Episode Transcript
Proverbs 14 verse 30.
The title of the message tonight is A Sound Heart.
And these three words, a sound heart, they have a whole lot of doctrine in them.
So we're going to spend a little time with them before we move on.
And the word heart, just like the the heart of of uh of a fruit or something, the word heart in Hebrew it has the idea of that innermost or that centermost part. of something.
So when we think of the heart of man, we think of the inner man.
A lot of people get confused when they think of the heart versus the mind.
But the inner man is what thinks and contemplates and makes decisions.
And it's the same as the heart.
And so when you're looking at the heart here, we're looking at the inner man. and uh who we are, our thoughts, our intentions.
And someone said, oh no, a heart's much different than that.
No, it's the a person's thoughts, a person's intentions Someone say, well, maybe I believe and I want to be saved and I want to believe, but maybe I don't do so with my heart.
I just do so with my mind.
Again, it's the inner man, it's the heart's, it's sorry, it's the thought, and it's your intent.
And uh Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the, listen now, thoughts and intents of what?
The mind?
No, the heart.
It's the heart that thinks.
It's the heart that desires.
It's the heart that believes.
And so it's all the same.
Whatever you're thinking, you're thinking in your heart.
Whatever you're intending, you're intending with your heart.
It's all the same.
It's the inner man.
So if our heart's broken, then our thoughts and intentions are going to be broken too.
They're going to be troubling.
They're going to be unrighteous.
The word sound here literally means curative, something that cures, something that heals that which is broken.
And we are broken people, are we not?
Broken by the fall.
A heart that is sound is a heart that has been mended.
A heart that's been made whole, that's peaceful and at rest.
Solomon would have had no need to have described a sound heart.
If it were not for us also having broken hearts, right?
He would have just said a heart, but he didn't.
He clarified it as a sound heart because sadly most people have broken hearts.
In the beginning, God made everything good, made everything taube.
And that means everything was sound.
Nothing was broken.
Nothing was unsound until sin broke everything.
And that's why we need the gospel.
The gospel is the cure.
It's that which stitches back up that broken heart, stitches back up. the thoughts and the intents of man.
If you remember in Genesis 6, when God was about to destroy the earth with a flood.
The thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.
What does that mean?
They didn't have sound hearts.
There were broken hearts.
It's the gospel that fixes that unsound heart.
The gospel mends everything that sin broke.
So it can be sound again, whether it's creation, our thoughts, our intents, whatever it is, the gospel stitches it all back up and heals it. including the heart of man.
But the soundness of our heart is incrementally restored by the gospel.
We're not saved and then suddenly we just have sound hearts and we have no more bad thoughts and no more bad intentions.
It doesn't work that way.
We're incrementally stitched up by the gospel. as we grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Before I believed the gospel, my heart was troubled.
But now that I know the truth of what Jesus did for me and what he's going to do when he comes again, there's great peace in my heart concerning many things.
My co-workers and I were talking about death last week, and they thank God all expressed that they were at peace with dying.
Because they knew where they were going to go when they died because they're believers.
But there's still a lot of things.
For our hearts to be troubled about other than that.
We may all raise our hand and say, praise God, we know where we're going when we die.
Hope you all can.
But we don't realize that there's a lot of other parts of our heart that are still unmended.
Remember when Jesus talked to Martha?
Martha, Martha, thou art troubled about many things.
Her heart was broken in many ways.
Her heart still had many, many places that needed to be mended by the grace of God.
And most of the stress that we're under is not the result of the circumstances that we're in.
It's the result of our broken hearts.
Which must be mended by God's grace as we grow in that grace and knowledge of Christ.
There is a dear sweet lady that That uh prayed for me and she was uh about my grandmother's age that I knew and loved very much years ago.
And uh She uh would get upset about things pretty easy.
And there were some missionaries.
Do y'all remember?
Um, do y'all remember What was his name, Tammy?
What's that missionary's name that Elliot's?
Yeah, remember, um not Sam Elliott.
What was his name?
Elliot.
Elizabeth Elliott's husband.
Jim Lee Elliot.
Jim Elliott.
Yeah, I started to say Sam Elliott.
He was an actor.
Wrong, wrong, wrong Elliot.
But Jim Elliott.
After he was murdered by the natives, a couple of missionaries that went in to evangelize those natives in anyway.
