My Heart is Fixed, O God!

They have digged a pit before me into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. Say la. My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise. Let’s pray. Lord, once again we come and we ask for your blessing upon the study and reading and examination of your Word as we try to receive it ourselves. I pray that you would help us to learn from it, Lord.

We trust you, we ask you for the illumination of your Spirit as we read and focus on your Word in Jesus’ name. Amen. Verse seven is our target tonight, and it’s one of these verses that kind of stands out when you read the Scripture just because it’s a turn of phrase that’s a little bit interesting. The psalmist says, My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.

I will sing and give praise. What does it mean when your heart is fixed? This is not fixed in the sense of something is broken, but this is fixed as in something that is immobile, something that is unmovable. That’s what’s being described here. When we think of the word fixed, like that’s a fixed object, like something in a parking lot. You don’t want to bump into it.

It’s a fixed object. The idea behind something being fixed is it stands in contrast to something that is movable. To be fixed means it is attached, it is secure, it is firm and stable, it is fastened, and it’s not subject to movement, to change, or to alteration. Now this in the psalm is referring to the psalmist David’s heart. His heart is fixed. What you’ll find is the word that we have in verse number seven as fixed is very often put as established in scripture, which makes perfect sense.

Something is established, something is immobile, it’s permanent. If you’ll notice in the first six verses, as we saw last week, we read how David is describing, in fact even in the subtitle of the psalm, you can see that he fled from Saul in the cave. Then we read about all of his enemies and they’re hunting him down and they’re slandering him and his soul, verse four, is among lions and they’re set on fire.

Their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongue a sharp sword, and they prepared a net for his steps. In verse six, his soul is bowed down. He is discouraged because of the distress that has come upon him. And so that’s kind of the context in which we find verse seven. Like many of the psalms, David is in a bad way. It is, well, I say discouraged, what I mean is David is surrounded by discouragements.

David is surrounded by trouble and distress of various kinds from the outside and also on the inside. And it is in that context, it is in that context that David says, my heart is fixed. In the midst of trouble and in the midst of distress is when David says, my heart is fixed. It’s kind of like if I were to put it in just common language that we might say it, we would say something like this.

David says, despite these testings and despite these trials and despite the distress that I’m going through at this moment, my heart is fixed means nothing in me wants to draw back away from God because of these things. There is nothing in me that wants to depart from God because of these distresses. Now let me tell you something. If you have passed through any sort of distress as a believer, and I actually wrote down a list of things that might fall under that category of distress, but if you have passed through any kind of trouble as a believer, anything that’s relatively serious, not you went outside and your car tire was low, not that, but anything relatively seriously, you might have had a thought of slippage.

You might have had a thought where your heart moved, where you felt like your heart wasn’t fixed because often the thing that will cause your heart to kind of release, you think of a torrent, a river over its banks and something that was supposed to be permanent finally lets go due to the current and it gets washed down river. Well that’s kind of like our heart in this case and our heart is supposed to, David said, my heart is fixed, it’s that thing that will not move no matter the torrent, but if you’ve been through something difficult, you probably have felt your heart shudder, where you thought it was just going to let go.

Because distress and trouble in whatever form it comes to us often has that effect. Now let me show you this. Look if you would at Psalm 112, Psalm 112. My heart is fixed is also found in Psalm 108, but we’ll skip that for now and go to Psalm 12 starting at verse 1. Psalm 12 verse 1, 12 verse 1. Note carefully verses 1 through 5. Praise ye the Lord, blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments.

I’m going to read that one more time and please note that in your mind. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. Now I’m going to continue. His seed, whose seed? Verse 2, whose seed? The man that feareth the Lord. His seed shall be mighty upon earth, the generation of the upright shall be blessed. Wealth and riches shall be in his house.

You could say the man that feareth the Lord. And his righteousness endureth forever. Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness. He is gracious and full of compassion and righteous. A good man showeth favor and lendeth. He will guide his affairs with discretion. So what is being described here? What’s being described in the first five verses is essentially what we read in verse number 1 in different terms, but a man that feareth the Lord and delights in God’s commandments.

So this is, verses 1 through 5 are a description of this upright, godly, God-fearing man who delights in the Lord. You know what that speaks of? That speaks of his relationship to God. This is a man who has a relationship to God. He finds joy in his relationship to God. He seeks to avoid sin because he fears God. This is a description of a man who fears God.

