Invite you again this evening to open your Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter seven. 2 Samuel chapter seven and we're continuing to look for Christ in the Old Testament because Jesus tells us that he's there. We're looking for him in the progress of redemption and the promises that are fulfilled in him. We're looking for types and themes that point to him and we're considering and comparing and contrasting various ways that God works with his people throughout the scripture. As we looked at this morning, the context in 2 Samuel is God's covenant with David. I want to look this evening particularly at just the first five verses, focusing particularly on verse 3. In the context of the text, What do you do when you're trying to decide what to do, or how do you decide what to do? Is what David went through normative for us as Christians, and if so, are there qualifications to it? Let's hear the word of God, and then consider it together. 2 Samuel 7, verses one through five. Now when the king lived in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, the king said to Nathan the prophet, See now I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent. And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you. But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, go and tell my servant David, thus says the Lord, would you build for me a house to dwell in? We'll stop our reading there and we'll ask God to open our eyes to his word. Please join me in prayer. Father in heaven, would you teach us about our own hearts? Would you teach us about your heart? I want you to teach us about how you guide us in the way that we should go. We pray that we might see Christ even as we consider this text from your word. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. Do what is in your heart. That's what Nathan told King David. Is that what we are to do? It's interesting, just before we look at some of the details, that that exact same phrase is what Jonathan's armor-bearer said to Jonathan as Jonathan said, let us go up against the Philistines. The armor-bearer said, do what is in your heart, for I am with you. To know that your armor bearer is with you is a good thing if you're a warrior, but to know that God is with you is obviously far more significant. This question, do what is in your heart, comes in the context or with a qualifier. Nathan says, for the Lord is with you, but I encourage you to think about it in this context, if the Lord is with you. then do what is in your heart. And we'll look at whether the scripture qualifies that a little bit more or not. But that's what Nathan said to David. Even though David didn't spell out what his desire was, if we were writing the account, just transcribing it, we might put dot, dot, dot after David finished speaking. I dwell in the house of Cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent, dot, dot, dot. We know that there's more to that. David's not just giving Nathan information. And we know by Nathan's response to David that Nathan understood that. He understood that David had a desire to build a house for the Lord. And so he said, do what is in your heart for the Lord is with you. If the Lord is with you, do what is in your heart. And we see that theme of the Lord being with his people in various ways throughout the whole of the scripture. One of the most interesting, to me, places in which we find that is in Genesis 26. Isaac and Abimelech. And it's after Isaac had said that Rebekah was his sister, not his wife. He learned, of course, that from his father. For his father, it was a half-truth and a half-lie, and for Isaac, it was a complete lie. And yet God protected him, and in the context of God's response after that, God showed grace. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. And so it's in that context, immediately after Isaac had tried to give up his wife, for his fear of the people. The Lord appeared to him that night and said, I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Obviously, Isaac was afraid. That's why he said, this beautiful woman is my sister. I don't want you to kill me and take her. And then just a few verses later, Abimelech came back to Isaac. And Isaac said, why have you come to me? You hated me and sent me away from you. And they replied, we have clearly seen how the Lord has been with you. To me that's an amazing act of God's grace, an amazing reminder that he is with his people even when we sin. Never can be an excuse for sin. What should we say then? Should we sin so that grace may abound? May it never be. But this idea that the Lord is with you is something all throughout the scripture. When the angel announced to Mary that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and she would give birth to a child, the announcement of the angel was, greeting favored woman, the Lord is with you. God continues throughout his word to tell us, I am with you, I am with you. Isaiah 4110, do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will help you, I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. What a great thing it is for the people of God to say, the Lord is with me. And of course, in Jesus' final words to his disciples in Matthew's account, he said, surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age. Do what is in your heart if the Lord is with you. And I think that really demands the converse. Do what is in your heart if you are with the Lord. It's a two-way street. You can't have