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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/eugene-higgins/keeping-thy-heart/
I'd like to read with you in the book of Proverbs, please. Chapter 4. Proverbs chapter 4 verse 23. Proverbs 4 in verse 23. Keep thy heart with all diligence For out of it are the issues of life. Keep thy heart Above all that thou guardest for out of it are.
The issues of life. Chapter 23. For another reading please. Verse 26.
Proverbs 23 in verse 26 my son Give me thine heart and let thine eyes Observe my ways. Now would you turn please to the first book of Kings and we'll read in chapter 2 first Kings chapter 2. Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die and he charged Solomon his son saying I Go the way of all the earth.
Be thou strong therefore and show thyself a man and keep the charge of the Lord thy God to walk in his ways to keep his statutes and his judgment and his commandments and his judgments and his testimonies as It is written in the law of Moses.
That thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest and whithersoever thou turnest thyself. That the Lord may continue his word which he spake concerning me saying if thy children take heed to their way To walk before me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul.
There shall not fail thee said he a man on the throne of Israel. Now just one more passage, please in chapter 11. In verse 1. But King Solomon loved many strange women together with the daughter of Pharaoh women of the Moabites Ammonites Edomites the Sidonians and Hittites of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel.
Ye shall not go into them. Neither shall they come in unto you for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon clave unto these in love. Do notice now in this Reading the repetition of the word heart.
He had 700 wives princesses and 300 concubines and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father verse 9.
And the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel. Which had appeared? Unto him twice. Proverbs chapter 3 seems to tell us that the responsibility of self-vigilance of Keeping our heart is the chief duty of every saint.
Interestingly enough if you just link that up with our second reading in Proverbs. It seems to be that the only way to truly keep your heart is to give it to the Lord. To know what it is to live in true hearted devotion to the Lord Jesus.
When the writer says keep your heart above everything else that you keep for out of it are the issues of life. He seems to seems to suggest that every other thing will be affected or decided by your heart condition.
That who you will marry where you will live. How you will live what you will do your vocation your job your choices in everyday living that everything will stem from that inner man from the opinions you have formed from the ideas you have Formulated.
If all of that then refers back to what my inner condition is like then above all else. I must guard my heart. In fact the word that he uses has a Relation to the job of the watchman who would be guarding the city.
So here then are the crown jewels of Christian living to guard yourself. To yield yourself to the Lord in wholehearted obedience and devotion to keep your heart above all that you keep to give it to the Lord.
Now it is interesting to me to take a look at Solomon and notice a man who though highly gifted and Singularly blessed by God should have a tragic breakdown in this very point that again and again We are reminded of a man whose heart was turned from God and who therefore despite so many other things failed Failed in this most important line of truth.
I can remember as a younger believer not long saved the conferences like this had the salutary effect of making me tremble to think of the the dangers that were in the world of the environment through which I had to pass of the things we were reminded of yesterday that they it would send you away from a conference like this with a humbled heart Longing to be preserved by God to be kept in any measure of usefulness for God.
And I hope that together with what we have already been privileged to listen to in the conference thus far That my brief comments this morning will have that effect upon us as well And will make us long to be preserved for God's glory.
I Want you to notice then first of all Solomon's splendid start somebody has said that the the Solomon who wrote the Song of Songs was a happy man and the one who wrote the book of Proverbs was a holy man and the Solomon of Ecclesiastes is a haunted man a man who with regrets Swelling in his heart looked back over life Forward to the imminent darkness and mourned that all was empty that all was vanity.
And yet when you go back to those early days When you look at how we began was there anyone who ever began his course for God so splendidly with so much So much typological meaning with so many advantages with so much blessing.
First of all He was chosen by God of all my sons said David God has chosen Solomon. He was chosen by God early in his life He would be impressed with the grace of God. He was the son of Bathsheba and yet God would choose him.
What grace was this that would so work that out of all of that dark chapter in the life of David? Solomon would be produced and God would choose Solomon and when he selected a man who would be a man of peace who would build a House who would take the reins of government God would choose Solomon.
He would be impressed with the love of God. How amazing that God should employ Nathan again. The prophet who came in to condemn David comes back in to rename the child and say call him Jedida Beloved for jaws sake the love for God's sake the Lord loves that child.
