The Pilgrims Progress

Introduction

According to the CDC 1 in 2 deaths in the united states is caused by heart disease or cancer. In fact, over 600,000 people a year die of heart related issues. That means that every hour an estimated 83 Americans died of some complications related to heart disease. What is truly disheartening about these statistics is that the CDC reports that more than a quarter of these deaths could have been prevented or delayed with better control of key risk factors, physical activity and diet. This shows us that the heart is a very important organ in our bodies. The heart gives life to your body. It pumps blood through your body and delivers oxygen and nutrients to your cells. You can live without a one of your kidneys, you can live without one of your lungs. But, you have only one heart.

Information like this grabs our attention. If a doctor sat your down and told you that you that if you continued in the same condition you are in you may not live much longer, it is quite possible that you would begin doing the things necessary to change that.

This brings us to our text this morning. The writer says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow springs of life.” This morning I want us to enter into the exam room. Many arrived this morning thinking they are well. Sure, there have been signs that your heart may be sick but you have ignored it. But, you know that you need a check up so you have come this morning. It’s more out of duty than out of concern. Some of you have come here this morning without a pulse at all. There is no life in you. Thanks be to God that death doesn’t inhibit Christ from saving you. For, did he not say to Lazarus “Rise and walk!” and he did! This was four days after he had died! I’m no physician but I believe that Lazarus’s heart had long stopped beating before Christ called out to him. No one here is too sick, or too dead. May the gospel of Jesus Christ revive you if you are sick and restore you if dead.

Pray

Commandment

“Keep your heart”

In our text this morning we have a commandment. “Keep your heart.” Some translations use the word guard. When something is guarded it is kept safe from an attack. In Great Britain the royal family is protected by the “Queens Guards.” Their responsibility is to ensure that no harm comes to the Queen. So, when Solomon tells his son to guard or keep his heart, he is warning him about an attack. Not only is he warning him but he is speaking from experience.

We see in 1 Kings 3:3 that “Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father.”

However, Solomon entered into a marriage with Pharaoh’s daughter and had several other wives of nations other than Israel. In 1 Kings 11:1-2 we are told that doing so was completely against the instructions of Yahweh.

To make matters way worse, Solomon built temples to foreign God’s. 1 Kings 11:7 “ Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.”

Because of Solomon’s disobedience Yahweh spoke to him and said, “Sin this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet, for the sake of David your father I will not fo it in your days, but will tear it out of the hand of your son.”

Solomon started off strong. Yet, he didn’t guard his heart. The end of 1 Kings 11 is upsetting. Solomon kept his kingdom, he died King Solomon. But, he died knowing that his actions would be a detriment to generations after him.

Solomon was a wealthy man. 2 Chronicles 9:13-28 details the substantial amount of wealth that Solomon had. It says that in a year Solomon received 666 talents of gold. That is about 22 tons of gold and the equivalent to 1 billion dollars. That’s not counting what he received from other kings in the surrounding area. His throne was made with ivory and overlaid with gold. Even the cups that he drank out of were gold!

Some of you are having to pick your chins off the floor right now. With the type of wealth imagine the things your could do! Imagine how happy you would be and fulfilled your life would be!

But, don’t be impressed by that! Solomon’s wealth did not make him a great man. In fact, Solomon no matter how wise he was became a fool. Why? Because, life does not flow from the outside in. Life flows from the inside out.

The same can be applied to other things. Think about what you fill your life with. It should not surprise us that was goes into us will come out. Jesus says in

Matthew 12:34, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” What you fill your life with will come out. If you are consumed with wealth it is not a matter of if you will be greedy but to what extent your greed will be revealed to others. If you surround yourself with gossip and rumors it is not a matter of how dishonest you will become but if the truth will be found in you at all.

You may be thinking this morning, I am not that bad. Ah, but I implore you to examine your to see what is found there. Proverbs 21:2 says, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.”

This is what guarding your heart means. It means consistently and often examining your heart. But, you don’t do this alone. It must have some sort of standard by which you compare yourself with. This is why Solomon began this paragraphs with

“My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my saying. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart.”

This isn’t the first time Solomon has said this in this chapter. He says something similar three other times.

Church, if you do not have a steady intake of the Word of God you are already behind the 8 ball in guarding your heart. You are your worst critic. Not because you are too critical but because you will not be critical enough. Why is this?

It is because our hearts are sick. What does Jeremiah 17:9 say? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?”

