In Peter Allison's sermon 'Keeping Your Heart', he draws from John Bunyan's allegory 'The Holy War' to illustrate the importance of guarding the heart. The city of Mansoul, built by Shaddai, represents the human soul with various gates symbolizing our senses. The heart is depicted not just as the seat of emotions but as the center of all functions, encompassing the mind, will, and understanding. Allison emphasizes the biblical view that the heart influences all aspects of life, including moral character and decision-making. He explains that guarding the heart involves being mindful of what we allow through our senses, particularly our ears and eyes, and ensuring that what enters aligns with God's Word. Furthermore, the sermon emphasizes the necessity of examining what comes out of the heart, as it reflects one's true nature. The heart is the source of our thoughts, emotions, and actions, and it's vital to evaluate and align them with biblical teachings. Allison concludes by encouraging listeners to seek God's grace in guarding their hearts, acknowledging that it is through divine strength that one can truly protect and purify their heart.

In 1682, John Bunyan wrote a novel called The Holy War. Maybe you've read it, I hope you have. It's an allegory telling the story of redemption. And in it Bunyan describes a city built by Shaddai for his own delight. It is a mirror, this city, and the glory of all that he did in this land, in Bunyan's story.

Its walls were impregnable from outside of the city, and it had equally strong and magnificent gates. The ear gate, the eye gate, the mouth gate, the feel gate, and the nose gate. The name of this city, as you might be guessing if you haven't read this story is called Man's Soul. And in the center of Man's Soul, Shaddai had built a very stately and magnificent palace. He built it and intended it for himself as a place where he would live.

But he also made it a garrison, a fortress to be kept by the men of that city. And this palace, this garrison, is where all the meetings of state were held. It was where every important discussion occurred. This palace, this stately and magnificent palace intended by Shaddai for his own inhabitation was the heart of Mansoul. Of Mansoul.

And when Diabolus conquers Mansoul, it is in this palace that he takes up his residence. Now the picture that Bunyan paints for us in the holy war is the picture that Solomon gives to us in the passage that we read. About ears and eyes, mouth and hearts, and above all, guarding or keeping the heart. Now in our common American understanding of the heart, it is often contrasted with the head. And we talk about the heart versus the head.

And in our view, the heart is the seat of the emotions, and the head or the mind is where we think and where we reason and so forth. But if we think this way, we'll miss the force of the picture that Solomon paints in these words. My Son, give attention to My words. Incline your ear to My sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes.

Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are life to those who find them. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." See, the biblical, the Hebrew view of the heart is very different. The biblical view of the heart is as the center of the body's functions. It encompasses the inner man, the mind, the will, the understanding. It controls the body, controls the facial expressions.

It is the sum total of the flesh, the body, the mind, and the spirit of man. If we were to continue our analogy in the Bible, what we think of as heart and mind would maybe be the heart and the guts, or the heart and the kidney, sometimes the innermost being. See, in the Bible though, the heart is the seat of knowledge and thinking. The heart. Hebrews 4.12 speaks of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

It doesn't say the thoughts and intents of the mind. In Deuteronomy 8 and verse 5, Moses tells us that we ought to know in our heart that as a father chastens his son, so God would chasten us. It was something we ought to know in our heart. In Genesis 6, 5, when God looked at the world that He created, it says that God saw the thoughts of the heart that were only evil and wicked continually. It is in the heart that one reflects and ponders.

Genesis 17, when God came to Abraham and told him that he would have a son. It says that Abraham says in his heart, he said it in his heart, he wonders if a baby can be born to someone who is old like Sarah. Past the years of giving birth, He is pondering this in his heart. The heart is the place of memory. Solomon says in a couple chapters later in verse 621, to bind his words to our heart.

It is out of the heart that our inclination and the determination of our will arises. The heart is also the seat of our conscience. Job says in 27.6, My heart shall not reproach me. And in 1 Samuel 24, when David had gone into the cave and Saul came in after him and he cut off a portion of Saul's robe, and you remember his men had been encouraging David to take Saul's life, to kill Saul. Because after all, Saul was there on a mission of war to take David's life.

