Guard Your Heart | Part 1
As we launch into a new year, the teaching from Proverbs 4:23 serves as a powerful reminder that the condition of our hearts should be our utmost priority. The podcast message resonates with urgency, calling for a renewed commitment to spiritual integrity, illustrating how a guarded heart leads to a flourishing family life and reflects the love of Christ in action.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Speaker A:It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.
Speaker A:Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.
Speaker A:And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.
Speaker B:If I were to ask the question here this morning to dads, if I were to ask the question to fathers here this morning, what is the most important thing above everything else that you could say to your children?
Speaker B:What's the most important thing that you could say to your son?
Speaker B:What's the most important thing?
Speaker B:If there was one thing that you could say, what would be the most important thing you could say to your son or your daughter?
Speaker B:What would it be?
Speaker B:Well, fortunately, Solomon answers this question for us in our text this morning in Proverbs chapter 4.
Speaker B:So I want you to turn there with me, Proverbs chapter 4.
Speaker B:And look with me at just one verse this Morning, Proverbs chapter 4.
Speaker B:And look at verse 23, very familiar verse.
Speaker B:And I want to preach on that verse this morning and again tonight.
Speaker B:Solomon speaking to his son, of course, speaking to us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker B:And the Word of God says, keep thy heart.
Speaker B:Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
Speaker B:Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
Speaker B:The great Puritan preacher and writer Richard Baxter says this.
Speaker B:The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart.
Speaker B:There it is that God dwells by his spirit in his saints.
Speaker B:And there it is that sin and Satan reign in the ungodly.
Speaker B:The great duties, the great sins are those of the heart.
Speaker B:There's the root of good and evil.
Speaker B:The tongue and life are but the fruits and expressions of that that dwells within the heart.
Speaker B:Baxter eloquently states that it's a heart that orchestrates and directs and is the director of every part of our life.
Speaker B:In Mark, chapter 7 and verse 21, Jesus puts it this way.
Speaker B:For from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness and wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within and defile the man.
Speaker B:It's no wonder that Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, exhorts his son to keep his heart, to keep his heart with all diligence.
Speaker B:For out of the heart of the issues of life, or the courses, we might say, of life, now, if you look at that verse, the word keep means to guard.
Speaker B:But it doesn't just mean to guard it once.
Speaker B:It's an imperfect verb.
Speaker B:It means to continually guard it or to continually guard your heart all the time.
Speaker B:And then it says, with all diligence.
Speaker B:And if you study those words in the Hebrew, it means above everything else.
Speaker B:Now, that's important.
Speaker B:Above everything else, or we're to guard our hearts, Solomon says, exhorts his son, above everything else that we can guard.
Speaker B:So Solomon says the most important thing we can do is to continually keep or guard our heart because it determines the course of your life.
Speaker B:Now, some of us will take a lot of attention to guard our home.
Speaker B:We'll put a security system in our home, and we'll try to guard our home.
Speaker B:And certainly we should.
Speaker B:We'll guard our money by putting it in the bank and by being in a safe place there.
Speaker B:Some people, not a whole lot of people, but some people guard their health by watching what they eat very carefully, eating just the right things and taking time to exercise their body to make sure that they can, we might say, have good health and live a long life.
Speaker B:Certainly, we are to guard our children.
Speaker B:We're to guard them, and we should do all we can to guard and protect our children.
Speaker B:But Solomon says above everything else, all these other things that he even mentions in the Book of Proverbs, he said, you need to continually, continually guard something called your heart.
Speaker B:Now, if it's so important to guard our heart, and we're to do it continually, that it's a very important thing to understand just what the heart is.
Speaker B:Just what is he talking about when he says to guard your heart?
Speaker B:I think all of us are pretty familiar with a water reservoir from which we get our water to drink in our homes.
Speaker B:We have a water reservoir right across town here.
Speaker B:And from that water reservoir, there are pipes that lead all across this town into the different neighborhoods, into each one of our homes.
Speaker B:Many of our homes get water from this particular reservoir.
Speaker B:And certainly if the water in that reservoir is toxic, then that toxin and polluted water will come into every home through those pipes, and it will destroy our homes.
