Open Heart Surgery - Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Your heart and my heart is all that really matters to God.

It's not the externals. The externals are part of it, but only if it flows from your heart. In Proverbs 4, Solomon wrote this, above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Above all else, guard your heart.

Do you do that? See, that'd be a question. Notice, it's above all else. It's above anything in the Christian life you can imagine. He said, above all else, I want you to guard your heart, because it's the wellspring.

Everything in your life comes from your heart. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world.

And this shows how human beings think and how you and I think. In verse one, it says this. In the thirty-sixth year of Asa's reign, he was the king of Judah. The kingdoms are divided. Judah in the south, Judah and Benjamin, the ten tribes in the north called Israel. The ten tribes in the north are always evil, in God's eyes.

Most of the time, the tribes in Judah are good. They're at war with each other. So it says in the thirty-sixth year of Asa's reign in Judah, Bashah, king of Israel, came up against Judah and fortified Rama in order to prevent anyone from going out or coming in to Asa, king of Judah, right on the border. It says then Asa, he figured, how am I going to handle this? He brought out silver and gold from the treasuries of the house of the Lord and the king's house, and he sent him to Benedad, king of Aram, who lived in Damascus. He said, I know how to solve this. I'm going to send money to the king of Damascus.

Now, it becomes clear as to why. He said, Let there be a treaty between you and me and between my father and your father. Behold, I have sent you silver and gold. Go, break your treaty with Bashah, king of Israel, so that he will withdraw from me.

Syria was a big army. He said, I'll give you enough money. I'll blackmail you. See, that's how this is going to work. I'll give you enough money. You'll break your treaty with them.

That'll scare the daylights out of them, and you and I can be together. It says, so Benedad listened to King Asa, and he sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel, and they conquered Lijan, Dan, Abel, Mayim, and all of the store cities in Naphtali. It says it came about when Bashah heard of it, that he ceased fortifying Ramah, and he stopped his work. Then King Asa brought all the stores of Ramah and its timber, which Bashah had been building, and with them he fortified Geba and Mizpah. Now, here's what happened.

They were threatened by the northern kingdom. He came up with a plan. He's going to bribe the king of Syria, and it worked, and that's what happens to us a lot.

I've got an idea, you see, and I think this will work. Now watch what happens. Then Hanani, the seer, came to King Asa of Judah, and he said to him, because you have relied on the king of Aram, and not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army of the king of Aram has escaped out of your hand. He said, we're not the Ethiopians in the Luban, an immense army with very many chariots and horsemen, yet because you relied on the Lord, he delivered them out of your hand. Asa the prophet or the seer says to him, you know what you've done here? God was going to deliver Aram, the Syrian army, into your hand, but you made a deal with him to protect yourself. Now, that's the context, now this famous verse. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his. God says, I look everywhere for one thing. Someone whose heart is completely mine.

That's what I'm looking for. He said, you have acted foolishly in this indeed, and from now on you will surely have wars. Notice Asa's response, then Asa was angry with his seer, put him in prison, for he was enraged at him for this, and Asa oppressed some of the people at the same time.

He didn't take it well. Notice how important this is to God, for the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the earth. And why? I just want to find someone whose heart belongs to me. That's never changed. Your heart and my heart is all that really matters to God. It's not the externals. The externals are part of it, but only if it flows from your heart. In Proverbs 4, Solomon wrote this, above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Above all else, guard your heart.

Do you do that? That would be a question. Notice it's above all else. It's above anything in the Christian life you can imagine. He said, above all else, I want you to guard your heart, because it's the wellspring. Everything in your life comes from your heart. Everything you do comes down to its motivation. Does it come out of your heart rightly or purely, or are you just doing some external activity? Chuck Swindoll says, how important is the heart?

It is there that character is formed. It alone holds the secrets of true success. Its treasures are priceless, but they can be stolen.