They were at war. Saul had brought an army to take David. And David doesn't. He cannot lift his hands against the Lord's anointed, but he cuts off a portion of his robe. And then it says that David's heart smote him when he had cut off Saul's robe.

Romans 2, Paul tells us in verse 15 that the law of God is written on every man's heart and their conscience bears witness. The heart is the seat of moral character, the seat of appetites and as we might expect it is the seat of our emotions. In Psalm 4-7, God says, God has put gladness in our heart. It is also the seat of our passions. Even courage is said to come from the heart.

In Genesis 42, when Joseph's brothers had come to him and discovered to their great horror that This brother that they had sold into slavery was the lord and master of Egypt. And they left and when they stopped that first night, opened their bags, there was their money. And The Bible says that their hearts failed them. They had no more courage. Rahab describes a similar situation in Joshua 2 when she describes to the spies who came to her house how Jericho responded when they heard the stories of God's triumphs over His enemies through Israel.

She said that when they heard these stories of how God defeated their enemies before them, great and powerful nations, that their hearts melted within them and there remained no more courage in any man because of you. And the heart and its thoughts and its intentions and its emotions is that by which we will be judged. So Solomon says here, Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Above all that you guard, guard your heart, watch over it, For out of it spring the issues of life." Issues of life is an interesting word. It's used in the Bible and the Hebrew to refer to boundaries and borders of a country.

In fact, most of the time this word is used, it's used when God is describing the border and the land of Israel that He would be giving to them. It goes over to here and over to there, and then exits out or springs out here, comes out here at this point. And that's the way it's used the vast majority of times that it's used in the Bible. But here it's used in the sense of the springs of life, that which comes out of our life, everything that we do, the direction of our life, the contours of our life, the boundaries of our life are determined by our heart. And the thoughts that we think and our decisions and our desires and our emotions our will This all arises out of the heart and so we're to guard the heart And I want this look this morning at the ways in which we are to guard our heart You'll notice that consistent with Bunyan's allegory, guarding our heart consists of guarding what goes into it and guarding what comes out of it.

Guarding what goes into it and guarding what comes out of it. Guarding what goes into it and guarding what comes out of it. Guarding what goes into it. It was, If you've read that allegory, through the ear gate and the eye gate, that Diabolus attacked and entered the city of Mansoul. Through the ear gate and through the eye gate.

He came in through the ear gate. He began to speak to them and to cast doubt in them about the Word of God. My Son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. That which comes into our heart through our ears must be the Word of God.

And we must block out those other things that would come into our heart through our ears that are not consistent with the Word of God. When Diabolus showed up at that ear gate, and began to speak to the people of Mansoul, and began to say, as we read this morning, has God indeed said that if you will eat of this tree, the fruit of this tree you will die? Has God really said that? The inhabitants of man's soul should have turned away and closed that gate. Because that was not the Word of God.

That was not what God had spoken to them. My Son, give attention to My words. Incline your ear to My sayings. If we're going to incline our ear to what God's Word says, to His sayings, we have to stop our ears to what Diabolus, Apollyon, Beelzebub, Satan, the great deceiver, would speak to us through His servants. Through His servants.

We cannot expect to passively listen to the words of the deceiver and not have our heart affected by it. We have to listen to preachers who are faithful to the Word of God, who preach God's Word and not the words of men. We have to evaluate everything that we hear. We have to search the Scriptures to see whether the things that we are hearing are consistent with the Word of God. Do you evaluate the things that you hear to see if they are consistent with the Word of God?

Do you evaluate the things that your children are hearing to see if they are consistent with His words, His sayings? Do you point out the errors, the lies, the deceptions of the messages that fall upon your ears to yourself and to those in your family, if God has given you a family? Do you help those in your family to see the deceitfulness of deceitful messages that you hear? If we are to guard our heart, and that is what we must do, we must guard what our ears hear. The things that you hear come into your heart.

