Head, Heart, Hands

I knew Nathan would be prepared, so no problem having him lead us in special music. Comment before starting the sermon. It's just nice to see the young adults back from their event. When you sit in the back and you look at everybody's head, when the young adults are absent, it's like, wow, that leaves a big hole in the congregation. So it's just good to see you here.

Chip, does it cause any problems if I turn this? Everybody's over here, so there's no need to look over there. Tell me what happens when someone asks you to rub your head and pat your stomach, or vice versa, pat your head and rub your stomach. You know, there's always times when people are checking coordination, they say, okay, let's see you rub one, pat the other. And the first time you try it, you find out that it's one thing to be asked and understand what is being asked, and it's another thing to comply. It doesn't come naturally.

Our bodies don't always conform to our mental wishes. You can say, oh, sure, I want to pat my head and rub my stomach. Then you put your hands up there and you go through the frustration of finding that they both want to do the same thing at the same time.

So if you pat both, that's real easy. If you rub both, that's easy. If one is going one way, one is going the other way. The mind is saying, this is what I want to do. And the body says, yeah, but I've got my own mind. There's a spiritual corollary or a lesson to that experiment. The corollary is very simple. Your intellect, your emotions, and your actions are not always in sync with one another. Just like the physical exercise of trying to do those two dissimilar physical functions, we as human beings live a life, if we stop, back up, and look at it, where our intellect, our emotions, and our actions are not always in sync with one another.

The head, symbolic of one, symbolic of one, the heart, symbolic of the other, and the hands, or, if you wish, as I said a moment ago, the intellect, the emotions, and the actions are not always on the same page. And wishing that they would be doesn't necessarily make it so. Your Bible, as you come to understand it, says that it takes your personal determination, it takes the Holy Spirit, and it takes the help of God to reach the place where all three are in perfect harmony.

Let's take a look at the Bible and what it has to say about the head, the heart, and the hands. We'll start at the top. I'll start with the head. I was telling my wife not too long ago that prior to the May Council of Elders meeting, I was doing some prep work for it and reading through a long list of literature that we had published. And I ran across, I'll just say something because I don't remember whether it was a reprint article, a magazine article, or something else, but I was reading something where Mr.

Armstrong made the comment, and it caught my eye because I thought, well, I've read this material before, but this particular comment has never caught my eye. He was pondering conversion, and he said, to quote the phrase, that some people are, quote, converted to the idea. And I thought, that's a very interesting observation, a very interesting comment.

Some people are converted to the idea. They see the truth of our teaching. They mentally and academically accept that it is true, and that's as far as it goes. If you engage them in a conversation, they're totally with it. They're able to repeat it. At this level, they are with it, but it never sinks below that level.

Probably one of the most deceptive things in life is to be on the active end of that comment. In other words, where you're the one I'm now talking about, because it's highly deceptive, and that deceptiveness makes it very dangerous. You can believe, because the head is fully committed, that you're on the right path and find out, in reality, that it's all worthless. How many times have you seen people committed at the head level only? Over the years that I pastored Portland, I mentioned one of my dad's cousins, who would sit down with his nephews, and he would get on his soapbox, and he'd give them a sermon about the evils of smoking.

Now, he smoked like a chimney, but he'd tell you, don't ever do it. It's a dirty habit. It's an expensive habit. It's an addictive habit. And he'd give you the lecture every time you saw him. He was totally committed here. But after he finished with the sermon, he'd get out the pack, tamp it down, put it in, light it up, puff away, and you say, okay, I heard the message.

I believe the message was sincere from this level up, but that's as far as it goes.

In the aftermath of 1995, I don't know the number of I don't know the number of conversations that I had, and I would say probably the same with all of you, about people who sat there shaking their head about certain friends, relatives, even pastors that seem to be totally, completely, 100 percent committed to the way of life that you and I live. And like that, did a 180-degree turn. And the bewildered question was always the same. How, how, how in the world could that happen?

At the level that I live at, there was a great deal of attempt to indoctrinate, and I watched fellows that I had lived with and worked with for decades who I could see were resistant. And I could see at the end of a day-long session of indoctrinating with the new stuff, I could see this wobbling and wavering. And I could see the next day when we got back together this look in the eye, and the phrase was always the same. Now I can see it.