hope that the Lord is with you if you are not with the Lord. And sometimes we want to know, God, are you on our side? And God wants to know, are you on my side? We saw that with Joshua as he met what we think is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. And he saw this man and he said, are you for us or for our enemies? And he said, neither, I am the commander of the Lord of hosts. And the implication is, are you with me? Not am I with you. And so, if the Lord is with you, and if you are with the Lord, both go together. You can't have one without the other. In fact, the prophet says to King Asa in 2 Chronicles verse 15, It's not just Ed that says you can't have one without the other. Ed says it because God says. If the Lord is with you and if you are with the Lord, they go together and you can't have one without the other. He goes on to say, if you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you. If the Lord is with you, if you are with the Lord, then Nathan's instruction to David is good instruction for you as you face decisions in this life. Do what is in your heart, if the Lord is with you, unless. There's another qualifier here that Nathan doesn't give directly, but the text does give us, unless the Lord directs otherwise. We're not given any indication that Nathan's instruction to David, do what is on your heart, for the Lord is with you, was in any way wrong. It's merely that God intervened. And God said, no, what is in David's heart is not my plan and my purpose for David. And so as you and I seek to decide what it is that we should do, when we wonder, should we do what is on our heart, because as best we can tell, the Lord is with us and we are with the Lord, do what is in your heart, unless the Lord directs otherwise. And don't think that you'll have an extra biblical prophetic revelation. A Nathan will not come to you and tell you what the Lord wants you to do, but you might read in the revelation of God what the Lord wants you to do. You might find as you consider decisions that you're wrestling with, God's word directs you very clearly whether you should or shouldn't do what is in your heart You might find that it's through his word preached. It ought not surprise any of us. I sit under preaching as well. Even when I'm up front, I'm sitting under preaching. It ought not surprise us that God directs us by his word preached. Oh, that applies to my life and my circumstances. Thank you, Lord, for that direction. Sometimes it will be through the word of God applied. I suspect that most of us can think of a situation in our life when we've been making plans, we've thought perhaps carefully through what, as best we could tell, we thought we should do, and we were inclined to pursue that, and then maybe it was your pastor, or one of your elders, or another mature Christian who came to you and applied the word of God to your situation, And you came to the conclusion, no, the Lord is directing me otherwise. I'll not do what was on my heart because God is directing me otherwise. I mentioned again this morning our call from you, and we concluded it was from the Lord. As we were wrestling with that call, the process is that you made the call, you signed the call, it got sent to our presbytery, it got sent to my presbytery, and then it got sent to me. Once I had it in hand, I had two weeks to make a decision. And so Nancy and I decided, somewhat arbitrarily, but if you have a decision to make, you have to decide when you're gonna make your decision. So we decided that we would make a decision a week after I had the call in my hand. And one of the things that I did in that week, and I may have shared this before, I don't remember, is I prayed regularly. We were inclined to accept this call, but I prayed regularly for me and for my wife, that if God didn't want us to accept this call, he would change our hearts. I told Nancy regularly, as we talk about this, and I say, what do you think we should do? Not that she had the burden of the decision, but I very much wanted her input. As you think about what do you think we should do in this, don't say I think we should do it because you think I think that I want you to think we should do it. If you don't think we should do it, tell me. If this is not on your heart, I wanna know that. And yet, even after praying that way, even after talking to my wife that way, the Lord did, in fact, not direct us otherwise. And we concluded, as best we could tell, that what was on our heart, that what came to be on our heart, you'll remember when I came out here in that May and June to preach those two Lord's Days, I had no intention of being a candidate. I said to the session, then I said to the congregation, I can't imagine leaving our PTS. And that was a situation where God changed our heart, and then as best we could tell, he directed us to do what was on our heart, because the Lord was with us, and he was in fact directing us toward that decision, not away from that decision. So do what is in your heart if the Lord is with you and the Lord does not direct otherwise. I think we can answer that question in the context of is this a biblical way to make decisions with a qualified yes. I've already qualified it from exactly in our text, but I'd like to qualify it more. And that is in this way. Do what is in your heart as long as your heart is in the right state. I don't mean Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania or Colorado or Indiana, but if your heart is in the