Come into your heart. And if you are around people who speak blasphemous things, who take God's name in vain, and do nothing, say nothing. Don't be deceived. Those words that you hear, that come in your ear gate, will go into your heart and find a place to live. What do you do when somebody takes Jesus' name in vain?

One Man I know who lived in a world where God's name is routinely and frequently taken in vain. When he heard people say Jesus' name in vain, shouted out, He would finish the sentence for them and take what they meant to be in blasphemous, God's name taken in vain and turn it into a truth. So they would say Jesus, he would say Christ is Lord And complete their incomplete sentence. That's just what one man in one circumstance found to do. But that was a way in which he could guard his heart and the words that he was hearing and turn a words that were meant to take God's name in vain into words that spoke the truth and gently answer back those who had taken God's name in vain.

We also have to guard what comes into our eyes, what we see. The pictures that we see, the books that we read. It is important that we make a covenant with our eyes. Solomon says here, let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. What is coming into our eyes?

The workhorse, as it goes down the road, has its blinders on its eyes so that it is not distracted from its purpose by the sights that are beside it. That it is not caused to start and startle and bolt as a result from the sights that are beside its way. That are beside its way. What we see does have a big effect on us in dulling our heart to sin. I've told you about Pompeii, the city of Pompeii.

But I'll tell you again, because it's such a vivid example of the truth of this passage. But that city was a wicked, wicked city. It was the playground of Rome, where the rich and the wealthy and the debauched to go. Every, I think, fifth building was a brothel. And God destroyed it.

He absolutely buried it under a volcanic eruption, and its memory was forgotten. Its location was forgotten. Nobody even knew where it was. So great was the wickedness of that city. But it was discovered and excavated.

And because of the way that God had destroyed it, it preserved, etched in what became stone, rock, people and their actions, and what they were doing when this volcano erupted without warning. And it was so vile, the sight before their eyes was so vile and so corrupt that they shut it up and didn't even tell anybody. And nobody went back there for another hundred years or so. When it was opened up but then blocked and nobody could go into it. It's only recently that people have been able to go back and visit it.

What was sites that were too debauched to even make available now are available. Of course, it's not something that even today they will let young children into. At least the last I heard that that may be changing. Images, pictures, what comes before our eyes, comes into our heart and changes, affects our heart. And that's why we need to, if we're going to guard our heart, we have to not let the word of God depart from before our eyes.

That means we have to be reading God's word, faithfully, regularly, studying God's Word. Incline your ear to my sayings, do not let them depart from your eyes. Deuteronomy speaks of this as well. Speaks of this as well in speaking about the training of our children. All these words which I command you today shall be in your heart, something Solomon goes on to say, and you shall teach them to your children, you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, the ear gate speaking.

When you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. In other words, throughout all of your life, if you are guarding your heart, your ear is hearing the Word of God brought to you in many different ways and forms. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Now there was a person, claims to be some sort of a Christian who spent some period of time trying to live according to these commandments of the Old Testament. For example, her husband, the Proverb says that a husband would praise, the husband of a good wife would be praised in the gates.

And so she stood at the gate of the city with a sign to praise her husband. And she tried to do the same thing with this. Well, that's people of God making a mockery of the Word of God. It's not at all what Scripture is teaching. To not let them depart from our eyes, to bind them as a sign on our hand and as frontlets before our eyes, is not to say that we have to walk around with a piece of paper dangling in front of our eyes, but rather that we understand all the life as we see it in light of the Word of God.

All of life as we see it, understood in the light of the Word of God. In everything as we are about to do, we ask ourselves, what does the Word of God say about my family, my role as a father? What does it say about my business and how I conduct it? What does it say about money and how do I use it? What does it say about land and how I utilize it?

What does the Bible say about how I teach my children? What does it say about how I relate to my neighbor? What does it say about art? What does it say about music? The Word of God before our eyes is absolutely necessary if we are to guard our heart, to guard our thinking, to guard our emotions, our passions, our desires, our decisions.

