Well, good evening, brothers and sisters.
That’s pretty weak. Are y’all tired? Let’s try it again. Good evening, brothers and sisters.
There you go. There you go.
We must find ourselves alive in Christ, right? That’s where our real energy comes from.
Well, tonight I wanted to welcome all you young folks on behalf of the Richmond Christian Assembly—the saints here in Richmond. You need to know that this time came about out of a burden that the Lord has put on our hearts in recent months.
That burden is that the Lord, in this very late hour, would raise up a generation to follow Him, to carry the testimony of Jesus. And we are, of course—or at least I am—of the older generation, and quickly probably becoming one of those cloud of witnesses that watches on.
But that being said, we are so grateful that you’re here. We do believe the Lord is moving to raise up a generation to carry on the testimony of Jesus, and we’re grateful that we can be a part of it in some small way.
We really do have an anticipation that the Lord will meet you this week. He is in our midst, as He has promised, and He will meet you if you open your heart to Him.
Actually, a great responsibility rests on the shoulders of this upcoming generation. As I thought about it tonight, I couldn’t help but think that I feel a little bit like David must have felt when Solomon began to show a real heart for the Lord.
Solomon began to take up responsibility in the house of God before the Lord. Eventually, David was able to turn over the great work of building that temple to his son Solomon, and Solomon completed what David started.
Which brings me to the first scripture I wanted to mention. It is in 2 Chronicles 5:1.
When all the work Solomon had done for the house of the Lord was finished, Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated, even the silver, and the gold.
I came to the Lord Jesus when I was twelve years old. I’ve had a long history, a varied history, in my relationship with the Lord. But I am grateful that the Lord really did draw me to Himself. I was not willing to go on my own; He had to draw me. I am grateful for that, as He has drawn y’all as well.
Over the years, the Lord has done a work in our lives—in my life, in the life of the assembly here, and in the lives of the assemblies in which you probably gather.
Much gold and silver has been prepared for the next generation. Gold being just the life of Christ, the nature of Christ that you find among the saints and in the assemblies; and the silver, the work of redemption—that great work of God on Calvary’s cross that somehow has touched your own lives, and you’ve given yourself to the Lord Jesus.
Those are rich treasures. I’m only saying that to say that you’re not by yourself. It’s not like one generation does a work and another generation does a separate work. Each builds one upon the other, and we are dependent on one another.
That’s why in Romans it talks about this great cloud of witnesses that are looking on, praying, and looking for that next generation to carry the testimony of Jesus.
So that’s why you’re gathered here this weekend. We want you to see the Lord Jesus in a new and living and fresh way. We want you to have your heart so touched that it will never deviate from here on. May the Lord do His work this weekend.
The theme verse of this conference is Acts 13:22. What is that theme verse?
Ah, I’m not getting any response. Come on, somebody tell me the theme verse. I didn’t hear. I’m old; I’m hard of hearing.
I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who shall do all My will.
The Lord was searching for a man. You know, that comes from 1 Samuel 13:14.
But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart, and the Lord hath appointed him to be prince over His people.
He was talking to the previous king. The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart. That’s what the Lord is searching for tonight: a man. Of course, a sister, brother—a brother or sister after His own heart.
This is the question I have for you tonight, to challenge you and for you to think about: Are you that man? Are you that young brother or sister whom the Lord has sought out, one who is after His heart? Are you after the heart of the Lord?
The Lord is seeking. He seeks throughout the whole world for those who have a heart for Him and those who want to know the Lord’s heart. Are you that one?
It’s an important question to consider as you come together this weekend. If your answer to me would be, “Well, yes, Mr. Amon. Yeah, I believe that I’m after the Lord’s heart,” I would be a little concerned.
I would say, “Are you that confident in yourself? You can say, ‘I am the one after the Lord’s heart’?” I think all of us, and many of us in this room, would say, “Yes, I have a heart for the Lord.” But are we really after His heart?
If your answer is, “No, Mr. Amon, I don’t think I am,” and you stop there—if you say, “Mr. Amon, no, I don’t think I am, and I just don’t think I ever will be”—then I’ll be disappointed in your answer.
Because it’s very much like the rich young ruler who came to the Lord Jesus Christ. He was seeking to follow the Lord, and the Lord challenged him.
When He asked the young man if he had followed all the commandments, the young ruler said yes. He was confident. Then the Lord said, “Well, okay, sell everything you have and come follow Me.”
