Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Proverbs 4:23 tells us “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it flow the issues of life.” (Key verse in this study.)

To get a handle on this verse let us take it in context starting with verse 20 and ending with verse 27.

“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand not to the left: remove thy foot from evil.”

On May 1^st, 1873, the great Scottish missionary David Livingstone died in the jungle of Zambia Africa and apparently when the nationals found him he was kneeling by his cot with his hands together and appeared to have been praying. He was a man that was very much loved by those he lived among. Seeing he was dead when they found him, they cut out his heart and buried it in African soil. Then they wrapped his body in bark and walked a thousand miles carrying it to the coast. No one knew how they managed to keep his body so well preserved with this process, but they did. Then his body was shipped back to England and was placed in Westminster Abbey. They knew that they had to send his body back, but they wanted to keep his heart there. When his body arrived in England he was so well known for his work that he did in Africa and was so well respected because he open the door to all other missionaries that followed after him and this was why it was decided that he would be buried in Westminster Abbey. If you ever get to Westminster Abbey, you will find his burial spot right in the center of the Nave.

If you are interested in studying about David Livingstone There is much to be found on the Internet.

I tell you this story because I want you to understand that David Livingstone spiritual heart was in Africa and that is why the Africans keep his physical heart there. Now we know that his physical heart was different from his real heart; the heart we will be studying. And we all have this heart; believers and unbelievers.

In second Samuel 18; Remember when Absalom took over the throne from David when Joab was sent out to fight and Absalom was fleeing, his head got caught in a tree, and when Joab came along he told one of his soldiers to kill him, but he would not, so Joab took two spears and ran them through the physical heart of Absalom. There is one other scripture where a king was shot through the heart with an arrow, and these are the only two references that refer to the physical heart in the Bible. All the others are metaphorical. All other references in the New Testament and Old Testament are Immaterial aspects of mankind.

When God made a man he made him in two parts. Some theologians say a man is made up of body, soul and spirit and they base that on a verse in 1 Thessalonians chapter five. Where others say he is made up of two parts, there was the material part; the flesh, the organs; the part we can see. Genesis 2:7, then He breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul. The soul, spirit and the mind are things you cannot see. Our thought life; our intellect, emotions and will are also things we can’t see, but we can see the result of them in our actions. One more thing that comes to mind is our character. All these things together make up our character. It is who we are.

You know a doctor can operate on the brain and he can see it, but he cannot see the mind. He can also open you up and see everything inside you, but he can’t see your soul or spirit. There are some who have tried to see the soul and spirit as it leaves the body when a person dies but if there is anything at all that they say they can see, I believe it is just energy if anything at all.

There could be a parallel with the physical heart and our spiritual heart. Take for example if you were having a heart attack your emotions and your thought life would react to what was happening. Now I believe we can have a spiritual heart attack or maybe I should word it this way. Our heart can be wrong with God and then it will effect my spiritual well-being.

We come to the big question. What is the heart? It is said, that God gives us a clue by giving us a key to understanding the scriptures. It is said that if you want to understand the meaning of a word you should try to find its first appearance and see how it is applied. The first place I found it was in Genesis 6:5,

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

If we look at the first three places it appears we will see the same meaning. I believe if you do a word study in Genesis 6:5, Genesis 6:6, and Genesis 8:21 for the word heart you will see the meaning to be the same. The only difference is the first one is man-ward and the next two is God-ward.

To try to understand this word I looked it up in the Hebrew. It is translated “heart” 508 times, “mind” 12 times, “midst” 11 times, “understanding” 10 times, “hearted” 7 times, “wisdom” 6 times, “comfortably” 4 times, “well” 4 times. We also will find it translated “considered”, “friendly” ,“kindly”, “stouthearted”, “care”. The meaning comes down to this: inner man, will, heart, understanding, inner part, midst. Midst (of things), heart (of man), soul, (heart of man), mind (knowledge, thinking, reflection, memory), determination (of will), conscience heart (of moral character), as seat of appetites, as seat of emotions and passions, seat of courage.  With all of this we have a lot to consider here.

Solomon, who is said to have been filled with wisdom tells us to guard our hearts, and if we are to guard it we better know what we are guarding. Let’s look at Genesis 6, remember the fall has taken place in chapter 3, and chapter 4 Cain murdered Abel, Chapter 5 was the descendants of Adam, and then the next three chapters are dealing with the flood. From the creation of man to the flood many generations; hundreds of years have gone by. We can say this because if you look at chapter 5 you will see how long some of these people lived.