We have to guard, first of all, what goes into our heart through our eyes and through our ears. But we also have to guard what comes out of our heart through, as Bunyan said, the mouth gate. The mouth gate in the city of Mansoul is where all the proclamations were read. If something was being announced, if you wanted to hear the news, It came at the mouth gate. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you." You see, it is what comes out of a man that defiles that person. It is out of the heart that proceed murders and lusts and adulteries and fornications and strife and envy. Jesus said in Luke 6, that a good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth what is good. And an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth that which is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And that's why guarding our heart requires guarding our mouth. What comes out of our mouth? Comes out of our mouth is what's in our heart.

Do you find anger coming out of your heart through your mouth? Impatience, gossiping, tearing people down unnecessarily, complaining. Tearing people down unnecessarily. Complaining. Complaining is dissatisfaction with God's providence.

Dissatisfaction with what God has brought to pass in our life. See, when you hear yourself complaining, then you need to stop and realize that's coming out of my heart. In my heart, I am dissatisfied with God at this point in my life, and that's wrong. Are we speaking what is edifying? Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you.

We ought to first keep our heart, examine our heart. God looks at our heart. We ought to examine our heart. But if we fail at that, and evil comes out of our mouth and from our lips, that ought to be a second warning to us that our heart is not right. That we have not guarded it.

That we have allowed our mind, our heart, to think thoughts that are not right, that are not in accordance with the Word of God, and somewhere we have gone off the path that we looked at last week, the path of righteousness in our thinking and in our emotions. Let your eyes look straight ahead and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet. Ponder the path of your feet. In other words, think about what you are doing before you do it.

And think about what you are doing so that you do not get started on the wrong path, as we saw last week. Ponder, ponder, think about the path of your feet. Where are you going? Where are you headed? Think about parents and children.

When that baby is born, as David was earlier this morning, everything is wonderful. Everybody delights in that little baby. But what happens about three years of age, or before even? And parents are now looking for a government school to dump off their child, to get them out of their hair for a few hours. Or they can't wait till they grow up and leave.

I was with somebody on Friday working. He was expressing great joy that his child, his daughter and grandchild were no longer living with them. And I was sad when I heard that. What happened between the time that that child was born and they had such pleasure in it. And now, he couldn't wait to get them out of their house.

Well, the path started as He did not guard His mouth and His heart. And when the child did something that inconvenienced him, in responding in frustration, in anger, Instead of teaching that child the Word of God, teaching that child to obey the precepts of God and to walk in the path of righteousness, they began speaking words rising out of their own convenience, their own inconvenience, of what the child was or wasn't doing. Sometimes it even goes so far that parents and children won't even speak to each other. They can't speak to each other. Guard what comes out of your heart through your lips.

Husbands and wives, the same thing happens, doesn't it? The wedding day is wonderful. The bride and the groom cannot get enough of each other. They delight in each other's presence. They feed each other food.

They smile at each other and whisper sweet things to each other, and yet a couple of years later, they can't stand each other. What happened? That first time, their spouse did something that they didn't like, that inconvenienced them, that maybe even was a sin against them. They didn't guard their heart and their thinking. They didn't respond to that provocation as the Word of God would require.

And they let slip from their mouth words that were not true. They said something bad about this spouse, the one that God had given to them for their good. Guard your heart. Guard the words that come out of your mouth. For out of the heart come the issues of life.

Ponder your path. Think about where our culture is today, where our government is today. How did we get here? Because Christians did not ponder the path of their feet. How did we get to an economy that is based upon theft?

The very foundation of our economy is based upon theft. It was because our great grandparents, or maybe our grandparents, were envious. They wanted more. More than what the money that they had could buy. And so they believed a lie when somebody by the name of Warburg and his fellow devils came to them saying, I can multiply your money supply and you can have everything that you want.

