How many sermons have we heard where the preacher tells us that when the Bible speaks of the heart, it’s not speaking of the organ that pumps our blood, but it speaks of our minds? It’s not our emotion but our intellect. While that is true in a technical sense, it’s even more nuanced than that. The heart that the Bible talks about, when you read the context it’s used in, is a very specific aspect of the mind.
The heart the Bible speaks about can be either good or bad. Certainly, it is more than a man's intellect. It has to do with man’s will and his intentions. Man’s free will determines whether his heart is good or bad. Is it our will to intend to do good and obey our God, or is it our will to intend to do evil? This is the crux of the human heart the Bible speaks of.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10 ESV).
What makes our hearts deceitful and desperately sick? When the Lord searches the heart and tests the mind, He is looking for what every man does. What we will or will not do flows out of the heart. It is out of our intentions that our deeds follow.
God tells us that we will know people by the fruit that they bear. This fruit, or our actions, is evidence of our heart’s condition. Yet, God seems to have given us grace to see not only our actions but also our intentions when He considers our hearts. Sometimes, we have a good heart that intends to do good, but our actions do not follow.
When Jesus was in the garden praying about the suffering He was about to endure, He asked Peter, James, and John to stay with Him and watch while He went a little further to pray, But when He returned, He found the disciples asleep.
“And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour?
Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:40-41 ESV).
When Jesus said the spirit is willing, He was speaking of the heart. God distinguishes between a man who intends to follow Him and a man who doesn’t intend to follow Him. Making a specific choice to do what God wants us to do or rejecting Him and choosing to do what we want to do is the essence of a good or evil heart.
When Jesus finishes His Sermon on the Mount, He ends with two kinds of people:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ...
And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” (Matthew 7:24, 26 ESV).
The mind, or the intellect, hears and weighs out the Words it hears. The good heart chooses to follow God, while the evil heart chooses to reject the Words and follow its own paths. Fruit will bear out that choice.
This is what God searched out in the Jeremiah passage we considered at the beginning of this post. This is what God is always searching. Do we intend to follow God, or do we intend to reject Him and follow our own way? David was a man after God’s own heart. This means God chose Him after His considerations and not after man’s considerations.
Paul says of David,
“And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, 'I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.'“ (Acts 13:22 ESV).
But we know that David was not perfect. While he was a man who was fully devoted to God, sometimes his heart followed his own way. When he should have intended to do God’s will, sometimes he chose to follow his own will. Never is this seen more than in the case of adultery and murder concerning his affair with Bathsheba.
After it was all over, David recognized that his heart was bad because it followed his own will and not the will of God. That’s why he wrote these words of Psalm 51:
“Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:9-10 ESV).
When we ask God to create a new heart in us, we are asking for His help in hiding the sinful, willful choices we have made and replacing them with an intentional will that bends to what God wants from us.
This is what Jesus's blood does for us. It wipes away willful disobedience and replaces it with a good heart that once again aligns with God and His will. This is what cleansing is all about. It erases and forgets former actions and replaces them with new intentions of serving God. It gives us hope when we are hopeless. It allows us to conquer sin when sin may have had its way with us.
God promises to cleanse our evil and dirty hearts through the power of His Gospel. The Spirit will do His work in us, just like He did the work in David. This is how Jesus frees us from the slavery of sin. But it is all based on our desire to want this. There is no cleansing while we are still choosing to hang onto our sins and rejecting His way for us. Our heart is determined by the very intentions we have for it.
“The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45 ESV).
A good heart does not happen accidentally. It is created by what we do with God. Do we make the choice to yield to Him, or do we follow our own way? While the mind plays a role in considering this choice, it is ultimately the intention of our will that determines whether our heart is good or evil. The fruit of that choice will be what we produce.
From the days of Ezekiel, God had been promising something amazing for us. He promised to give us a new heart, one that wiped away the damage sin had done, giving us a clean slate:
“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.” (Ezekiel 36:26 ESV).
Only the power of the Spirit and the Gospel can do that for us. Only by the power of God can the damage of sin be undone, paving the way for a heart untouched by sin. Do we understand that magnificent blessing? Until the power of Jesus’ blood cleanses us, we are still slaves to sin with a cold, hard, evil, and dirty heart.
But God gives us a new heart and a new spirit by wiping the slate clean. This is precisely what David was praying for. This is the ultimate “do-over” in the most profound sense. But it takes us seeking after it. It takes our willful decision to embrace this gift. It takes us being the wise man who hears the Words of Jesus and making the willful choice to do them.
Romans 10:10 says this beautifully when Paul writes,
“For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” (Romans 10:10 ESV).
It all begins with the heart. The willful intention to yield to God. What follows is fruit: confessing with the mouth, obeying through baptism, and living a life where God’s will becomes our will. Once we make the decision to yield to God, He aids us in keeping our hearts clean. He is there as an enabler, not as someone waiting for us to fall into a snare. He gives us aid while we keep our intention to serve Him.
