Proverbs 4:20-27 | Guarding Your Heart
Practical Wisdom for an Enduring Walk • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 37:10
0 ratings
· 5 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
[Song] Be Careful, Little Eyes, What You See
Be careful, little eyes, what you see.
Be careful, little eyes, what you see.
For the Father up above is looking down in love.
So, be careful, little eyes, what you see.
Ears - Hear
Feet - Go
Tongue - Say
This children’s song teaches a powerful lesson about the way we should view our lives before God.
Wisdom means that we have a particular kind of focus on our lives because we understand that we are living them before the face of God [Coram Deo].
A picture of total devotion to the paths of wisdom.
This is an important teaching because it gives us a process for self-reflection that will ultimately help us remain in the blessedness of wisdom.
Many want the good but fall short because they expect that it will just happen.
Or that God will just make us to be in a state of sinless perfection that would make the path easy.
The promise of Jesus is that we will be blessed.
So, the danger is not whether the road will be rough, but that we would have a lack of self-awareness about the way we lead our everyday lives.
Being a Christian doesn’t mean that I placed my trust in Jesus at a singular discreet moment in the past.
It means that from that moment I made a commitment to Jesus Christ to follow after Him, to live every moment in obedient pursuit of Him.
The hard moments in life are only a fork in the road.
The Need for Heart-Keeping (4:20-22)
The Need for Heart-Keeping (4:20-22)
20 My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.
21 Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart.
22 For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.
It’s not enough to take in new information about God and wisdom, or about agreeing with it.
Wisdom requires that we go further: reflecting regularly upon wise teachings and continuing in them over the course of our lives.
Moment-by-moment application of wisdom’s teachings in our practical lives.
Habitual obedience (unremarkable; regular; ordinary)
Obedience matters all the time, not just in what we consider the critical choices.
Because, as we will see, it is in the little choices that our course is charted.
No superficiality allowed.
God doesn’t call us to a life of superficial religiosity, but to a life of principled, practical, loving obedience to God’s wise ways.
Heart-centered wisdom is a matter of life or death
The way that we solve the problem of remaining wise is to regularly apply the gospel to our hearts regularly.
Remembering who Christ is and what He has accomplished for us.
Remember the Spirit, whom he has given to be our teacher and comforter [the reminder of His good will for our lives].
“Be attentive” is to say PAY ATTENTION!
Keep the teachings in yours sight.
Regular consumption of God’s Word is crucial.
Keep your eyes fixed on God and they wont have time to look at anything else.
A neglected Bible is the melancholy proof of a heart “alienated from God.” For how can we have a spark of love to him, if that Bood, which is the full manifestation of his glory be despised?
Charles Bridges (1794-1869)
Moreover, keep the teachings in your heart
Occupy your mind with meditating on, applying, and obeying God’s Word.
Work to expand the influence of God’s word to every corner of your life.
12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Diagnosis and Prescription (4:23-27)
Diagnosis and Prescription (4:23-27)
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
24 Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you.
25 Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.
26 Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.
27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.
To keep our hearts we must know our hearts.
The world’s wisdom says that happiness comes from having our external world under our control.
Designed according to our particular specifications: home, family, career, etc.
But time and again, it is the very people who seem to “have it all” who report the greater unhappiness.
Rather than being fulfilled, they are left wanting more.
The reality is that all the possessions and achievements in the world would only serve to draw our attention to the emptiness we feel inside apart from the source of life which is found only in our relationship to God.
Life does not flow from the outside in; it flows from the inside out.
Ray Ortlund Jr.
The heart is the center of a person
physical: blood flow
emotional/spiritual/intellectual: our individual identity.
Moral/ethical: the center of our moral knowledge and will.
Our hearts govern most of our lives: our thoughts, feelings, desires, and worship all issue forth from our hearts.
In the Biblical worldview, the mind is subject to the heart.
What we think and do follows where our hearts are drawn.
For this reason we must take great care for the health of our hearts, because everything flows from it (springs of life).
Our heart is the most precious part of us, and in need of the greatest effort in defending.
We all have a heart problem.
It’s a comprehensive problem.
