Guard Your Heart: Recognize and Resist Spiritual Drift - Proverbs 4

All right.

Well, one of my sons, my son Jay, he uh he leaves for college next fall.

Uh, you know, one year, that's basically all I've got left with him.

Uh and you know, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately because for 18 years, you know, more or less I I've had him at our dinner table almost every night.

So we made it a point as a family to have as many dinners as a family as possible.

So I've had him with us almost every night at our dinner table.

And in about 12 months, he's gonna pack up a car and drive off.

And and everything I've been trying to instill in him is either in him or it isn't.

So I've been wrestling and asking myself a question, which is if I've got one year, what matters most?

What's the thing I've got to teach him before he goes?

And I keep coming back to the same answer.

You know, it's it's it's it's not about his grades, it's it's not about, you know, if he can handle money or or feeding himself.

You know, Sarah's done a good job with teaching him how to cook, so he's good there.

Uh, I on the other end is horrible at that.

But but it's not about those things, it's about what's happening inside him.

Because whatever is in him, whatever, whatever is in there, that's what's gonna go with him.

Right?

Now, 3,000 years ago, roughly 3,000 years ago, there was a father in a similar spot that I'm in.

He had a son, sat him down, gave him a speech, not a lecture about his curfew or anything like that.

More about the the last things you say to somebody when you're when maybe you're running out of time.

Part of that speech is in Proverbs chapter 4.

Proverbs 4 · chapter mention

And we're gonna read from starting from verse 20.

You can open up your Bibles or you can follow along on the screen.

Proverbs chapter 4.

Proverbs 4 · chapter mention

We're gonna pick up at verse 20.

My son, pay attention to what I say.

Turn your ear to my words.

Do not let them out of your sights, keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and health to one's whole body.

Above all else, now this is the hinge of the verse uh of the passage, verse 23.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Keep your mouth free of perversity, keep corrupt talk far from your lips, let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you, give careful thought to the paths for your feet, and be steadfast in all your ways.

Do not turn to the right or the left, keep your foot from evil.

Now, last verse, I like the way ESV puts it.

It says, Do not swerve to the right or to the left, turn your foot away from evil.

Okay.

Verse 23, that's the hinge of this passage.

That's what we're gonna basically focus in on.

Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Now, there's a problem with that verse.

Many of you, you already think you know what it means.

Somebody probably told you at least once in your life, guard your heart.

Maybe, maybe it was when you started dating something, somebody that your mom didn't like, right?

When you hear guard your heart, most of you think it means protect your feelings.

Don't get hurt.

It's not what this says.

See, the word King Solomon uses for heart is the Hebrew word Leb.

And it does not mean your feelings, it means the inner you.

It's not just your feelings, it's it's where you think, it's where you choose, it's where your loves and desires come from.

It is your mind, it is the seat of your mind, your will, and your emotions.

It's the seat of what you want most of all, sitting in one room running the whole operation.

So when God talks about your heart, he's not talking about the part of you that cries at the movies.

He's talking about the part of your life, the part of you that runs your life.

Let me say it this way: whatever rules your heart will end up ruling your life.

Whatever rules your heart will end up ruling your life.

Think about an airplane.

When you're on a plane, you can see almost everything.

You can see the flight attendants, you can see the other passengers, but you can't see the cockpit.

The doors are usually closed on that.

And that's actually the only part of the plane that decides anything.

The cockpit sets the direction, decides where the plane lands.

And here's the thing: you could have a spotless cabin.

Everybody's being polite, crew in perfect pressed uniforms, nobody's spilling anything, not a crying baby in the entire fight.

Looks like a great flight, it's gonna be relaxing.

But whoever is in control of the cockpit, well, guess what?

That plane is gonna go wherever they take it, and everyone in the back is going with it.

That is your heart, the cockpit.

Now I want you to pay attention to what the father does with that.

Look at verse 20.

Well, verse 23, again, is the is the hinge of the whole speech, but I want you to see what hangs out off of that off of that verse.

Verse 24 talks about watching your mouth.

Verse 25 talks about watching where your eyes go.

Verses 26 and 27 talks about watching where your feet take you.

You know, don't drift off the road, don't drift right or left off the road.

Stay in alignment.

Mouths, eyes, and feet.

But understand the father doesn't start with any of those.

He starts with the heart and says that everything else flows out of it.

You see, the heart is the source.

Your mouth, your eyes, your feet, those are the stream.

That's actually a good thing because here's what that means.