The tragedy is that the young man went away. He came seeking and went away disappointed. I hope that doesn’t happen to any of us here this weekend—that you’ve come seeking and go away disappointed.
If your answer is, “I don’t know, Mr. Amon. Only the Lord knows my heart, but I do have a desire to know His heart. I’ve come here this weekend because I have a desire to really follow the Lord’s heart and to seek the Lord’s heart,” then I am pleased. I am pleased with your response.
The Lord challenged that rich young ruler. He knew the young ruler couldn’t give up those riches. He already knew that.
He wanted that young man to see that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t really follow Him in his natural state. Though he may have had some heart to follow the Lord, he really couldn’t follow the Lord.
But He didn’t want the young man to go away disappointed. He wanted the young man to come back to Him and say, “You know, I want to follow You. I can’t give up these riches, but I want to follow You. Lord, can You help me? Lord, I’m willing to give them up if You’ll make me willing.”
The Lord is not only looking for a seeking heart, but for a willing heart.
What did the Lord say after the young man had left?
The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
I want you young people to realize, when we talk about carrying the testimony of Jesus, it is an impossible task for man. But all things are possible with Christ.
You may give up on yourself, and that’s okay, but never give up on Christ. Never give up on Christ. With Him, all things are possible.
That’s what He wanted the young ruler to see, and that’s what He wanted the young ruler to have faith in and to cling to: that yes, maybe he wasn’t the man after God’s heart he thought he was, but he wanted to be, and he and the Lord could do it.
I hope that as you come together this week and y’all begin to seek the Lord and seek His heart, that at no point do you become so disappointed that you give up. Rather, be challenged to say, “Lord, I cast myself upon Thee, because I cannot do it. Only You can, but You can do it.”
May God do that in our hearts this weekend. God desires a seeking heart. Are you seeking? God desires a willing heart. Are you willing?
You may say, “I’m not willing,” but can you say, “Lord, I’m willing to be willing”? Can you at least say that? “I’m willing to be willing.” The Lord is so gracious to us.
The first question was, “Are you a man after God’s heart?” The second question is, “What is on God’s heart?” Do you know what is on God’s heart?
David did. It says in Acts 13:36:
For David, after he had served the counsel of God in his own generation, fell asleep.
David served the purpose of God in his own generation. That’s what we so desire of this generation that stands before me—or sits before me—tonight: that you would serve the Lord in your generation.
Not only just serve the Lord, but serve the Lord according to the Lord’s heart, according to what is on the Lord’s heart. I will tell you, there’s been something on the Lord’s heart from eternity past, something deep in His heart, and David discovered it.
David was the one man that discovered it, and he gave his all that God’s heart would be fulfilled and His desires met. I pray that we will all be like David, that we will find out what is on God’s heart, begin to pursue what is on God’s heart, and fulfill God’s heart and desire.
I’m not going to tell you what that is tonight. I want you to discover that for yourself.
You’re no longer children. You know, when you’re children—my baby, I remember my baby, my little baby boy—we had to feed him out of those little green cups of food. It was kind of yucky stuff to me, but he loved it.
All that green stuff out of those little jars. He couldn’t get enough. Man, both my wife and I had to feed him, one spoon in each hand, feeding him. He was so ravished over his food, just looking, trying to be fulfilled.
Brothers and sisters, the point I was making is that my thought is not to feed anybody. I want the Holy Spirit to do that. I want you to discover what’s on the Lord’s heart.
It’s very personal. There is a general thought, but it needs to be personal to you, and only the Holy Spirit can do that. That’s my prayer for you this weekend: that you will begin to see what is really on the Lord’s heart and give your own heart to that.
The Lord is seeking a man after His heart. And what is on the Lord’s heart? Those are the two questions I present to you tonight.
I do pray that the Lord will fulfill His own desire for this time together tonight. My prayer is similar to Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians: that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ would grant unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, your eyes being enlightened.
That’s what really matters. Just gathering more information is not what matters. What matters is that the Holy Spirit touches your heart personally.
Recently, as we’ve been sharing in Richmond about this need for the younger generation to begin to take up the testimony of Christ, some have been asking, “Well, what specifically should I do?”
Well, rather than give you a fish, I’d rather you learn how to fish. That means that you follow the anointing. You seek the Lord: “Lord, what does that mean for me, to really serve Your purpose in my generation?”
If you will really seek the Lord, the anointing that you have in Christ will show you, and you will know. And it will grow.
Well, that’s my thoughts for the night. My prayers are really with you guys. We do anticipate and are quite excited about this time because the Lord has so impressed us with the importance of this time and the importance of the hour that we’re in.