We must guard our heart with the sharp truth of God’s word. We guard our hearts by constantly applying the gospel. Again and again and again. The gospel is not just for lost people! In fact, some of the people who are in the greatest need of the gospel is those who fill churches week after week because they have been swept away!

But Jesus! What a gracious Lord we have. He invited us as often as we will come to drink from him if we are thirsty! Church, we have no need to fill our hearts with the pleasure of the world because we have access to living water! Yes! the heart is the wellspring of life when it is filled with Christ! Jesus brings life! and whoever believes in him, as John 7:38 says, “From his heart will flow rivers of living water!”

So believer, you come and you drink of the gospel often and from your heart will flow life! The gospel is so great that if this morning the well spring of your heart is polluted the gospel is strong enough to restore is purity.

“With all vigilance”

But, we don’t just guard our hearts. We do it will “all vigilance.” The word vigilance is an enforcing word. In other words, it carries the same idea but intensifies what is being said.

What the writer is saying is that the heart should be guarded above all other things.

In 2011 Americans spent a total of 20.64 billion dollars on security systems. This could be a security system for your home, car, or a number of things. It’s pretty easy to determine why the security system industry is so lucrative. It is because we want to protect the things that are valuable to us. I am sure most if not all of us have some sort of security measures in place to protect our valuables.

Let me ask you, are you taking greater diligence to guard your heart? Why is the such value on your heart? Well, we have already seen that from it flows the life of a person. In the text, the writer says the “Springs of life”. The word used here is normally used to describe the farthest reaches of a geographical boundary. The metaphor here is describing the farthest reaches of your life. The ultimate end of your life.

There is a saying

Sow an thought-reap and act;

Sow an act- reap a habit;

sow a habit- reap a character;

Sow a character- reap a destiny!

Rest assured, there has been a heist planned since before you were born for your heart. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.”

He said to the Ephesians, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Christian, are you actively fighting against the enemy who seeks to take you over? Or are you passively sitting by waiting on the end? There is no greater indicator of what the end will be like than what you expose your heart to.

Listen to what Mark 7:21-23 says,

“For from within, our of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Reason

So, we have the command to guard our hearts. Now, we focus our attention on the reason. We have already talked about this some. Everything we think, say, or do is a manifestation of our heart. The application is simple, you will become, think, and act like what you love most. I can’t think of a more relevant message for the church in America at this moment.

As election season get’s closer and closer the tensions are always the tightest. People we have loved, laughed with, and fellowshipped with for four year become enemies. We are so inundated with this way and that, that we begin to lose sight on the way. I do not intend to make this sermon political. That is because politics is a matter of conscious. However, I am concern with our hearts in the matter. For, if we can revile our neighbor and the next week join them in song, prayer, and communion that reveals something of our hearts.

Everything we think, say, or do is a manifestation of our hearts. The idea here is that sin is always a matter of the heart, and it must always be dealt with at the level of the heart. You see, you cannot merely deal with the symptoms of sin. You cannot merely remove yourself from conversation that are gossip. Sin is a living organism that grows in your life. James has a great visual for this. He says,

“But, each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

You cannot trim the branches of sin. It must be cut at the root. The root of sin is your heart. You cannot let sin live. You kill it.

John Owen famously said, “Be killing sin. Or it will be killing you.”

This is exactly what Paul says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.”

What is the reason to guard your heart? Because, the sin that is left there to grow and spread will choke your faith with its roots.

John says in 1 John 3:6 “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”

Well, that verse ought to stop us in our tracks. Wait a minute John. You are telling me that if I sin one time or a few times that I am not a Christian? We would all be in a lot of trouble if that was what John is talking about.

No, those whose sins have been taken away by Christ (1 Jn 3:5), live according the finished work of Christ, and are no longer identified by anything but the obedience of Christ. In other words, those who are truly saved. Those whose sins have truly been removed do not sit by idly. They attack sin!

Paul asks in Romans 6:2 “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” You can’t! If we have been united to Christ in his death (6:3) we cannot stay attached to our sin. If you have believed in Christ by faith, you have made a declaration of war on your sin. Imagine if during war one side invited their enemy for a slumber party. That is absurd. For, the enemy would wait for you to sleep and kill you and still your things. This is exactly what happens if we do not guard our heart!

John Piper once said, “If you are not at odds with sin, you are not at home with Jesus, not because being at odds with sin makes you at home with Jesus, but because being at home with Jesus makes you at odds with sin.”

