CENTRE OF THE PHYSICAL LIFE.
(a) "Lifeless" Objects. Deut. 5: 11; Matt. 12: 40; Jon. 2: 3; Ezek. 26: 4, 25-27.
(b) Lowest Life-Power. Gen. 18: 5; Judg. 19: 5.
(c) Life-Power. Ps. 38: 10, 11; Luke 21: 34.
(d) Life of the Whole Person. Acts 14: 17; Jas. 5: 5.
CENTRE OF PRACTICAL LIFE.
(a) Emporium. Ps. 5:9; 49:11; 1 Pet. 3:4.
(b) Export. Mark 7:21, 22; Esth. 7:5.
(c) Import. Acts 5:3; 16:14; 2 Cor. 4:6.
N. B. The relative position of Head and Heart in the Bible and Modern Thought will be explained. "The head is to the external appearance what the heart is to the internal agency of the soul."
1. Centre of Physical Life.
We will deal first with, the N. B. on the chart. In the Bible the heart is made to be the centre of thinking, not the brain, and for a long while mental science has differed from the Bible. It has maintained a steady opposition to the Bible standpoint. But modern psychologists are coming round slowly now to find that the best way to explain the facts of conscious life is to revise previous unbiblical " findings."
Physically, remember that the heart is the first thing to live, and the Bible finds in the heart all the active factors that we have been apt to place in the brain. The brain is simply the head- piece, the true indicator of what the heart is. In the mystical body of Christ, Christ is not called the heart; Christ is called the head. (Eph. 5:23; Col. 2:19; 1 Cor. 11:3.) Now, if the head is to be the exact outward expression of the heart, how can sin have any part in the mystical body of Christ? That is, how can people who are not rightly related to God, whose inward disposition has not been changed, how can they be part of the body of Christ, if Christ is the head and true expression of what that body is, especially in the centre of its life?
The head has the prominence of all blessings in the Old and New Testaments, simply because it is the outward expression of the condition of the heart. (Gen. 48:14; 49:26; Prov. 10:6; Ps. 132:2; Lev. 8.) You find also statements about the countenance; which does not only mean the face and front of the head; but the whole carriage of the person that is external in expression: and the countenance becomes the true mirror of what the heart is like, when the heart has had time enough to manifest its true life. (With regard to the countenance being the mirror, see Ex. 34: 29; Matt. 17:2; 2 Cor. 3:13; Isa. 3:9; 2 Sam. 17:11.)
The Bible does not put the head in the central position, it puts it in the prominent position, on the top; the head is the final finish off, the manifestation of what the heart is like. The head is the outwarcl expression, as the tree is the outward expression of what the root is like. That is the relationship between head and heart in the Bible.
The materialistic scientists say that "the brain secretes thinking like the liver does bile." They have made the brain the centre of thinking. The Bible makes the heart the centre of thinking and the brain merely the machinery the heart uses to express itself. That is a very vital point in our judgment of men. For instance, Carlyle represents the judgment of men who do not accept the Bible standpoint. He judged men by brains, and consequently said the majority of the human race were fools.
God never judges men by brains; they are judged by heart.
The heart, then, is the true centre of living, and the true centre of all vital activities of body, soul, and spirit.
When the apostle Paul refers to believing with the heart, he means a great deal more than we are apt to mean. The Bible always means more than we are apt to mean. The Bible term "heart" means the particular centre on which everything turns, in every way and in every detail. The human soul has the spirit in and above it; the body by and about it; but the vital centre is the heart.
The passages under section 1 simply mean that the Bible points out that the centre of everything is its heart. "When we speak of the heart, either figuratively or really, we speak of the mid-most part of a person. "Where we differ in our Bible teaching from secular mental science is, that we make the heart the soul-centre and the spirit-centre also.
One of the greatest dangers in dealing with the
Bible is to exploit it, that is, to come to it with a preconceived idea, and take things out of it only what agree with that idea. If you try, as has been tried by psychologists, to take out of it something that agrees with modern psychology, you will find that you always have to omit everything the Bible says about the heart. The heart is the centre, the centre of the physical life, it is the centre of memory, the centre of damnation and the centre of salvation, the centre of God's working, and the centre of the devil's working, the centre from which everything works that moulds the human mechanism.
(c) Life Power. (Ps. 38:10, 11; Luke 21:34.) These passages are typical of many more where the heart is made the centre of all life power, physical and otherwise. Anything that makes the heart move or beat quicker physically always works towards higher or lower manifestations, and you will find our Lord Jesus Christ produces the kind of influence that alters the heart life at once. Some people you come in contact with freeze you (so to speak), you cannot think, things do not "go", you feel everything "tight" and "mean"; you come into the zone of other people and all those "bands" have gone, you are surprised at how clearly you can think, everything seems to "go" better. You feel better and you take a deep breath and say, "Why, I feel quite different; what has happened?" The one personality brought an atmosphere that "froze" the heart not only physically, but psychically, kept it cold, kept it down, kept it back; the other gave it a chance to expand, and develop, and surge again throughout the whole body.
(Take it in the lowest physical domain. If people knew that circulation of the blood and the quickening of the heart life would move distempers from the body, there would be a great deal less medicine taken and a great deal more walking done.)