And that's what happens. Do you guard your heart? You see, if you don't guard your heart, you're never going to practice your faith. It's more important than anything. It's easier for any organization to say, look, we have the externals.

Let's just go through the externals. None of that matters. You can't fool God. You see, he's not naive.

He's not foolish. Go with me to Proverbs chapter 19, Proverbs chapter 19. Again, I want to get another look at why we need to guard our heart from Solomon. Verse three. Solomon says the foolishness of man ruins his way. And his heart rages. Against the Lord. The foolish the man ruins his way and the heart rages against the Lord. This is Hebrew poetry.

And I said in the past, I'll say it again. Hebrews don't rhyme words. They use parallelism. This is called synonymous parallelism. What he says in the first line, he says again in a different way in the second line.

There are synonyms. And so he says here. He says the foolishness of the man ruins his way. The word ruin is the word Salaf and it means to pervert or twist or distort. He says the foolish of man distorts or twist or ruins or perverts his way, his life. The foolishness of man ruins his life.

Next line. He said his the reason for it. His heart rages against the Lord. My natural heart will always rage against the Lord.

That's where my native by fleshly nature, as Paul calls it, the flesh in the New Testament. He said it makes war. You see, that's part of the Christian life. There is a way there is a way that seems right to a man and it ends in destruction or death.

That's what Solomon said. Our natural heart wages war. In fact, it wanders us away from God.

Isaiah Chapter 53, this great chapter about the coming Messiah. 53 says this, all of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has gone his own way. That's the way it works for you and I. That's the way our lives work. There is a way that seems right to us, but it's not. We follow our own heart, our own plans, and we drift away from God. What ends up happening is we never really, in a sense, receive what God has intended for us. When Jesus said, I've come to give you life and give it to you abundantly. What he meant by that is I want to fill your life with joy and peace and hope.

I want to just fill it with that. Ask yourself, is my life full of joy and peace and hope? You see, and I'm telling you, if you say no, it's because you have a heart problem. You see, you're listening to the wrong thing.

That's what I'm telling you. Now, let me go on with this for a moment. Go with me to Psalm 51. Psalm 51, the great confessional Psalm of David.

You know the story. David and Bathsheba got together. David committed adultery, and then he had Uriah the Hittite, her husband, murdered. And then David decided, because I'm king, no one can hold me accountable.

And for about a year, no one did. And then Nathan the prophet showed up and confronted David. Now David is ready to confess his sin.

Now he finally is. Notice what he says. He says first in verse four. He said, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge me.

Here's my question. Why did David commit adultery? You see, you want to think, well, he saw Bathsheba bathing.

And he said, wow, that's a beautiful woman bathing. I'm going to commit and I'm king. I can do what I want. That's not why.

Why? His heart. You see, it was in his heart. And he rationalized just like we do.

I'm king. Not only can I commit adultery, I can get rid of her husband. And remember, he had another plan for his husband. He wanted to have her husband come back and have her husband sleep with his wife so that no one will know that David's. That's the way our minds work. Our heart operates. And then Uriah said, I wouldn't do that.

The other guys are out there fighting a battle. I wouldn't do that. I will not sleep with my wife.

So then he had Uriah killed in battle. That's how bad the heart is. Jeremiah said it's desperately wicked. It's deceitful above all things.

It's incurable. So then notice what happens. Verse 10, David says this, created me a what? Clean heart, oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

David knew what his problem was. It's my heart. Created me, he says, a new heart. Notice what happens if God does. Verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.

David had no joy in that year. He said, I want my joy restored that I had before. You see, but I need a new heart, Lord.

That's what I need. I need, I really need a new heart. I need you to restore the joy, he said to me. Then go down to verse 17 and you see how you receive it. He said, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite, and there it is again, heart.

Oh God, you will not despise. My spirit, he said, has to be that. You see, David knew what his problem was. Paul knew what his problem was.

