We are continuing this theme of the affairs of the heart, and I'm going to get you to turn with me to a few passages of Scripture. We will be back in Proverbs, but only this time in Proverbs chapter 4. But we're going to get you to turn with me, please, first of all to Ezekiel chapter 36. Ezekiel chapter 36 is the first passage that we're going to turn to. Ezekiel chapter 36, and it's God speaking through Ezekiel, telling him that they have brought disgrace on the gospel of God, the children of Israel, and they have lived like reprobates. God says that that can't continue. And it is possible to live like a reprobate and be saved as such, although I have grave questions over that. But they have been bringing disgrace to the gospel of God and of Jesus Christ. And God says, listen, I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna give you a new heart. And maybe that's what you need, a new heart, a heart transplant. A heart that has been bringing disrepute and ill repute to God. Now we're reading from Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 24 to verse 28, and we're also going to read from Matthew chapter five, and we're going to read the Beatitudes. And I'll explain that whenever we get that far. Not doing an exegesis of these two passages, but all I'm simply showing you is that God wants to do more than what you've maybe experienced so far. So Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 24 and the following. I will take you from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle upon you water, and ye shall be clean. And from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. That's a great promise, isn't it? That's what God promises to do for every one of us. That's what God has purposed to do for every one of us. And let me say, that's what God wants to do for every one of us. Give us a new heart. I want a heart transplant. That doesn't mean to say that this old ticker is going to be changed, but it means, as we thought last Lord's Day evening, that the heart of man is the very dynamic, it's the very dynamo of everything we are. Without the Spirit, we're dead, it says. Without the heart, we're dead. Let us also then read, please, from Matthew chapter five, the beatitudes, or the attitude of the heart of the believer, is what you would really see. We're going to read from verse, we're going to read from the first verse. Matthew chapter five, this is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five, six, and seven. These beatitudes, these principles, they're not mechanisms whereby you can be saved. These are the attitudes of those who are saved. This is what it ought to be. in Matthew chapter five and verse one. And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Amen, and we trust that God will bless that reading of his word. Just one little text. It's found in Proverbs chapter four. Proverbs chapter four and verse 23. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. For those of you who are here for the first time or perhaps listening for the first time, we've been doing a little series on the affairs of the heart. The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. That's where it all starts and that's where it all ends. That's where all the difficulties and that's where all the blessings are stored at the very heart. That place which is deep down in us, which is part of our very innermost being, which is the dynamic of everything else, what you are in your heart will be what we see in your life. And we've been looking at that. And we've been trying to tease out, first of all, the heart that was gone wrong. And we noticed how perverted and how distorted and how destroyed the human heart has been since the fall of man. God has given you a faculty, and it's your heart, and has given you the ability to love God, to know God, and it says here, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. What does that mean? What does that mean? See God? See him physically? See him visibly? No! Seeing God means that in every circumstance and in every situation, in every event, you're able to see the hand of God in it. You see that where you saw it made mistakes and see how God brought you out of those mistakes, you see God was in it. Or whenever you had an accident, you see how that perhaps on that way or wherever you were going that you had that accident, somehow you see the hand of God in it. He prevented you from doing something worse. Vanessa and I were in Cork. doing the camps for the teenagers. We used to run three weeks of camps back-to-back, and we had the small ones, we had the intermediate ones, and then we had the teenagers. The teenagers in Cork didn't realise that they weren't teenagers anymore, because some of them were up in 23 and 24 years of age. And there was always a waiting list for our camps. And the children were... They said that the reason that they came was to get away from the drug scene. And to get away from that scene where it was destroying them and they wanted, and they knew that there's one week that could be an oasis for them. And they knew it was in Karhu Camp in Cork. And every year, and so we had to keep making our intake larger and we had 56 and 57 teenagers. Have you ever had 56 or 57 mad teenagers in your house? One day we heard of an accident. Someone was coming to the camp, little did we know it was a foot. And the accident prevented the person from getting to camp. Now we didn't know they were coming. But the teenagers told us that really what was happening, they were on their way out to camp to try and give some drugs to those who were drug addicts. And they never got that far because they had an accident. Now listen, oftentimes we think the bad stuff that happens to us is bad, but sometimes what God is doing, He's intervening in something that could have been far worse, preventing us from going far further or too far. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will always see the hand of God in every circumstance and in every situation. And so we've been talking about the affairs of the heart, and we see that Rehoboam, whom Solomon was writing to, he's my son, give me thine heart. His heart was seen to have gone wrong, and it was perverted and distorted, and we looked at how we know a heart gone wrong by what you admire, and what you acquire, and where you aspire to. If you're admiring that which is sinful and wrong, and I'm not gonna go into it all, a heart gone wrong He was reluctant to come to church. He didn't want to be in church, and he was fed up listening to the preacher, and he was bored stiff at anything to do with God and church. And then we looked at a heart set right. We established two things about a heart set right. My son. In other words, we need to recognize the true relationship. My relationship to my God is a father-son relationship. Recognize that when you've been born again of God's Spirit, you've been brought into a family, a loving family relationship, and God is your heavenly father, and he cares more for you than your earthly father, and he knows more about you than your earthly father, and he'll do more for you than any father could do. and has done more for you than any father could do. My son, stop living like a slave and start living like a son. Stop living like a servant and start living like a child of God. Stop scratching around in the burglary things of this old world and start rejoicing in the heavenly places in which Christ has set you free. Far too many people of God's people haven't recognized the full riches that they have in Christ Jesus. And we let the devil condemn us. We let our past condemn us. We let the events of our lives condemn us. But God says, I don't condemn you because he says, there is therefore now, let's go to Sunday school again. What does it say in Romans chapter eight? There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ. There's no condemnation. Are you sitting in church here today condemned? But then what is it that is condemning you? Is it your old past that's under the blood? Is it the devil that's whispering in your ear, you don't deserve God's grace? There's not one of us here deserves God's grace. That's why it's amazing grace. Oh, the relationship, you young believers, others that are sprinkled in the church, I want you to, if you learn something from this service today, learn that you've been brought into a relationship with your heavenly Father. And don't let the world and the devil and don't let somebody pointing the finger at you accuse you and blame you, but you recognize, my dear soul, that you've been forgiven of God. And you've been brought and you've been born into the family of God. Now, I do want to put in a proviso there. If you're living in known sin, if you're living in deliberate sin, if you're living in some habitual sin, and I want to tell you, isn't it awful? What did we say about my black trousers last Sunday night? I'm knocking into it. Don't we have a sticky soul, don't we? And everything sticks to us, and this old sin, it just doesn't seem to be easy to shake off. And I want to tell you, we spent a lifetime getting a habit of sinfulness. It is very hard to break habits, isn't it? Thank God there's power in Jesus' blood to set the captives free. Oh, I'd love to open this meeting to our testimony time. Someday I'm going to do that. I know the deliverance that some of you have had. I know, everybody thinks that the preacher was some goody-two-shoes that never had a difficult time in his life, that never was, and said, listen, I want to tell you, being there, did that, and worn the t-shirt. Smoking from I was four years of age. My mother used to say, it'll stunt your growth, and she was right. Took my first pint of Smithereens when I was 14. was involved in all sorts of degradation that I would make the devil nearly embarrassed. But thank God, he sets the captives free. He'll take you from the dunghill and he'll set you among princes. He'll take you out of the mire and he'll put you in the choir. That's what he does. Relationship. But perhaps there are those who haven't been able to break some old habit. And God, by His Spirit, will convict you. And that's the difference between conviction and condemnation. Conviction makes you feel uneasy about things that you're doing. Condemnation reminds you of things that you are forgiven for. You remember that. I find myself, I need to simplify the messages these days, so that you get a good grasp, especially you young believers, you get a good grasp of how the devil works. If he can't hold you back, he'll drive you too far, and he'll get you involved in stuff that are