This means that you can actually find out what's going on in your heart without having to guess.

Okay, you want to know what's going on in the cockpit of your heart?

Look at what came out of you this week.

Your mouth.

What you said on the car ride home, maybe after church with your family sitting next to you.

Your eyes when you went looking for, you know, you grabbed your phone and you're looking at something at 11 o'clock at night when everybody's asleep.

Maybe your feet, where you actually went this week.

Not where you meant to go, but where you actually went.

You see, you start looking at these things, you start looking at what you say, you start looking at what your eyes are looking at, you start paying attention to where your feet take you, and that's the readout of your entire life.

Your life has been telling you what's in your heart for a long time.

So it's not just about asking, what did I do this week?

We need to go deeper than that.

We need to ask, and pay attention to this question.

We need to ask, what does what I did tell me about what I love?

What does what I did this week tell me about what I love?

And here's why this is so important.

Most of us know Lake Okeechobee, right?

We're aware of Lake Okeechobee, the big lake that's about 40 minutes west of here.

That lake feeds a whole system.

Canals running south through the Everglades, out to the coast.

Some summers, most summers, in fact, for the past decade this has been going on, that lake gets a very significant algae bloom.

Maybe you've seen pictures of it on the news.

It's this green, like really it's it's green water, it's thick like paint.

Okay, this happens almost every year in Lake Okeechobee, this thick green paint-like algae.

It doesn't stay in the lake.

It moves.

It moves down the canals, into the intercoastal, out toward the ocean.

So people go to work on it.

They treat the canals, they clean the beaches, they pull the junk out of the water down at the bottom end.

And look, every bit of that is good work.

But the lake, it's still the lake.

I mean, you can clean up the canals, you can clean up the beaches, you can you can do all the scrubbing all day long, but if the source is bad, the water coming out of it is going to be bad every time.

Your mouth is downstream.

Your eyes are downstream, your feet are downstream.

If all you're doing is working on your mouth and your eyes and your feet, you're just treating the canal.

You never touch the source.

And you know what that you know what that does?

You know what you turn into when you get really good at that?

When you get really good at treating the mouth, eyes, and feet and not touching the source?

You become a smarter sinner.

You get better at it.

You get better at hiding it.

With the same art underneath.

You see, this father knows.

He doesn't start with with his son's behavior.

I mean, he could have.

He had this one shot, he this one speech.

He could have spent the whole time talking about the rules and focusing on just the behaviors.

Be home by 11, watch who you hang out with, don't waste your money.

And look, he addresses those things, but he doesn't start there.

He goes straight for the heart.

Because he knows something his son may not know yet.

You see, that heart, Jay, I'm talking to you, that heart his son is about to carry out the door, it's already under attack.

Which is why he says, guard your heart, protect it.

You know, I watched uh the movie Frozen recently for the first time with my daughter Elena.

Now, I know I'm probably about what, 10 or so years late on that one.

I get it.

It's a good movie.

I enjoyed it, I liked it.

I liked Frozen.

Very, you know, good writing, good storyline, very catchy songs.

In fact, the songs are still stuck in my head.

I sing it almost every morning, which is its own set of issues.

But somewhere in the middle of that big song, Let It Go, I actually start listening to the words.

And it's telling a three-year-old, my daughter, there's no rights, no wrongs, no rules, just you.

Just do essentially do whatever you feel.

No rules are gonna hold you back.

Nothing's gonna hold you back anymore, so let it go.

No rules.

You are you, do whatever you feel.

That's really the whole message.

Your feelings are the truest thing about you, and everybody who told you different was just holding you back.

And listen, that's not just a movie, that's the air we breathe.

Follow your heart, be true to yourself.

Feelings have defined what is truth in our culture.

In fact, it's it's the one thing everybody in our culture agrees on.

Your heart is the one thing you can count on, your feelings will tell you the truth.

Wait a minute.

God tells us the exact opposite.

Jeremiah 17, he says, the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.

In other words, desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

Deceitful?

That means our hearts lie.

And your heart doesn't just lie to other people, it lies to you.

So the the thing the whole world is telling you to follow is the one thing the Bible says you can't trust.

So the Father says, guard your heart.

And church, church, there are at least three things always coming after your heart.

There's the world outside you, the part that is against Jesus and against actual truth.

I mean, you just heard it about a song a three-year-old is singing.

Follow your feelings.

There's an enemy.

The Bible says he prowls like a lion, looking for someone to devour.

I mean, he started that since the beginning, and he he and he hasn't quit.

