In The Garden

Good evening, Welcome to Voice in the Wilderness. I'm Don Noble of Pure

Heart Ministries, and I welcome you today with exceedingly abundantly and overflowing joy.

Tonight I'm going to talk to you about in the garden, but specifically we're

going to be talking about the garden of your heart. But we're going to

start from the beginning history of creation, chapter one of Genesis to talk about

that garden long ago. Verse eleven. Chapter one says, then God said,

let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and

the fruit that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself

on the earth. And it was so, And the earth brought forth grass,

the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that

yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God

saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the third

day. Then we'll go to verse twenty nine, and God said, see,

I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the

face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you.

It shall be for food, and to every beast of the earth,

to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth

in which there is life. I have given every green herb for food.

And it was so. Then God saw everything that he had made, and

indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth

day, Chapter two of Genesis, verse eight. The Lord God planet a

garden eastward and eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground. The Lord God made every tree grow that

is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The Tree of life was

also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good

and evil. Now we're gonna jump over to the book of Jeremiah. This

is Jeremiah chapter two, and of course Jeremiah, the Weeping Prophet, is

dealing with this backslidden people Israel, who has worshiped idols, who is very

rebellious. And we're going to start with verse nineteen. This is the Lord

speaking through Jeremiah, and he says, your own wickedness will correct you.

Your backslidings will rebuke you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil

and bitter thing that you have forsaken the Lord, your God, and the

fear of Me is not in you, says the Lord of Hosts. For

of old, I have broken your yoke and burst your bonds. And you

said I will not transgress. But went on every high hill and under every

green tree, you lay down playing the harlot. Yet I planted you a

noble vine, a seed of highest quality. How then have you turned before

me into the degenerate plant of an alien vine. For though you wash yourself

with lie, and you use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before

me, says the Lord God. So we have a picture of a people,

a culture of people that the Lord had said. He broke the yoke

off, he got them out of Egypt, he burst their bondage, he

got them out of that. And they promised God, they said, will

not transgress. We're not going to sin against you. And yet the Lord

says, ah, are you kidding? You're over there playing the harlot on

the high hill, under the evergreen tree. You just lay down and play

the harlot. But God said to them, he said, I planted you

a noble vine, a seed of highest quality, But you've turned into a

degenerate plant of an alien vine. You see, God has given us a

noble heart as born again Christians, we have a noble heart, and He's

put the highest quality of seed in us, and that is the seed of

Christ. There is higher quality, noble seed in us other than Christ himself.

And yet even with that, sometimes we can turn into a degenerate plant

of an alien vine, which we might call today weeds simply. And so

what we want to do, and what I want to talk to you tonight

about is how we need to landscape the garden of our heart. So I

guess the question to ask is what's growing in your garden? What's growing in

the garden of your heart, because it probably needs some landscape work now in

my garden, and I'm not bragging, but you all know, if you've

listened to me for any length of time, you know I'm a gardener.

So I have beautiful flowers with lovely fragrances. I have roses. I just

put in a brand new lilac bush that is actually going to flower in the

fall. So it flowered in the spring and now it's going to flower again

in the fall. I think that's pretty cool. I have irises that smell

lovely daylilies, violets. Maybe you have wonderful fruit in your garden. I

have red raspberry bushes. I used to have blueberries. I gave up on

that. I have peaches and apples, plums. Now. Maybe you grow

walnut trees or almond trees. I have chestnut trees. So I grow a

lot of really cool things. I love being in the garden. That is

my happy place. When I am in the garden, I'm in my happy

place. So we have to examine the garden of our heart to seem are

there any weeds growing in the garden. And any gardener is always inspecting.

I'm always out there looking to see if some crazy wild grape vine is trying

to pop up. That stuff spreads like crazy. I have plucked it out

of so many different places in the garden. Now I live in the country,

so I'm going to be more prone to wild grape than maybe you.

If you live in the city, probably never even see probably never see it

at all. But a bet you have dandelions. I bet you have poison

ivy, poison sumac. I've got all kinds of crazy weeds out there.

I'm telling you. It's almost a battle. Sometimes a daily battle just to

try to keep the weeds out and the weeds under control. Sometimes they have

to be sprayed, sometimes they have to be pulled. But one thing we

want to make sure we do. We do not want to neglect our spiritual

heart. That garden, that garden is very very important. It's much more

important the garden of my heart and the garden of your heart is much more

important than the beautiful gardens that I have around my home, because neglecting our

spiritual heart will cause lots of bad weeds to grow. And that's the last

thing we need. See. One bad seed, one bad seed in a

regular garden, one bad seed can bring an entire population of weeds. Yeah,

I mean, I've got a weed. I don't know the name of

it, but I'm telling you, once that plant gets started, it spreads

and it's it has so many little, oh my goodness, little little roots

that it's it's next to impossible to try to get rid of this weed.

You ultimately have to spray the weed because pooling just doesn't work. But that

one bad seed can really mess up your garden. Well, same with your

heart. One bad seed can cause this ugly thing to grow with the root

that is hard to remove now. Gardens need water. We haven't had rain

for three weeks, three solid weeks of no rain and till last night and

today. That's very unusual for June. And of course my water bill is

going to be over the top because I've been trying to keep everything alive.