We are in that hour just before the Lord’s return, the darkest of the night. The world is greatly changing, becoming darker and darker, and we are to be light in the darkness.
Lord, we come to You tonight. My heart, my prayer is, Lord, that You would fill this place with Your presence; that, Lord, You would give that spirit of wisdom and revelation to everyone here; that they would be enlightened by the Spirit and by the knowledge that God Himself gives to their heart and through their spirit.
Lord, I just look to You. Lord, bless this time. Lord, do all that You have desired for this time. Capture every heart here for Yourself. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This is like, when you pray so much and then something begins to happen, it’s almost like a dream, or in a dreamy way. There’s been so much anticipation and just a feeling that the Lord’s going to meet us this weekend. So we’re really just so thankful everybody’s here.
We asked our brother Jerry to come up and share because the saints in Richmond—and I think all around, the older saints, older than young people in our limited range—the older saints really have had such a heart for all of us.
It’s really touched our hearts, and we have appreciated it. It’s encouraged us to press on, to rise up, and just be who we should be in the Lord—to be men and women of God.
The saints here in Richmond have carried this burden in prayer on Wednesday nights and in their own time. As an assembly, the heart has really been there for this time.
Amen. I’d like to read a scripture. I think we already heard a call for tonight and an introductory word. I have some thoughts to share on this new heart that the Lord has given.
In Ezekiel 36, I’ll just read a few verses to start with.
And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep Mine ordinances, and do them.—Ezekiel 36:25-27
Let’s pray again together.
Lord, we bring this word before You. We pray in this brief time tonight together, as we’re preparing for this weekend and as we’re finishing out a whole year, that we would look away to You to meet us.
Lord, we pray that You’d bless the word, speak to us, and reveal Christ to us in our hearts. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Okay, so this is what we’re looking into tonight, in a way, as a preparation. The theme this weekend has to do with having a heart like David—a heart that is after the Lord, and actually after the Lord’s heart.
In thinking about this, I looked to the Lord to see what could help us just in a night before we start. The main messages begin tomorrow. This is just in a way of reflection, in a way of doing what we normally do at the end of the year.
It’s December 31, 2015, and most of us—actually most of the world—seem to think about what happened last year. How did I do? What did I do? What would I change, and what am I looking to do next year?
A lot of times believers and unbelievers alike make New Year’s resolutions and want a new start and a fresh start. Tomorrow really is like a fresh start. It’s a new year, a new beginning.
A lot of us who like Bible reading plans will start a new plan at the beginning of the year. Sometimes it’s at a random date, but sometimes we pick that time because it helps us remember when we started. There’s a lot of newness about it.
But actually, about ourselves and about this desire to have the kind of heart that the theme is about, I wanted us to understand a little bit about the heart—some thoughts, clarifications, and scriptures to contemplate as we prepare, hopefully to help us prepare our own hearts.
There’s a question that comes up in the way we use the word heart in a spiritual sense. We’re not talking about the physical heart, but scripturally and spiritually it is used all throughout Scripture, and sometimes it’s confusing. It’s hard to tell what it actually means.
I think all of us have a general sense of what the heart is. We kind of know in a fuzzy way. As we read the Bible, we know what they mean when they say that a heart is this way or that way.
In a way, we all get the sense that it’s the centerpiece. It’s the me. It’s the depths of me. It’s what I’m really about.
But I’d like to get a little bit nerdy to begin with, just about the heart. What is the heart, really?
Scripturally speaking, the Lord divides us into body, soul, and spirit. Actually, not just scripturally speaking—in reality. If you’ve discovered this in life, the whole world really knows that there’s a soul of man. Some know there’s a spirit of man.
The Bible teaches that we have these parts. This is the way God made us. One verse that mentions this separation is 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where spirit, soul, and body are used together.
Then in Hebrews 4:12, the word of God is described as dividing soul from spirit. At least from that, you can see that the soul is different from the spirit. If they can be divided, they are distinct.
The reason we don’t discover that they’re different as we’re growing up, before we meet the Lord and in the world, is that they’re merged together. In a way, the soul has swallowed up the spirit in an unnatural way because of sin.
But one thing the word of God does is bring a penetrating division between the soul and the spirit. As we grow in the Lord, more and more we begin to tell the difference between these two things.
There are different parts of these two areas of us. In the soul there are the emotions, the mind, and the will. There are a lot of scriptures concerning this.
