Guard Your Heart | Part 3
In our recent episodes, we’ve explored the essential principle of guarding our hearts, focusing on the need to keep them pure and tender. As we continue our spiritual journey, it is crucial to understand how easily our hearts can become divided, leading us to worship both our Creator and the creation. We are reminded that our commitment to God should be unwavering, and it is our responsibility as families to guard our hearts against anything that might dilute our faith.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Host:It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.
Host:Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.
Host:And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam wood.
Sam Wood:Proverbs, chapter 4 and verse 23, where the Bible says, keep thy heart with all diligence or to guard your heart above everything else.
Sam Wood:For out of it are the issues of life, the streams of life.
Sam Wood:For your heart directs the course.
Sam Wood:As the director and the orchestrator, certainly of our life, this morning we took a few minutes to talk about what it means to have a pure heart.
Sam Wood:Certainly for the person who's unsaved, they need the purity.
Sam Wood:They need a new heart in Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:And for us as a Christian, we certainly need a sanctified heart.
Sam Wood:We need a clean heart, a pure heart, as in our daily walk with God and to pull all the weeds of sins that are in our life up out of the garden of our heart to make sure that it remains very, very pure.
Sam Wood:Then we talked about having a tender heart.
Sam Wood:And certainly as I studied that, I know over the last week about having a tender heart that really spoke to me in thinking, is my heart hard or is my heart really tender toward God?
Sam Wood:Am I really sensitive to the first awareness of sin in my life so that I respond to that sin through confession and through repentance?
Sam Wood:And we gave the example of Josiah, who was the king, who God stayed his judgment upon the people of Israel until after Josiah died because he had, God says, because he had a tender heart that led him to humble himself before God.
Sam Wood:Then we talked about how a tender heart can be changed into a hardened heart.
Sam Wood:And the example of David, of him having a tender heart when he went into the cave with King Saul and tore a piece off of his robe and his heart smote him.
Sam Wood:And how later, just a couple decades later, that on top of the rooftop looking at Bathsheba, his heart no longer smote him, but it was hardened and he ignored his heart and fell into adultery and into murder.
Sam Wood:We need to have certainly a pure heart.
Sam Wood:We need to have a tender heart.
Sam Wood:And I want to talk about the, the third thing that we need to do to guard our heart tonight, and that is you need to keep an undivided heart.
Sam Wood:An undivided heart.
Sam Wood:Now you might say, well, Brother Sam, what do you mean by an undivided heart?
Sam Wood:Well, an undivided heart is a heart when one part of me.
Sam Wood:Or we might say a divided heart.
Sam Wood:Is a heart where one part of me worships and the other part worships the Creator.
Sam Wood:Or an undivided heart is a heart where that I am worshiping the Creator and not worshiping the creation.
Sam Wood:Even the apostle Paul struggled with a divided heart.
Sam Wood:He said in Romans, chapter 7, in verse 22 through verse 24, for I delight in the law of God after another law of my members were in bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members.
Sam Wood:O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of this death?
Sam Wood:One theologian, I think sums it up well.
Sam Wood:He says, the heart, the human heart, is an idol factory.
Sam Wood:I thought, what a statement that our heart is continually producing idols in search of something to worship, when we were made only to worship God alone.
Sam Wood:But because of sin, our heart seeks to worship something.
Sam Wood:And we do not fill that void with God.
Sam Wood:We fill it with other things.
Sam Wood:So our heart becomes a continual idle fat.
Sam Wood:Now Jesus addresses the issue of a divided heart, or keeping your heart totally on him in Matthew, chapter six.
Sam Wood:And I want you to look at that scripture with me tonight.
Sam Wood:And that'll be our text tonight in the Sermon on the Mount.
Sam Wood:And look with me if you would, verse 19, Matthew, chapter 6 and verse 19.
Sam Wood:Very familiar passage.
Sam Wood:But I want to share some things with you tonight about keeping an undivided heart.
Sam Wood:Jesus said these words, lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.
Sam Wood:But lay for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through or steal.
Sam Wood:For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Sam Wood:The light of the body is the eye.
Sam Wood:Therefore thine eye shall be full of light.
Sam Wood:But if thy eye be evil, the whole body shall be full of darkness.
Sam Wood:If Therefore the light that is, how great is that darkness.
Sam Wood:Verse 24.
Sam Wood:No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.