He'd be impressed that he was chosen by God that God loved him that the grace of God had selected him and the faithfulness of God for God had promised the kingdom to Solomon and Despite the ploy of Adonijah and his attempt to circumvent that promise and seize the kingdom Solomon is going to be brought to the throne in a scene reminiscent of a of a Dullam.
Solomon is accompanied by the priest Zadok by the Prophet Nathan. Just as his father had had God Just as his father had had a biother he has a prophet and a priest. But this is the day of the kingdom not the cave and he has another man with him the warrior Benaiah and the enemies are subdued the land is rid of these terrible rebels.
Solomon receives the throne he would begin his course marveling Marveling at the faithfulness of God and bringing him to the kingdom. Not only was he chosen by God, but he was charged by David so that when he began his course He was charged by his father.
I can remember listening to ministry such as you have listened to already. I Albert Ramsey from Prince Edward Island. I Recall listening to him when I was not long saved and being impressed With the fact that God had saved me for a purpose.
I had no idea what that purpose was. I'm not sure that I understand it yet. But there it was anyway in the ministry that when God saves a person there is a purpose. He has a purpose for that life. He has selected a sinner from going down to the pit.
He has a course he wishes that believer to run. He has aims and goals and purposes and that is a young believer I would need to be exercised to find those aims those purposes those goals in life. That is that is the way it was with Solomon.
In fact the charge that was laid upon him by David as David impressed him with the purposes for which God had brought him to the Kingdom seemed to break themselves into four. I remember them very simply this way.
Solomon was charged to rear the house and to fear the Lord and to hear the law And to clear the land. And as he came to the throne his father charged him with these Responsibilities that the life's work the longing ambition of David was now being Transmuted passed on to his son to rear that house for God and the land still had rebels in it.
He was to remove from the land all things that would offend to clear the land of the enemies. And he must ever have an ear open to hear the law of the Lord. And if he wished to be preserved he must walk in the fear of the Lord.
He was charged very quickly. You will see that he was channeled by Responsibilities. A man now who had things thrust upon him that caused his time his energies his efforts to be all Channeled toward the things of God.
What a what a call for humility. There was ever a happier day in Israel's history when their monarch bowed humbly hands out stretched Reaching heavenward asking God for wisdom to rule this so great a people.
A man who realized he was already wise. You remember that that before that prayer and before that experience with God Solomon was being addressed by his father David and David said you'll know what to do because you are a wise man.
And yet a man who already had natural wisdom Was crying to God for something beyond that for spiritual wisdom for wisdom from God to lead the people of God. Humility. Back in 1989 time magazine devoted 30 pages to the subject of leadership.
It interviewed a number of renowned leaders to ask them to define the subject of leadership. Not one of them not one of them suggested the biblical model of of humble service as Having anything to do with leadership.
What a marvelous moment it was when this man humbly realized God had brought him to that throne. He is lifting his hands heavenward to ask help from God. Fidelity. What a call for fidelity that there had been a pattern passed on to him and he was called upon to adhere to that pattern.
Dear young believer, we are not called upon today to be novel in our approach to assembly testimony. God is not charging us With a responsibility to be clever to figure new and Noveler and better ways of conducting ourselves in the things of God.
In fact that searches my heart very deeply and I hope it will yours as well. I'm speaking now to my own generation that the peculiar danger to which the third generation is liable is the danger of Letting go the things of God is the danger of altering the pattern.
That the first generation fresh out of Egypt Has at least some appreciation of the God who has brought them that the second generation Eschewing the mistakes of the first are seemingly more devoted and and and wish to claim the land for God that the third generation is liable to the danger of Allowing the luster of holy things to be dimmed and letting the pattern fall.
And not holding things for God. There is a call today to simple faithfulness Fidelity to the things of God truth that has been handed on to you that you are called upon to hand it on intact Unchanged to a generation to come if the Lord has not returned.
Oh all of that then I have simply gone over very briefly to show you that in Solomon We have the blessing of an uncluttered start a man who began his life and service for God unfettered untrammeled Unattached to things that would cause him to be led astray.
There are times when evangelists that are here They've seen people saved who have had so many things in their life to hinder them. Perhaps they're married to someone who has a total disregard for spiritual things.