right condition. And the scripture talks over and over about the condition of our heart. And so I'd like to encourage you in this context to think about how do you get and keep your heart in the right state. And I've used the phrase prepare your heart. Prepare your heart so that you can do what is on your heart because the Lord is with you unless the Lord directs otherwise. Because if your heart is not prepared, then doing what's on your heart is the same thing as doing what seems right in your own eyes, which is given to us in a rebuking way at the end of Judges. There was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. So if our heart's not in the right state, if our heart is not rightly prepared, then we can't be as confident as we want to be if we can do what is in our heart, because the Lord is with us. So I chose seven ways to prepare your heart. It could be 77. You might not be willing to stay with me that long this evening. Seven ways to prepare your heart. Seven ways to try to make your heart ready before the Lord to do what is on your heart because the Lord is with you unless the Lord directs otherwise. They're not in a particular order, but I would say that the first and the last are significant, not in the way we sometimes think of lists. The first is the most important, and the last is the least important. Not that way, but as bookends, as emphases in the list. But all of them, I believe, are significant and come from the Word of God. So how are you to seek the right state in your heart? How are you to prepare your heart? Let me first encourage you and urge you to love God with all your heart. Love God with all your heart. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength. We see that repeated over and over in the New Testament. Jesus interacts with a rich young ruler. What is it that the scripture commands? Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. If you don't love God with all your heart, then you ought not to be confident in your heart directing you rightly to make decisions. Is your affection close toward God? Jesus quotes from the prophet Isaiah in Matthew 15, where the prophet said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. If you're loving God with all your heart, then your heart will be drawn close to God. It won't be far from God. If you're loving God with all your heart, then you'll be in that state that the psalmist talks about. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Sometimes we might think about that, particularly maybe if we're young in the faith, if we're not as mature in understanding the word of God. So if I really enjoy the Lord, I get whatever I want. Well, there's some truth to that, but you need to understand it this way. When you and I delight ourselves in the Lord, then our desires begin to match his desires. You can think of that in relationships, parents to children, or husbands to wives, or wives to husband. The more you delight in that other person, the more you want what they want. the more you desire what they desire. And the more in the providence and the love of God that we love God, that we delight in God, the more our desires line up with his desires. And the more confident we can be that we can do what is on our heart because the Lord is with us unless the Lord directs us otherwise. So the first is that. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. The second in my list here is hide God's word in your heart. Hide God's word in your heart. You young men in the congregation, I hope you know this, and you young women, and you older men and older women as well, how can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping your word. I have sought you with all my heart. Don't let me wander from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you. Hide God's word in your heart if you want your heart to be prepared to make decisions that please God. We've considered it already in this series on Christ in the Old Testament. That's the temptation of Christ. Matthew gives us an account as well as some of the other gospels. Three times we're told that the devil tempted Jesus with particular matters. And three times Jesus said, it is written. It is written, it is written. The word of God was hidden in his heart and his commitment was to do what the word of God said. If you don't care about what God's word says, then you ought not be very confident that you can do what is in your heart because the Lord is with you. The psalmist says prophetically about Christ, I delight to do your will, my God, and your instruction is deep within me. And so it's a twofold, it's a hiding in our heart that goes along with a delight to do what God's word says. And if you're a Christian, then Christ's heart to delight to do the will of God is yours by faith. It's in Christ that you can do and delight to do the word and the will of God. And when you think about the word of God in your heart, we need to remember that Satan longs to snatch it away. You hear the word preached and you walk away and you think, what did he say? You read the Bible in your private worship or in your family worship and you go to work and you think, what did I read today? Jesus in the parable of the sower tells us that the devil works to snatch away the word that is sown in our hearts. And so be on your guard and ask God to continue to emphasize his word to your heart. Hide God's word in your heart. The third of these ways in which I suggest you can prepare your heart from the scripture is trust in the Lord with all your heart. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. What should I do, God? Trust me, God says, and I will direct your paths. God might direct your paths by you doing what's in your heart because the Lord is with you. Or God might direct your paths by intervening and changing the direction of your heart. But either way, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding. Don't say, well, I can do whatever, the preacher said I can do whatever I wanna do. No, that's not what the preacher said. The preacher said that God says, do what's on your heart if the Lord is with you, unless the Lord directs you otherwise. And as you're trying to do that, and you're working with the Lord's help to prepare your heart, You're trusting in the Lord with all your heart. You're not leaning on your own understanding. So sometimes that means I can't trust what my heart desires to do because I know that's from my understanding and not from trusting the Lord. Jesus told his disciples, don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. He both began and end in our Bibles chapter 14 that way. Don't let your heart be troubled. Don't let it be afraid. Sometimes we face decisions and we can be fearful. We can be afraid, if I make this decision, this is gonna happen, and if I make this decision, that's gonna happen, and sometimes we can be paralyzed by fear and not make a decision at all, and that's not what God asks us to do. Now there may come a time when you have a decision and you wrestle with it honestly before God, you're seeking as best you can to trust the Lord with all your heart, and you just have to wait. You just have to wait on the Lord. Wait for God to give you more clarity in this decision. But as you make decisions, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't be troubled, don't be fearful. Be put in your trust on God. The fourth of the ways that I suggest you and I can prepare our heart in order to know whether to do what is in our heart because the Lord is with us, unless the Lord directs otherwise, is to examine your heart. Examine your heart. Search me, oh God, the psalmist says, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the everlasting way. As you examine your heart before God, ask God to examine your heart. Ask God to show you whether your desires are contrary to his desires. And get into his word, hide it in your heart. All of these go together. They're not isolated. They all go together in preparing our heart One of the ways that Jesus says you can examine your heart is examine where your treasure is. In fact, what he says is where your treasure is, that's where your heart is. And so where's your treasure? Is your treasure the Lord? Is your treasure the kingdom of Christ? Or is your treasure all the other things that tug on your heart that encourage you to seek after them? Now, as we're trying to make decisions, as we're seeking to examine our heart before the Lord, as we're seeking his word, as we're seeking to live consistent with his word, you may come to a decision that you are unable to discern the state of your heart in that particular decision. I'm gonna give you one particular example. In my first pastorate, I might have mentioned it before. Some of you smile when I repeat things, and that's okay. We had a family that we were very interested in. We liked them a lot. We were good friends. Nancy and I were friends with them. They had kids about the age of our kids. And they were just on the fringe of the congregation that I was involved with, the church plan in Evansville, Indiana. And late one Saturday evening, I was notified that their six-year-old son was in the hospital getting his appendix out. And I wrestled with whether my heart was encouraging me to go for the right motives. Because I knew that I could be motivated, that if I went and visited this family in their time of crisis, they would say, wow, what a good pastor Ed Blackwood is. We should be part of the church. We should be a closer, more intimate part of the church that he pastors. And I really wrestled. Lord, I know my heart. I know that I can do things for the wrong motive. Is my desire to go and visit this family because I want to minister to them in their time of need, or is it because I want them to see me? I wrestled with that, I prayed over it, I talked to my wife, and I went to the hospital, not sure whether I was going for the right reason or not, but as sure as I could be that going to minister to them was the right thing to do. I sought to examine my heart, and I couldn't judge the motives I honestly before God wasn't sure why I decided to go, but I decided to go because I believed it was the right thing to do. I think that family appreciated my visit. They never became an integral part of our church. We continued a friendship with them. We homeschooled and they homeschooled. And maybe that was for the best. Because maybe if they had, I would have always continued to wonder, did I do that for the wrong motive, and is that what drew them in? In a sense, they ended up committed to another church, and they were solid Christians. They cared about serving Christ and His church. But I was wrestling with the examination of my own heart, and sometimes we'll be there. And sometimes we just have to do the right thing, even if we're not sure why we're motivated to do it. If it's the wrong thing, then just don't do it. You don't have to wonder. Is there a way that I can