Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: Proverbs 4:20-27

HAMSTRUNG

Hey, Vintage family, good morning. I’m going to teach us today out of Proverbs. And obviously it’s not Sunday. This is Friday, and I’m in my office, and we are doing this for a reason. This weekend, we have a special guest with us from other parts of the world, and we’ve been in relationship with this organization for a long, long time. 

But the work we do is work that needs to be fairly guarded and protected. It’s great work, and I love it, but we don’t want to ever take the risk of exposing something that could be misused or mishandled. I don’t want somebody jumping on a live stream and not having context for what we’re doing. 

And so, we just work really hard to protect anonymity, especially for our friends that are working in other parts of the world to move the Gospel forward, and some of the work they do is incredible. 

And so if you’re interested, maybe you’re watching this for the first time, you’re like, I want to know what that’s about. Feel free to reach out to the church. Feel free to reach out to any of our team and just say, Hey, can you explain to me what Pastor Greg was talking about? But I want you to rest assured, we’re incredibly proud of what we do and the organizations we get to work with. But because of that, what’s happening live in the room on Sunday won’t be on. 

So, today, you’re going to get me sharing out of the Scriptures. But I’m excited because I think it’s a really cool opportunity. We’ve been in the Book of 1 Peter, and Peter makes a transition at verse 12 into verse 13, and what he transitions into is really a shift in mentality. 

He’s been focusing our attention on what the Father’s done for us, the salvation we’ve been given, and now all of a sudden, he makes a transition to the responsibility index on us as people. 

And as I was studying that, I kept coming back to a passage in Proverbs 4 that I love. We’re going to read through it, but let me give you the Cliff Notes really quick. It’s, “Above all else, guard your heart, for out of it flows everything you do.” 

Now, I’m a Proverbs guy. I’ve started since I was probably nine. My grandfather’s best friend challenged me when I was nine years old, You should read the Proverb of the day. I’m like, What’s the Proverb of the day? I didn’t know that that was in the Bible, and he explained to me that here’s how you get there. 

There’s 31 chapters in Proverbs. You just pick the one that’s on the calendar day, and you read it and study it. I’ve taken that into our staff here. I’ve taken that to my business with Octane and my team. We go out, we do installs and churches, and we help with their tech. And in the morning, we’ll go to a coffee shop and we sit around and we open the Proverbs and we just read through it and discuss how it applies to our life and what it means. 

And maybe you should take that and do that in your home, whether it’s with your roommates or your family. It’s a really cool process, and I think it’s been incredibly life-giving. 

First chapter of Proverbs and first two paragraphs gives a promise. It’s the only place that’s ever found in the Scriptures that if you read this book and you do what it says, it’ll create life in you. It creates prosperity in you. It’s just kind of silly how obvious it is. So, I’ve been a huge fan of it. Would recommend you are too. 

PROVERBS 4:20-27

So with that, I want you to grab your Bibles, and we’re going to go to Proverbs 4. And I wanted to actually utilize this pocket because I get to go a little longer than I would on a Sunday, because I really feel like what we’re going to talk about builds into where we’re going next in 1 Peter, especially in verse 13 of chapter 1. 

So, what I want to talk about with us right now is our heart. That’s a word that gets very convoluted in our culture. And if you ask five people what the heart means, they could all give you five different answers. And I want to talk about it from a Biblical lens. Specifically, I want to talk about what it looks like to protect it, and what it looks like to put yourself into an environment that keeps your heart healthy. 

I think a lot of us have experienced seasons in life where our hearts have gotten unhealthy, cancered, bitter, and I use that word, cancered, in a spiritual sense, where our hearts have been maybe wounded and we all understand it has a pretty dramatic effect on who we are. 

I’ve shared with you before my incredible love for Proverbs. I started a process when I was nine years old, which was to read a Proverb of the day, every day, and that was based on the impetus of one of my grandfather’s friends, a very imposing figure who was a spiritual leader in my life. And he just said, If you really want to develop well, read the Proverb of the day. 

So, I’m not reading the Proverb for today, I’m pulling something out of Proverbs 4 that really felt like the Lord highlighted when I was studying in Peter for the next teaching. And so, sidebar, if you have not developed a discipline of reading the Proverb of the day, I would really love to encourage you to try that. 