At this point, I want us to focus in on verse 5. “The wickedness of man” and “the imagination of his heart.” We see that the word heart and mind are used interchangeable. When we imagine something, we imagine it in our mind or heart, or maybe we could say thought life. We will come back to that later. We see in verse 6, “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at the heart.” God was grieved that he made man, and this grieving (emotion) took place in his heart. We also see that God has a heart, and I believe this is part of our being made in the image of God. God has a heart so we have a heart. And in the third and last place we read in chapter 8 verse 21, “And the LORD smelled a sweet savor; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.” This verse was written after the flood and while Noah was making a sacrifice to the LORD. With this last reference we see the heart is dealing with the will. So now we have the first three places and the three parts of the heart. The mind, emotion, and the will.

Hebrews 4:7 tells us, “…Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” The living word will speak to our hearts and we are told not to harden our hearts when we hear his voice. What a warning we have here. At this point, we can say it is here where we can make decisions. We hear we understand, and our will comes into play.

I want to make you aware of the fact when you read scriptures and you come across the word heart make sure you understand if it is talking about the mind, your emotion or your will. It is important to know this fact. In some cases, it just refers to the inner-man and takes in all three. I have even seen where it refers to our decision-making capability.

Let’s think about the emotions of man when it comes to our decision-making ability that God is given to all of us. We first have the mind then the emotion, and where it said God was Grieved in his heart, that was an emotions. Such things as feelings, affections, resentments, likes, dislikes, bitterness, all of those things are emotions; there influenced by the mind by they are emotions. Sometimes in scripture you run across that word heart, it will be referring to the emotional part of the heart as respect to man’s being. And the third usage of the word as we saw in chapter 8 verse 21 where the Lord said in his heart that he would never destroy the earth again by water that demonstrates in the heart that we make our decisions. So it’s in the heart where we have things like courage, that we determine things, that we make our resolutions and have our impulses. This all occurs in the mind. So when we think of the heart in scripture it can refer to the mind, or the emotions, or the decision-making capabilities or our hearts that God has made us.

We now find something very interesting in that Genesis six passage that Moses refers to the heart as the intent of and thought of the heart. Now there is a difference between the intention and the thought. There is a difference between the inclination and the ability to make a decision. Someone as defined inclination as the disposition of the heart. So I got to thinking about that so that it might be our inclination process is our decision making, and maybe our inclination affects three areas of our life. We sometimes say that when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden they took for themselves a sinful nature. I don’t like the word nature personally, I can never get my mind around this word nature for some reason. I think a better way to describe this sinful nature as to refer to it as a disposition. That because of sin a man as a natural disposition to do that which is evil. And that controls us before we are saved and after we are saved because God doesn’t take that away from us. We are still going to be disposed to do evil things and that is why in the New Testament we have all this moral commands given to believers. It isn’t like we get saved and none of these things ever happen again to us. Maybe a good way to say it; because of the fall we are predisposed to sin. It’s always been interesting to me that there has been this debate among Bible students that in the case of a believer that he can reach a point, not to where he doesn’t sin, but he reaches a point where he is not disposed to sin when the truth is, we are predisposed to it.

I know of a man that got away from the Lord a few years ago and one of the older brothers saying he wasn’t save anyway, I remember saying, that doesn’t sound right to me, you just can’t write everybody off like that because they don’t live a Christian life. Take the Corinthian believers that didn’t live a very saintly life. They were doing all kinds of things. And the more I studied the New Testament the more I realized that Paul gave this moral commands in his letters because they are all possibilities for us to do in the life of a believer. In fact in Ephesians 4, in the later part of the chapter he said, “stop stealing and work with your own hands,” remember that passage. In the original text, it means “Stop Stealing!” So the implication was there were still believers stealing so Paul is saying stop. So we all are inclined to sin, but there is also another inclination that we inherit from our parents. Our parents are genetic in nature. Think about yourself. We sometimes say, looking at a baby, “Oh, he or she looks like her mother or father.” Or when they get older they start to reflect actions of their parents. People use to say that I walk like my father did it wasn’t that I tried to, it just came naturally to me. So we all have a genetic disposition.

Here are some examples. Two people go out to look at cars, one sees a Chevy Impala and says, this is really a sharp car where the other person sees it and it does not appeal to them. They like a completely different style car. Or you see how people dress differently from one another. Some people like to dress nice and others do not, and they are comfortable with that because that is part of their personality.