not even, as I said last Sunday morning, you need to have the ability to discern between what is good and best. And it's good to be involved in good stuff. but it's better to be involved in the best stuff. That's a lesson you need to learn. And in the work of God, there's lots of good stuff to be done, but for you, there is the best stuff. And so there's relationship, but there's also responsibility. Give me thine heart. Give me thine heart. David, you want to get that there and give it to Jean? Here, just give that to Jean there. Give me thine heart. Give me thine heart. It's your responsibility to hand it over to God and say, Lord, here's my heart. Here's my bitter spirit. Here's my critical spirit. Here's my worldly spirit. Here's everything about me, my selfish ambition. Lord, here it is. I give it to you. That's not the easiest thing you'll do. That's the hardest thing. W.P. Nicholson said the hardest thing that he ever had was to go to his own funeral. He said, I die daily. We all think we've got rights. And it's my right to achieve, and it's also my right to have. And we've been talking about that. We've said, give me thine heart. Give me thine heart. And so there's a heart going wrong. There's a heart set right. But we can't finish it there as the heart kept right. I think I said last time that Adam and Eve didn't have a fallen nature, yet they went wrong. And the Word of God says, let him who standeth take heed lest he fall. So you have to be very careful. as to your direction and the way that you live your life. One commentator wrote, the greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God. The greatest difficulty after conversion is to keep the heart with God. The greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God. The greatest difficulty after conversion is to keep the heart with God. Another commentator says this, if there's one consideration more humbling than any other, it is to a spiritually minded believer, it is that after all that God has done for us, After his rich displays of grace, his patience and tenderness in his instructions to us, the repeated discipline of his covenant, the tokens of love received, and the lessons experienced and learned, the greatest consideration then should be that there should still exist in the heart A principle, the tendency which is to secret, perpetual, and alarming departure from God. Let me put that into simple English. After all that God has done for me, for after all that God has paid for me, and after all that God has brought to me, that there still would be a tendency to stray from God. To stray from God. John Bunyan, I've quoted to him, and I was delighted to hear that those two people had ordered and bought his books since I mentioned them, Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War. In the book Holy War, he describes how there are souls where our lives can have the enemy without, but the traitor within. And he says we need to keep the enemy out and we need to track down the traitor. But let me change the analogy here. You all know that Alfie plays the fiddle, or the violin. Isn't that right? The fiddle and the violin, they're both the same instrument, in case you think that he's a multi-fiddle player. Well, if you bought a Stradivarius violin that's worth millions, hands up those of you who've got a Stradivarius. Alfie? No? I wish myself. And you know the thing about a violin is every time you pick it up, you have to tune it. It matters not how expensive that piece of equipment or instrument is. It is always prone to go out of tune, because of its makeup and because of its nature. I've got a Gibson guitar. It's not the cheapest guitar you can get your hands on. But it makes no difference how expensive or how cheap the guitar is. It always has to be tuned to keep it in tune. Your heart is like that violin or that guitar. You have to keep it in tune. You have to make sure it's in tune. But in tune with who? In tune with God. Because if you don't keep your heart in tune with God, then you will be brought away from the cords of His love and grace, and you'll be brought into the old burglary ways of the world. A few weeks ago, when Nigel was doing his final Bible study, I discovered that my guitar was out of tune with the piano over there. Now, let me tell you about these instruments. I tune my guitar to concert pitch. Any musicians here? Yes, there's a few. Well, yeah, we're aspiring musicians anyway. And we always tune our instruments to concert pitch. That's the settled standard for all musical instruments. And anybody who goes into an orchestra, they must be tuned to concert pitch. Now, before I went that Tuesday, I was tuned to concert pitch. But I found that my guitar was out of tune with the piano. Guess who was out of tune? The piano. Guess how difficult it is to tune a piano? a lot more difficult than the six strings on a guitar. So the wise guy here, the next Tuesday he went back, we were having our outreach meeting. You remember the outreach meeting? We had David Martin, and I said, I'm not going to let the devil catch me out. I'm going to make sure I'm in tune with the piano. Guess what I did? Can anybody guess? I took my tuner, and I saw how far the piano was out of tune, and then I tuned my guitar to where I found that the piano was out of tune, and