Guard Your Heart | Part 4

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Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.

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It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

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Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.

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And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

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Jesus says these treasures will control your heart.

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And then secondly, he says these treasures will control your mind.

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Look at verse 22 and 23.

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The light of the body is the eye.

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If therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

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But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.

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If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness?

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Now, there's a lot of commentators that really struggle through these verses, but as I study this, I really believe the picture of the eye is a way to describe how we look at things.

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So Jesus mentions two ways of looking at things by mentioning two types of eyes.

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And the first type of eye he mentions is the single eye.

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He says, the light of the body is the eye, therefore thy eye be here.

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It is single.

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Thy whole body shall be full of light.

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Wow.

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The single eye.

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This is the eye of the spiritual man who sees things as they really and truly are.

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He sees things as God would have him see them.

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He has the wisdom of God.

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And he looks at life.

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He views life.

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He discerns life as God would have him look at it, view it, and discern it.

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He's single eyed.

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But then we see the evil eye that he mentions here too.

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He says, but if thy eye be evil, the whole body.

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Therefore, if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great, how great is that darkness?

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This describes the eye of the carnal Christian who has double vision, even marred vision.

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Their vision becomes very cloudy.

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Their vision becomes very distorted.

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It becomes very marred.

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Remember, Jesus is dealing with laying up treasure.

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He's dealing with what controls our heart.

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He's dealing with having a single focused heart on him and not having a divided heart, but an undivided heart toward him.

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So he's teaching that where our treasure is, our heart will be.

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And wherever our heart is, folks, our mind follows it.

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Wherever our heart is, our mind follows our heart.

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The world and earthly treasures blur the vision, Jesus says, of the mind.

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We begin to love these things.

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Our heart clings to them and our mind becomes blurred concerning them.

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And Jesus says these worldly treasures will not only control the heart and control the mind, but in verse 24, he says these treasures will control the will too.

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They will control their will.

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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.

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You cannot serve God and mammon.

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Now, the word serve in verse 24 is a very interesting word and it really speaks of the will of man, what we will to do.

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And so what the will does, a result of what our heart is focused on, that directs our mind and our thinking.

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So you have the heart that directs the mind, that directs the will.

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Now let me go back to our verse in Proverbs 4:23.

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No wonder Solomon says, listen, keep her guard, son.

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Keep or guard your heart above everything else, for out of it are the issues of life.

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If you go back to this reservoir illustration I gave you this morning, I said the heart of man is like a large water reservoir that has pipes going out all over the community and the water flows through those pipes.

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Certainly if the water is not pure, if the water is toxic, then it's going to destroy those who drink that water, who receive that water and the homes that it supplies.

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Now, I said those pipes.

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Sometimes some people will look at this and say, well, if we have a problem with water being toxic and polluted, what we need to do is replace the pipes.

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I talked about this this morning and talking about how society many times looks at the outward man instead of the inner man and doesn't realize that the inner man is the one who needs fixing.

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But how does this reservoir illustration have to do with what we're talking about here tonight?

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Well, I think the reservoir, as I said this morning, is a picture of the heart, the mind I mentioned a while ago, and I was trying to picture this myself, and thinking back as an engineer, I believe the mind is like the valves that open and close on the pipes that go out to the community.

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That is a heart, the water, that's the reservoirs within us.

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Then we open certain valves and close certain valves in our, in our mind, and it feeds us.

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And the wheel is like the pumps that is pushing that water through the pipes to the homes.

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So you have the reservoir, the heart, and you have the valves that we open and close like the mind.

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And the heart's directing the mind.

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And then you've got the pump of the wheel that pushes that water out and it does what the heart directs it to do through the mind.

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Jesus is saying that earthly treasures are so powerful that they grip our heart, influence our thinking, and there in what we do, notice that compromise between the desires of the world and God are impossible.

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Look at verse 24 again, the last part of that verse.

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Let me say that again.

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Compromise between the desires of the world and God are impossible, he says, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.