Sometimes I think there is an acquired inclination. I was telling some folks that I grew up in the hills of West Virginia and I can tell you that they didn’t listen to classical music. When I think of classical music all I can see is these long hair guys standing up front with a black suit and a wand waving it all around. That’s what comes to my mind when I think of classical music. What kind of music do you think southerners are exposed to? Bluegrass and Country music. If I listen to any kind of music what do you think I would listen to? Yes, I would listen to country music because that is my inclination and I probably acquired it because of where I lived and grew up. The whole point of emphasizing this is when we have a sinful disposition that will precede the decision itself. So if I am inclined to steal something I’m disposed to it. Then I still have the freedom to make my decision but my decision process is going to follow the inclinations that I make. To illustrate this, to regard to the heart think of it this way. We are talking about the mind, the emotions and the will. The mind will affect the emotions, the emotions will affect our decisions.

Now I started at Emmaus in 1959. I did my first year and started my second year. They had a practice back then, and I am not sure if they have it anymore, but a second-year student would take a first-year student and would be like a big brother to that student. Boy on boy, and girl on girl. So my little brother, a big fellow from Pennsylvania named Jake. I took Jake out to Oakdale park and showed him around. We had a park across the street a bookstore down the street and restaurants and clothing stores. We just went out and had a tour and on the way back there was a little restaurant three doors down from the entrance to Emmaus so Jake and I stopped in to have a coffee together so we sat down this little waitress came and waited on us. I remember thinking, “she is kinda cute.” But I am thinking immediately I am not sure if she is a believer or not. I didn’t give it much thought, but I do remember thinking she was cute. So when I went to Emmaus that same day for a family meal who do you think I saw downstairs? I saw the same young lady waiting on tables, and her name was Darlene.

Now, what was the function in me? I saw her through the eye gate, and I started to think about her in the mind, she’s cute! And I thought about her. When I saw her downstairs I started thinking about her a lot more and the more I thought about her the more my emotions became involved and I wanted to get to know her, and I started to get feelings for Darlene. Now it took me a couple of months but I mustard up enough courage to make my decision to ask her to go out on a date. That was the first time I ever teased her. Fifty years later I am still teasing her. I don’t know how she ever puts up with me. Anyway, that’s the way it happens. Did you see how it worked? Now all of that was in my heart. I thought about her, that affected my emotions, and I made a decision and all this happen in my heart.

Now let us take another kind of illustration. Here is a man walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago, brightly lite and a lot of jewelry stores along Michigan Avenue. And he just walking along and maybe he has a little booze in him, I don’t know, but he is still able to think. And he came to this jewelry store and he looks inside and he sees this beautiful diamond ring through his eye gate. He begins to think to himself, “If I have that diamond ring I could sell it on the black market and I could get a lot of money for it and I could live a long time on the amount of money I get from selling that diamond ring.” So he is thinking about this in his mind. Now he is starting to get emotional about it, so he is feeling he wants to have this, and now he has to make a decision, and he decides to steal the diamond. So he takes a glass cutter; he probably can’t do it this way on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, but we are only using this as an illustration. And the glass is going to be too thick. So he cut a hole in the glass big enough to get his hand in and he steals the diamond and he walks away with it. Now every decision and every part of the process from the time he sees the diamond and stealing it has taken place in his heart. In his mind, he thinks about it, and he becomes emotionally attached to the idea and his will steps in and he decides to steal it. All of this took place in the function of the heart. All of this suggests brothers and sisters that you can see if it is wrong there is a problem in the heart. It begins in the mind.

Let me give another illustration. There is an assembly in Wisconsin that my wife and I have known for many years; probably over fifty years ago, but anyway there was some internal struggles and right in the midst of this trouble one of the elders had a heart attack. The wife of this elder blamed the assembly for what happen and the wife leaves the chapel and she goes to her home. She pulls all the shades down in all the windows of her house and she lived a reclusive life and never went back to the chapel again. Think about what happen here. She started thinking about the problem in her mind. Then as she thought about it then she became emotional in the sense that she begins to blame the problems on the local assembly and then she became bitter; she became resentful and then she made a decision to leave the chapel and isolate herself for the rest of her life. All of this was done in her heart because her mind effected her emotions and her emotions affected her will.

The way I like to think of this and I don’t know if it would affect you the same way but suppose we were standing in a lush green valley and we looked across the valley to the other side and up at the very top there is a mountain spring and the water is coming out of the ground. And we see the water running down the mountain side and it goes into a reservoir. And from this reservoir it goes into a second reservoir and there is a pipe between the two. So all the water that goes through the first reservoir will go to the second reservoir. And below that reservoir there is a third and it is also connected by a pipe. So the water that comes down from the mountain comes down the side of the mountain which it goes to the first reservoir then the second and then the third. Now think about it this way, the first reservoir is the mind, the second is the emotions, and the third is the will of man the decision-making process, Now if the water that comes out of the spring is not pure is all the water in the three reservoirs going to be pure? It won’t be pure. But if the water is pure on the top side then the water that runs down will also be pure.

