Proverbs 4:23-27

It's one of the great scenes in Old Testament scripture. Samuel had been designated by God to go and anoint the new king. You recall the Lord had rejected Saul because of his repeated disobedience. So Samuel goes to see a man named Jesse who has many sons. It is from Jesse's line that the next king will be anointed.

And do you remember the story? Samuel gets there and he sees Eliab, the oldest, good-looking son. And he says, Lord, surely this is the one. He looks like a king. He's got the bearing, the demeanor.

Surely this is the one. And do you remember what God told him?

He said these words. Samuel, don't consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

in our study of proverbs which concludes today we've been looking at our relationships to various people or things our relationships to our spouses our relationships to our enemies our relationships to our friends our relationship to god the sovereign lord but today i want to talk about our relationship to our hearts. How is your heart? That's the question we want to answer today. So if you have your Bibles, let's turn to Proverbs 4, verses 23 to 27.

which reads as follows, Proverbs 4, 23 to 27. It says, above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Put away perversity from your mouth. Keep corrupt talk from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead.

gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left. Keep your foot from evil. Lord, this day we pray that as we think about our hearts that you will help us better understand how our hearts can be more fully what For it is in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

There is a central admonition in this passage.

That's supposed to say admonition. Is it right on your handout? Okay. Central admonition. And the central admonition is this.

Above all else, guard your heart.

Above all else, guard your heart. Now let me take this part kind of word by word. The word here, guard.

How many of you have been in the military and have stood guard?

I wasn't in the military, but I went to the Citadel, we stand guard. Now the guard at the citadel was mainly to keep people in. There weren't many trying. Everybody wanted out. We weren't worried about people coming in. That's true.

But the word guard here is a critical word. Different translations. The NIV uses the word guard and I think it's a great word to translate what the Hebrew text says but guarding has the idea of keeping watch the guard is the one who is supposed to be the protector to let nothing come through that would be harmful if we are to guard something it means we're to keep it safe safe to keep it protected.

The admonition here, guard, is an imperative command. In other words, this is something that all of us, as followers of our Lord, are to be about. We are all to be on guard duty. Protecting. Keeping bad things out.

Diligent. Watching.

In fact, the diligence we are required to exercise is the utmost diligence. The NIV begins the verse by saying, above all else. Other translations say, guard your heart with the utmost diligence. The idea is that nothing in our personal lives is to be more closely guarded or more carefully protected than our own hearts. okay so if you if you're paying attention to your own personal life where does scripture direct us to be most protective of our hearts there is to be no sleeping on guard duty we're not supposed to slumber we're never to relax we're never to let our guard down no breaks for coffee

no forgetting the procedures the protocols that a good guard follows we are to be diligent in guarding our hearts

everybody understand the admonition now let's talk about what it is we're guarding I've said it several times we're guarding our hearts need to understand what the heart is or what that means when we're talking in the Hebrew language which of course the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into English. The Hebrew word translated heart in this passage can mean heart in the physical sense. It's the place that has all those chambers and arteries and veins you know that pump blood through our system. But the word heart is often used in a symbolic or metaphorical sense. And that's the sense in which it is used here.

And here's what the heart means in the Hebrew. The heart is the inner self.

The heart is the seat of our feelings and our impulses.

and in the Hebrew language the heart really has the sense of how we would use the word mind

because the heart to the Hebrew to the Old Testament Jew would be the place where we think it's where our disposition is it's where our character is it's in the heart so the heart is mind it's our will emotions. It's who we are on the inside. That's what the heart is. You know, all of us are distinctive in how we look outwardly, but you know, it's not just the outward appearance that makes who we are, is it? It's how we think, how we act, what it is that motivates us on the inside.

each of us has a different personality and that personality and that character flows out of the heart. Okay, so everybody hear that? It's our mind, it's our will, it's our emotions, it's who we are on the inside. This is what we are to guard carefully. In fact, I'm going to use the word zealous.

That is the idea of the utmost diligence to be used in guarding the heart. Now why is the writer of Proverbs so almost crazy about us guarding our hearts? What is the reason he is giving us for this admonition? Why does he want us to be so diligent in guarding our hearts? because the heart is the wellspring of life.

That's the way the NIV translates it. It's the wellspring of life. In other words, in the physical sense, it is the heart that is essential for physical life, isn't it? If the heart isn't pumping the blood, you're not going to live very long. If it fails, physical life is not going to be what it should be.

and in the same sense the heart is the source of our spiritual lives it is the source of how we live our mind our will our emotions our inward disposition affects how we live in this life or in other words the heart is the source of who we are it is the source of how we think it is the source of how we feel. It governs our character and how we live. This is why the writer of Hebrews is so desperately intent on making us guard this heart because he knows it affects the whole of our life. Okay, well he's told us what the command is, it's to guard. He's told us what we are to guard, but how do we do it?

