Each week, let’s reflect upon Sunday’s teaching through further exploration…
“The Walled Heart” (Introduction to Walls Sermon Series)
Walls often surrounded major cities of the ancient Near East. These city walls were massive – they not only enclosed the entire establishment but also extended 12+ feet in the air, including watchtowers that stood two to three times the height of the rest of the wall (it’s estimated the walls around ancient Jericho were13 feet high with a watchtower 28 feet tall). City walls were also strong – thick and solid, many featuring a stone foundation with the vertical structure built from mudbrick. Some city walls were even built as steep slopes to prevent erosion and further complicate an enemy’s breach.
This tells us that the wall was much more than a boundary. A boundary makes clear an area of operation. For example, a fence is a boundary. The posts and fencing provide a border that communicates accessibility. A herd knows they have freedom to eat, play, and rest within the boundary of the fence; outside the fence is off limits. As the herd grows and/or supplies within the fence become depleted, the boundary is moved to include more area, more access to what’s needed, and allow more freedom.
But just think if instead of posts and fencing, there was a stone wall. You don’t move and relocate a stone wall; it’s permanent. What would happen to the herd if they had to stay inside that permanent stone wall?
What happens to us when we stay inside the hard, stubborn wall?
On the surface, the answer seems clear: We stay safe, protected, cocooned from the people and things that could hurt us. But the truth is, that safety and protection are a façade. Because at the same time we’re keeping possible harm out, we’re preventing necessary good from coming in.
Let’s go back to that city wall as an example. Imagine yourself as an occupant of that city. The wall surrounding you is keeping the enemy out, right? It’s protecting you from his advances. But what if that enemy is smart? What if he uses that wall to his advantage and your downfall? Rather than trying to break through, wasting lots of energy and resources, he surrounds the wall. He isolates you, leaving you and all the others trapped inside. Day by day your food, water, and supplies keep diminishing. The only way to replenish them is to venture outside the wall, yet outside is an army ready to strike. Patiently, the enemy waits for you to run out of nourishment. You grow fainter and fainter, now too weak to fight. And all the enemy has to do at this point is enter the city through the gate and claim it as his own. The wall is still standing, yet the occupants weren’t protected from attack after all.
In our lives, when we put up stubborn walls, we give the enemy – Satan – a grave advantage. He doesn’t even have to build the wall to isolate us; we do that brick by brick, through each distraction, unworthiness, pain, anger, failure, fear, apathy, tradition, and pride. All Satan has to do is sit back and wait patiently as we self-destruct, depriving our minds and bodies from the nourishing rhythms God offers.
Proverbs 4:23 tells us:
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Guarding your heart does not mean erecting walls. Quite the opposite – it means allowing God to tear them down, to replace your “stony, stubborn heart” with a “tender, responsive heart” (Ezekiel 36:26 NLT).
I’m ashamed to admit there’s not one area on Jonathan’s list for the series where I don’t have a wall. My heart resembles a labyrinth of stone rather than a mass of tender flesh. What about you?
What walls do you need to let God tear down? What have you been clinging to as protection that has actually made you numb and unresponsive? Are you willing to submit those to Him and begin the journey of healing and growth?