That's a lie. That's a lie just like the serpent telling Eve, has God said? You won't surely die. Who can multiply a pile of gold and make it a bigger pile of gold. That's creating.

Only God can create. Only God can say, Let there be light and there is light. Let there be bread and there is bread. There is no person that can multiply a pile of gold. But you see, our ancestors and we today continue, because of the envy in our heart, to believe that lie.

It's a foolish lie. And it's brought great devastation and destruction upon us because we've believed it and we continue to believe it. Look at houses that were built 100 years ago. Did you ever drive through an old town and look at the houses that were built 100 years ago? What do you notice about those houses?

I'm talking about the middle class houses. They're little, right? They're very small. They're usually under a thousand square feet and they aren't fancy. They're just squares.

They have doors and they have windows to let light in. They have a roof to keep the rain out. They don't even have, oftentimes, great porches and eaves and so on. Now, But then now drive down a neighborhood and look at the houses that are being built for the same middle class America. For the people that are mechanics and engineers and so on.

And what do those houses look like? They don't look anything like what houses used to look like. They're a lot bigger. Now is that because we're a lot wealthier today? No, it's not.

It's because we've believed a lie. We haven't pondered the path our feet were set upon. And we've believed a lie that somebody could multiply our money. We never pondered that path and the destruction that it would bring. And so we have bought into a system that seeks to create money out of nothing, at least it tries, and then loan that money out to us to build bigger houses.

Why are those houses bigger? It's not because we're wealthier, it's because we're greater debtors. We're in debt. We don't own those houses. We're the debtors to the people that own those houses.

And the Bible says that a debtor is a servant of the lender. And so we are servants today. We're greater servants today. Why? Because we believed a lie.

We didn't ponder the path of our feet. We wanted bigger houses and better cars instead of buggies and an easier life. And God has in one sense given it to us as judgment Because with it has come great slavery and bondage. We read on bumper stickers, I owe, I owe. It's off to work I go.

I think in a very significant way, all of the pearls of our economic life today come because we live in an economy that fundamentally is built upon fraud. The Federal Reserve represents to our economy what Planned Parenthood represents to an unborn baby, a death threat. A death threat. We didn't ponder, we didn't ponder the path of our feet before we went to the bank and borrowed that money. Borrowing that was made possible by the Federal Reserve and its system.

It wouldn't be possible to borrow that money without the Federal Reserve. It couldn't happen. As much as we might want to do it, it couldn't happen. Why? Because if you have a pile of silver, and hopefully you do, how many of you want to give that away to somebody else for them to build a bigger house?

Seriously. They'll pay you a little interest. Would you think about doing that? Would you think about letting that silver go? You probably don't have enough of it, I'm guessing, that you're really willing to do that.

What you have, you want to keep it safe for yourself if you need it. And that's the way the economy used to be. You couldn't just go out and borrow money because there wasn't money to borrow. There weren't people lining up to give it to you like we have today. Anybody can walk down and get a loan.

In fact, I heard that in Europe, they were having to pay people to borrow money, negative interest rate. Their money is so worthless, they have to pay people to borrow it. Ponder the path of your feet. People came to government schools and thought, wow, this is a great deal. I can send my children away, and they'll take care of them, and they'll teach them the reading, the writing, and the arithmetic.

And I can have the day free to myself. Go to the spa, get my hair done, get my nails done, chat with the neighbors about nothing in particular, and then enjoy my children when they come back at the end of the day. Isn't that wonderful? Now people go to school to pick up their children or to complain about what they are being taught there, because even the wicked are now offended at what they're being taught, and they get arrested and put in jail. And they say, well, I thought I owned my children.

And they find out, no, the government school superintendent actually owns their children. And the government school superintendent determines what they will be taught and what they won't be taught. And too bad if you don't like it. And so the children of our county learn all sorts of immorality, covetousness, envy, hatred, and murder. What is it that has hardened hearts?