I thought, how does that work? We've been in the same classes, we've been in the same ministry, we've been in the same refreshers, we've been in the same—and yet you are at the place right now where you've completely bought and endorsed something that is alien and foreign to everything you've ever believed. The only thing I can assume—and I'm not offering a rock-solid answer on this, but in the spirit of what I'm saying to you today—the only thing I can assume is their commitment was only at the head level. Romans 7 is probably the most pointed and powerful illustration in the Bible of the conflict between the commitment of the head and the position of the heart. It's a section all of us know. In fact, many of us have read it over time after time after time after time. In Romans 7, beginning in verse 15, the Apostle Paul says, For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do.

If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.

But now it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do. But the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God, according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? That is a powerful, powerful section. And I realize the vocabulary that he uses here is different, but the message is exactly the same. What he is sharing with the Roman reader is exactly the same thing I am sharing with you. There is dissonance there. There is conflict there. There is the ability to stand back at arm's length and say, at this level right here, I am with it. I am totally with it. I not only agree with it, I love it. You know, he said, I delight in it. And then we turn around and we say, well, not all of me is on the same page.

Our younger generation has been cheated by the world of humor by its transition. I wish today that cartoonists cartooned like they cartooned when I was the age of our young adults. Everyone my age is familiar with cartoons where you had a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other shoulder and each one whispering in the ear and one saying, this is the right way, this is the way you ought to do. You know what you should be doing, the other saying, yeah, but wouldn't you rather do this? And both of them are sitting there and the head has that distant look, that wavering in the eyes as it listens to this side, that side, this side, and that side. Those were all very good cartoon depictions of the reality of the conflict with any human being that Paul was describing in Romans 7 and that I'm describing to you right now. So, you know, all of us can sit back and we can ponder and we can meditate. We can even pray. We can tell God how much we love Him. We can tell God how much His way means to us. We can tell God that His word is a beautiful light to our feet and it's an illumination of the way we ought to go. It'd be very sincere, very genuine.

And only partially committed.

So what do we have so far? What we have on a plate right now, compliments of Romans 7, is an introduction to the struggle between head and heart. It's far, far easier to convince the head, but it's worthless unless it goes beyond just the head. So what does the Scripture say about the heart?

Another participant in the whole. Paul addressed the head's willingness to agree with God in Romans 7, as we've just read, but it is Jeremiah who focuses on the heart's unwillingness to follow. So if we look at different biblical writers and we ask, who shines the spotlight on different component parts to this subject? Paul shines a brilliant spotlight on the head and the conflict. Jeremiah shines an equally bright spotlight on the heart itself. Jeremiah 17.

I've probably been not going to hit any foreign Scriptures to you. We hope we can give you a fresh look at some of these Scriptures, but the Scriptures are very well known to you. What I read in Romans, we all know backward and forward. What we're about to read in Jeremiah chapter 17, we may know even better than we know what Paul had to say. Jeremiah chapter 17 in verse 9 says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?

We're going to take that verse apart because there's a tremendous amount of meat to chew in that short verse. Jeremiah in this verse observed two things about the heart. It is deceitful.

And it hides from us. He expressed that with a rhetorical question. Who can know it? What he was saying to you is the heart is very deceitful, and it likes to hide. The heart, the term we use for the seat of our emotions and impulses. So as we take these bodily organs, they're representative of different portions of the human being, the intellect, the head, the thinking, the rational, the mathematical. The heart, the seat of emotion, feelings, impulses. The heart, which we use to describe the seat of emotions and impulses, is described by Jeremiah using a word that has a range of meanings. You know when he said, the heart is deceitful. If you go back to the original language and you look at what that word means, it, like many English words that you would look up in a dictionary, has a range of meanings. It isn't just, this word means this. It's this word can mean this, and this, and this, and this. And they go from the very simple and the very benign to those that are more serious and have greater consequence. The most benign of the meanings attached to that word is that the heart is feeble. Okay? The heart is feeble. Or to put it in a word that connects more with actions and deeds. The heart doesn't have any guts. The heart doesn't have any backbone. The heart's that willy nilly that, eh, whatever way it's going, let's lean that direction. Let's go that direction. The heart looks for the easy way, the convenient way. The darkest of the definitions is that it is desperately wicked, incurably so.

In between those two extremes, from just simply being spineless, go whatever way the flow goes, to being downright deliberately dishonest, is that the heart is crooked?

