In his sermon, 'The Heart's Emotions', Peter Allison explores Proverbs 14:8-15, focusing on the role emotions play in our lives according to Scripture. He discusses how emotions enrich our experiences, aid in memory formation, and are intrinsic to our nature as beings made in God's image. However, Allison emphasizes that due to the fall, emotions are unreliable guides and need redemption through God's Word. The sermon elaborates on the complexity and individuality of emotions, urging listeners to be mindful when comforting others in their grief or joy. Allison highlights the unique ability of Christ to truly empathize with our emotions due to His human experience. He stresses that while emotions are significant, they should not be the foundation for living, as they are temporary and often deceptive. The church, as the family of God, plays a crucial role in preserving the faithful, contrasting the temporary nature of earthly families. The sermon concludes with the hope that Christ will ultimately reverse the sorrow brought by sin into eternal joy for the righteous.

Please turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 14. I'd like to read, beginning at verse 8 through 15, we'll be looking at section of that, 10 through 14. Hear God's word. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way, but the folly of fools is deceit. Fools mock at sin, but among the upright there is favor.

The heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger does not share its joy. The house of the wicked will be overthrown, but the tent of the upright will flourish. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Even in laughter the heart may sorrow, and the end of mirth may be grief. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways, but a good man will be satisfied from above." The simple believes every word, but the prudent considers well his steps.

Thus far the reading of God's holy and infallible Word. May He write its truth upon our heart and be praised at its reading and hearing. Almighty Heavenly Father, we ask that you would be glorified in our assembly today. We ask that you would visit us in mercy and in grace. That you would reveal to us the truth of your Word.

That you would open the eyes of our understanding and open our heart. That we might behold wonderful things out of Your law and rejoice in it. I ask that You would sanctify these lips as well for that purpose. In Jesus name, Amen. It's been a few weeks since we last looked at Proverbs and you can remember back that far we were looking at the first 11 verses which are this chiasm that begin and end with the concept, the teaching, verses 1 and 11, of God preserving the righteous but overthrowing the wicked.

Verse 1 of 14 was specifically about the wise woman building her house but the foolish one tearing it down with her own hands. Verse 11 expands that the house of the wicked will be overthrown, but the 10 of the upright will flourish. Well, there is also an overlapping chiasm that we will look at today that goes from verses 8 through 15. And it weaves together with this idea that God upholds the house of the righteous and destroys the house of the wicked. It weaves into this the idea of emotions, of the inner workings of our heart.

Now how are these related? This was something I wrestled with. Because the text seems to bounce back and forth between talking in verse 10 about the heart and then the house of the wicked, then back in verse 13 about the heart again, and then 14 is back on God rewarding, judging people according to their ways. And so I think that there is a reason for this, and that's what we want to look at this morning. Because emotions have a big impact on our life.

They enable us to experience life. Emotions are what enables us to experience life. They bring richness to our life. The ability to experience joy and happiness, contentment, to be ecstatic, right? That's a wonderful feeling.

Brings wonder, brings enrichment into our life, or even sorrow. When something truly sorrowful has happened. The loss of a loved one. The loss of somebody who was close to us. Our emotions are what enable us to experience that.

We remember those things that are connected with strong emotion. Things that are shocking, things that are deeply emotional are things that are burned into our memory. I remember growing up my mother used to, she would talk about this one incident, a very severe accident happened right out in front of their house one day. And she remembers every detail of everything that was going on in the house at that time, even down to what was cooking on the stove, just because the emotion of that occasion, this tragedy that happened in front of their house, burned into her memory Everything, every little detail that was going on. That's actually one of the reasons that spankings of children, little children, is effective.

Because it is provided it's accompanied by teaching. Remember, it's the rod and reproof that we've looked at earlier that bring wisdom. Because the trauma of a spanking should burn into their mind the teaching, the comfort, the rebuke, the instruction, the love that is being shown at that moment because of emotion, burning that into their memory, the emotion of the occasion. Emotions are part of how we are created in God's image. We are created in the image of God.

