Protecting your Heart - The Power Source

Protecting your Heart

Proverbs 4 23

keep your heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life

A rather obscure verse and a not very long one obviously, but very powerful now let's unpack this a little bit as we look closely at it.

The word keep is the same word that god gave Adam in the very beginning he was to keepthe garden of Eden and it simply means to guard it or to protect it.

The Keep your heart the word in Hebrew is LAB for heart, it means it houses our feeling, our will, and our intellect. But the way Hebrew looked at it was literally it is the centre of our being.

The word to keep with all diligence is defined and this is rather interesting we'll talk a little more about it but it means to hedge about was with bushes of thorns it's the same thing that the shepherds would do in the wilderness with their flocks ofsheep they would build a with a sheep fold which was made up of they would go and they would cut thorn bushes and they would put them around they would create an enclosure and then the shepherd would lay down across the opening as the doorway.

Obviously packed with lots of meaning there but let's move on the issues that flow out of this are or the outflow are the issues of life that are flowing out of our heart and the word life itself is very interesting it’s the word kai but in the Hebrew it'sit consists of two words much like any other language Greek we see it a lot but it means the first part of it is chad that means an inner or secret chamber within and the word yod which means the power of God so we get a visual here of we all have a chamber within us that we call a heart from where flows the issues of lifein other words guard the centre of who you are with a protective hedge of thorns forit is the source of your life the inner chamber where the power of God dwells.

We get a very powerful image of this on the cross and Jesus wore a crown of thorns was symbolic of the protective hedge the shepherd placed around the heart and mind of mankind and so there's great imagery in that because as he took that as he took man to the cross of Golgotha and crucified him in order to baptize and resurrect him it was to bring out a new heart and mind a new centre of being which was the mind of Christ and it was protected as a as a shepherd protects his flock.

I think you'll agree that just this statement is very powerful as you meditate it you'll be amazed at how much of this truth affects your life personally if there is a let me ask you this though if there's a place within us indwelled by God and we have life as a result within this inner chamber then we can never think of ourselves as separated from him.

As a matter of fact as it is a impossibility to think you are separated, therefore we’re, we've come to see that or understand more clearly that we are derived creatures. It means we are not the source of our own life; we derive our life from another source soan entity apart from us is our provision for this life.

In John 14 and Jesus says i am the life i am the way i am the truth i am the life there is no other life, there is no source of other life so as we think about

that let me ask you a question did God and Adam and eve become separated in the garden.

you couldn't really absorb what I’m saying here in terms of life and say that if they were if they were separated if they did separate somehow, they would have either fallen over dead immediately they wouldn't exist. There wasn't a separation there was at least there was not a separation of God from man he it's an impossibility but there was certainly a separation of man from God in his own in in our minds.

So, this separation is clearly seen or much more clearly in Genesis chapter 3 which is the fall and verse 13 most of our translations say when eve being asked by god says what have you done she says well the serpent deceived me and i ate from the tree that word deceived there is very interesting both in the Hebrew and the Greek because it's it literally means to have a spell cast, it means that what is the word it's something that and

well literally it means to be caused to forget and it's to have us an illusion created within you that is so powerful that it causes you to forget everything basically in terms of who you are, as well as your very reality.

Both Adam and eve were impacted by it because of their actions and reactions afterwards particularly toward God and toward each, invaded by something that created a darkness that caused them to forget not only who they were but what they had been taught the things that they had experienced and not the least their relationships and those relationships again not just with one another but with God himself. All of a sudden they have created a whole new reality for themselves, a whole new story for themselves if you will so that when they looked at the face of god they projected upon him the character of what this story has now produced for and it's one that is an absolute deception and it's one that that it is a lie.