It's fraudulent. It won't look you square in the eye and give you an honest answer. And if you think your head and your heart can have a conversation and the heart's going to level with a head, you're misguided. What can we say from personal experience about the heart? Because all of us have head-heart issues. All of us have had head-heart discussions. All of us have had the back and forth. What can we say from personal experience? You know, when the head sees something is right and it understands it's right, the kindest thing we can say about the heart is that it's a yes-but machine. In other words, well, yeah, yeah, I agree, yeah. What you said is right, yeah, well, it's book, chapter, and verse, yeah, yeah, but, but. Now comes the equivocating. Oh, I agree.

And then it offers an alternative path, which in the end leads to a totally different conclusion. We're all walking down the line and the head and the heart are both, both there. The head says, this is the way we're going. The heart says, that's the right way. Head says, the Bible says, this is what we should do. And the head says, yeah, it sure does. You get to a fork in the road and the heart says, yeah, but have you considered this? By the time you're finished, the head has gone off here and the heart has gone off over here.

It hasn't been honest.

The heart loves avoidance.

It is the master of procrastination. And it doesn't procrastinate because it's lazy. It procrastinates because it doesn't want to commit. If I drag my feet long enough, it'll go away. If I drag my feet long enough, the head may come to an alternate position.

The head and the heart go different paths because the heart loves avoidance and it can avoid, through procrastination, I can simply avoid committing and hope it all just disappears.

On the more devious and deceitful side, the heart loves to hide in the shadows.

The heart loves to simply sit back and let the mind speak for it when it isn't fully committed. Or, in some cases, when it doesn't even agree.

We have a term in our vocabulary for this dichotomy. It's called lip service.

Lip service. Oh yeah, I agree with that.

Down here, it's... I don't really feel that way. I'm not really on the same page.

The heart would rather the mind do all the talking so it doesn't have to come out of the shadows and really expose itself for what it is.

This is what Jeremiah is talking about in Jeremiah 17.9. When he says, this is what the heart is.

Now that we've taken a full review of what Jeremiah has to say about the heart, let's ask a more personal question.

If you look back over your Christian life, your converted life, what has your heart taught you?

How many times in your life has your heart given you a wake-up call where the heart said, okay, I'm going to come out of the shadows where you can see me. And you have that shock of saying, it doesn't look like I thought it looked like.

Ever been there?

Or how many times have you been there? Have you ever been there? Or how many times have you been there? How many times have you been there? I remember in the past an incident that I'll share with you. Because as I look over my life and I look at those points in time where if I were on the listening end, instead of the speaking end, I could say, okay, I can share with you times where the heart has come out of the shadows and made itself known. But I remember one because it had done such a totally complete sales job to my head. I thought we're all marching along together in absolute perfect step. We look like a military band, every foot coming down at the same time. It was during a time of great personal upheaval, and I prayed to be at peace with individuals with whom I'd had a very adversarial relationship. I was praying for reconciliation. I knew very clearly what the Scripture said about peacemakers. I knew what it said about those who would seek peace and pursue it. I knew all of those things, and in the words of Paul in Romans 7 agreed with them 110 percent, totally completely. Prayed over a long, long, long period of time to find that place.

Because of the length of time I sought it and pursued it, I believed that all of me was on the same page. So, God used the prayer to teach me a lesson. God took an innocent bystander that knew absolutely nothing about my prayers or my wishes, and a knowing of my feelings arranged that me and one of the enemies that I had been praying about ended up staying in the same house at the same time. I had been invited first and had accepted the invitation, and then as an afterthought it was, oh, by the way, so-and-so is going to be staying here also. Now, I've been praying for months, and at that point in time, my heart came out of the shadows and said, I totally agree with peace, I totally agree with peacemaking, I totally agree with reconciliation, I totally agree with people walking together in harmony. I just don't want to participate.

I just simply don't want to participate. I don't want to be stuck in the same house at the same time with somebody that we have had that bad a relationship to where I actually have to do something about it. Up here, I guess the best you could see at that time of exposure was, like the fairy tales, I wanted God to wave a magic wand, I wanted to hear a little tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, and see stardust, and I wanted to see it all go away. Because up here, I was fully and totally committed. And here, I said, there's enough history, there's enough ill feelings, there's been enough bad blood over time. I don't want to be in the same place with that person at the same time. I treasure that event. You know, you don't want to walk through life self-deceived. You don't want to spend your whole life thinking that everything is working the way it ought to, and from here on down, it's got its own agenda. I greatly appreciate what God did to me, because He gave me a very shocking wake-up call that said, okay, I need to alter the way I pray in the future, and I need to include more than just the head in this situation. I need to be sure that everybody is on board. All of us, like Paul and Jeremiah, understand the struggle between head and heart. We've all been there, and probably are there at different times with different issues.

Now, so far, in describing to you the head and the heart, all we've seen is the negative side. We've seen that conflict from Paul between head and heart. We've seen from Jeremiah the deceitfulness all the way from just being lazy and flabby to downright deceptive from the heart. But in a real Christian living, thanks to the help of God's Spirit, the head and the heart do walk together in harmony in many areas. You see, the end of what the Apostle Paul had to say in Romans 7 was to use the phrase, I thank God. And Romans 7 transitioned into the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit chapter. It's why I said at the beginning it takes determination on our part. It takes the help of the Holy Spirit and the assistance of God. Where do we go to look at what makes up a head and heart that are working the way that we all want them to work? If you look for head-to-heart scriptures, or if you look for scriptures that imply that everything is in sync and it's moving along and it's going the right direction, you'd be surprised how many places throughout the Bible you will find just really good scriptures dealing with what I'm describing right now.

I want you to turn back, first of all, Psalm 86.

Psalm 86.

What all of us want is a head and a heart that are both participants in obeying God. We want the ability and the peace that comes from saying all the participants are on board and they're all going the right direction. Christian living begins with the need to have everything in alignment, united, no longer wobbling back and forth. Psalm 86 makes the following comment. Psalm 86 verse 11. We even have a hymn based on this. What he's saying is stop my heart from wobbling. Bring it in sync. Unite it. Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. Though he doesn't mention the head implicit in it is, I want my thoughts and my emotions to be on the same page. I want them both to love your way, and I want you to teach me how to arrive there.

Turn with me now to the book of Hebrews.

I'm going to read to you from Hebrews chapter 10 a few verses before a section that is very, very well known to us. We're all familiar with the section that says, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together and so much more so as you see that day approaching. What leads up to it is a very powerful set of verses that talk about this unity of head and heart in their service and obedience to God. Hebrews chapter 10, and if you will allow me so that I don't create confusion, you know how it is with complex thoughts and complex ideas that you can go through 10, 15 different translations, and each one will capture a piece of a verse and then miss it with the rest of it. I went through my 10, 15 translations of this particular verse, or these two particular verses, and found of all of them in terms of capturing really what we want to see, that the international standard version did the best job. So let me read it to you, and when I'm finished then I'll tell you the two verses. But I don't want you reading it in the New King James while I'm reading it in the international standard version. All that creates, as you know, when you've got two signals going at the same time as you miss what I want you to get. This is what it says. Let us continue to come near. This is speaking of God having given Christ the role of our high priest. So it's speaking of our high priest and the ability to approach the throne of God in heaven. And that's why it says, let us come near. Let us continue to come near with sincere hearts. So a component part here is we've moved beyond just intellect. Let us continue to come near with sincere hearts in the full assurance that faith provides. Because our hearts have been sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience and our bodies have been washed with pure water. Let us continue to hold firmly to the hope that we confess without wavering for the one who made the promise is faithful. He connects the participation of head and heart in these two verses. He says we have to make that approach with a sincere heart that emotionally and intellectually both has the faith to believe that God's promises are certain and sure. And the ability for the heart to come over and join the mind is because the heart has been sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience. You know, how often is it that the heart argues with the head because the heart is not on the same page spiritually?

