As I read from the fourth chapter
of the book of Proverbs, the book of Proverbs, chapter 4, and may I remind you, if I assume
some unusual postures in preaching, I am not setting you an example
to follow. I am simply trying to relieve
some of the pressure of that bad leg. Proverbs chapter 4,
beginning with verse 20 and reading through verse 27. My son, attend to my words. Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine
eyes. Keep them in the midst of thy
heart, for they are life unto those that find them, and health
to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence,
for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a
wayward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine
eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before
thee. Make level the path of thy feet,
and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand, nor
to the left. Remove thy foot, from evil. Now those of you who are second
and third year students are very much aware of some of the tremendous
and intensive demands that are going to be made upon you in
the coming months within the framework of your studies here
in the academy. You first-year students will
soon have your baptism and will be dripping wet from that baptism,
and you also will know something experimentally of the demands
that will be made upon you. We've tried to make that plain
in our interview and in the prospectus, but it's one thing to look at
that baptism from afar. It's another thing to feel all
the waves and the billows breaking over your head. And so it will
not be long before you will feel yourself torn by many strands
and pressures of responsibility, for in addition to all the demands
that will be made upon you as students, those demands which
are presently upon you, most of you as husbands, some of you
as fathers, as providers for your family, some of you engaged
in various forms of ministry, You will find yourself, as it
were, pressured by a multitude of responsibilities, a multitude
of tasks, none of which can be relinquished without, in a real
sense, relinquishing or disobeying a clear precept of God's Word. Now, in the light of all of these
things, all of these areas of duty which must be performed,
all of the precepts which must be guarded and cherished, it
is in the midst of all of that that I would direct your attention
this morning to verse 23 in the passage read in your hearing.
Keep thy heart with all diligence, or as the marginal reading of
the 1901 renders it, Keep thy heart above all that thou guardest,
for out of it are the issues of life." As we attempt to open
up this text this morning, I would first of all direct your attention
to the duty commanded in the text. Here we are commanded to
keep, or literally to guard, our hearts. Our hearts, of course,
being the seat of all of our religious life, the seat of the
soul, the citadel of what we are as men before God, and the
command is one which puts us under solemn obligation to place
our hearts under strict and under constant guard. Now, we grant
that ultimately only God who knows the heart can guard the
heart. But Bridges' comments, bringing
together the command, which obviously makes this our duty, and the
parallel biblical teaching, which clearly indicates that it's only
within the power of God to do so, his comments, I think, are
very helpful. Though it be God's work, it is
man's agency. Our efforts are his instrumentality. He implants an active principle
and sustains the unceasing exercise. And then he gives his parallel
passages, Philippians 2, 12, and 13. Work out your own salvation
for it is God who worketh in you to will and to do. And Jude
24 paralleled with Jude 21. where we are told to keep ourselves
in the love of God and then the prayer is that God would keep
us in his own love. And then further on he goes on
to say the greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart
to God and after conversion to keep the heart with him. And
so in the light of this command nothing is of greater importance
at any point in the entirety of your time within the framework
of the Academy and this period of intense formal instruction
and throughout all the days of your life and ministry, no duty
is of greater importance than the duty commanded in these words,
keep thy heart. And that moves us very naturally
then into the second element of the text, the relative importance
of this duty. Having seen the duty commanded,
which is the guarding of the heart, notice the emphasis upon
the relative importance of this duty. Kyle renders the text,
Above all other things that are to be guarded, keep thy heart. So, this duty is placed in relationship
to other legitimate duties that involve the conscious engagement
of our guarding or our protecting faculties, above all that thou
guardest. In other words, there are many
things that fall within the orbit of the legitimate, conscious,
guarding work of the child of God. We who are husbands are
to guard and to protect our wives, our children, our homes. We who
are the servants of Christ are to guard our minds from error. We who have responsibilities
of oversight are to guard the flock of God from the intrusion
of heresy, from the outcropping of ungodliness. In other words,
the Scriptures lay upon us many legitimate spheres where it is
proper for us to regard ourselves as spiritual sentinels. But now
the text says there is a relative importance to this duty of guarding
the heart that places it head and shoulders above every single
other legitimate act of being a spiritual sentinel. Guard thy
heart above all else that thou guardest, or as I previously
rendered it, above all other things that are to be guarded
guard thy heart. And so we not only have the duty
commanded, but we have the relative importance of the duty laid before
us. And then thirdly, from the text
we see the reason given for the performance of this duty. Guard
thy heart above all that thou guardest for. There is a rationale,
both for the command and the relative importance of the command,
for out of it are the issues of life. And so the reason given
for the performance of this duty, and then the emphasis upon the
relative importance of this duty, is the fact that the heart is
the central fountain of life. All of the streams of life flow
from the heart, both sin and virtue. Our Lord, in describing
the origin of sin in that well-known passage in Mark chapter 7, words
familiar I'm sure to most of you this morning, for from within,
Mark 7 and I believe beginning with verse 19, for from within Out of the heart of man, verse
21, proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,
covetings, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye,
railing, pride, foolishness. All these things proceed from
within and defile the man. but it's also true of virtue.
