Guarding Your Heart - the Word

Please be seated.

Well, good morning, and I'd like you to uh open your Bibles up to our scripture reading for this morning, which is found in the Old Testament portion of your Bible, Proverbs four, verses twenty to twenty-three.

And if you're using a Pew Bible, that's on page five thirty in that Pew Bible.

So Proverbs four, twenty to twenty-three.

Incline your ear to my sayings.

Let them not escape from your sight.

Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Here ends the reading of God's Word.

Well, I'd like to begin our time together this morning with a short quiz about a human proverb, and I'd like you just to just to fill in the blank here.

You are what you are what you eat.

In fact, that is the most uh most popular answer to that um to that phrase.

If you were to search it on Google, there's other contenders.

Uh you are what you measure, you are what you say, you are what you choose and give.

My favorite is you are what you tweet.

But all of these things, and especially the you are what you eat saying, are out to highlight uh something of the importance of things at the core.

Um, in this case, um the importance of nutrition to human health.

Um we all know that.

You know, we know that if you want to feel good in your old age, if um if you want to have not just longevity, but actual wellness when you are aged, um, it will pay you well to pay attention now to your diet and to the quality of the food that you eat.

Because nutrition lies at the core of our physical wellness.

And if something goes wrong at the core, we know this, or at the foundation, the whole superstructure is in peril.

Well, in a very similar way, the author of the Lord's Proverb that we're looking at this morning is out to highlight with great urgency something which lies at the core of human wellness.

And far beyond any kind of physical wellness or emotional wellness or even environmental or cultural wellness, our author is out to teach us about what lies at the core of the deepest level of human wellness.

And with great passion, he's out to coach us for success.

And so I'd like to just dig right into our text with a little bit of background to it.

Um, if you're familiar at all with uh Proverbs, you know that Proverbs is a collection.

It's a book in the Old Testament, most of them written by Solomon.

It's a collection of short, pithy statements that have general truths about life.

And um, but you also know, if you're familiar, that the first seven chapters of Proverbs are unique in that they they're kind of a, they come across as a speech of a parent to a son.

In fact, they come across as a father, a very concerned father to his son about choosing well in life.

This father is very passionate that his son choose the right path.

And in fact, he the father knows, and it's a part of his passion, is that this path will be difficult.

It's the path where character will be tested and forged, and that this path is going to be counter to the many easy paths and the many popular paths and foolish paths.

This father knows that there's a tremendous amount at stake in not only the life choices of his son, but also his heart passions as well, and that these will pay consequences both in the life here and now and in the age to come.

In fact, one of the reasons why the father is so adamant about this is that the competition for the right path is severe.

And if you were to look over in Proverbs 9, there we have the conclusion of this whole first section, and there you have two women, uh Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly.

And each of these women give their invitation to all who will come.

Lady Wisdom says, all you who are simple, come into my home.

I prepared a feast for you, and it will not disappoint you.

Come and eat freely.

But there's Lady Folly.

And Lady Folly says this she's loud, she's seductive and knows nothing.

Yet she sits at the door of her house.

She takes a seat on the highest place of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way.

Whoever is simple, that means foolish.

Let him turn in here.

And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

But he does not know that death is there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

So this father, who sounds awful uptight, has a good reason for his mood and his urgency in these chapters.

Now, those of you who are parents, I know you can relate to this father, can't you?

I don't know how often, and the older my children get, the more I relate to him.

Because we see things as fathers and mothers.

We see things that are coming, we see the consequences of life choices and heart attitudes because we've lived there and we've made those poor choices and we've gone down those poor paths.

But this fatherly advice is not just your average parental advice, and we need to know that as we come to this proverb.

It's not something you can take it and leave it.

I mean, my kids can take or leave my advice, honestly, and they do.

I'm not inspired in what I say.

But these proverbs, this father's advice has been enscripturated, if that's even the right word.

They've been forever honed and put and carved into the tablets of Scripture, so that when God speaks in the Old Testament in all of Scripture, he's speaking now through this Father's exhortations.

So that no longer are these just urgent pleas of one man who was kind of laying out the things important to him.

These become the very words of God inspired for us today.

And so as we approach this text, we actually come to this text as the sons and daughters.

And now the Father who is speaking to us is not just our earthly father.

No, it's our living Father.

It's God the Father who is speaking through his Spirit.

And if we come to Proverbs well in these early chapters, we will come hearing and paying attention to what these things are saying and to the mood of them as well.

Well, I'd like to focus our attention today largely on verse 23.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.