There are 31 Proverbs, so it subdivides really easy. Just whatever the day of the month is, you read that one and you sit and study it. We do this with my Octane crew when we’re on the road and we’re doing installs. 

We’re in different churches all over the nation, doing audio, video, and lighting, and having fun supporting church culture, but one of our morning rituals is we will go find a coffee shop and we sit down and we open the Book of Proverbs together, and we just study it as a team. 

So, maybe you could do that with your family, maybe it’s your roommates, or you just sit down and develop the discipline of aligning your lives and your hearts around the Scriptures as a step one every day. I just think that’s a great decision. 

So, all right, let’s dive into Proverbs 4:20-27. Let me read it for us really quick. “My child, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them 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. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Keep straight the path of your feet, and all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.” 

MY CHILD

I want to pick us up in a different version, which is, “Pay attention my child to what I say, listen carefully.” Love the way that phrase reads. And I’m just going to take us systematically, verse by verse through this. “Pay attention my child to what I say, listen carefully.” 

The word here means to focus or incline your attention to something. I think we could easily understand this is to not take it casually. My child deals with relationship. Anytime in Scripture we hear that phrase, my child or my son or my daughter, we instantly understand the voice of the narrative is coming out of a relational context. It’s a father speaking to children. 

Now, I know when we say things like that, for a lot of us, what comes to mind is maybe a bad image of the way we were dealt with. Maybe you had a very harsh father or a very harsh mother, and so you felt a recoil in that. Maybe you had a disconnected or unattentive parent, and so you feel this sense of absence there. 

I want to ask us to go back to what we’ve been working on in Peter, which is all of the Scriptures are coming through the lens of a Father who is deeply in love with us. The Scriptures say out of Him flows mercy, and so everything He’s going to speak to us is for a benefit. 

That’s really the heart of the Proverb here, that the writer of Proverbs is using this phrasing with the mindset saying any child would want to hear what their loving parent is going to teach them, because that parent’s going to teach it to them for their good, for their betterment. 

Jesus, in Luke 11, “If you, being evil, know to give good gifts to your children, how much more does your Heavenly Father know how to give you the gift of the Holy Spirit?” And we were like, Oh, that deals with the Holy Spirit only. It doesn’t. What He’s saying is the Holy Spirit’s the most priceless gift that could be given. So, the Heavenly Father’s heart towards us is nothing but good.

So, here, pay attention my child. Listen to what I say. Don’t lose sight of my words. Let them penetrate deep within your heart. This word lose here literally means to be lost from view or to let go of sight, here it’s spiritual or mental sight, so it’s the mind’s eye. It’s not just talking about what’s in front of our vision. It’s actually talking about what we’re thinking on or focusing on. 

This phrase, let them penetrate means to keep or to guard as precious. So, it’s the idea of putting priority on something. If you have a friend that speaks to you, and they’re a friend that you know gives great advice when they speak, you take it to heart. 

Some of you may have experienced somebody who, when you sit and talk, they just want to write down everything you say because they value it. It’s just this incredible honor, and it’s wildly humbling to realize, like, Oh, somebody’s like, going to do that. 

My youngest son will do this thing where he has a note in his phone, and he reads to me things that I’ve said through the years that he’s been holding onto. It’s just one of the most intense things personally for me to realize, like he’s let those things penetrate his heart and he’s using them to build his life from. 

HEALTH AND AUTHORITY

That’s the mindset here in Proverbs, that we are to intentionally decide what this is teaching me. I’m going to let it penetrate my heart and they bring life and radiant health to anyone who discovers their meaning. 

I love this phrase because there’s a lot loaded in it. Life here means sustained life with restoration properties towards health. So, it’s the idea of advancing forward in health. Now, a lot of us, as we get older, realize that, unfortunately, the reality is the opposite, that we see ourselves degrading a bit in health. 

And what the writer here is saying is these words of wisdom actually have a supernatural effect on the physical body, that they move us towards health. Radiant health means total physical health, and it means all. So, it’s not just a word that’s dealing with spiritual health, which I think is pretty important to anyone who discovers their meaning. 