Sam Wood:You cannot serve God and mammon as we look at this section of Scripture in the sermon in these first two verses in verse 19 and 20 lays down a great principle.
Sam Wood:Then in the following verses, he gives the reasons for the principle that he lays down.
Sam Wood:Now this is a principle that we see in these two verses.
Sam Wood:And the rest of the teaching again goes into the why of the principle that he gives in verse 19 and verse 20.
Sam Wood:So I want to look at the positive side, and I want to look at the negative side.
Sam Wood:Of this principle that he lays down.
Sam Wood:Now, here's the principle.
Sam Wood:In verse 19, he says, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth.
Sam Wood:At verse 20, the beginning of verse 20, he gives the other part of the principle.
Sam Wood:But.
Sam Wood:But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven.
Sam Wood:So the principle he's laying down here is lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth, but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven.
Sam Wood:Now let's look at the negative side of this principle that he gives to us first in verse 19.
Sam Wood:Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth.
Sam Wood:Now, what does he mean by the word treasure?
Sam Wood:What is very important to understand this teaching?
Sam Wood:We understand what the word treasure actually means.
Sam Wood:The word treasure includes money.
Sam Wood:But it's a much broader sense when he speaks of treasure than just money.
Sam Wood:Treasures really refers in this text to whatever possesses or owns our heart.
Sam Wood:The treasure that Jesus is talking about here is whatever possesses or whatever owns our heart.
Sam Wood:Jesus is concerned that our hearts are not divided between him and some other thing.
Sam Wood:He says that, and I know I preached this message several months back in Mark chapter 12, where the Pharisee comes to him and asks him, what is the greatest command of all?
Sam Wood:And Jesus says, the greatest command of all is hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord, our God is one Lord.
Sam Wood:And then he says, you're to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
Sam Wood:You're to love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all thy strength.
Sam Wood:That is Jesus Christ is to be the passion.
Sam Wood:We're not to passionately seek after anything else above a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:And we might ask a question, what are some earthly treasures that might take hold of our heart?
Sam Wood:Let me just mention a few here tonight that are very prevalent in our society today.
Sam Wood:One of them is money, the worship of money.
Sam Wood:Another is the worship of sex.
Sam Wood:We are a sex crave society in America today, God help us, but we're a money crave society too.
Sam Wood:The worship of money, the worship of sex, the worship of a career, it could be that is a focus on our career and what we do.
Sam Wood:And many people believe that what you do defines who you are.
Sam Wood:But the truth of the matter, it isn't necessarily what you do that defines who you are.
Sam Wood:It's who you are in Christ that defines who you are.
Sam Wood:Amen.
Sam Wood:Your identity is in Christ.
Sam Wood:Most of the time we focus on what someone does instead of who they really are.
Sam Wood:But the important thing is that we have our identity based in the person of Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:Now we can even worship our husband or wife and we can worship our children.
Sam Wood:I see a lot of families in the center of their worship.
Sam Wood:That is, the child in that home directs everything else in that home.
Sam Wood:And the whole home focuses and revolves around that child in the home.
Sam Wood:I want to remind you of a statement I think is a very good statement.
Sam Wood:It comes to me often that is a good thing.
Sam Wood:Money, sex, your children.
Sam Wood:A good thing can become a bad thing if it takes place of the best thing.
Sam Wood:Let me say that again.
Sam Wood:A good thing can become a bad thing if it takes place of the best thing.
Sam Wood:And the best thing is to have a heart that's devoted to God.
Sam Wood:And if you have a heart that's devoted to God, it's going to things.
Sam Wood:So it's Even though there are a lot of good things, there's nothing wrong in and of itself.
Sam Wood:Money, certainly nothing wrong with sex in the context that sex God makes sex, for that is in marriage.
Sam Wood:It's a wonderful thing.
Sam Wood:It's a blessing that God has given a wife.
Sam Wood:But a good thing can become a bad thing if it takes place of the best thing.
Sam Wood:That is our devotion and our heart toward Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:How do we lay up treasures on earth?
Sam Wood:I believe we lay up treasures on earth by allowing something or someone to be more glorious to us than God is.
Sam Wood:We lay up treasures on earth.
Sam Wood:We let someone or something become more glorious to us than God is.
Sam Wood:Now, that word glorious is a very interesting word when we talk about glory in the Bible.
Sam Wood:And what it means is weightiness.
Sam Wood:It's what weighs on us.