The soul in Scripture has these major functions. There’s more to it than that, but generally there are these three areas: emotions, mind, and will.
With the spirit of man, one function is worship. In John 4, the Lord said:
God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
—John 4:24
One thing that is to happen deep within us, in the spirit of man, is worship of the Lord.
Another function is intuition. This is where the Lord leads spiritually, though mentally you may not comprehend it right away. Maybe in retrospect you can look back and see, “That’s how I knew that. That’s how I was led that way.”
This ability is built within us so the Lord can speak directly and lead us directly, letting us know His will. He wants us to know His will deep in our spirit, sometimes even before we understand it, before our emotions agree with it, or before our will chooses it.
The third function is conscience. This is where we have convictions, sorrow or joy as far as sin and righteousness go. This is where you know what is right and wrong. You know when you shouldn’t do something, when you did something you shouldn’t have done, and when there’s something you should do but didn’t do.
So what is the heart? Is it another spot, another bubble, a heart-shaped bubble inside of us? Where is it located?
The heart is actually some combination of the soul and spirit. Scripturally speaking, it includes the soul—our emotions, mind, and will—and it includes the conscience, which is an aspect of the spirit of man.
The conscience is the depth of the heart. The beginning or foundation of the heart, the doorway to actually knowing the Lord, receiving the Holy Spirit, and having the presence of the Lord, is the area of the conscience in the spirit of man.
Throughout Scripture, there are places where these four areas of the heart appear. For example, in Matthew 13, when the word of the gospel is sown, the Lord Jesus explains that the ground is the heart of man and the seed is the word of the gospel.
The good ground, in that case, ends up being the conscience. Whenever the gospel is shared and hits the heart of man, we want it to go down deep into the conscience of man.
In Hebrews 4:12, it says that the word of God is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. So the heart has thoughts. There are thoughts of the heart. That is the function of the mind in the heart.
That same Scripture speaks of the intentions of the heart. Here are your decisions: What do you want to do? What do you will to do? As the word of God divides and exposes your heart, soul, and spirit, it shows what your heart really intends to do.
It is not merely what your actions are, but what is behind them. What is in the depths of the heart? What is your real will behind it? Sometimes you can even be deceived and think, “This is what I’m doing, and it’s right,” but what are the intentions of your heart?
The other part is the emotions. Scripture calls us not to harden our hearts. A hard heart is the opposite of a soft heart, or the heart of flesh described in Ezekiel 36.
In Ezekiel 36, a heart of flesh does not mean flesh as in carnality. It means flesh in the sense of softness—the soft flesh of your body. A physical heart is kind of squishy, right? It is flesh; it is soft.
A heart of flesh means that there is not an automatic rejection when the Lord speaks. It means that you are open. You are openhearted.
With the conscience, Hebrews 10:22 says:
Let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.
—Hebrews 10:22
That shows that the heart has the conscience. When you approach the Lord, the blood is sprinkled upon the conscience. If there is wickedness upon the conscience—sin—it is washed away by the precious blood of the Lord.
This is the way we can approach boldly in faith. If there is sin upon the conscience, you can’t enter into the holy place, this area of communion and worship. That is why the conscience is really the doorway.
This is what the heart is and its functions. Even with these areas of functioning, the heart really is the center.
There is a Scripture that says we should guard our hearts, to keep the heart guarded more than anything because out of it are the issues of life. We are to guard it because it is so important, and because the heart expresses the life.
Physically speaking, the heart pumps out blood, and that helps us live. Even in the Bible, the blood has the life of the soul. There is life flowing from the heart physically.
Spiritually speaking, this is really you. This is your heart; it is the depth of you. Whatever happens here will flow out. This is your real center.
The depth of your conscience really determines a lot of what is going on in your emotions, mind, and will—what your intentions are, what you are thinking, and how you are feeling about things. This will flow out into your actions, into all of your life, into everything that is happening.
That’s why if the heart is right, even sometimes the actions can be wrong, but it’s kind of okay. You know what I mean? You’re goodhearted.
One time I was trying to be very chivalrous with my dear wife. She was in the car, and we had a bunch of stuff in there. I don’t know what the stick was—bamboo or something.
I was being goodhearted. I was trying to help, shutting the door for her all nicely. But as I shut the door, this stick slammed into my wife’s ear and ripped it. It really hurt and bled, and we had to take her to urgent care.
But the whole time, she wasn’t angry at me. She didn’t punch me. She didn’t say anything against me. She just smiled because she knew my heart was right. I didn’t mean it.
