Guard Your Heart — Proverbs 4

0:00 Dear Lord, just, wanna come to you today. We wanna seek your wisdom. We want your spirit to to guide us. And, we want you to your word to imprint on our hearts that we may be more like you and that you may make us whole and that we may know more about you. I pray this in the name of Jesus.

0:33 Amen. Amen. Alright. So, if you could turn to Proverbs four, we're going to begin by reading the whole Proverbs, a little chapter, and, so we can get, here a bit of context on specifically verse 23 regarding guarding your heart. My children, listen when your father corrects you, pay attention, and learn good judgment, for I'm giving you good guidance.

1:16 Don't turn away from my instructions. For I too was once my father's son, tenderly loved as my mother's only child. My father taught me, take my words to heart, follow my commandments and you will live. Get wisdom, develop good judgment, Don't forget my words or turn away from them. Don't turn your back on wisdom or she will protect you.

1:40 Love her. She will guide you... Guard you. Getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do. And whatever else you do, develop good judgment.

1:52 If you prize wisdom, she will make you great. Embrace her. She will honor you. She will place a lovely wreath on your head. She will present you with a beautiful crown.

2:07 My child, listen to me and do as I say, and you will have a long good life. I will teach you wisdom's ways and lead you in straight paths. When you walk, you won't be held back. When you run, you won't stumble. Take hold of my instructions.

2:26 Don't let them go. Guard them for they're the key to life. Don't do as the wicked do, and don't follow the path of evildoers. Don't even think about it. Don't go that way.

2:38 Turn away and keep moving. For evil people can't sleep until they've done their evil deed for the day. They can't rest until they've caused someone to stumble. They eat the food of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. The way of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, which shines ever brighter until the full light of day.

3:08 But the way of the wicked is like total darkness. They have no idea what they are stumbling over. My child, pay attention to what I say. Listen carefully to my words. Don't lose sight of them.

3:22 Let them penetrate deep into your heart where they bring life to those who find them and healing to their whole body. Guard your heart above all else. Guard your heart above all else for it determines the course of your life. Avoid all perverse talk. Stay away from corrupt speech.

3:47 Look straight ahead and fix your eyes on what lies before you. Mark out the straight path for your feet and stay on the safe path. Don't get sidetracked. Keep your feet from following evil. This is one section of the book of Proverbs.

4:20 The... Solomon was an interesting guy. I mean, we know a lot about him from first and second Samuel, first and second Chronicles, and other places in scriptures that talk about the man Solomon. We know that he was, you know, the the wisest man that ever lived other than Jesus and incomparable to Jesus. Jesus, by far, was greater.

4:47 It says that in Hebrews. He was a man... We don't often think about the stuff that he lived through because we know a lot about his life by the description of the courts as we learn about David's life. So first of all, he was the kind of rebound child after all the drama that happened with David and Bathsheba. His younger brother had died as a judgment.

5:15 His the person that was previously married to his mom was killed by his father. And that's quite a backdrop to live in. Not to mention, then you he lived through all the intrigues of the court. Odd enough, the court itself, well, I mean, on one hand, David was called a man after God's own heart. On the other hand, he failed to judge his own family and, in fact, actively did all sorts of things to put God's judgment on his family.

5:51 You saw God work throughout. He was there, not in the room, but he watched the drama play out of his own brother who hatched a plot in his heart along with his cunning cousin to commit incest against his own sister. And then he saw the aftermath play out as Absalom in bitterness of heart hatched a plot of his own to murder his brother in revenge. And then you saw that play out where a whole story of how David basically ignored it. He did nothing.

6:47 And then he just pushed Absalom away, then he brought him back. There was all sorts of drama there. So it's a long story. And that ended up going into a situation where David was then put out. There was a rebellion led by his own son Absalom.

7:07 And his heart was broken by it, David's heart. And Solomon saw all this. He saw all this intrigue. There's a lot of things that should not be. These are tragic tragedies in his life that he witnessed.

7:26 Things that don't make sense. The the... Just total differences from the life of being able to go to the temple and worship and having a father that was called to be... Said to be a man after God's own heart and cared about his kids and yet neglected them. And he he he...