The argument is not intellectual. It's quite often spiritual. And so he says we can approach the throne of God with a sincere heart because that heart has been sprinkled and it has been cleaned from a guilty conscience. And he's speaking here of baptism. Our bodies have been washed with pure water. When he says, let us continue to hold firmly to the hope, you know, the firmness is up here. You determine. So much of Mr. Kelly's sermonette as he was talking about archery was that singleness of mind, that singleness of focus, that determination up at this level that here's the way, here's what you do, here's the process, and I hang on to that. Let us continue to hold firmly to the hope that we confess without wavering, for the one who made the promise is faithful. There are dozens of scriptures about how a person lives, who has both head and heart in alignment with God. So what we're going to look at are those scriptures that are uttered from the mouth of somebody whose head and heart are on the same page. And we can extrapolate from there, okay, if this is where he is, then I can see what it takes for the two of them to work together in concert. I said to you that there are scriptures from beginning to end in the Bible that deal with this. You know, when God in Genesis 6 decided that he would destroy the earth, it was because of the deficiencies in the area we're talking about right now. He said, you know, these people have gone from just a wicked heart. They've gone from the place where every imagination of the thoughts of their minds are evil continually. This is a case where the head, in its more noble position as Paul described it, had to try to bring the heart up to that level. This was a case where universally on the earth the heart had brought the mind down to its level, and every thought and imagination of the heart was evil all day long. When we reverse that and say, well, where's the person where it's on the right page all day long, it should come as no surprise that if we wanted to pick one place to focus, the place we would focus is in the writings. You know, this is one of those duh statements. In the writings of the man that is described in the Bible as a man after God's own heart. You know, a man whose heart was where God's heart was, what better place to go than to what he has to say in order to see a synchronization between head and heart? If I took one chapter and I went all the way through Psalms from start to finish, it's interesting that there are 14 different positive statements, either stating or alluding to the alignment of the head and the heart in honor of God. 14 in Psalm 119. Some of them are repetitive of the same thought, so I'm not going to take you through all of them, but I want you to turn to Psalm 119, and we will look at some of the statements from the writings of David that demonstrate the importance of it, the value of it, his being there. We'll look at several nuances. I'll mention before we start reading Psalm 119, though, that what is interesting is in the instruction from father to son in the beginning chapters of the book of Proverbs are also some profoundly valuable head and heart scriptures also. Psalm 119. Psalm 119 in verse 7.

I will praise you with uprightness of heart when I learn your righteous judgments. David is saying here, I will praise you with a heart that is right with you. When we talk about upright, God talks about uprightness or the upright man. What do you mean by upright? You know, we're not talking about evolution from knuckle-dragging to the place where we're standing erect. Upright has to do with I am right with God. And so what he's saying here is, I will praise you with a heart that is right with you when I learn your righteous judgments. Where's your learning? Your learning is here. And so he's in essence saying, as this learns your way, this will walk correctly in that way. Both are working in sync.

Verse 10. With my whole heart I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments.

Whole heart, as you read it here in Psalms and as you read it in Scripture, whole heart is a heart that has been proven to be in sync with God because it's respect for all of His commandments.

We use the term wholeheartedness. You know, we live in a world where there are those, as an illustration, who will tell you I am a total complete believer in the commandments. I remember making a church visit somewhere in the Midwest, and there had been a court ruling against the commandments appearing in public places. And I went through this small Midwestern community, and people by the dozens had staked in their front yard a plaque with the 10 commandments on them. This was a case of citizen defiance. You may be able to take it out of the courthouse. You may be able to take it out of City Hall. But I want you to know that you cannot take it away from me. And as I drove with my host, I think it was probably during a Holy Day visit, maybe the days of Unleavened Bread, and I was guest speaker, house after house after house after house over several blocks had in their front yard a stake and a plaque with the 10 commandments on it.

You know the irony of it all? Because the topic right now is wholeheartedness. That's what David is talking about. I could have probably gone up the sidewalk and knocked on the door of most of those houses, and when the person answered, I would have expressed my respect for seeing the plaque in the front yard. And then I could have asked them, do you observe the Sabbath? And I knew by the community I was in, the answer would have been, no, that's done away.

With my whole heart I have sought you. Not with 90 percent of my heart. With 100 percent of my heart I have sought you. Let me not wander from your commands. We live in a society where among the rich, religious, we have many, many very, very genuine and very sincere people who have wandered, in part, from the commandments they endorse. Verse 32, I will run in the way of your commandments, for you shall enlarge my heart.

You know, when you run, the orders come from up here, don't they? I'm going to run. Order is given, feet take off. I will run in the way of your commandments, for you shall enlarge my heart.

What is he talking about when he says, you shall enlarge my heart? We're not talking about prepping for open heart surgery to take care of a birth defect. Enlarging the heart is a way of saying, as you give me more understanding with concurrent desire.

