THE PROBLEM OF THE HEART
The Book of Proverbs declares, “Above all else, guard your
heart for it is the well spring of life.” (Proverbs 4:23)
This wise saying is as true in the physical sense as in the
spiritual. The heart is the core of a person’s life. The heart pumps blood
throughout the body through the circulatory system, supplying oxygen and
nutrients to the tissues and removing carbon dioxide and other wastes. Proverbs
aptly describes the heart as the well spring of life.
The heart is also the
center of those qualities which make us human. Scripture also speaks of the
heart in metaphor. The heart bears many layers of meaning. The heart may be known
as the center of all relationships, intellectual
or emotional. God’s word describes God speaking to our hearts. The Bible tells
us how God has a heart for us before we ever had a heart for Him.
All four Gospels assert that Jesus knew people’s hearts.
On one occasion when he healed a lame man, He asked the
religious leaders, “Why do you question in your hearts?” (Luke 5:22).
When the disciples argued among themselves as who among them
should be the greatest in His Kingdom, “Jesus saw the thoughts of their hearts,
took a child and placed him in the midst
saying, ‘Whoever is least among you is great.’ (Luke 9:47)
In talking to the woman who had had five husbands, Jesus
revealed that He knows all about her.
Seated at the last supper Jesus knew what would happen- Judas
would betray Him.
The disciples were stunningly awed by the Lord’s omniscience
that they confessed, “Now we know that you know all things(including the
thoughts and contents of their heart) and need none to question you; by this we
believe that you came from God.”(John 16:30)
It was the public exposure of people’s evil heart that caused
public hatred of Jesus as He condemned the hypocrisy of the Jewish clergy.
Later, the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians, described the Lord
Jesus Christ as having the power to “to bring to light what is hidden in
darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts”. (1 Cor. 4:5)
Our Lord knows our stories and is acquainted with our
weaknesses. He knows the corruption of the human heart because of sin, and He
freely accepted the judgment of condemnation and the just penalty for our sins by dying in our place.
In 1948 when the world was recoiling from the realization
that man had succeeded in splitting the atom, which paved the way for the invention
of the Atomic bomb, Albert Einstein, the genius behind this scientific
breakthrough was quoted as saying that the problem lies in the hearts and
thoughts of men. He said what terrifies is not the explosive force of the
atomic bomb, but the wickedness of the human heart- its explosive power of
evil.
The Bible says, “The heart is more deceitful than all else
and desperately wicked, who can understand it?”(Jeremiah 17:9). But it also
tells us that God will give us a new heart and put a new spirit in us; he will
remove our stony stubborn heart and give us a tender responsive heart. (Ezekiel
36:26) Christ penetrated the darkest
places of our hearts, and changed our sinful, deceitful hearts.
Man has a spiritual nature. He is essentially a spiritual
being, more than flesh and bones. The Bible says it is our spiritual nature
that sets us apart from lower forms of life. St. Augustine in the 4th
century remarkably observed that man’s heart is restless until it finds rest in
God.
The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal
described the God shaped vacuum in the
heart of every man which only Christ can fill.
Scripture makes it clear that man’s heart was afflicted by
sin, and because of sin man died. The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23)
The good News however is that new life is possible in Jesus
Christ (Ephesians 2:1-10).
The mark of a true Christian is to experience the
transforming power of Christ in his heart.
All of us are sick in the heart. But God has provided a cure.
Sin is the curse, Christ is the cure. Christ gives a new heart and a new
spirit. The message of the Gospel of Christ gives us this simple truth. If you
have not received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord of your life, your
heart will find no rest. You will have that emptiness or vacuum in your heart,
which only Christ could fill the void. The hope of a Christian is Christ.
The
Word of God says, “If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe
in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is
with your heart that you believe and are justified and it is with your mouth
that you confessed and are saved.” (Romans 10:9-10)
Among the essential subjects of the Christian faith are sin
and salvation. The disease and the cure. Sin in man. Salvation in Christ.
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will
not see life, for God’s wrath remains in him.” (John 3:36).
All of us are sinners. We are
spiritually sick at the heart. The Psalmist David acknowledged the hard universal
truth when he said, “For I was born a
sinner, yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5) So David
asked God to create in him a clean heart. (Psalm 51:10)
The Lord Jesus Christ made it very clear that those who are
well have no need of a physician. And who could claim that everything is
perfectly and absolutely well with him or her?
God’s word declares, “If you say you have no sin you deceive
yourself and the truth is not in you. (1 John 1:8) The Lord Jesus Christ said,
“I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. (Mark 2:17). And
the Bible says, “There is no one righteous, no, not even one”. (Romans 3:10-12)
Jesus is the Healer. He is the cure and that is the good
news. But He tells us the bad news
first. The bad news is we are sick at heart. The bad news is some, do not
believe or are not even aware they have
a bad, sinful heart. God’s word says, “If you say you have no sin you deceive
yourself”.
So we need to hear and listen to the weeping prophets. We
need to be told that we are not good and
our good is not good enough. We need to be told that we are sinners in need of
a Savior and if we die without Christ we will face judgment, for it is
appointed unto man once to die but after this the judgment. (Hebrews 9:27) This
is the judgment of eternal separation from God and suffering in hell. We need
to be told that the wages of sin is death. We need to be told to repent of our
sins. We need to be warned that Christ will come again no longer as Savior but to
judge everyone. We need to be warned that hell is real.
“Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved-you and your
household.” (Acts 16:31)
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