7:49 His own father did not follow god's law in many respects. Okay? And and then, of course, you go on a little bit and, he takes over the kingdom, and there's the intrigue of his own brother trying to take the kingdom wrongly. And he ends up ordering the execution of his brother that as his brother continues to be cunning there. And so you see the same kind of confusion and extremes in the life of Solomon later on as you see through.

8:35 Does build the temple. He prays a prayer. God blesses him. God gives him a vision and ask him what he wants, he says, hey, just give me wisdom. And he's right in asking that.

8:50 God blesses him for that. He said he said, you didn't ask for power. You didn't ask for pleasure. You didn't ask for money. I'm gonna give you wisdom.

8:57 And he gets it. And this man, becomes probably the most powerful person in the world. He becomes apparently the... Probably the most rich richest. If you wanna talk about celebrity, he was admired and adored everywhere.

9:19 And God gave him... God says that he was the wisest person ever. God gave him the ability to just perceive and understand things that no one else did. And when they saw it, when they listened to him, they marveled. They were awed by the wisdom...

10:15 But it was also, in his heart, he... A big part of that was alliances with other kings. It says he had a thousand wives. Now I don't know about you. Not...

10:28 Nothing against women or wives. I... My wife is a delight and a huge blessing. She's a Proverbs 31 woman. And Solomon wrote Proverbs 31, by the way.

10:38 So we knew a little about that as well. A thousand wives, I mean, I don't know that anybody I mean, I'm sure that there were men that said, Oh, he's the man. He got all them women. He saw firsthand what happened with, what, 10 wives that David had? Five?

10:57 I'm not sure how many he had. He saw the intrigue. If just one in 10 of those wives had a... There was a child that came from that relationship, you can imagine the drama in that house. And probably, according to that culture, even more drama if you didn't have a wife.

11:12 If you look back in the life of some of the comments about women not having wives in that day and age, that was a problem. And so, you can imagine the things that went on in his in his house. I don't know when Proverbs was written. I don't know if it... I I I have a feeling that it was mostly written in the beginning of his life, you know, towards...

11:38 Or the middle. It seems to be more Ecclesiastes was written later and has a kind of cynical mindset looking back and reviewing. Although I suspect if he had written it, he might have reviewed it later. That was part of the writing of Ecclesiastes. There's a yearning in this book.

11:58 My child. You can imagine him pleading, trying to... He has this wisdom, and I think even in that, there was a realization of the truth here that you can have all this wisdom and lose it. It seems to be that wisdom is a state of heart. And, it's not one of those things that once you get it, you get to keep it necessarily.

12:34 And thus, we come to verse 23 here. Guard your art, heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. A phrase that comes... That that piques its interest to me because I'm a student. I used to be a student anyways in college.

12:57 And I was taught, I think by my parents and probably a number of other sources, you really got to pay attention to the professor. He's going give you cues as to what's on the test. Normally, sometimes he'll actually say, he'll just straight up say, This is going to be on the test. You should probably write it down. Sometimes your professor will give you a little wink like this.

13:20 Sometimes it's just he repeats it a bunch of times or talks in a louder voice when he's saying it. And you learn as a student who is going to be tested to pay attention to the communications that say, This is important. Here, he elevates it. He says, Above all else. Now, there are other translations.

13:43 They say, Keep your heart with all diligence. In other words, this is important. You have to pay special attention here. And so in life, you... Life is a test.

14:04 You could call it a test. Right? As you live your life, there's a test. It it it could be looked at as a test before God. And the state of your heart is going to determine the results of the test of life.

14:29 As a student, I learned all sorts of study techniques. They say if you study together with other people, you learn better. Sometimes you can make a song of something, you remember it better. It affects your heart. You can make a poem, a song, repeat it over and over.

14:48 When you really know something's important, you need to learn it. You will do anything you need to do it. It's that important. You and to me, I think getting those good grades was life or death. I probably valued it a bit too much.