So it's to have a in a sense a spell cast over you it’s to be completely seduced by something someone has affected you when i say affected i don't mean that word in a light sense i mean it's like contracting a disease it's like getting Alzheimer’s or dementia so it’s an it's a literal violation of your very being it's being violated by something that is not you that has now taken up residence within you and causes this distortion even i would describe it as an insanity they literally it's basically lost their minds in terms of who they were, and God was, but so let's let's now that the stage is set let's consider this where is now or what of this chamber of life what about this inner sanctuary this place where the power of God dwells did it dissipate was it gone, no again without it there's no life so was God still there, had he forgotten of course not

He certainly hadn't forgotten his great love for Adam and Eve, and he even demonstrated it by going through process of covering them with skins it's clear the scripture is on that.

i think that those skins were more than simple skins but they were symbolic of something far more powerful i believe these were the royal robes the same robe that we'll read about in Jesus’ story about the prodigal son in Luke 15 when the father covers him with a royal rope i believe before Adam and eve left the garden he covered them in order to help them remember who they were because that's exactly what he did with the prodigal right it was his love and unconditional acceptance that that caused the son to remember his father and who he was who his father was, like in the Luke 15 story the father is the one who basically funded the trip the prodigal took

when he wasted his inheritance I believe what the father gave adam and eve was a sense of identity that remained and resided within this in this sanctuary.

So, there's the point of this whole thing that i’m making is that there never was a separation there never could be a separation the lord remained patiently and abundantly in love with his creation throughout and so when we see Adam and Eve departing in the royal robes and did they know what that meant i don't think so not really they wouldn't remember until the next time the father put the royal robes on someone because that was the sign of the times that Jesus Christ had come and become incarnated in man so his inheritance or their inheritance wasn’t simply material wealth as the prodigals was it was a namesake it was an identity always there always inside of that still small voice reminding them but this is not who you are but this is not who you are can we relate with that today I think so absolutely because we are indwelled by the holy spirit who is constantly reminding us but that's not who you are let me show you who you are

Galatians 3 27 tells us that as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ well here is the same imagery the same visual we are now inside in a spiritual sense the very skin of god the god man Jesus Christ

Galatians 3:27 NASB95

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

because we were always or in the Old Testament we were described or put it this way the place that god resided was in the tabernacle right as the children of Israel wandered the wilderness as they searched for who they were and God did everything he could once more to remind them of who they were he said meet me in the tabernacle well the word tabernacle simply means a place where God dwells that is covered in skin right so it is again a metaphor for us we read later Paul says you are the templeof god it is where the holy of holies resides it is where God and man meet.

So the old covenant of course speaks in types and shadows and symbols metaphors etc and god announces his name of course for the first time in the book of Isaiah when he calls himself Emmanuel and the meaning of that name is simply is God with us but it's even more it's God as us, God equal to us, God like us all within that name so he absolutely relates to us he's not simply standing there side by side where is he now where was he all the time he was in the inner sanctuary right.

The word Yod the power of God residing in that inner sanctuary .

God the son who became the God man, so God made covenant with God as God and as man in in order to keep it from ever being broken he is the one who kept it so what we're seeing now is that he never left us more reinforcement and more assurance that he has never left us the word tabernacle we see in:

John 1: 14 where he says the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us or indwelled us and in our condition of loss he relentlessly always pursued us.

So the word to dwell within in this case in the hebrew in the greek and in Johnis tabernacle He the word became flesh and tabernacled and most translations say among us and that's fine but it's really much more accurate to say in us because that is the word in greek that's used.

We are the housing, we are the tent, we are the tabernacle, we are the temple where God in all of creation and all of the universe meets with man, he indwells in each one of us.

Psalm 23 we're all familiar with surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and i will dwell in the house well this word here is the word for tabernacle

i will dwell in the tabernacle of the lord forever, you and i are that tabernacle so and and where it says he shall follow me it's really a much more powerful word than that it's to pursue we get and pursue relentlessly imagine if you will God residing in you in this place in this innermost sanctum that is you it is the centre of you as the Hebrews said and he matter what happens he won't leave as a matter of fact he is constantly pursuing us in our minds in terms of what it is that we choose to do about our lives now he's not a bully and he's really very gentle, he's very kind tender-hearted so he endures a great deal but in those crucial moments in our lives and often they are turning points in our lives we can look back and say you know i don't know what made me do the thing i did take the path that i took as opposed to taking a path that would have been much more conducive of my mental state but that's the Lord that's the lord inside of us keeping us from utterly destroying ourselves.