How do we protect this most important and precious aspect of who we are? Well, he gives us three main components of our bodies to look at, and he's using these components not just in the physical sense, but again sort of in the metaphorical sense. But he says if you want to guard your hearts, you've got to think about your mouth, you got to think about your eyes and you got to think about your feet.

So first, the mouth. How do we guard our hearts? First, we are to watch what we say. Verse 24 says, Put away perversity from your mouth. Keep corrupt talk from your lips.

So there are really two things he tells us that we are to watch. Two things we are to avoid in our speech. First, there is to be no perversity. If you're reading the King James, it says no froward mouth. F-R-O-W-A-R-D.

No froward mouth. My spell check kept changing it to forward. It wouldn't let me say froward. wouldn't let me say it because nobody knows what that word means today but the word that the king james translated forward the niv translates as perversity it's a word that means there's to be no crookedness no distortion in what comes out of our mouth no perversity or the parallel thought is there's to be no corrupt talk and corrupt talk is talk that deviates from the kind of talk that God would want us to have coming out of our mouths. So no perversity, no corrupt talk, nothing that deviates from what God wants coming out of our mouths.

These things we're to keep out of our mouths and away from our mouths. Now let me ask you a question.

Is it our hearts that affect our speech, or is it our speech that affects our hearts?

Okay, both. There are passages of Scripture that make it very clear that it is from within, out of men's hearts, that you will produce all sorts of things, including envy and slander, things that come out of the mouth that aren't good come out of the heart. But it is also true that what we say affects our hearts.

In other words, habits of speech affect habits of the heart. That's my warning. Habits of the speech affect habits of the heart.

Is that not true? If we speak angry words, doesn't it stir up anger in our hearts? When we finally voice those angry words, they float out of the heart, but when they're spoken, they tend to harden the heart. Critical, cutting remarks about others that we verbalize tend to make our hearts and our minds more critical of others. When we say unkind, unloving things about people, it tends to make our hearts more unloving and unkind.

When we use profanity, outward profanity, over and over and over, it tends to make our hearts more insensitive.

I've debated whether to tell some stories today. I'll let you peek in on a couple. learned to cuss in the third grade. A good friend taught me all these words. I had not a clue what most of them meant. But can you imagine when that third grade boy came home and said one of those four letter words in front of Mama Juanita? I mean, not just a little four letter word, a bad four letter word.

after mama wanita got up off the floor she helped straighten her third great son out but you know what i found

the saying of those things sort of made me callous to things it happened again when i went to the citadel there's something about being in the military and around military people they just believe, I don't know, any sentence without a good profane expression just isn't a good sentence is sort of the view. And I mean, as a freshman, a knob, you know, that's what they call it, standing at attention and formation, these upperclassmen harassing us, the harassment was just littered with profanity. And it tends to harden you. And again, I had this struggle with watching what I would say, profanity tends to make us insensitive. When we speak lying words,

they tend to make our hearts more deceitful. When we begin to take God's name in vain, and we're literally expressing that using His name either as a swear word in profane ways, it tends to make us insensitive to His holiness and His majesty. And when we tell those coarse, crude jokes and stories, it tends to make our hearts more coarse and more crude. So the reality is that if we want to guard our hearts, we must first guard what we say, and we must practice gracious, kind, polite conversation. Conversation.

We must teach our children and we must ourselves practice saying the right things. Because saying the right things helps incline our heart in the right direction. How do you speak to your spouse? Do you say gracious, kind, polite things? If you do, it tends to make your heart more gracious, kinder, more polite toward her.

If you say harsh, cruel things, it tends to harden your heart. Toward your spouse.

So we need to watch the warnings. Matthew 12, 36. I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment. For every careless word they have spoken. And James 3, 6 says, The tongue is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.

It corrupts the whole person. he's echoing that thought that our speech corrupts our hearts the whole person sets the whole course of his life on fire and is itself set on fire by hell and then exodus 27 20 verse 7 you shall not take the name of the lord your god in vain and it doesn't stop there because the lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

So, if we want to guard our hearts, let's watch what we say. Secondly, we are to watch where we look. We are to watch where we look.

Where are we to look? The text tells us, Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. It's literally look straight ahead. Fix your eyelids is the literal Hebrew.

Fix your eyelids directly before you. And it's the idea of having your eyelids open, looking fixed straight ahead. always watching, always watching, always watching.

But looking always straight ahead. The question that the writer is asking us is where is going to be our focus in life? What is it that we're going to let capture our attention? And it can be some things that we literally look at that can become our focus or things that begin to predominate in our lives because we focus our attention upon them. That on which we focus is critical because that on which we focus tends to lead us in a certain direction.