That means our will, we are able to think God's thoughts after Him, our intellect, but also our emotions. It's all part of our us that God made and made us in His own image. And it should not be forgotten then that when we think of the fall that affected our will, that We no longer desire to follow the Lord, to obey because of the fall, because we are sinners, we are corrupt. Our will is fallen, our intellect is fallen, our bodies are affected by the fall. Every one of us is going to die, and our body will return to the dust from which God formed it because of the fall.

We bear today the marks of a sin-cursed world in our body, in sickness, in illness, in those aches, in those pains, some less, some more. Those are all the effect of the fall upon our body. Some of us wear glasses because our eyes don't work very well. The effect of the fall. We have all sorts of effects on our body of sin and of the fall.

Well, our emotions are fallen as well. They are affected by the fall and they need to be redeemed. And that's why our emotions, as wonderful and as enriching as they are, are not a reliable guide. We can't live by them. We can't live by how we feel, because our emotions are fallen.

We love what we shouldn't love. We're happy about things we shouldn't be happy about, and we're not sad about the things that we should be grieving over. Sin and its effects should bring us to tears. They should cause great sorrow in us, but it doesn't always. Sometimes we laugh at things we shouldn't laugh at.

Some jokes shouldn't be laughed at. They're about things that we shouldn't be talking about, shouldn't be mentioned. And yet we laugh or we chuckle and then we catch ourselves. And we think, why am I laughing at that? Our emotions are falling and they need to be redeemed.

We can't live by just our feelings. We can't just do what we feel like doing. We have to govern our emotions by the Word of God, by the will of God. We have to tell ourselves how we ought to think. We have to teach ourselves like David did in Psalm 42 and 43.

And emotions have an impact on our body and our life. The Bible says that anxiety, this emotion of being concerned for something and fretting about it and worrying about it and chafing under it, that emotion, if left unchecked, if we don't govern that emotion by the Word of God, has a detrimental effect upon our body. It brings depression and it destroys our heart, as we saw in an earlier message. It destroys our heart physically, it has a physical effect. God says, don't be anxious, but in everything with prayer and thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.

And the God of peace will guard your heart. He will keep that ill effect of the emotion of anxiety from impacting your heart in a bad way. Of course it's easy to be anxious, isn't it? So we have to teach ourselves. We have to see that our emotions need to be redeemed.

And So our emotions can affect us in a good way too. A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance, Proverbs says. Our emotion of joy will show in our gait, in our walk. You walk with a bounce and a smile. Or we can, in our unsanctified self, We can allow the emotions of yesterday to continue on into today and affect and ruin our day to day.

The Bible says that Laughter is a medicine. And a broken spirit does something to the body. But laughter is a medicine. Laughter makes medicine work better. Brings healing.

And so the text this morning, verse 10, The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share in its joy, tells us something we probably all know about emotions, and that is that emotions are experienced internally. No one can truly know what we are feeling. No one can truly share in the burden, in the sorrow, or even in the joy that we are experiencing. The Heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger does not share its joy. That word stranger there is not, don't think of it as somebody that you don't know, that you never saw before.

It's a man that doesn't know you. It's speaking of somebody who is other than you. The word stranger in the Bible refers to someone who is outside of the covenant. So a strange woman in Proverbs 5 we saw is it's not a woman that you have no idea who they are It is a woman who is outside the covenant of marriage That's a strange woman you may know them very well, But they're a strange woman with respect to the covenant of marriage. It talks about in Exodus, it speaks of the stranger is not to eat of the holy things.

That isn't somebody that the priest didn't know, but rather it was somebody who was outside of his family. Somebody he might know very well. There was a stranger and that was outside his family. Strange fire that Nadab and Abihu offered. It was fire that was outside of what God had commanded.

It wasn't fire from where God told them to get fire and how they were to offer that fire. So The Bible calls it strange fire. And so the stranger here is not somebody who doesn't know you, but rather somebody who is another person. Somebody else. Only your heart knows the intimacy of your sorrow and your joy.

