Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah. I have to admit this morning that I feel a bit like that preacher who dreamed he was preaching only to wake up and find it was true!If I'm a little slow today it's because I haven't had much sleep.

This past week I have been working flat-out transcribing and commenting on a scholarly book written over 120 years ago that examines the teachings of Christendom's best minds in the first five centuries following the life of Messiah. Connecting with people who separate you by 1,500 years or so it like going back in time. As people of the Book - the Bible - which is even older, we are familiar with ancients to be sure, or at least we like to think we are.

Yet to become relevent to us, we rely in very large measure on scholars to explain not only what the ancient languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek mean to us, but we also depend on the historians and their knowledge of the cultural settings of the Bible. So many misunderstandings arise in trying to read our own 21st century mindset into lives very different from our own in so many ways. And so it was I met one lady many years ago who was convinced that John the Baptist was a 'baptist', that is to say, a member of the 'Baptist Church'! And yet as those with any histoircal knowledge know John the Baptist would likely be befuddled and confused were he to be introducted to a modern Baptist Church even with a koiné Greek translator.

As I have tried to get into the heads and minds of the post-apostolic fathers I have been fascinated by the way they thought. And whilst it is comforting to see they used exactly the same Bible texts as we do, yet they often interpreted them very differently because of their Greek and Roman cultural biases. The controversies in doctrine that they had were very different from our own. And yet there was something easily discernable in their writings which enable us to deeply relate to them in spite of the separation of the centuries. Reading Origen, the Clements, Tertullian, Polycarp, Basil, Macrina, and so many others made me realise that in spite of the differences in thinking there was essentially the same heart throughout. I could connect with them and were they alive in the flesh I am sure they could connect with us. we would be able to relate.

Which leads me to the subject matter of my sermon this morning and I can think of no one better way to introduce it for me than the late French mathematician and believer, Blaise Pascal, who said this:

"The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself to them; and it hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have rejected one, and kept the other. Is it by reason that you love yourself?" [1]

But what do we mean by the 'heart'? In the West we mean by it the reals of feelings or emotions which we experience in the vicinity of our heart and sometimes lower down in our abdomen. And we view this as separate and distinct from our mind where our thoughts reside. What, then, do the writers of Scripture mean, then, when they say, as Solomon once did:

"walk in the ways of your heart" (Eccl.11:9, NKJV)?

Does he mean that we are to live by our feelings? What, then, does Yahweh mean when He commands us in the Torah:

"You shall love Yahweh your Elohim (God) with all your heart´, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Dt.6:5, NKJV).

And later in the Book of Samuel:

"Yahweh sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks on the heart" (1 Sam.16:7, NKJV).

I think all of you assembled here today know the answer to that question but for the benefit of our listeners it's as well to be reminded how the ancient Israelites viewed the heart:

"...the word heart in the Jewish-Christrian tradition refers to the source of all physical, emotional, intellectual, volitional, and moral energies. From the heart arise knowable impulses as well as conscious feelings, moods, and wishes. The heart, too, has its reasons and is the centre of perception and understanding. Finally the heart is the seat of the will: it makes plans and comes to good decisions. Thus the heart is the central and unifying organ of our personal life. Our heart determines our personality, and is therefore not only the place where Elohim (God) dwells but also the place to which Satan directs his fiercest attacks. It is this heart which is the place of prayer" [2].

So when Western writers like Pascal say, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know", we are following the standard practice of the ancient Greeks and Romans who saw mind and heart as two separate things. I see nothing wrong in dividing them this was sometimes because it is very clear that there are two different kinds of 'heart' or 'reason' and sometimes they are very contrary to one another, aren't they? But not the ancient Hebrews - they viewed the two as one - as a single entity and of course ideally we should be one within. And we are certainly at our greatest ease, and a lot happier, when thoughts and feelings are echad or one. And I think it would also be true to say that men and women have different mixtures of these two, and when man and woman are echad (one) in marriage, then there is even greater and better unity.