After they killed the first missionaries that went in, we were having supper with two of those missionaries that went back into that tribe.
And they were older.
And boy, they had lived in about every circumstance you could live in, going over to evangelize unreached tribal people.
So they um they had learned to be thankful for things.
And they were having supper with us one night at uh Miss Hagan's house.
And sweet Miss Hagin, she has a healed heart now.
She's in heaven.
And she just started complaining about some stuff.
And wanting them to get right in there with her and sympathize for.
And that old missionary man, he just says, Catherine, you complain too much.
And just kept eating his food.
And she goes, what?
He said, he wasn't smiling.
He was very serious.
He said, you complain too much.
And uh I thought, well, I will never complain around them.
Because I'm going to get it too.
And uh, but you know, their heart had been mended in a lot of ways.
They had learned to be thankful for things through hardship.
And every godly truth that we learn, whether through our faith and believing God's Word or through our experience, trying God's word in our daily lives, every godly truth we learn mends a place in our heart That was once torn by the devil's lies.
Everyone.
Now Solomon said, a sound heart, look in your text, is the life of the flesh.
The life of the flesh.
Now, literally, a sound heart is the life of the flesh because the heart pumps blood.
And God said the life of the flesh is where?
It's in the blood.
So literally, a sound heart is the life of the flesh.
A good, functioning, pumping heart is the literal life of the flesh.
And we'll get to that here in just a moment.
But we're looking at the inner man here more than anything else.
You see, the Proverbs, the Proverbs can help your physical heart.
But the Proverbs were written primarily for your spiritual heart, your mental, spiritual, that inner man.
And so that inner man is the life of the flesh, because a heart that's resting on God's word, that's stayed on God's truth, is a heart that truly lives.
Solomon said a sound heart is the life of the flesh, but the life we live in the flesh is lived by faith in God's Word.
You see?
Say Brother Richard, he can't be talking about the heart.
He's talking about the flesh.
He can't just be talking about the inner man.
He's got to be talking about the pump that's pumping.
No The life we live in the flesh, we live by faith in God's Word.
Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, Paul said, I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, in the life which I'll now live in the flesh.
I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
A sound heart seeks the will of the Father.
How do we do the Father's will?
Well, we work it out in our flesh, in our members of our body Starts with the heart and it works out through the members of our body.
And so a sound heart seeks the will of God the Father, allowing us to present our bodies to Him as living sacrifices.
A sound heart allows us to walk by faith and not by sight while we're having to walk in this fallen flesh.
A sound heart allows us to love others with the love that Christ has for us. apart from a regenerated heart, one that believes in Christ as one Savior.
The Bible says we are dead in trespasses and sins, even while our flesh still lives.
1 Timothy 5 verse 6 says, But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.
Isn't that something?
So if a person is living in pleasure, meaning the lust of their flesh, whatever the desires, whatever pleases their flesh.
If they're living according to the pleasure of their flesh, the lust of their members, rather than the word of God, even though their flesh is alive, they are yet dead while they live.
Can you see then why a sound heart becomes the life of the flesh?
Without a sound heart, a sound mind, mended back together from Adam's fall through the soundness of the gospel There is no life even though you live.
That's just the way the scripture says.
And it's so, so true.
I think back, and I was thinking back over my life this week.
Thinking back before I became a believer and how my life was busy I was active.
In many ways I was happy.
But when I look back over it, I just think how dead that was.
Because I was separated from God and I was not living out the purpose for which I was created.
I was breathing air doing what seemed to be the thing to do, but not doing what I was created to do.
And I thank God I truly live now.
The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.
And a sound heart, therefore, is the life of the flesh, but from a purely physical standpoint, I told you we'd get to that.
A sound heart or a sound mind It supports a sound body.
What we think directly affects how we feel Have you ever gotten nervous about something?
And it affects your gut, anybody?
Isn't that something?
When you're nervous, that's an unsound mind.
That's an unsound heart.
The Bible says he will keep thee at perfect peace, his mind is stayed on thee.
So if our mind is stayed on God, then we have perfect soundness in our heart.
So Brother Richard, I don't always have perfect, I'm not always at perfect peace.
Well, that's because you don't always have a sound heart But if your mind is stayed on him in his word Then your heart will be at rest.
You'll have a sound heart.