And I'd like to uh to ask us three questions as we move through our material today.

Number one, what is the heart?

How do we guard the heart?

And what's it at stake?

What's really at stake in how we deal with our own heart?

So I'd like to begin then with what is the heart?

Well, I think one thing is really clear in both the old and the next, the concept of the heart is very popular.

And it stands for the core of our real selves.

It's the real you, it's your center.

And you see this kind of thing in Proverbs 27, 19, which reads, as in water, face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.

Or in the New Testament, we have some language that talks about there's an outer self and there's an inner self.

There's an outer man and an inner man.

The inner man is the real you.

2 Corinthians 4, 16 says, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

Talking here about the regenerate Christian whose heart is being changed day by day on the inside.

One other passage that really brings out, I think, into kind of bold relief, this idea of the heart, and maybe how it's different than we think of it sometimes, is Proverbs 23, 6.

Do not eat the bread of a man who's stingy.

Do not desire his delicacies.

For he is like one who is inwardly calculating.

Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

It's like those cartoons that we see that have the little bubble that comes up that really reveals the real thoughts and desires and longings of the heart, while outwardly something is said to the contrary.

Well, this leads then to uh to another aspect of what the heart is.

The heart is hidden from sight and easily deceives us and others.

Um, one of the passages that I really like when thinking about the human heart comes from 1 Peter 3:4.

1 Peter 3:4

There Peter is addressing women and he says, Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.

Let your beauty be the hidden person of the heart.

You see the outward beauty.

We all see that.

Let your beauty be the hidden heart, which is not obvious, um, so obvious to others.

Um another proverb that brings out the kind of hiddenness of our human hearts, um, Proverbs 25.

The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.

And here the idea is that, you know, the motives in our heart, why we do what we do, are like deep waters.

We can't get to the bottom of those things very easy, can we?

I've spent a fair amount of time talking with a counselor, and um, in these sessions, um, sometimes they would ask me, you know, I wonder why you said that.

Why do you think that?

What's behind your reaction that you just had?

And all those times the counselor was trying to force me to go behind the outward man and to try to get at what was really the real me, which was being suppressed and hidden from my sight.

Well, finally, one other aspect of the hiddenness of the human heart, we find this in Jeremiah 17, 9, a very well-known passage that says, um, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

That's what our hearts are like in our natural form.

We are desperately sick at the very core of who we are.

We come into the world broken in that kind of way.

And who can understand it?

We're hidden from our own self so often.

By the way, the passage does go on to say that the human heart, albeit hidden from us sometimes and hidden from others, it's not hidden from God's sight.

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.

So the human heart, it's the core of who we are.

Well, how do we guard our heart?

This passage calls us to keep our heart, which means to guard our heart, to guard the core of who we are and to do it with all vigilance.

I was thinking about guarding.

I thought, man, you know, there's a lot of different kinds of guarding, isn't there?

Back when I was in the military, um, I spent hours and hours guarding at night.

We called it firewatch.

Guarding barracks in a very safe lockdown base.

And I'd have to be awakened at two in the morning.

You know, Connolly, time to get up.

It's firewatch, your turn.

And for two hours I'd have to walk around with a flashlight and and guard the barracks.

And and I have to tell you, I didn't have a very high passion for that guarding.

Because you know, guarding looks different based on the threat, doesn't it?

Or the danger.

But think of the Secret Service.

They don't feel like they're wasting their time, I don't think.

I think when the president pulls up into a crowded stadium or when he pulls into a to a crowded uh square to speak, I think you see men and women who are on high alert.

They're alert to the possibilities of danger, and they're cocked, and they're ready.

I don't know, I don't have real passion to guard anything unless there's a real threat.

But this passage tells us that the threat is real.

This passage tells us in more than one way that this threat is everything.

It's telling us that the real battle in the Christian life is fought or lost at the core of who you are.

And therefore, you need to guard that vigilantly with all care.

The real battle in our lives is not about what we're doing on the outside.

The real battle in our Christian lives is about what's going on right now in your Christian heart or in your heart, your human heart before the Lord.

There is a guarding that's not vigilant.

I think we know what that looks like.

I was thinking of Pearl Harbor.

The world was at war.

Our troops were on some kind of ready alert.

We knew there was going to be potentially a threat of some kind to our nation, but it was a gorgeous, beautiful day in Hawaii.

And somewhere in that process, someone who saw the screen and a potential threat made a decision that it wasn't that big a deal.