15:08 But you'll do what you have to do no matter what to learn what you need to learn so that you can pass that test. I want you to think about the word guard for a moment. Does anybody can anybody think of any stories of guards, guarding, guarding things, what that means? Bill? The guards that were guarding Jesus' grave?

15:49 So there's a couple examples right there. And both of those were kind of interesting examples because you have, one, he said that Jesus' grave was guarded and then Peter. And in both of those cases, and I can think of like the Philippian jailer too. All three of those cases were cases where the guards' lives were at stake. The Philippian jailer's case, he took out his sword and was getting ready to take his own life and commit suicide with his court.

16:23 Kind of a gruesome way to do it. I prefer the modern methods, but I guess that's all he had. He knew he was going to die anyways. Preferred to do a die by his own sword. When you lost the thing that you guarded, it was so important that your life was at stake.

16:42 Okay? So that was true with the Philippian jailer. When Paul was released, it says Herod questioned them and put them to death. And when Jesus... When the angels rescued Jesus, they...

16:55 The the deal was, here's some money and you won't... And we'll talk to your bosses so so that they don't die. And in exchange, you're gonna lie for us. You're gonna tell a lie. Quite a deal.

17:10 All three of those, when you say guard, it's because it's important, and oftentimes your life is at stake. And thus the translation, guard your heart above all else. Listen up. Your life's at stake. Why?

17:29 Again, for it determines the course of your life. In Jeremiah seventeen:nine, we're all aware of this. The the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Mark seven twenty one-twenty three says this, For within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

18:22 All of these evil thoughts come from within and they defile a person. Man, I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want to guard that. I'm not sure I want to be responsible for the guarding of this heart that is vile and deceitful, cunning. The heart is more than that, by the way, and we'll talk about that. But it kind of sets you up for...

18:57 I think of another example of guarding. Like, remember stories of like, I don't know, world war thinking of like a revolutionary war and there's maybe like a scouting party or something like that. They're going deep into enemy territory and they actually have to sleep at night. So another form of guarding was to be the guard at the edge of the camp. And you have to keep careful watch.

19:24 And there, it's not as simple because you're not just in... Looking in and, you know, you can see the person's either there or not. Right? Well, even then, people seem to have messed up. You know, God can put you to sleep if he wants and let let let the the guy out.

19:38 But it's a lot harder when you're looking out into the dark and you can't see anything and you're trying to pay attention to the is there a little sound? Did the twig break? Because you don't want something to come upon you. You don't want something to come upon you unawares while you're sleeping because when you're asleep and if it comes upon you in the dark and you don't see it a little far off, it's all... You're already dead.

20:08 The stroke's already been... The the sword's already slashed. The bullet's already hit. There's no defense if you don't see it. And thus, the guard.

21:07 Various words have been translated in different ways from the Old and New Testament, but it's very easy to kind of get thinking wrong about things. And yet oftentimes, because the heart and the mind are so related as well as the will, they can't be separated. They're all part of the soul. The same verses still kind of work. Even this particular verse that we're basing this on, guard your heart, I saw one translation out of like 30 that said guard your mind rather than heart.

21:51 But I think words have meanings and it's reasonable to think through why and how they're used and how they affect us, especially when it comes to things like your life and the man that God made you or the woman, the person that you are and what the Bible says about that and what that means in terms of success and wholeness in your life. So I'm going to try and I might have to skip through some things and I want to tie it back into this verse. So one John three eighteen-twenty says, I color coded it, guys. So the picture here, love, that has to do with the heart. The truth has to do with yellow for illumination.

22:53 And blue, I think, that just feels like an action thing, that's when you get stuff done. That's the will. So what he's doing is he's setting up the fact how these link together, okay? The different parts of you in the ideal way in which God has for us in wholeness, in our soul. Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other.

23:14 Let us show the truth by our actions. These things go together. Our actions will show that we belong to the truth so that we will be confident when we stand before God. Why? Because He's made us holy.

23:32 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings. Our heart, by the way, so sometimes our heart deceives us, right? God's greater than that, and He knows everything. And we can be thankful that He is greater than our heart. And so are some verses here, and I'm just going to quickly reference them.