They were against their their marriage partner attending the meetings or getting salvation and now they are against them going on for God. It may be that their job that that circumstances on life or so arrayed against them that it will be fairly well Impossible for them to rise above it and yet divine life Bubbling up fresh in the soul has overcome Titanic obstacles and made men of usefulness for God out of the midst of circumstances That would have dictated otherwise all of that is possible but I want to tell you it is a tremendous thing when a believer when a young believer starts off uncluttered unattached a Splendid start to be able to run their course.
Well without the other things to hold them back. That's the kind of start that Solomon had. That's the kind of beginning this man had so that is what makes it such a Terrifying thing when you look at his splintered heart when you see a man who in the midst of tremendous potential at the prime of his life Caused his or allowed his heart to be turned away from his God.
I think that that is part of the thrust of 1st Corinthians chapter 10. I Unfortunately, I guess I never realized the connection between chapter 9 and chapter 10 until some time ago that when in chapter 9 Paul is speaking About his course and running so run I so fight I and what our brother McCullough read to us yesterday about his great fear Lest I myself should be a castaway that when he moves into chapter 10 His mind is still thinking his pen is still writing on the same subject and as he dips back into Israel's history and he tells us about those Israelites and he tells about their coming out of Egypt the The emphasis is on the word all that they all had the same food that they all had the same fealty to date Moses that they all had the same fellowship all were baptized in the cloud and in the sea He is saying that they all began with the same blessed start the same benefits the same advantages.
But with the most of them God was not well pleased and he moves from speaking about all. They're telling us about the most of them falling out of the race about the relative few Who kept their heart above all that they kept and the great fear in his own heart that while he had had a wonderful start What would his finished be like?
He was a man then who despite this splendid start Allows his heart to be led away from God perhaps just by noticing for a few moments some Simple principles in this man's life. It will preserve us from making the same mistakes.
I noticed first of all that light and gift even when divinely imparted or Not sufficient anchors for the soul.
Ability gift a knowledge even of the Word of God.
And would you listen to me dear young believer? They are not enough to preserve you in fellowship with God. Or in fellowship with the people of God. Light could you ask for more than what Solomon had?
Ability divinely imparted wisdom. You see when he was young. He was so scrupulous. Wasn't he? Do you remember that that he took his wife the daughter of Pharaoh and he moved her away from the ark. He was very very careful very circumspect very scrupulous.
When he was old he was very Saul like Very much like the man that persecuted his father and he is trying to destroy this rival Jeroboam to rid the kingdom of the man who might take the reins of government from him and with all The benefits that have been given to him.
He allowed his heart to be turned aside. Some years ago my brother and I went to visit our uncle Who was dying with cancer? When my when my mother told me That he had once been in the assembly that he had once been a very exercised man that he had once had a deep interest in children's work and.
And took a major part in the Sunday school work. I Could hardly believe that I had always known my uncle Frank as a as a happy-go-lucky man a nice man. But was very very little of God about him. So we were wondering what the conversation how we would turn it around to spiritual things when we went to visit him.
We needn't have worried. We had hardly been in the house five minutes When sitting in that easy chair with the pillows propping him up to try and get some comfort. He said to us fellows. Look, I know why you came.
I know why you came. I said I'm gonna tell you I know I'm saved. I Don't have no doubt about that. I'm trusting the blood of Christ. Said I really don't know how it happened. It was really like just being there while a man was talking to himself.
He said I really don't know how it happened he said some Christians criticized me and and and my wife and I got a little annoyed at it and then we just allowed that to fester and. And we became upset at them and annoyed and he said I began to give up some things I was doing and said I'm not Gonna do that anymore and I stopped taking part in the assembly and And he said before we knew it we were not coming to meetings too much.
And then it just became easier to stay away and and then we dropped out. We never intended that it would be permanent.
But we never got back. I.
Don't know he said how it happened. Never make you tremble That despite all that you know and all the gifts that God may have given you. That if you fail to guard your heart if you fail to yield it to the Lord to guard it.
That your heart could be divided. Parted that we might fail to adhere to the wonderful principle of that great hearted man Barnabas who exhorted the believers that with purpose of heart they should cleave to the Lord.