And then if you have a sound heart and your heart's not troubled, then your stomach's not upset because of it.
Some people, when they're troubled in their mental heart, it makes them troubled in their physical heart.
A lot of people have had heart attacks because they were under stress.
There was a highway patrol trooper, Brother Shepherd remembers.
He and his partner were out one night and he watched his partner get hit by a truck and his partner was killed.
You know what he did?
He then had a heart attack and died too.
Remember that, Brother Shepherd?
Yeah.
So the the the from a from a physical standpoint, a a sound heart supports a sound body what we think, what we experience, how it affects our our thinking, it affects how we feel, and it affects, has a direct effect on our health, our attitude does, our outlook does.
Proverbs 17, 22 says, a merry heart doeth good like a what?
Medicine.
But a broken spirit, same as a broken heart, drieth the bones.
Now the bones, of course, being dry.
We got our marrow in our bones, right?
So the marrow of the bone also speaks of the health of the body.
So the Bible here is very clear that the state, the condition of our thinking The condition of our mind, our inner person, directly affects our physical health.
A merry heart.
A heart that's filled with joy.
A heart that can say, we thank you, Lord, in spite of what we're going through.
I was watching a video this morning.
There's a pastor I'm friends with on Facebook, and they built a uh a Bitcoin mining, that AI mining, data mining center. close to his house.
He has some beautiful land.
He's back off the road, surrounded by trees.
I mean he he is this man when he was young, he he did a great job. building his homestead.
It's it's beautiful.
And uh now there's an AI mining center close to him.
And about 5. 30 in the morning He was sleeping and they kicked those cooling fans on and fired up at mining center.
He stepped, it woke him up, stepped out on his porch, and he just sitting there with his phone letting you hear what he hears.
He says it goes right through the walls into your room.
Not a thing he can do about it.
Now here he is old.
And uh miserable.
And he says, but I need to quit complaining.
He said, I thank the Lord for what we've got.
And I thought, you know, who else can do that?
But someone who sees that mining center with an eternal perspective in the heart Someone who can look beyond the next 15 years for him, maybe, at his age.
And look to the next thousands of years.
Once that mining center is long gone.
Thank God we won't need any artificial intelligence when Jesus comes.
Man will once again have all the intelligence he needs.
But a sound heart allows our bodies to relax.
It allows them to heal Adrian Rogers did something once, and it taught me a lot.
I want us to do it together, can we?
I want you to take your fist and start clenching them just as tight as you can right now.
Don't stop.
Just keep clinching them as tight as you can Boy, isn't that great?
That's what our don't stop now.
That's what our bodies do.
Whenever our insides are all tensed up, our bodies are just like this.
Is it uncomfortable yet to anybody?
Is it getting uncomfortable, Abigail?
Since we have older folks in here with arthritis, we won't take you too far into it.
But let go now.
Ah, doesn't that feel better?
Just to let it go.
And that's what we have to do with things in our life too.
You just gotta let them go.
And uh sometimes my wife will tell you when she gets all worked up, and that's what women's supposed to do.
They're supposed to go to their husbands and get all worked up.
When things bother them.
And sometimes when she gets all worked up about things, I'll say, Tammy, there's not a thing in the world we can do about it.
You can let go if you want to, Jonathan.
No pain, no gain.
You keep it up.
That's fine.
But I'll say, sweetheart, there's not a thing we can do about it.
Not one single thing.
We'll have to let that work itself out.
People will have to deal with that on their own.
They'll have to make their own decisions.
And that's between them and God.
Or this circumstance is up to God or whatever the problem is.
And I'll say sometimes quite frankly, I don't care.
And that sounds ugly to say you don't care But you know what?
The Bible tells us not to care.
Not to be concerned.
And there's some things we just can't wait our mind down with.
I'm convinced.
At this day and age, I'm convinced that back in um 1800s, 1900s.
I mean I grew up in the 70s, and uh if you got broke down, you just gotta walk You walked to a phone.
There was no phone in your vehicle.
And uh you had news though.
You had news on TV That's about it.
TV and radio, word of mouth.
Before then Back in the 1800s, early 1900s, you didn't have news on TV.
Early, early enough 1900s, a lot of people didn't have anything on radio.
You heard everything by word of mouth or printed page, if you're lucky.
Why do I say all that?