23:57 I won't look them up, but I will reference the key words in the verse and the reference. And if anybody wants, they can have this presentation. I'll give it to Samuel as well to put on website. But Proverbs two ten connects knowledge, which would be a basic function of the intellect or mind to know something. He says, Knowledge is pleasant to the soul.

24:24 Psalm 13nine 14 says, My soul knows it well. Okay? Psalm 100 three:one-five, in that section, it says, Bless the Lord. In other words, he's using language, which is of the mind, to talk to the soul, thus inferring that there is an intellect in the soul, that that is part of the soul, what the soul is. The heart is interesting, and I'm gonna make a couple leaps that not many people would say, but I think it's biblical.

25:05 And so I don't think it's a leap. It's just... It's a leap from what I've heard. I believe that this is absolutely true, And I'm going to give you the verses. So generally, the heart is first associated with emotions.

25:20 And so like in Ezekiel, there's an emotion of scorn. Ezekiel 30 six:five, the scorn of the soul is referenced. In Song of Solomon, soul is loving. It says, Psalm one:seven, Tell me, you whom my soul loves. In other words, the soul loves.

25:44 In Psalm 40 two:one, So my soul pants for you. Again, desire. I say I believe that there's this idea of the subconscious in the heart specifically. And you see that in the verse that I read here already, The heart is deceitful. You can't deceive if you know everything.

26:20 I'm sorry, yeah. The heart can't, if there's no subconscious... So it infers a subconscious. It infers that there's a part of you that processes something in your heart that is not that doesn't really show that part of the processing to the part of you that you think of you, like the mind. The part of you that can know and understand is not aware of the deception, right, of what's being hid.

26:49 And so it infers a kind of what we would in the modern day describe as subconsciousness. And I think it's a valuable concept, else it wouldn't be in the Scripture As a warning, by the way, so it's kind of important to understand. And it plays out a lot in this whole wisdom conversation. So the ideal state of the head and mind, going back to that and I didn't fill this in is truth. We are supposed to be filled with the truth of God's Word.

27:32 And when we believe lies in our heart that have been understood in the mind as lies or sometimes not, that affects us. I'm going to skip over this because I'm going to go to the eyes of the heart. But the heart is I want to look at it a little bit more. But the heart is the filter by which we perceive everything, Okay? And the Bible as much as says that, both in Matthew 26 and Ephesians one-eighteen, Modern day science says that we can process as much as 11,000,000 bits of information in a single second.

28:35 I always thought it was more. I did some calculation, I thought it was 3,000,000,000,000 bits of information, but it's a lot either way. And don't worry about what a bit is. That's a whole other deal. Just realize it's a lot of information that the senses that God gave us process.

28:57 But where did it all go, right? The assumption is that it is processed by the subconscious. And how does it get to my mind? How do I take through all my five senses and arise for me to evaluate in my mind? Right?

29:18 Well, it comes through the heart. Things that you value, the things that you like, the things that you, believe to be true in your heart, the things that you think of yourself are, they all determine how your subconscious or your heart basically determines what of that 11,000,000 bits of information gets into the 50 bits of information that comes through to your conscious mind. You can only consciously see just a little bit. Your And heart, the condition of your heart is the filter that is your entire reality right now. Okay?

30:40 But everything that you experience, even on a logical level, has to have been determined to be relevant for you to see it. And to the degree that your heart is deceiving you is the degree that you are going to be able to really see the truth. And this is very much the secret. When you start to look at all the verses on hardness of heart, foolishness, the fear of the Lord, it's the beginning of wisdom, that wisdom is held in the heart and it's a filter for everything that you know or are learning. And even the thoughts of your mind are filtered first basically through the kind of 60,000...

31:36 Bob Markovich talked about 60,000 thoughts a day. Again, not in the Bible, but not non biblical either way. We have things like we have verses like, From the heart, the mouth speaks, right? Which speech is both typically like language and thoughts and when it comes out of your mouth, it's also a part of your will because you chose to move those muscles and allow that out of you. That's your will.