Other people can't share that. Other people can't share the sorrow of your heart. You can't share it fully, you can't communicate it, and it can't be reproduced in someone else. Now that doesn't mean that our trials are unique that nobody else has ever had. Actually the Bible says just the opposite.

Paul told the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 10 that there is no temptation that is overtaken us but such as is common to man. But that God is faithful and He won't allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able. And so it's not the experience, It's not what happens to us, the temptations, the trials that are unique, but rather how we experience them, what we feel, what we are going through. That is what is unique. Because what might be difficult for one person, the saccane experience may not be experienced in the same way, may not be as difficult for another person.

So what is devastating on one hand, may for a host of reasons, be different to somebody else. You see, a physical burden, if I'm loaded down with 150 pounds, you can come up to me and say hey can I help you and I can share and we can split the load and make it easier but we but we can't share our sorrows our emotions the same way A light heart can't pick up the load of a heavy heart and lighten the load? In fact, the Bible says kind of the opposite, that trying to sing psalms or trying to sing to somebody of a heavy heart, trying to bring a light heart to a heavy heart doesn't work. It doesn't make them any better. And so we can take some applications from this principle that's given here about emotions, that they are unique to us, that they cannot be experienced or known by anyone else.

To apply to how do we minister to those who are experiencing deep emotion. If this is the true, if the heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger cannot share in that emotion. Well, first we don't want to assume anything. Grief is complicated by many other emotions. There might be relief.

Maybe there's somebody over a slow and painful death. There might be a sense of relief in that loss. There might be a sense of anger over a mistake that caused that loss. Maybe it's their mistake. Maybe it's somebody else's mistake.

But there's a sense of anger that's wrapped up in that loss. There may be a deep joy as well that somebody has departed this and left this body of sin and suffering behind. Somebody who has watched somebody suffer in agony may be truly relieved that they are no longer suffering, their loved one is no longer suffering. But we don't assume that. We can't assume that that's the case.

There may be a foreboding of the future. What's going to happen now that this person is gone? And there may not be. So we don't assume these things. People may not have pleasant memories of the departed person.

I'm sure you've all seen the obituaries that circulate around the internet, that are written of these kinds of people. Children who write the obituary that their mother has died at everyone's relief, that nobody liked being around her. Apparently they're true, some of them. So we can't assume. We can't assume any of these things.

Just because we see these circumstances, we shouldn't assume that that's the way their grief is. But rather, We should let the grieving person take the lead. Listen, listen, and listen. And talk only in response to what they have said. To respond to their comment.

Don't be afraid of silence. That's often one of the best ways to weep with those who weep is silence. To just sit with them. To be there. Remember Job's friends?

They sat in silence for seven days. Didn't say anything. And we struggle sitting in silence for five minutes. Our mind is churning, what are we going to say? What are we going to say that's going to be an impact?

That would be helpful. Silence may be all that needs to happen. Thirdly if our heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger can't share in that emotion, either bitterness or joy, then we shouldn't compare. We don't really know what their grief is like or what it is not like. We don't really know what it compares to or doesn't compare to.

But especially we shouldn't compare their grief to our grief. Even if we've had the exact same experience. There might be a time or place later on, sure, people ask, but in the beginning, in the moment, Comparing is probably not a good way to go. Because comparing, saying that what I experienced is somehow similar to what you've experienced. That's probably not true at all.

It's also not a good time to try and resolve difficult questions, to fix things, to try and make people better. I was sitting with a family once whose maternal grandmother, so there was the grandmother, the parents and the children, the wife's mother, was dying. Dying of cancer at about 64 years of age. Her feet were already dead. They were cold clammy black.

She was on constant morphine every minute or two wanting another dose of morphine. Intense pain. She could barely speak. But she wanted to know why she was dying so young. And the family turned to me for an answer.

What are you supposed to say? Why are you dying so young? Well that's not the time I've decided to plumb the depths of the inscrutable will of God. And I said, we don't know. We don't know.