There is a great possibility that there are people in this room this morning and watching online that have allowed sit to take up residence in your heart. Sin hasn’t made a short visit. Your heart is its address. Church, it’s time to issue it the eviction notice of the gospel that Jesus Christ died for that sin!

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Romans 6:6

“But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,” Romans 6:17

But, you may be thinking Pastor Seth you don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know what I think. You don’t know what is truly in my heart. I want you to think about your feet, your hands, your head, everything that you are. Now, Jesus died for all of that. Every bit of it. There is no part of you that is insignificant. He poured out himself for you. He did so to redeem you. To make you wise today, and restored in eternity. One day you will not be able to sin. You will be filled with the glory of Christ! You will be struck with wonder at the sight of your savior.

Christian, we don’t live for today! We are looking forward. We know that heaven is waiting. Christ is coming! Believer, your path is not that of destruction. Christ is sanctifying you, he has claimed you for himself. Sin will not have the last word.

So, we guard our heart with all vigilance and we fill it with these truths. We fill our heart with the love of Christ and his love with come bursting out of us. We fill our hearts with Christ and enemy becomes brother, greed becomes generosity, hate becomes love, gossip become edification, deceit become truth. The sinner becomes Saint! How do we guard our heart? We fill it full of Christ!

If you are not a believer this morning, you hear is in desperatly. The heart is prone to wonder, prone to sin, attracted to it, craves it. Your do not need to repair your heart, you need an entirely new one. The good news of the gospel is that in Christ, God has promised to give you a new heart.

In fact, church this is what the New Covenant is! God says in Ezekiel 11:19-20

“And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove their heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”

If you want to guard your heart. If you want to be a Proverbs 4:23 Christian it begins by acknowledging how depraved your heart is, examining the sin in your life by the standard of Christ, and filling your heart with the truth of the gospel. It is only through the gospel that we can guard our heart. Behavior modification is not good news.

Implications of a Guarded Heart

In closing this passage, Solomon gives his son some handles to grab onto as he begins to guard his heart. This is the equivalent to a survey. So, as we read them I want us to do just that.

“Put away crooked speech, and pur devious talk far from you”

Wisdom, produces edifying speech. If you have wisdom you will build up others. Only fools tear people down. This is especially relevant today because the word crooked really means words that twist and distort reality. Social media only exacerbates this problem. As Christians it is our responsibility to first ensure that our words are formed by Christ, but also that they communicate truth. So, before you share something on social media or speak to someone make sure you are vetting your words by this standard. Do they show other who Jesus is? and are they true? Deceitful talk reveals that a person is not guarding their heart.

“Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.”

Keep your focus on Christ. Don’t get distracted by the things that seek to pull you off the path. You will never be satisfied when you indulge your sin. A taste only means you will require another, and another and another.

“Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.”

I have heard it said many times, “We are only one misstep away from a life-shattering catastrophe.” There have been great disciples of Christ fall, not because of explicit evil, but because they failed to guard their heart. All it takes it to stop being vigilant. Ponder the path. It is the wide gate? or the Narrow gate that leads to life? To ponder means to direction your attention on the path. We will walk the path but there will be distractions that will entice us to stray away.

A heart guarded in the gospel makes it possible for us to stay the path. Perhaps you have strayed from the path of righteousness. Perhaps you have lost your way, have you examined your heart?

Conclusion

The path of sin is death. Jesus said “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Look at Proverbs 5:5-6. The path of unrighteousness does not ponder the path of life. It has no consideration for it. The path of foolishness is easily swayed, distracted by many things, attracted to sin. That path leads to death.

We must guard our hearts to walk the path of righteousness. The question you must answer this morning is which path you will follow. In the Pilgrims Progress, Christian is given the opportunity to walk the path of life to the celestial city. He runs scream “Life Life Eternal life!” Death, it’s an undesirable end. Destruction, an unwelcome outcome. Yet, so many are presented the path of life and choose the path of destruction. As unpleasant as death and destruction is the way is easy and many find it.

How do you find the path of life? By, Christ alone! For he took your death. He was destroyed for you. He did so that you may have life! Your heart desires life. That is why you fill your heart with so many things that you hope will offer it. But, those things cannot save you.

“Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them on the day of the wrath of the LORD. In the fire of his jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed; for a full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.”

There will be a day when the path you are on will come to an end. If you are on the path of death I beg you this morning to receive the path of life that is given to you in Christ!

If you are in Christ this morning, guard your heart. Fill it with the gospel, so that there is no room for the world.

“O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let that grace now like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;

Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above”