A GUARDED HEART

Introduction

-{Proverbs 4}

-In what seems to be a lifetime ago, I used to work in the criminal justice system in my younger years. I was a probation/parole agent for a while and a jail supervisor for a while. And part of the training for both of those jobs was self-defense. And I remember one of the most important rules that was drilled into our minds was this: always protect your head. Even if you are brought down to the ground, protect your head. You can survive broken bones elsewhere on your body, but a blow to the head will be fatal. Either the blow itself will kill you or it will knock you out and then you can’t stop further attacks. Always protect your head.

-The Bible tells us that for the people of God, there is a similar principle to live by. In much the same way, a blow to this area of our existence can be harmful to our spiritual life. Whatever you do, you have to protect your heart.

-Now, when the Bible talks about the heart, it’s not talking about the organ that pumps blood, but it’s what that organ of the body metaphorically symbolizes. The heart is the totality of man’s inner life. While western literature relegates the heart to the emotions, the Bible is more wholistic. The heart in the Bible ranges from the mind to the will and volition to the emotions and whatever else we consider to be of central importance to the inner self. That is what needs to be protected and guarded. To fail to protect this heart, this inner self, will lead to a lot of harm and heartbreak (no pun intended).

-In the section of Proverbs that we are looking at, Solomon is telling his son to listen to all this wisdom. And in this passage specifically, Solomon warned that if a person’s heart is unguarded, they will have no spiritual health or soundness within them. And so, the main point that we find for ourselves here is that if we are to lead spiritually healthy lives we must guard our heart above anything else that we do.

-My hope is that we would place a priority in erecting spiritual barriers around our hearts to protect them from the sickness of spiritual wickedness and darkness. So, before I explain further, let’s look at our text:

Proverbs 4:20–27 ESV

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. 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.

-Our starting point this morning is v. 23 and it’s translated various ways, but all with the same meaning. Some translations will say guard your heart, watch your heart, keep your heart. And really there’s two connotations to what it’s saying, but we only have time to really concentrate on one of those this morning. It definitely has the connotation of protection. Set up some sort of defense around your heart to protect it from attack. That will be the main connotation we look at today. But there’s a second, background connotation that I want you to keep in the back of your head, because there is also the idea of nurture in there. Protect your heart, and while you are protecting it, nurture it so it will be strong and healthy.

-You might want to think of how they did vineyards back in the day. They would erect a wall or barrier or hedge around the vineyard to protect it from animals that would try to eat their grapes and vines and thereby destroy them. But then they would also care and nurture and prune the vines so they grow healthy. So, there’s that picture we ought to have in our minds. You protect it from enemies, but at the same time nurture to make it healthy.

-Now, it should be noted that it says to keep/guard your heart with all vigilance. Literally it says above anything else you watch or keep or guard, guard your heart. This is not to be some passive past time. This is to be a very active, rigorous activity. You can’t adequately guard your heart while you’re constantly eating snacks on the couch watching 10 hours of TV. This is something that will take time and effort on your part, and if you don’t do it with vigilance, it is definitely going to show in your life.

-And Solomon tells us that the reason you want to guard your heart is because from it flows the springs of life. The word literally means it is the point of departure of life or the origin of life. The New Living Translation probably gives the sense when it says that it determines the course of your life. If the source or origin goes bad, then everything that comes from it will be bad. If the heart goes bad, everything that flows from it will be bad. And the same is true if it is good.

-As Adrian Rogers used to say: What’s down in the well comes up in the bucket.

-Jesus Himself confirmed this principle of what comes out of the heart demonstrates the shape of the heart

Luke 6:43–45 (ESV)

43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit,

44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.

45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil...

-I mean, if you think of the metaphor of heart and origins of life, the heart as the organ pumps life-giving blood throughout the body. Whatever is in the heart or from the heart will pump it’s way throughout the body. If the heart is bad, everything runs amok. So, we need to protect our heart from outside influences that will try to corrupt and defile it.

-And the flow of thought in what Solomon says here demonstrates how the health of the heart affects certain areas of life. If the heart is protected, then things should be well in these areas. If the heart is not protected, then things will not be well. So, I want to quickly consider these areas. And, honestly, maybe this is a spiritual heart exam, and if you see some problems in these areas, that might mean that your defenses are down somewhere, and that part of the wall of protection needs to be patched up. So, what does Solomon warn us about?