I have vegetable gardens, flower gardens, i have bushes, trees, young

trees that I'm trying to keep alive. So it's been a real battle to

try to just make sure everything stays watered. So have you ever tried to

pull out a weed when there's no rain. M You'll probably get the green

top part of the weed, but you will not get that root out.

If there's been no rain, that ground will be so hard. And then

if you just take the top and a little rain comes while, then the

weed grows back. So the point of it is the root has to come

out. Now. One of the worst weeds in the garden of your heart

is the weed of unforgiveness and bitterness. Have you ever seen the root of

a dandelion? Well, they can be I've pulled, well, I shouldn't

say pulled, I dug out a root of a dandelion that was more than

six inches long. The problem is it has many fine hairs, many fine

roots that come off that dandeline, and then other stronger roots that come off

the dandeline that then propagates more dandelions. So that weed of unforgiveness and bitterness

is kind of like that dandeline, and it just wants to propagate, and

it can get and it can get pretty tough to get out of your heart

because if you let that stay there for any length of time without repenting to

the Lord about it, it grows more fine hairs, it grows more,

it grows deeper into the soil of your heart, and it's sometimes very difficult

to uproot that out of your heart. So I challenge you tonight, if

you're walking in any kind of a fence somebody's offended you. You've allowed that

to grow into a deep bitterness. You must remove that at all costs,

whether you get chemical spray and kill it, or you get a you know,

a hand tool, a trowel and dig it out of there. Now

obviously in your human heart, in your spiritual heart, that is, you

can't use those means to get rid of that. So what are the means

we go before the Lord, and we have a talk with him one on

one about the situation, and we confess the sin. And it's okay to

say, hey, Lord, I'm having a very difficult time for giving this

person, but will you help me? I assure you whenever you ask the

Lord for help in that matter, he will help you. Now, it

may not happen overnight, but it See, it's an act of your will.

So if you just say I want to forgive such and such, I

do not want to be offended by their comment or their actions. Lord,

I don't want that sitting in the garden of my heart. I don't want

that taking root. And if it's taken root, Lord, I want the

complete thing up out of there. So we confess the sin, we bless

the individual. See, when you confess the sin, that's important. You're

repenting. Lord. I don't want to have that in my heart. I

do not want to carry that offense. And if it's bitterness, I've got

to get that all out, like immediately as quickly as possible. So Lord,

by an act of my will, I confess the sin to you,

and I release the person who hurt me. I release them to you,

And I asked Lord that you would bless them, And I asked Lord that

you would bring healing to them. See, we don't want to we tend

we can harbor bitterness. When we don't refuse to bless the person, we

just to keep harboring that little bit you know of Oh, I just don't

really like that person. Lord. Well I've said that. I've said that

about people who've really, really, really hurt me. Lord, I don't

like that person. But but I'm a Christian. I love you, you

love that person. So I want to bless them, and I want to

speak good of them, and I don't ever want to speak a bad word

against them. I don't want them. I don't want to make them look

bad in the eyes of another person. And that's important. That's part of

getting rid of the little hairs, the little roots that stay stuck in there.

See. So we repent and then we bless a person, and then

we say, you know, I'm not going to speak ill of this person

to anyone. I'm not going to talk about them. So we get rid

of all of We get rid of the whole root, We get the whole

thing out. Now, how do weed seeds get in our heart in the

first place, do you know that you can speak weed seeds into your heart

over your own self just by making negative comments about yourself. For instance,

you can say things like I am a horrible person, I am I am

just the worst. And so you're you're planting seeds and guess what, they'll

come back to bite you, because then you'll be You'll have those thoughts,

you'll continue those thoughts of negativity about yourself. And so we can be the

worst person when it comes to allowing weed seeds to get in a heart.

Now someone else can speak them about us, So so and so over there

can speak some terrible things about you, And those are weed seeds, and

they can get in your heart and they sometimes they can speak them right to

you, and you receive them. You don't disagree with what they say.

Let me tell you, if I'm around anybody that says anything negative to me

about me, I immediately say I don't receive that. I will not receive

that because I'm not going to let that weed seed get into my heart.

And we have to be very diligent about that. See, words have power.

I say that so often because scripture tells us death and life are in

the power of the tongue. Those it love it well eat the fruit thereof.

So we have to be careful what we say about ourselves. Hey,

we have to be careful what we say about others. We don't want to

be propagating seeds in someone else's heart and speaking some negative curse word curse over

someone else that will go into their heart. And of course, if someone

speaks something negative to our face, we have to cancel that out, like

right now by saying I don't receive that. Let those words fall to the

ground. You see those kinds of things can They're poisonous. It's like growing

poison ivy in your heart. For goodness sakes. You don't want poison ivy

in your natural garden, do you? Of course not. I'm allergic to

poison ivy. I don't like poison ivy. I sure don't want poison ivy

seeds in my heart, and I'm assuming you don't either. And let me

tell you poison ivy is a vine and that sucker can grow and grow and

grow. And have you ever seen poison ivy go up a tree? Oh

my goodness, it's pretty crazy how that happens. So, you see,

we have to get these weed seeds out of our heart. And it takes

repentance, and it takes blessing, and it takes the word of God.

