The ABC's of the Christian Life (9): Following Jesus Christ Rightly (5) – Keeping Your Heart

Following Jesus Christ Rightly by Guarding the Heart

We've been addressing this matter of following our Lord Jesus rightly. There's a right way to follow the Lord, and if we are to follow him rightly, the Christian must be very diligent to guard and preserve his heart.

And that's what I want us to consider today, keeping your heart. One's devotion and commitment to the Lord must be maintained, or else defection and departure from the Lord may and probably will occur if you are not actively, purposefully maintaining your heart before the Lord.

And we could look to many places in the Holy Scriptures that speak about this matter, but we want to consider Proverbs 4, particularly verse 23. However, I thought for our purposes we would read verse 23 within its context, which is Proverbs 4, 20 through 27, and here a father is giving instruction to his son to heed his instruction in order to guide him in a life blessed of the Lord.

And so Proverbs 4, verse 20. My son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes. Let them in the midst, keep them in the midst of your heart. They are life to those who find them and health to all their flesh.

And here's the verse embedded right in the middle. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth and put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead and your eyelids look right before you.

Ponder the path of your feet and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left. Remove your foot from evil. This should be the interest and the occupation of every Christian. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it springs the issues of life.

It has been asserted that to keep your heart is the most important and continuous duty of the Christian. To guard your heart, to keep your heart with all diligence. John Flavel, a great Puritan writer, once wrote,.

It is the most important business of the Christian's life. This is at the top of the list. You can see how we are addressing this in our subject, Following Jesus Christ Rightly. Without this, we are but formalists in religion.

All our professions, gifts, and duties signify nothing. If the heart's not right, nothing's right. That it is the great business for the Christian to keep his heart betrays the great deficiency of our hearts, right?

Why do you need to keep it unless there's a problem with our hearts? Even though we're Christians, and the fact is we're sorry lot, we're all with weak and defective hearts, spiritually speaking. Every one of us.

That we could and that we would allow our hearts to grow indifferent to the things of God, in disregard of all the blessings that God has so freely bestowed upon us through Jesus Christ, it reveals to us that we're deficient and we're unstable.

And hence again, the need. Keep your hearts with all diligence, for out of the heart come forth, spring forth the issues of life. And so we must keep our hearts with all diligence because of their weakness and their deficiency in staying strong and fixed.

It's a weakness, a problem that you have, I have, we all have. Octavius Winslow wrote a wonderful book, he was a 19th century preacher, and he commented on the spiritual weakness of the Christian in his book entitled, Personal Declension.

Declension, decline, personal declension, and there's a longer title to that, but basically how to be revived as well, how to be restored. And he wrote these words. If there is one consideration more humbling than another to a spiritually minded believer, it is that after all God has done for him, after all the rich displays of his grace, the patience and tenderness of instructions, the repeated discipline of his covenant, the tokens of love received, and the lessons of experience learned, there should still exist in the heart a principle, the tendency of which to secret, perpetual, and alarming departure from God.

Truly, there is in this solemn fact that might well lead to the deepest self-abasement before him. We ought to be humble before our God when we understand and recognize our weakness. Now of course when we speak about the heart of the Christian departing from God, it should not be concluded that a true Christian can so depart from God that he can lose his salvation.

And I hope we all understand that. For the true Christian to lose his salvation is an impossibility, even though it is commonly taught in many churches. Salvation is a work of God's grace in the soul.

God himself gave us saving grace, for he saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.

And so because it is of grace it cannot be lost. God, who gave us this grace in eternity, bestowed this grace in time when he brought us to salvation in Jesus Christ. And of course then God justified us by his grace when we believed the gospel, having forgiven us fully of our sin.

And upon our justification he adopted us into the family of God. We became his sons and daughters through faith in Jesus Christ. That was all by grace. And of course when we were first regenerated he sealed us with the blessed Holy Spirit until the day of redemption that sealed his security.