I want to highlight this because I’d love to say it this way: just reading the Proverbs isn’t going to give you this health. You have to be willing to dig in and discover it. And the idea for discovery here is to churn up or to dig up and to find something. And so, there’s this activity that is intentional. And so, that’s really what the writer of Proverbs is saying here. 

So, 20 through 22 here are about an attitude, choice towards the teachings of Scripture. And I want to kind of put a pin in that and say I think that that’s where this all begins. It’s a mindset that we grab onto and we hold the mindset should be this: if the Scriptures teach it, we decide to live it, and when we do that, according to the writer here, we benefit. 

So, I would ask you, before we move in any further in this, what’s your attitude towards Scripture? Do you approach them with this mindset? Because for me, what that means is I have made a decision to give the Scriptures authority in my life. Whatever they teach, I’m going to hold on to and make my life align. I’m not going to view it as suggestions. 

I am just like you. There’s things I read in the Scripture and I’m like, I hate that. I don’t want to live that because that force is changing me. The only way I’m going to get there is if I repent and if I align with a different mindset. 

But to give the Scriptures authority means that I’m making a choice that says these are going to govern my life, my life’s not going to govern them. So, have you made the decision to give Scriptures that kind of place in your life? Because that’s really the foundation we move into this next teaching. 

GUARD YOUR HEART

From verse 23, it says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do.” Above all else. The word phrase means with diligence, as in a prison. It’s interesting, as in a prison. It means, above all else, it means to put something under lock and key, under careful observation. 

Can I highlight an idea that’s not a casual thing, that is not something you just occasionally think about? This is a vigilance. If you think about a guard in a jail, that’s kind of the picture that’s being driven and there’s a really high value captive. They’re under constant care, constant surveillance. That’s the phrasing that the writer here is using. 

I used to watch Star Trek a lot. There was a Prime Directive in Star Trek, and their Prime Directive was that they were never allowed to influence a civilization in a way that would advance it. They had to let every civilization they would encounter through their space travels advance at its own natural pace. Prime Directive. This is a Prime Directive. 

In other words, above all else means this is your number-one concern in life. That’s a wild thought that this is your number-one concern in life above anything else you do: guard your heart. The word here means to watch over or to preserve, to guard from danger, to guard with fidelity. 

It carries the idea of a watchman on the wall. Now, in the ancient world, walled cities were pretty normal, and watchmen would stand as sentries, and they would stand as guards, and their job was to give an all-call if danger was approaching. The city never wanted to be caught unaware. 

The heart is the internal center of who you are. So, this deals with mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions, passions. Maybe the simpler way to say it is it’s the true essence of you. And according to this, you and I are responsible for the health and protection of our own internal person. We’re responsible for what we think, feel, emote, what we allow to become an appetite. We are to be actively watching over it, directing it, and guarding it. 

The writer says it affects everything you do. The literal word here for everything you do is life. In other words, it deals with your whole life, and it means everything– your heart, your internal systems of thought, feeling, belief– directly influencing everything in your life. Simpler way to say it: how you think shapes how you live. 

So, could I ask you to consider these phrases with the strength that they’re given in? Because the strength they’re given in says this: the most important thing in your life is learning to guard and protect how you think, feel, emote, and what you allow yourself to have an appetite for. 

None of these– not your thinking, not your feeling, not your emoting, not your appetites– none of these are to be rogue or free. What do you mean? They are to be controlled. They are to be under your direction and your watch. I would argue that they were to be under the Scriptures. You are to take the Scriptures and superimpose them over these places in your life. 

Now, I love that Proverbs 4 doesn’t stop with just this declaration because this is a lot to go, I’m responsible for a lot, and I think there’s a reason. I think the writer of Proverbs understands the significance of this teaching, and so his goal is to give actual steps for success to the reader. 

Again, reminding us that the vast majority of Proverbs is written with this father-to-son ethos, and it’s one of coaching for success. Now, most of us understand that the writer of Proverbs was Solomon. My gut is Solomon is pulling from the way David taught him the Kingdom. 

He’s utilizing the mindset that David had with him as a son, and he’s giving it away in Proverbs, which I think is a cool picture, but I just want to give us four things that Proverbs will teach here that Solomon wants to give us. 

PROPER COMMUNICATION

The first one is your heart will respond to your communication. I want you to write these down. Your heart will respond to your communication. He says in verse 24, “Avoid all perverse talk; stay far away from corrupt speech.” 