32:08 So anyways, a little bit about that. And we're going get a little bit more into the eyes of the heart because there's a couple verses that talk about your heart as an eye. Your heart itself is the gateway of insight. And Jesus talks about it as well as Paul in his teaching. Let me go on to the will because although this is only about the heart, you can't disconnect them.

32:45 We want to look at how the heart affects the will. So I say I used to say mind, heart, will, but head, heart, hands sounds cooler because it starts with three H's. So anyways, I combine them. The hands represents action. When the will is exercised, it results in something happening outside of you.

33:12 So you have a head, you have a heart, and then the interchange between those, some combination of what's in your head and your heart comes out in your will, in lived life. You're going to live life. You're going to make choices about how you spend your time, what you say, what you do. And the way that I connect this is through several verses that describe aspects of the will in relation to the soul, and that's why I believe this is part of what the Bible describes as the soul. Set...

33:48 Chronicles twenty-two 19, it says, Now set your heart and your soul to seek. In other words, there's a specific choice. And when a choice is made, all the potentialities and ideas of what you could act out are firmed into one. It's a choice, and then that becomes your will. Job seven fifteen says, My soul would choose.

34:10 Again, connecting soul to choice. Job six:seven says, My soul refuses. Again, it's connecting without the word choice, but refusing is a choice, so connecting to choice. Ultimately, in mind, we need God's truth. In our heart, we need his love.

34:42 Okay? And there's a number of verses that talk about how love changes us, transforms us, enables us, specifically love and worship of God, which we will get to, hopefully. And so we were created for holiness. God intended that for us. But that is an outworking of the will.

35:12 We have to choose it. As Joshua says, choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. One Thessalonians four. Let me see if I wrote this one down.

35:28 I have to look it up. Actually, I think that's the next one. No. It's not. Actually, I just looked.

35:55 We only have five minutes. So one Thessalonians sorry, I thought it was fifteen minutes and not thirty five. So one Thessalonians four: three-four-seven talks about the blessing of the Lord and the way that he sanctifies us and makes us holy. Another interesting connection, probably slightly out of context to use it this way, but I think it makes sense. First, it's reasonable as well.

37:11 Fundamentally, the opportunity for a spiritual union between God who is spirit and us who has a spirit as well, could not be because he is holy and we are sinful. And so Christ died for our sins. He suffered. And not only did He suffer to take care of our sins positionally so that we could be positionally holy now immediately as we accepted Him. But He also, when He died, painted a picture so that we, as was talked about in the earlier service, we could know the width, the height and the depth, the four dimensions.

38:02 I forgot. One of them seemed kind of it was like all of those dimensions that are really can't be understood. It's too expansive, too awesome what he did. When he died, he was able to show our hearts. You know, we could we could represent this to some degree.

38:26 Our minds could grip it. Our hearts could see it. And then through the effect of our heart and our mind, he could affect our will and allow us and bring holiness into our life through sanctification, to sanctify us, to move us towards being more like him in the real world. I could go on. I'm going to read this verse really quickly.

39:02 One Thessalonians five twenty three, How now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a lot that could be said on this verse. But God fundamentally wants us to be whole. He lists three parts: spirit, soul, and body. And many people think that these are distinctly different.

39:41 I believe that, there's a lot of ways to infer what exactly the soul is. One is the function, which we just talked about, the three functions. But it seems to be that fundamentally the soul is made up of the body and the spirit. And that they're so connected in with each individual aspect of the soul, both. You can point to ways that they affect that.

40:09 And so this is the way I represent it as a picture, two circles of body and spirit. I believe that that's reasonable and biblical, although I recognize that there's many people that disagree. It helps me see it because I want to apply what I understand in the scripture in a way that I understand to understand it as best as I can to my own heart and to my own life as a filter. And this seems to help me. I certainly am open to someone who would, argue a better way of understanding it.

40:46 I'm not going to go into this. I've talked about this one before too on the slide. The fact is, is that I want to know how I can understand my life experience with the filter of God's Word rather than through the deception of my own heart. My heart is going to present me with things that are not truth. It's going to hide me...