You can enlarge the brain with more knowledge. You enlarge the heart with more desire to act upon the knowledge. And so he said, I'll run in your ways, for you shall. In other words, I know that the more I am focused on obeying and living your way, the more you will allow me to see and understand. You will enlarge my understanding, and you will enlarge also my commitment to that way of life. Now, we're only halfway through, but you're beginning to see a man who was in sync, a man whose head and heart were going the same direction. They were on the same page. They were headed to the same destination. Verse 34, Give me understanding, so this is at the head level, and I will keep your law. Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. This is probably one of the pivotal examples of the two of them being in sync. Feed me up here. Give me understanding. And I will keep your law indeed. In fact, I will observe it with my whole heart. So, as this learns, this cooperates. Unlike Paul's description of the man before conversion. Because if you understand in Romans 7, Paul is describing a fight that never goes away, but he was leading up to the Holy Spirit chapter to where help is available to rise above this. Verse 36, Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to covetousness.

You know, when you watch somebody, we have a vocabulary term that is a depiction of a physical action. We ask when options are available to a person, we ask, which way are you leaning? Now, the person probably doesn't lean at all. You know, they stand the same way, no matter what the discussion. They stand the same way, no matter what's being conversed about. But we ask, which way are you leaning? That's not a question about the body. It's a question about the emotions. And he says, lean my heart, incline it toward you, and not toward where it naturally wants to go.

My head is already there. I want my heart to lean the way it should, rather than the way that it shouldn't. You see, sometimes with the devout, and David was indeed devout, you not only thank God for what he's given you, but you look forward and ask him to continue even making it better and better. And this is one of those better and better verses. Two more. Verse 80.

Let my heart be blameless regarding your statutes, that I may not be ashamed. Let my heart be blameless.

Another meaning, if you go to other translations, is let my heart be sound, undivided, completely centered. So you would see, if you read in maybe 10 different translations, you would see this range of terms used for blameless. Let my heart be sound. Not flawed. Let it be undivided. Not wavering back and forth. Some even say, let my heart be completely centered on God's way.

I'm looking at a couple here that I need to check just very quickly.

I think that probably takes care of it.

As I said, you could go through all 14 in the 119 Psalm. The book of Psalms, I can't even tell you how many heart-head scriptures there are between Psalm 1 and the end of the book. Proverbs starts with some tremendous ones.

What was the pivotal scripture as God said, ancient Israel coming out of Egypt, and the very low probability that they would follow Him? It was a statement that said, oh, that there were such an heart in them.

You know, that was a lament. It was a lament based upon looking and realizing it wasn't there. It wasn't there. They could sing and dance and shout as they stood on the banks of the Red Sea, looking back at the flotsam and jetsam on the ocean and knowing they were free from Egypt. And within three days, they were muttering and grumbling and saying, why did you bring us out in the desert to kill us?

And He said, oh, that there were such an heart in them that they would do these things. What David was busy doing here was saying and showing us that in him there was such a heart. And that heart loved the way of God. It agreed with the intellect. It sought to even improve and grow from there. Well, are we there yet?

You know, like the kid in the backseat of the car looking at the scenery going and getting tired of the backseat and saying, well, are we there yet? The answer is almost. Not quite, but almost.

We've been talking about the head and the hearts. If they're aligned as we have seen here in David's writings, I'll ask you a question. If the two of them are aligned, head and heart on the same page is all good with God.

Good place to be, but we're not quite there yet.

Good place to be. If head and heart are in alignment, good place to be. But we aren't quite there yet. James 1.

Between James 1 and James 2 are two dissertations on what's left. James 1. Be you doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man observing his natural face in a mirror, for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

James 2.

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says, he has faith? But does not have works.

And faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked in destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warmed and filled, but you don't give them the things which are needed for the body, what did it profit? You know, there are scriptural absurdities that in their absurdity make the point. Nice to tell somebody who hasn't eaten in three or four days, and has a nice summer shirt on when it's 20 degrees outside, well, hope you got a full stomach and that's your warm and see you later. He said, what did that profit? Thus also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. For someone will say, you have faith and I have works. James says, show me your faith without your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works. You believe there is one God? You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble. But do you want to know, oh foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works, faith was completed or made perfect? As I said at the beginning of the sermon, I wanted to talk to you about the head and the heart and the hands. The hands have to come into this, or we're not there yet. I'd like to share with you, as we begin to wrap up, pieces from two of Jesus Christ's parables. One in Matthew 7. Matthew 7.

This is the final parable of the Sermon on the Mount. After this parable is uttered, the Sermon on the Mount is finished. So this is a capstone, more or less. This is the culmination. This is where it all comes to an end. Verse 24 through 27 are the final words of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. And he says, Now everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell and great was its fall. Success, stability, and durability rested totally and completely upon the connection between the head, the heart, and the hands.

The other parable is in Mark chapter 4, and it's the parable of the soils. It's also in Matthew 13, but we'll look at Mark's account of what is called the parable of the soils. The parable begins in this way. We know it well, but I'll just give you the preface. And again he began to teach by the sea, and a great multitude was gathered to him, so that he got into a boat, set in it on the sea, and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. And then he taught them many things by parables, and said to them in his teaching, Listen, behold, a sower went out to sow. Now we all know the parable. There were four different soils, and there were four different results from those soils. And when he was finished giving the story, he said, Now let me tell you what soil one was, what soil two was, what soil three was, and what soil four was. And all we're interested in for the sake of this illustration is the fourth soil, which was the soil that was fertile and that bore fruit. And he described it in this way, verse 20. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit.

So what do you have here? Acceptance.

Hearing. Bearing.

All the hearing goes on up here.

The accepting goes on here. The doing goes on here.

Said those that were on the good soil and that bore fruit, some 30-fold, some 60-fold, some 100-fold, were those who this was with it, this was with it, this was with it. Head, heart, and hands. You see, the hands are the confirmers. The hands seal the deal. The head will be there way ahead of everything else, sometimes dragging the emotions, kicking and screaming behind it. The emotions may eventually come in alignment with the head, and the two of them will look at each other and smile, and they're happy as they can be, and they walk in concert, as we read in the 119 Psalm in a number of instances. But the hands seal the deal. They confirm it all. When the head is on the ground, the head is on board, the emotions are completely in alignment, the hands then put the stamp on that says done, finished, committed. Anything less than what we've described here is a work in progress. Many of us in our lives, in various compartments of our life, we go through those works in progress. In fact, none of us is going to be finished growing until the day we die. And if it were up to us, we'd live longer because all of us, when we reach that point, know that there's more growing to do. So there's always works in progress. That's a reality of life. But those areas where there's calm and confidence and peace and assurance are those where the head, the heart, and the hands are all nodding the same way and all moving the same way.

Can we back what I've just said to you up through Scripture?

I would use a phrase from the Apostle Paul, I speak as a fool. We can back this up in the most profound way possible, and I mean that without exaggeration. Literally, in the most profound way possible from the Bible, we can back up what I have just said to you. Matthew and Mark, in conclusion, record a pivotal event where the Sadducees had been in a back and forth with Christ, finally ended in a Pharisee, decided to pick up the baton and go from there. In one account, he's called a scribe, which means that he would be among the most learned of the Pharisees. You know, there are Pharisees, and there are Pharisees. Paul said to himself, I am a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I'm at the top of the stack. Well, the scribes were the brain trust of the Pharisees. In one account, this man is called a scribe, in the other he's called a lawyer. And it says in one account, he came to test Christ. So he wasn't there with good intentions. He was there to put the screws in the screws to Christ. And he asked the question that we're all familiar with. He asked of Christ, what is the greatest commandment in the law? The answer that Jesus Christ gave, if you read the account, silenced everyone. These were men who knew and understood, and his answer simply left no wiggle room. It left no room for additional comment. He said all there was to say, there was nothing more to say, and silence prevailed following that.

Now, you're familiar with this. So when I say to you, Christ was asked, what is the great commandment in the law? I'm sure there are a number in this room that can recite it in their minds, verbatim. And if you can't get every word right, you can still recite the intent correctly. But have you ever taken it apart? Turn back with me in closing to Mark 12.

In Mark 12, verse 28, Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he had answered them well, ask him, what is the first—and if you look in your margin, it means what is the foremost or the greatest—what is the first, the foremost, the greatest commandment of all?

In the spirit of the message I've just given you, brethren, I want you to listen to the front end of his answer. The first of all the commandments is here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love him, and you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.

He chose to give them in a different order than we have in the sermon, but let me take the four components.

He said, You shall love the Lord your God, with all your mind, your intellect, with all your heart, with all your emotion, with all your strength, your hands, with all your soul.

The soul is simply a way of taking all of these and wrapping them in one neat package and putting the bow on. The word soul means with your breath. What he was saying to them was, You have to love the Lord your God with all your heart, I mean with all your mind, all your intellect, with all your heart, all your emotion, with all your strength, with all your hands. In fact, you have to love him with your very life.

He said, This is the foremost commandment. Head, heart, hands.