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He said, you cannot have it both ways.

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You can't have God and mammon.

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You can't have it both ways.

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You can't have a divided heart.

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So if the things of this world control us, we have a divided heart and we're living an ungodly life.

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I love Jerry Bridges.

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I love to read Jerry Bridges books.

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I don't think you've.

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I've read a book that I haven't really enjoyed and came across a statement a while back when he defined ungodliness.

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And when he did, it just really kind of jumped off the page.

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Because normally we think of ungodliness as things that we don't do.

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You know what I mean?

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Those things that we don't do.

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We think of ungodliness as those sexual sins out here, immorality.

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We think of stealing, we think of killing somebody.

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We think of all these things out here.

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But he defined ungodliness this way.

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And I think very correctly he said, ungodliness is living your life without regard to God.

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Then I thought, wow, that's a different definition.

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It's when I live my daily life without regard to God, not thinking about God in my daily life and going my own way without thinking about God.

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I'm living an ungodly life.

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When I go through my day and I don't consider God in my day.

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Wow, God help us.

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Look back at verse 23 and look with me at the end of that verse because that's a very interesting statement at the end of verse 23.

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If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great?

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How great is that darkness?

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I believe this describes a man who thinks he is godly because he talks about God.

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He comes to church and talks with other people about God.

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His conversation is about God.

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Sometimes he goes to church, sometimes on Sunday morning, sometimes Sunday night.

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Once in a while he goes to church.

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He says that he believes in God, but he's really living for the things of this world.

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How great, Jesus says, is this man's darkness whose wearing mask of being somebody that he's really not, to the point that he's even fooled himself.

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So how terrible of a condition that is that we could deceive ourselves even in our salvation.

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John addresses this in First John, chapter 2 and verse 15.

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Very familiar passage.

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He says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

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If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

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You know, if you go through this book, John, so black and white.

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John just says, listen, if you love the world, love of God isn't in you.

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That's just black and white.

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Amen.

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It's hard to debate that.

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He said, for all that's in the world, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.

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And the world passeth away.

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He said this again, same argument.

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This world is passing away.

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Why are you loving the things of the world?

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It's temporary.

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It's passing away in the lust thereof.

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But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

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Wow.

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Get your focus on the person of Jesus Christ.

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Live a life for Christ.

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Realize that you need to live for eternity.

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Invest into heaven, not into the things of this world.

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Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount further addresses this in Matthew 7:21.

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And it's one of the most shocking statements, I think, in the Bible, when Jesus says these words, not every one that saith unto me, lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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But he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven, says a lot of people going to stand before God one day and they're going to say to him, but I prophesied in your name.

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I did this in your name, did that in your name.

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I went to church on Sundays.

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I gave in the offering plate.

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I did all these things in your name.

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And Jesus will have to say, depart from me.

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I never knew you.

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The saddest words any man, any woman, any person could ever hear.

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No wonder that Jesus says in verse 23 Again, if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.

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If therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?

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God wants us to have a pure heart.

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God wants us to have a tender heart.

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And God wants us to keep an undivided heart toward him.

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I want to close the words that I want to share with you here tonight with the words of the APostle John in first John, the last verse, the closing statement, the curtain call of First John in First John 5:21, he says these words.

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He says, little children, my little children, talking about those who are Christians, my little children.

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His final words, keep yourself from idols.

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He's saying, little children, keep from having a divided heart toward God.

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Don't let anything take God's place.

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In your life.

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Don't be more passionate about anything else than you are about God, because an idol is anything that would take my heart away from my single focused devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And if it does, it gives me a divided heart.

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We must continually keep an undivided heart.

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The question we'd have to ask ourselves, the question I asked myself as I prepared this is do I have a divided heart?

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Is my heart divided between God and something else?

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Is there something that's taking God's place in my life?

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Is that being evidenced by me storing up and laying up treasures on this earth instead of laying up treasures in heaven?

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More Marriages and families can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.

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Remember, fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.