I was in complete harmony with Glenn on that night. Isn't that lovely? I sounded good again. Your heart was tuned to the world. That's the constant standard in the world in which you live. You have to tune it to something different, someone different. Your heart must be kept in tune with your heavenly Father. Because if your heart is not kept in tune, Well, what does Proverbs 4 and 23 say? Proverbs 4 and verse 23, keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Can I say that the natural instinct of our hearts is to go out of tune? It takes very little to get you out of tune, is that right? Like all I have to do is hit that, I'm not gonna do it, all I have to do is hit that a bit of a bang and it's out of tune. You had to go back over it again. And I'll tell you what else. The different temperatures we'll put it at a tune. If it comes in cold, and then it gets all warm. If it comes in warm, it gets all cold. There's so many things, and you'll often see musicians that are tuning up all the time to make sure that their instruments, and they'll play a song, and then they'll tune all over again. And you'll say, what's he doing with that old thing? When he'll go and get himself a decent one. If it is a decent one, it'll go out of tune. It's natural instinct to go out of tune. So here's the question, I'm gonna give you the first one, and there's five more after this, and I'll give them to you the next Sunday. How do I keep my heart in tune with God? Here's the first word. Next week, take a wee notebook, and I'll be giving you references. Watch. Watch and pray. He says, keep your heart with all diligence. This means watching, looking for those warning signs, looking for those little signs and symbols, those evidences that things are not as hot as they used to be. Making sure that you're still in tune, that you're still in tune with what God's Word says, and you're still in tune with the Spirit, and you're walking with God, and you hear His voice as He speaks to you every morning. Paul says, as he writes in 1 Timothy chapter four, as he writes to young Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter four, listen to what it says on the verse 16. It says this, take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee. He also said to the church, the Ephesus elders, he said, watch yourselves and the flock over which God hath made you overseers. Now here's my wheel illustration, and I'm going to finish with this illustration today. Because it's mighty warm up here and I don't know what it's like down there. Hands up those of you who've got a car, or have been in a car, you've driven in a car, right? You've got a dashboard in that car, isn't that right? And that dashboard is very, very, very useful. It contains a lot of information that you need to know. The speed you're going, if you'd have been watching that speed, you wouldn't have three points on your licence. And I heard someone the other day, they had six points. And when I looked at the speedometer, I didn't realise I was going 105. All I said is, you know, you don't need a speedometer to know you're going too fast. And also it gives the fuel level, it also gives the temperature of your engine. Some of these things, by the way, are very important to know. Did you know that? And on that dashboard, there'll be a little red light and a ping if something's gone wrong. Like my sister-in-law one day, she was driving along in the car, and all of a sudden then she realized, in big, bold, uppercase writing, stop! She was off running over a stone, she'd punched it in the front of the car, and the car was very quickly running out of oil. But she drove on! Now you engineers, do you know what happened? Guess what happened? She seized her. The car blew up. There was bits going out to this part of the bonnet and bits going out to that part. She absolutely ruined the engine. She said, I don't know what went wrong. I say, you didn't stop when the car told you to stop. That dashboard in your car, is to tell you when there's danger, when there's difficulty, when there's something wrong, when the temperature's gone, when you're almost out of fuel, or when something's wrong, and you do well to notice those warnings and take stock of them and do something about them. There's a name driving around in my car, and the next thing it says, what it said, there's reduced pressure in your tires. I didn't even know there was such a thing in my car. And so the next thing I went in and seen the temperature was all right, but I tell you what, I had two hefty boys in the back, and that's what happened. So if you were in my car in the last two weeks, you're the problem. But anyway, all I had to do was press a wee button, reset it because there's nothing wrong. But those warning signs are in your dashboard. Do you know what you need to build into the dashboard of your heart? Warning signs. Let me suggest to you a few of the warning signs that you should put in the dashboard of your spirit, so that if you feel you're going off track, or you feel that you're going out of tune with God, then you realize that whenever these things flash up, you do something about them. Here they are. Fear. Pride. Greed. Self-pity. Resentment. Cowardice. Anger. unforgiving, unforgiveness, criticism, coldness in worship, carelessness in personal