November, 8 2020 | Pastor Nathan Elms
The word 'heart' refers to the inner life. What the writer of Proverbs is talking about here is the life of the soul.
You might say, “Well, only God can keep my heart.” That is like the farmer saying, “Only God can make my harvest grow,” and so he sits around twiddling his thumbs. Here God gives us a command, an active duty. This is something that God calls his people to do.
When you become a Christian, God gives you a new heart, a heart that loves God, a heart that trusts God. If anyone is in Christ he or she is a new creation: The old has gone, the new has come.
But God also says to us: "Keep your heart!"
The primary focus of the eye of God is fixed first on your heart. And the problem of the heart is God’s complaint against his people.
No one shows this better than the prophet Malachi; he speaks for the Lord and makes 7 complaints against the House of Israel. All seven of spring from a single problem—they have lost their heart for God.
Further, Jesus in his famous Sermon on the Mount, defines righteousness as essentially a heart problem.
The Sermon on the Mount is a God speaking for himself, doing justice to both his character and our calling, to the mission of the church and the church of the mission, to the individual person and to a spiritual community, from the present to the future.
The followers of Jesus Christ read the Sermon on the Mount to understand what it means to be a Jesus- follower regardless of their cultural background.
The followers of Jesus are invited to a real-world, real-life social righteousness fulfills the law as God intended. Their good works shine before others in all the practical areas of life, love, marriage, truth, justice and reconciliation. Their witness brings glory to their Father in heaven.
Their personal righteousness – their giving, praying and fasting, is not to impress others but to be in communion with the heavenly Father.
Jesus give us a list of things not to do ... that should free us from bondage to materialism, competing loyalties, idolatry, self-righteousness and false guilt.
Jesus closes with a vivid image. “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” A home, no matter how beautiful, built on sand cannot stand in a storm.
The Sermon on the Mount is necessary for all believers, because it brings clarity and understanding.
Just as the house of the Lord was kept with diligence... We keep our hearts...
