A heart that direct us to the right

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Mark — iconic scene

Service recording Sunday 23rd August looking at Mark.

Watch the service — 23 August 2026

▶ Jump to the sermon (Mark 12:28-34) — 0:47:29

Chapters

Mark 12:28-34

New Testament Reading: Mark 12:28-32

This, then, we believe is God’s word.

"One of the scribes came, and hearing them arguing, and recognizing that he had answered them well, asked him, ‘What commandment is the foremost of all?’ And Jesus answered, ‘The foremost is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’ And the scribe said to him, ‘Right, Teacher; you have truly stated that he is one, and there is no one else besides him.’"

Sermon Text: Ecclesiastes 10:2-7

Hear then the word of the Lord.

"A wise man’s heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man’s heart directs him toward the left. Even when the fool walks along the road, his sense is lacking, and he demonstrates to everyone that he is a fool. If the ruler’s temper rises against you, do not abandon your position, because composure allays great offences. There is an evil I have seen under the sun, like an error which goes forth from the ruler: folly is set in many exalted places while rich men sit in humble places. I have seen slaves riding on horses and princes walking like slaves on the land."

Where We Have Been: Small Things Destroy Much Good

Just to remind you, we’re working through the book of Ecclesiastes, not merely to work through the book, but to continue on, at least to the end of it, our little series called The Measure of a Man. What is the measure of a man? How do we measure ourselves, particularly in regard to heavenly things and in regard to being Christian? We’ve discovered many things; but last week, in the previous verses, we discovered that a wise man understands that a small thing, just a small thing, can destroy much good. Ill discipline loses the game.

This morning I was up nice and early to wrestle with this passage, and I was gravely tempted to turn the All Blacks game on. It was at five o’clock this morning. But I resisted the temptation, and I meditated on the word of God instead. I want you to be pleased with me. Nevertheless, they tell me, and I won’t tell you who won, that the team that won was the most disciplined team; the team that did not win was the team that showed ill discipline, and they were losers. Ill discipline loses the game of life.

Dead flies soil the perfume. You’ve got a nice bottle of perfume; if you leave it open, you get a few dead flies in there, and you’re going to get a bad-smelling perfume. Little things destroy much good. Foolishness outweighs wisdom and honour. Have you ever noticed that? Everyone remembers the bad things that you do, and even we remember the bad things we do more readily than the things we do okay in. Bad news moves more quickly than good news, and bad news sells stuff; that’s why we’re fed a diet of it through the media, because they know that we’re actually more intrigued by the bad stuff than the good. That’s human nature; we can’t escape it, because we’re all human here.

We looked at Achan and the Valley of Achor as an example. We looked at immorality in the church being tolerated. And we looked at how a little bad teaching can do much harm: a little leaven works through all the bread. So we need to watch, to be alert, and to give careful attention to the teaching we receive that is biblical and of the Lord. And we need to cover up: prevention is better than cure. Once the cat is out of the bag, he’s very hard to put back in; once the sin has been sinned, it’s very hard to put back where it came from. There will be consequences. The Bible, and even life, is full of examples; you may have some in your life, and I certainly have some in mine, of mistakes I’ve made that had consequences further down the road.

We need to create good habits, and we need to start with the small. There’s no use looking at our lives and saying we have big problems; start with the small. If we start with the small, we’re more likely to create good habits by which we can go out and strangle the bigger issues in our lives. And positively, we need to remember that a little faith goes a long way. We talk about a little fly in the ointment destroying the whole thing; but on the positive side, when we have a little faith, and as long as that faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ, then it goes a long way. It goes right to the point of our salvation. A small mustard seed, says the Lord, grows into a large tree in the garden; it moves mountains, and ultimately will save our souls. If Jesus is the object of our faith, then we can be sure that our faith will be effectual unto our salvation.

Wrestling With the Text: The Heart Directs to the Right

Today, however, we’re in a new text, verses 2 through 4, or 2 through 5 more particularly. As I said, I’ve wrestled with this passage from about five o’clock this morning. Sometimes when you’re preaching you get these eureka moments, and you leap out of the bath and run around yelling, Eureka, I’ve got it, I know what the message is. But sometimes we have to really wrestle, and this has been one of those passages that I’ve had to get in a good hard headlock and really work over. Because at the outset it’s not terribly obvious what the Qoheleth, or the preacher, is trying to get at.

We need to think about the principle laid down in verse 2: that a wise heart, or a good heart, directs the person to the right. And biblically speaking, when we talk about the right, it’s the better side. Now, I don’t want to be hard on you left-handed people; just imagine that everything I say to the right, if you’re left-handed, is to the left; it’s okay, we’re not picking on you lefties. But predominantly most of us are right-handed. And if you’re right-handed, there is an element where on the right you are stronger, you have more power, and because of that, more authority with the right hand. It is a place which properly belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ: the right hand of God.

So when we talk about the Lord Jesus Christ, as we spoke with the children, he came, but he’s away, and he’s coming back in person again; and in the intervening time, we talk about Jesus being at the right hand of God. He sat down at the right hand of God because that’s the place of strength for him, a place of power, a place of authority; and the fact that he sat down there means that he had finished all the work that God intended him to do. So when we think about our hearts desiring us, or directing us, to move to the right, the idea is that as we do so, we move to the place where Jesus is. It makes sense, if you think about it, because Jesus is righteous; he’s the one who has done everything well and everything good. And our hearts desire that, our whole being, not just part of us, directs us to the right, that place where biblically Jesus Christ stands. If that is the case, then surely it’s worth seeking that place, the right hand, in such a way that we do so not with a half-heart, but with all of our hearts, our whole self. As the Lord says, the first and greatest commandment is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God; you shall serve him with all your mind, your soul, your body, your heart.