1) An unprotected heart leads to corrupt speech

-v. 24 says to PUT AWAY FROM YOU CROOKED SPEECH, AND PUT DEVIOUS TALK FAR FROM YOU

-The flow of thought in the passage is that the way that you talk is going to reflect what’s going on in your heart. If your heart is protected and in strong spiritual shape, you will speak truth in a loving, graceful manner. Your words will be like what is described elsewhere in Proverbs as pleasant words that are like a honeycomb that’s sweet to the soul and health to the bones.

-But if you have a spiritual heart problem, that’s also going to show up in the way you talk. As Jesus described elsewhere in Scripture, what comes from the mouth actually has its origins in the heart and that’s what defiles a person.

-We try and mask this issue a little differently to make it sound better than it is. We might say that this person or that person or even for ourselves that they or we just don’t have a filter for our mouths. In a sense I guess that’s true. You don’t have a filter in place because something got to your heart and your heart isn’t right before God. If we had protected our heart from whatever we might say influenced us to speak wrongly, then we wouldn’t have spoken wrongly. A protected heart will have a filter.

-And the manifestation of an unprotected heart can be many. This most definitely refers to lying. If untruths come out of our mouth it’s because we haven’t guarded our heart from fleshly and worldly influences that cause us to think that lying is actually an option. Again, we try and pretty up our sin by giving it cutesy names. We might say that we stretch the truth or maybe exaggerate a little, but any misrepresentation is a lie. We try to distinguish between different levels of untruths. Somehow we’ve come to think that little white lies are OK. Does that mean any other color lie is not OK? What about pink lies—are they good or bad? Beige lies? Periwinkle lies? No, any lie (whatever the hue) is a lie that proceeds from an unprotected heart.

-But it’s not just lies. There’s a favorite sin among church-goers that comes from an unprotected heart—and that’s gossip. We love to talk about the juicy details about someone’s life that tears them down and we think builds us up. That comes straight from a rotten heart. Another favorite among church-goers is murmuring and complaining. If all we do is complain and speak negatively about anything and everything, then our heart has been unguarded and under the influence of something negative. If we speak very caustically, very harshly, that comes from a heart problem. If you yell and scream in the heat of the moment and say that it comes from a hot-temper or anger management issues, we’re that way because of our heart. We didn’t protect our heart from these things taking root. If we would guard our heart, the seeds of these things wouldn’t get implanted in us.

-So, the thing is, if your speech is off, it’s because your heart is off, and your heart is off because you haven’t guarded it against the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil. You’ve allowed things to settle in your heart and you need to repent and work with God to weed those things out. But there’s another area...

2) An unprotected heart leads to wandering eyes

-v. 25 tells us to LET YOUR EYES LOOK DIRECTLY FORWARD, AND YOUR GAZE BE STRAIGHT BEFORE YOU. In a sense, this is a way in which to protect our hearts—keep your eyes on the prize who is Jesus Christ. But it is also giving us a warning that when the heart is unprotected, our eyes will wander away to look at things that it should not—they will not look straight ahead. An unprotected heart will lead to behavior that will do the heart more damage. It can be a vicious cycle. When you open the door of the heart to wicked things, you leave a weak spot through which other wicked things can enter.

-And this is so true of the eyes. When you fix your gaze on something that you ought not, your unprotected heart will then be vulnerable to the next gaze of something that’s even more spiritually deadly, which then makes you more vulnerable to the next look and the next look and the next look. And on and on it goes. You can protect your heart by not even taking the first look at something that you ought not. But when your armor is weak, your eyes begin to wander and fix themselves on things that will lead you down a path that is difficult to leave.

-So, for example, when your heart is unprotected, your eyes fixate on a picture or even a person that you find attractive. It’s not just a passing glance, but you allow your eyes to linger and you allow lust to settle in your unprotected heart. This then causes your mind to create illicit fantasies. But then these fantasies aren’t enough, so then you begin to seek out illicit pictures, which further weakens the wall around your heart. So then your eyes want to wander to the hard stuff of pornography. And when pictures aren’t enough, your eyes wander to videos. And then when that’s not enough, it may lead to outward acts of sin such as adultery. A wandering eye comes from an unprotected heart, and the more the eyes wander, the weaker the defenses become and the more unhealthy the heart becomes.

-But it’s not only sexual sin, the eyes can desire and lust after many things. While your heart goes unprotected you see some object or toy that your neighbor has and in jealousy your eyes envy that thing that they have. The more you envy that object, the greedier your heart becomes. This greed then leads to discontentment where you are completely unhappy with the blessings that God has given you. And Paul describes it rightly when he says that this covetousness that has entered your unprotected heart has created an idol that you obsess over.

