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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/joel-portman/my-heart/
Ephesians chapter 3. I'm going to be very brief because that's all the time we have. And my last point will be my last point. Ephesians chapter 3. I just think that what I have had on my mind will follow the touching ministry of our brother Steers.
Very briefly we'll read just one verse in each place. Chapter 3 and verse 7, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. That ye be rooted and grounded in love and so on. Colossians chapter 1, sorry chapter 2, chapter 3.
We'll make it yet. Colossians chapter 3 and verse 15. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you're called in one body and be thankful. Verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell richly, dwelling richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
First Peter please, chapter 3. First Peter 3 and verse 15, but sanctify the Lord God or Christ as Lord in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.
One more in second Peter and chapter 1. Verse 19, chapter 1 of second Peter verse 19. I'm going to alter the order of the words here just a little bit. It won't change any words, we'll just change the order.
Verse 19, we have also a more sure word of prophecy. For unto you do well that you take heed in your hearts, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arrives. I just want to think about what is in our hearts, five different references to the heart.
And again and again that reference in Proverbs comes to my mind, my son give me thy heart. And then a thrust of the ministry that we've heard in this conference weekend is that the Lord wants our heart.
And I believe if he has our heart in a real way he'll have the entire person. There's nothing like hearing the word of God over a two-day ministry to affect us insofar as our life is concerned, to motivate us and to turn us and to control us and to enable us that might go on in faithfulness with a view to the fact that the Lord Jesus is coming soon.
We've read five references to something in our hearts. And you and I might ask the question right at the outset, what is really in your heart and what is in my heart? What really occupies the center so far as your affections and my affections?
What is really the ultimate desire and the purpose and the ambition and the longing of our hearts? We know the heart is not so much this down here but it's the essence of the being. The Lord wants everything.
If he has our hearts he has all. We read about Christ dwelling in our hearts. We read about the peace of God ruling in our hearts. We read about the joy of singing in our hearts. We read about sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts.
And the word of prophecy made more sure in our hearts. I think that you can find there's a little bit of a sequence there that if Christ is dwelling, that is settled down at home as the actual resident in our hearts, the result is going to be the peace of God ruling, arbitrating, controlling, overseeing, and maintaining the tranquility of the heart.
If Christ is dwelling there, brethren and sisters, the peace of God has to be there and it has to be that which will bring us joy and assurance in a dark troubled world. If the peace of God is there and Christ is ruling, Christ is there and the peace of God is ruling in our hearts, we'll be singing with the grace in our hearts as well.
Can't help but sing with joy when you think of what we have in Christ and what Christ is to us. The ministry would cause us to well up with joy and praise and thanksgiving to think of who he is and what he has done, reminding us again of the marvelous grace of God singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
Then he talks about sanctifying or setting apart Christ as Lord in your lives, in your hearts. I said the result is there will be a ready response, a defense, an apology, a willingness to stand in the testimony that would come from Christ in your heart, from the peace of God ruling in your heart, but singing with grace in your heart results in a testimony of Christ being made known to others.
What preserves us in all events? Word of prophecy in your hearts, the word of God residing, holding fast the individual and enabling us to go out in the confidence of God and the assurance that what he says, he really means it and we can depend upon him.
Tremendous thing to know that there's a divine person that wants to take up residence in your heart and mind. You know, sometimes we dwell, perhaps we're in a place, we live there, we might be in a motel room, we might be in a transient condition in somebody's home, but this word indicates that the Lord Jesus Christ wants to settle down as a permanent resident, known and in control in the heart.
My wife and I are finally dwelling in our house. After moving over a period of time, we came in and out of the house and we owned the house and we had some things in the house and my wife had all these pieces of newsprint cut out to the size of the pieces of furniture and she's putting some here and some there and trying to figure out where she wants to put all the furniture.
But you know, it's a different thing when you're dwelling in a house. Just settle down. All that's all taken care of. No more moving around and not sure how things are going to go. Everything, I'll tell you, when my wife puts the furniture in the living room, it's going to be there 10 years from now because she doesn't move it.
It's going to stay there. Once she makes up her mind where she wants it, we're dwelling there. We're settled there. She's in control insofar as where that furniture is going to be. Christ wants to dwell in your heart.
He wants to be more than a transient. He wants to be more than one who comes as a guest. He wants to be the one who lives there and determines what is there because his presence is going to exclude everything that is contrary to his desires.