One reason the Western mind finds it hard to grasp the Bible is precisely because of this unity of mind and heart. Science, art and story-telling comingle in Yahweh's world. And that is why so much biblical revelation is in the form of poetry. We are a part of the story, part of the ongoing narrative, part of the tapestry, part of the painting of life. What, then, is the relationship between these elements? Which, if any, is superior? I believe that once we shart thinking in this way we have already fallen into the Western trap of categorising the different parts of what we may broadly term chayim or life. Where do art and science begin or end? Can we even know? And isn't what I am doing now - analyising - part of the problem?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, I think, right when he said that "the 'heart' in the biblical sense is not the inner life, but the whole man in relation to God" [3]. What Yahweh sees is the dynamic between thoughts, feelings and actions. Good intentions are never enough. Good feelings are never enough. What counts is how these two translate into behaviour and that's something we'd rather not admit to. Truth told, we'd rather be judged on the plans we make in our heads, or on the sudden emotional urges to do good, rather that on the doing of good itself.

Just as team work - the activity of the messianic community or church as a whole - is what ultimately counts, so the very soul itself is a 'team' of thoughts, emotions and actions that must come together as echad (one). Who can say whether there is a fixed hierarchy of 'events'? I like to speak of all impulses starting in the thoughts, working their way to the feelings, and then causing our bodies to translate that into deeds by springing into activity. But is that always so? Sometimes we can spring into action without even being aware of thoughts or feelings. Sometimes an emotion is what galvanises us. Sometimes there is no time in a given situation to either thing or feel. And we all know how dangerous impulsive behaviour can be if we're not careful.

Very clearly there is a divine order of sorts. The Kingdom of Heaven starts within and works its way outwards. There is a divine plan and intent in all the good that Yahweh desires to see done in the world of men. Paul said:

"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Lord Jesus Christ), from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Ruach (Spirit) in the inner man, that Messiah may dwell in your hearts through emunah (faith); that you, being rooted and grounded in ahavah (love), may be able to comprehend with all the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) what is the width and length and depth and height -- to know the ahavah (love) of Messiah which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of Elohim (God)" (Eph.3:14-19, NKJV).

Several things stand out for me in this passage:

• 1. Heart-love surpasses brain-knowledge whilst not being without it;
• 2. The life we desire begins with the "inner man"; and
• 3. The ahavah (love) we desire and need can only be obtained through emunah (faith) - through trusting.

Love is not possible without trust. And though Paul did not have a hierarchy concerning both the inner life and the outer one, he did know what was supreme, and he gave his reasons why:

"Ahavah (love) never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: emunah (faith), tiqveh (hope) and ahavah (love). But the greatest of these is ahavah (love)" (1 Cor.13:8-13, NIV).

Paul had the advantage of having had both a Hebrew and a Greco-Roman upbringing. He knew both worlds intimately which is why he was uniquely positioned to take an essentially Hebrew Besorah (Gospel) to those with Greek and Roman mindsets. He knew how the Greek philosophers thought. He knew the imperial Roman mindset. And he knew the strengths and deficiencies of both. Likewise John understood the mystical mindset of the Gnostics and others so in the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) alone you have inspired writers speaking to different cultures and mindsets. Why are so many Western Christians so taken with Paul to the virtual exclusion of the other writers? Because theirs - ours - is essentially a Greco-Roman way of thinking and being. Paul alone speaks of the "inner man", and then only once in the whole Bible. The Greeks and Romans thought of the heart in one way and the Hebrews another and yet all understood what 'love' was because it is a language common to all.

So how we talk about heart, mind, soul, spirit, and so on may differ a little from culture to culture, but the language of ahavah (love) transcends them all. Then there is human love and there is divine ahavah-, chesed-, or agapé-love and there's quite a gap between them, ours being but a pale shadow of the more lofty one. Yet it is in our own imperfect, human loving that we come to grasp and desire that ahavah (love) which is above our own. It reveals our deficiencies and imperfections but we cannot acquire the divine variety on human terms. We have to go to Source. And that requires a number of heart-awakenings:

"We are what we see; we create what we see; our rank on the scale of being is determined by the objects of our interest and love. There is absolutely no other way of rising in the scale of being, of realizing our true destiny, of filling our allotted place in the chain of spiritual life, than by aacending in heart and mind to the spiritual world, having our conversation there, setting our affections on things above ... We can transcend the limitations of our finite existence, we can live the life of the hidden man of the heart. Such a life is not foreign to the nature of the soul. The way to it is by love and yearning, which are natural to the soul when she sees glimpses of her father's house, and the home from which she has been exiled" [4].