somehow convince myself that God wants me to do this? No, if it's the wrong thing, it's the wrong thing. But if you're not sure of your motives, if you're examining your heart, you may have to just take a step and do what you think is right, even if you're not sure of your heart motives. The fifth thing that I suggest here is to forgive your neighbor from your heart. Forgive your neighbor from your heart. As you're trying to prepare your heart so that you can know whether you can do what is in your heart because the Lord is with you, unless the Lord directs you otherwise, Jesus says this in the account of the man he forgave, 10,000 talents, and the man then wouldn't forgive a fellow servant who had a very small debt. And Jesus said this, because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed. That's what, in the account, the master did to the unforgiving servant. And then Jesus said this, so also my heavenly father will do to you, unless every one of you forgives his brother and sister from his heart. If you're trying to wrestle with whether your heart is directing you to make the right decisions, and you recall that you have an unforgiving spirit towards someone, you can be sure that you can't count on your heart right now. Instead, forgive your neighbor from your heart. You cannot harbor an unforgiving heart and trust that heart to make wise decisions. The sixth of these reasons, these ways in which I believe God gives us to prepare our hearts, and again, this is only a partial list from the scripture, is to purify your heart. Purify your heart. James writes this, draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Don't think that you can sort of play with sin in your heart and make wise decisions. Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. And it's a very good thing when the desire to see God is a motivation to purity. I'm not gonna follow that impure way because Jesus said the pure in heart are blessed and they will see God and I want to see God. Jesus said, how do you know if your heart's pure? Listen to what comes out of your mouth. What comes out of the mouth is what's in the heart. You know, sometimes we say, well, I just said that because somebody else did this. No, that's not what Jesus says. Jesus said you said that because you had evil in your heart. If you're sinning with your mouth, don't trust your heart to be making wise decisions. The psalmist, when he was wrestling with seeing the wicked prosper, he said this, did I purify my heart and wash my hands in innocence for nothing? And the answer is no, no. It's never for nothing that you purify your heart and wash your hands. It's never for nothing that you seek to stand in the presence of God with a pure heart. Even if you see other things happening that bother you, that frustrate you, if you see the wicked who have wicked hearts and they prosper, don't think for a minute, well, I'm just going to do what they do and then I get to prosper too. You won't prosper. You won't prosper. Purify your heart. One writer put it this way. If the heart remains pure, the rest of the body will stay on course. And the last of these seven, and again, it's just a list of seven. I picked seven because it's a number of completeness, but it's not a complete list. Remember your Savior's heart. Remember your Savior's heart. What is it that Jesus says in Matthew 11? I think most of you know we're going to study a book with that title, Gentle and Lowly, in the next quarter. Let me just encourage you to consider coming. If you already come, keep coming. And if you don't and you're able, you're not providentially hindered, to take a look with us together at our Savior's heart. And not only remember your Savior's heart, but have the heart of your Savior. Draw near to Christ with all of your heart and expect that you who are united to him by faith will more and more in your life's practice have a heart that is like his. If you have a heart that's proud, if you have a heart that's harsh, your heart's not like your Savior's. And you ought not in that situation to think, I'm gonna be able to trust my heart and do the things that are on my heart because the Lord is not gonna be with you if that is the state of your heart and you have no desire to change that. I'm not saying you have to live a perfect life in order to have a heart that can direct you well. but don't intentionally be engaged with sin. Don't intentionally turn away from the heart of your savior. Draw near to Jesus with all of your heart. Love God because Jesus loved you. Hide God's word in your heart because it is your very life and because Christ is the word of God. Trust Jesus because he is trustworthy. Examine your heart because Jesus has given you a treasure worth committing your heart to. Forgive your neighbor from your heart because God has forgiven you in Christ Jesus. And purify your heart because you wanna see your Savior. I believe that this text in 2 Samuel 7, directs us when faced with decisions in life, if your heart is with your Savior, do what is in your heart. If your heart is with your Savior, do what is in your heart. Pray with me. Our Father in heaven, give us more and more in increasing measure the heart of Christ. Give us more and more in increasing measure a love for you. And God, would you direct us in the way that we should go as we trust you because you are trustworthy. Hear our prayers and guide us through our great shepherd, the Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray.