
Measuring Your Heart
- if you've ever flown into New York city, you might
have looked out the window and seen the great lady of the harbor, the
Statue of Liberty
- but occasionally this statue needs maintenance
- on these occasions, you might instead see the lady
shrouded with scaffolding
- on this scaffolding you will see people scurrying about,
welding and polishing and repairing and maintaining her
- and you will then realize that this grand old lady
in the harbor has no capacity to care for herself
- she has to live by the scaffolding
- she is not an organism
- she is a monument, nothing more than a symbol
- there are a lot of Christians just like that lady in
the harbor
- they've become accustomed to living by the scaffolding
- perhaps they're hollow on the inside, who at the heart
have had something happen
- I've found in my own life, it my walk with God is not
carefully maintained, there is that subtle drift to hollowness
- and it doesn't take very long
- my Christianity becomes something of a heartless habit,
often moving into some forms of hypocrisy
- our walk with God is, above and beyond everything else,
an inside-out reality
- God begins to work in our lives at the level of our
hearts
- because God is not impressed with externals
- when we permit ourselves to drift into hollowness,
we are forced to live by the scaffolding
- test this in your own life when you are propped up
and maintained and polished by a book or a tape or a pastor or a professor
or a message, and when you begin leaning on these externals for the
vibrancy of your Christianity
- it doesn't work!
- in the Old Testament, God often spoke to Israel about
the coldness of their hearts
- they kept the law, but God still said to them, "You
are uncircumcised of heart"
- In Joel 2:13, he says that when you repent,
- (Joel 2:13) Rend your heart and not your garments.
- (Hosea 6:6) For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and
acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
- when Jesus looked at the Pharisees, the religious establishment
of the day, he said:
- (Matthew 23:27) "Woe to you, teachers of the law
and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which
look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's
bones and everything unclean.
- (Matthew 23:28) In the same way, on the outside you
appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy
and wickedness.
- it's possible to be religious and devout on the inside,
and to be hollow and empty spiritually inside
- but I'm also struck by the promises given to us as
New Testament believers
- if you understand the new covenant predicted in Ezekiel
and Jeremiah, you understand this
- they prophesied the day when a new covenant would be
instituted
- God would dwell within them and write his laws on our
hearts
- we would interact with him from the inside out
- (Ezekiel 36:26) I will give you a new heart and put
a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and
give you a heart of flesh.
- (Ezekiel 36:27) And I will put my Spirit in you and
move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
- then when Jesus met with his disciples in the Upper
Room, he lifted the cup and said these significant words: "This
cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you"
- you and I have been grafted into that new covenant
promise of God so that you and I have an edge over Old Testament believers
on a heart relationship with God
- throughout all of Scripture, God speaks so much about
our hearts and our heart's condition
- but I'm intrigued by one passage in the Old Testament,
which drives the spear of its meaning deep into our own flesh
- in this passage we glimpse how God works in the hearts
of men and women
- it's found in 2 Chronicles 16:9
- (2 Chronicles 16:9) For the eyes of the LORD range
throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed
to him.
- in this passage, Ling Asa hired foreign troops instead
of trusting God to protect him
- and God uses a metaphor, saying that God's perceptive
ability moves throughout the earth looking for something specific: people
he can strengthen
- personally, I long for the strengthening work of God
in my heart
- God knows my frame is dust
- I need him
- the text says that God is looking for people he can
strengthen, but there's a qualifier
- what kind of people is God looking to strengthen?
- people with particular kinds of hearts
- God is searching this earth for hearts that are fully
committed to him
- it's critical that we understand what the heart is
according to Scripture
- the heart is the place of conscious decision making,
the place of spiritual activity
- our hearts are the comprehensive term for our personality
as a whole
- it's where we desire
- it's our passions
- it's our thoughts, our understanding, our will
- it is where God meets us what is the heart? It's really
what you are
- and God is searching the condition of our hearts
- I notice that it's an insightful search
- we live in a world that's bent on credentials
- everyone is interested in who you are and what you
are like: business cards, acclaim, honors we've received
- I'd like to think that when God begins to probe my
life that I can stop him on the outside and talk about my credentials
- that would be much more comfortable
- I'd like to say, "Lord, wait a minute. I graduated
from seminary. I'm a pastor."
- but you know what God says?
- God pushes that all aside and says, "I'm not impressed.
I want to see your heart"
- successful businesspeople, presidents of companies,
come to God and say:
- "Wait a minute, Lord. Here's my business card.
What do you think? Look at the tag on my corporate door"
- and God says, "I'm not impressed"
- God is on an insightful search for a few good
hearts
- I want to be like David, who could be so transparent
that he could put aside all his credentials and say:
- (Psalms 139:23) Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
- (Psalms 139:24) See if there is any offensive way in
me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
- this morning I'd like to do a spiritual EKG on all
of us
- I'm asking, what does God look for when he gets past
all the external things?
- let's see what the text has to say
- (2 Chronicles 16:9) For the eyes of the LORD range
throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed
to him.
- that's the measurement of our heart: how committed
we are to him
- God is looking for a heart of full commitment
- if you read 2 Chronicles, you know that King Asa of
Judah had a heart fully committed to God all of his life
- but now the king of Israel has gone and placed his
legions around Judah so that no one could go in our come out
- Asa is in a tight spot
- what will he do?
- he has two options
- one: he can lift his eyes to the Almighty God of Israel,
who has rescued his people time and time again in their history, and
say, "God, we of Judah beg you to deliver us from this invasion"
- two: Asa had the option of striking an alliance with
a pagan king, Ben-Hadad of Aram
- the text tells us that Asa went to the treasury of
God and took silver to strike a deal with Ben-Hadad
- God said to Asa, "Your heart is not fully committed
to me, because when you get in a tight spot, you strike an allegiance
with a foreign, pagan system and you don't trust in me"
- a young businessman was climbing the corporate ladder
- he lived in a beautiful home
- and he was the head of a cable company
- after about eighteen months in the assignment, as he
was growing with the Lord, he began to struggle
- he said, "I don't know how I can continue to grow
and be God's kind of man - and market this unrighteousness in my community"
- some of you may understand what it means to step off
the corporate ladder when your upward momentum is so strong
- one day he came to church and said, "I resigned
my position this week because I came to realize that if I am going to
be a man after God's own heart, if I am going to be a man committed
to righteousness, I can no longer market unrighteousness in this community"
- they asked him about his new job
- and he replied, "I don't have one. In fact, we're
packing up and moving back to where our parents live"
- that guy left the community with his heart showing
- there was a man who would not strike an allegiance
with a pagan world system, but would trust in his God when he was in
a tight spot and be unflinchingly loyal to him
- when God was looking for a heart in the Old Testament,
that was the kind of heart he was looking for
- at the beginning of this new year, let me give you
five tests this morning of how loyal your heart is to God
- test number one is the treasure test
- (Matthew 6:19) "Do not store up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break
in and steal.
- the context is earthly values versus heavenly values
- but verse 21 says
- (Matthew 6:21) For where your treasure is, there your
heart will be also.
- did you ever wonder where your heart is?
- try looking at where you put your treasures
- try looking at the treasure of time, the treasure of
your money, the treasure of your relationships
- what about the treasure of your spiritual gifts, the
equipment that God has given you?
- Christ says where you put your treasure tells me where
your heart is
- he looks at our treasure chests
- they might be full of self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction,
self-serving things
- or they could be full of things that please him
- but that's test number one, the test of what you treasure
- test number two is your thought life
- (Matthew 9:4) Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, "Why
do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?
- as the Lord penetrates my life, he says, "I see
your thoughts, and they are a reflection of your heart"
- this is convicting to me, because I have a darkened
closet in my brain, that place no one can invade and I think no one
will ever know
- I've deceived myself
- what goes on in your thought life?
- is it a place where fantasies move, sexual fantasies
fanned by a sensual world?
- is it a dark closet full of thoughts and fantasies
of taking revenge?
- what do you think about? What do you dream about?
- test number three is your words
- (Matthew 12:34) You brood of vipers, how can you who
are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the
mouth speaks.