He's always at the gate of your heart looking for an opening.

And then there's the one you can't blame anybody else on.

Your own heart lying to you from the inside.

So you got the world, the devil, and you.

Now, two of those three are outside of you.

But the last one, huh, well, that's the one holding the keys.

And and with all three of those things coming after your heart, with all those three things attacking, trying to attack your heart, you would think, you would think it'd be the thing that you watch like a hawk.

But we don't.

I mean, gosh, we guard everything except that big things, small things, wrong things.

Like for me, look, I'll give you a small example.

I've got this thing about my dinner plate.

My food is not allowed to touch.

Okay.

Chicken over here, rice over here, vegetables gotta stay in their lane.

And if there's sauce, you gotta you better watch out.

The sauce and the food cannot mix unless I authorize the mixing.

Okay.

Everybody, look, it's weird.

I know.

Sarah thinks it's ridiculous.

She's right.

I mean, I've been known to reorganize my entire plate before I even take my first bite.

Like I will guard the borders of my dinner plate with everything I've got, and I can go a whole week and never once check or guard what's getting into my heart.

And here's the thing about the heart.

It doesn't usually get lost in the big moments, it gets lost slow.

Right?

Nobody really wakes up in the morning and decides, you know what?

Ah, today's the day.

Today's the day I walk away from Jesus.

No, nobody does that.

That's not how anybody falls.

Verse 27 says, Don't swerve to the right or to the left.

You see, a swerve is small.

A swerve is is one degree off.

You don't feel a swerve.

You feel the crash.

No, nobody ever feels the swerve that got them there.

They feel the crash.

You know, for some it's the it's the marriage.

You didn't blow up.

You just slowly stopped reaching for each other.

You're not fighting.

You're not anything.

And if I asked you, you you couldn't tell me the year it went quiet.

Because it wasn't a year.

It just slowly grew cold.

It's a late-night phone.

What started once in a while became most nights.

House is asleep, the screen is dark, and you're back at the thing that you swore you would never do.

And you can tell me when it went from a a a small minor slip to a habit again.

Because there wasn't a single night you just decided.

Just crept back in.

Christians, it's it's the prayer life that never actually ended.

It just got thin.

A little less.

Then a little less than that.

And before you know it, you realize one day that you haven't really talked to God in over a month.

And you can't point to the to the exact day you stopped.

See, that's how the heart goes.

Not in a blow-up, in a drift.

And look, it doesn't matter how put together your life looks from the outside.

You can be running a business, raising good kids, showing up every Sunday and be drifting the whole time.

Understand something.

A clean cabin doesn't mean anybody's actually flying the plane.

But now look, drifting doesn't mean you don't love God.

Some of you love him.

Some of you love him dearly.

And you're drifting, anyways.

You see, both things can be true at the same time.

In fact, there's an old theologian, John Flavell, this guy, he wrote a book 300 years ago on this one verse, verse 23.

One verse, he writes this book.

And he simply says this.

This whole book boils down to one simple phrase.

Heartwork is hard work.

Heart work is hard work.

Let me tell you where I've been at for the past couple of weeks.

Now many of you know Sarah and I run a business.

And right now there are some deals on our table.

Deals that that would really be life-changing and take care of our family for quite some time.

And I want to tell you, I want to tell you that I've been trusting God with all of it.

But I'd be lying.

Because late at night, when it's quiet, here's the voice I actually hear.

God's not going to come through for you.

He's going to string you along one dollar at a time, and he's going to make you sweat.

And a week ago, I caught what was underneath even that.

Because it wasn't really about the money.

Underneath it is a voice that says he's holding out on you because you don't deserve it.

And here's the thing that voice is right about one part.

I don't deserve it.

But I didn't deserve to be pulled out of sin and death either.

And he did that anyway.

He chose me anyway.

See the voice in my head, though the one that says I have to earn his goodness, that's not the voice of my father in heaven.

That's a voice I picked up along the way a long time ago before I even knew him.

And I'm telling you honestly, right now, this week, I, even me, I am still learning and growing to stop believing the lies in my own head.

See, today it's a small swerve, just a doubt, just a bad night here and there.

But I know what an unguarded heart does with a swerve.

So I'm saying it out loud to all of you.

Hold me accountable.

Check up on me so it doesn't become a collision.

See, King Solomon wrote these verses.

The wisest man who ever lived.

God gave him more wisdom than anybody before him and since him.

And he's the one who wrote this down.