Somebody else was there and tried to give a different answer to some other friend of the family. The husband came back later on and said, I think I like your answer better. It wasn't a good answer in one sense, but it would fit the occasion. It was what was needed at that point. If the sorrow cannot be shared by a stranger, then we need to be very careful about making that occasion about us.

Sentences that start with, well, I, or then I, or I remember when, or my whatever, those are probably not the right sentences to be starting at that moment. Those are good things to avoid saying. Honor their grief by grieving with them. By grieving with them. The Scriptures teach us to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice.

If somebody has been sinned against grievously, the right response is deep sorrow. Deep sorrow. That not a manufactured emotion. That not a manufactured emotion. But we ought to sorrow over sin.

We ought to be grieved over it. It ought to bring a genuine sorrow to us to see sin, to see people sinned against. That can be helpful. Scripture says that whoever sings to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day and like vinegar on soda. You ever put vinegar and baking soda together?

You get a lot of fizz and pop. Or taking a garment off on a cold day. It's stifling, right? You start freezing, you shrink down, you don't want to move, you're cold. So rather Weeping with those who weep weeping over the reality and the sinfulness of sin They're not trying at that moment to bring all the truth of Scripture to that situation, but rather simply sharing as best we're able in that emotion with them.

And the same is true for somebody who is experiencing great joy. If we have a big problem, that's maybe not the time to bring it to them, but rather to Enjoy that joy with them. That can be very difficult when you have a wedding and a funeral at the same time. But the person who is experiencing great joy should also remember that that is an internal thing that no one else can share and should be careful not to make that Experience all about them as well That to be sensitive to the fact that there are others who may not have joy at that moment in their life. But there is one human being Who does know what we feel.

Who knows the depths of our sorrow and the height of our joy. Because in the incarnation Jesus Christ took to Himself a full human body. And that means that He had emotions. That means when Lazarus died that Jesus wept. That means when He looked out over the sinfulness and the wickedness of the city of Jerusalem and He lifted up His eyes and He said, Oh, I wanted To gather you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks, but you wouldn't and he wept With deep sorrow He took to Himself a full human nature.

And just like us, He is fully human. And that full human nature is added to His divine nature. And so therefore He can fully enter into our experience. He has been touched with the feeling of infirmities, Hebrews says. Hebrews chapter 2 tells us about the humanness of our Savior Jesus Christ and His ability to enter into our emotions.

For indeed, He does not give aid to angels, verse 17 says, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham, to those who are humans, and to those who are His covenant people. Therefore in all things He had to be made like His brothers. He had to be made like His brothers, just like us, with emotions. That He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God. For Jesus Christ To be our great High Priest, for Him to be merciful and faithful, and to make propitiation for the sins of His people, He had to be made like us.

He had to have a human nature that had emotions. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. He knows exactly what we experience. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is God.

There is nothing that is hid from us. Remember throughout the Gospels, Jesus knew what people were thinking in their heart even before they said it. He knew what their thoughts were. He knew when they were angry at Him for healing somebody, or angry at a woman for doing something. He knew what was in their heart.

He knows what's in our heart. Not only does He know it as God, but He has experienced it as a human. His experiences are like ours, and He knows then our experiences. The Christian who is a branch in Christ's vine is one with Christ in a way that no other human spirit can be one with another. Jesus said, I am the vine and you are the branches.

Those who are in Christ are united to Him in a way that no other human can be united. When Saul was persecuting the church, Jesus said to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? He is a partaker in our sorrows. When Saul was killing people and dragging Christians off to jail, he was persecuting God. Because of that, he's able to intercede for us before the Father and the throne of grace.

He's experienced everything we'll ever experience. And so therefore the writer of Hebrews goes on to say, therefore draw nearer to Him in prayer. He understands. He can say, I know what you are going through. And He has sent His Holy Spirit to come alongside, the Paraclete to come alongside and to comfort us and to assist us, to guide us.