If I had stuck her ear with a stick in a different circumstance, she would have been scared and running from me. She might have fought me back. I don’t know—she’s pretty tough.
When the heart’s right, it’s easy to understand our foolish actions. Sometimes somebody says something and you think, “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that,” but you get their heart. You know what they mean by that.
That’s kind of what the Lord does too. He is not looking at what is happening outwardly as much. He is always looking at what is happening inside the heart.
We all have heart trouble, though. We are born this way, with heart trouble, ever since sin came into the world. God did not create us with heart trouble; He created us with a really good heart. But heart trouble has come.
There is a famous Scripture in Jeremiah 17:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?
—Jeremiah 17:9
This is our heart trouble. Because of sin, our hearts have become blackened with sin and darkened with sin. The heart is not only dark; it is tricky. It became very deceitful and incurable.
Right after Adam and Eve sinned, sin entered into the heart of man. In the spirit of man, the conscience became defiled with sin and was darkened. Immediately, the ability to worship God was cut off. That doorway was cut off.
The ability to really know the Lord’s will and to be intuitively led by Him was lost, or at least damaged. It was cut off from God because all that was upon the conscience of Adam and Eve was the sin before them.
Throughout time, the darkness of death and the hardness of heart, beginning with the depths of the heart, worked its way into the soul of man. Sin worked more and more upon men’s desires, emotions, and thoughts.
If you read Romans 1, it shows an unfolding of the corruption of the heart through sin. It has three layers, and they correspond to the three layers of the soul, because the beginning of the corruption had already happened in the conscience.
By the time of the flood, man had become fully darkened in his heart. The spirit was hidden, and the body was almost leading the soul. This is our heart trouble.
But the trouble is more than just that we have sin and it has brought us into death. We do not even know our trouble because the heart is tricky. It is deceitful, as Scripture says.
Do you actually know your own heart? I want to look at how the heart gets so tricky, and how the enemy, the world, and sin are always working on this deception of the heart. They are always trying to bring it down to the conscience, to be fully deceived and to stay away from the Lord.
This is important even with believers. The temptation is to keep the heart deceived, to keep this blackened and corrupted heart. The world system that is against God and the enemy of God try to keep the heart unclear, full of wrong ideals, and full of deception.
This is the condition of our old heart.
For example, in 1 John 2 there is an exhortation to young men not to love the world or the things of the world. If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you.
It gives the three angles through which the world comes at us with temptations. These three areas work upon the soul of man—the upper, surface part of the heart. The attack is always to bring it down to the conscience.
The attack of the world is mainly to distract. It is not always tempting you directly with sins, but it is trying to bring in enough deception that will eventually lead you into sin. The world especially seeks to lead us away from Christ and draw us out.
The lust of the flesh comes at the emotions. Here, flesh means the physical body. Our body has natural needs.
The temptation that came to the Lord Jesus in the wilderness was, “You’re very hungry. It has been about forty days. There are these stones, and You are the Son of God. Turn them into bread.”
The desire of the body to eat is a natural, good desire. The Lord, of course, was taking His stand as the Son of Man, not using His divine power for Himself. But the temptation of the world comes at you physically, trying to reach your emotions.
A boy and a girl may like each other. They may be very sober-minded, and the girl or boy may know, “I don’t want to do anything physically impure before I get married.” But the body is so attached to the emotions.
You have no idea what control it has over a corrupted heart, over a heart that is distracted, over a deceived heart. As hand-holding begins, rubbing of the back begins, and other touching happens, suddenly the emotions are affected so strongly.
The feeling of love becomes larger than life. The next thing you know, it tricks you. “This feels so right and must be right.” But it affects your conscience, and that is when you end up in sin.
It begins with something that is just a natural desire of the body. It is the same when my body feels like food. If you’re sober-minded, if your heart is in a good spot, if you can separate your body from you, sometimes you can look at your body and say, “You’re hungry, but your tummy’s growing too big.”
“You’re hungry, but you already had one bowl of ice cream. No need for two, and especially not with peanut butter.” This is my temptation.
But that often doesn’t happen because the lust of the body is strong, and the emotions say, “Yeah, it feels right to eat ice cream.” Or reverse it: when the body is emotional, sometimes you eat chocolate, and so on.
These two are attached. As the temptation of the world comes in, it tries to trick you by way of emotions. All those temptations that concern bodily needs—even sleep, even anything your body might legitimately desire—the world would try to use to get at your emotions and control them.