I notice That departure often begins with a turning away from revealed truth. That is it is not what we don't know but what we don't obey. It is not a matter that if we just knew more. That that God hadn't taught us sufficiently if he had just taught us more we would have been preserved.
It is not so much truth that we don't know but truth that we are not obeying that we are not practicing that that is. Where departure begins? I have a great problem really when I'm reading the Proverbs to differentiate Proverbs written to Solomon and Proverbs written by Solomon but just allow me then to suggest that since both are possible that there are Proverbs that Solomon wrote and there are Proverbs that were Given to Solomon as a young man to mold his life.
Then notice these two stirring and searching principles if on the one hand if Solomon wrote things like this Keep my heart above all that thou keepest. If Solomon wrote things like he that ruleth His own heart is better than he that taketh the city.
If it was Solomon who was the writer of things that told us to Guard yourself to protect yourself a wise son. Here's his father and father's instructions. If Solomon was the writer of those then I see.
That if that is the case they were written by him. It is possible to forget my own ministry. It is possible to tell you truth. It's possible to warn believers to be careful to be circumspect to develop convictions to guard their life.
And fail to do it myself. If they were written to him. If he was the man to whom the mother is speaking in chapter 31, it's not for Kings. Oh Lemuel. It's not for Kings to drink wine or for princes strong drink.
Guard your ways. Seek a virtuous wife if he is the man being given such cogent advice. And I learned that it is possible to ignore the ministry of others. To sit and listen to ministry like we have heard already to be reminded of truths as we have been reminded.
To walk away from a conference like this unaffected and untouched. That's terribly searching. Because God wishes to communicate to our hearts by ministry like this. And I hope that God will help us unlike Solomon to respond to the truth of his word before leaving that.
I just want to notice with you that another principle is this usefulness for God is determined by spiritual condition. Not favored position. It's not a matter of whether I'm up here and and I can preach or or I'm in a large assembly where there are a lot of men that are able to teach me the Word of God or or I am able to come to conferences like this and and maybe someone else is not.
It is not favored position or circumstances in life. That will dictate your usefulness for God. It is your own spiritual condition. Your exercise. Your devotion to God. Here is a man who ignored his personal life.
A man who? Apparently thought he could be one thing in private and another thing in public. A man who would build a house for God and Then think that he could turn away from the Word of God. Bring in influences from heathen nations and somehow be untouched by that and ignoring his own personal life slackening.
Led to the terrible debacle of a life that could have been eminently useful for God. Back in 1987 there was a qualifying heat being run in Indianapolis and at that time the Irish world record holder for 1 ,500 meters indoor racing was a man named Eamon Coughlin.
It was a qualifying heat so all he needed to do was place in the first three and he would qualify for the race. But with two and a half laps to go He tripped and fell. People thought he could never recover from that kind of a fall, but he picked himself up and with an amazing burst of speed he caught up to the lead runners and with 20 yards to go he was in third place, which is all you needed.
He'd make up for that in the race with his speed. First man crossed the line. Second man crossed the line and just in just in a few seconds. Now what I'm taking a minute to describe was only Instantaneous.
He turned to look to the inside to see if anybody was was pressing him. Would he have to put a little more speed in? In just that split second that he let up and he turned to the inside to check. Our man on the outside Passed him.
He was fourth. He might as well have been 40th. Just that moment's carelessness cost him the race. Just the letting up in his personal exercise before God. Just the turning away from ministry that had been committed to him or early convictions that have been formulated in the presence of God.
Just the turning around to the world. And a splintered heart has led astray. Just allow me then in a Closing moments because I want to leave time for at least one if not two others. Let me point out to you his nation split apart because if when we are looking at At this man's youth We are learning the legacy that was left to him.
Then when you look at his old age, you are seeing the legacy he left to others. What are the things that marked him in old days or that marked his kingdom? There was the rebellion of the people. We cannot put the responsibility solely on the shoulders of Rehoboam.
Because you will recall that when the people came to King Rehoboam to complain they said thy father Made our yoke grievous. They were going back to Solomon's reign that when a man got away from God He began to view the people of God as unimportant.
They were his people. He could do with them what he will. It's always a tragic thing. Isn't it when a man forgets that they're God's people that the flock is God's flock that they're not mine. They're not my sheep and Solomon made their yoke grievous.
