We've been talking for the last few weeks on Sunday nights, talking about this idea that every Christian is a counselor. Every Christian has the responsibility to be able to offer sound biblical wisdom and advice and counsel to those around them, to speak the truth into life situations, both in our own lives and the lives of those around us when we have that opportunity. And we've talked about several things. Last week we talked about the Word of God being sufficient for all matters of life and godliness, and tonight we're going to look at the object of giving good counsel or what we direct that counsel toward, which is the heart of individuals, right? The human heart. Every problem of life, every relational conflict, every spiritual struggle traces back to the heart. The world will say that People are shaped by their environment, they're shaped by their experience, their education, different aspects of life, but what we should understand is that our hearts are truly shaped by the way in which we choose to interact with God. It's shaped by things like worship, which we talked about a lot this morning. Biblically speaking, when we use the word heart, We're not talking necessarily about the organ that beats in our chest, right? The heart, when we talk about this in a biblical spiritual sense, it is, when that word's used in the scriptures, it typically relays this idea of what we would call the control center of a person. It's the seat of our thoughts, our motives, our desires, our will. That's what we mean when we talk about the heart. And so, whatever it is that rules our heart is that which rules our life. And so, in order to offer biblical wisdom and biblical counsel, We have to make sure we understand really what's, do our best at least, and I know we can't know fully someone else's heart, but we need to see and discern what's going on in the heart, not just what the actions are. The actions may point a certain direction when the heart issue may be something a little bit different. It's paying attention and prayerfully discerning what somebody's desiring, what somebody's fearful of, what they love. And Jesus addresses this behavior. He exposes the truth that the heart drives things. He talks about what's in your heart comes out of your mouth. We've talked about that before. So the heart is what we're aiming at and what we're seeking to understand and discern. So we're going to look at several scriptures tonight, but the primary ones are going to be in Proverbs 4.23. and in James 4, 1-3, and in Luke 6, 43-45, and she'll have those on the screen, and I'll read several others as we go along. But Proverbs 4.23 is going to teach us that the heart is the source of our life, right? What it says in Proverbs 4.23 is this, Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of Again, that word heart includes the mind, the emotions, the will. It's the term for the whole inner person. Everything that's going on within you, within your heart and your mind, that's what it's including there. And in that text, Solomon is talking to his son and he's telling him to keep his heart with all diligence. And that phrase really means, it's like to to build a fortress around, not in a sense that we don't allow anyone in or we don't interact with our emotions and our will with other people. This isn't about keeping an emotional guard up. Instead, it's to protect it. Protect it from falsehood. Protect it from the lies of the enemy in the world. And Solomon says that our heart, out of it, is what's going to flow the issues of life, as we said before. Everything that goes on in our life and the choices we make, we can always trace it back to our heart. You see, whenever we only look at what we would call the outward actions, it would be much like going to the doctor. And you say, you know, Doc, I've had a headache, you know, three days out of the last five, and I don't know if it's my allergies or whatever. And they say, oh, you got a headache? Well, let's just lay you over here and cut your head open. There's probably something wrong with your brain. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on just a second. That's a pretty strong assumption, right? It didn't take a lot of time to discern. Go in and say, boy, my stomach's been upset. Oh, you probably got cancer in your stomach. We'll schedule your surgery in the morning. Didn't take an x-ray, didn't take a scan, didn't do anything else. If somebody did that, you would think, well, that's wild. Why in the world would a doctor do that? Sometimes we do that. Sometimes we can even do that to ourselves. This is what I'm doing, and I don't even take time to discern it. I'm just trying to I'm just trying to deal with what we might call the symptom, right? And I'm not dealing with the actual heart change that needs to take place even in my own life. You see, many times, and as Christians, we're terrible about this, y'all. I can pick on myself and pick on y'all because I know Christians and I know churches pretty well. Sometimes we focus so much on the external that somebody can have a completely wicked inward life. All of their thoughts, all of their desires, everything about them internally is pursuing that which is wicked, but we focus so much on the external, they think if they can just keep it cleaned up enough on the outside that everything will be okay. We've got to understand, behavior modification is not sanctification or growth in the Lord. Now, if you're being sanctified, if you're growing in the Lord, will your behavior change? Yes, it will. But if all you're doing is just changing your behavior, and you're not addressing that conflict in the heart, you're not