"Walk in the ways of your heart", Solomon said (Eccl.11:9) but he also warned us to:

"Keep your heart with all vigilence; for from it flow the springs of life" (Prov.4:23, NKJV)

"...guard your affections. For they influence everything else in your life" (LB),

"Watch your step. Stick to the path and be safe. Don't sidetrack; pull back your foot from danger" (vv.25-26, LB),

The heart is ... well, a 'mixed bag', if I can put it that way. Linked to the Divine Heart, it is the source of the greatest thing of all. Linked to the flesh, in which is what it is embedded in the natural man, it is a source of continual mischief. In the next chapter in Proverbs, Solomon echoes his earlier warning:

"Listen to me, my son! I know what I am saying; listen! Watch yourself..." (Prov.5:1, LB)

For not only does Scripture command us to guard our hearts but to pre-eminently guard the Torah, the mitzvot (commandments). Yahweh's teaching is to be the heart's reference point always. Like watchmen we are to keep one eye on the Divine Instruction Book and the other eye on our hearts, because it is the heart that causes us to walk in safety or to wander off into disaster.

The fleshy heart, moreover, is very devious indeed, as we all know. That is why in his great apology for ahavah (love) to the Corinthians, Paul goes to great lengths to enthrone ahavah-love above faith, prophecy, revelation and the like:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of malakim (angels), but have not ahavah (love), I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have an emunah (faith) that can move mountains, but have not ahavah (love), I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not ahavah (love), I gain nothing" (1 Cor.13:1-3, NIV).

I believe Paul's point is that we can be very religious indeed but without a foundation of ahavah (love) or chesed (mercy), our religion counts for nothing. I have known people trample on ahavah (love) thinking they were doing Elohim (God) a favour by exercising tremendous faith and expounding tremendous knowledge. What is so tricky about the heart is that it can take legitimate and important things like knowledge and faith and elevate them to a station in the inner life for which they were not designed. If these do not lead us to love in the Derech (Way) of the Master, then they have been perverted and corrupted. Indeed, religious people can be amongst the worst because they deceive themselves into thinking they are so qadosh (holy, set-apart) because of their knowledge and faith. They don't see the fruit of darkness that enters and destroys their hearts when they start looking down on others as inferior.

The heart is a wildfire and George Eliot rightly observed that "there's nobody but God who can control the heart of man" [5]. He has to have sovereignty because if He doesn't, the heart will run roughshod over people, thinking it is a god. The same instrument that contains ahavah (love) also has a tendency to embrace vanity which, because it is disgusting to ahavah (love), then cloaks itself in religion to make it appear kosher to love.

"The mystery of God has its seat in man's heart, and even if it starts making itself felt in his brain, he still finds the answer only in love" [6].

One of the greatest dangers facing us is when we treat the heart as scripture, particularly that kind of 'scripture' that ascends above the Torah itself. Yes, revelation manifests through the heart but if there is sin there filtering and distorting that revelation, and if we then proceed with our life on the basis of this bent revelation, we will not only hurt ourselves but those others we may seek to impose our revelation on. If there is a single thing in the Davar Elohim (Word of God) that contradicts our purported revelation or inspiration, we must discard it immediately, or reap the whirlwind!

It should come as no surprise, then, that the heart has to be discliplined like any part of our being, whether it is our thoughts or the actions of our physical bodies. When the heart is on the wrong track and our head knows it, then our head must step in. And the reverse is true also, of course. We are so designed by the infinitely wise Creator whereby we have the means to check, measure and regulate how we live our lives. There will be internal disagreement, with all the unpleasantness and inconvenience to our life that that entails, sometimes on the scale of a civil war, until we have stopped believing those lies we have allowed place in our minds and hearts. The greater the sin we fall into - and sin of thinking, feeling or behaving in a manner contrary to Yahweh's written revelation, the Torah - the greater the inner turmoil which we are impelled to resolve for our own peace. Sadly, all too commonly, the resolutions we seek are carnal, thus compounding the problem and perpetuating the inner civil war in new and more terrible ways, like turning to alcohol, drugs, pornography, and ungodly music to name just a few. Why do people turn to such destructive 'solutions'? Because the Enemy whispers these suggestions to them and they choose to listen to him rather than to Yahweh, as Eve did when she set the whole sorry business of the Fall off in the Garden of Eden.

The 'Wars of the Heart' constitute our greatest challenges in life and they often result because we are too lazy to apply controls, rather like a house going to pot because it is never cleaned or a car rusting away because it is never maintained.