The Holy Spirit makes sure that nothing can cause us to become lost again. And then the Bible declares that God seeded us with Christ, that he enthroned us with Christ in the heavenly places in Christ in whom we remain and abide.

And so to say that a true Christian can lose his salvation is to claim that a justified man can unjustify himself. In spite that God had declared him to be righteous, a man who loses his salvation would become unjustified, an impossibility.

That though his sins had been cast into the depths of the sea, he'll bring them back upon himself and that even though God had adopted him as a child, he came to cease to be a child of God. For a Christian to lose his salvation is to assert that sin and Satan have defeated the power of God and the grace of God that saved him and held him, that the former Christian was able to unseal what the Holy Spirit had sealed, and that he was able to thwart the power of God that kept him.

That a true Christian can lose his salvation is a biblical absurdity, thankfully, or we'd all be rather unsettled, wouldn't we? Again Winslow said forth, Octavius Winslow, we must here, however, guard a precious and important truth, that is, the indestructible nature of true grace.

Divine grace in the soul can never really die. True faith can never utterly and finally fail. We're speaking now, but of their decay, see that's what declension is. Not extinguishing grace, but decaying grace.

A flower may droop and yet live. A plant may be sickly and yet not die. In the lowest stage of spiritual declension, in the feeblest state of grace, there is a life that never dies. In the midst of all of this starting to side, the ebb and flow, the wandering and restoring, the believer in Jesus is kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

He cannot utterly fall. He cannot finally be lost. The immutability of God, in other words, the unchangeableness of God, keeps him. The indwelling of the Spirit keeps him and keeps him to eternal glory.

We say then, true grace is indestructible grace. It can never die, but it may decay. And to the consideration of this solemn and important subject, the reader's serious attention is now invited. And thus he has the book, Spiritual Declension, published by Banner of Truth.

It's a wonderful book. I recommend it to you. But sadly, spiritual decay does take place and it takes place all too frequently. And sometimes it may occur within us without our clear perception that it's happening or that it has happened.

It often occurs gradually, slowly squeezing out the spiritual vitality of our souls. And the process of spiritual decay can, therefore, occur to some degree before we're awakened to just how far we have backslid from the Lord.

Again, Winslow. And yet without changing his nature, divine grace may decline to an alarming extent in its power and exercise. It may become sickly, drooping, and ready to die. It may become so enfeebled through its decay as to present an ineffectual resistance to the inroads of strong corruption.

So low that the enemy may ride roughshod over it at his will. So inoperative and yielding that sloth, worldliness, pride, carnality, and their kindred vices may obtain an easy and unresisted conquest.

And so, because this is true of every Christian, it's true of you, of me, as a Christian, it's vitally important for us to follow this injunction of scripture, Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

You cannot follow Jesus Christ rightly unless this is employed in your life. Let's consider this matter by first attempting to understand precisely what our text is saying and suggesting to us. So first, let's answer the question, what is the heart?

What the Bible Means by the Heart

Keep the heart with all diligence. What do we mean by the heart? The common conception of the heart by most people has been shaped by what may be described as the romanticism of our culture. And that's unfortunate.

We think of heart primarily in terms of one's affections, what one loves. Love is the principal idea of the heart. It is most commonly thought by Christians. To love the Lord with all your heart is understood as loving the Lord sincerely and supremely, to have warm affection for God.

That's what it is to love God in the heart. But actually, this is not how the Holy Scriptures use the term heart. And let me illustrate from several different places, different ideas or suggestions as to what the heart means in God's Word.

Sometimes the heart is used to identify one's intellect, that is, his mind. And I thought while driving down here this morning, so often you'll hear people say something really rather ignorant like this.

It doesn't matter what you believe. What really matters is your heart. As though if you have devotion to the Lord, it doesn't matter what you think, what your mind believes, as though the heart and mind were different from one another.

And that's not biblical. The heart in Scripture involves the mind. And so we have, for example, in Proverbs 23 .7,. For as he that is a man thinks in his heart, so is he. You see here how the heart is a term used for the mind, as a man thinks in his mind, so is he.

