Your Heart is Above All
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
When you all think about someone’s heart, what comes to mind?
Sometimes we only think about the heart as a vital organ, or the place where someone radiates their love to another. But God’s Word says our hearts are much much more than that.
But what does God say that our hearts are in scripture?
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
The Proverb says that the springs of life flow from where? Our hearts.
A spring is a place of origin for water, that fills the oceans, ponds, or other areas of pooling water. But what is unique about a spring is that most springs come underneath the ground, meaning that they are unseen. One does not find a spring unless they go and dig it up.
Proverbs is comparing our hearts to a spring of water. Just like a spring of water on the earth that supplies a body of water, our hearts are a secret spring which we cannot see, only God can see, but from it our lives flow.
God’s Word is very clear to us that our hearts are the origin for everything that we do in life.
**Speak on what Christ sats in Matthew 15:19 “19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”
Our Hearts are also the area of lives that God looks at directly:
1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV)
7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Here in this passage, the Prophet Samuel is looking for a king for Israel to replace King Saul. God had told Samuel to go to a family who was led by a man named Jesse. It was someone from this family that God was going to show Samuel the future king.
So Samuel is looking upon the sons of Jesse and he comes across Eliab. Now Eliab was tall and from his appearance Samuel assumed that this man had to be the future king. But it was after this assumption that God, gave all of humanity the truth on how He views us.
God said “man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
When God said this He disclosed to everyone of us that He alone looks on our hearts. NOBOY ELSE CAN.
That means He sees our thoughts, because God can see our hearts, and because the heart of humans is where everything we do in life originates, that means that there is absolutely nothing that you or me can do to hide anything from God.
This means God can see the bad things in our hearts, but that also means He can see the pain and the hurt in our hearts.
This passage of scripture also discloses to us that God’s number 1 concern in our lives is the condition of our hearts. Because He says He bypasses everything else, and goes directly to the heart of the matter (literally)
In fact, we even see hints of God’s concern with man’s heart in the book of Genesis, shortly after man sinned God said: Genesis 6:5-6
Genesis 6:5–6 (ESV)
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
When God first created us, He created us with pure hearts. Hearts that were undefiled. But when Adam disobeyed God in the garden and he ate of the fruit God told Him not to eat, something happened to our hearts.
Our hearts became defiled. Our hearts were filled with sin. The condition of our hearts is so bad that it grieves God. It grieves him that our hearts are not in the right place. So what can we do about it?
If our hearts are in the wrong state, and it is from our hearts that everything we do in life originates, what can we do to please God?
Actually we can’t do anything.
Because our hearts are impure because of sin, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. In fact, me and you could follow everyone of the 10 commandments to the T, and still not make it to Heaven?
Why?
Because our hearts are still dirty. They are still unclean. There is not a single amount of righteous acts that we could do to ever earn salvation, because we can’t cleanse our hearts.
Just because I preach stand up here and teach you all God’s Word that does not mean that I am going to Heaven. Because I can’t fix my heart.
You can’t fix your heart.
Remember a spring of water is under ground, unseen by man, and was not created by man. It is a natural Phenomenon. Your heart is unseen by others, unseen by you, not created by you, and it can’t be fixed by you.
But it is the single most important part of you.
So we can’t fix our hearts, but God can. 1 Sam 16:7 God said He alone looks at man’s heart, and secondly in Genesis 6:6 He alone is grieved by man’s heart, so what He did was give us the solution.
God’s solution to your heart issue is Jesus Christ.
The sweet message of the Gospel is that Jesus came to
Be the death sacrifice for mine and your sins. So that our debt to God could be forgiven. The very thing that contaminated our hearts from the beginning Christ came to set us free from.
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
His forgiveness is the antidote for our hearts.
To then set us free from the defilement of our hearts by sending us the Holy Spirit to indwell us. To give us a new heart. And by this new heart, God no longer is grieved by us, because when He sees us (remember he sees our hearts) he sees a cleansed, renewed and purified heart.
By the work of Jesus Christ everyone in the world including you and me have access to a new life, that is hidden in Christ.
The reason you here christians say that our lives our hidden with Christ is because He has given us this new heart, that is only seen by Him, and our lives remember flow from Him.
Where is this new heart mentioned in the Bible? I’m glad you asked:
Before Jesus came and actually gave us the opportunity of a new heart, in the OT Ezekiel prophesied about it:
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Then in the NT Jesus, speaking about the same spirit He would give us in Ezekiel, mentions how He has came to fulfill this:
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
Do you see how the plan of God has unfolded for you and me?
Do you see your desperate need for a new heart?
In John 7:38 Jesus mentions how we get a new heart, He reveals how we can escape this life of sin.
He said “whoever believes in me”
5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus says that we must be born of water and spirit. What he means by water is that we must repent of our sins. He was comparing the water baptism to repentance. Actually saying that that the water baptism was a sign of repentance. When we go down in that water our old lives are being “buried” and when we come up we are showing we are living our new life with Christ.
In other words we must die to ourselves. We must have a change of mind.
It is with faith and repentance that God will give you a new heart, and save you.
You must see your sin, and then have a change of mind toward that sin. Which simply means you acknowledge within yourself, you are unclean before God, and you make the decision to turn away from that lifestyle of sin, and serve God without looking back.
Your mind is turned Godward, and not inward. You must give your inner self, that is your heart to God, so that He can renew you.
When someone has a engine problem in their car, they must give the mechanic the whole car, in order for him to properly fix it. So you must give God the fullness of your heart to be renewed.
So do you want your heart to be as Jesus says, to flow rivers of living water?
Do you want to be born again, begin living a new life. One that is not based on what you want but what your creator wants?
Do you want to throw away a life that is getting you nowhere and pickup the new life God has waiting and prepared for you?
Or if you have given Him your life in the past and maybe you have waned away, do you want to pick that life back up?
Tonight the decision is yours, we are here if any of you need prayer.