Our emotions, no human can ever truly know, but Christ does. But our emotions of today are not final. Look in verse 13, Even in laughter the heart may sorrow, And the end of mirth may be grief. Actually, the King James says even in laughter, the heart is sorrowful, and in the end of mirth is grief. Due to sin, the very nature of our life is a life of sorrow.

That's why emotions can't be the foundation for living. We can't run our life by them. The nature of this life is sorrow. Entertainment will not ease the sorrow of this cursed world, though it does for a time appear to bring joy, brings the appearance of joy, but it's a counterfeit joy. Even in laughter the heart sorrows and the end of mirth is grief due to our sin.

But Christ comes and He reverses that for the Christian. The Christian also has sorrows. If you've been a Christian for more than a day, you know that. The Christian life is not just going from one victory to the next victory, from one high to the next, but rather it is a veil of tears. But the joy that we have as Christians is a joy through tears.

We have intense and real pain and real loss. But Christ reverses the natural effect of sin. And He brings joy. Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Psalm 126 speaks of.

Those who are coming back would reap in joy. Paul says that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us. Shall be revealed to us. And Jesus actually says in Luke 6, He says in verse 21, Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets." Rejoice, he says, blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." But verse 25, Woe to you who are full, for you will hunger. And woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets." Woe to you when men speak well of you. You see the relationship is different for those who are in Christ, than for those who are outside of Christ.

The sin-cursed life has sorrow at the end of the earth. The one who is outside of Christ spends his time seeking to entertain, seeking to relieve the burden of his sorrow with entertainment and merriment and laughter. But Proverbs says the end is sorrow. Those who are in Christ do have sorrows. We grieve for our sin.

We grieve and suffer through trials that God sends to chase in us. But the promise of Scripture is that those who weep now, Blessed are you who weep, for you will laugh. Christ will reverse the effects of the fall and of sin, and turn our weeping and our sorrow into joy. Christ prospers. God prospers the righteous, but He overthrows the wicked.

The house of the wicked will be overthrown, but the tent of the upright will flourish. There is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death." That's what God is doing in the world. That's what the Bible says. He is destroying the house of the wicked, but causing the tent of the upright to flourish. Now appearances may be to the contrary.

A tent is sort of temporary. Notice that? The house of the wicked, but it's the tent of the upright. A tent there, that tent is sort of a temporary thing. A tent, this word is referring to one of these tents that's like a bell shape that has a big pole in the middle and it's made of goat skins.

My grandfather had a tent like that. They don't make tents like that anymore. Even back then when we had it, this was a very old tent. We camped in it once when we were moving across the country and it had a big wooden pole in the middle. I see Some of you smiling, you probably know about these tents.

Big pole in the middle, and you stuck it up under there, and then it kind of came down like a bell. And it was made out of heavy canvas. That's the way they made tents. That's the way these tents were. The tent of a nomad, they made out of goat skins.

It's not what you would think of as a permanent dwelling place. A house made out of marble with stately columns or steel today. Actually the Roman cement was different than what we make today. Roman cement that they made their buildings out of hardens over time. It hardens in the presence of seawater so that today, 2, 000 years later, their concrete is harder and stronger than it was when they made it, and still around.

Whereas our concrete, underwater, disintegrates in less than a century. Falls apart. So a house, it would seem to be solid and lasting, but appearances are deceiving. We need to walk by faith and not by sight. We need to believe the Word of God, that God is in the business, in the process of destroying the house, that solid, stately mansion of the Wicking.

But He is establishing the tent of the righteous. We need to remember who the righteous are. The righteous are not people who have walked some mile or said some words or prayed something. The righteous are those who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who are justified in His sight, to whom Christ's righteousness has been imputed. And those who are walking in newness of life in the Spirit, those who are being sanctified, because all those whom God justifies, He sanctifies.