It takes God's word. See, God's word is the refreshing, that's you

know. And we and what do we do? We apply God's word.

We apply the principles of God's word to this situation and to this person,

because we don't want to be speaking ill about an another person, even though

they've harmed us, even though they've heard us. Oh no, we can't

do that, can't do that. So we have to clean out the garden.

Hey, it's time, right, and probably we've should have done this

way back in early spring. But here we are, we're already in mid

June almost. So we've got to clean out the garden of our heart.

We've got to get rid of all the weed seeds. We've got to get

rid of the roots. We've got to get rid of the little tiny hairs

that have grown in our heart. And it could be you know, a

variety of things, not just bitterness, unforgiveness. It could be gossip.

It could be jealousy, it could be lying, it could be fornication,

it could be other things. So We've got to break the hard ground of

sin, because if you have not confessed this, and you've been holding onto

this, I guarantee you that your heart will be hard, because the Bible

says it will. And so we've got to break up that fallow, hard

ground, and we've got to water the garden, and we've got to fertilize

the garden with God's heart and repentance. And you see, the Holy Spirit

will help you. That's what he's there for. He's our comforter, he's

our strengthener, he's our help and he will help us to make a very

fertile garden. And why do we want that fertile garden? Well, i'll

tell you in a second. We're going to look at a few scriptures in

Proverbs and Proverbs. Want to go to Proverbs eleven, chapter eleven, verse

thirteen. It says a tail bearer reveals secrets. That's a gossiper reveals secrets.

But he who is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter. So if

someone shares something with you, you don't go and repeat that to one or

two, or five or ten other people. You're revealing the secret that this

person just shared with you. If you conceal that matter and you keep it

to yourself, then you have a faithful spirit. So we don't want to

be gossiping. If we look at Proverbs twelve, verses seventeen and eighteen,

it says he who speaks truth declares righteousness, but a false witness deceit.

That's somebody who's lying. A false witness is lying. So when we speak

the truth, we are actually walking in and declaring righteousness. When we lie,

we're speaking deceit were and we're in deceit, and we're operating in deceit.

And then verse eighteen says there is one who speaks like the piercings of

a sword, But the tongue of the wise promotes health. Now, if

you are speaking harsh and mean and ugly things, you're taking a sword.

See it says, speaks like the piercings of a sword. You're like taking

a sword, and you're just gouging the heart of that individual in the spirit

realm, in the spirit realm, this is what you're doing. Be very

careful not to do that, because the tongue of the wise promotes health,

and that's what we are all about. We are about promoting health. We

do not want to bring a person down. I don't care how difficult they've

been with you, how ugly they've been with you, YadA, YadA,

YadA. No, we are operating out of the principles of the Word of

God because we are Christians. So when we operate out of the tongue of

the wise, we are promoting health. And we don't want to be one

who speaks like the piercings of a sword. Never let's look quickly at Proverbs

fourteen, verse thirty. It says a sound heart is life to the body,

but envy jealousy is a rotteness to the bones. I don't know about

you, but I'd like to have a sound, healthy heart because what my

spiritual heart. This is talking about. A spiritual heart is sound. In

other words, it is in right relationship with God, the Father, God,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I have life in my body,

hallelujah. But jealousy when I have jealousy, When you have jealousy,

it's rotteness clear to your bones. That's how deadly jealousy is. It will

rot your bones. You've heard osteoporosis, that's basically a rotting of the bones.

So jealousy is a deadly, ugly thing. So when I say we've

got to clean out the garden of our heart and relandscape it, we use

the word of God and the Holy Spirit to help us relandscape our heart.

Get that soil of our heart nice and fertile and full of the water of

the Holy Spirit. And we want to make fertile ground. For I said

I was going to tell you for the love of God to flow. See,

the love of God cannot flow out of your spiritual heart, which eventually

will flow out of your mouth, your tongue when you have all this junk

in there, when you have all these weeds growing with big, ugly roots

of stuff, then the love of God cannot flow. And we want a

heart that is able to flow with the love of God because people need what

we have and will not be able to give them this precious love of God

when our heart is full of all this junk. So here you go,

it's time got a landscape the garden of your heart. Amen, Father,

I thank you for helping. I thank you for sending the sweet Holy Spirit

to help each listener tonight to landscape the garden of their heart. Well,

and make it a fruitful, fertile soil to let the Love of God flow

freely in Jesus name. Amen, this is Don Noble. You can go

to www dot pureheart dot today and listen to this podcast again. You can

download the iHeartRadio app go to Pureheart Ministry's podcast to listen twenty four seven.

And of course I always ask for your prayers. Thank you, thank you,

thank you for praying for this ministry. And would you please consider helping

to support this ministry. You can send a check to Pure Heart Ministries PO

Box eighty five. That's Pure Heart Ministries, PO Box eighty five, Valley

Grove, West Virginia, two six zero six zero. I look forward to

being with you again next week. This is Don Noble. Sang Shallom Shallom,

Peace be unto you.