The Human Heart
Old Paths Bible Ministries © 2007 Richard St.James
The Following From: Messages From The Messenger Sluice Box
Adventures
The Heart Is Unknowable
Let's search out this matter of the heart. In Proverbs 4:23, God gives us this truth. "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." In Judges chapter five in the song of Deborah and Barak, there are these references to the heart: "there were great thoughts of heart," [vs. 15b] and "there were great searching of heart" [vs. 16], which proves one thing! The heart is a pretty hard thing to figure out. If you doubt the veracity of this, read Jeremiah 17:9-10.
The BOOK will straighten you and I out! "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it." Now... BELIEVE IT! Certainly the BOOK shows that no man can know the heart ... even his own heart. It is only God that knows the heart. "I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."
It is God who knows and understands its inner workings. "Man's goings are of the LORD; how can a man understand his own way?" [Proverbs 20:24] [I am inditing in a good matter].
The Heart Is A Highway
The heart is the highway for many things! Consider this! It is "with the heart" that man believes the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the saving of his own soul. "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." [Romans 10:10] Wow! The heart is deceitful, yet it is with the heart that he believes ... what God says in His Book. Oh, how can this be? We learn in I Corinthians 2:9 that the things of God will not enter into the old unregenerate heart of man. He needs a "new heart" [Ezekiel 18:31] or "another heart" [I Samuel 10:9] and God can [and does] give you and I a new heart or another heart.
Why does God in the Bible put so much emphasis on the heart? It is for this reason, "the Lord looketh on the heart" [I Samuel 16:7]. God in His judgment wants to perform a righteous judgment, "But, O Lord of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the heart---.” [Jeremiah 11:20] In contrast, and for reasons only found in GOD’s infinite MERCY and GREAT GRACE, God wants to give us a new heart, so that you and I may know Him intimately. [See Jeremiah 24:7]
The Illegal Way
The unregenerate heart of man is disposed to seek its own brand of salvation. In John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the illegal way is illustrated. "That the highway upon which Christian was to go, was fenced on the other side with a wall, and the wall was called SALVATION." After marveling over some men he found sleeping a little out of the way, Christian noted a peculiar thing. "He espied two men come tumbling over the wall, on the Left Hand of the narrow Way; and they made up apace to him. The name of the one was Formalist, and the name of the other Hypocrisy." Christian asks them where they came from, and where they were going. They answer, "We were born in the land of Vain-glory, and are going for Praise to Mount Sion."
Then Christian asks them this, "Why came you not in at the Gate which standeth at the beginning of the Way? Know you not that it is written, That he that cometh not in by the Door, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a Thief and a Robber?" What is the lesson we can learn from this discourse between Christian and the two men, Formalist and Hypocrisy? Do not try to find another route from that which God has declared to be THE WAY OF SALVATION!