Guard Your Heart
Notes
Transcript
My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them, And health to all their flesh.
Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.
Put away from you a deceitful mouth, And put perverse lips far from you.
Let your eyes look straight ahead, And your eyelids look right before you.
Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established.
Do not turn to the right or the left; Remove your foot from evil.
Have you ever thought about the difference between a palace and a castle? We often use the terms in a similar way because they both can refer to the residence of royalty. But they are two different kinds of residences. A palace is a mansion, a fancy house, an example of extravagant architecture. A castle is a military fortification. It is designed to protect what it contains.
I remember reading about a man’s first visit to a real castle. It had been constructed over several hundred years, with each generation adding layers of defense. As you approached, there was an earthen trench like a man-made valley at least fifteen feet deep. Then all the dirt that had been dug out from the trench had been mounded up behind it to create a steep hill as tall as the trench was deep. Beyond that was a thick stone wall. Inside the wall there was an additional inner wall before you finally arrived at the central citadel or keep. Why such precautions? Because what was housed in the citadel was extremely valuable, namely the nation’s leader, and those who were being kept out were intent on doing him harm.
What is fascinating about studying such fortifications is learning how they were attacked and defeated. You would think that powerful siege engines and massive armies would be required to attack such well-guarded position. That is sometimes what happened. But more often than not, the favorite strategy was to convince someone on the inside to betray their own, unlock the door, and let the enemy sneak into the city undetected.
How does this connect to our study of the Proverbs? Short answer: You are the castle. And you are under attack.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
The question is what do you defend and how?
Proverbs 4:23 says it clearly, “Guard your heart.” This study will focus on what this means and how we should do it.
GUARD YOUR HEART V23
GUARD YOUR HEART V23
Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.
Your heart is more than your emotions. In the ancient world, your heart stood for your will and the place where your “self” resided. It was the central part of you, the non-physical part, the part that continues to live even after your body stops working. We use the word “soul” for now.
Your soul is the part of you that will live forever. You will one day get a new body, but you will be working with the same soul for eternity. The problem is that we often get our priorities between the body and the soul turned around. We tend to value our body more because that is the part that everyone sees. Our bodies are what we use to interact with the world and with each other. It is in our bodies where we experience a fair amount of pleasure and pain. Our soul, on the other hand, no one can see. In fact, some people go so far as to doubt that it exists. Many people act like it is the least real part of us. How do I know? Because we allow harm to happen to our souls in order to prevent harm from happening to our bodies. That is a very crude but accurate definition of sin. In order to obtain some physical good, or avoid some physical pain, people will lie, cheat, and do other things that have their effect on a thing that we can’t see.
Oscar Wilde wrote a novel called the Picture of Dorian Gray about a man who has a portrait painted of himself which takes on the signs of age and sin while the actual person remains youthful and pure. Our soul is like that portrait. It grows uglier from all the sin, but we console ourselves with the idea that no one will ever see it.
In Matthew 10:28, Jesus tells his disciples:
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
In short, Jesus is saying exactly what this proverb is telling us to do. Guard your heart. No one has access to your soul but God (who made it), you (whom He gave it to), and whomever you give access to it. Be careful whom you let it. Don’t be the person who betrays the impregnable citadel to the enemy. Treasure it. Guard it. Defend it. Build walls around it. The rest of the proverb will show you how.
Watch your words v24
Watch your words v24
Put away from you a deceitful mouth, And put perverse lips far from you.
The consistent message of Scripture is that words reveal what is in your heart. In Matthew 12:34, Jesus says:
Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
In James 3, we read about three pictures that show us the power of words. James calls our words a rudder (James 3:2-5), because they guide our lives. He calls them a fire (James 3:6-8),, because they are dangerous when used incorrectly. He calls our words a well (James 3:9- 12), that reveals what lies beneath the surface. The importance of this warning is both a call to take the test and ask ourselves what the words that come out of our mouths reveals about what is hidden in our soul. He is also suggesting, as does this proverb, that we can fill our soul with good things by training our tongue. Guarding our heart means watching the words that come out of our mouths, and using them as an indicator about what enemies we have already allowed within our walls.
Train Your Gaze v25
Train Your Gaze v25
If our words reveal what is already in our soul, our eyes are a main way that it gets there.
In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6:22-23, Jesus describes the importance of vision this way:
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
Your vision determines what you are filled with.
What you focus on will end up consuming you. So be careful what you focus on. If something catches your eye, and you become convinced that it will bring you pleasure to possess it, you will be consumed by it until you obtain it. If you focus on something that is causing you fear, you will become consumed by it until you are an anxious wreck. If you notice something in someone else that frustrates you, and choose to focus on it, you will become consumed with hatred.
That is why the consistent call in scripture is to fix your eyes on good things.
Hebrews 12:2 tells us to run our race “fixing our eyes on Jesus.”
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Philippians 4:8 tells us, as a cure for anxiety,
Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
This isn’t a call to deny bad things in life, or to overlook wrong done by an individual. But it is a call not to dwell on it. The world is going to dangle a lot of things in front of us to entice us or scare us. Each of us gives the other plenty of ammunition to be frustrated with us. The antidote to all this is not to pretend it doesn’t exist, but simply to train your gaze to focus on “heavenly things.”
All of this was perhaps best summarized by the song we learned as children:
Be careful little eyes what you see,
Be careful little eyes what you see,
For the Father up above is looking down with love, So Be careful little eyes what you see
Choose your path v26
Choose your path v26
Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established.
The last stage of guarding your heart is to choose your path carefully. But this is the last line of defense. Most people once they have filled their eyes and their heart with a desire for a specific thing, it is hard to keep them from choosing that path. That is why fixing your gaze and filling your soul with good things is so important. You will find it hard to resist the desire to choose the path that leads to life.
This proverb shows where the path starts. Look back at verses 20-22, which are the introduction to this section.
My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them, And health to all their flesh.
Notice the frequent use of sensory words: incline your ear, don’t let them depart from your sight; keep them in your heart. The path to choosing the right path starts with wanting wisdom in the core of your being.
A life of wanting wisdom becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Wanting wisdom will show you the importance of guarding your heart. Guarding your heart will lead you to watching your words, training your gaze, and choosing your path well. The best path to choose will be to want wisdom. And the cycle begins again.
Prayer