But than we hear sermons as if God is the source of our problem, as if He is judging us for something we did, or it because of genrational curse. Mostly this kind of theology birthed when we have a separation mentality and not realising we are in union with Him.

So we're the tabernacle, it's the inner chamber, and it if he never left us if he’s there and we exist because he is there then it was always his plan it wasn't to recover us not only to recover us from our darkness, but to heal and restore us to an original blueprint of the image and likeness by becoming fully human. Jesus Christ is the Messiah that word means the conjunction the joining of God and man, to see Jesus is to see god he is fully god but also to see Jesus is to see man because he is fully man so if we ever had a question about what does God look like or what is it i'm supposed to look like then we simply look to Jesus.

I think that before the incarnation for all of those millennia he was in sight of mankind and he could hardly contain himself I think he was so excited for that day that when the fullness of time would take place and he would literally join man in a way that had never happened before he would incarnate himself, it was a time that God knew was the perfect time it was the time when man had reached a condition a state that required a saviour beyond any other time in history and that was his judgment that's why he came when he did and I think that we see it clearly as we read psalm 22

When Jesus was on that cross and fully man and representing man on that cross

and having resigned himself to seeing and feeling and experiencing everything that man has experienced in our darkness, in our hopelessness, in our fear he cried out and he said my God why have you forsaken me is what i have believed for generation after generation true you have forsaken me and yet we hear the father's response or at least the record of it by the psalmist when he says no he heard he has not separated himself he has not forsaken us and he never will.

He loves us far too much the father and the son the spirit the trinity don't do abandonment

they don't know the meaning of that word.

Now it's the answer was in Colossians 1:26

The mystery that had been hidden for ages and generations has now been revealed and what was that Christ was always in youhe is the hope of glory.

We tend to separate the god of the old covenant and the and the new but keep this in mind no matter how you read the old testament or what somebody's told you about it you have to keep in mind that this is we're talking about the same God because he is the same yesterday today and forever apparently there are explanations that you're not hearing about in terms of some of his seeming behaviour in the old testament because he is a god of love and i think one of the most telling statements Jesus made in his ministry on earth which says no man and he’s speaking to the crowd he says no man here knows the father except the son and no one here knows the son except the father

i think it's time that you are reintroduced i think that it is time that we set the record straight that god is love and that much of what has been God has been blamed for it was man's doing and always was Jesus endured all that he did and Paul reveals it to us in 1 Corinthians 13 when he says clearly

love bears all things; God was in you in that inner sanctuary the power of God bearing all things about you and the things that you were doing and yet he believed all things about you, all good things about you all and hoped all things for you, he endured everything with you, you see there is nothing that any man who has ever lived has experienced that God has not experienced with him and yet we think somehow we're hiding something how do you hide from yourself the life that is in you. I no longer live it is Christ who lives in me

He has always been loved, he has saved us

Athanasius one of the great church early church fathers who virtually wrote the Nicene creed he said god saves whatever it is he has become, he heals what he assumes he took up residence with us thousands of years ago and then moved in.

Philippians 2 5 says let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus and what was that well i think the mirror translation captures it he says “ his mission was never to prove his deity talking about Christ but to embrace our humanity, he emptied himself of his reputation as God he fully embraced our physical human form he was born in our resemblance he identified himself as the servant of the human race his love enslaved him to us in his own words he said the son of man came not to be served but to serve and for the joy set before him once more he endured what he had to endure he endured the cross utterly despising the shame because his love was far greater. The name of Christ as i said literally means the union of God and man

Colossians 1 17 says

He is before all things

He is before all things

He is the lamb slain before the foundation of the world

God's idea in Christ to was to become a human long before creation long before man

stuffed up. Long before he fell, long before there was sin was, before all things with the full intention of becoming a man therefore Christ’s coming was not plan bit was not to come try to unravel a mess that man had made god didn't see a mess in it

what he saw was a process what he saw was what it was going to take for man to turn his eyes to God to see a difference because that's how we as human beings learn we choose by differences God never resented stepping out of his omniscient omnipotent and omnipresent status he said we are in fact God's strategy to live and to move and have his being on this earth.