The problem is some of us get some very dangerous perspectives in life and our eyes can lead us in a wrong direction. as proverbs 27 20 says death and destruction are never satisfied and neither are the eyes of man

matthew 6 22 the eye is the lamp of the body if your eyes are good your whole body will be full of light but if your eyes are bad your whole body will be full of darkness if then the light within in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? And the writer there is talking in the context of what is going to command our loyalty. And if our eyes are letting the right things come through, we'll have light on the inside. If we're getting our loyalties misfocused, the wrong things will predominate in our lives. Remember what Matthew said in Matthew 18?

If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life with one eye thrown into the fire of hell. And again, he was teaching, not so much literally to rip the eye out physically, but to be sure we get out of our lives anything that tends to take our focus away from God and what he wants us to be about. Everything in the world, John says, the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does come from the Father, but from the world.

What you've been looking at lately.

What you've been watching. Where has been your focus. What you're focused on tends to move your heart in the wrong direction. We are a visual culture, aren't we? Images flashing across the screens of our TVs and across the movies.

Images in magazines and newspapers. Images, images, images. all designed to draw us to Christ, to make us think about the eternal, to be focused on that which is right and holy and good. Is it? No, the advertisers know the human heart sometimes better than we Christians.

They know what attracts us. They know what attracts the eye. It is that which is dark, that which is not wholesome, that which is not healthy. That tends to capture us, doesn't it?

I think pornography is a deep-seated, deep-rooted problem in God's church. But nobody wants to talk about it. Internet pornography, so accessible, so easy, in the privacy of your home, where no one, no one, no one but God can see.

Right? at the Citadel there were guys who literally in their rooms would pull out the fold outs of the magazines and on the day they knew there wouldn't be an inspection they would have them pasted on their walls. I remember walking in a guy's room in G Company and the wall was literally filled with pornographic pictures.

where does your mind race when you see that kind of stuff tough

but where are we looking what are we watching what is the focus of our attention the scriptures will encourage us to focus on the eternal and on Christ 2 Corinthians 4 18 says this is Paul writing fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen for what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal paul says you want the right focus focus on the eternal live life focused on the eternal or as the writer of hebrews says we are to run the race with endurance fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. When something wants to command your attention that is dark and not good can we bring our minds back to think about Jesus? To think about the eternal? To think about where our focus should be? I think we can train our minds to do that.

I think we have to practice that. The third thing we are to watch is we are to watch where we walk. That's what it says in verse 26. This is how the NIV translates it. It says, make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm.

Do not swerve to the right or the left. Keep your foot from evil. In other words, if we're going to guard our hearts, we have to be careful where our feet take us. Because they can take us to places that can injure or harm our hearts. The first thing we are to do, the NIV says make level paths for your feet.

The King James uses the word ponder. It's a word picture in the Hebrew and both of these, the translators are trying to capture what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew word literally has the sense of scales. And when you're considering where you're going to let your feet take you, you're supposed to weigh on the scales what God would want you to do versus the course you're about to take. And if those things are out of balance, in other words, where God wants you to go is one way and you're going another, so you're out of balance, you need to stop.

the writer of this text wants you to balance where you go with what God wants those things should be in balance you should be walking paths that Jesus wants you to walk so you have to ponder or think through what path if I'm being asked to take I have to think how does that measure up to what God would want me to do? What are the consequences of taking this path? Am I going to be in God's will or not in His will? It's amazing to me that so many adults don't stop to ponder the path they're about to walk upon. It's as if they just turn because it looks attractive without stopping to say, is it attractive?

Or is it just a false appearance? Is it the worldly view that looks attractive for the moment? But when I weigh it in the scales of God's perspective,

strangely out of balance with what God would want. Think. Christians should be thinking people. Before we take a course, we should think about it. We should weigh it. We should consider it.

We should know the consequences of the path we're about to take. Do not let the world take you down its path because it does not love you. It is not a loving place they want you to go. Satan wants you to walk into the pit of hell. But he will offer you what appears to be an attractive road.

Think, think, think.

Walk on firm ground, the writer says. Isn't that a great picture? You don't want to walk on the ground that will sink or shift. In other words, you want to walk in those established ways where the ground is sure. The ways of God.

Don't go after the newfangled. Don't go after the latest, greatest fad. I will tell you the old ways are better. The established paths are best.

Walk in those ways, the ways that have been set by our Lord for thousands of years. Don't be enticed to doing something that God has not established as right and good. Don't swerve to the right or to the left. Do what God has said. Walk in the paths He wants you to walk.

Do not let anyone, anyone, anyone, not even your dearest friend persuade you to go on a path that is not firm and sure and that does not weigh in God's scales appropriately. And the last command is to keep away from evil. Turn aside from evil. Depart from evil. Or as Paul told that young preacher named Timothy, flee from youthful lust.