That they are able to go in and tear a baby apart limb by limb and throw it in the trash? But a government school that has calcified them and hardened their heart by putting in front of their eyes and putting into their ears all manner of deception and wickedness. And wickedness. Ponder the path of your feet and let all your ways be established. It doesn't do any good though to ponder the path of your feet if if the Word of God is not in your heart.

If your thinking is not biblical thinking. If you are not thinking God's thoughts after Him as He has revealed them in the Scriptures. That's why we need to keep God's Word in the midst of our heart. That's an ongoing thing. You can't say, Well, I read the Bible ten years ago, and I've studied it, and now it's in my heart.

No, keep it in your heart. Keep it in your heart. Day by day. In the morning, in the evening, and at noon. Keep the Word of God in your heart.

And do not turn to the right or to the left. Do not turn to the right or to the left. You have to look ahead at the goal to which you're going. Or you will zigzag to the right and to the left. I'm reminded of a time where I just learned to drive and I'm reminded because of a visitor that we have.

And I was driving across country within days of learning to drive and getting my license. I didn't know, I didn't have a lot of skill at it yet. So I was hugging one of the lines and this person said to me, you know you need to look ahead. You need to look ahead down the road where you're going. And then you won't be always steering, correcting, because you're going to the left or the right.

But keep your eyes ahead. Look far down the road. And it was right. He was right. When you do that, then you have no trouble driving straight.

But if you're looking at the sidelines, then you're always continually correcting. Going to the left and going to the right. We talked last week about two paths. There are two hearts as well. Christ is the way.

He is the object. He is the destination of the path that we are to follow. Jesus said, I am the way. We need to keep our eyes fixed upon Him as we walk this path and not turn to the right or to the left, looking to the right or to the left. For we are to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

We are to cry out to Him, to create in us a clean heart and to renew a right spirit within us. For just as there are two paths, there are two hearts. A heart in which the Word of God dwells, in which God Himself dwells. Or a heart in which are the words of men. There is no other kind of heart.

In your heart either dwells God and His Word, or in your heart dwells the words of men. If your heart is hard or stony or deceitful or wicked. And out of that heart is coming forth deceitful words, words of anger, Words of envy, thoughts of envy, actions based upon a desire for more than God has given you. Then cry out to God to create in you a clean heart and to renew a right spirit. For God to change your heart and to keep changing your heart.

To keep renewing your will by His Word. Lastly, to guard your heart, look for fruit. Look in your heart for the fruit of God's Word in your life. Christ looks, God looks upon our heart for fruit. He comes upon us as He did to that tree and looks for fruit and He expects to find it.

We ought to be looking at our heart if we are guarding it. Looking for God's work in our heart. This guarding of our heart is something that we are commanded to do, but it is not something that we have the ability to do, or the strength to do by ourselves. We are commanded to repent, and we must, but it's not something we have the ability to do of ourselves. It is the power of God by which we accomplish it as He gives us His grace, gives us that ability.

And so it is with guarding our heart, this process of sanctification. We are not able in our own power to sanctify ourselves. We are not able in our own power to sanctify ourselves. We are not able in our own power to guard our heart. It is by God's grace, as we look to Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith, that we are enabled by His strength to do what He commands us to do.

May God give you and me that grace. Almighty Father in heaven, We acknowledge how many times we have sinned against you, we have not guarded our heart, and have allowed all manner of wickedness into it, through our eyes and through our ears, and have thought all manner of wicked thoughts, of lust, of envy, of complaining against your providence. We ask, Lord, that You would forgive us. That You would give to us the joy of Your salvation. That out of our heart may spring forth a river of living water, giving life, edifying one another.

Thank You Father for Your Son. Thank You that You do come and dwell with us, that You are God with us, Emmanuel. We ask for Your grace to guard our hearts this day and this week. We pray that you might take away that heart of flesh, that heart of stone, and give to us a heart of flesh, a soft heart, tender toward your word, compassionate, content, filled with joy, even in the trials and the difficulties and the temptations that you bring to try us and test us, to teach us, to perfect us. Father, may we know that health to our flesh, that you