killing sin, you're just entertaining it internally, there's no real Christian growth happening. And that kind of external change without heart change, it just won't last. And the most important aspect of this is that God, while God does command us to live in a certain way, God is not pleased if all we do is change our behavior because He doesn't look on outward appearance but on the heart. That's what He says in 1 Samuel 16, 7, But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Do you remember that encounter? He was down there looking at the sons of Jesse, because there was supposed to be a king among the sons of Jesse, and they didn't even bring the run of the litter up. They left him out in the fields doing the things that he would do, and they marched out the oldest son, and man, he said, this is the guy. Samuel said, this is him. This is the one I was looking for. He looks like a king. And God said, no, don't look at his outward appearance. It's about what's inside. It's about what God has done and the change that God has wrought. True transformation in our lives flows from within us when the heart has been transformed. Ezekiel talks about this. Many of you will know this passage. In Ezekiel 36, 26 and 27, he says, I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues. And you will keep My judgments and do them." Did you get that? Once the heart's transformed, the transformation of the heart will cause you to live in the way that pleases God. Doesn't mean we won't mess up, but the general tenor of our lives will be that a transformed heart does the things that a transformed heart does. Just like a wicked heart will ultimately do the things that a wicked heart only does. And so the heart is the source of life. And so you've got to be careful whether it's within yourself or when you're trying to give counsel to someone close to you that you love. Somebody comes to see me when I'm doing counseling and they come in with whatever their issue is and I try to tell them on the front end, I say, You know, maybe they've got a problem with a substance, drugs or alcohol or something like that. And I'll tell them, I'll say, look, my goal for you is not just for you to be sober. There's a lot of people that just get sober in different ways, and praise God that they're not hurting their lives with that anymore. I said, but my goal for you is instead that you would live a life that pleases God a lot more than what you're doing now. And on the way to that bigger goal of pleasing God, we'll deal with the problem of addiction, substances, whatever the case may be. It's about what happens in the heart. Because the heart is the source of life. In the James text, in James 4, 1-3, James is going to expose that fact that this inner war is what produces our outer conflict. In that text, the Bible says, where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. James is writing here to the church and he's telling them the problem with the conflicts that you guys are experiencing in your lives is that your hearts aren't right. Can you think about that in your own life, where you recognize that a conflict that you've entered into was because of the fact that your heart wasn't right? You may say, well, everybody else's heart's the problem, it isn't my problem. Right? It's kind of like that person you run into. and somehow every single person they ever worked for was just a stone-cold idiot. You ever meet that guy? Man, yeah, I've had 17 jobs in the last year and a half, but I'm going to tell you, everybody I worked for, they were so dumb, they were so wrong, they were so inept, and you just kind of want to say to them, maybe it's you. Right? Maybe it's you. Maybe not. Maybe you just got bad luck. But maybe it's you. If our heart is not transformed, There's going to be a constant inner war. And even as Christians, our heart has been transformed. If we pursue those things, and if we allow our desires to be fixated on those things that aren't of God, it will produce problems in our lives. These ungodly desires, they'll lead to things like quarrels and envy and frustration. It happens when we demand what we desire. I want this. What's that? It was commercials. Y'all remember those commercials that come on all the time for a long, long time? J.G. Wentworth, I want my money and I want it now. Y'all remember that? I want my money and I want it now. Well, that's how we are if we're not allowed ourselves to be checked up by the Spirit of God and by the Word of God. We want what we want when we want it. But we've got to recognize the truth in our own lives and in the lives of others. If we're pursuing that which is not of God, there are going to be all manner of issues that are going to flow forward from that. When we allow ourselves to be slaves to our desires, we're going to find out that even though they promise satisfaction, they end up enslaving us. That's what Romans 6.16 tells us. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? Paul says, whatever it is you have given your heart over to, you've given your desires over to, you have allowed to be the pursuit of your life, you're a slave to whatever that is. You can be a slave to your desires or you can be a slave to obedience toward God. And Jesus said that His yoke of obedience is a light one. Through the power of the Spirit of God as we seek to obey Him, you may say, well, it doesn't always feel light. Well, it's light compared to the yoke of judgment. It's light compared to the yoke of darkness and sin. The heart, especially in our interactions with other people, when our heart is not transformed, it'll produce all kinds of conflicts. You see that what I'm trying to get at is this. It's like a it's like a tree. That's a sick back home in Jonesboro on public access TV. I don't know if y'all remember this or not. There used to be this guy. He was the tree doctor. And if you were up late at night and you happened to run across public access TV, you'd watch this guy working on trees. And I don't know how in the world, and people always talked about it. I guess everybody had the same experience. Couldn't sleep scrolling through. I was watching this guy and he's working on this tree. He was working on that tree. He was doing this. And I promise you, it was not enthralling. He'd be like, this tree's sick like this. And he'd spray something, or he'd put spikes in a tree, or he'd do this, or he'd do that. You think, well, OK. But most of the reality of a tree that's sick is most of the time, if you just take a hatchet or a chainsaw and you just go to lopping off limbs, you're not going to do much good. You've got to get down to the roots. You've got to get down within the trunk of the tree. A lot of times, most of the time, that's where the problem's at. And if all we do is we go around in our own lives or if we're advising other people, you know, hey, you just got to quit doing that or you got to start doing this. It's okay to tell people what the right thing to do is, but if we don't dig down and tell them the only way that you're going to do this is if your heart's transformed by the power of the gospel and start with the root. Somebody may be doing certain things, but it's all about their pride, but on the surface it may not look like that. And sometimes we've got to address our pride, we've got to address our ungodly anger, our lusts, our desires, whatever the case may be. The cure. for a heart that is desiring that which is not of God is repentance and submission to God. That's what James tells us later on in chapter 4. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up. The cure isn't just changing the way that we behave, although it is a good thing to stop doing the wrong thing and start doing the right thing. It begins with repenting for whatever sin we have stepped off into and submitting our lives and our hearts to God and saying, God, change me. Do with me what you will. When that person, that friend, that loved one, when they're engaged in all sorts of ungodly behaviors, what do we do? Do we just say, hey, quit that? Well, you can do that. And if they quit, you'll say, well, I did my job. Well, what's the problem? Most of the time, they end up just doing something else. And you say, well, maybe it's not as bad as the first thing. But ultimately, we haven't dealt with the problem, have we? We haven't dealt with the heart of the issue. The reality is this, that the fruit reveals the root. The fruit reveals the root. That's what Luke tells us in Luke 6, 43. Excuse me. Luke 6, 43 through 45 says, For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." I referenced that text earlier. Jesus was speaking and telling them that ultimately the fruit is going to reflect the root. Someone's stepped off into some kind of ungodliness, there is a root that's there within their heart that's got to be dealt with. Trees produce fruit according to their nature. The behavior is the fruit, and it'll ultimately reveal belief and desire, which are the roots. If the fruit's anger, or fear, or lust, or bitterness, the heart is devoted to something other than God. Jesus said, whatever's in the well, as the old-timer said, whatever's down there in the well will come up in the bucket. My great-grandmother had an old well in her yard, and for a few years, once in a while, they'd let us roll the bucket down and pull some water up out of there. But I quit that one time. I did it one time, and you know what would come up in the bucket? Snake. And I was done. You know what I knew? There was snakes down that well, and I don't want a snake. So I'm not pulling the bucket up out of that well anymore. I don't care. They may say, hey, that ain't going to happen again. Well, what I know is, is it could happen, so I'm not going down there. I'm not putting the bucket down that way anymore. That's the reality for us. Whatever's down in the well is going to eventually come up in the bucket. That's the reality in everyone's life. And if we don't know that, we will spend a lifetime in our own lives, or we will spend a lifetime offering counsel to people that is just, hey, quit it. Just stop that. It might help in the short term. And hey, there's a time to just say, hey, quit that and we'll figure it out. But right now, stop doing this and we'll work on the other part. You're about to hurt yourself or somebody else, so quit that and we're going to work on the heart. That's okay sometimes, but we've got to make sure that that's not the sum total of how we're seeking to offer the wisdom of God to someone else. When the Bible commands us to love the Lord your God with all your heart, What it's commanding is total devotion, not just a simple emotion of love. It's a total devotion where our heart is transformed in that inner engine of our life. It's impacting every decision and every affection that we have in our lives. What we have to know about the heart is this. Sin will corrupt the heart and then the heart will flow forward and sin begets sin because it's in our heart and we begin to allow it to flow outward. Sin corrupts the heart. Jeremiah tells us that, doesn't he? The heart's deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I always tell people this anytime I bring that verse up. You ever run into anybody that says, follow your heart, or if you ever tell anybody, go ahead, just follow your