Due diligence wasn't done at that point, and it cost an enormous amount.

But then I think on the other side, we have a lot of examples of vigilant guarding that takes place.

I think of the TSA at the airports.

Don't you just hate going through an airport?

You say, those guys are so, and gals, they're just so intense.

You don't dare joke with them about what you might have in your bag.

You don't.

It's yes, ma'am, no, sir.

And since 9-1-1, it's been almost 12 years, and it hasn't let up, has it?

They are vigilant.

And it may swing down and swing up, but they are very vigilant.

I hope every time you go to the airport, from today forward, you are reminded of a call of God to be as vigilant with your heart as they are with the safety of the passengers on their planes.

Because there's a whole lot more at stake in our hearts, frankly, than there is when we get on an airplane.

Well, how do we guard our heart?

In this passage, it's clearly related with what we do with the word of God.

We're told in this passage, this Father who is speaking to us tells us to pay attention to his words, to his instruction, to his wisdom, and to put them in our hearts, to place them there.

And I would say that as I began thinking about this, there's got to be at least four features of any real guarding of our human heart.

Four features.

The very first feature has to be if you're going to guard something, you have to know what it is you're guarding, right?

You have to have an idea of what the measure is.

What is it that you're guarding?

Are you guarding the plane?

Are you guarding the president?

What is it you're guarding?

Well, here we're called to guard the heart.

And we've already seen that the heart is hidden easily.

And so we have to know our heart.

We have to move toward our heart.

We have to quit ignoring the heart, the real core self, what we really think, what we really feel, what we really long for.

We have to quit ignoring that and begin to dig and push into it.

Otherwise, there's no guarding of the heart.

I think a second feature of this guarding is we better have a growing knowledge of the word of God.

And what strikes me about this is that the word of God, we think of it as just like sometimes like rules, right?

You think of your Bible, it's a book of rules.

We hate rules.

Some of us more than others.

Some of us are rule followers.

But the Bible is so much more than rules.

In fact, it's not even fundamentally rules.

The Bible is, in the, I think, in the simplest form, it's the very heart and character of God Himself.

That's what the Bible is.

That's what the Word of God is, that's what this instruction is.

And God is calling us as we look at ourselves and as we learn His word and find out what His character is and what His desires are and what His longings and purposes are.

Do we have something?

To shoot for.

We have something to move toward.

And that's the third feature of any real guarding is the two of these have to be brought into sync.

To some degree.

I mean, we know about syncing, right?

That's a cool term these days.

You know, you want to upgrade your update your calendar on your iPhone, and it sinks everywhere at the office, at your wife's calendar, and it's everywhere, right?

It's great the way that just uh happens.

Um, but I'll bet you check it and make sure it actually synced.

And see, it's that kind of process right there.

That is the dynamic of what's happening in this passage.

As we push into our heart, what is the degree to which our heart is in sync with the word and the heart of God?

How do those two things sync?

That's a major feature of guarding our hearts.

We have to learn to be honest with God about this.

We've got to learn to live with this question of is my heart in sync with the Word of God.

I want to give a couple of examples here about how I see this playing out.

We know in Scripture it's not wrong to be angry, right?

But it is wrong to be overly angry.

There is an anger that goes too far.

And so as we begin to feel an anger that goes too far in our heart, we begin to feel all kinds of things.

We have lots of signs going on inside, lots of windows into our soul.

If we're willing to walk and push into that, if we're willing to ask what's behind that, that anger that's there.

But then are we thinking about the word of God?

What does the word of God say about this over-anger?

And do we really believe it?

Do we really long to line up with it?

You know, is it true that a root of bitterness will raise up and defile us?

Is it true that that anger left unchecked and to grow when the sun goes down gives our enemy a foothold to move in and to begin to ravage our lives?

Is it true that anger is more harmful to us than it is even to those around us?

That it doesn't bring about the righteous life that God desires.

And so as we begin to look at those two things, we begin to sit within honesty before the Lord and begin to speak to God about what we find and where we are.

That's what it means to guard the heart.

And this moves into a fourth feature of guarding.

Any guarding that can be considered vigilant and real is a guarding that moves into prayer with the Lord.

Next week, I'm going to devote the whole week to just this section, so I'm just going to touch on it today.

But one of the things that we find in this is that we don't really have the power to change our heart.

I wonder if you believe that.

I wonder if you believe that you cannot just will to change your heart.

You cannot just will to desire something.

One of the ways this is shown to us, one of many ways, is in how our hearts continually leak out.

And I'm using some language from Dr.