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
It’s an unfathomable problem.
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Know the God who sees our hearts.
We cannot hide the truth of our hearts from our creator.
He knows our hearts
7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
He judges accordingly
10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
This is not good for us.
See the need for heart change.
We must address our spiritual lives at the level of our hearts.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Crying out to him for help.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
His promise is not of our doom, but of our redemption and salvation.
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Our hearts need to be filled with the life of Christ, supplied by faith in the gospel [the person and work of Christ], and He generously gives to all who come..
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
Receive the change from God.
“Keeping” our hearts involves a great many things, but there is one thing it doesn’t require, walling it off.
Our natural inclination in protecting our hearts is to close it to the outside.
This entombs the heart, condemning it to living death.
Rather, we protect our hearts by intentional activity on its behalf.
Tending to it: looking after what feeds it.
Regulating it: determining where growth is needed.
Directing it: pointing it in the right directions.
Life must be lived, and so the heart must be put to work wisely and purposefully.
Ryan Patrick O’Dowd
The calling of Jesus Christ is comprehensive; over every part of our lives.
He created us and we ought to busy ourselves in serving his purpose.
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Distractions from following God have the effect of ruining us by degrees.
Our hearts grow cold to Him, evidenced by:
Reckless tongues
Wayward eyes
Wandering feet
No one becomes Hitler overnight. But by a lack of watchfulness, anyone may fall to the peril of the unguarded heart.
It is this very danger that is why we must occupy ourselves with the gospel [Christ’s love] continually.
The one who comes to Jesus for life will not lose their way.
They will gain a renewed strength to walk.
Diagnosing our hearts.
Diagnosing our hearts.
How do we judge the health of our hearts?
Diagnostic tools God has made available to all of us to examine our lives, and thus, our hearts
By what comes out of our mouths.
24 Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you.
29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
2 For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.
3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.
4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.
5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!
6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.
Cursing, slander, and lies are all sins of the mouth
Keeping our hearts means taking care of what we speak, to whom we speak, and how we speak.
But the opposite is also true (what we do not say, to whom we do not speak, how we keep ourselves from speaking) [Give positive and negative examples]
Every word, every person, and every tone must be directed in God-honoring and people-encouraging ways.
I can do just as much hurt by failing to encourage others or to speak kindly as I do by cursing and lying.
What comes out of my mouth shows what has already taken root in our hearts.
We must first ensure that we guard our hearts by speaking what is pure and profitable.
Next, by what we take in to our eyes:
25 Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,
23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Lust, envy, and greed are all sins of the eye.
Our eyes are also the way we view the world [worldview] and gain a direction for our lives [good or bad]
The biblical pattern is that we inform our lives and worldview from God’s Word:
18 Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
And so where we cast our eyes can either become a distraction from God’s vision for our lives or lead to greater intentionality in pursuing it.
What we allow our eyes to rest upon and occupy will naturally become an object of desire {so take care of your eyes]
Keep your eyes directed toward what is righteous.
By thinking about the paths we make with our feet.
26 Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.
27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.
Consequential thinking is a necessity for us.
Every journey is a succession of steps, miles, moments.
Each one is a step down one path or the other…and each is important.
Keep your feet walking in integrity; with what is consistent with your profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
If you call yourself a Christian, see to it that you act as one.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they can’t name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life. Something deathless, something sacred. But replacing the hunger for divine connection with Double-Stuf Oreos® is like giving a glass of sand to a person dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic.
Geneen Roth: Women, Food and God
We are not meant to live this way.
We were meant for more than this, and God means for us to have more than this.
Knowledge and affection mutually help one another; it is good to keep up our affections of love and delight by all sweet inducements and divine encouragements, for what the heart likes best the mind studies most. Those that can bring their hearts to delight in Christ know most of His ways.
Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)
Jesus Christ died for us.
He didn’t die just to pay for our sins, but to redeem our present.
He gives us wisdom today to make us ready for eternity.
He will do amazing things that we can scarcely imagine, and He will do these things in and through us for His glory and our good.
Confident expectation shoudl drive us to renew our walk and to give our all to His work in us.