Guard your heart with everything you got.

He wrote that.

And then we read what happened to him in 1 Kings 11 when Solomon was old.

His wives turned his heart after other gods.

And his heart was no longer fully devoted to the Lord his God.

His heart turned.

The man who wrote the warning.

And look, it didn't happen all at once.

It was slow.

One compromise, then another, then another.

One small swerve to the right, then another small swerve to the left.

Nobody watching would have caught the day it happened.

Because there wasn't a specific day.

He had, man, he had the wisdom, he had the warning, and the heart still got poisoned.

Guard your heart.

Solomon wrote that.

And Solomon couldn't do it.

So what chance do the rest of us have?

See, here's the good news.

You're not the first one God ever told to guard something.

You go all the way back to Genesis 2 in the beginning.

God makes a garden, puts a man in it, gives him a job.

God says to work it and to keep it.

In other words, guard it.

Guard the garden.

Take care of the garden.

Adam was the first guard posted at the garden to protect it.

And most of you know the story.

Serpent gets into the garden.

Adam stands right there and just says nothing.

Serpent enters in.

The enemy just walks right in.

He watches his wife take the fruit.

And what does Adam do?

Well, guess what?

He eats it too.

The first man God ever posted as a guard failed as a guard.

And every one of us has been failing that same post ever since.

Adam couldn't guard the garden.

Solomon couldn't guard his own heart.

You can't guard yours.

Not on your own.

Wait.

There's another garden.

Years later, another man walks into a garden at night.

His name is Jesus.

And he knows what's coming.

By morning, he's gonna be beaten, arrested, nailed to a cross.

And he brings his friends with him and he gives them a job.

Stay awake with me.

In other words, guard this hour with me.

And what do they do?

They fall asleep.

The one job was to stay awake, and they couldn't even do that.

He comes back and finds them sleeping, and he says, Could you not stay awake with me even for one hour?

So Jesus, he guards it alone faithfully.

While his friends are asleep, Jesus is on his face in the dirt.

The Bible tells us that he was in such agony that his sweat was coming down as drops of blood.

He knows exactly what obedience will cost him.

He feels the weight and the horror of what's coming.

And Jesus, he does not swerve.

That's the verse Solomon wrote and couldn't keep.

In that garden, in the dark, with the cross in front of him, Jesus stayed the course.

He didn't swerve to the right or to the left.

Not one degree.

He guarded his heart perfectly.

When everything in him was screaming to let go.

You know, record your count your record against you.

He counts Jesus' righteousness for you.

His perfect obedience becomes yours.

And understand something, Jesus doesn't only forgive the old heart, he gives you a new one.

He puts his spirit in you.

Now why is that important?

See, you don't guard your heart to make God love you.

You guard the heart he's already made his own.

That's the gospel.

Not too long ago, we were in the book of Philippians.

Do you guys remember Paul writing from a prison cell in chains?

I don't know if you guys remember, but in in chapter 4, verse 7, he says this the peace of God, which is beyond anything you can understand, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

What's that word again?

Guard.

But look who's doing the guarding.

You see, in Proverbs, it sounds like you alone are the guard.

Guard your heart.

It sounds like it's on you.

And we spent part of this morning finding out you can't do it on your own.

In Philippians, you see that the guard has changed.

It's not you.

It's the peace of God standing watch over your heart.

And just to remind you, that word Paul uses for guard is a military word.

It is a soldier posted at the gate.

I don't know if many of you remember this, but when when at the garden in Genesis, when Adam failed in the first garden, do you remember what God did?

He stationed a cherubim with flaming swords at the entrance.

Right?

The man who had been told to keep the garden was now outside it.

And God himself guarded the way to the tree of life.

See, Adam failed his post, sin entered, paradise was lost.

And listen again to what the language that Paul is using in Philippians.

The peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In other words, you are commanded, all of us here are commanded to guard our hearts.

But friends, you are not guarding it alone.

God watches over you in Jesus Christ.

See, your hope is not that your grip on Jesus will never weaken.

That'll happen.

Your hope is that his grip on you never will.

Guard your heart with everything you have.

He is guarding it with everything he is.

So what does this look like during the rest of the week?

I'm gonna give you two things.

Well, really, it's more like one thing, kind of two parts.

First, you gotta be intentional.

Be intentional about what you feed your heart, or something else will.

See, you can't guard your heart by just scrubbing the bad stuff off out of it.

That's just treating the canal.

The only way a bad love ever leaves your heart is when a better love moves in and crowds it out.

