Pondering Hearts

The heart among the Hebrews is regarded as the source of wit, understanding, courage, grief, pleasure, and love. We generally confine it to the emotions, and especially the affections, and, indeed these are so important and influential that we may well call them the heart of a man’s life.

Now we cannot read the heart, much less ponder or weigh it. We can only judge our fellow-men by their actions; but of motive, and actual condition before God, we cannot form a true estimate, nor need we do so. This, however, the Lord can do as easily as a goldsmith judges silver and gold by weight. He knows all things, but he is pleased to show us the strictness of his examination by the use of the metaphor of weighing. He takes nothing for granted, he is not swayed by public opinion, or moved by loud profession, he brings everything to the scale, as men do with precious things, or with articles in which they suspect deception. The Lord’s tests are thorough and exact. The shekel of the sanctuary was double that which was used for common weighings, so at least the Rabbis tell us; those who profess to be saints are expected to do more than others. The sanctuary shekel was the standard to which all common weights ought to be conformed. The law of the Lord is the standard of morals. The balances of God are always in order, always true, and exact.

I. THE WEIGHING OF HEARTS.

1. God has already performed it. Every man’s purpose, thought, word, and action is put upon the scale at the first moment of its existence. God is not at any instant deceived.

2. The law under which we live daily weighs us in public and in private, and by our disobedience discovers the short weight of our nature, the defect of our heart.

3. Trials form an important order of tests. Impatience, rebellion, despair, backsliding, apostasy, have followed upon severe affliction or persecution.

4. Prosperity, honor, ease, success, are scales in which many are found wanting. Praise arouses pride, riches create worldliness, and a man’s deficiencies are found out. Proverbs 27:21.

5. Great crises in our own lives, in families, in religious thought, in public affairs, &c., are weights and scales. A man’s heart can hardly be guessed at when all goes on steadily.

6. Truth is ever heart-searching. Some left Jesus when he preached a certain doctrine. Hearts are weighed by their treatment of the truth. When they refuse God’s word that word condemns them.

7. The moment after death, and specially the general judgment, will be heart-weighing times.

II. THE HEARTS WHICH ARE WEIGHED.

They greatly vary, but they may be divided roughly into three classes, upon which we will dwell, hoping that our hearers will judge themselves.

1. Hearts which are found wanting at once.

   • The natural heart. All who have been unchanged come under this; even “the good-hearted man at bottom.”
   • The double heart. Undecided, double-minded, false. “Their heart is divided, now shall they be found faulty”: Hosea 10:2.
   • The heart-less heart. No decision, energy, or seriousness. He is “a silly dove without heart”: Hosea 7:7.
   • The perverse heart. Rebellious, willful, sinful.
   • The unstable heart. Impressions forgotten, promises broken, etc.
   • The proud heart. Self-righteous, confident, arrogant, defiant.
   • The hard heart. Unaffected by love or terror. Obstinate Resisting the power of the Holy Spirit.

2. Hearts which turn out to be wanting on further weighing.

   • “Another heart,” such as Saul had. A new phase of feeling, but not a new nature.
   • A humbled heart, like that of Ahab when Elijah had prophesied his ruin. Humbled, but not humble; turned, but not turned from iniquity.
   • A deceived heart. Thinks itself good, but is not.

3. Hearts which are of good weight.

   • The trembling heart: penitent, afraid of sin, etc.
   • The tender heart: sensitive, affectionate, longing.
   • The broken heart: mourning, pining, humble, lowly.
   • The pure heart: loving only that which is good and clean, mourning sin in itself and others, sighing for holiness.
   • The upright heart: true, just, sincere, etc.
   • The perfect heart: earnest, honest, resolute, consecrated, intent, united, etc.
   • The fixed heart: resting firmly, abiding steadfastly, etc.
   • Is your heart ready for the weighing? Have you no fear of the final trial? Is this confidence well founded?
   • Is Jesus enthroned therein by faith?
   • If so, you need not fear any weighing.
   • If not, what will you do when the King sets up the final scales?

Sundry Helps

Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings, but himself,

That hideous sight, a naked human heart.

—Young.

In the reign of King Charles I. the goldsmiths of London had a custom of weighing several sorts of their precious metals before the Privy Council. On this occasion, they made use of scales, poised with such exquisite nicety, that the beam would turn, the master of the Company affirmed, at the two-hundredth part of a grain. Noy, the famous Attorney-General, replied, “I shall be reluctant, then, to have all my actions weighed in these scales.” “With whom I heartily concur,” says the pious Hervey, “in relation to myself; and since the balances of the sanctuary, the balances in God’s hand, are infinitely exact, O! what need have we of the merit and righteousness of Christ, to make us acceptable in his sight, and passable in his esteem.”

My balances are just, My laws are equal weight;

The beam is strong, and you may trust

My steady hand to hold it straight.

Were your heart equal to the world in sight,

Yet it were nothing worth, if it should prove too light.

But if you are ashamed

To find your heart so light, And are afraid you shall be blamed,

I’ll teach you how to set it right.

Add to my law my gospel, and there see

My merits your, and then the scales will equal be.

—Christopher Harvey, "Schola Cordis."

In the mythology of the heathen, Momus, the God of fault-finding, is represented as blaming Vulcan, because in the human form, which he had made of clay, he had not placed a window in the breast, by which whatever was done or thought there might easily be brought to light. We do not agree with Momus, neither are we of his mind who desired to have a window in his breast that all men might see his heart. If we had such a window we should pray for shutters, and should keep them closed.