There's no such thing as a Christian who isn't being sanctified, who isn't growing and dying more and more to sin and living more and more to righteousness. And because the Holy Spirit is dwelling in the upright, they are enabled to produce fruit. They are enabled to obey the Word of God and to walk in His ways and to delight in Him. Psalm 1 talks about just such a person. And it uses exactly the same language.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. There is a picture of a man whose life is conformed to the way of God. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. There is an inward delight, a joy in God's ways and God's words. See, this isn't speaking anything of somebody who just made a profession.

This is speaking of somebody who has the Spirit dwelling in them. In His law, He meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. This is what the Proverb says. The tent of the upright will bud.

It will bud, it will sprout, it will flourish. Whatever Psalm 1 says, whatever He does will prosper. But the ungodly are not so, they are like the chaff which the wind drives away. They may live in a mansion, they may live in a house, but God will overthrow that. Therefore the ungodly will not stand in judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly will perish." That's what God is doing now.

Psalm 92 talks about that even in old age, Those who are upright will still be bearing fruit. They will still be flourishing. The righteous will flourish like a palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.

They shall still bear fruit in old age. They will be fresh and flourishing. They will be green. They will be living. To declare that the Lord is upright, He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in Him.

Notice how the Lord preserves or where the Lord preserves the upright. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord, those who are planted in the house of the Lord are preserved. God does this through His providence. God controls all things. The weather.

Diseases. He controls people. Every atom in the universe is under His sovereign will. It does what He decrees. It says He preserves the upright in the house of the Lord.

Your family and my family will not survive the wrath of God outside of His family. It's the visible church that is the household and the family of God. This is where God provides for our families. This is the means that God uses to preserve and to establish our families. Over the years I've seen many families that have come to the church.

Some have joined and some just visit. But every family that has left the church, the vast majority, because they don't always know the end of all things, but in many cases, in many cases, Those families that have tried to live outside of the family of God, outside of the visible church, outside of the preaching of the Word of God, and the seals of the covenant, their families are disintegrating. I can't explain it. Why? Well, they do meet together.

They do love the Lord. They do read the Bible. But their families are falling apart. I've seen it again and again and again. The household of God, Psalm 92 says is where God preserves the upright.

God destroys the family of the wicked. Now it's not because we're so good that God preserves the families of the righteous. It is because of His covenant. It is God who maintains and establishes His covenant and in that He maintains and establishes our family. In Ezekiel 36, verse 16, The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, saying, Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own way and deeds.

To me, their way was like the uncleanness of a woman in her customary impurity. The Israelites were wicked people. Therefore, I peered out my fury on them for the blood they had shed on the land and for their idols by which they had defiled it. I scattered them among the nations in Babylon and in Assyria. And when they came to the nations wherever they went, they profaned My holy name.

When they said of them, These are the people of the Lord, and yet they have gone out of His land. But I had concern for My holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations wherever they went. Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord, I do not do this for your sake O house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. I will sanctify my great name which has been profaned among the nations which you have profaned, and the nations will know that I am the Lord when I am hallowed before their eyes. For I will take you from those nations and gather you out of all countries and bring you into your own land and I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean.

I will baptize you and I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from your idols and I will give you a new heart." Now why is God doing this? For the glory of His own name. Not because the Israelites were so good and righteous. I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you and I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.

Why are they upright upright? Because the Spirit of God dwells in them. Because they have been sprinkled and made clean. Because if the Spirit of God dwells in them, they are able to walk in His statutes. They are able to walk upright.

And I will keep My judgments and do them, and then you will dwell in the land that I gave your fathers, and you will be My people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from your uncleanness, and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and bring no famine upon you." Why is God doing all this? Why is He preserving the righteous for His own namesake, for His own glory? There's another aspect that is vital to understanding why our family needs to be in the family of God, needs to be a part of the visible church of Jesus Christ, as it exists on earth today, as spotted and stained and wrinkled as it is. And there isn't any church that doesn't have spots and stains and wrinkles.

