This morning we turn to the first book of Kings in chapter 8. 1 Kings chapter 8. And the text is found in verse 61. 1 Kings 8 and verse 61. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments as at this day. Solomon, one of the greatest of the Old Testament kings, began to reign in Israel in the year 970 BC, ending his reign in the year 930 BC. His crowning achievement was the building of God's temple at Jerusalem, which when finished was solemnly dedicated to the Lord. In this chapter, the eighth of one king's describes for us what took place in the service of dedication. First of all, in verses 1 to 13, there was the installation of the Ark, awaiting the coming of Jehovah, the Great King, who would henceforth be seated upon it in the midst of his people. Secondly, there was Solomon's address to the congregation in which he reminded them of God's promise to David and its wonderful fulfilment, stressing that the temple was God's house. where he would dwell. Verses 14 to 21. Thirdly, the king engaged in solemn prayer, in which he offered praise to Israel's incomparable God, requesting him to continue his favor and asking that God's eyes may ever be focused on this place and his ears ever tuned to Israel's prayers. The rest of the prayers in this section from 22 right through to 53 are such as might be offered in various circumstances and situations and Solomon asks that when such prayers are presented to God Most High, he would hear and he would forgive and he would answer those prayers. That prayer of 22 to 53 and following that Solomon rose from prayer and he turned to the people and he blessed them, exhorting them to right response and right conduct. And that is where we pick it up at verse 61. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God. to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments as at this day. He's calling upon them to show devotion and commitment to the Lord their God. And he expresses his desire and his hope in these words. Now Solomon in that verse, verse 61, stresses two things, as you will observe. The first is the inner life. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God. And the second is the outer life, to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments as at this day. And this is true religion, to mind the affairs of the heart and to mind also the conduct of the life. I want to take those two headings and speak to you this morning on the necessity of preserving the inner life First of all, the inner life. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God. The heart, of course, is another word for the soul. And it refers to what scripture calls the inner man. Sometimes it is used of the mind as when Paul describing the condition of the heathen in Romans 1.21 says, their foolish heart was darkened. Now their heart means specifically the mind or the understanding, part of the soul. Then we have in Matthew 22, our Lord's great summary of the law, that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. And there the emphasis is not upon the mind, but upon the affections, that which desires God and that which delights in God. And sometimes it's used of the will, as in Deuteronomy 11, 13. Hearken diligently to what I command you this day, to love the Lord your God and to serve him, that is to resolve to do his will with all your heart. So heart can be used in a narrow and specific way for an aspect of the soul. But often in scripture, it simply means the soul itself. Mind, heart, will, the whole inner person. Now as in nature the health of the body depends upon the heart, so in grace the health of our outer man depends upon the health of the inner. Let your heart be perfect with the Lord your God. I want to make several observations here and the first is that God desires and he requires the heart. So often in Scripture, we read that it is the heart that God seeks above everything else. Remember in the book of Proverbs, God is heard saying, my son, give me thine heart. In the fifth book of Moses, We read these words in chapter five and verse 29 that God says, oh, that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep my commandments always. Since this is what God clearly wants, The believer's greatest sacrifice is to yield his heart to God. Then again, we ask ourselves why it is that God wants the heart. And the answer to that is that he's not satisfied with anything else. What else might that be? Well, he's not satisfied with mere profession to the effect that someone is a Christian. Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8 made a profession. He said he believed and he was baptized on that basis. But when Peter and John came down from Jerusalem, they perceived that that's all that it was. Outward profession. And Peter says to this man, I perceive that thine heart is not right. Nor is God satisfied with conformity, that is outward conformity to his law, to his word. You remember Isaiah's complaint to the people in Isaiah 29 and verse 13. This people draw near me with their mouth and with their lips to honor me, but they have removed their heart far from me. Isaiah 29, 13. It's not therefore surprising that scripture time and again says that whereas man looketh on the outward appearance, God looks upon the heart as if he's not taken up with the superficial. with that which constitutes the veneer of the believer's life, but he looks for the heart. And the question he asks is, is thine heart right? Why the heart? Well, because The heart has been called the fountain of life. The spring from which all our actions flow. Remember Solomon's words in Proverbs 4.23. Keep thine heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. It is the fountain. And what we think and what we say and what we do proceed from the heart. Out of it are the outgoings of life. The Lord Jesus taught the same thing, didn't he, when he said, out of the heart precede all manner of things. They may be good things, they may be evil things, but it all stems from the heart. And for this reason, there must be a turning to the Lord And the prayer of David, as in Psalm 51, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me. Whatever else I do, if the fountain be foul, in my life. So I want a purging, a purifying of the fountain's waters. And I want a spirit within me which is adjusted to God and to his revealed will. And the answer to that prayer will not be something which is vacillating and alternating. The people in Antioch were exhorted to cleave unto the Lord with all their heart. So the heart must not be yielded to God to be made anew in any fickle sense or any feigned sense. But we must with purpose of heart, when we are converted, resolve that this heart shall be for God, as God shall be for this heart. It will then become God's throne. God by His Spirit The apostles' prayer for the Ephesians in Ephesians 3 is this, that Christ may dwell in your hearts. No other there, not self, but God. Not the world and its pleasure, With that heart that is yielded and desirous of his presence, the Lord will come and he promises to dwell with the true heart. You will recall the words of Isaiah 66. where God says that the earth is his footstool. And in 57 he says, he will dwell with him that is of a lowly and contrite heart. To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at my word. Isaiah 66 and verse 2. It is essential that the Lord has the heart, access to it, and control of it. For we cannot give him the heart and then determine what we please, what we desire. The hard fact of the matter is that if God does not have the whole of our hearts, Satan will take it. We read of Judas, whose heart was never holy for the Lord, that Satan entered his heart. 