It's because for the vast majority of time. that humans have existed here on this earth, except for just a what a couple centuries, the vast majority of time.
People didn't hear much bad news, except for what was immediately around them.
What affected them directly.
You heard about what happened in your town, not the town over there.
At least not immediately.
It may take a little while for it to get to you, like it did with Rahab We've heard of thee, but it took a while.
But back then, if it wasn't directly affecting them, they didn't know about it.
Do you know what we do now?
And I'm telling you, this is not good.
It's not good.
Now we have television, so now I get to know on the news all the bad stuff going on.
And then now we have social media and text messages.
And so now, and I'm telling you, it's not smart.
It's not wise.
In fact, I think it's sinful.
And I've tried to get people to do this over the years and I've been unsuccessful at it, but I want to take another stab at it If you get on Facebook and ask me to pray for somebody, you know, I see people on Facebook all the time.
Pray for so-and-so.
Pray for this.
Pray for that.
This person's got this.
This person's got that.
If you come here and you raise your hand, I will pray for whoever you ask me to pray for.
But a lot of times I think, why are we praying for these people?
Why do I need to know that?
Why?
I really do.
Because we know we end up For example, pray for the family of so-and-so they just lost their loved one, someone will say on Facebook, who lives in another state.
Or pray for me, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
And we get, we're inundated with, I just found out I had cancer.
This person just died.
This person just died over here.
This person just found this out.
This person's going in for surgery.
We're inundated with it.
And let me explain.
This may come as a shock if Brother Shepherd prays for me And God hears his prayer.
Is God going to sit around and go?
Well, we got a few more hundred we need to pray for Richard before we go ahead and answer this one.
We haven't quite hit the limit yet.
Is that what God does?
Does he say, but that's the way people think?
Put so-and-so on your prayer request at your church.
We don't know these people.
Why does our church need to pray?
for some common illness at somebody in another church, in another town that we don't even know.
Why isn't it sufficient that their church prays?
Why isn't it sufficient that their family and their friends that know them pray?
Why do we have to be so bombarded with bad news all the time?
It gets habitual.
I mean it gets absolutely habitual.
If I ask prayer for someone directly connected to me, That makes sense to me.
If I ask prayer for someone not directly connected to me, that none of us know that doesn't make sense to me.
Again, if you ask me to pray for someone and kid, I kid you not, if I scroll through Facebook and someone asks for prayer, I stop right then and I pray for them.
I do.
I'm not going to turn someone down who asks for prayer.
At the same time, I cannot help but realize that I am forced by those requests to continually set my mind on bad news after bad news after bad news after bad news.
And I just don't think it's healthy.
And that's how come I don't go around sharing a bunch of prayer requests.
I got this, I have the same, know the same people dying just like y'all do It's not that I go around like this in life.
I know, just like y'all do.
But I don't get up and say, pray for this, pray for this, pray for this, pray for this.
Because we really need to have a mind like back in the day when we only knew bad things that directly impacted us.
In that way, our mind can have some relief to focus on the merry things in life that does good like a medicine.
And I think if we were to change our habits like that, because there's something, it's like, to me, bad news is like gossip.
It's addictive.
Oh, did you hear about the so-and-so that got shot up there in Dallas?
Oh, did you hear about that carjacking over here?
Oh, did you hear about this over here?
Why do I need to know about that?
What am I going to do about it?
I can't fix it.
Me knowing it's not going to help anything.
What a person, when they say that, is really saying is, hey Sister Elizabeth, I don't know what you're thinking of right now, but I want you to think about someone getting shot and killed.
Is that okay?
Would you do that, please?
I mean, when I say you hear about so-and-so getting shot and killed in Dallas?
That's really what I'm doing.
Would you please think about someone getting shot and killed in Dallas right now?
Just stop what you're doing.
Think about that just for a little bit, please.
Would you think about someone dying with cancer right now?
They're really bad.
I mean, seriously, and then that's really what we're doing.
And so if we'll get in a habit. of trying to help people have a sound heart.
Think before you speak.
Think before you think Does this help me?
And does this help my brethren and my family?
to have a sound heart.
Because that heart is the life of their flesh.
That's the life of my flesh Now, let's move on as we close, but envy the rottenness of the bones.
Envy the rottenness of the bones.
The most beautiful thing about a sound heart is its ability to love.