The heart is indeed the centre for all the physical life and all the imaginations that the mind works. Anything that keeps the physical blood in a good condition and keeps the heart circulating in a proper way, will always benefit the soul and spirit life as well. That is why Jesus Christ says, "Be careful that you do not get your heart (that includes physical heart as well) surfeited by the wrong things." Whenever certain kinds of sins are mentioned they are called idolatry. "Covetousness" is called idolatry because every drop of blood in a covetous man's life is drawn away from God physically, and spiritually. The same thing with sensuality, with drunkenness, and with vengeance (vengeance is probably the most tyrannical passion of the carnal mind). The first wonderful thing done by the new life given to us by the Holy Spirit is to loosen the heart, and as we obey the Spirit in the life, it leads in each detail nearer and nearer to what God has for us, and the manifestations become easier. Satan, however, is as subtle as God is good, and he will counterfeit everything God does, and, if he cannot counterfeit it, he will limit it. Do not be ignorant of his devices!
(d) Life of the "Whole Person. (Acts 14:17; Jas. 5:5.) There is indication given of the power of our heart-life. If our hearts are right with God, we are able to realize what is mentioned in the first passage, that everything nourishes and blesses the whole life all through. The other indicates the bad side. "We can develop in the heart life what we will, if we only put our hearts in the right condition, or the wrong one. There is no limit to the growth and development. If we give over to meanness and to Satan, there is no end to our growth in devilishness; if we give ourselves over to God openly, there is no end whatever to our development and growth in grace. Our Lord has no dread about consequences, when once the heart is open towards Him. No wonder the Bible counsels us to " guard our heart, ' ' for out of it are the issues of life; no wonder Solomon prayed for " enlargement of heart/' and no wonder Paul says that the peace of God will "garrison our hearts. "
2. Centre of Practical Life.
The Emporium, The Export, and The Import.
(Ps. 5:9.) The phrase "inward part" there is simply a translated phrase for heart.. (Ps. 49:11.) There again the "inward thought' ' is heart entirely. (1 Pet. 3:4.) That is the "great exchange and mart" in your life and mine; words and expressions are simply the coins we use, but the shop resides in the heart, the emporium, where all the goods are, and that is what God can see and no man can. That is why Jesus Christ's judgment always confuses us until we learn how to receive, recognize and rely on the Holy Spirit. The way people judged Jesus in His day is the way we judge Him to-day. The way the critics judge the Bible and the way the critics judge Jesus is an indication of what the heart is if any man has not received the Holy Spirit. When once we receive the Holy Spirit, what happens to you and me is that we get to the condition of the disciples after the resurrection; their eyes were opened and they discerned things, that is, they had power to discern what they saw before. Before they received the Spirit they could not perceive correctly. They simply recorded physically, they simply saw that Jesus Christ was a marvelous being whom they believed to be the Messiah, but when they received the Holy Ghost, received the Spirit life, they discerned what they saw, they discerned what they heard, they discerned what they had been handling. Why? Because the heart had been put right, the whole shop inside had been renovated and restocked by the Spirit of God.
Notice the characteristic of a man who makes his head the centre, and the characteristic of the New Testament being who makes the heart the centre. The man who makes the head the centre becomes an intellectual being, that is he does not estimate things at all like the Bible characters do; sin, to him, is a mere defect, something to be overlooked and grown out of, and the one thing he despises is an enthusiast. Take the apostle Paul, or any New Testament character, you will find the characteristic of the life is enthusiasm; the heart is first, not second, the antipodes of modern life, if the modern life is intellectual. Intellectuality leads to bloodlessness and passionlessness and stoicism and unreality; you will find that the more and more intellectual a person becomes the more and more hopelessly useless he becomes, such degenerate into mere critical faculties, and they pass the strangest and wildest verdicts on life, on the Bible and on the Lord Jesus Christ.
(b) Export. (Mark 7:21.) This passage is detestable to an intellectual person, it is in absolute bad taste, and nine out of twelve people do not believe it, because they are grossly ignorant about their heart. Jesus Christ says, to put it in modern language, " There has no crime ever been committed that every human being is not capable of committing." Do I believe that? do you? If not, remember we pass a verdict straight off on the Lord Jesus Christ, we say He does not know what He is talking about. Jesus said He "knew what was in man/' meaning He knew his heart, and the apostle Paul emphasizes the same thing. ' ' Don 't you trust any man/' he says in effect, "only the grace of God in yourself and in other people." No wonder Jesus Christ pleads with us to give the charge of our hearts over to Him so that He can fill them with a new life, and every characteristic seen in Jesus Christ's life becomes possible in mine when once I have handed my heart over to Him to be filled with the Holy Spirit. "We are not capable of guarding our own hearts, the Bible says we are not.
(c) Import. (Acts 5:3.) That is a terrible statement, a statement with a shudder all through, viz., a Pentecostal liar, a lie that has never been mentioned before in that particular profundity, but it is mentioned here because it is the part of the heart to actually try to deceive the Holy Ghost. Peter says, "You have not lied to men; you have lied to God. Satan hath filled thine heart. " In 2 Corinthians 4: 6, our Lord undertakes to fill the whole region of the heart with light and love and beauty and holiness. Can He do it? First of all, do I realize that I need it done? Or do I think I can "realize myself" (that is the phrase to-day, it is growing in popularity, "I must realize myself")? If I want to know what my heart is like, let me listen to my mouth (in an unguarded frame), for five minutes!
Thank God for everyone of us who has been saved from that perilous path by yielding ourselves over to the Lord, and asking Him to give us the Holy Spirit and obeying the light He gives!