The word avoid all here means to put away from oneself or to lay aside. If I take my Bible and I put it over there, I’m removing it from my vicinity. It’s that idea. It’s to fully refuse to be near something. 

Perverse talk here is distorted or crooked speech. This is a hard thing in our language to understand because he uses two phrases here, perverse and corrupt, and they really mean different things. 

Perverse or distorted, is crooked speech or communication that is contrary or not in alignment with the heart or perspective of God. It is communication that is contrary or not in alignment with the heart or perspective of God. And when we say the perspective of God, what we mean is as revealed in Scripture, not our perspective on God. That’s a different thing. 

If I talk about this idea of what is distorted or crooked in my communication, it doesn’t always mean it’s something negative. Sometimes it can be a belief system. Sometimes it can be an attitude or perspective. There’s a lot of places that I have to be willing to inspect in my life and ask them, are these in alignment with Him? Even self-image and self-talk, according to this, has to be aligned with Him. 

What does He say? Do I speak to myself the way He does? Do I believe about myself what He says, let alone other people? So, this is a really big idea, and I want to challenge you to truly consider, do you allow that? Do you allow yourself to only communicate what’s in alignment with the heart of God? 

Second question: what do you align with or believe that’s not in alignment with Him? We have to do the work to figure that out if we’re going to walk in this kind of heart-guard, because we know this: our heart’s going to respond to what we communicate. The word stay far away is to intentionally put great distance between oneself and that concept. This is a really active thing of saying, I can’t let this be named among me. 

He goes along and says corrupt speech. This is where it shifts. It’s deviation of perversion and language. This is more than verbal. It’s the total witness of our communication. It deals with what’s not just perverse, but it’s also deceptive, or something off-center from absolute truth. 

When Tom Ewing was here doing the marriage retreat, he and his wife were talking about big truth and little truth. And little truth is my perspective, it’s my truth. But big truth is when I allow the Lord to weigh in and the Scriptures to weigh in, and then I align myself with what is actual truth. So, let me remind us, truth is found in what aligns with Him. Only, would He say it? Would He communicate it? That’s what the writer here is talking about. 

Now, there are a lot of things we talk about corrupt speech, which is deviation or perversion. We know that growing up in Pentecostal culture, this was just about cussing. That’s all this was ever used about, if we use bad words. Now, do I think using bad words is a good thing? No, I just think it’s lazy. I think there’s always a better way to say it. There’s more articulate language to use if we want to do the work. 

However, when we’re using language to communicate, what is deceptive, what is ugly, what is hurtful, that’s corrupt speech. And I want you to just learn to ask this question before you speak it, just ask yourself, Would Jesus say it? Would He communicate this way? And if the answer is no, then don’t do it. And if your answer is, Well, I’m not perfect, repent because that’s laziness and not forcing yourself to align with Him. 

YOUR HEART WILL FOLLOW YOUR VISION

The second thing the writer says here is look straight ahead and fix your eyes on what lies before you. I want to give you this second thing, I want you to write down: your heart will follow your vision. Your heart will follow your vision because he says look, and it’s of the eye.

It means physically, mentally, or spiritually. It regards what we pay attention to. Straight ahead is in front of oneself. Fix your eyes. The root word is eyelid here, it means to look level. So, it’s the idea of just staying focused on what’s in front of you. 

Right now I’m looking at a camera. My eyes are just focused on what’s in front of me. If I look up, if I look to the side, the concept is to stay focused directly in front of you. The word what lies before you, just means directly before you. 

So, both of these phrases deal with focus and choosing what is in view. I want to state it this way: you are in control of what you focus on, and you are to be in control of what you focus on. Fixation is a concept in our culture that gets talked about a lot. It’s choosing to look at or even obsess over something. 

Maybe you have a friend or family member, or maybe yourself where you struggle with fixating on things like someone hurts you and they’ve offended you, and you just can’t let go of it. You can’t stop looking at it. You can’t stop thinking about it. That’s the idea of choosing what you’re looking at. And the writer of Proverbs is making a very clear case that you must choose to look at what the Lord has put in front of you and refuse the temptation to look elsewhere. 