In the Matthew 12 passage where our Lord says, out of the abundance
of the heart the mouth speaketh, He says, either make the tree
good and the fruit good, or the tree evil and the fruit evil,
for He says the tree is known by its fruit, but you must deal
with that which is the source of the fruit. And so the heart
is viewed then as the seat, as the origin, as the ultimate fountain
both of sin and of virtue. And so the reason why this duty
is placed above all other responsibilities is because of the very nature
of what God has constituted our hearts. Now then, in the fourth
place, consider with me the implementation of this duty. It's all right
for Solomon to say, my son, keep thy heart with all diligence,
for out of it are the issues of life, but how in the world
does one perform so vast and important a duty? Well, I would
like to suggest that in the context there are two major activities
which form the God-ordained means to implement this duty. One precedes
the command and the other follows the command. The two great means
by which we are to implement this duty of keeping the heart
are, first of all, the spiritual assimilation of the Word of God,
verses 20 through 22, and then, secondly, the specific mortification
of the major streams of sin, verses 24 to 27. All right, first
of all, then, this spiritual assimilation of the Word of God.
Attend to my words. Incline thine ear to my sayings. Let them not depart from thine
eyes. Now notice the emphasis. Keep
them in the midst of thy heart. And the word keep here literally
means to hedge them about, and it's a beautiful picture. that
once the words of God find their entrance to the heart, we are
to hedge them about and hedge them in that they may be regulative
of all the springs and the impulses of the heart. If it is from the
heart that the issues of life proceed, then the impingement
of the influence of the word of God must be at the center
of the fountain. You see, if the influence of
the Word of God is removed from the heart, then you see the heart
left to itself under the impulses of remaining corruption will
spill forth much that is dishonorable to God, even though the mind
may be retaining a conviction concerning the authority of the
Word, it may be retaining much of the substance of the Word,
but unless the Word itself is kept hedged in to the midst of
the heart, it will be utterly impossible to guard the heart
as Solomon here commands us under the inspiration of the Spirit.
And perhaps many of you have already thought of that which
is the best inspired interpretation of this principle, Psalm 119,
verses 9 through 11. Wherewith shall a young man cleanse
his way? The answer, by taking heed thereto
according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought
thee, O let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have
I laid up in my heart, that I might not sin. against thee. And brethren, there is no way
to guard the heart above all that you guard apart from this
spiritual assimilation of the Word of God. Now, what do I mean
more particularly and practically by this spiritual assimilation
of the Word of God? Well, I mean, first of all, the
kind of consistent devotional interaction with the Word of
God in which we come to the Scriptures primarily and essentially as
humble disciples to be taught of our Lord Jesus Christ. We
come to the Word not in order to fulfill an assignment in Systematic
Theology Unit 3 or in Old Testament Biblical Theology Unit 1, but
we come to the Word of God with this element of holy desperation
that God would so implant its truth and power in the citadel
of our beings for no other reason than that we may be disciples
of Jesus Christ worthy of that name and worthy of that calling. Brethren, you have heard it many
times before and you'll hear it many times in the future.
