Joe McKeever

Heart Trouble

The Heart is a Rebel.

Miss that and nothing else makes sense, either about the human condition or what God did to heal its maladies and re-align its focus.

I've driven the interstate across our city for enough years to remember when it felt like a parking lot and required five minutes to go a city block. These days, since the highway has been widened and the lanes increased, we can breeze through what were formerly congested spots at fifty miles per hour. Some motorists, however, choose to go seventy. Where the limit is seventy, they go eighty.

I have not the slightest doubt that if the speed limit were increased to 90, some drivers would exceed it.

The heart is a rebel. It does not like to obey a law or keep a promise or restrain itself.

The tabloid staring at you from the supermarket checkout line names a husband of some Hollywood star known for her beauty. The headline announces that she has caught him in adultery and is suing for divorce.

What, you wonder, is that man doing committing adultery when he is already married to the most luscious dish on the planet? Answer: the heart wants what it wants and does not like to take ‘no' for an answer.

King David, you recall from II Samuel chapter 11, had several wives and no doubt, his choice of any number of other possibilities. Yet, he wanted the wife of Uriah, a warrior who was daily risking his life in David's service. David indulged his lust and ended up securing the slaughter of Uriah in order to protect his public image.

We scratch our heads and wonder why such an otherwise good king would do such a dastardly thing.

Answer: The heart is a rebel.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," Jeremiah said (17:9). "Who can know it?"

Miss out on this key point concerning human nature and you will travel down a road of errors. You will preach the innate goodness of man, you will set yourself up for a lifetime of disappointments, and you will ignore what your own sinful heart keeps telling you.

Skip this lesson -- that the heart is a rebel -- and you will see no need for the cross of Jesus Christ or the gospel. You will mislead everyone who looks to you for direction and eventually find the path you have trod to be a dead end.

The heart is a reservoir.

Our Lord said the basic problems in this world are not the result of what goes into man -- certain foods or drinks -- but what comes out of him. (Matthew 15:11)

"For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." (15:19)

In order to change man's behavior, his heart must be transformed.

Christians have taken a lot of flack over the centuries for positing that as the answer to racism and prejudice, the remedy to greed and cruelties and unfairness. Some think the solution is passing laws or leading protest parades or sit-ins. These have their place, but only in restraining bad behavior. The heart is still untouched. That's why, even when the law sets a speed limit, people continue to defy it.

In a fallen world, we will always need laws to protect society from the selfishness of lawbreakers, but only a heart transplant, so to speak, will correct the problem in an ultimate way. That's why the royal law -- "love thy neighbor as thyself" -- supersedes all the other laws of man.

"Hey, it's only the water in the city reservoir that is polluted. Here, try a glass of tap-water from our kitchen. It's fine."

The water arriving in your home had its start in the city reservoir. If the water is impure at the source, what flows from your home tap is undrinkable.

To clean up the tainted drinking water in your home would require a massive purification job at the city's water filtration plant.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God," David prayed after his sin with Bathsheba. "Renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)

The Heart is a Residence.

Although we in the church often speak of "receiving Jesus into my heart," I can't find any Scripture that specifically uses "heart" in this way, as though it were a residence. The nearest to it may be the well-known Revelation 3:20 where Jesus stands at the door of the Laodicean church knocking, asking admittance in order to enter and "dine with you and you with me." Clearly, we can see where the connection originated. The inner residence of the human being is what we commonly refer to as one's heart.

By heart, we mean the innermost part of one's being. The control center. In Psalm 51:10 above, David uses "heart" and "spirit" to mean the same.

"Then Satan entered Judas." This statement from Luke 22:3 helps us to understand how a disciple who has lived close to Jesus for three years and seen up close His character and known His love could betray Him for a measly 30 pieces of silver. He had to have superhuman help, if you will, and the adversary, Satan, provided it.

Where exactly did Satan go when he entered Judas? Into his heart, no doubt. Into the control center.

The heart or control center is what Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright used to call "the throne-room." He pictured the ego of an unsaved person sitting on the throne and calling the shots until the day he or she invited Christ in as Lord, at which time He would assume the throne.

The complication, Dr. Bright, would point out is that many a Christian has moved Jesus from the throne and reinstalled self in charge. According to this, Jesus is still inside the heart, but not on the throne. The individual is still a Christian but a carnal one (carnal meaning "fleshly"). The result is chaos and disorder, as much or more than the unsaved individual experiences.

"As many as received Him (Jesus), He gave the authority to become the sons of God." (John 1:12)

This verse, this idea, is as much as anything responsible for our understanding of how a person becomes a true follower of the Lord: we receive Jesus into our hearts.

The heart is a rebel; we are the enemy of all that is best for us and those we love.

The heart is a reservoir; we live and work out of whatever it contains, good or bad.

The heart is a residence; whoever occupies the control center determines how life will be lived. Only when Jesus Christ lives inside and rules from the throne does life work the way God intended.

Had enough of your self-destructive ways? (Rebel)

What's inside your heart? (The reservoir)

Who's inside it? (The residence)

Why not stop now and invite the Lord Jesus Christ to come in and occupy the throne. From that moment on, your constant prayer should be, "Lord, what do you want me to do?"

From that moment, you begin to live forever.

From that moment, you become part of the answer of this world and not another of its problems.