Another thing is the lust of the eyes, and this has to do with our will. What you actually see with your eyes can create a desire.
It may start out as curiosity. Often, what we look at begins with, “I’m just curious. Was that person really naked, or were they just wearing a bathing suit that was the color of skin?” You know, your eyes are curious.
You may be curious about how beautiful a car is, or whatever it is that you are looking at. Or you get a lot of emails with coupons for what is on sale. You do not even need to buy anything, but you see the new Bluetooth speaker that just came out.
Suddenly your eyes see it and desire it because it looks so nice. Then your will is tugged a little bit. Your desire to choose it is worked on, and it can actually be deceived.
That is why, if you get a lot of emails like that, it may be good to have them go to another section in your inbox—a coupon section that you look at when you actually want to buy stuff.
The world knows how to do this. Advertisers know that it helps to show pictures. You do not get emails with deals that have no pictures, usually. They show you a picture of it.
Even food—if they are going to sell you ice cream, they show you a nice picture of it. It looks really good, even though it’s probably like mashed potatoes with syrup on top in reality. I think that’s how they do it because the camera’s so hot. Anyway, am I right? I don’t know.
But the desire of the eyes is a temptation that the world works at. It comes at you, showing you flashy things.
Remember when the Lord Jesus was tempted? Satan brought Him up to look at all the kingdoms of the world. If He wanted all those kingdoms, it would come down to worshiping Satan.
As He saw the kingdoms, this was the temptation the Lord went through: the lust of the eyes. The enemy used the eyes. The temptations of the world want you to see something first.
So we have to be careful with our eyes. Really, the eyes of the heart are like an open window that shows so much of what is going on.
This is the way the heart is deceitful above all things. The world works to keep it deceived, but the blackened heart is already tricked, and our wills are already tricked in that way.
Then there is the temptation called the pride of life. Scripture says things like, “Do not be high-minded about yourself. Do not think about yourself more highly than you ought to think.”
When something tempts us, it can alter our thinking ability, our sober-mindedness, and our ability to really understand something, if it puffs us up.
The temptation to the Lord Jesus from the enemy was, “Throw Yourself down from this high place. Everybody will see You, and then they’ll worship You and know that You’re the Messiah.” It was a pull upon the pride of life.
It may sound odd for this to be a thing of the mind, but when we get puffed up and proud, we start to think about ourselves. We start to think great thoughts about ourselves.
Our motivations for doing something righteous or doing something well can become the praise of man, how good people will think we are. It is always this pride of life, and it is a deception.
It ends up turning our thoughts so that we are tricked. We do not think clearly anymore. We do not think right.
The way through, of course, is to have the mind of Christ. That is not merely having the thoughts of Christ or understanding correct doctrine like Christ. In Philippians 2, it says:
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 2:5
Then it describes a humble Person. He was God, but He gave up that glory, became a man, and submitted to the Father all the way to the cross. This is the mind of Christ.
He thought of others more than Himself. This is the mind of humility. But the temptation of the world and the deception of our mind is pride. It is the pride of life.
With the conscience, 1 John 1:8 says:
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
—1 John 1:8
This is where we deceive ourselves. It is a deception in the conscience. You feel like, “I don’t really have a problem.”
It can go another step further. Two verses later, in 1 John 1:10, it says:
If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
—1 John 1:10
We are not only tricking others by acting like we do not have any problems. You can get to the point of such deception in your conscience that you feel like, “I’m not really doing anything wrong.”
You may ask yourself the question: When was the last time I was cleansed by the precious blood in my conscience? When was the last time I went to the Lord with my sins and asked for forgiveness?
If it was today, you are probably not deceived so badly. If it has been a month, you are under deception. You may say, “A month ago? I haven’t done anything bad since then.” Probably you are not walking enough in the light of the Lord.
Instead, you are walking in a darkened heart. You are walking in darkness. You do not feel convicted about anything. That does not mean you have not done anything wrong, because the heart is deceitful above all things. Who can really know?
Actually, only the Lord knows. That is why we ask Him to shine light in our hearts and show us. We pray for Him to search us and show us our hearts. He is the One who searches the hearts and searches the reins of the hearts—the depths of what controls your heart.
It also says the heart is incurable. There is really no hope for this old heart.
You cannot try to repair your conscience by learning all the things that you should do. That does not actually fix it. It is still not repairable. It is incurable. It cannot be fixed.
