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     1. Keep Your Heart with All Diligence   (27:46)
     2. Old-Time Religion, excerpt   (1:47)

Proverbs 4:23.  Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

Ezekiel 36:26-27.  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 an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

Jeremiah 31:33.  But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Isaiah 26:3.  Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

I Peter 1:5.  Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

But here’s something that God definitely desires to do for us: “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding…  She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.  Her ways are the ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her…  My son,”—I’m so glad when the Lord calls us His sons—“let not them depart from thine eyes: keep sound wisdom and discretion: So shall they be life unto thy soul, and grace to thy neck. Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thou shalt not stumble.

“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.  Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health unto all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.  Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.  Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.”

Now here’s the word I would like to leave with us to ponder over this week: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

…

How diligent we are to guard our own health! … We go through all kinds of contortions to keep our health, but here is the source and the seat of life: “out of it are the issues of life.”  And by “life,” God means eternal life.  And how little attention is paid to guarding this heart with all diligence.  Anyone that is wise unto salvation will pay attention to his heart infinitely more than to his body.  In fact, I believe the less you think of your body the better [off] you are.  If you will think of your heart, if you will guard your heart from harm and from sin, the Bible says, “If you attend to my words, and you let them not depart from thine eyes, and keep them in the midst of thine heart,” you have all the medicine you need to keep your body well.  He says, “they shall be health to your whole body—all your flesh.”

…

How very wonderful that God created this heart for His habitation.  He created it to be a fountain.  When Jesus Christ says, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,” all these things: “jealousy, pride, wrath,” He shows what a zoo, what a cage of evil beasts there lodge in our hearts until God Almighty has renewed them, and has cleansed them.  And that’s the promise of the Gospel: “A new heart will I create within you, and I will write My laws upon the table of your heart.”

…

“As many as I love, I rebuke, and I chasten.  Be zealous therefore and repent.”  “I have not found thy works perfect before My God.”  Is it possible to have a heart that is perfect?  Well, God says so. “His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth.” And what are they looking for?  Why, they’re looking for hearts that are “perfect toward Him.”  Oh, how much does that heart mean to God!

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“He commands all men everywhere to repent.”  Repent of what?  Well, you didn’t murder anybody, did you?  You didn’t set anybody’s house afire.  But Paul said, “There’s no good thing in me.  O wretched man that I am!”  That’s the thing.  Oh, what a privilege, (…) Glory to God!  Not only my face, not only my hands, but my whole being renewed by the power of His resurrection!

That’s what God’s looking for.  He’s looking for men whose hearts say “yes” to His will.  They’re perfect toward God.  They don’t fool with the blood of Jesus Christ.  They don’t tread it underfoot.  But they bow before the cross of Christ, and they bring their sins to Jesus with a vengeance.  And, “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

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My heart is a garden, dedicated to my Bridegroom.  And He watches it.  Oh, how carefully He watches that garden!  Every flower, every plant has its enemies.  And these bugs, they’ll come around and they’ll eat, and these little foxes will come in and they’ll spoil your vines.

…

But how very wonderful that my God will keep “in perfect peace”—that God is the keeper of this vineyard, if I let Him.  He who washed me with His own precious blood, He is the one who is careful to “keep my heart with all diligence.”  I must put my heart into His powerful hand.  I learned a song in those days… “Wonderful keeping power, glorious keeping power… No power have I my soul to keep within the way…”  I don’t.  … 

To know that Jesus Christ covered me with his mantle—kept me, kept me from all defilement.  He was able to save me in the first place, and He was able to keep me…

You have a heart.  And that heart is either defiled and bound or it is “kept by the power of God unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time…” 

Listen, here’s an offer of Almighty God the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to make your heart their holy shrine—the Holiest of All—the temple of the Living God, and to make your very body a temple of God and a member of the body of Jesus Christ.

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A vision of mortality.  “Where are they going, one by one?  I had a vision somehow in my soul of this great crowd of people rushing toward the grave.”    (from 10:19)

Worldly thoughts likened to mosquitoes.    (from 16:04)

A beautiful box of raspberries defiled by insects.  “They put that box back and sold it.  That’s what we do with our hearts: full of vermin, full of lice, full of worms, full of filth, full of death.  We don’t recognize, beloved, out of it are the issues of life, and out of it are the issues of death.  And someday, we’ll reap what we sowed.”    (from 18:18)

Ruth Brown Snyder, a woman who died in the electric chair in 1928.  A photograph of the execution was taken surreptitiously and published in the New York Daily News.

Keeping Power, a hymn by Lelia N. Morris, 1935.

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