Heart-disease

Israel, as a nation, divided its allegiance between Jehovah and Baal, and so became good for nothing, and was given up to captivity.

God has made one heart in man, and the attempt to have two, or to divide the one, is in every case injurious to man’s life.

A church divided into parties, or differing in doctrine, becomes heretical, or contentious, or weak and useless.

A Christian, aiming at another object besides his Lord’s glory, is sure to spend a poor, unprofitable life. He is an idolater, and his entire character will be faulty.

A seeker after Christ will never find him while his heart is hankering after sinful pleasures, or self-righteous confidences: his search is too faulty to be successful.

A minister, aiming at something else besides his one object, whether it be fame, learning, philosophy, rhetoric, or gain, will prove to be a very faulty servant of God.

In any case this heart-disease is a dire malady. A broken heart is a blessing; but a divided heart is a mortal malady.

Let us seriously consider,—

I. THE DISEASE. “Their heart is divided.”

This evil is to be seen—

1. In their idea of their state: they say they are “miserable sinners”, but they believe themselves to be exceedingly respectable.

2. In the ground of their trust: they profess faith in Christ, and yet they rely upon self: they try to mix grace and works.

3. In the aim of their life: God and mammon, Christ and Belial, Heaven and the world.

4. In the object of their love. It is Jesus and some earthly love. They cannot say “Jesus only.”

5. In the decision of their will. They are never settled; they halt between two opinions; they do not know their own mind: they have two minds, and so no mind at all.

   • The disease complained of is in the central fountain of life, and it affects every part of their manhood. It is fearfully common, even in those who make a loud profession. If not cured it will end fatally, and perhaps suddenly, as heart-disease is very apt to do.

II. THE EVIL EFFECT OF IT. “Now shall they be found faulty.”

In all sorts of ways the fault will show itself.

1. God is not loved at all when not wholly loved.

2. Christ is insulted when a rival is admitted.

3. No grace reigns within the soul if the heart be not wholly won.

4. The life limps and halts when it has not a whole heart behind it.

5. Before long the man goes over entirely to the wrong side.

   • This secret evil must sooner or later prove the whole profession to be faulty from beginning to end. It will be an awful thing if this be never discovered until death is close at hand.

III. ATTEMPTS AT A CURE.

Let it be seriously considered by the double-hearted man—

1. That he condemns himself by yielding so much of his heart to God. Why any if not all? Why go this way at all, if not all the way?

2. That his salvation will require all his thought and heart; for it is no trifling matter. “The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence”: Matthew 11:12. The righteous scarcely are saved: 1 Peter 4:18.

3. That the blessing he seeks is worthy of all his soul and strength.

4. That Jesus gave his whole heart to our redemption, and therefore it is not consistent for us to be half-hearted.

5. That all potent beings in the universe are undivided in heart.

   • Bad men are eager for their pleasure, gains, etc.
   • The devil works evil with his whole power.
   • Good men are zealous for Christ.
   • God is earnest to bless.

6. That faith in Christ is an act of the whole heart, and therefore a divided heart is not capable of saving faith, and consequently shuts itself off from the Savior.

   • From this time forward pray that you may have an undivided heart.
   • Read, hear, pray, repent, believe with your whole heart, and you shall soon rejoice with all your heart.

Helps Toward Application

A minister in Brooklyn was recently called upon by a business man, who said to him, “I come, sir, to inquire if Jesus Christ will take me into the concern as a sleeping partner.” “Why do you ask?” said the minister. “Because I wish to be a member of the firm, and do not wish anybody to know it.” The reply was: “Christ takes no sleeping partners.”

Some talk that the devil has a cloven foot; but whatever the devil’s foot be, to be sure his sons have a cloven heart: one half for God, the other half for sin; one half for Christ, the other half for this present world. God has a corner in it, and the rest is for sin and the devil.—Richard Alleine.

As to the evil of being neither one thing nor the other, one finds an illustration in the water-ways of Southern China, which in winter-time are quite useless for purposes of commerce. The temperature is most tantalizing, for it is neither cold enough to freeze the canals, so that the ice would be able to bear traffic; nor warm enough to thaw them, so that they could be navigable by boats.

Some great king or potentate, having a mind to visit his imperial city, the harbinger is ordered to go before, and mark out a house suitable to entertain his majesty’s retinue. The prince will only come to a house where he may dwell alone: if he cannot have the whole house, he will go elsewhere. The herald finds one house where the master desires to entertain the king, but he must have but one small chamber, wherein to lodge his wife and children. The herald will not accept his offer. Then he entreats the benefit of some by-place, to set up a trunk or two, full of richer goods than ordinary. “No,” says the harbinger, “it cannot be; for if your house were as big again as it is, it would be little enough to entertain the king and all his royal train.” So it is that every man’s body is a temple of God, and his heart the sanctum sanctorum of that temple. His ministers are sent out into the world to inform us that Christ is coming to lodge there, and that we must clear the rooms, that this great King of glory may enter in. God will have the whole heart, the whole mind, the whole soul,—and all will be too little to entertain him, and the graces of his Holy Spirit, which are attendant on him. “Let it be neither mine nor your; divide it”: was the voice of a strange woman (1 Kings 3:26), and such is that of the present world; but God will take nothing by halves: he will have the whole heart or nothing.—John Spencer.

On one occasion, when a former ruler of Montenegro was supposed to have received the offer of peace and a sum of money if he would acknowledge himself a vassal of the Porte, it is said that the chief men of the people waited on him to remind him that he was at perfect liberty to take service with the Sultan, but that no servant of the Sultan could be Gospodar of the Black Mountaineers.—Travels in the Sclavonic Provinces of Turkey.