Would you agree?
When the gospel heals a broken heart, it enables that heart to love because it realizes it has first been loved by God.
And then we love God because He first loved us.
And then we love our brethren because we've been loved by God.
And so a sound heart has the ability. to exercise agape love.
But an unsound heart, it can't do that.
An unsound heart on account of Jesus can't love its neighbors as itself.
And so uh uh we're looking at envy here.
Do you know what that word envy means?
It's the word that means zealous, Z-E-A-L-O-U-S, zealous.
I think I print, is that correct?
Zealous.
Zeal.
When someone is zealous, they would be very eager very passionate about doing something.
The Bible speaks about the zeal of the Lord.
The Lord's zealous.
He's zealous about righteousness, about judgment, about holy things.
And the Bible speaks about people being zealous toward God.
When you think of the word envy, Think of zealousness because that's what it means.
Except it's zealous in the wrong direction.
So if I'm zealous toward godly things, I'm passionate to fulfill the will of God.
Someone who is passionate to fulfill the will of God can only exercise that passion if they have a sound heart.
Make sense?
I have a sound heart, because I walk by faith, not by sight.
My heart therefore is sound, walking according to his word.
And as I'm zealous, I do so with that sound heart.
Envy, on the other hand, is this word that means zealous, but in a bad sense.
And so an unsound heart has that same passion, that same zeal, but against the Word of God, running opposite of what God's Word says.
If love is the greatest passion I can have.
Then envy is the opposite of that or hate.
But when you envy someone What are you doing?
You're not loving that person.
You're not wanting, you're actually upset.
When God blesses them, it actually bothers you.
When you see someone doing well in life, you begin to envy, in other words, it upsets you.
And so envy, that zealousness in the wrong direction, it begins to try to do what it can to stop God's blessing in someone's life.
I believe that's one of the reasons that the devil wants to steal, kill, and destroy.
He hates seeing God's blessing.
He can't love.
His heart's not sound.
There's a man I used to work with, and he enjoyed nice vehicles.
And he said whenever he got a new vehicle, there's a particular person at work that would always get upset.
So it bothers that person when they when I get a nice vehicle.
They can't just be happy for me.
Envy is a symptom of an unsound heart because it can't rejoice when others prosper.
It grieves when others prosper.
There are people who will actually try to sabotage another person's job if if they can get away with it because they don't want them to have it.
Now we'll learn about that Sunday.
You're going to see the king was going to try to promote Daniel, and someone moved with envy, tried to sabotage it.
I believe with all my heart that there are even some parents who envy their children's success because their kids have managed to accomplish Something that they couldn't in life.
Y'all ever seen parents like that?
It's really unnatural because most parents.
If their kids do better than them, they'll think, thank God, they're not having to go through what I went through.
Thank God I'm not having to worry about them having to eat or pay the bills.
When I see my kids prosper, I say, thank God.
I'm not having to pay that for them.
No, but thank God they're able to do that.
And um, but there are.
And uh I've had neighbors on both sides of me sell their homes in the past so they could go get nicer, bigger homes in a better place.
You know what?
Good for them.
They worked hard for that.
Good for them.
I don't need to envy them because they have something nicer than me.
I just need to be content with what the Lord has given me.
Because I'm not going to be needing it very long.
I told you about my grandmother before on my dad's side.
She, the whole time I can remember at the age of my memory, she never owned a home.
She rented an older apartment.
I have watched her take pots out when it rained and set it to catch the drips.
A lot of y'all have been in houses like that before as well.
And I never once heard that woman complain about it.
Never once heard her complain.
She was happy to see others succeed.
She cared about people.
And somehow she just managed to not get caught up in the stress of life.
She didn't worry about what she didn't have or what somebody else had.
She just loved the Lord and loved her neighbor.
And you know what?
That makes for some pretty good living.
It helps make a merry heart.
It helps keep the heart sound when we keep our mind on the good word of God and off the bad news of men.
And we'll leave it there tonight.
Father, thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you, Father, how time and time again your word addresses these issues with us.
And tonight your Holy Spirit is calling our attention to the needfulness of us having a sound heart.
I believe every adult in here, Father, knows all too well the effects of having a broken one.
And Father, I pray that you'll help us develop godly, wise, healthy habits for our thought life.
And ask these things in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.