Speaker B:It will destroy us, it will kill us.
Speaker B:Because the source of that water from that reservoir, that's polluted, that's not pure, and that's very, very toxic.
Speaker B:We might say the heart is a reservoir of man.
Speaker B:Our life flows out through different pipes, the mouth, the hand, the eye.
Speaker B:But all of these derive their source from the great central reservoir within us that we call in the Bible the Heart now many today in our society and culture today believe that the outworkings of man's life is not caused by the heart, but is rather caused by the environment in which man lives.
Speaker B:These people believe that the answer to man's problem is to remodel society and to control and change the environment in which man lives.
Speaker B:They say if we change man's environment, it will change the man.
Speaker B:Now many parents even buy into this approach as I travel across the country and do parenting seminars and all.
Speaker B:Because we see many parents who work on the exterior of the child or the behavior of the child, but they never work on the heart behind the behavior of the child.
Speaker B:Very, very similar way they're working out here instead of we might say in here.
Speaker B:Now if a reservoir is filled with poison water over here, we might say, these people say, well the way to get rid of that poison is to go and replace all the pipes that the poison water runs in.
Speaker B:And if we go and an engineer comes and says, well, I know the solution to the problem.
Speaker B:Let's take up all the pipes, dig up all the pipes in all this community and we'll replace all the pipes with new pipes and then that will solve the problem.
Speaker B:But we know for a fact that won't solve the problem.
Speaker B:Because you still got the same water flowing through the new pipes.
Speaker B:You've just changed the pipes.
Speaker B:You haven't changed the reservoir.
Speaker B:And the great problem we have today in America and today across this world is the reservoir, the heart that we're talking about here this morning.
Speaker B:I love a quote that I read by Martyn Lloyd Jones.
Speaker B:He says this.
Speaker B:The tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment.
Speaker B:And that to change the man you have nothing to do but to change his environment.
Speaker B:He says that's a tragic fallacy.
Speaker B:It overlooks the fact that it was in paradise that man fell.
Speaker B:It was in a perfect environment that he first went wrong.
Speaker B:So to put man in a perfect environment cannot solve man's problems.
Speaker B:No, no.
Speaker B:He says it is out of the heart that these things arise.
Speaker B:What a great statement that is for our day and time.
Speaker B:Unless the heart is right, folks, man's best schemes will not solve man's problems.
Speaker B:We've seen this evidence through thousands, we might say of years history of man's repeated failure to solve his problems without ever attempting to change his heart.
Speaker B:The problem isn't out there somewhere.
Speaker B:The problem is right here.
Speaker B:So God instructs us to get to heart of man's problems.
Speaker B:We must guard this heart above everything else that we guard.
Speaker B:So the question comes up, how do we do it?
Speaker B:How do we guard this heart, this great reservoir inside of us that is the orchestrator or the director of our life?
Speaker B:How do we go about guarding our heart?
Speaker B:I want to mention two things to you here this morning, and I want to mention the third thing here tonight.
Speaker B:And again, I hope you'll come back tonight.
Speaker B:I think first thing we need to understand is to guard our heart.
Speaker B:We need to keep it pure above all things.
Speaker B:To keep it pure above all things.
Speaker B:But to keep a pure heart, it's only logical to think.
Speaker B:To keep a pure heart, you must first have a.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:Pure heart.
Speaker B:Okay, if I'm going to keep a pure heart, I must first have a pure heart.
Speaker B:Spurgeon says, but if a man's heart were rotten, how could that be cured?
Speaker B:If the heart was a putrid ulcer, if the very vitals of the man were rotten, what human surgery, what marvelous medicine could touch a defect so radical as this?
Speaker B:According to the word of God In Ezekiel chapter 36, man's heart, his natural heart is like a stone.
Speaker B:But God, through his grace, can remove this stony heart and give man a new heart, a heart of flesh.
Speaker B:You may be here today, and the greatest need in your life this morning is a new heart, a heart that's purified from sin by the cleansing blood of the Lamb of Jesus Christ our Savior.
Speaker B:One theologian states, it's a great work of conversion to win the heart to God.
Speaker B:The great work of conversion is to win the heart to God.