Oh, he wants to dwell in our hearts. This is the great prayer of the Apostle Paul in this last part of the first section of the Ephesian Epistle. The ultimate conclusion of what Christ is to the body and what we have in relationship to him.
Christ at home residing permanently in the house of our heart. I'll tell you, that's a basic essence of Christianity. That's what it all comes down to. Colossians 1, verse 15, the peace of God, arbitrating, ruling, controlling in your hearts.
I've been reminded of the Gnosticism and the wrong teaching that had entered into the assembly in Colossae. And what was the antidote to that? The truth concerning Christ and the knowledge of who he is and what place he has, a preeminence that God has for him.
And that engaging the heart and erasing all the wrong teaching of the error that had crept in. But you know, it goes even beyond that, because in all the troublesome situations you and I face, we can know in a real way the peace of God ruling in our hearts.
That peace, I take it, comes from confidence in him. The assurance that all could be dependent upon so far as he is concerned, he will never leave us, he will never forsake us. Well, the dry burrows reminded us that he is for us, in us, with us, in our midst.
What a tremendous blessing you and I have. In a world that is so full of trouble and unrest and things that would cause anxiety, wonderful thing to be able to go away with the assurance that in relation to what Christ is for us, Romans 8 again, we can have the peace of God in control of our hearts.
May God help us to enjoy that and know the reality of it. Because the result is in verse 16, the ability to sing. That's more than just singing with a voice. It's employing every possible means of magnifying the person of Christ and doing so in worship and adoration and praise that would ascend to him, singing with grace.
It's the grace, actually. It's the grace of God operating in our hearts that moves us to desire to honor him and to do so in a way that is appropriate to his person. Tremendous will a believer has a song.
The world has its songs. And I've listened to a few of them and they don't impress me very much. Sometimes an old song comes on, the kind they sang back when I was in high school. They had a little more substance to them than what they have now, but they didn't have much then either.
But I can tell you this, the song of a believer, the song of a child of God is a song that is far better than the best song this world has to give you. Fill your heart and mind, brother and sister, with the songs of grace, magnifying Christ, occupying with this person.
And the old hymns in the believer's hymn book, brethren, they may be old, but they're still good. They're still scriptural and they're still applicable in our day. And so far as I'm concerned, I'm very happy with them.
There's a few others I wouldn't mind seeing added to it, but nevertheless, you can't have everything. And the word of God is full of the songs of praise that ascended from God's people. You know, I started something the first day of this year.
I started reading the psalm every morning. Not a bad practice, you know. You read a psalm and it fills your heart with a sense of joy and lifts your heart to the appreciation for the matchless grace of God.
Singing with grace in your hearts. I have to stop, but you'll notice that he says in First Peter, Peter practically is looking at the testimony of believers in the midst of the affliction that they are enduring and the difficulties they have.
Yes, they had problems, but he said, you sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. He has a higher position than your master does. Those masters that were oppressing them, those masters that gave them so much difficulty, he says, you put Christ above all of them and sanctify, set apart Christ as absolute Lord in your life, in your heart, to be ready always to give a defense, an answer to them that ask you a reason.
Why is it like this? What do you have to say? What do you have to enjoy in all the distressing circumstances they endured? They had every reason to rise above them all and to have something to say to others.
I hope you and I, from the fullness of heart, appreciation for Christ, occupation with him, that we have a testimony to maintain and to express to others that we're not ashamed to own him as Lord and to seek to show it in reality in our life.
But Peter says in Second Peter, he says that word of prophecy, you've never had a vision like I had. You'd never seen the Lord transfigured on the mount. You'd never see the display of his majesty like we saw.
So you've got something else. You've got the word of prophecy. You've got the word that he says was written by holy men of God that were born along by the spirit of God. And what they wrote is still valid for you today.
He says, you just hold the word of prophecy in your hearts until that day dawn and the day star arrives. That's what's going to maintain you, brother and sister. You know, the devil wants to rob you of the word of God.
He wants to undermine confidence. He wants to attribute it to all kinds of human sources and add all kinds of ideas, different questionable manuscripts and different ways in which the word of God is negated.
Or he says, you keep that word, you hold it in your hearts, you feed your soul upon it, and you maintain your spiritual life and your character in a dark world by the sure word of prophecy. Rather than hold your heart, maintain it for Christ.
Go on in the assurance that that day is coming very soon and all that you and I have in Christ and all that we have anticipated will come to the realization we shall see him. We should be like him. We'll see him as he is.
May God help us keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.