, but never acting out on it physically with somebody, and you think that that's gonna solve the problem of sexual morality, no, you are treasuring it up within you.

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You could be bitter in your heart and angry at others around you, you could not be forgiving, I'm just gonna keep it within me, it'll be my secret and my

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God and my secret, it's all inside me, the truth is, is no, you can't store it up because it will gush out, it's where it all flows from.

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You have to deal with your heart, you want freedom, you have to deal with your heart. The hope we have is

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Ezekiel 36, God says he gives you a new heart, soft heart towards God, and God tells his people, you have to be sober, you have to be vigilant, you have to incline your ear, you have to treasure these up, you have to receive these words, keep it with all vigilance, you have to mortify your sin, you have to put it to death, it starts there in the inner life, we have to be vigilant.

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So scripture tells us all these ways of vigilance, it says, what? Be vigilant with your heart, guard it, stay on the path, keep your eyes focused, the text says it here, keep your eyes forward, ponder the path of your feet, verse 26, then all your ways will be sure, do not swerve to the right or to the left, turn your foot away from evil, that's what we're called to, scripture says things like, flee from sexual immorality, flee from it, don't toy with it, don't sit with it, run from sexual immorality, flee from it, you're gonna see in Proverbs chapter five, we're getting to the account of the adulterous woman that you must avoid, what does

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God say there, we'll just jump ahead a little bit, chapter five, verse eight, it says this, keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house, stay away, don't go near, stay on your path, run, flee, put it to death, deal with your heart, keep it with all vigilance, fight, brothers and sisters, to guard your hearts, stay far from these things, now it's gonna be different for all of us, because all of us are in different places of sanctification, we're all being challenged by the spirit of God in different ways, maybe it's a wife, dealing with issues of submission or anxiety and fear, maybe it's a husband not loving his wife, not providing for his family, not being a hard worker, being undisciplined, being prideful, being mean spirited, maybe it's a child, not loving and being gracious to family members, not serving one another in love, whatever the case may be, we're in different places, or is it lust, be vigilant, how do you have to guard your heart, how do you have to put it to death, how do you have to stay on this path, ponder it, not swerve to the left or to the right, that's something you have to deal with the

01:00:26

Lord now, you have to ask God, deal with my heart, what's there, because that's where all this sin is coming from in my life, and God calls us with his wisdom to keep our eyes forward, we all recognize this, the text says at the end here, it says, ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure, ponder the path of your feet, okay so God's word to me, okay

01:00:54

I'm a creature, I don't know everything, I'm fallible, he's infallible, he's the creator, he's all knowing, he says to me his son, he says

01:01:02

Jeff, ponder the path of your feet, so here's the word from God that tells me and tells you, put your name in there, it says look down, look down, look down at nine o 'clock, look down at 10 .30,

01:01:19

look down at noon, look down at three, look down, ponder, is this where God calls me to be, is this how

01:01:27

God wants me to love him and to love others, is this, am I glorifying God, am I honoring God, what path am

01:01:32

I on right now, scripture says don't swerve to the left or to the right, turn your foot away from evil, and most of us, we can understand this call, this command, we can understand it when we think about say, for example, like a race, right, a race, we've got everyone lined up on their lines and they're bent down, right, and their eyes are forward, they're looking straight ahead at the path that they're on and all they're thinking in that moment is as soon as that gunshot goes off,

01:02:06

I'm gonna beat this path as fast as I possibly can and my eyes are straight ahead, they're not running and looking around them and look like this, they're staying focused, if they look around, they could trip, they could swerve, they could lose sight, they could lose their pace, so when they're on that line, they're looking forward at their path in front of them, they are fixed, it's a fixed gaze and their focus is get to the end and stay focused, we understand it there or the fighter in the ring, when they call the fighters up to the middle of the ring, the fighters are looking right at each other in the eyes, this is my opponent, this for the moment is my enemy, this is the person

01:02:43

I have to take down and they look eye contact, it's just focus, focus, eye contact, it's intimidating at times, right?

01:02:50

The eyes are locked on each other, that you are my mission, I'm not looking away,

01:02:55

I'm looking you right in the eyes because it is my goal to take you down, we understand that with those opponents or I don't know,

01:03:04

Dennis with baseball, I imagine Dennis when he throws those baseballs that could put holes in people, he's not throwing the ball and looking at different direction while he's doing it, if you've ever seen him throw a baseball, it's scary and when he's throwing the baseball, his eyes are fixed on where he's throwing it, he's not losing sight, he's not losing his gaze, he's throwing it and it hurts when it hits that guy's glove,

01:03:30

I think about this, recently when we went to Ireland to serve the churches out there who are now saving lives and to help them and bless them and teach and equip them,

01:03:42

I had for the first time to drive in Ireland because we were going so many places to teach so many different times that it didn't really work for us to have people pick us up and to take the trains and everything else, we've usually done that but this time we had to drive and it's intimidating obviously because you get there and you haven't slept at all and so you're exhausted, you've been up for 24 hours and you get in the car and you're on the wrong side of the car, it feels really unnatural and now

01:04:15

I'm in the car with Isaac and Zoe and I think Carmen was with me maybe in that but now we have to hit the street to Dublin and start driving, now mind you, no sleep whatsoever and I'm already exhausted,

01:04:28

I'm on the wrong side of the car and now I have to drive on the wrong side of the road, wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road and it is intimidating, it's intimidating.

01:04:37

You get used to it actually pretty quickly and I felt great after like half an hour but at first it's very scary and I can tell you right now that the entire time in Ireland when

01:04:47

I was on a road, a path, my eyes were focused directly forward, I looked like an animal, like this, focused right there on the prey, eyes forward, there's the path, stay focused and it got even more difficult when you get off the highways which shouldn't really be called highways in Ireland, their highway is like one of our lanes, two way, it's amazing, they have teeny tiny cars, most of our cars wouldn't even fit on the roads in Ireland but in Ireland, most of the roads are these back country roads and I'm telling you the truth,

01:05:16

I ain't lying, if I'm lying, I'm dying, I'm telling you, these roads, it's like one strip of asphalt that can barely fit one of our

01:05:24

American cars. I'm not exaggerating here and so you're on this road and you know as you're going up this hill in Ireland, you know as you're driving 45 miles per hour over hill that there might be another car coming, it's a two way street, they're out of their minds, it's two ways and you know that another car could be coming over that hill and you're driving and there's not enough space on the road for the both of you so you're like this on the path, stay focused, right, stay focused, don't look too, don't be distracted, you gotta stay focused the whole time or you're gonna kill yourself or somebody else and so the whole time it's nerve wracking, your nerves are shot because you're driving the whole time for like an hour and a half fixed like this, don't die, don't die, don't die, your eyes are on the path, not to the left or to the right, it's absolute focus and yeah, it wears you out but you know what, you live, ponder your path, don't swerve to the right or to the left, keep your heart with vigilance for from it flow the springs of life, let's pray brothers and sisters, father

01:06:31

I pray that you'd bless the word that went out today for your glory and for your kingdom, bless us as your people, heal our minds and our hearts,

01:06:39

I pray even now, Lord with all of us, with your people and dwelt by your spirit,

01:06:44

I pray you convict us, show us our hearts, we're about to come to the table

01:06:49

Lord, your table that displays for us the glory of Jesus, his work on our behalf, his broken body, his shed blood, we're about to come to this table

01:06:58

Lord to remember you, so we come as forgiven people but show us

01:07:04

Lord, where, where we are treasuring up sin within us, show us our hearts, bring us to confession, bring us to joy in our salvation, we praise you in Jesus name, amen.