John tells us that even when we fall, we should not give into sin. We should repent and confess our sins, and keep walking with Jesus. This is what a good heart does. It seeks to keep walking with God, to put His will first in our lives, to always turn our faces to God, and not let sin reign in our mortal bodies.
Our heart is more than our minds. It is the willful intent to do what God wants us to do. It is cleansed because of Jesus’ blood and gives us the wonderful gift of being created anew. What is our intention today? Is it to submit to God and His will or to follow after our own desires? The answer to this question will determine whether we have a good or evil heart.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” (Psalm 139:23 ESV).
Here's one thing I'm looking forward to in the new Heavens and the new Earth...
God will give each of us a role, or job, that we will be perfectly suited for. It will be one that brings us joy and complete satisfaction.
The days will be long gone when we worry over our livelihood as many of us to now. We will finally be doing what we were created to do.
And worshiping God face to face will be a big part of that.
I believe there is evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
I believe the Genesis flood account conforms to the modern geologic record.
I believe the rational consideration of the evidence can support the faith we have in God,
but...
I do not believe we will ever find absolute scientific proof that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven.
I do not believe we will be able to scientifically prove beyond all doubt that the Genesis flood happened to the extent that there is no other alternative.
I do not believe that our faith will ever be scientifically proven to the extent that no one will ever be able to refute it,
Until our faith becomes sight.
It pleases God that we have faith. That means God will give us all we need to arrive at the conclusion that there is enough evidence for our faith to stand on.
If God definitively proved scientifically all things our faith is based on, there would no longer be faith, and the Hebrews writer tells us,
“And without faith it is impossible to please him.” (Hebrews 11:6a ESV).
I am in the book of Judges in my daily Bible reading. What a depraved people the Israelites became. When you get past the story of Samson, you read what happens when people no longer serve God.
The people of Gibeah reenact the same sins of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Eventually, this led to all of Israel going up against Dan in a civil war, which led to the near destruction of a tribe in Israel.
And yet, God does not abandon His people. In the next few books, we will read how God unites the people under a king and brings glory back to the land.
Unfortunately, it did not take long for the kingdoms of Israel and Judah to leave God and follow their own way. Yet, even when a nation turns evil, there is always a remnant who never forsakes God.
A lesson I take away from judges is this: Even if my nation turns evil and we are hard-pressed to see God anywhere, I want to be among the remnant who does not forsake God. It will never be worth throwing our lot in with evil.
God is sovereign. Even today, there will be a day of reckoning. Those who do not side with evil will be held in God's hands when that day comes. Let us remember we are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Nothing that happens in the kingdoms of men can take away our birthright, made possible by the great sacrifice of our Lord and King Jesus.
As image bearers of God, we are made with a grand purpose that begins in this life but is seen in its fullness and glory in the life to come.
Exegesis is the critical analysis of Scripture, where we study the text to take its meaning out of it.
Eisegesis is when we bring our preconceived notions, or beliefs, of what Scripture teaches, read those notions into Scripture, and then pull out the teachings that support our preconceived notions.
Eisegesis is something that we all need to be careful of. It's one thing to extol the merits of having an open mind; it's another thing to actually have an open mind when studying the Scriptures.
I am in the book of Ruth in my daily Bible reading. We see how God took care of Ruth and Naomi in the end. But these women had to endure years of heartache and pain. Can you imagine losing your husband and children and then returning home with no means to keep your family's inheritance?
“She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (Ruth 1:20-21 ESV).
I suppose there are times when we all feel forgotten or overlooked by God. It can be a painful realization for us to cope with. But just as it was with Naomi, we need to remember that we are never forgotten by God, no matter what we are going through.
We are quick to jump to the redemption in the story, and with good reason. It is the wonderful purpose of the story, and it foreshadows our own redemption by God. But eventual redemption does not make the reality of pain go away.
There is nothing wrong with feeling and acknowledging pain when we are hurting. It is part of life we live under the sun. This pain was brought into the world by the consequences of sin. It was never intended to be this way for us by God.
That's why the story of a redeemer is so important. Redemption fixes the wrong, restores what was lost, and makes right the wrong. We cannot do that on our own; we need a redeemer.
Naomi could not remove her sorrow or redeem her family's inheritance—but Boaz could. Our story tells us that there was another redeemer, but this man refused to sacrifice for Naomi because he was concerned about his own family's inheritance.
“Then the redeemer said, “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.” (Ruth 4:6 ESV).
So Boaz steps up in a selfless act of sacrifice as a redeemer. Naomi did not deserve it, nor could she demand it from Boaz. It was a sheer act of grace.
But this grace could not be seen or appreciated if it had not been for the consequences that led to sorrow and unimaginable pain. Pain is not the state God intends us to be in, but it is evidence of our need for a redeemer. It helps us understand that there is something better for us if we put our trust in the One who can redeem us and do what we cannot do for ourselves.