John Coe, who did a has a great seminar on spiritual formation that shaped me a lot of my thinking about this.

He talks about how we don't intentionally sin, but our sin just kind of leaks out.

It's triggered by something in life, right?

Somebody says something.

Something triggers our pain.

It triggers something in us, and it leaks out.

And we see it, and we're alarmed, and we put the lid on that as fast as we possibly can.

And we vow, Lord, I'll never do that again.

I'll never go there again.

I'll never drink that again, smoke that again, look at that again, listen to that again, say that again.

And we leak out again, and we leak out again, and we leak out again.

No, the way to being transformed.

The way to being transformed is the road of weakness.

We saw it last week.

Dr.

Jad Packer, I don't know how many of you knew him, and if you were here last week, one of the greatest leaders in the world, in um in Christianity in the last century, an old man in his 90s, who says, you know, we have, we're schooled on the idea that strength, that our strength is the way.

He said, but the older I've gotten, I've come to learn from the Word of God and in my own life that weakness is the way.

It's when we let go and surrender and realize that we really don't have the power or the horses to make the changes that God calls us to.

So there is a weakness factor, but God is greater than our weakness, and he gives his people, his Holy Spirit, to live within our hearts, actually, in the very core of who we are, and even it begins to forge and shape our own instincts, and the Spirit of God has power to change us.

But the way to that change is brokenness and surrender and invitation and sitting in our messes before the Lord.

I wish I had time.

There are other kinds of things.

I don't want us to think just of the kinds of heart issues that we need to guard are always those with moral components, or at least the things we think of.

I think of those things that deal with, for example, of tragedy.

How do we guard our heart in tragedy when we're tempted to believe that God doesn't care anymore?

That he's not really faithful, that he's not really good.

Why is God bringing this in my life?

The word of God, my heart, what's really there?

Am I really railing it, God?

Am I really in God's face?

Do I have the courage to walk into that heart?

Do I have that courage before the Lord and say, that is who I am right now?

And I'm a mile from where you want me to be.

But that's where I am.

And I want to go another way.

Well, there's examples of abuse.

People have been abused in their life.

They often live this life in very, very sad terms because they feel like they're always captive.

And there are those who take advantage of people like that sometimes.

They exploit their weakness.

And they captivate them by their overarching authority, maybe.

They step on them.

And the voice begins in the head.

Am I even lovable?

Does God even love?

I'm not lovable.

I'm not lovable by God anymore.

Christ notwithstanding.

God doesn't care.

He doesn't care.

Does God really want me to be free?

Does he really want me to rise above all of this?

Will he really be enough?

Can he be enough?

I mean, can I just be filled with God instead of food and drink and sex and whatever else I'm just grasping to fill me that never does?

Can God just be enough?

He says he is, but it doesn't feel that way so often.

Well, I want to move on to the third question of what is it that's really at stake in how we deal with our hearts?

The heart is the core of who we are.

We're exhorted here to guard our hearts with great vigilance, and we are because there's so much at stake.

In the very passage itself, I'd like you just to look, you can look at this more deeply later, but it's interesting that what's mentioned in this passage by this father is he says, Hey, kiddo, pay attention to your ear, pay attention to your eyes, pay attention to your speech, pay attention to your feet, pay attention to your heart, right?

All those are in here.

It's just like he's going through the senses.

But there's only one that he comes back to and camps out on and says, You guard this one above all else.

Because all of those other things are externals that come from the real core us.

And so, right away, this is one of the things that's at stake with our heart, right in the passage.

And it is this that the Christian faith and any true worship of God is chiefly about the heart.

It's about what goes on at our very center.

1 Samuel 16, 7 says, For the Lord sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The issues of being a worshiper of God is all centered on the human heart.

I don't know.

Do we know that?

And do we believe that?

So why do we act so often?

Like it has to do with what we're doing.

If I were to ask you right now, how is your Christian life going?

How's your Christian life going?

I'd like an honest assessment.

How's your Christian life going?

I wonder what we would think of first.

I'll bet many of us would begin to think of the things we're doing.

I know my Bible time is up to 30 minutes a day, my prayer is up to, I'm not that good on prayer, but it comes and goes, and I'm a lot better giver than I used to be, and um, you know, the different kinds of things that we that we set the benchmarks for how we're doing, but we seldom put it at the heart.

And that's why we can ignore the heart.

There's something so uncomfortable about our hearts.

We just don't want to go there.

And we don't want you to, I don't want you to go there with me.