And all of these, verse 2, verse 3, verse 4, verse 5 are all kind of expanding descriptions of this upright man, verse number 4, of this man who has righteousness endureth forever, verse 3, who shows favor and lends, guides his affairs with discretion. So I want you to note that because we’re going to come back to that in just a minute. Now we go to verse 6.

Surely he, the same guy as in verse 1 through 5, the man that feareth the Lord and delights in his commandments, surely he shall not be moved forever. The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. He shall not be afraid of evil tidings. His heart is what? Fixed. Trusting in the Lord. Notice what it says in verse 8 to continue. His heart is, what’s it say? Established. That’s where we get the fixed, established relationship.

His heart is established. He shall not be afraid until he see his desire upon his enemies. So what you have is this Psalm describes a man that fears the Lord and all the blessings that come along with that. And then you get to verse number 6 and you see he is not moved and then you get to verse number 7. He is not afraid of evil tidings.

Why? His heart is fixed. And so this is what we’re talking about in Psalm 57. His heart is fixed. But I want you to notice the beginning of verse number 6. He shall not be afraid of evil tidings. He shall not be afraid of evil tidings. You see this is why I mentioned his heart is fixed. We saw it in Psalm 57 related to trouble that came to David.

And then after talking about that trouble he says, my heart is fixed, oh God, my heart is fixed. Remember that? The double mention, you know that extra emphasis? My heart is fixed. And he says that in the midst of his trouble. Here you have a godly upright man who also has a heart that is fixed. And notice it’s mentioned in connection with evil tidings. You know what evil tidings is?

Bad news. This is the distress and the trouble I was talking about earlier. Why though is this man’s heart fixed? It’s because of verse 1. Because this man is a man who fears the Lord. Because in verse 6 and verse 1 we’re talking about the same guy. It’s a description of the godly upright, God-fearing man. And the man in verse number 1 whose heart is fixed in verse 7 is a man who fears God and delights greatly in his commandments.

You know what that means? This means this is kind of Old Testament language for a man who has a relationship, a good, solid, sound relationship with his God. He fears God. That means he takes seriously what God says and he avoids what God wants him to avoid. Not only that but it’s heartfelt because he has genuine joy in God’s commandments in verse number 1. So you see this man is the real deal.

I want to tell you something. There are many people, you know we talk about the heart being fixed, I think there are many people that have the appearance on the outside that they are with it. That they are firm and established in the Lord. They are firm and established in the will of God and living for God but their heart is not truly fixed on God like we read there.

In other words they look like it but inwardly it’s not actually fixed on God. Because I mean, here’s what I mean in a practical sense, here’s what I mean. I mean there are many people that come and I listen I believe in coming to church. I believe you ought to come to church every time the doors are open if humanly possible. That’s what I believe. That’s what I try to do and that’s what I’ve always tried to do since I got saved.

But that, the appearance at church does not necessarily mean one’s heart is fixed on God. That would be a mistake, right? The way that you have your heart fixed on God, notice the emphasis is on the heart. It’s not about appearance at the temple. It’s not about appearance at the church. It’s not about showing up at the events or anything like that. That’s all important but that is not the sum total of one’s heart being fixed because our bodies can be present and our heart not fixed.

Our heart not set upon the Lord and established upon God. And this, in this, notice his heart is fixed. His heart is established. In Psalm 57, my heart is fixed, oh God, my heart is fixed. It’s talking about the heart not the body. It’s talking about the inner man. You see a person can be present but absent in heart. Do you think there are people that come to church and carry on as a Christian?

And maybe they are a believer. I mean I’m not casting doubt on that. But their heart is not really fixed upon the Lord. Oh yeah. Do you think there are people, to kind of expand that out, do you think there are people that come to church but are not people whose heart delights in God’s commandments and whose heart doesn’t fear God like we read in verse 1 of Psalm 112?

Yeah. There are. In other words, on the outside they appear so but inwardly there’s no substance. I want to tell you something. The question I was going through this and thinking about what it means to have one’s heart fixed upon God, the automatic question I have is how do you get your heart fixed upon God? If it’s so important, and we’ll see why it’s important in just a second, how do you get it there?