Now the same is true spiritually. At the moment, we were saved, and that will be part of my second study how the heart was corrupted, but before you and I were saved we were sinners, we were controlled by sin. There was no understanding spiritually in the mind. As far as the emotions many of us were pasted worrying about sin and our will was in bondage to sin and the reason for that was because we ourselves were sinners. But when we get saved we become a new person in Christ. And if I can use this terminology God unhooks the line from the first reservoir and he hooks it to a new mountain stream because you and I are a new person in Christ. Now the capability of the mind being pure and the emotions being controlled and the ability to make good decisions are there because we have the presence of the Holy Spirit living within us. So you see at the time we were saved God doesn’t give us a new brain; He doesn’t give us a new personality he doesn’t change those things but what he does do He makes us a new person and now the mind can be occupied with things that are Godly and with things that are good and things that are pure. And if the mind is filled with pure things and Godly things it is going to affect the emotions, Right! So if in my heart the fruit of the Spirit is being produced and I am loving the other saints, and in my mind I love them then it is going to issue wanting to do something for them; to maintain a good relationship with them, to serve them as in Galatians five. All because God is made us a new person in Christ.

Now Remember in Proverbs 4 it tells us to guard our hearts, that means we guard our minds, our emotions, and our will. Now I don’t know Hebrew but it is interesting to me that in the King James Version it says “keep your heart.” In my translation, it has “guard your heart.” Now there is a little distinction in the New Testament between those two words, In first John chapter two where John is giving some of the evidence of being in communion with the Lord that evidence is keeping his commandments. And three times in verses three to six of chapter two it tells us to keep his commandments. But the word in the original Greek means more than just obeying. When you and I read the text that is what we think, that it is just telling us to obey him, which is true but the word is a totally different word and it means to guard. It means to value to watch over that is the meaning of the word according to the Bible Lexicon. So now when you think about it, we have two issues going here now the keeping of his word means putting great value upon his commandments; guarding his commandments.

Remember the Psalmist said, “I love your law.” So if we love the word of God then we will want to practice the word of God we will want to know the word of God. So there is a sense in which my attitude toward the word is going to affect the amount of time I spend in the word. And the amount of time I think about it seriously; the amount of time I apply it to my life.

Pascal said, “Earthly things have to be known in order to be loved but in spiritual things you have to love before they can be known.” Because it affects the mind of a man the attitude toward the word. I was reading some time ago a commentary on first John and the author gave a really interesting illustration that I think really helped me. He was telling about this lady that lived out in this woody area and they had a bay window at the back of the house that looked out into the woods. One day in the afternoon she was standing there looking out and she saw this bird’s nest up in one of the trees. And she was watching the birds and she soon became aware that one of the little birds had fallen out of the nest and was laying on the ground; it was still alive but laying on the ground. So the lady said she watched the other bird and it would leave the nest and it would go out and get food and bring it back to these little birds in the nest. With their little beaks wide open ready to eat and she would feed them and then she would go back and get more food and then she would fly down to the little bird that was laying on the ground and she would feed that little bird. And the woman said as I watched that process I notice that the mother bird did something else for the little bird that was laying on the ground. As the little bird was eating up his food, the mother bird hopped away and began picking up little twigs and leaves and brought them back and she built a little hedge around the little bird. She wanted to protect that bird and instinctively not with her mind because birds don’t have minds, but we do, but instinctively she place great value upon that little bird. So she wanted to feed him and protect him.

Now that is the attitude I should have towards the word of God, I should value it so much that I want to study it that I want to read it and want to know more about the Lord that it talks about. But keeping his word is having the right attitude and it will lead to obeying his commands. So when the Psalmist tells us to guard the heart, we have to guard the mind; we have to guard the emotion, and we have to guard the will as well.

Now it is interesting as you read through one of the studies I have on the old man and the new man how that affects the heart of man because in the end the water flowing down the mountain side is not going to be any more pure then the mountain spring and just so our lives will only be a spiritual value if the heart is right. and that is what God is looking for, searching for those who have a heart for him. And it my prayer for myself and all Christians that it be the desire of our hearts and that will lead us to deal with sin fixing rupture relationships all those things that can create disunity among the people of God. We have to keep the heart right. If we don’t we are going to have a spiritual heart attack. And things will happen we don’t want to happen. So let us guard our hearts with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.