41:08 Hide from me things that are true. And sometimes I get all wrapped up around feelings. I'm hurt. I'm angry. I'm mad.

41:22 Sometimes I'm lustful. Sometimes there are things that are wrong. And if I can only stop and say, Hey, I know this happened and I know I feel this, but the event does not equal the state. This thing that happened and my feeling, those are not the same thing. Instead, there is something that happened, called an event, and then there is a meaning that I had about an event, and I feel that.

41:55 And my mind is capable through the power of the spirit who affects me through my heart. But my mind is capable of saying, you know what? I'm mad at you for what you did now. But the truth is, the reason I'm I am is because I believed a lie. In order to be mad at you, I needed to believe that God was not good.

42:19 Just like Joseph did when he... Well, opposite of Joseph. Joseph said, You meant it for evil. God meant it for good. Right?

42:25 And so when I'm mad at you, it's because, yeah, believe you meant it for evil and I don't believe God is good, right? That's just one example. That's the one that comes up for me a lot because apparently I have a problem. My heart in that regard, that lie. So what I will say is that the highest level of meaning that's going to change everything in our mind and that...

43:10 Who is God? That changes everything. Gone through this one, the triangle of relationship. It seems to be that... Well, just think about it this way.

43:24 A guard, well, he can only guard for a little bit before he falls asleep. You can only be alert and diligent for a specific period of time before you wear out. We need a protector of our soul. We need somebody to help us. And it's through the relationship with others and God that we get that.

43:45 We are called to fellowship and we know that our relationship with God affects other people's relationship with us and God. We know that our relationship with God has an effect back on us in our own hearts. And because of what Christ has done to take care of the sin issue, we can move close in intimacy with Him. There's no block. Okay?

44:17 He is willing. He wants us to move into intimacy with Him. And He wants us to be closer to Him. On this slide, I have a lot... Some of these I've talked about, some of head.

44:31 But but there's just a number of things that affect this geometric relationship, if you will, between us and God. And over and over and over, the scripture connects the love of God with with the love of His creation. You cannot divorce those two. And one of the good ways the mind can notice is that physical relationships have spiritual dimensions. We can't see the spiritual so well, but we can certainly experience the physical.

45:00 And so when we start to see things break down, we can start to recognize that there's a problem in our heart and in our mind as well. God can use his word to help us fix those issues in relationship both with him and others. He uses the relationships to show us more about ourselves and to illuminate our hearts. It's 12:20. I'm five minutes over.

45:36 So let me just say, and I'll make an assertion because I don't have time to go into further study here. God is the ultimate guard of our heart. I gonna close with this. God is the ultimate guard of the heart. There is an interesting, there's an interest...

46:03 In Romans nine, there's an... There's an interesting passage that I just read with the family. And it does talk a little bit about the difference between God's sovereignty and man's free will. And how... And it infers that that that both are true.

46:18 That God really does act on us, and we really do have a choice in the way our heart is. And we and we aren't subject to the... Just to the whims of our heart even though it's deceptive of all else else. Proverbs wouldn't say to your mind to guard it, to the you that you know, the you that's awake, guard it. Guard it with your will.

46:40 Guard it with your mind. He wouldn't say that. Right? And yet yet God has a role in it too, and it's it's a mystery. But it's...

46:51 But the... But that section in Romans nine is a great study on that. In Psalm 60 six:nine, he says, praise our God, all peoples. Let the sound of his praise be heard. He has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping, for you, God, tested us and refined us like silver.

47:20 So in the difficulty, in the testing that we already talked about that your life is, he's preserved... The the the praise of those that follow him is that he he preserves our lives. The teacher is going to help you out with the test. You could call an open book test if you want. Know, get the book.

48:22 The biggest part of so... Being sober here is always realizing that we're very limited, and we have to trust and rely on the Lord, his the... His power in our lives through the cross. And I'll leave you with that. I got a lot more, but some other time.

49:05 You expressed your love to us, and ultimately, you keep us. We pray this in Jesus name. We pray that we would understand this in the name