I think you get it there by verse 1. It’s that walk with God in private. It’s that personal connection and following and delighting in God and His commandments and having and maintaining a relationship with the Lord that is close, that is intimate, that is sound, that is right. You see, you can’t wait until the trouble comes in verse 7 to fix your heart. It’s too late at that.

When the river’s already rising, it’s too late to dig deep and establish roots to resist being swept away. No, you’ve got to do that on the front end. And that’s something, it doesn’t have to do with the externals of where your body is so much as it has to do with where your inner man is, whether your inner man is actually walking with God, whether you actually have a true, close relationship to your God.

Because when you do that, actually, if you want to be technical about it, I know it says my heart is fixed. God is the one who fixes our heart. He is the one who establishes our heart in grace and He does that as a byproduct of our relationship to Him. But that has to be done on the front end before the testing arrives.

You know, sometimes when you think about people who come to church, you know, sometimes faithfully, regularly, but their heart is not with the Lord. Their heart is not fixed upon God. The reaction to that might be, well, if the preacher’s not going to recognize what I am doing, then I’m just going to... But does not that indicate that one’s heart is not attached to the Lord and fixed upon Him?

You know, if the preacher’s saying that people come to church whose heart is not fixed upon the Lord is so bothersome and offensive that we’re going to withdraw from the Lord, is our heart fixed on Him? You see what I’m saying? Listen, we have to have something real and of substance in us and our relationship to God. It is not enough to just look the part.

You’ll notice in verse number seven, He shall not be afraid of evil tidings. That’s bad news. You see, the bad news, the bad news are the things that might dislodge a heart from being fixed upon God. That might require, the bad news that we read in verse seven might be the things that require our heart to be fixed in the first place, especially given the context of this Psalm, these verses in verse six through eight, but also in the Psalm we read a minute ago in Psalm 57.

You see, our heart being fixed is related to trouble. That’s when it matters. You see, it is trouble that tends to dislodge a heart from the Lord. Verse seven, the bad news does not move Him. He shall not be afraid of evil tidings. His heart is fixed. That bad news, these evil tidings might come in the form of sinful temptation or they might come in the form of actually indeed falling into sin, not just temptation, but actually doing the thing.

This bad news that might dislodge the heart from God might be something like health problems or when others depart from God. How many of you have known someone that has walked away from God? Is that discouraging to you? Yeah, that’ll move your heart. That’ll move you. That’ll shake you. It might be trouble that comes in the form of loss of a job or maybe financial collapse in your personal financial life.

That’ll rattle you. It really will. Sometimes others’ personal offenses against you will shake you. Sometimes when your enemies slander you, sometimes when you’re rejected or you’re betrayed by a close friend or a spouse, that’ll rock you to your core. Sometimes when you have some sort of terrible disappointment where your hope has been totally lost in some issue, some matter in your life, or any other kind of, you might say, unexpected catastrophe or unexpected upheaval in your life, all of those things and probably many more that we could talk about are things that will test whether your heart is fixed upon God.

I don’t say something. Our heart had better be fixed upon God before those things come because when the trouble of verse number seven in Psalm 112, when the trouble of verse number seven comes, there is a reason that the psalmist is unmoved. It is because his heart is fixed. He has learned before the fact through his personal relationship to God to trust in God before the trouble came.

And so when the trouble comes, he doesn’t move because he’s already fixed. His heart is already fixed upon God. Because he already had, we might say, a pre-existing walk with God, when that trouble comes, he instinctively trusts God when that distress arises. I want to tell you, as a believer, there have been absolutely been things that have happened in my life where we were missionaries on the mission field.

I can think of a few things, several things anyway, that really shook me and made me ask, the question crossed my mind, why am I here? Why am I here? I’m not doing any good here. You know what that is? That’s being shaken. I’ve had a number of times in my life when that has happened. You know, we have thoughts that go through our head, well, if this happens, I’m gone.

Listen, if you or I think that, we are demonstrating our heart is not fixed upon God. How can we say if X, Y, or Z happens, I’m gone? If our heart is fixed, firmly established on him. But see, when it’s not, and those things come, and they do, you and I are going to get personally offended and you and I at some point are going to be betrayed, and it’s probably going to come from a Christian person.