Speaker B:The only way to have a new heart is to realize your depravity, to realize your sinfulness.
Speaker B:That you are a sinner without hope, that there's nothing in and of yourself that's good enough to gain acceptance before God.
Speaker B:That every one of us here this morning, if we got what we deserve, we'd go straight to hell.
Speaker B:Praise God.
Speaker B:We don't through Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:But if we got what we deserve, every one of us would be eternally separated from God forever.
Speaker B:The Bible says In Romans, chapter 10, very familiar verses.
Speaker B:If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine what folks?
Speaker B:Heart that God hath raised him from the dead, Thou shalt be saved.
Speaker B:For with the heart, man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.
Speaker B:It's very interesting, as I was studying these verses once again, to notice in these verses there's an intimate connection between the heart and the mouth.
Speaker B:That wherever there is true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, it will be heard from the mouth.
Speaker B:That is, if you have true faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, it can't be helped, but it will be heard out of your mouth.
Speaker B:Your mouth is an echo chamber of your heart.
Speaker B:It speaks what's in your heart.
Speaker B:It betrays you many times because it tells other people what you really are.
Speaker B:Your words certainly are a reflection of your heart.
Speaker B:To have this heart, as Jeremiah states, that is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, cleansed and one to God.
Speaker B:That's the great work of conversion.
Speaker B:That's a supernatural.
Speaker B:It takes a supernatural work of God to convert a stony heart to a heart of flesh.
Speaker B:A new heart to have this heart takes nothing but birth from above.
Speaker B:A resurrection from the dead, an intrusion of divine grace only can convert the heart.
Speaker B:God alone saves man.
Speaker B:Once your heart has been made pure through Christ.
Speaker B:And let me just stop and say, if you're here this morning, you are nothing else in this message today.
Speaker B:The great thing if you're not saved here today, the great thing you need to hear this morning is that you need radical heart surgery.
Speaker B:You need a new heart in Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:And I beg you today to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior before you leave this building this morning.
Speaker B:And trust in him today to save you.
Speaker B:Only he can save your soul.
Speaker B:But once your heart has been made pure, once you become a Christian through conversion, you need to keep on guarding this heart to keep it pure above all things.
Speaker B:Now, let me finish a quote I started a while ago.
Speaker B:It's a great work of conversion to win the heart to God.
Speaker B:And the greatest work of the Christian life is to keep the heart with God.
Speaker B:What a great statement that is.
Speaker B:It's a great work of conversion to win the heart to God.
Speaker B:And the greatest work of the Christian life is to keep the heart with God.
Speaker B:I'm teaching through First John on Wednesday nights to the young people.
Speaker B:And one of the verses several weeks ago we went through is in First John, chapter three and verse three.
Speaker B:And it says this and every man that hath this hope, some of you know this verse.
Speaker B:In him does what purifies himself, even as he or Jesus Christ is pure.
Speaker B:That is, if you are truly a child of God, because you have the hope of Jesus Christ within you, you have a pursuit of holiness in your life.
Speaker B:You have a pursuit of purification in your life, to be pure and holy, even as he is holy.
Speaker B:Now let me say this you have to do it.
Speaker B:It says, every man that hath this hope in himself purifies himself.
Speaker B:It's not something somebody else can do for you.
Speaker B:It's something that you must do.
Speaker B:You must guard your heart.
Speaker B:You must keep it pure.
Speaker B:No one else can do it for you.
Speaker B:You see, your heart and this time of year is a great illustration.
Speaker B:I think it's kind of like a garden you plant in your backyard.
Speaker B:And you've got rows of tomatoes, you've got rows of corn, you've got rows of cucumbers.
Speaker B:You've got all these.
Speaker B:All these vegetables in a garden in your backyard.
Speaker B:But if you don't continually weed that garden, if you don't continually take care of that garden and weed that garden, there's going to be weeds that start growing in that garden.
Speaker B:And if you ignore those weeds, before long all you'll have is a weed bed out in your backyard.
Speaker B:You'll have a garden, but it'll be full of weeds.