The spiritual heart that you are born with in darkness can never be repaired. This was what was exposed in the old covenant, when the Lord gave commands to show man, “This is right; this is wrong.”
Their consciences had become so confused that they did not even know what was right and wrong. So He put it before them, so they could see it, memorize it, write it on their foreheads and hands, write it on their walls, and see it all the time: “That is a sin.”
In a way, it pumped up the conscience. It put a temporary Band-Aid on there, but it kept bursting, bleeding, breaking, and exposing what was really going on. The heart is incurable. There is no way to fix it.
Even though you try to repair your emotions and thoughts, train your mind, and get your will to decide on the things of God, it will always revert back to the selfish, darkened heart.
The heart is deceitful. It is incurable. It cannot be fixed.
So then, what happens with the new covenant is that the Lord takes away this stony heart.
When the Lord Jesus came and died on the cross, He did not repair this heart. He actually took it all the way out. Then He brings in a brand-new heart. He gives us a new heart.
In the Scripture I read earlier, He says, “I will give you a new heart.” He actually gives a brand-new heart.
As I have been looking at these Scriptures and meditating on this, I have been impressed more than ever that we actually have been given a new heart. You already have a new heart.
It is not something merely being developed. It is not something we are working for. All who are born again, all who have believed on Christ, have received a new heart. It is actually already there.
You have inside of you a new heart. It is different than that darkened heart. It does not matter what you felt like coming in today. It does not matter what your experience has been like, or how much you have acted like you only have a darkened, black, stony heart.
Actually, the Lord says, “I will give you a new heart.” When you believe in the Lord Jesus, He has given it.
These Scriptures show, even though this is a prophecy in Ezekiel 36 concerning Israel initially and concerning their future repentance when all Israel is saved and sees the Messiah, there is a beginning experience for all those who believe in the Lord Jesus.
For all the church of God, for all the Israel of God now in this time, all of us have this experience that has happened.
It begins with the conscience, the very depth of the heart. He says, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you. You will be clean from all your uncleanness. From all your idols I will cleanse you.”
This cleansing work happens through the precious blood. When we believe in the Lord Jesus, the cross experience for our heart starts at the conscience.
That is what was read earlier in Hebrews: as we approach in our hearts, the wicked conscience has the blood sprinkled upon it. So the work of the cross comes into the heart at the foundational root level, beginning with the conscience of man.
When we receive the new heart, the conscience is cleansed from all sin.
When this first happens, immediately the spirit of man is changed. He says, “I will put a new spirit within you.”
The old spirit that was darkened—the dark conscience, the inability to worship, the loss of intuitive leading from the Lord—all of that is taken away. There is a new spirit within us who are born again.
It actually happened. You received a brand-new spirit. Not only were the sins washed away from your conscience, but at the same time the Lord put a new spirit within us.
At the same time He said, “I will put My Spirit within you, to cause you to walk in My statutes.” The Holy Spirit is now dwelling in our spirit.
This is something brand new that humans do not naturally have as they grow up: to receive the Holy Spirit within our heart.
Now, the word that said the heart is incurable is lost. In the new heart, there is hope. Not only hope—there is assurance, because the Holy Spirit is within our hearts.
The Holy Spirit is bringing us into this full salvation and bringing us into all the light and all the clarity of heart that the Lord desires for us to have.
As He put His Spirit within us, He says that He will cause us to walk in His statutes, keep His ordinances, and be able to do them. The Holy Spirit is actually there.
How does this happen? It begins at this root, foundational level in the spirit of man. It begins with the conscience being cleansed; we receive the new spirit, and the Holy Spirit is there.
Our brother mentioned the first prayer in Ephesians, about receiving the spirit of wisdom and revelation. There is another prayer in Ephesians 3, where Paul speaks of being strengthened in the inner man.
He speaks of the love of the Lord being founded and rooted in our hearts, right at the base there. He prays that our hearts would be filled with love.
He speaks of discovering the breadth, length, height, and depth. This is all an area of the heart. What is happening is amazing to me.
He says that Christ would dwell in your heart, and that you would be filled. Not only does Christ, through the Holy Spirit, dwell in the spirit of man, but as the working of the cross happens, it flows out into the soul.
Christ ends up dwelling in the whole heart of us. This is our Christian walk that is happening right now.
The crosses in the soul are different. The cross we experience in the conscience is receiving what He has done on the cross for us. But the crosses that happen in the soul are when we decide to follow Him and not our own old, darkened will.
When we say, “Not my will—my darkened will, my selfish will—but Your will be done,” that is the working of the cross.