Romans chapter seven. Notice Paul said, what's my problem? It's me. He said, you know what, I find myself doing the very things I don't want to do, and then I don't do the very things I know I should do. Oh, wretched man that I am, he said, who will save me from this?

Well, God will, but the point is what? It's me. It's my heart. That's what he keeps saying. It's my heart.

I know that that's the problem that I have. Go with me now to Psalm 139. Psalm 139. And if you could put something on a three by five or on a refrigerator magnet, these two verses would be it because I think this is the way all of us need to start the day.

139 verses 23 and 24, he says this. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there's any hurtful way in me and lead me into the everlasting way. Do you do that? You start dancing, Lord, search my heart.

You see my heart, not my externals. You see, one of the biggest problems we have as Christians, and we know this, isn't Christianity easy to fake? I mean, and by the way, you're at your best faking on Sunday morning. We can really fake it on Sunday morning.

Nice to see you, brother. Pray for you. Bless you. And we do all that and it's all that must be a righteous man, but you don't know what that guy's like Monday to Saturday night at all. You don't know how he conducts business. You certainly don't know what he's like when no one else is watching, but God does. You see, God does. It's a matter of your heart. That's why he said, search me, search my heart, not my activities.

You see, that's what we end up doing. We measure spirituality by some kind of behavior or activities that are external. And that's wonderful if it's backed up by your heart, but if it's not, it's just hypocrisy.

There's no truth to it at all. The heart is very important to God and we have to guard it. But the beauty of it all is God is willing to do open heart surgery on all of us. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 4 in the New Testament, Hebrews chapter 4. In verse 11 of Hebrews 4, the writer of Hebrews is trying to urge these Hebrew Christians not to follow a plan that they've come up with on their own.

They're being persecuted by the Jews and the Gentiles, so they decide maybe the best thing we can do is to go back into Judaism, still believe in Jesus, but that way the Jews will at least accept us and we can do business and our families will be happy. The writer of Hebrews says, look, if you do that, I want to tell you something. You're going to be just like the wilderness generation. You're going to die in the wilderness and you're never going to enter the promised land or what he calls the faith rest life. You'll never get to where you should go as a Christian.

That's what he's saying. So, in verse 11, he says, therefore, let us be diligent to enter the rest so that no one will fail or fall. He said, through following the same example of disobedience, I want you to get everything out of the Christian life you should.

Now, here comes the open heart surgery. He said, for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. It's piercing as far as the division of the soul and the spirit of both the joints and the marrow, and then this phrase. And it's able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of what?

The heart. Word of God judges my heart. He said, that's the way this works. So, why know the word of God? The word of God tells my heart something.

You see, and you see this over and over and over again. Example after example, there's a way in which I think, and there's a way in which God wants me to think. There are two different ways. You see, there are two different ways. I've said this in the past, but I've always been brought up that if somebody pushes you, push them back. Somebody insults you, insult them back.

God said, let no unkind word come from your mouth. That doesn't sound right. That's the way I was taught. You hear this over and over again. We rationalize a behavior and then we reap what we sow.

Let me show you this in a different way. Go with the Romans 12, Romans chapter 12, the first two verses with me. Paul was summarizing this great book of Romans, and these two verses in the summary tells us how do we live the Christian life. He said, here's the first step. He said, therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies, that's your life, a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Here's the first thing you have to do. I have to give my life to God. Jesus said, take up my cross, and then he said, take it up daily.

But the point is, Lord, I'm here. Use me. I'll do anything, anywhere, at any cost, at any time for you. You have my life.

It's yours. He said, that's a sacrifice we have to make. Then he says this, do not be conformed to this world. That word, J.B. Phillips, the great Greek scholar says, do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.

Why? Because there's a way they think out there. There's a way you thought before you became Christian. There's a way that's promoted to think all the time. You see, from the most basic tenets, what's our culture tell us over and over again in a thousand different ways? You need to look out for number who?

Yeah, see, we all know it. You need to look out for you. That's the most important thing our culture teaches.

