After the Sermon Part 1

Introduction: The Duty After Hearing the Word

0:02 In Luke's gospel, the 8th chapter and the 18th verse, our Lord uttered a very simple but clear command to his disciples when he said to them, Take heed, therefore, how you hear. This command had reference to the very words which he had spoken and would yet speak to them as the inner circle of his followers.

0:30 It is these words which, in their timeless authority and constant relevance, have formed the basis of our series of studies through these weeks of the summer on the subject of how we ought to hear the word of God preached and taught to us. In the opening up and applying of this duty to take heed how we hear, we have considered together the duties, it demands of us prior to our hearing of the word, the duties it demands of us during the hearing of the word,

1:10 and we are now considering the duties it demands of us after we have heard the preaching of that word. And in addressing the third and final category of this theme, we have, first of all, sought to identify what I have called the central concern, that ought to fill our minds and hearts subsequent to our exposure to the preached word. And I expressed it this way, that having heard the word preached,

1:44 it ought to be our most crucial concern to retain that word in our hearts and to experience its appropriate influence upon our lives. That was the central concern. Then, last Lord's Day, we began to examine what I have called the specific means prescribed. What means has God given to us and revealed in his word that under his blessing will enable us to retain the word in our hearts and to experience its appropriate influence upon our lives?

2:29 And we had time to think about that. We had time last Lord's Day to underscore just one of those means appointed by God for the attainment of that end, namely the retention of the word in our hearts and the experience of its appropriate influence upon our lives. And that word was repetition. Repetition.

Supplication: A Means for Retaining the Word

2:59 And we turned to a number of scriptures, which indicate that along with the witness of general revelation, scripture also underscores that the repetition of the truth heard is a means ordained of God for its retention. We come this morning to address the second word, which identifies another means ordained by God to assist us in this retention of the word. And it is the word supplication.

3:40 Now, the word translated in our English Bibles, supplication, means to ask or to make request. The noun de-esith, which is translated and rendered in our English versions as supplication, comes from the verb deomai, which means to ask, to beg, or to implore. So when I say that supplication is a means given to us by God, I am using the word in the sense that it is used in such familiar passages as Acts 1 and verse 14,

4:23 Acts 1 and verse 14, where we read, Here it was prayer in the form of supplication. We supplicate God that he would write his word upon our hearts. And the warrant for this is seen in what I am calling the promise and command of God addressing the word of God. When we turn to the Scriptures, we find a strange parallel

The Paradox of Command and Promise: Ezekiel 18 & 36

5:03 in both commands in which God tells us to write his word upon our hearts, and yet promises in which God says that it is his work to write his word and his law upon our hearts. We find in Ezekiel 18 and verse 31, a thing that God commands his people to do that later on in this very prophecy, God says that he himself will do. In Ezekiel 18 and verse 31, God says to the prophet,

5:44 Cast away from you all your transgressions wherein you have transgressed, and make you a new heart, and a new spirit. For why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies, says the Lord Jehovah. Wherefore, turn yourselves and live.

6:12 Yet in Ezekiel chapter 36, it is God who says that he will do the very thing he commands here in Ezekiel chapter 18. Here in Ezekiel 36, God says in verse 26, A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my ordinances, and do them.

6:57 Here the thing God commands his people to do, he says he will do. Now is this a hopeless contradiction? Or is it another of those expressions of the marvelous synthesis of God's revelation? That the very thing he commands us to do or to be, he promises that he will do or make true of us, of us, and in us.

7:24 Well obviously it is not the former, but it is the latter. The promise and command of God with respect to this matter, of the writing of his law, of his precepts upon the heart, is not in contradiction to the promise that God will do it. For the promises of God are not given to negate the necessity of prayer and of effort, they are given to the end that we may have both an incentive for our efforts and a confidence that our efforts will not be in vain. And as we take that great principle and apply it to the subject in hand,

Supplication as the Bridge Between Command and Promise

8:08 when our Lord Jesus says to us, take heed how you hear, and we bring to that general command the analogy of scripture, and realize that scripture has much to say about being a fruitful or an unfruitful hearer of the word. A doer or a non-doer of the word. It has much to say about whether or not we both hear and do his commandments. When we bring then the analogy of scripture to this aspect of our study and ask the question, how can we be good hearers,