If you get into something that ain't right, start running. Get out of there. One of the admonitions we try to give our children over and over and over, if you find yourself in a situation that is not right, leave. Get out of there. Go somewhere and call us and we'll come get you.

Adults It's what we tell our children Not good advice for us

Deacons Should not be found

At Godiva's

Or What's the one in green? Diamonds Huh?

Or in Atlanta where they think no one will know. Huh? Nor should any children of God be found there. So here are my lessons for life. Number one, consider the state of your heart.

We need to stop. We need to take a hard look. Have we been good guardians of our hearts? Or have we let things seep in that have polluted our hearts? The first step in getting our hearts the way the Lord wants them is to identify the problems.

And sometimes it's very painful to have to admit to ourselves where we have let our hearts go. but you got to start there I think with that examination number two the attitudes of our hearts can be changed with God's help you can change the way you think you can change the way you feel with God's help do not do not believe that because you've fallen into a pattern of wrong thinking or wrong character, that it cannot be with God's help changed. It can.

Number three, do outwardly what you know you should do. Do outwardly what you know you should do, even if you don't feel like it.

Even if you're just mad as a hornet at your spouse.

Speak graciously. because there's something again about that gracious speech that affects our heart. Even if you want to go into a place, you're being pulled by that old sin nature.

Just do outwardly what you know you should do. Don't let your feet take you there. I will tell you one thing I have to do. Fortunately, I don't travel much. being close to home. I like being close to Louise.

It's a safe place to be and I love being there. But when I do travel and when I have to stay in a hotel room by myself, I got to go in first thing before I even think about it. I got to go get that clicker and I got to click. I don't want the adult movies. Boom! Turn them off.

Right? Don't even give a thought. Because if you start to think about it, well, Well, I'm not a peak. You know? I've just got to go turn it off.

And there are other areas that may be your area where you've got to just do outwardly, immediately, what you know you should do to avoid getting into something you shouldn't be in.

You know what I mean. Your feet have taken you places you shouldn't have gone. Right? All of us have.

just don't go there. Number four, listen to, read, and watch things that are wholesome and uplifting. Finally, brothers, Paul says, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. Let's begin to fill our hearts and our minds with things that are good. I love Christian music.

love having my children listen to Christian music. I think we ought to be listening to Christian music. I'm not saying that has to be the only thing we listen to. But boy, it sure does fill your mind with the right kinds of things. Read good, wholesome, uplifting books. Scripture's a good place to start, but other good books. Avoid the trashy romance novels.

They don't help. They don't lift up

avoid the magazines and the movies that appeal primarily to the sexual lust. Think on things that are good and holy. Number five, avoid situations that divert you from God's path. Divert you from God's path. Let me say a word on that.

You know what? Sometimes you need help.

Sometimes, sometimes, and maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's somebody else who will help you avoid situations. You need a close friend who can say, where have you been lately? Let's talk about it. Where did you go last weekend? What did you do last night?

Let's talk about it. some of us, maybe all of us, need that somebody who will look us in the eye,

peer down into our hearts with us, and ask us the hard questions so we only go where we should go. Be zealous, here's how I said it, Be zealous, eccentric, different in the eyes of the world in protecting your heart and living a holy life.

If you live this life, I think many people will think you're weird. And I'm not saying we should have weird personalities, but I think if it takes us being eccentric, if it takes us appearing to be almost overly zealous in protecting our hearts, so be it. I will tell you one of the hardest areas was when we were trying to help protect the hearts of our children. We had some pretty stringent rules about what they could watch and see.

If it said PG-13 and they were under 15, they didn't see it unless it had been edited. We picked 15 because we figured for Hollywood if it was 13, 15 was at least the minimum age.

and when they get older they can begin to discern some things and my 15 may not be right but you know what i'm trying to say it is you got to protect them but you know what then when your children go out to spend the night with a friend or at a friend's party and your child calls and says well they're getting ready to watch this movie and i know i can't watch it what's the easy thing to say. Oh, I don't want you to be embarrassed. Oh, I don't want you to feel out of place. So go ahead. Don't do it.

Don't do it. Be willing to appear eccentric and different to protect the hearts of your children and to protect your own hearts. It is hard if you're serious about this, I think. It'd be so much easier sometimes just not to be a Christian. You know what?

It really would. And you don't have to worry about this stuff. The road is narrow, but boy, the end of the road's the best place in town and in eternity. Last, don't wobble. Don't wobble and don't let your children wobble.

Don't wobble. Stick to the firm paths and stick. Stand like a stone wall.

And even those of you from the north know what I mean. Don't wobble. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that we will be firm in guarding our hearts.

But where some have not, and we all have been there at some point in our lives, I pray that today, no matter where people have walked, no matter what they have seen, that they will recognize that in Christ there is hope, there is forgiveness, and there is strength. Help us to walk in your paths, to stand on firm ground, to have hearts that are committed to you. For it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.