We're all searching for peace in our heart.
We're searching for happiness and joy in our life.
And so the Bible talks a lot about the heart.
So we could argue that 70%, 70% of the Bible is about the heart.
One of the themes that has come up over the last 10 years
in my ministry of working with men especially has been the issues of the heart.
And the heart of the issue of the heart is kind of my thesis today
because the Bible says more about the heart than anything else.
So one might think that the Bible is about salvation
and that's part of the aspect of the Bible that would be considered
one of the themes of the Bible for sure.
We could say that in the ministry of Jesus, the kingdom of God was his theme.
We could say that the law is one of the themes of the Old Testament in the scriptures.
But what ties it all together is the heart and God's view of the heart,
how the heart is the perspective in which God reveals himself.
He reveals himself primarily in the heart.
So even though God reveals himself partly through creation,
he's really speaking to the heart of men and women.
So when I've talked to men, the tendency especially with men
is to focus on the exterior, the outward aspects of manhood or masculinity,
marriage, family, vocation, calling.
All those things are important.
They really are important.
But where I like to go with men especially is the heart
because if you don't get a man's heart, then it doesn't really matter the external stuff.
And it's true with women too.
And I've had the privilege of speaking to women about femininity, about relationships,
about their own unique struggles in the ways of women relationally.
I find with women that marriage and children are a big part of their journey.
Their relationships are really important to them.
And a lot of women feel like that they're not enough in their outward beauty,
that they're not enough in their relationships.
I know lots of moms that struggle with being not enough as a wife and as a mother.
And man, I totally get that as much as a guy can get that.
And I know with men, it's that feeling of not being strong enough,
not being, not making enough money.
But all those things are outward.
Those are all the outward manifestations.
And what I want to do in this series is talk about the importance of the heart
and that the heart is really the issue.
And I'm going to be talking about the idols of the heart too
and how we set up idols to satisfy this longing within all of us
to find joy, happiness, peace, grace.
We're all looking for that.
I don't care whether you're a Hindu in India or Pakistan,
whether you're a Muslim in Egypt
or whether you're a Christian in Europe and America,
we're all searching for peace in our heart.
We're searching for happiness and joy in our life.
And so the Bible talks a lot about the heart.
So we could argue that 70%, 70% of the Bible is about the heart.
We look at the passages of scripture in the Old Testament with the prophets.
They were going after the heart and they were talking about the heart
and they were talking about idols.
Jesus in the New Testament being challenged by the Pharisees and the scribes
at one point, which is depicted in Mark 12 and in Matthew 22,
a scribe says to Jesus, what is the greatest commandment?
And the context of that text, of that pericope
is looking for some kind of an answer about outward behavior.
And Jesus throws a wrench in the whole argument by saying this.
He says, look, all of the law and all of the prophets,
everything that you're looking for is summed up this way.
Love the Lord your God with all of your heart,
with all of your soul, with all of your mind and with all of your strength.
If you do this, then you will love your neighbor as yourself.
These two commandments sum it all up.
Jesus went straight to the heart.
And we're going to look at that in this series.
Even in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7,
where Jesus says,
Jesus throws the whole sacrificial system,
the legal system on its head by saying
that it's not these outward things
that are the most important.
It's actually the attitude of your heart.
It's actually the direction of your heart.
The heart of the issue is the heart.
And my thesis is this,
is that the heart of the issue is the heart,
but get your heart lined up with God.
If you get your heart lined up with God,
God will line up the rest of your life.
If you line up your heart with God,
God will then come and line up your life with him.
One of the most important doctrines
that many have talked about over the years
has been creation,
and creation doctrine is really important.
Another great doctrine is the doctrine of salvation.
Salvation is very important.
Many have talked about the doctrine
of the sovereignty of God.
And so I took systematic theology in graduate school,
and I have a thick book by Wayne Grudem, about that thick.
And then I have another one by Burkoff,
and then I have another one by another author,
three books on systematic theology.
Beautiful, man, I just love reading those books.
But here's what's interesting.
I think, and I think many theologians would agree with this,
that the most important doctrine
actually is not the existence of God.
It's not the importance of the Bible.
It's not creation.
It's actually the doctrine of sin.
The doctrine of sin is huge.
It's probably the one doctrine that is the easiest to prove.
All you have to do is look around,
face the earth, and everybody's pretty darn sinful,
and gone their own way.
So this doctrine of sin, as a central doctrine,
is probably the most important doctrine of all,
because you don't really have any need
for a doctrine of creation.
Why would God create the heavens and the earth?
You don't need a doctrine of the Bible,
because why do we need the Bible?
Because of sin.
I mean, sin's the most important part
of why we have the doctrine of creation, the Bible.
The existence of man.
We came to this earth, and we rebelled against God.
And so the cross, and the life, death,
and resurrection of Christ,
all centers around this idea of our heart,
and the fact that we have a sinful heart,
and that we've all rebelled against God.
And that's the big struggle.
Today, I wanna talk about this idea
of the idols of the heart,
and the battle for the idols in our life
that we struggle with.
And so I wanna ask this question.
What is the one thing that, if you lost it,
would cause you to lose the will to live?
Or if you lost it, it would almost,
if not completely, drain you
of all your desire to live life?
That's a big question.
That's the question, I think, of the idols of our heart.
And I wanna propose that all of us have something.
Nobody's perfect in this arena,
but all of us have something
that is a little bit misplaced in our heart
that we think about, that we focus on,
and in the order of importance,
it becomes an idol in our heart.
And it's not a bad thing.
I'm not talking about a bad thing.
I'm talking about actually good things,
good things in our life that become within us
kind of an idol of our heart.
I wanna encourage you to read a book
called The Confessions by St. Augustine.
I brought the book with me, and I'm reading this right now.
I'm reading The Confessions of St. Patrick,
and I'm also reading The Confessions of St. Augustine.
Both of them focus in on the heart
and the importance of the heart in our lives.
In this series, I'm gonna talk about this idol of the heart
and why that's so vital and dynamic in our life
in knowing God, in loving God with all of our heart.
In the next few sessions,
I'm gonna be talking about idols,
what kind of idols get raised up in our life,
and with those idols comes with it a distance from God
that gets our life a little bit out of order.
So in the next talk,
I wanna talk about the idols of the heart.
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