In other words, that's not a reason to leave a church and strike out on your own. As they say, if you find a perfect church, don't join it. The reason is, another reason for the importance of the church is that it is the church, the family of God that will endure into eternity. It is the family of God that will endure into eternity. Think about it.

What will happen to your spouse if you're married? Are you going to be married in heaven? No, Jesus says those who are in heaven don't marry and aren't given in marriage, but are like the angels in that sense. This marriage, which is the foundational relationship of the family, it is the foundation from which the family grows, That relationship will not exist in heaven. We won't be married.

We'll be married to Christ. This family, this earthly family is a type. It is to teach us. It is to point us to the family that God is building. In fact, it is the family of God.

It is the church that Paul says, through which God's manifold wisdom is displayed to the hosts of heaven. Not the earthly family, the church, the family of God. That's what will endure for all eternity. My relationship to you as a brother and sister in the Lord will continue into the eschaton. We will continue to be brothers and sisters in the Lord, part of God's family for all eternity.

But the relationship I have with my wife will end when we die. Our vows were till death part us and we're not going to be married in heaven. That earthly family will fade away. And in heaven we have just the family of God. And that's why the church in this sense is preeminent.

The family has preeminence in that it is the first institution God created. The church came later. But the church has, It was to the family that the cultural mandate was given. But it was to the church that the great commission was given. See the earthly family is analog.

Just like those sacrifices that Pastor Carl talked about that pointed us to Christ, the family is a way that we understand. It's an analogy for us to understand our Heavenly Father, through our earthly Father. We understand the communion that we will have with Christ because of the relationship that we have in marriage. It's a type of the church, Paul said. We are called the bride of Christ.

But this family, this earthly construct will fade away. And the church, the family of God, will endure. But this passage here then, God establishes the tent of the upright. Think about that. We read a book a few, maybe a year or two ago on covenant succession.

And the point of that was to think about building a godly dynasty that is able to bring right government, that is able to conserve and utilize the wealth that God has given for His own glory. We have that promise in Scripture that God will establish the family of the upright. But God judges, lastly, according to our heart, the inner nature of our heart. The backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways, but the good man will be satisfied from above. Our emotions have a lot to do with our spiritual state.

God looks at the heart. The backslider in heart. This backslider in heart may be somebody who outside looks very good. Somebody who looks upright, righteous, a good character. But God looks at the heart.

And the backslider in the heart will be filled with his own ways. He will bring upon him the just reward for his backsliding. But the good man will be satisfied from above. Verse 12 says, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. We may think we are doing something right, But the end of that way, if it's not the way in accordance with the Word of God, is death.

We are responsible to know the truth. And sincerity in being wrong does not remove the consequences of our error. We may be sincerely wrong in something. We may honestly believe that what we are doing is right, but if it's not the way of the Word of God, if it's not in accordance with His law and His Word and His precepts, The Bible says it's the way of death. And all of our sincerity and all of our belief that it's the right thing doesn't change that.

But a good man will be satisfied from above. God will reward those who walk in His ways. Even the New Testament speaks about that. God rewards those who walk in His ways. We've got to remember, why do we walk in His ways?

Because His Spirit dwells in us. Because He is sanctifying us. He is working through us. Every good thing that we have, even our good works, come down from the Father above. So these are His works really through us.

But He rewards us according to those works. That's grace, my friends, that's grace. We will reap what we sow. God will reward our sacrifices for Him. And He will turn our sorrows into joy.

He will turn our weeping into laughter. And He even begins now to do that. Let us pray. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We cannot live without it.

It is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. It is food to us. It is truth. We ask that you would fill us with your Word. Enable us to hide it in your heart that we might walk in its ways, that we might not sin against you.

Give to us a delight in it, and a yearning and a hunger and a thirst for it. Father, thank you also for the emotions that you have given to us, along with a will and an intellect and a mind. We thank you for the experiences that we are enabled to have through them. You are the giver of every good thing, even these. And we thank You for them.

We ask that You would sanctify them. That we may weep at what we ought to weep for, that we might rejoice in what we ought to rejoice over. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.