Sam Wood:What's glorious to you is what weighs you down.
Sam Wood:It's what you think about the most.
Sam Wood:It's what your mind is thinking on the most.
Sam Wood:It's what weighs on your heart the most.
Sam Wood:And of course, what God wants to weigh on our heart the most is our devotion and walk with him, our love for Him.
Sam Wood:He doesn't want anything else to weigh us down more than we are weighed down.
Sam Wood:That is, in giving him all the glory and all the honor and all the praise.
Sam Wood:And if you want to see where you're laying treasure, then look at what weighs upon your heart the most.
Sam Wood:We can look at a lot of places to find it out.
Sam Wood:As far as money, you can look at your checkbook and very quickly see whether God is a priority in your heart or whether other things are a priority in your heart.
Sam Wood:Now that's the negative side.
Sam Wood:Let me look at the positive side.
Sam Wood:Because the positive side in verse 20 says this.
Sam Wood:But lay up.
Sam Wood:But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven.
Sam Wood:Now some People think this refers to salvation, but it doesn't really refer to salvation because Jesus is talking to professing Christians in the Sermon on the Mount about literally storing up treasures in a literal heaven.
Sam Wood:But how do we practically do this?
Sam Wood:How do we obey this command that Jesus gives us to lay up treasures for ourselves in heaven?
Sam Wood:Well, let me mention a couple things as we look through this verse that Jesus tells us.
Sam Wood:I believe, number one, we need to remind ourselves continually that this world is not our home.
Sam Wood:Folks, you need to continually talk to yourself, remind yourself this world is not home.
Sam Wood:As a child of God, Paul said in Philippians 3:20, for our conversation, that word conversation means citizenship is in heaven.
Sam Wood:My citizenship is not in this world.
Sam Wood:My citizenship is in heaven.
Sam Wood:I'm just passing through this world.
Sam Wood:And the Bible says in James that this life is like a vapor that appears for a short time and then it passes away the more.
Sam Wood:My dad used to tell me, he said, son, he said, it seems like the older you get, the quicker time goes by.
Sam Wood:And I used to think, well, that's not true, dad, because time is time.
Sam Wood:But, you know, the older I get now, I believe that the quicker time goes by, it appears to be.
Sam Wood:Anyway, many of you could give testimony to that.
Sam Wood:We need an eternal perspective in our heart.
Sam Wood:Not a temporal one, but an eternal one.
Sam Wood:And we need to continually remind ourselves that I'm just a steward of all the things that God has entrusted to me.
Sam Wood:And a steward is someone who carries out the dictates of the One who is the Master over them.
Sam Wood:And so if God gives me certain things, whether it's money or whether it's children or whether it's a wife or a husband or whoever it may be, or whatever it may be, then God has given that to me for his glory and for his honor and for his praise.
Sam Wood:And I am to be an ambassador to God for what he has given to me.
Sam Wood:And I am to use that certainly for his glory, not my own.
Sam Wood:So I must continually remind myself that I'm just passing through this life, the things of this world.
Sam Wood:But Jesus Christ is to be the passion of my heart.
Sam Wood:I believe that is what Paul was referencing in Philippians in the famous statement that he makes.
Sam Wood:To live is Christ and to die is gain.
Sam Wood:He said, my life, my life is all about Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:The things of this world are as nothing to me.
Sam Wood:To live is Christ.
Sam Wood:Jesus continues by appealing in these verses to our common sense.
Sam Wood:He says, I want to appeal to your common sense and give you some why you should not lay treasure up in this world, but you should lay treasure up in heaven.
Sam Wood:The first thing he says we see there is, he says, everything on earth is decaying.
Sam Wood:He says, we're moth.
Sam Wood:And he says, everything on this earth.
Sam Wood:Just remind yourself, use your common sense.
Sam Wood:Look around.
Sam Wood:Everything on this earth is decaying.
Sam Wood:It's corrupted.
Sam Wood:I'm reminded of when I was in engineering school of the second law of thermodynamics, which basically says that everything is progressing to a lesser state.
Sam Wood:It doesn't take rocket science to see that around us.
Sam Wood:Your car, you buy a brand new car, in a few years, it starts getting rust on it, the paint starts getting faded away, your house starts getting leaks.
Sam Wood:Everything's progressing to a lower state.
Sam Wood:Jesus says, it's rusting, it's decaying away.
