Watch a toddler enter an unfamiliar space and you will get a primer on how impulsively humans worship. He is driven by a heart prone toward awe and possession. He sees something he’s not familiar with, it’s wonderful, he wants it, almost nothing can divert his attention from it. He must have it…until he sees the next thing new to him in the room…and he’s off in awe of that object. It’s wonderful, he wants it, almost nothing can divert his attention from it—he must have it.
This is more than mere curiosity. He has a heart built for awe, for adoration, for worship. His heart will find an object to satisfy that yearning, if only temporarily, until something else captures his attention.
We don’t outgrow this. God designed our hearts to worship Him as He is the only one worthy of true worship and the only one who can satisfy the human heart. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they didn’t trade in worshipping hearts for non-worshipping hearts. They exchanged the objects of their worship: Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things (Rom. 1:22-23). They were separated from God physically—they were removed from the garden—and they were separated from Him in their worship—their darkened hearts became unable to rightly regard with with awe.
Their false worship became ours as we were conceived with hearts like theirs. Habitually worshipping false gods, we rebel against the one True God in our attitudes and actions, bringing upon ourselves misery in this life and judgment in the next (Psa 16:4; Rom 2:5).
However, the Lord Jesus’ work in His life, death, and resurrection rescued us on multiple levels. He removed the penalty for our rebellion (Rom 8:1). He saved us from slavery to sin (Rom 6:6). He graciously gave us new hearts able to rightly desire Him, and put His own Spirit inside us to empower us to walk in fellowship with Him (Eze 36:26-27).
But the battle for our worshipping hearts is not over. The enemy who tempted Adam and Eve is still after the people of God (2 Cor 2:10; 1 Peter 5:8). False worship is still a danger (1 Cor 10:7, 14; 1 John 5:21).
Proverbs 14:14 speaks to this danger: The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways… Again, the heart is a vehicle for worship. If it’s capacity for awe, for highest devotion, is not steered toward the right object—God in Christ—there will be fruit, or ramifications in life. This proverb is not unlike Proverbs 4:23: Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Life—our attitudes and actions—are determined by what is going on in our hearts, in our worship.
Some of us feel acutely the pull of a besetting sin. We fight it tooth and nail, as we should. But perhaps, we don’t recognize that, foundationally, every sin problem is a worship problem. To use the fruit analogy of Proverbs 14:14, we are trying to swap out bad fruit for good fruit without addressing a wandering heart.
Occasionally, we sing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” It may be my imagination, but I think I usually detect a swell of feeling when we sing, “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.” The answer to this problem is in the preceding line: “Let Thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee.”
It is God’s goodness, not ours, that most surely pulls us to worship Him above all things. We should know this, given the revelation of the gospel in Christ, but we still struggle to read the Bible and apply it so life from a gracious, Christocentric worldview.
Consider all of Proverbs 14:14: The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways, and a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways. Though we are saved by grace in Christ, we may read the second half of that proverb and think: “I need to be a good man—then good fruit will fill my life.” I suggest this is a wrong reading of the proverb. The same man who wrote 14:14 also wrote Proverbs 20:9, which reads: Who can say, "I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”? The implied answer is, “No one.” Remember that all of the OT prepares us for the coming of Jesus. Jesus said to the young man in Mark 10:18, “No one is good except God alone,” His point being that He IS God, therefore, He alone is good.
So, “a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways.” There is only one good man—Jesus. And what did Jesus say about our relationship to fruit? We can’t produce good fruit—the kind of good fruit mentioned in Proverbs 14:14—unless we abide in Him: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
The backslider in heart will certainly be filled with the fruit of his ways. But the one who abides in Christ—the only truly good man—will be filled with the fruit of Christ! The answer to a backsliding heart is to abide in the Lord Jesus.
What does it mean to abide in Jesus? To cling to Him in every way. To not only be aware of our union with Him, but to enjoy it in fellowship. Meditate on His character and work as depicted in the Word. Deprive ourselves of the things that have captured our attention, affection, and worship at His expense; spend time with Him instead. Allow Him to capture our capacity for awe the way a new space does a young child. His infinite perfections allow for an eternity of discovery, wonder, and love as we learn over and over again how great a salvation we have in HIM.
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