Ground the people into the dust and they came and said thy father made our yoke grievous now. Now what kind of a king will you be? So there was first of all the rebellion of the people. Rehoboam had the same heart trouble as his father.
You will remember that it says about Rehoboam. He did evil in the sight of the Lord and prepared not his heart. So the same heart disease that smote his father was passed on to the son. He prepared not his heart and the people are ready to rebel.
There was the rise of Jeroboam in the atmosphere created by Solomon. There was a milieu in which a man like this man Jeroboam could rise a man who was Self-seeking a man who hearing that prophecy by the Prophet decided to take things into his own hand and so that Solomon is faced with the fact that the Perverting of all of that early potential and possibility in the life of a man like Jeroboam Was due to his mismanagement.
He was industrious. It says of Jeroboam. He was a mighty man of valor. Yet he becomes an arch foe of Solomon so that there's a disintegrating of his kingdom. There is Haydad from the south in Egypt. There is resin from the northeast in Syria.
There is Jeroboam internally the whole thing like some mighty ocean liner Smashing up in that in the North Sea. The whole thing is breaking apart. So finally like the garment that was ripped from the back of Jeroboam.
There is the rending of the nation and this man who began his course with so much promise with so much potential Leaves behind him a shattered kingdom. I Couldn't help but think yesterday when I listened to the ministry of brother McCullough.
What a difference when you look at a man like Saul of Tarsus. In some ways, I don't know whether this is artificial or not. But in some ways these two men so often link themselves in my mind yet. You can't help but draw the contrast can you between the man and the man in the palace and the man in the prison?
The man who in the Old Testament has so much that life is supposed to be made up of. So many of the amenities of life and he's saying it's empty it's empty it's all empty. There's nothing to it. The haunted man wandering around the palace.
Trembling to think he had to leave it all. And that happy man rising above circumstances in the prison. The one man who could not see beyond the grave and the darkness of it all was so oppressive. That he said it's all vanity and the other man was such clear.
Glimpses of what our brethren have been telling us and will tell us today in the Bible readings about the future that he says your labor. The Lord is coming bodies will be changed glorified. We will be made like him.
We will bear the image of the heavenly. Therefore your labor is not in vain in the Lord. There's no vanity linked with this. There's no emptiness linked with this. Because he had eyes he had vision that could see beyond the tomb into the glory of eternity.
Is there not then a tremendous contrast between the man who began so well and finished so tragically and the man whose heart's wish? Was that I might finish my course with joy. And the ministry I have obtained of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God.
What a legacy to leave behind truth safeguarded. Testimonies preserved lives influenced for God. What a legacy the son of sir Christopher ran that that great architect. He said at his father's funeral.
He said words that really were his father's epitaph. He said The monument to my father can be seen all around you. What he meant was look at the buildings that he that he designed. The monument to my father he said is not here at this this stone at this grave site.
The monument to my father can be seen all around you. We're gonna leave any monuments. I Don't want to be melodramatic and I'm not trying to to be vainglorious, but we're going to leave anything for God.
There's some believers here that have visited a little assembly in Vermont. It is very little it must be very discouraging at times to be at meetings there. Let me just tell you about a man that perhaps some of the younger believers here would not know a man who for years.
Almost single-handedly Shouldered the weighty responsibility of those assembly meetings. Be up at the crack of dawn fulfill his own farm duties on the farm. And then head out to pick up people carload after carload bring them in.
One one from over here and then 20 miles in this direction and then over that way. Bring them into the meetings have the meetings and then take them home again and shifts. Week after week. After tiresome week so he died.
Just an old Vermont farmer. But you'd never get his name in fortune 500 Nor old hands calloused with hard work. What's his legacy? And when he was gone, there's still an assembly functioning to the glory of the name of the Lord Jesus.
Is that worth a life's work? What are we gonna leave behind. When I see the tragic end of a man like Solomon. Then I feel like borrowing the words of his father. And saying preserve me O God. For indeed, oh I put my trust God grant that we may know what it is to observe that chief duty of every child of God by glad-hearted consecration and obedience by humble Submission to the Lord.
By yielding our heart to him to have it guarded and preserved and kept for the master's use.