biblical study, and any sense of really just going through the motions. What you should do is take those and write them down and put them in the dashboard of your conscience and of your heart. Even take down a little notebook and write them down. Ask yourself, well, how am I getting on? How does this refer to me? Is there fear in my heart? Am I afraid of being a witness for God? Is there a selfishness? Is there pride building up in my heart? Am I so full of myself? Is there any problem with me In God's word, is there a difficulty in me having my quiet time? Am I careless about all of these things? Write them down, and when you see that you're not involved, when you see that you're not communicating with God, when you see that these things are flashing up, you need to do something about them. See, the heart has got impulses. And you may put those into your dashboard of your heart. so that you might indeed be able to identify when you're going wrong. I encourage you to get a pen and to write them down. Begin making a list. It's very practical, but begin to make a list so that you'll have clarity as to how your life and where your life is going. John Calvin said this, that nearly all the wisdom we need comes in two parts, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. A.W. Pink said this, for the Christian to keep his heart means for him to pay close attention to the direction in which his affections are moving, and to discover whether the things of the world are gaining a firmer and fuller hold over him, or whether they are increasingly losing their charm for him. When is a rolling stone easier stopped? When it's at the top of the mountain going down towards the bottom or almost at the bottom. A rolling stone is easier stopped when it just begins to move. And the momentum of sin in your life is more easily stopped when you get the first hint that something's wrong than when you let it get out of control. And so today it says in Proverbs chapter 4, it says, and in the verse 23, It says, keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. It's your responsibility. Watch, watch. We'll pray together. I'm not going to overfeed you today. Let's pray together. Father, we pray that our lives might be in tune with you, our hearts might be fully involved with you. We pray that our hearts be handed over to you. And today, Lord, as you've spoken to our hearts, you've warned us, you've challenged us. We pray that we will write on the dashboard of our hearts the things that are alarming and ought to cause us alarm. Handle us with your spirit, we pray. And may we be fully committed and yielded to the heart of God in tune with him. In Christ's name we pray, amen. 610, and we're gonna stand and sing. Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way. Thou art the potter and I am the clay. Mold me and make me after thy will while I'm waiting. Yielded and still. We'll stand and sing together, please. Glory and praise I said to the band whenever we were practicing earlier this morning, that's the song I was saved through, Have Thine Own Way Lord, Have Thine Own Way. I remember that Wednesday night so well. I said, Lord, I didn't know how to get saved because I don't come from a religious background. So I didn't know how to get saved. And I just said, Lord, here's my life. Here's my heart. You know what? I've never wanted to give it back to the world. Never. I know it says, take him as thine, take heed lest ye fall. On that night, you know, I had a very bad temper. And the rest of you won't agree with this, but I had the world's worst temper. And I can remember, I mean, I'd just lose it. God dealt with it. God dealt with it. And thank God I haven't had the desire to lose it ever since. Now listen, it might not be a substance, it might be a vice, it might be a desire, or it might even be some old arrogant anger, temper, or something that's crept in and you feel yourself lacking patience. Write those in the dashboard of your heart. When you see the slightest little sign, a desire for whatever this world or the old nature coming back again, write it in the dashboard. I give you that homework today. Go home and write in a wee booklet, those things that I've mentioned are the things you're coming from. And then whenever you feel tempted or whenever they start to reappear in your life, you can then ask God. But I'm gonna tell you now, God brings you through situations and allows them to keep recurring until you waken up and smell the coffee and say, God can help me with this. And oftentimes he teaches us through our failures how to get strong not to fail again. Let's pray. Gracious Father, we pray that the Spirit of God will apply your truth to all our hearts. Bring us from this place, Lord, with an added desire and determination that we're gonna live for God, and we're gonna let him live through us, through this world in which we find ourselves. And we rebuke the devil, and we rebuke the power of Satan to try and bring the old beggarly ways of the world back into our hearts. And we say, Lord, we have done with lesser things. We want to live for you. Perhaps, Lord, someone's praying not just now, Lord, I want you to have it all. Well, we pray that they'll take everything that they're giving and that you will fill them with yourself. In Christ's name we pray, amen.