8:48 who retain in our hearts and seek to find appropriate expression in our lives, that word which we've heard, there must not only be repetition to keep that truth etched upon the walls of the mind, but there must be supplication that that word may be written upon the fleshy tables of our hearts. While we have no proof, no power in and of ourselves to effect this, God commands us to do it, that we might feel the necessity and responsibility, and yet in our sense of helplessness,

9:31 we supplicate Him to do for us and in us that which He commands us to do, but which we know we have no power to do, but which He has graciously promised to do for us. And that's not just bringing human logic to this apparent contradiction. What we find in one of the very passages that I've quoted, Ezekiel chapter 36, that God explicitly states this principle. In Ezekiel chapter 36, after all of these, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this,

10:12 notice what God says further on in that chapter. The God who says in verse 26, I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit within you, I will take away, I will give, I will put, I will cause. This very God in verse 37 says, Thus saith the Lord God, for this moreover will I be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them. I will, I will, I will.

10:48 And now God says, for the very thing I've committed myself to do, I will be inquired of by my people to do it for them. And so these promises in which God commits himself to do something are not meant to be viewed as things that we look at from afar and sit back and wait for God to somehow fulfill them without any engagement of our own hearts and minds and without the earnest supplication of our hearts that God would do for us the very thing he has committed himself to do

Supplicating for an Incline Heart: Lessons from Psalm 119

11:30 in his own word of promise. But as we turn to the scriptures and seek to find clues as to what happens when the word is brought home to the heart, we find another strand of emphasis in particularly the 119th Psalm where we are taught that we must not only supplicate God that he would write his word upon our hearts, but that secondly, we need to supplicate God that he would incline our hearts into the path of faith and obedience to the word thus written upon them.

12:12 Not only must God put something upon our hearts, God must do something in our hearts. And in verses 4 and 5 we have as it were an entrance into the whole perspective that I'm going to attempt to underscore for you and with you. You have commanded us your precepts that we should observe them diligently. The Psalmist acknowledges that God has given us his precepts not merely to inform us, or somehow to satisfy our curiosity, to expand our understanding of his ways and his works.

12:55 No. You have commanded us your precepts to this end that we should observe them and not just observe them casually, but observe them diligently. That being so, notice the prayer that automatically flows out of that perspective. All that my ways were established to observe thy statutes.

13:21 He says, Lord, you have commanded us, you have revealed to us your will in the precepts to the end that we should observe them diligently. That being so, then what else can ye pray but all that my ways were established to observe your statutes. Here is a prayer that what God is revealing, that you might become so regulative of every facet of his life that you could call his life a reflection of the very ways of God, so that his ways are forged by the precepts and the commandments of his God.

The Heart's Engagement with the Word: Psalm 119 Continued

14:05 All that my ways, that is all of the patterns of my life, in every dimension of my life, were established to observe thy statutes. Verse 11 is a very familiar text to many of us. Thy word have I laid up in my heart that I might not sin against thee. But notice what leads into that verse.

14:36 Back up to verse 9. Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. If a man, young or old, but a young man with his peculiar temptations, the peculiar pressures upon him, to a life of independence, to a life of selfishness, of ambition, of covetousness, of lust, all the peculiar temptations when the potential for sin is fueled by the energy and strength and many times the naivety of youth.

15:13 How shall a young man cleanse his way? The answer is by taking heed according to your word. If his heart and mind are regulated by the word, his way will be cleansed. That being so, verse 10, with my whole heart have I thought you.

15:35 Let me not wander from your commandments. You see, he realizes that his ways will not be conformed to the precepts of God. Unless his whole heart is engaged in walking in the ways of God. So he cries with my whole heart have I thought you.

16:00 And he pleads that he will not be allowed to wander from the commandments and then he uses appointed means. He lays up, he stores up the word in his heart. He is not merely retaining it in its form in his mind, but he is storing up the word in his heart. So that where motives and moral decisions and ethical perspectives are first forged and formed and come to birth, there the word of God will be exerting its pressure upon all of the interaction of thought

16:44 and of judgment and conscience and will and emotions and everything that makes us the mysterious creatures we are as image bearers of God. Notice that engagement of the heart in conjunction with the word. Notice it again in verse 32. I will run the way of your commandments when you shall enlarge my heart.