Here heart is used for mind or intellect. Another place where this is evident is in Romans 1, 20 -22. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.

Here again, the idea of heart is in the intellect, the mind, the understanding. You notice the phrase before, futile in their thoughts. The phrase after, professing to be wise, they're fools. And right in the middle, their foolish hearts were darkened.

Hearts here have to do with one's understanding, one's mind, one's intellect. In other places in scripture, the heart is a word that describes one's conscience. 1 John 3, 20 reads,. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

Now what is that that condemns us? It's our conscience, isn't it, that God created within each of us. Here, the word heart is a synonym for the word conscience. That which condemns us is our conscience, and here John refers to the conscience as the heart.

And then elsewhere in scripture, the heart is a reference to one's memory. Psalm 119, 11, we read the familiar verse,. Thy word have I hid in mine heart. It's not talking about affections there, is it?

It's talking about your memory. Again, associated with the mind, if anything, that I might not sin against thee. And then the heart is also used to convey the idea of one's volition or one's will. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth,.

So let each one give as he purposes in his heart. In other words, as he determines or intends in his heart, not grudgingly nor necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. Here, the word or term heart has to do with one's intention, one's will, one's decision that he makes.

We may conclude that it is best to understand the word heart in scripture to speak of all aspects of a man's being apart from his body. In other words, the heart speaks to a man's mind, but also his affections or emotions and his will.

In other words, the heart of a man is his whole soul. The heart and soul are synonymous in Holy Scripture. The body and the soul, two parts of an individual. The body and the heart, the heart is the same as the soul.

And so, again, as John Flavel wrote, Puritan, the state of the whole body depends upon the soundness and vigor of the heart and the everlasting state of the whole man upon the good or ill condition of his soul.

There again, Flavel is indicating the heart and the soul are one and the same according to scripture. But again, because, I'm suggesting because of our culture and this romanticism that has really captured our culture in the last couple hundred years, we think of terms of heart only as like romantic affection, you know, love, as divorced from the mind or the will.

And that's just not biblical usage. The heart is the same as the soul. And so, keep the heart. Guard the heart. What the writer is saying is that you're to guard your soul. You're to guard your mind, your affections, what you desire, what you love, what you delight in.

And you guard your will, too. That you resolve and purpose to do the will of God. He's talking about the entire life that's being exhibited here. Guard your heart. Keep your heart. What is it then to keep the heart?

To keep the heart is to strive to keep one's soul with all its faculties of mind, emotion, and will devoted principally to the Lord. To keep one's heart is to use all the means that God has given us so that we keep him and his kingdom as foremost in our thinking, foremost in our desires and delights, and foremost in our efforts to live for him and advance his glory.

It's all-encompassing. He's not just talking about having warm, fuzzy feelings toward God. He's talking about your entire purpose in life. Intentional life. Your affections are centered upon the Lord and doing his will.

John Gill, Baptist preacher, 18th century. Pastored the same church that Spurgeon later pastored. He wrote, Keep thy heart with all diligence. God who gave us these souls, see how he uses heart as identical to soul?

God who gave us these souls gave us a strict charge with them. Man, woman, keep thy heart. Take heed to thy spirit. Soul and spirit are the same as well in Scripture. And notice here heart and spirit are set forth in the same context.

Tautology there, they're one and the same. We must maintain a holy jealousy of ourselves and set a strict guard accordingly upon all the avenues of the soul. Keep our hearts from doing hurt and getting hurt, from being defiled by sin and disturbed by trouble.

Keep them as our jewel, as our vineyard. Keep a conscience void of offense. Keep out bad thoughts. Keep up good thoughts. Keep the affections upon right objects and due bounds. Keep them with all keepings.

So the word is.

In other words, the Hebrew in Proverbs 4, 23, that's literally what it says. Keep them with all keepings. Keep the heart. There are many ways of keeping things, by care, by strength, by calling and help.