It is when we take our emotions and deny what our deceived emotions would choose to do, want to do, or feel like doing, and reserve them for the Lord’s heart.
Then you can do what Scripture says: you can weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice. When someone cries, if you are in a darkened heart, you may not have tears. You just say, “Oh, I’m sorry that you’re sad.” You are heartless.
If someone is rejoicing, have you ever come in rejoicing over something really joyful, and no one else can rejoice with you? It is because all the emotions are spent selfishly.
But in the Lord, through the working of the cross, the emotions can be used in this way. You can have the feelings that the Lord has. When He is sad, you can be sad. When He is angry, you can be angry. When He is jealous over something, you can be jealous, and your emotions are pure in this way.
That is the working of the cross and the denying of our own old heart.
The same is true with the mind, where we capture our thoughts and lead them captive to the obedience of Christ. We set our mind on the things above, not on the things of the earth. It is a real denying of ourselves.
This is the expanding and growing of the heart. But the amazing thing to me is this: we actually have the very heart that the Lord has put in us, and this heart is a heart after the Lord’s heart.
If you can receive it or believe it, all of us have a heart after the Lord in the new heart. The Holy Spirit is there, always yearning for more.
However much you try to corrupt yourself after you have been born again, you cannot go back to the blackened heart all the way. You can get a little bit gray, and the temptations of the world can darken our hearts, but there is no going back to that incurable heart.
The Lord said, “I will put a new heart in you. I will do it.” When He put this new heart in us, we received a heart after the Lord, buried deep down in the depths of our hearts.
There is a yearning beyond our own new heart. There is a yearning of the Holy Spirit, longing for the things of the Lord, longing after Christ, and longing after the things that Christ cares about.
It is already there. It is just to be discovered. It is already there in the new heart that we have received.
The Lord put this new heart within us. All we have to do is bring our hearts before Him, open up our hearts, and walk in this.
If we have darkness on our hearts, if we have sin upon us, the word of God tells us to confess our sins. Step into the light where that new heart dwells. Step into the light where everything is exposed and all those deceptions are shown for what they really are.
Then we confess our sins, and God is faithful and righteous. He will cleanse us in the depths of our hearts from all unrighteousness and all uncleanness.
This is something to be discovered. There is a man after God’s own heart within each one of us. There is a heart after the Lord inside of you. It is the new heart, and the Lord has already given it to you.
This is something that should warm our hearts. For me, it is an amazing discovery just to contemplate, meditate on, and bring back to the Lord. Say, “Lord, search my heart. I want to walk in the new heart.”
Bring this working that He has done with the new heart, and allow Christ to fill our hearts all the way.
He said, “I will give you a new heart.” This is actually our portion. This is what we have.
As we have this weekend happening, let’s come in with this new heart, in full assurance of faith.
Let’s allow our hearts tonight to be sprinkled with the precious blood and enter into His presence. No matter what deception has been upon us coming in tonight, no matter how much we feel like, “I don’t have a heart after the Lord,” or think, “There’s no way I can be like that or do that.”
Even if we will other things besides the Lord, if you cannot do it, the Lord actually put it within you. He says, “I work in you, and I will will it as well.” It is the Lord who works inside of us.
All we need to do is give Him our hearts. As it says in Proverbs:
My son, give Me thy heart.
—Proverbs 23:26
Just bring it before Him and give Him our hearts. Let’s pray together.
Lord, we want to worship You tonight and take our stand with this so great a salvation. You have done it. You have given us the new heart, and You have taken our stony hearts away.
Lord, all this deception that has been upon us, all this trying to bring us back into the darkened, old, incurable heart, we bring it before You. We bring all the corruption of the heart before You in the light, to have the precious blood wash us clean.
Lord, turn us away from our idols. We come to You with our hands and our hearts, and Lord, we look to You to wash us clean with the precious blood tonight.
We confess our deception and confess our walking in darkness and confess our deceiving ourselves. We confess all these other things that we have longed after, all this going after our feelings, all these high thoughts about ourselves and wrong thoughts, and all this twisting of our consciences.
We confess where we have given up the things that You showed us in the past to do. Lord, we want to repent of it and come back to You and say, “Remind us and reveal to us that new heart that You have put in us.”
Show us anew all the depths of the conscience that You have given to us—every area where You have shown us right or wrong, every area where You have shown us life or death.
Lord, we pray that You would shine Your light and bring it all back through right now. We trust ourselves to You, and this weekend to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.