What's the Bible teach you? If you want to lead, you have to serve. If you want to be first, you have to be last.

You have to consider everybody else is more important than you are. Which one's winning in your mind? You see, what's working in your mind? How we think. He said, look, I don't let the world squeeze you into its mold, but be transformed, metamorphous, caterpillar to butterfly, be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. The whole point is, I think God speaks. If I listen to what God says, what happens to me is my mind gets renewed and I begin to think differently. In other words, I have open heart surgery and I begin to think differently about virtually everything. One last verse, Proverbs chapter four and verse 20.

The same idea, but a little more personal appeal. Proverbs 4 20, Solomon writes this. He said, my son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your sight.

Keep them in the midst of your heart. I have to keep these words in the midst of my heart because God's trying to do open heart surgery on me. He's trying to change the way I see everything to the way He sees it.

There's no natural inclination to this. In Isaiah, God said, my thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways aren't your ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my thoughts and ways than yours. So, how much do you naturally and instinctively think like God? None.

He said, it's infinitesimal. My thoughts aren't your thoughts. You know how much trouble we get into? How many times have you said this?

Well, I think that's a good way to get yourself in a whole bunch of trouble. He said, notice, He said, do not let them depart from your sight. Keep them in the midst of your heart. Now watch, for they are life to those who find them and health to all their body. Watch over your heart with all diligence. He says, for from it flow the springs of life.

That's what this is all about. What happens after a person becomes a Christian is God's desire is to do open heart surgery on you. His desire is to change your heart. His desire is to change your thought life completely with His word, which is alive and powerful, He said. And it is a judge of the very intentions and the thoughts of my own heart.

He said, that's what I do. And for most of us, we almost never get there. We somehow allowed our faith to be compartmentalized in some way or externalized in some way.

J.I. Packer says this, modern Christians tend to make satisfaction their religion. We show much more concern about self-fulfillment than we do about pleasing God.

Typical of Christianity today, at any rate, English speaking, in the English speaking world, is its massive rash of how-to books for believers, directing us to have more successful relationships, more joy in sex, becoming more of a person, realizing our possibilities, getting more excitement out of each day, reducing our weight, improving our diet, managing our money, licking our families into happier shape and whatnot. He said, for those, he said, whose prime passion is to glorify God, these are doubtless legitimate concerns, but the how-to books regularly explore them as self-absorbed in a way that treats our enjoyment of life as the most important thing rather than to glorify God. It all comes down, he says, to an issue of our heart.

He's right. It's so easy to avoid this. And we set up a certain amount of externals, and if we go through these, we think we're fine.

But we're not. The heart is very important to God. Nine hundred times in the Word of God, he says you need to guard your heart, and God says, look, I'm willing to do open heart surgery on each and every one of you. The last question, is God's Word changing your heart? Can you look back and say in the last five years I've changed the way I think about a lot of things? Because that's good if it's happening.

If it hasn't been, then I'm afraid you're just going through the motions. And it won't help you much. You will not be glorified and you will not reap a life of joy and peace and hope.

You won't. And we can't fool God. We can fake everything in the Christian faith for other people. But God sees our heart. And he knows what we're like.

Let's pray. Father, these words are so personal to each and every one of us. And what the Word is, is we can't judge each other. Because all we know are the externals. We don't know what goes on in the mind, how we think, what our heart's like. We don't know whether the Word of God is really changing our heart.

But you know. And individually, Father, as believers in Jesus Christ, we know. Father, I pray that we become honest with you. That we're willing, as honest Christians, to examine our heart and to say to you, search our hearts, God. Put in us a clean heart.

Change the way we think. Because we know when we do that, our faith becomes authentic. You are glorified in our lives. And we are blessed with joy and peace and hope. Father, thank you for being a God that is willing not to let us the way we were. But to begin a process to conform us to the image of your Son. We thank you in his name.

Amen. You can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word, 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At the website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.