And we must use them all in keeping our hearts. And all little enough, so deceitful are they. Or above all keepings, we must keep our hearts with more care and diligence than we keep anything else. We must keep our eyes, keep our tongue, keep our feet, but above all, keep our hearts.

Amen.

This is something that we're to be doing every day of our lives. If you fail to do this, you're going to have problems. You're not going to follow Jesus Christ rightly. It will not happen. Consider God's law in this matter.

Moses commanded the people, only take heed to yourself and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget what your eyes have seen, unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life.

Diligence.

And then consider God's prophet that speaks of the evil of our hearts. The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Who can know it? No one but the Lord. But we ought to be aware just of how bad it is.

And so, we are to keep the heart. Thirdly, what is it then to keep the heart with all diligence, is what the proverb declares. Well, first let's consider the great effort that we are to give to this matter.

Those who fail to keep their heart fail because they did not use diligence in doing so. They did not see the need. They did not see the danger their souls were in. They did not see their proneness to spiritual decay.

They failed to use the means of grace diligently that would have prevented their declension. Diligence requires, it means effort, intention, time, purpose, involvement. Most of us probably view ourselves as somewhat stable Christians.

We walk with the Lord daily. We're faithful to pray. We attend the house of the Lord to meet with God along with his people. But the truth of the matter, most of us are not as stable as we might think we are.

The Christian life is not generally characterized by consistent communion with God. We're not always living in the word as we should. Decay and recovery, backsliding and renewal commonly characterize a Christian life.

Fits and starts, the tide coming in, going out, ebb and flow. Our hearts are prone to wander and often we do. We sing about it, don't we? Come thou fount of every blessing. Our heart's prone to wander.

Lord, I feel it.

Do you?

We are to give all diligence that decay not occur. The Apostle Paul gave warning to the Christians at Corinth. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. You think you're standing pretty well?

Look out.

You're in danger. Paul gave the exhortation after first citing the example of the Israelites that the Lord sent forth as examples to New Testament Christians. He first wrote of the privileges that Israel had.

Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, that rock was Christ.

He's showing the parallels here to an Old Testament professing people of God and Christians. But then Paul recounted what had happened to them and how God warns us through them. But with most of them God was not well pleased for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

Now these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted and do not become idolaters as were some of them as it is written the people sat down to eat and drank and rose up to play.

He talks about the orgy at the foot of Mount Sinai. Nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did and in one day 23 ,000 fell nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted were destroyed by servants nor complain as some of them also complained.

How many of us are characterized as complainers? Nothing goes right and we're destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these happened to them as examples. That was God's sovereign purpose in all of that as example to you and to me.

They were written for our admonition on whom the end of the ages have come. We're living in the age of fulfillment. It is then that Paul gave the exhortation therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

You and I are a weak people. We need the grace of God to help us and sustain us and we are to give all diligence to guard the heart.

All diligence.

We will not follow Christ rightly if we fail to do this. This is an essential and yet it's a sad experience of many who fail to know and acknowledge the vulnerable condition in which they exist. Fall is often preceded by presumption because as one's heart departs from the Lord there is a sense I'm okay.

I'm in no danger. I could recount stories to you of individuals. Individuals you know that were careless became indifferent and fell into sin and they're living in remorse today because of their failure to guard their heart with all diligence.

Keep their heart with all diligence or out of it flow the issues of life. The fact is they become presumptuous, self-willed, self-secure. The terrible remorse the people express and I hear it and it's sad.

John Gill wrote of this great need to give great diligence in keeping the heart. Keep thy heart with all diligence. The mind from vanity. The understanding from error. The will from perverseness. The conscience clear of guilt.

The affections from being inordinate and set on evil objects. The thoughts from being employed on bad subjects. The whole from falling into the hands of the enemy or being the possession of Satan. Great diligence had need be used in keeping it since it is naturally so deceitful and treacherous.

A strict eye is to be kept upon it that is the heart all the avenues to it to be watched that nothing hurtful enters or evil comes out. It is to be kept by all manner of means that can be thought of.

By prayer.

Hearing.