"Discipline of heart means the control of the emotions and the affections; this is often very difficult, and seems impossible. It is only with God's help that we can voluntarily detach our desires from what which we want most (however good and desirable it may be in itself) when we see clearly that this 'way' or achievement or relationship is not for us" [7].

I have to reluctantly admit that my greatest struggles in life have been of this kind, not the opposition and persecutions and difficulties imposed upon my from without by unkind and hostile people, unpleasant though thay have been too. We can point these out and away from ourselves in most instances, and say, I am not guilty of this! I do not deserve this!' That is another kind of trial of life. All the godly Bible characters testified of such tribulations. "Rulers persecute me without cause", David said,

"but my heart trembles at your word. I rejoice in Your promise like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood but I love your Torah (Law). Seven times a day I praise You for Your righteous torot (laws). Great shalom (peace) have they who love Your Torah (Law), and nothing can make them stumble. I wait for Your salvation, O Yahweh, and I follow your mitzvot (commands). I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly. I obey your precepts and your statutes, for all my ways are known to you" (Ps 119:161-168, NIV).

We hate perseuction when it happens, as it must, but really the toughest battles I have personally faced are the ones within, because you cannot blameshift for what's happening inside. We choose to be what we are inside - we may not be able to control outer circumstances but we have full responsibility for what is inside. If people hurt us, as is common in life, we have a choice in how we react. Alone, in our own strength, we tend to botch up, but we're not alone, if we have received Yah'shua (Jesus) as our Master (Lord) and Deliverer (Saviour), we have supernatural strength. We have the resurrection power to forgive our wrong-doers, a necessity if we are to be forgiven by Yahweh for our many sins, as Yah'shua (Jesus) taught in one of His beatitudes. That's the Christian dynamic. That is how we come off victorious. That is how ahavah (love) remains with us. If we choose to reat people otherwise, that ahavah (love) soon departs, because it is a living, personal force. It comes from the very heart of Elohim (God) Himself.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Cor.5:17, NKJV).

The humanist wants you to believe in yourself - in your own mind and heart, in your own abilities and potentials - to fix everything, but a sinful heart no man can fix alone. That is one reason Yah'shua (Jesus) came into ther world, for He is the restorative and renewing agent. It is He who transforms and makes everything new and fresh. He alone can fix the heart so that it walks in shalom (peace) and ahavah (love).

What a contrary thing the heart is, this vessel for ahavah (love) and every fruit of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) if we will but exclusively admit these and throw the rest out. What fruit is that?

"Ahavah (love), simacha (joy), shalom (peace), patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Gal 5:22-23, NIV).

If any of these displease you - and I can think of at least one or two which carnal people loathe - then you have something that needs to be urgently fixed because unless it is, the civil war within will continue, and both you and those around you will become casualties of it. Therefore we must grapple, wrestle, and persist in doing so until we have overcome these destructive tendencies. For,

"It is by the things that we feel that life is dominated and controlled. That principle governs every department of human experience. The entire history of mankind goes to show that men are more easily reached and more powerfully affected by the things that they feel than by the things that they see. In one of the finest passages in [the book] Coningsby, Lord Beaconsfield shows that, without an exception, all the great epoch-making movements that have convulsed mankind - the siege of Troy, the rise of the Saracens (Moslem Jihadists), the Crusades, the French Revolution, and so on (e.g. Napoleon, Nazism, Communism), - have been inspired, not by reason, but by emotions. It was not that men's minds were illuminated by a new light, it was that their hearts suddenly glowed with a new passion...The priceless evangel (Gospel, Besorah) of the New Testament is not a system of philosophy, appealing to the intellect, but a divine letter, making its appeal direct to the heart" [8].

The same heart that beats in every human breast is called to reverence Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) as Lord and Master (1 Pet.3:15) for by this means it shall be saved and purified, and become the driving force of a life which Yahweh ordained from the beginning. There is no real happiness to be found until this has been done - there can be no real happiness any other way that is not otherwise short and transientory. It is good to get heart matters resolved early in your life, to establish the right foundation, for then you will be content, no matter what Satan or the world throws at you. Get your heart established first before all else, by filling your mind with the emet (truth) of Yahweh's Davar (Word) and walking in the Derech of the Living Torah- the living Davar (Word) - Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). He alone can heal every hurt and set your life on the path of ultimate satisfaction. Amen.

Endnotes