Speaker B:I believe what Solomon is saying to us and what God is saying to us this morning is we need to make sure in our heart, like that garden, that we go out and we pull up that weed of covetousness, that we snatch up that weed of lust and envy, that we pull up that weed anger that we pull up that weed of pornography, that we pull up that weed of jealousy.
Speaker B:Let me just say here this morning, I could keep on going, that we would pull up that big old weed of selfishness and we would discard it and throw it out of the garden so that our garden would be made with weedless or without all these weeds.
Speaker B:In the same way the writer is saying, pull these weeds continually out of your garden so that you can keep your garden pure, so that you can keep it without all these sinful weeds of bitterness and unforgiveness and hatred in your garden.
Speaker B:Listen.
Speaker B:These sinful weeds that you're allowing to pollute your heart will rise up and slay you later in your life if you don't pull them out.
Speaker B:Men, you may indulge in the fleeting fantasies of sexual immorality now, but if you don't pull those weeds up in five or 10 years, they will surface out of your heart and they'll slay you.
Speaker B:They'll destroy you.
Speaker B:They'll destroy your marriage.
Speaker B:They'll destroy your family.
Speaker B:Teenagers, listen to me this morning.
Speaker B:You may be letting the sinful weeds of premarital sex into your garden, into your heart now, but these weeds will rise up and destroy your life through sexually transmitted Diseases through a dysfunctional sex life Once you get married, oh, Solomon says, guard your heart, keep it pure above everything else.
Speaker B:For out of it are the is the issues of life or the streams of life or the course of life.
Speaker B:Friends, a battle for your life is won or lost in the heart.
Speaker B:No wonder we exhorted to guard it again above everything.
Speaker B:So how do we do that?
Speaker B:How do we guard it?
Speaker B:How do we guard it?
Speaker B:I want you to look with me at a verse in Exodus chapter 15 and verse 23.
Speaker B:I came across this when I was studying and I thought, wow, this is so good I got to share it with you.
Speaker B:Just really spoke to my heart as I was studying.
Speaker B:Exodus chapter 15, verse 23.
Speaker B:Look at it with me and look at what happened when the Israelites came to the bitter waters of marah.
Speaker B:In verse 23 it says, and when they came to Marah, it says, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.
Speaker B:Therefore the name of it was called Marah.
Speaker B:And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink?
Speaker B:Look at verse 25.
Speaker B:And he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast it into the waters, the waters were made what, folks?
Speaker B:Sweet.
Speaker B:I like that.
Speaker B:Friends, I want to say here this morning, God has given us a tree to put into the pure waters of the heart.
Speaker B:And that tree is the cross of Christ.
Speaker B:The cross of Christ.
Speaker B:Take that tree, the cross of Christ, the sweet cross of Calvary, and it will transform this impure reservoir of our heart into its nature and continually make it pure.
Speaker B:Christ Jesus is a sweet purification of the heart.
Speaker B:First Corinthians, chapter one.
Speaker B:And verse 30 says, Christ is made unto us righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
Speaker B:Not only is our sin cleansed so that we become a new creation in Jesus Christ at salvation, but once we are justified, there's a continual process of sanctification going on in our heart.
Speaker B:And it says in 1st Corinthians 1:30 that Jesus Christ is made unto us.
Speaker B:Sanctification.
Speaker B:Christ not only gives us a pure heart, but he helps us keep it pure.
Speaker B:Once his cross becomes the object of our adoration and the theme of our delight, the heart will begin its cleansing and our life will become pure and more pure and more pure.
Speaker B:The cross and the heart is the purifier of the soul.
Speaker B:It purges it and cleanses the chambers of the mind.
Speaker B:No wonder it says Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 10:5, that we're to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Speaker B:The Cross of Christ.
Speaker B:Our focus on Christ is a purifier of the soul.
Speaker B:Dads, moms, men, ladies, teenagers, keep your heart pure, for out of it are the streams the issues of life.
Speaker A:You have listened to the first part of a two part message by evangelist Sam Wood.
Speaker A:Thank you for joining the Fortifying your Family podcast.
Speaker A:And if you feel encouraged by today's teaching, give us a follow so we can invite you back and share us on your socials so more marriages and families can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.
Speaker A:Remember, fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.