It always does, because that’s the most effective way. See, when an unbeliever offends us and an unbeliever insults us or an unbeliever betrays us, we can just write it off. Well, they’re just sinner-sending, right? So it always comes from a believer, because that’s how it shakes us. When they’re the ones talking about us behind our back, when my hope was, my prayer was this thing and the other thing happens, that kind of just absolute catastrophic disappointment, it’ll shake you.

It’ll make you wonder. I mean, I quit. I can’t do this. I’m not going to go to church. It makes no use to read my Bible. I’m not going to pray. I’m not going to seek God. It ain’t worth it. I can’t. The thing is, you and I, if you’re anything like me, and I know you all are, because we’re all made of the same stuff. You would probably have thoughts like that.

And if you haven’t yet, you probably will. You probably will. This is why our heart must be fixed upon God first, now. Because in those moments, if it’s not fixed upon God, you’re gone. You’re gone. Those distresses and troubles do that to us. Let me give you a couple of examples to finish up. Look at Job 13. You know all the things that happened in Job’s life.

Terrible, terrible things. There’s a few instances where you see that Job unequivocally says, my heart is fixed. He doesn’t say those words, but he reveals that his heart is fixed upon God. Job 13 verse 15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. But I will maintain mine own ways before him. Though God slay me. So in Job’s mind, there was nothing that God could do to him that was going to break him free from his being fixed upon God.

You see that? Look at Job 23. Job 23 verse 8. Behold I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him. You all have probably felt this very thing when you were wanting God to help you and you could not find him at all. On the left hand where he doth work, but I cannot behold him, he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him.

That is cause for someone to say, well if God’s not, I’m praying and God’s not listening, I’m done. That’s not what Job says. You know why? Because his heart is fixed on God. He says, but he knoweth the way that I take. And when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. At no point is Job entertaining anything but him holding on to God. You see that?

At no point is that entertained at all. He expects that he’s going to be tried all the way to the end and come through the other side. Look at Job 27. Job 27 verse 5. God forbid that I should justify you. Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me. By righteousness I hold fast and will not let it go. My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.

Now Job, this is a little bit self-righteous of Job to be honest with you in the bigger picture of the book of Job. But his heart is there. But there was another character in Job whose heart was not fixed upon God. And when the trouble came, this person was swept away. You know? His wife.

His wife. Endured the same trial. Job’s heart was fixed upon God, hers was not, and she’s gone. She’s the one who said curse God and die. She said that. Look at John 6. John chapter 6.

Verse 66. It’s interesting that John chapter 6 verse 66, anybody see that? John 6 66 says what it says. I don’t know, maybe it’s a conspiracy. I don’t know. But it is interesting that it says that, right? From that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, will ye also go away? You know what this is in ministry terms?

You know what this is? This is a period of discouragement. People are walking away. You might say they’re leaving the church. Not only leaving the church, they’re leaving Jesus. That’s far more importantly. You know there are some good reasons to leave churches from time to time, right? Hopefully not very often, but they exist from time to time. But leaving Jesus is far more serious than leaving a church.

They’re leaving Jesus. This is a discouraging moment. Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. Peter and the other disciples, their heart was fixed upon Jesus. They weren’t going anywhere. Why not? My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. Their heart was set on Christ. They were not letting him go, even if everybody else let him go.

And we know that they are going to let him go briefly when the pressure gets really, really hot. And then they’re going to repent and they’re going to come back. So you see the weakness of these disciples, the weakness of all of us. But they did have a heart that at least wanted to be fixed upon Jesus. One more, Acts 20, Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20.

Verse 20, 22. Acts 20, verse 22. And now Paul speaking here to the Ephesian elders. And now, behold, I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there. Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me. You see that?

Moving is the opposite of being fixed. Paul is saying these distresses, these temptations, these persecutions, these periods of distress in my life, none of them move me. In other words, he’s basically saying what David said. He basically says, despite these troubles, nothing, absolutely nothing in me wants to withdraw from Christ. Wants to give up the ministry he’s given me. Wants to back away from serving him. Wants to cool off.

Nothing, nothing, nothing in me is moved. So I just want to ask you, ask myself, is our heart truly fixed upon the Lord? Is it really fixed upon the Lord? Because these troubles do come to us from time to time. If there’s a question there, if there’s a question in your mind about that, whether your heart is truly fixed upon God, you should get that, we should get that settled sooner rather than experience something that proves that it wasn’t.

Right? Let’s pray.