- you see, our words are tattletales on our hearts
- they reveal what is inside of our heart
- I've occasionally been with people, and I've wanted
to say, "Stop! Your heart is showing"
- and there have been times when I've said words, and
I'd like to grab them and jam them back in, because my heart is showing
- God intended our tongues to be controlled by the Spirit,
by having a heart for God that might heal and encourage instead of being
destructive in the body of believers
- having a heart that is not a heart for God will always
show in our words
- it's like getting all dressed up and going to a big
party, but your slip is showing
- it wrecks the whole thing
- so Christ says, "When I search your heart, I measure
your words"
- in Luke 8:15 we have the fourth test of our hearts
- (Luke 8:15) But the seed on good soil stands for those
with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering
produce a crop.
- it's the parable of the seed and the sower
- Christ is talking about the good soil, and his point
is this:
- our response to the Word of God is a measurement of
our hearts
- he said that people who have a good and noble heart
do three things with the Word of God: they hear it, then they retain
it, and then they produce through it
- hearing the Word of God is not an easy task
- I'm much like you when I get under the instruction
of the Word
- I listen for the first three minutes, and then my mind
is off to my own little world
- or perhaps you have a big reflector on your head as
you hear God's Word
- "Boy, I hope Bob's listening to that"
- we've forgotten that God intends us to listen to his
Word and hear it as though we had funnels over our heads with broad
mouths to drink in everything and internalize it for ourselves
- Jesus said that a good heart hears the Word of God
and retains it
- that's a tough test too
- I can easily spin off naughty little rhymes I learned
in elementary school
- I've also memorized hundreds of Bible verses, but come
to me a couple of months later and I struggle to get them out
- it takes work to retain the Word of God
- note that a good heart produces
- we have to get rid of the notion that God gave us his
Word to make us theologically astute
- God gave us his Word to measure us and grow us into
the likeness of Christ
- anything other than a changed life as a result of hearing
and retaining the Word of God aborts the process
- God says a good heart hears, retains, and produces
the good crop because it has listened to the Word of God
- let me close with the fifth test, found in Matthew
15:8
- it is the test of worship
- Christ walked into a religious system that was full
of traditions
- people worshiped their traditions, and gave only lip
service to God
- scoring them about a religion that had gone shamefully
sour in its traditions, Jesus quotes Isaiah:
- (Matthew 15:8) "'These people honor me with their
lips, but their hearts are far from me.
- do we worship our traditions and our expectations and
all the false things we've built around our system of Christianity,
and simply give lip service to God?
- or do we have hearts that genuinely glorify God in
worship?
- obviously, worship is everyday experience
- Romans 12:1 makes that very clear
- Paul says, "Do you want Old Testament sacrifices?
Then climb on the altar and give your body as a living sacrifice to
God"
- that's the worship God is looking for
- every once in a while I wonder if God would say to
any of us, "You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far
from me"
- there was a pastor who had a successful ministry
- people loved to hear him preach
- he could communicate the Word of God would solid exegesis
and profound application
- he ministered to a large church
- but one day he left a note on his desk saying good-by
to the church, and he left for Texas with a woman he'd been counseling
- but the greatest shock was when people found out he'd
been carrying on an affair with her for four years
- he was nothing more than a high-tech spiritual robot
- we hear a lot about lifestyle
- the Pharisees had a lot of lifestyle
- we've forgotten the God who is concerned with heartstyle
- lifestyle without heartstyle before God is no style
at all
- we were saved and redeemed not to be monuments in the
harbor of Christianity, but to be an organism, a movement, a power from
the inside out
- Bob was a deacon in a church
- three minutes before the Sunday evening service, an
usher rushed into church and said, "Pastor, Bob just fell to the
sidewalk"
- everyone ran out to where he had fallen
- they could tell it was serious
- just then the ambulance pulled up, and three men ran
out, took one look at Bob, and said:
- "His tie is crooked and he scuffed his shoes.
Look at his hair! Go in and get the brush and the hair spray, and we'll
shine his shoes. We gotta get this guy lying right on the sidewalk!"
- not on your life
- cosmetics were of no concern
- they went right for the heart
- that was the core of the issue
- we need to remember that beyond everything else, God
goes right for the heart
- it is my prayer that we learn what it means to
be like David of old, that it may be said of us: "They were people
after God's own heart"
adapted from a message by Joseph M. Stowell