I don't want you to know my real heart.

And yet that's where the that's where everything is won and lost.

Well, the passage goes on to say there's a second thing at stake in how we deal with our heart.

And it puts it this way you know, our chief wellness in this life depends on how well we guard our heart with all vigilance.

And notice in this passage, there's a phrase that's used about life.

The heart is likened to a spring in the desert, right?

And uh, when you're if you live in the desert, I grew up in the desert, man, fresh water out of the ground is unbelievable.

And uh it's life-giving and it's rare.

And um, so what this passage is saying is that guard the springs of your heart because they're they're going to issue forth in life.

And this life is defined in verse 20, uh verse 22.

Life is defined there in a comprehensive way.

It's healing, it's vitality, it's wellness at the deepest levels.

In no way is this limited to longevity of days, although that would be a part of it.

It's talking about flourishing and shalom.

It even has a relational pointer and component to it with God.

That we are at peace with our Creator, before whom we live, and who sees the very core of who we are.

This passage actually, I'm trying to think of the word here.

It actually foreshadows something that Jesus Himself would say.

He said, the good person out of the good treasures of his heart produced good, and the evil persons out of the evil treasures of his heart produces evil, for out of the abundance of your heart his mouth speaks.

So this passage is calling us to say, you know, what do you want to come out of your heart?

Because it actually turns out this passage says that you are what you drink.

And so is everyone else around you.

Would you flourish?

Then you need clear, good, pure water.

Your heart needs to be pure.

You need to guard your heart.

Do you want brackish, toxic water for you and for those around you?

Don't worry about your heart.

Worry about it another day.

You got a lot of living to do, you know.

Take care of that heart later when you get a little older.

That's what I said when I was 12.

You know, again, I really one of the things I'm beginning to just dawn on me is in our sermons here in this church, in our classes in this church, at the very core of today's principle is this idea.

You know, the pastors here, we do not want anyone who's hearing the word of God in this place to go away and to think the way forward is to try harder.

That's not what we're looking for.

That's not what Scripture is looking for.

What we're looking for, what Scripture is looking for, is for us to think of being honest with God.

Blatantly honest with God every day, throughout the day.

And to be constantly asking the question, where is my heart?

What do I really think?

What do I really believe?

What's behind what I'm saying?

What is that window I just saw?

What does it tell me about myself?

Well, I want to bring this to a conclusion.

And I especially want to address those who have never really come to Christ in your heart.

You've never really come to Jesus in your heart of hearts.

And I want you to think about these words with all vigilance.

Vigilance means there's a lot at stake.

This past week on your screen, well, I hope it's on the screen, on the screen, um, picture of Chernobyl.

This is the 27th anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster, as far as I'm aware of, in human history.

And as you look at that reactor, it looks pretty decent, doesn't it?

Looks pretty healthy.

Looks like it's working pretty good.

You know, on the night, on the night of the disaster, had you been just outside and looked at the facade, you would have thought everything was just fine.

But there was something horribly wrong at the core of this reactor.

And when the core is bad, everything that's built upon it crumbles.

That's the message of Psalm 1.

The righteous will stand before the Lord at the end, the way of the wicked, everything they've built, everything they've worked for, everything they've longed for and hoped for, the way of the wicked will crumble, will scatter, will come crashing down and unravel.

No, your life is not what it is on the outside, neither is mine.

But our life is what we are deep at the core.

Our real wellness at the deepest level, both in this age and at the age to come, rests in a real sense on who you are now at the core of your being.

And our author is coaching us with great fervor for success.

He's saying it's what you cultivate on the inside, that's what you are.

And I leave you with this: you're back at Pearl Harbor, and you're the decision maker.

The radar screen is in front of you, and you get to choose.

We're all born with a corrupt heart.

But there is a way to have a clean record and a new heart in Jesus Christ.

Be honest with him today.

Surrender.

Fly to your Savior, who is waiting with open arms for all who come in that way.

Will you join me as I lead us in a closing prayer?

Oh, our Father, who is sufficient for these things?

Lord, we're not.

We're so easily led astray.

Father, send your Holy Spirit.

We want to begin wanting your heart formed in us.

Lord, bring us a deep repentance where we need it.

Give us grace to be honest.

Give us grace to know ourselves.

Give us friends, men and women, who will graciously push into our lives and lead us in good places.

Lord, thank you for your word.

Thank you for Jesus who makes the way available for us.

That our hearts can be made anew and our broken record can be clean.

And we ask it in his name.

Amen.