Keep Your Heart

Scripture

Proverbs 4:20–27 KJV 1900

My son, attend to my words; Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; Keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, And health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, And perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, And let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, And let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: Remove thy foot from evil.

Introduction

Carefulness is part of holiness. I felt drawn to this idea again this evening. I have a sermon that I like on the subject, but I would have been repeating myself for the third time here with that sermon. I don’t mind repeating myself, and neither does scripture. The idea of carefulness is woven throughout the Bible from beginning to end. So tonight I will repeat myself but with a whole different set of words.

The Preacher’s Confidence

Proverbs reminds me of preaching so I might call Solomon the preacher. In Ecclesiastes he refers to himself as the preacher. Proverbs 4 reads as advice of a father to a son. Solomon shares this advice with incredible confidence. When I preach I do think what I say is correct. Yet I would not have the confidence of Solomon about my words. I only feel that level of confidence when I am reading the scripture. Yet Solomon doesn’t speak in maybe’s, or probablys. He speaks knowing what He says is correct. He tells his son that his words are life and health.

Where does he get this confidence? Solomon had been granted wisdom form the Lord and he was writing under the inspirations of God. He could know that his words held weight because he knew they were not his words.

What Does He Say?

This particular passage lands in the middle of a broader teaching on getting wisdom and following instruction, but I want to focus in on this particular passage. First he says to keep thy heart with all diligence.

This could read also guard your thoughts or guard your mind. It is even a bit stronger than this as it says with all diligence, not just with diligence. Scripture tells us elsewhere that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

I cannot say that I paid the best attention in school chapels. But there is one illustration that I do remember from may years ago. The preacher took a coffee mug and poured water into it. He continued to preach as he carried around the water. Suddenly a student got up from his pew, walked up to the front and bumped into the preacher spilling water all over the floor!

It was all planned of course and he was making a point. Life is going to bump into us. It’s not always going to be smooth. When we get hit by life, what’s inside will come out. What is in the heart will come out, that is one reason we must guard our hearts with all diligence. So how do we do that?

I think there are two places where our attention should focus when guarding our heart or mind. We must take care of what we allow into our minds and what we allow to continue in our mind.

First the external inputs. The things that are in our mind are not coincidence. What we taste, touch, smell, see, and hear are things that are in our minds. Most especially the things that we listen to and look at dictate what we think about to a great degree. We need to guard our minds by taking great care what inputs are put into our mind. That’s why we believe it to be foolish and unwise to have television. That’s why we harp on the types of music you listen to, and the movies you watch. Sunday I mentioned some things that I particularly guard in my life, and after service someone said they were glad I didn’t touch their books! Well we have to guard what we read as well! Guard your heart is another way to say, be careful! Guard the inputs in your life.

But we also have to guard what we dwell on. I do not believe we have complete, perfect control over what springs into our minds, whether caused by uncontrollable external stimuli, or springing up seemingly randomly. Yet we must control what our mind dwells on. Allowing angry and bitter thoughts to consume our thoughts will result the issues of life, the life springing forth from within being angry and bitter. So guard what you allow into you mind and guard also what stays in you mind.

Proverbs 4:25–27 “Let thine eyes look right on, And let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, And let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: Remove thy foot from evil.”

Have you ever driven by a large and well manicured lawn with perfectly straight stripes stretching off into the distance? Have you ever tried to make your lawn look that way and looked back over your work to see wandering and crooked lines? The secret to having straight lines in your yard and having an established straight path toward heaven is the same. Fix your eyes on the destination. When setting stripes on a lawn it is important for you to find a point that is at the end of the line or further to fix your eyes on and to go towards it, not looking down to see if the mower is mowing, not checking anything, but being fixed on the destination. People have tried this advice and it hasn’t always worked. I doubt this ever happened but I have heard of someone mowing, and following the advice to look at something in the distance and go straight toward it and still at the end having crooked and wandering stripes. Even curves and turns that continued on. When questioned it was found that the person mowing had fixed their eyes on a person walking in the distance. Another mistake that I have heard of resulted in each stripe getting narrower on one end and broader on the other. This person had fixed their eyes on a cellphone tower to set the first stripe. Had gone back parallel to that, and then for each stripe headed toward the tower, used the same tower as the landmark so while the stripes were straight, the yard was mowed only in sort of a pyramid.

Let thine eyes look right on, at what? In mowing you need to pick a new visual target for each stripe, in life we have one goal, one target to keep our eyes fixed on. The end goal is heaven. We need to keep our eyes fixed on heaven. I don’t know a whole lot about horse and buggies but I have noticed that the horses have blinders. My understanding is that the blinders help to keep the horses focus on the path in front of them alone. It helps to keep them calm as cars whiz by and helps to keep them focused as some nearby things would perhaps distract them from the path. It helps them to move only at the direction of the one at the reigns.

I think this is a good picture for us. Keep your eyes focused ahead. Set up blinders so that the false pleasures of the world do not attract nor the close passing dangers. Only move at the direction of the one at the reins of your life. Provided of course you have surrendered you life to God. In this way guard your heart. Guard what comes in. Guard what stays in. Keeps your eyes fixed on the destination and in this way you ways will be established, you will not turn to the right or left of walk into evil. Guard your heart, fix you eyes on the destination, and move only at the direction of God.