-We excuse our wandering eyes. Partly because this is something that we can keep hidden. No one knows when our eyes wander, although the festering sores that it leaves on the heart will manifest themselves in other ways. But we say that this is just the way that we are wired. Or we might say that it’s not hurting anyone. But you cannot excuse sin. That sin entered you from a heart that was left unguarded. So, you can see why we have to keep the heart with all vigilance. There is still another area that Solomon touches upon:

3) An unprotected heart leads to a diverted path

-vv. 26-27 say PONDER THE PATH OF YOUR FEET; THEN ALL YOUR WAYS WILL BE SURE. DO NOT SWERVE TO THE RIGHT OR TO THE LEFT; TURN YOUR FOOT AWAY FROM EVIL.

-Solomon is talking about your walk—your life’s conduct—the path that you follow and what everything you do is centered upon. When your heart is not guarded, you go down the wrong path. You are more vulnerable to diverting your path, your life’s journey, away from where God wants you to go—living in ways that are not pleasing to Him. The trajectory of your life is going in the wrong direction. An unprotected heart will lead you astray.

-It might not be that you purposely set out to go down the wrong path. You think that you have a motive of wanting to please God. But when your heart is exposed, and other things start creeping into your heart, they steal your affections away from a pure love of God. You might desire what the psalmist describes that as a deer pants for water you want your soul to long after God. But then something else comes in your heart that peaks your interest, and you start pursuing that instead of pursuing God.

-It might start out as an innocent love of sports, but then over time sports is all you obsess over. You spend all your time watching sports, attending sports, and participating in sports. You can name off all sorts of oddball sports stats but you couldn’t quote one verse of Scripture or name one attribute of God. An unprotected heart led you down that road.

-An unprotected heart can also lead to a self-willed life. That means that you are now convinced that you are the captain of your own ship, you are the master of your destiny. All the choices you make are for you, and no regard is given to God’s will and purpose for your life. And so all your decisions are made to mark your own path and blaze your own trail. And the funny thing is, deep down you know you are spiritually left wanting. It’s because your unguarded heart let in all sorts of wrong influences that have now taken you down a path you may not have intended, but you are walking that road instead of the path God has for you. That’s why it is so important to keep your heart with all diligence.

Conclusion

-So, before I close, I want to quickly answer the question HOW DO I GUARD MY HEART? Now, a lot of this might sound like your typical Sunday School answers, but the thing is, if statistics hold, a large portion of you are not doing these things, and therefore your heart is vulnerable.

a) Be saved

~The first step is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Jesus died for you and rose for you and all who call on Jesus as both Lord and Savior can be saved. Have you truly been born again? Have you truly been converted? Your heart cannot be protected without Christ.

b) Read Scripture

~Constantly get into the Word of God. Read it. Study it. Memorize it. Fill your heart with it. When you treasure His word in your heart you will not sin against Him. You will keep your way pure by knowing and obeying the Word of God. Without it, you are unprotected.

c) Prayer

-Spend time with God. Talk with God. Ask of God. And then listen to God. The more time you have with God, the thicker your spiritual armor becomes.

d) Limit worldly input

-Stop spending countless hours taking in the things of the world. Spend more time in the things of the Lord. Instead of watching TV, read Scripture. Instead of listening to sports, listen to a sermon podcast. We can’t get away from the world, but don’t have to allow it to have undue influence on us. Guard your heart.

-I think D.A. Carson summarized it wonderfully when he wrote:

Make this duty of paramount importance: “Above all else, guard your heart.” One can see why. If the heart is nothing other than the center of your entire personality, that is what must be preserved. If your religion is merely external, while your “heart” is a seething mass of self-interest, what good is the religion? If your heart is ardently pursuing peripheral things ... then from a Christian perspective you soon come to be occupied with the merely peripheral. If what you dream of is possessing a certain thing, if what you pant for is a certain salary or reputation, that shapes your life. But if above all else you see it to be your duty to guard your heart, that resolve will translate itself into choices of what you read, how you pray, what you linger over. It will prompt self-examination and confession, repentance, and faith, and will transform the rest of your life.

-Guard your heart so that your speech, your gaze, and your walk are pleasing to the Lord. When you do that, you experience what Solomon describes in v. 22—you find life and healing.

-Christian, do a heart exam. Have you protected your heart or are there chinks in the armor? The heart has to be protected because it is deceitful and desperately wicked if left unguarded. If you need to maybe have God do some heart surgery, come to the altar and confess and repent and pray that God patches the holes in your spiritual armor and commit to do the hard work of guarding your heart.

-But if you’re not a Christian, then your heart is completely unguarded and is under the influence of anything the world, the flesh, and the devil throws at you. But you can put armor around your heart when you come to Christ...