Reading meditation.

And above all by applying Christ for his grace and spirit to sanctify, preserve and keep it. For above all keeping keep thine heart though other things are to be kept and care taken of them such as kingdoms and cities and towns and families and treasures and riches.

Yet the heart above all.

Amen.

That's the most valuable thing that you have. Your heart your soul. Again we're not talking about merely affections. Why are we to keep the heart with all diligence. Because out of it Solomon declared spring the issues of life.

The heart that is the soul is the source of all of our thoughts and actions in life. All actions of life spring from the soul.

From the heart.

A man's life is what he thinks in his heart what his heart is so his life will be. The condition of a man's heart in this life will result in the state that he will experience and encounter in eternity.

What he is here will be how he is hereafter if the things that come forth from his heart.

Are true.

Are noble.

Are just.

Are pure.

Are lovely.

Are a good report. If they are things of virtue in accordance with godliness they will give way to an internal enjoyment of these things in the presence of the Lord. This is why we are to meditate on these things as Paul advocated in Philippians 4 -8 so that they will spring forth in the issues of our lives.

But it's a sad fact that probably very few of us obey consistently this command throughout our Christian lives. Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life. Some have failed in this matter terribly and so they've fallen far from what they once were.

Perhaps their backslidden condition has desensitized them to their condition. They are spiritually numb due to the hardness of their heart but they are oblivious to their condition. But thankfully, however even when we strain, resist and fail to use the means of grace that God has given to us to keep our hearts God will do what he has to do to restore our souls.

Aren't you happy about that? God is the restorer of souls. Let's answer the question how may we know that we have failed to keep our heart with all diligence? Spiritual declension can happen.

Signs of Spiritual Declension

Almost unnoticeably.

To the one thus affected the state of secret departure from God may exist in connection with an outward and rigid observance of the means of grace. In other words, here you have a faithful regular churchgoer and yet there shall be no spiritual use of or enjoyment in the means and this may be the great lullaby of his soul rocked to sleep by a mere formal religion.

The believer is beguiled into the delusion that his heart is right and his soul prospers in the sight of God. And even more than this a declining believer may have sunk so deeply into a state of formality as to substitute the outward and the public means of grace for a close and secret walk with God.

In other words, you know I've been to church I even go to prayer meetings I'm okay. How then may we know that we failed to keep the heart with all diligence. First, when a Christian can continue to observe his customary duties of church attendance and service in the church but he receives no enjoyment from God for doing so no closeness and sense of God being pleased in his service he's probably failed to keep his heart with all diligence.

It's just routine. It's just what he does. Secondly, when a Christian can read his Bible faithfully but with no sense of joy or delight in doing so his spiritual life is ebbed from what it once was and what it should be.

The scriptures are God's holy word to us in which he reveals himself to us instructs us and guides us. We should all be as the Apostle Paul I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. If in reading the scriptures we don't delight in that way it's probably because we failed to keep our heart with all diligence.

Thirdly, when a Christian can pray but when he does he does not sense that he is before the throne of God. He prays but there is no fellowship with God with whom he is communicating. He calls upon God his father but without the least sense of his adoption as a child of God this would be an indication that his heart has not been kept.

And fourthly, when the believer has unloving thoughts toward his spiritual family his brothers and sisters in Christ when he has no desire to be with them to have fellowship with them but the desire to be separated from their company.

That's a sure indication of a failure to keep one's heart. And fifthly, when our speech becomes characterized as coarse uncharitable, confrontive, cutting and cruel it reveals that something is coming forth from the heart other than the gracious impulses of the spirit born from a heart that is in sweet fellowship with God.

But again, thankfully God has put within us a nature that when we sense we're not right with him he awakens us and gives us a holy concern for our condition. And so before long we begin to long once again for the Lord's blessing to be experienced by us.

The Lord then takes action to restore us unto himself and he has to do it. He's the restorer of souls. Because we can fall we can fail to such a degree that we can't find our way back. He comes to them in their sin even though they've neglected him or forsaken him and through his own power through his own work of grace he restores them unto himself perhaps at one time you were very tenderhearted.