heart. You are offering some seriously unbiblical wisdom. Seriously unbiblical wisdom. Because when we say follow your heart, what we're meaning is do what you think is best, do what feels good, do what you think is right. No, that is bad advice. Do what God says is right. And the way you can do that, it isn't if your heart is transformed, but if you begin to just do what's in your heart, your worldly heart, your fleshly heart, and not in the reality of the transformed heart that Christ has given us, you will find yourself in a mess. We talked about it this morning. It's brought up in the Judges all the time. And we look at it and see it all over around us that everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes. And if everybody does what's right in their own eyes, we end up in a mess. Every time we counsel ourselves or we offer counsel and advice to someone else, we must confront the deceitfulness of the heart. There are people that may say to you, well, you know, I just can't help it. I don't know how to do different. They may feel like that. The reality is, is that their heart needs to be dealt with. And if their heart is dealt with and it's transformed, maybe they're not a Christian, maybe they don't know Christ at all. If that happens, then all of a sudden they've gone from being a slave to sin and their will being bound by wickedness to now having a heart that is actually capable of choosing that which is good and right in the eyes of God. Mark says, from within, out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts. Until we see sin as what it is, as heart rebellion, rebellion from the very inward parts of who we are, we're never going to treat it as seriously as we should. It's a sin against a holy and righteous and perfect God. It is a stench in the nostrils of God. And it is our heart that drives that rebellion. But the good news is, even though sin corrupts the heart, the gospel is what renews the heart. I read the Ezekiel passage, you know, God will give you a new heart. It begins with the creation of that new heart that loves righteousness. But even after we know Christ, I know who I'm talking to on a Sunday night in a Baptist church. Prayerfully, I'm talking to people who are believers. But even after we come to know Christ, the believer must constantly yield his heart to be shaped by God. Years ago, and I haven't seen anything from them in a long time, there were these guys that did videos all the time, and they called them the skit guys. You ever seen them, John? They're called the skit guys, and a lot of their stuff was kind of aimed at youth, but they had a video, and it was called something like the statue or something like that. And one of them was standing there, kind of being still, and they were kind of going through this thing, and the other one had a chisel and a hammer, and he was acting like he was chiseling away on the other guy. And he would say sometimes, oh, oh, that hurts. That hurts. And he would say, yeah, sometimes being chiseled more into the image of Christ as we're cutting away those things that aren't of God, sometimes that hurts. But ultimately, it's for our good as we're being made more into the image of Christ. That's what we're talking about, being shaped by God and by God alone. In Proverbs 23, 26, it says, My son, give me your heart and let your eyes observe my ways. Offering biblical counsel to others is the work of helping others bring their hearts under the reign of Christ. We expose sinful desires, we renew right motives according to the truth, and we help strengthen holy affections through the Word of God. Friends, I've said this over and over again since we kind of started this series. If the people of God would get serious about the fact that in every encounter we have with others, that we were seeking to offer biblically rooted counsel to everyone around us in as much as it was possible, it would be transformative in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. I've told you before, it's really easy to just pile on and just offer our best thoughts or our best wisdom. When instead, we might say, you know, I understand what you're saying, but here's what God says. And I believe if you'll try to do this, because that's what God says, you'll be in a lot better shape. Somebody might say, well, I don't think I want to do that, or that sounds hard. You can tell them, well, sometimes it is hard. But God always promises an escape from temptation. He doesn't always promise that it's an easy way out, does He? The promise is that there's a way forward that pleases Him in every situation. The promise is not that it's going to be the easiest path that's set in front of us. In fact, sometimes it's the most difficult path. So what it comes down to is in our own lives and the lives of others, we should diagnose the heart, not just the habit. We have to ask the question of ourselves and of other people What is it that our actions are saying about what we want, what we fear, or what we love? Do you know most of the time what anger is rooted in? Anger is typically rooted in the fact that I have an unmet expectation. I expected that things would go this particular way, and it didn't go that way, and now I'm mad about it. I didn't get what I wanted. You say, well, what if I wanted was the right thing? Well, that's not the way it happened, and you responding in ungodly anger, you don't get an excuse. I said that in Sunday school this morning. Just because somebody sins against you doesn't mean, alright, I get to take a free shot. It's not like when I was a kid, it's like if somebody hits you first, you're allowed to defend yourself in school, so just wait for somebody to hit me. No, it's more like it is today. Everybody that throws a punch is in trouble. If you throw a punch, God says, if you're responding out of anger, if you're responding in sin towards sin, then guess what? You're accountable for your actions. Now don't take that out of here and say, Brother Russell said we can't defend ourselves. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, somebody's sin against you doesn't give you free reign to sin against them. When we do this, when we aim at the heart, We are shepherding the inner person instead of just managing the outward behaviors. Why do we do that? Because we believe the Word of God is powerful. We talked about that in our Hebrew study on Wednesday nights. The Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and joints and marrow. And here it is, and as a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. You want to know where your heart's at? Read the Word of God and God will show you where your heart's at. You ever read the Bible and go, ooh, that hurt? Yeah. That's what it looks like most of the time. The Bible tells us and shows us who we actually are, where our motives actually lie. So we have to diagnose the heart, not just the habit. We have to guard our own heart. Take heed to ourselves, Paul tells Timothy, and to the doctrine. Hey, I'm going to tell you something. You can't help other people if you're ignoring yourself. You're ignoring your own heart, your own wicked desires. You can't give out what you don't possess. Doesn't mean you have to be perfect. Some people get that idea. Well, I can't say nothing to anybody because I got this going on in my life. No. If you're striving against it and working in the Lord to try to deal with the things you're dealing with, then you can. You can tell someone, hey, I'm not perfect. I've got plenty of stuff going on in my life, but let me tell you, here's what I believe God has to say. And here's how God has worked some of this out in my life. You can share those things with other people. We've got to guard our own heart. And as a church, as Christians, We have to learn to see life through the heart lens. As parents, we must disciple our children at the level of desire, not just behavior. Yeah, we gotta correct behavior, but if we deal with desire, then we don't have to correct near as much behavior, do we? If we deal with the heart, then behavior takes care of itself more and more and more. In marriage relationships, we have to deal with motives, not just manners and outward actions. Friends, a heart-aware church becomes a humble, honest church. When we're willing to understand that, yeah, old brother so-and-so, he's got something going on. He's been short. He's been this. He's been that. Brother Russell hasn't even been acting right. I don't know what's going on with him. We won't have to get the personnel committee to talk to Him. Right? What's going on in the heart? What issue really needs to be dealt with? We have to point every heart toward Christ. Why? Because only Christ can cleanse the conscience That's what he says in Hebrews 9.14, How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? You can point people to right action. You can point people to good advice. You can give them a good book. But ultimately, if they don't encounter Christ, their conscience has not been dealt with. That word conscience, I think, is again just another word that's encompassed. by this idea of the heart. Jesus will cleanse the conscience and satisfy the soul. And every conversation that we have that's aimed at these issues of life should end with the hope that is found only in Christ. I'll finish with this. The heart of men and women, boys and girls, That is the very battlefield that we fight almost every conflict on. It's the battlefield of redemption. I wish I'd have come up with this, but boy, do I like it. Christ did not come to adjust behavior, but to reclaim worship. Everything that we put in the place of Christ, every desire that's aimed at something besides Jesus, it's a worship disorder. And we need to readjust our worship and refocus our worship on the only one who is worthy of it. Jesus bore on the cross our sins so that we might have hearts that have been transformed by His truth. And through His Spirit, Jeremiah tells us, He now writes His law within us. Jeremiah 31, 33 says this, but this is the covenant that I will make The house of Israel after those days says, the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. If you're here and you know Christ, the Spirit of God has written the truth of God on your heart. We encounter that when we do something that's outside of the will of God and we feel the weight of conviction. That's how we know that the Word of God has been written on our hearts. We need to have an eye towards discernment in our own lives and in the situations of life surrounding it. Every conversation we have is an opportunity to redirect worship and apply the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So my prayer for you is that you would guard your own heart, that you would help to shepherd the hearts of those around you and to trust more in the God who alone can change hearts. Let's pray. Lord, thank You for Your Word. I pray it would do its work among us. Help us, Lord. Lord, to be able to discern our own hearts through the power of Your Word and Your Spirit, and to be a tool in Your hands, an instrument in Your hands to be used to do the same in the lives of those around us. Lord, let us not lean on our own wisdom and understanding, but on Yours and Your truth. We pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen. And hey, real quick.