A great mystic philosopher of the 14th century named Meister Eckhart

he says if we could see the core of what we are, what it is that makes you we would see

we were observing our being rather as the infinite generosity of God

pouring himself out into our existence, therefore whatever is true about me is from him

anything not from him is not truly me because God is only true i am the way, the truth and the life.

Don’t misunderstand a statement like that with who do you think you are, do you think you're God

I would say it's quite the opposite I would say that

· I am nothing without god

· and whatever it is that I really am the incredible abundant loving generosity of God being poured out into my existence out of my heart whether I always recognize it or not flows rivers of living water that is the Spirit that is the existence that you and I have

· whatever there is about me that has no eternal significance isn't the real me it's the part without God that i have fabricated after some image of self-gratification and self-loathing because we go from one end of the spectrum to the other in order to be a concoction an image that we've fabricated.

He is not God without us he is God with us

· He hasn't been with us simply in our moments of joy and celebration but probably more so in our deepest sorrows and darkness’s

· our most terrifying hell there's never been a human being as i said who's experienced one thing without him without him experiencing it with us all things were created through him and for him and by him and in the in him all things consist

· it is however the first time so God knows man quite well he is the one who we read from the psalmist knits and forms us together in our mother's wombsbut it's so it's not the first time that god knows man when Jesus incarnated but it's the first time we know that god knows man and that is a huge distinction he understands us and yet he refused to bail on us, he refused to leave us where we were.

It's the first time as i mentioned that we get to clearly see what god really looks like if you have seen me you have seen the father but I think just as importantly

we get to see what we really look like we're able to visibly observe what we are actually like for

Paul tells us He is the mirror reflection of our lives that's an amazing statement

you know we read it in 2 cCorinthians 3 :18 and he says he tells us to look in this mirror

in our hearts of course would the veil of unbelief removed could you could we simply do that even for a moment just remove the veil of unbelief ask him to remove

and behold a reflection and that reflection being his image

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

you know I’ve looked at that passage and I’ve read it and I’ve taken it to heart

more than once, I said you know lord I get what you're saying but I know me, know I don't see it i I’m just being honest. I can't see Christ in my image in that reflection. Then you think you know maybe if I work at it few more years a few more decades maybe when I get to heaven, I’ll be able to look in a mirror and I’ll see the reflection of Christ in me. But the fact is this a mirror doesn't reflect tomorrow it reflects what I know to be true about you right now and I tell you what you we have been so blinded by the world by our own collection of facts that would prove what I think I’m really like and most of the time I don't measure up in those but he simply says will you keep on looking and we'll see who gives up first because that’s the way he is truth is truth eternal right.

I am always going to be who i am in him so Jesus has come to put an end to the illusions that we have about ourselves and about God, it's accomplished through revelation that's why I mentioned what I did before I started the these things when we realize

that we are one and it is impossible for us to not be one and this truth is for you to ponder for

you to meditate we immediately our flesh wants to think of somebody else somebody who's so horrible and has committed such heinous acts how could god be one with them i tell you what you'll come to a revelation of that but not until you come to a revelation that you are one with him you because all you're doing is judging and comparing and the scripture warns us against that.

This is this is accomplished through revelation r and repentance or metanoia and the word simply means a change of mind or I like François in the mirror he says it's to to be restored

to our right mind the mind of christ and it's always the result of the goodness of god because

Paul tells us that in romans 2 he says our repentance is the result of the goodness of god

the cross is the consummation of this revelation which he takes us back to the events that gave birth to our perverted ideas about god to that place where we've confused good and evil through the deception the place where we forgot who we are it's at the cross where our rejection of him is so absolute that he reveals his unconditional absolute love and acceptance of us in such a powerful method and what was that father forgive them

they don't know what they do what was he describing other than the loss of identity and the insanity that sin had created in our lives you see the word sin means to come apart at the seams basically it's to lose the form and shape

· it's to lose the image and likeness that we are in Christ

Peter and the other apostles even when they even when the

the people of the time the Jews the romans and whomever else took part tried to convince

society in general that Jesus deserved what he got he was the offered up by the father for that matter you know it really the whole the whole messy episode of the crucifixion was