So, how about we go about it this way: when you’re struggling to look at something and you can’t get your eyes off it, why don’t you sit with the Lord and ask Him, Do You want me focusing on this right now? What do You want my eyes on? 

You see, He’s not harsh. His answer isn’t going to be, I don’t figure it out. Hope you find it. His answer is just going to be Jesus. It says that if you come to Him and ask for bread, is He going to give you a stone? No. He’s going to answer. 

But the initial thing that has to happen is you and I have to be willing to stop and realize I know that I’m focusing on something that’s not what He’s given me, and have the discipline to ask the third thing the writer will go on in verse 26 say, mark out a straight path for your feet, and then stick to the path and stay safe. 

YOUR HEART FOLLOWS YOUR CHOICES

The third thing I want you to write down is that your heart will follow your choices. Mark out a straight path for your feet. Speaks directly to everyday life. It’s the idea of a track in the Hebrew. If you’ve ever run track, it’s monotonous. You get in a lane and you run in the lane, and you go around and around and around. 

And some of you are maybe like me, where I could run much further if I’m not going in circles, because when I go in circles, I just keep counting how many times I’ve gone in circles, and then I just want to lay down in the middle of the field. 

But this is the idea of systematic pursuit of something. Stick to the path is a really poor translation because what it means here in the Hebrew is that your life’s journey becomes stable and secure. 

So, it’s a pretty simple passage to understand; nothing is to happen by random choice or impulse. According to the writer here, we are to live with intentionality in our choices, choosing to walk a life that aligns with the fear of the Lord, and when we do that, your life is secure and stable, so your heart will follow your choices. 

Maybe you think about your choices right now: what choices am I making that have brought chaos? If you’re making addiction choices, you’re bringing chaos because you know the Scriptures say be mastered by nothing. If you’re making moral choices that are outside of the lines of Scripture, you’re inviting chaos. You’re eroding the stability of your life. 

Why would we do that? I’d love to offer that we don’t do that without the impulse of the enemy or the impulse of our sin nature, because both those things are set to destroy us. But the Holy Spirit’s constant work is, Hey, come on. Choose the right. Choose what I’ve put in front of you. It’ll give you security. 

YOUR HEART FOLLOWS YOUR PURITY

The fourth thing that the writer of Proverbs will say here is don’t get sidetracked. Keep your feet from following evil. Fourth thing I want you to write down is that your heart will follow your purity. 

I think this is an important one to land on. Don’t get sidetracked. It’s the idea of pitching camp or getting off task. The picture in the Hebrew is someone on a journey that sees something that’s of interest and goes over and pitches camp over there and hangs out. We would call it not really paying attention to what you’re supposed to be doing. 

Keep your feet is a phrase that deals with daily life and deals with the constancy, like it’s the pursuit from following evil. The word here means to turn aside from any for anything that is ethically wicked. So, it’s this idea of having an appetite for what’s wicked. 

What the writer here is dealing with is sin choices, and we’re seeing the nature of sin that it’s generally a distraction from what we are to do. It’s a distraction from what we are to be doing. Keep your feet as an admonition, and I just want you to hear it: do not allow that distraction. 

Paul teaches that we actually have the power, because of Christ, to choose to say no to sin. And I want you to consider that the writer of Proverbs is saying your heart will follow your purity. In other words, when you choose intentionally to align with wickedness or sin, you are choosing to pull your heart into darkness. 

And then we wonder why our heart starts to betray us, because we’ve done things to make it betray us. This is the heart-guard. This isn’t just a fun idea. Hey, above all else, guard your heart. This is a lifestyle of working for what is right before the Lord to protect our heart. 

And why would I do that? Because it affects everything I do. I want my heart to be pure. I want my heart to be easy ground for the Lord to put ideas and dreams into. There is nothing as important as the ideas the Lord drops into our heart. 

And when He drops an idea into our heart, and He finds in us a pure heart that has been guarded, He can do anything He wants with it. But all too often, He’ll drop things into our heart and we filter them funny because we’ve not protected our hearts. We haven’t gone through these steps, we haven’t learned these disciplines. 

So, I want you to consider these things, I want you to dig back into this passage, I want you to take these four concepts, and just investigate your life and ask yourself, Am I guarding my heart? Love you guys. Blessings to you. Have a great week.