What It Looks Like: Precision and Coordination

Our text demonstrates what that might look like on a practical basis. What does it mean that our hearts direct us to the right, to that place where Jesus is and where God stands? Well, it’s demonstrated by precision and coordination.

Years ago, when I was younger, fitter, and more amazing, I had younger sons, and they used to do various sports. Our youngest son, who’s not here, so we won’t name him, decided he was going to ride bikes in road racing. And of course, being a great dad, I decided I would take up road racing on a bike with him, so that we would train together. We’d hop on our bikes and zoom up the road and zoom back, so many kilometres every day, so that he could go out and do what cyclists do.

At one particular point in time, we were zooming along the road, and I was doing what any sensible person does: I was on his wheel, because if you’re on the wheel of the bike in front of you, you only do half the work. The person out front does all the work. Unfortunately, on this occasion, my wheel snuck up past the back of his wheel, and just at that moment he decided to swerve out. He stayed on his bike; but my front wheel went like that. We were doing about 60 kilometres an hour, so on the bitumen it was no small fall. I tumbled off and landed on my right shoulder, so hard that it snapped just across there.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a snapped shoulder, but it hurt, and it took a very long time to heal. You can’t wear a big bandage there; you’ve just got to wait it out. You remember those two or three things that were very painful in your life? Have you ever had a kidney stone? They’re painful. We had the odd accident on the farm; one time I smashed my hand driving standards. These things stand out, and this was one of those. It was super painful, and I could not use my right arm for a long time; I couldn’t even move it, I just had to stay real still. What am I going to do? I’ve got to use my other hand to do everything: pick my food up, eat my food. But the other hand doesn’t work very well, does it? It’s not coordinated. And again, if you’re a left-hander, just swap it around.

But listen to this: to be at the right of the Lord is to be precise and coordinated. And it’s obvious to see when a person is not precise and coordinated. That’s one of the things our text says: look at that person who lacks sense going down the road; it’s obvious that person has no sense, because they’re uncoordinated and not precise in their lives.

The Working Arm of God: Measured, Steady, Sure, Strong

Secondly, and conversely, to be sensible is to be measured, steady, sure, and strong. Biblically speaking, the right hand of God is the hand of God that works. Think of passages like Isaiah 41:10: fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. So it’s the working arm of God. Now, when we talk about the arm of God, we’re not talking literally; we’re speaking anthropomorphically, attributing human attributes to God so that God might be explained to us. So we talk about the right hand of God: it’s the hand that works hard on our behalf. And a couple of verses later in that same passage, it talks about God not only upholding us with his hand, but strengthening our hand, our arm, so that we might continue on to be strong, steady, sure, and ready for battle.

Every now and then we get to take the odd wedding in our church, and we’ve had a few. One of the things you do at practice time, when you book out the place, is work out where the bride is walking, where the girls will stand, where the ring bearer needs to be. And the question often comes up: which side should the bride and the groom stand? The answer is simply this: the bride-to-be always stands on the left-hand side of the bridegroom. Why? Because that keeps the groom’s sword arm free. He’s the protector, you see; you want your right hand free. And again, if you’re left-handed, just swap it over. I’m just speaking biblically here: keep your sword arm free. It’s the protecting arm.

Poise Under Pressure

To desire the right is also to show poise under pressure. The example given here is that if you come before a ruler or an elder, and the ruler is mad or angry at you, then you need to keep your poise. Don’t lose your rag; don’t lose your place. To be on the right is to keep one’s place even if a ruler is riled: hold your position. Composure is important in life. If you know that in a situation you are right, you have nothing to fear; the tables will ultimately be turned by God anyway.

Application: Where Jesus Is, We Want to Be

Let’s make some simple applications of the passage before us. The first is this: to the right we go, because in the first instance, the right is where Jesus stands. He sat down, and stands, at the right hand of God Almighty, and we want to be where Jesus is. So we need to be thinking: if where Jesus sits today is where we want to be, then the place we want to be is with Jesus. It is a place in our lives of strength, of power over sin, of authority over self, and of favour. Nearer, my God, to thee, the old hymn says. Because when we’re at the right hand, we are able to know better the affections of God’s love and care for us, to hear his guiding voice through the Scriptures applied by the work of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives, and to see his glory and his majesty in a new and fresh and wonderful way.

There’s an interesting verse in Revelation chapter 3. You all know that Revelation 3:20 says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. It’s a verse about having intimate fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. But interestingly enough, verse 21 says: he who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne. Where is his throne? At the right hand of God. I think that’s a wonderful promise. He who overcomes, I will grant him to sit down with me on my throne. We can’t be there in our own strength, in our own ability, by working our whole lives through; but we can be there by virtue of an invitation that God gives to all those who are in Christ Jesus, our Lord and our Saviour.

Grant us, then, Lord Jesus Christ, hearts which direct us to the right, to be in your glorious presence, to hear your loving voice, to observe closely your glory and your honour. To love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength is to have hearts which direct us to the right, and ultimately to the right hand of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a place of privilege, a place of power, a place of strength, favour, precision, coordination, sensibility, and poise. Where Jesus is, you and I want to be. Amen.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank you, Lord, that you have shown us from your word today where you would have us to be: that you, Lord, would direct us to have a heart that would direct us to the right, not to the left. We pray, Heavenly Father, that as we grow in our appreciation and grow in our relationship with you, we would learn to appreciate more and more the things that you have done for us.

We thank you that we have found our Lord Jesus Christ again in the Old Testament Scriptures, knowing that he has been there all the time. Help us then, Lord, to discover more and more about him, whom we love and who is our Saviour. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.