That's what this is.

That's what God's word, God's word is for.

This isn't just a rule book you check off.

It's where you go to see Jesus until you love him more than the thing that's been pulling you away.

The one who guarded his heart all the way to the cross when yours gave out the first hard night you had, the one who stayed at the gate for you, the one who has never once looked away from you, even at your absolute worst.

You go to him, you go to his word, you dig into it, you meditate on it, you soak yourself on his word and who Jesus is until he warms your heart, until he becomes sweeter to you, more beautiful to you than the thing that's pulling you away from him.

And that old love, the one you couldn't shake on your own, it starts to quietly let go.

Not because you you forced it out, but because something better moved in.

So go to his word, hear his voice.

Do it before you open the phone, before you check the news or your social media feeds.

Just start with just one chapter.

And look, if reading is hard for you, that's okay.

Put it in your ears.

There's an audio Bible on the phone you've got in your pocket right now.

And guess what?

It's free.

Nobody in this room is too far behind to start.

So start.

But now here's the second half, and you can't skip this.

If I haven't made my point clear, I'm gonna make it really clear right now.

Your heart lies to you.

Okay, we clear on that?

We have deceitful hearts.

You are the one person who can't see your heart clearly.

So if it's just you and your deceitful heart guarding your deceitful heart, guess what?

You're gonna lose.

You need people.

Not just on Sundays.

You you got you gotta get into Bible study, get into the Word, get with people.

We've got Sunday, Sarah mentioned earlier this morning, we got multiple Sunday Bible study groups, we've got Wednesday groups, we've got Thursday groups, the ladies' Bible study on Wednesday on Thursdays.

We've got plenty of options for you to get into the word with people.

Serve on a team.

We got ministry teams at this church.

There's a lot we got to do as a church.

Get involved, get plugged in, and let God hand you friendships that you never even knew you needed.

People close enough to you to see the drift before you feel it.

And some of you, I'll tell you, the bravest thing you could do this morning is to walk up to somebody, one person in this room who you've never met before, and say your name.

So fill your heart with God's word.

Surround your life with God's people.

Because these are these are some of the ordinary ways the God who holds you, these are some of the ways he holds you close.

You know, we started this morning with a father and son with one year left.

And I've been thinking, uh I've been thinking about a lot of things, you know, the things that I need to say and teach Jay before he leaves.

Things I I want him to know, things I want him to remember, things I want to somehow get inside him before he gets into that car and drives off to college.

But here's the thing I can't guard Jay's heart.

I can teach him, I can warn him, I can pray for him, I can love him, I can point him to Jesus every chance I get.

But I cannot change his heart.

And as much as I want to, I can't keep his heart from me ever drifting either.

18 years of being his dad, can't do that.

Heck, I'm 45 years old, I can't do it for myself either.

But there is a father who can.

A father who doesn't grow tired, a father who doesn't look away, a father who knows every swerve before the crash, every doubt before you say it out loud, every place your heart is tempted to wander, the father knows.

And that father has kept a drifting heart like mine.

He hasn't let me go, and he won't let you go.

So, Jay, if there's one thing I want you to know before you leave my house, it's this.

And maybe this is for all of you.

Guard your heart, guard it carefully.

Fill your heart with God's word.

Put people around you who will tell you the truth, not lies.

In fact, run away from anything that pulls your heart away from Jesus.

But listen, when you fail, because buddy, you're gonna fail.

We all do.

Don't run away from him, run to him.

Because the best news I can give you and everyone in this room is not that you'll always hold tightly enough to God, it is that in Christ, God holds you.

Guard your heart.

God is guarding it too.

Let's pray.

Father, I just want to thank you.

Thank you for loving us.

Thank you for showing us mercy and grace.

Thank you for not just giving up on us.

Thank you for protecting us.

Thank you for helping us to know that you ultimately are overseeing our hearts, you are keeping watch as the guard over our hearts.

So, Lord, as we respond to that, give us the desire and give us the empowerment to go to your word, to fill our hearts with you, to fill our hearts with your desires, to fill our hearts with your thoughts, to fill our hearts with your commands, to fill our hearts with the way you desire us to live.

Drive us into your word.

Help us to stay connected with one another.

You use your people to reach people, to reach one another.

Help us to find our people in this church.

And with all these things, I want to honor and glorify you as our Savior, as our King, as our God.

Because Jesus, you are worthy of it all.

Amen.

Can I ask everyone to stand with me, please?