17:18 Verse 36. Incline my heart unto your testimonies and not to covetousness. He is conscious that there is within him a principle that would naturally lead him to this vicious, wicked sin of a passion to have more things. And he says, left to myself my heart will go in the direction of covetousness, left to myself it will not go in the direction of your commandments, one of which is thou shalt not covet.

17:55 And he says, O God, I know the precept. It is there. It's retained in my understanding. The commandment is there.

18:02 It's not a matter of ignorance. But Lord, it's a matter of disinclination. Unless you intervene and do something in me. He cries, incline my heart unto thy testimonies and not to covetousness.

The Great Work of God: Winning and Keeping the Heart

18:20 And that's what I'm seeking to set before you when I say that in supplicating God we must not only cry to him that he would write his word upon our hearts, but that he would incline our hearts to believe and obey the word that he himself has objectively revealed in Scripture. One of the old writers has said, and I've quoted it several times over the years from this pulpit, that in conversion the greatest and most difficult work of God is winning the heart to him. That's the great work of conversion,

19:03 winning the heart for God. And the great work of the Christian life is keeping the heart with God. That's the great work of the Christian life, keeping the heart with God. And you see how all of that comes together under the preaching of the word?

The Unconverted Heart: A Heart of Stone

19:23 If the proclamation of the word is the great instrument of God for our ongoing sanctification, then that word must get beyond merely being retained on the walls of the mind by careful attention while the word is preached, by appropriate responses while that word is preached, by judicious repetition of it that it might be fastened firmly upon the walls of the mind. It must take up residence in the heart, in the citadel and seat of our being. Sitting here as an unconverted man or woman, boy or girl, the last thing in the world you want

20:07 is for the precepts and the promises and the ways of God revealed in this word, the Bible, to take possession of your heart so that there is no facet of your life that is not brought through the filter of God's word. That's as far from your desires as it is that you would here and now be plunged into a boiling vat of oil. You have no desire that the word of God be written upon your heart, that there be an internal delight in the ways of God, in the will of God, in supremely,

20:51 in the salvation of God in Christ and in the Savior who is the great focal point of all of that word from Genesis to Revelation. You have a heart that is described in Ezekiel as a heart of stone. It is hard, it is unfeeling, it has no nerve endings with respect to Christ and His glory. Christ and the marvelous provisions He has made for salvation.

21:20 You are sinners. Christ and His will and His word and His ways and His people. You have a heart that with respect to those things is unresponsive and hard as a lump of stone. That's what God says you have.

21:35 By nature a stony heart. It's that heart that is enmity against God. It's not subject to the law of God neither indeed can it be. What a tragic thing to sit under the preaching of the word that has no more effect upon you than someone trying to use his fingernail to etch words in granite.

A Plea to the Unconverted: Cry for a New Heart

22:04 My dear unconverted friend don't be, don't be proud of your ability to push the word away. It ought to humble you that you can sit under that word that promises life and salvation in Christ that calls you in the words of Ezekiel to turn from the way of Christ to death and to live. To make you a new heart and a new spirit that you might not die in your sins. And I would plead with you again that you would not let another Lord's day come and go finding you brought to its threshold with a hard heart and pillaring your head tonight

22:49 with a hard heart. Cry to the God of heaven who says I will take out the heart of stone and I will give them the heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within them and cause them to walk in my statutes and to keep my judgments. Jesus died to effect all of the blessings promised in the new covenant. We are told in Hebrews that in coming to Jesus we come to him as mediator of the new covenant.

23:21 And in the new covenant God says not only will there be sins and iniquities will I remember no more but God says I will take out the heart of stone and I will give a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you. My dear unconverted friend those blessings are to be had in Christ and you are to go to Christ for those very blessings. That not only can he alone effect them he stands ready and willing to do so. He himself can treat sinners indiscriminately sincerely earnestly to come to him