Sam Wood:Then he goes on to say, and give us another reason, he says, where thieves break through and steal.
Sam Wood:He says, why do you want to lay up treasures on earth?
Sam Wood:Thieves can break through and steal.
Sam Wood:That this is just common sense.
Sam Wood:Things that Jesus is appealing to us with.
Sam Wood:And there are many thieves in this life.
Sam Wood:We think of thieves.
Sam Wood:We normally talk about the common thief.
Sam Wood:It might break into my house.
Sam Wood:There's also the thief of illness, of all of a sudden having good health and not having health.
Sam Wood:There's a thief of the economy collapsing around us, as we've seen in days, in the last 20 years in the United States of America.
Sam Wood:There's the thief of war sometimes.
Sam Wood:2nd Corinthians 4:18.
Sam Wood:Paul says this while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
Sam Wood:For the things which are seen, he says, are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Sam Wood:These heavenly things are eternal.
Sam Wood:These heavenly things are imperishable.
Sam Wood:Why?
Sam Wood:Because God, folks, God himself guards these things.
Sam Wood:No sin, no decay will take place on these heavenly treasures like they do on the earthly treasures.
Sam Wood:You're making eternal investments with eternal rewards, not temporal investments with vanishing rewards.
Sam Wood:So Jesus reminds us that we are temporary citizens, this world.
Sam Wood:And he appeals to our common sense by saying, these things are passing away, they're rusting away.
Sam Wood:And thieves could even steal these things.
Sam Wood:So why do you put so much emphasis on the things of this world?
Sam Wood:Then he goes on to say, very importantly, he reminds us of the spiritual danger of a divided heart, the spiritual danger of divided heart.
Sam Wood:Where your treasure is, he says in verse 21, there will your heart be.
Sam Wood:Also.
Sam Wood:Jesus says, I want to remind you of something here.
Sam Wood:I want to lay down another principle here that's very, very important for you to see and remind yourself of where your treasure is.
Sam Wood:That's where your heart is.
Sam Wood:So the first thing he wants us to see, he says, these treasures will control your heart.
Sam Wood:These treasures of this earth will burial and worldly desires will take hold of us and influence and take control of our heart, and it will make us have a divided heart.
Sam Wood:We pretend sometimes that we only like certain things.
Sam Wood:But the truth of the matter, if we were to look into our heart, we see that we don't just like these things.
Sam Wood:We've fallen in love with many of these things.
Sam Wood:I read the statement not long ago that says we often do not know what our idol is until we face a prospect of losing it.
Sam Wood:What a great statement that is.
Sam Wood:We don't often know what idols we have in our heart until we face the prospect of losing that particular idol.
Sam Wood:I know my brother and his wife are visiting this weekend, and he was very excited about the golf tournament and got to our house, the St.
Sam Wood:Jude Classic, then in Memphis.
Sam Wood:And Friday night my TV went out.
Sam Wood:So we've had no TV all weekend.
Sam Wood:It's been wonderful to be honest with you, but I give such an example of that.
Sam Wood:But you know, some people, a TV is such an idol in the heart, and sometimes until you lose it, you don't recognize that it's there.
Sam Wood:So what a great statement that is.
Sam Wood:We often do not know what our idol is until we face the prospect of losing it in our life, and then it jumps out at us.
Sam Wood:And sometimes, folks, let me just say here tonight, sometimes that's why God will allow us to lose it, to show us what's really controlling our heart so that we will put him back in the proper place in our heart.
Sam Wood:He will allow things to come in our life.
Sam Wood:And when they do, we need to be reminded of Romans 8:28, that all things will work together for good of those who love God and are the called according to his purposes, he will work.
Sam Wood:Hey, that's not.
Sam Wood:That's not just something we hope will happen.
Sam Wood:That's a promise of God.
Sam Wood:Let me say that again.
Sam Wood:That's a promise of God.
Sam Wood:God is using that in our life to make us more like Christ Jesus.
Sam Wood:Sometimes we might have a financial reversal, a health reversal.
Sam Wood:We might have something in our life, a job loss or something.
Sam Wood:And God may be using that to even help show us where our heart is so that our heart will no longer be divided, but it will be undivided and it will be focused on him.
Sam Wood:So God says first, Jesus says, these treasures will control your heart.
Sam Wood:And then secondly, he says, these treasures will control your mind.
Host:Thank you for joining the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
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Host:Remember, fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.