22 in verse 3. We read of Annas in Acts chapter 5, and Peter's words to him, so searching, so severe. Acts 5, 3. Why hath Satan filled thine heart." To be God's in any meaningful sense, it must be that everything within us is for Him. Paul could speak in Acts 27 of God whose I am and whom I serve. Now, my friends, there's reason for this. There's creatorial reason for this because Genesis 2 tells us that God made the first man of the dust of the ground and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives. and man became a living soul. He has a creatorial right because he made us and not we ourselves. But he also has a redemptive right. Because in 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 20, Paul writes, you're bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. What has he bought? Not only our bodies to be delivered from death at the resurrection of the just, but our spirits. That all through our earthly lives, we may seek him and love him, and submit ourselves to him, and serve him, and trust him. He has a redemptive right to our hearts. And those hearts are something we all can give. He doesn't ask, as in the reading this morning, for rivers of oil and a thousand realms. He simply says, give me that heart. And that is the sacrifice with which God is well pleased. And in the light of these things we are moved to say, oh, for a heart for God. Everything goes wrong when that prayer is neither uttered nor answered. If your heart is your own, you'll live an entirely selfish life, not caring who you hurt, what pain you inflict, what good you break and shatter. If you keep your heart, you will destroy your lives. But if you lose your heart, as Jesus said, and give your heart to God, you will save your life. For that is the best way to be with the heart for God. Now Solomon says, you let your heart therefore be perfect. You may stumble at that and say, but that's an impossibility. Well, there are two kinds of perfection in God's word. There is what we call absolute perfection, such as is known after death. And the Bible speaks of the spirits of just men in heaven made As it speaks of the Lord presenting his people before the Father's throne at last in Jude 24. Without fault. Without blemish. Perfect. After death, the soul will be made perfect. At the resurrection, soul and body too. shall be presented perfect. That is one perfection of which the Bible speaks, but there is another which theologians describe as the perfection of grace. And what does that mean? It means such purity and holiness of heart as sinners may attain to in this life. When God said to Abraham in Genesis 17.1, walk before me and be thou perfect. There is a marginal reading which accurately translates and literally translates the Hebrew word, be thou perfect or be thou upright and sincere. So there must be no hypocrisy when we say my heart is for God. Be thou sincere about that. The heart to be perfect must not only be sincere, but it must also be united. There is a verse in the prophecy of Hosea and chapter 10, where it says, their heart is divided. It's an awful thing to have a divided heart. To have a little bit of God and religion, but a little bit of sin and indulgence. That is why David in Psalm 86 says, unite my heart to fear thy name. A perfect heart is a heart sincere and a heart united and a heart that will be faithful to the very end. We read in the scripture of one man. Let me turn to what the Bible says of him. In 2 Kings chapter 20 in verse 3, it's good King Hezekiah. I beseech thee, O Lord, remember how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart. and have done that which is good in thy sight." He was looking back, he was dying, he was looking back upon the whole of his life and he said, I have lived with a perfect heart. Meaning he had been faithful with God up to that hour. Now the heart cannot be perfectly perfect. But it can be true. And it can be united. And it can be faithful to the end. To the Lord your God. And that is what Solomon refers to, let your heart therefore be perfect. with the Lord your God. Maybe in this past year, we have been tempted and maybe we have slipped. This morning, God calls us to examine our hearts and try our reign. And has the world, its pleasure, its sin encroached upon God's domain? Who sits upon the throne of your heart today? And then just a word about the outer life. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments. There are two things belonging to the outer life which is stressed here. Walking in his statutes. It means that as far as outward behavior and conduct is concerned, we are under God's directions, not the directions of a lusting heart, a sinning heart. It was to prevent the dominant of such desires that we enthroned the Lord there, that he might put down these rebels and slay these usurpers. God is the sovereign upon my heart. Therefore, in life, I will heed his directives and obey his counsels. Now we don't do that in any proud, independent way. We can't walk in his statutes without grace. without the Lord, because he says, without me, he can do nothing. So every day we commit ourselves to him as we take this narrow way of obedience to God, reliant upon his support and his succor. I go, the psalmist says, of the strength of the Lord my God. But although we're under God's direction and dependent upon him to keep us close to that direction, what results is essentially practical. It is living the life. It is walking steadfastly, diligently, consistently in his statutes. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God in his statutes. Friends, if you do not have practical Christianity that is lived out in holiness, in righteousness, I fear you have nothing. It should affect your whole walk. And the second expression is keeping his commandments. Much the same, not quite though. Keeping his commandments must involve first of all keeping them in the sense of receiving them and believing this is God's will for my life. And I cannot dictate a better way, neither can the world present me with another option. This is the way to live. You receive them and then You are most careful about them. Keep in the sense of tenderly guard them and mind them. Like an infinitely precious jewel, keep looking at it, adjusting your life. recalling what God has said, keeping his commandments. And the third thought is this, holding fast to it. As the role of your life, as the guidance of your God, Hold fast the form of sound words. Hold fast that which thou hast. And at a time when political winds and religious winds are seeking to move us away from God's word and God's will, Hold it tight. Let no man wrench the Bible from your hands. Keep his commandments. For how long, you say? For always, I answer. To the end of your earthly life. Keep walking. Take fast hold and keep until you arrive in heaven. I put you on self-reflection this morning. as I put myself on it. Is your heart right? Is it God's? Is your life right? Is it godly? Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments as at this day and to those who keep them. there is great reward. Amen.