Before the Lord.

But no longer through your own neglect and failure. You didn't attend to the well-being of your soul. You did not guard your heart with all diligence. But you increasingly and more frequently transgressed God's word in violation of your former confession that you would abstain from sin and live for him.

You sinned against your conscience and your conscience became seared perhaps allowed your heart to grow indifferent and then it grew hardened toward the Lord. Charles Spurgeon addressed his congregation knowing that some of them needed to be restored to fellowship with the Savior.

You live as hired servants and not as sons. You get the duty of religion but not the enjoyment of religion and that being an old word for Christianity. You wear his yoke but you do not feed it in its pasture.

You seem to me to forgo all the cream of your holy faith and to partake of nothing but its skimmed milk. You leave the sunny plains of communion for the frozen regions of negligent living and hence you shiver with fear while others exult with gladness.

You've chosen your position in the outer courts of the temple. You never enter the holy of holies. You do not pass within the veil to behold the glory of the Lord. You're sailing to heaven but you're stowed away in the hold in the dark.

You appear to me in your religion.

To live like the beggars.

Who come around to the back doors for the bones and the stale crusts. And therefore I am not surprised that some of you feel the craving for amusements and say that you're very bored. And not surprised that some of you need lively company and gaiety to make your life bearable.

If my child were to say that he must continually go to the candy store or the eating house I should say to myself surely the food on my table is sufficient for him. But if upon inquiry I found that he did not eat at my table except occasionally and that he always made choice of the barest bones and driest crusts I should be at a loss to comprehend why he so frequently is seen at other places.

Of supply.

If you're not living upon Jesus and rejoicing in the measureless bliss which he is capable of bestowing upon you I do not marvel. If you go off to the world for your sweet meats and feel a leaning towards the leeks and the garlic and the onions of Egypt how many are that in that case.

Situation. And so are you walking.

With the Lord.

In fellowship and communion do you sense his presence with you. God manifests awareness in his people when he is with them and this is what gives them their confidence and their sense of well-being. As John recorded Jesus saying he that has my commandments and keeps them he it is that loves me and he that loves me shall be loved to my father and I will love him and in the last words I will manifest myself to him.

To some of us the Lord is richly manifesting himself to others he is not and very possibly it's because we have failed to keep our hearts with all diligence again. Spurgeon wrote the fittest condition of the believer is in communion with Christ it ought not to be a privilege.

Occasionally enjoyed.

It should be the everyday life of the soul we are to abide in Jesus walk with him and live in him. How sluggish our hearts how dull our spirits that we do not chase after Jesus with rapture of desire and do not perpetually labor to abide in him.

And so can you say that he is with you and that you are by his side or through neglect.

Or rebellion.

Have you strayed from his side. Well if that's the case.

Your soul.

Is in need of restoration is it not. How may we first. How may we experience recovery in our souls so that our hearts are restored and increasingly conform. We are increasingly conforming our life to the life in Christ.

The Lord Restores His Straying Sheep

First let's consider God's work in restoring our souls. For many people Psalm 23 is probably the most familiar passage in the Old Testament. It's a blessed one. It's a passage that has brought much encouragement to many beleaguered souls.

It's a Psalm of David. David of course had been a shepherd himself.

As a boy.

He tended his father's sheep he provided protection for them. On one occasion he killed a bear that threatened them. On another occasion he took a lamb out of the lion's mouth. He provided his sheep with food he led them to green pastures he sought out many stray sheep because he was a shepherd of the sheep and he cared for the sheep.

He sought them out and brought them back to the foal. And so it would be fitting that David would see the relationship of his God toward him as a shepherd to his sheep. And that's what Psalm 23 is. Of course the first clause of verse 3 is itself a cause of much comfort for the Christian.

We read about.

God as a restorer of souls David wrote He restores my soul if you're going to get back.

To a right relationship.

With the Lord as we've been describing he's going to have.