Perhaps the greatest battle both in the period of your formal
preparation and right on through every passing year of the ministry
is right here, to maintain a relationship to the Word of God that is non-professional. If you ask me where is the greatest
point of conflict after 27 years in the ministry, I answer without
any reservation. It is precisely here. And I'm
sure if we were to ask the question of Pastor Chantry, I'm quite
sure he would affirm that that's where the battle lies. Keeping
the heart means that the commandments, the precepts, must be hedged
in in the midst of the heart. And with all of the pressures
that are upon you to handle the Word of God in other ways other
than this, necessary pressures, legitimate pressures, There must
be conscious, concentrated effort if we are to spiritually assimilate
the Word of God by that kind of devotional interaction. And
it may be that where in other periods of our lives we've been
able to have an hour, two or three hours for such interaction
with the Word, The amount of time for that may of necessity
be limited, it may be cut back, and we would not be legalistic
in saying unless you have your one hour a day, but brethren,
giving all due allowance for the great diversity and spectrum
of responsibilities, there is no way that you will keep your
heart, in terms of this commandment, apart from keeping, hedging in,
the Word of God in the midst of your heart. Another way in
which we do this is to come to our studies, both publicly and
in private, in a prayerful mood. There is no reason why reading
theology at home should not get you shouting and weeping happy
at times. What is theology? but the attempt
to bring into sharp focus the total witness of the Word of
God concerning any given aspect of divine revelation. And if
you're approaching the study of systematic theology, whether
sitting here in one of the classes or at home with one of your books,
if you're approaching it with this perspective dominant in
your mind, Lord, I want my heart to be kept. I want to assimilate
the Word of God. I want this dimension of your
truth to become meat and drink to my soul. I want it to become
part and parcel of the very fiber of my being. then there is no
reason why there should not be times when you find yourself,
as it were, moving from the most intense concentration upon the
meaning of a given author's sayings and words to bowing your head
in worship and adoration and in praise. If you're to guard
your heart, and guarding the heart means the spiritual assimilation
of the Word, then there must be given time for devotional
assimilation of the Scripture, but we must add to that a prayerful
approach to our formal studies, and then thirdly, there must
be an immediate yielding to the implications of every truth. as its ethical and moral demands
become clear to us. You see, the Word of God has
as its target the heart, never the head. Now you can't get it
to the heart except through the head. So in that sense, the Word
of God is always a bent arrow. It's got to come through the
understanding, but its aim is always the heart. And in touching
the heart, there is no truth. that does not have moral and
spiritual demands and implications. Now, the moment the truth, then,
touches the heart with its attendant moral, ethical, and spiritual
demands, you've got to do one of two things. You've either
got to bow to the pressure of that truth, or you've got to
try to remove the arrow. One or the other. I mean, once
the arrow's there, you either got to yield to its pressure,
or you've got to try to remove the arrow. And the minute you
start removing arrows, you see, you are no longer keeping the
words of God in the midst of the heart, but you are deliberately
pressing the words of God out of the heart. Now, you may still
get an A on your systematics course, but you've started down
the road to apostasy. When a man can traffic in the
Word of God without yielding to its moral and spiritual demands,
he's put himself on the high road to apostasy. You who were
here last year will remember how Pastor Chantry addressed
himself specifically to that issue in a way that caused all
of our hearts to tremble afresh before that awesome reality.
And so I admonish you, my brethren, as I admonish myself afresh,
as I face my spectrum of responsibilities and think of the demands upon
my time and all of the rest and know all of the pat rationalizations. For everyone you have, I could
give you ten. But the command is still clear. Above all that
thou guardest, guard thy heart, for out of it are the issues
of life. How are we to do it? On the one
hand, Solomon says we are to do it by the spiritual assimilation
of the Word of God, but then, secondly, by the specific mortification
of the major streams of sin. Notice verses 24 and following. No sooner does he say, Guard
thy heart above all that thou guardest, But what he speaks
of three of what we might call major streams of sin that both
flow out of the heart and in a sense are like the tide can
flow back in. Keep thy heart with all diligence
immediately then, he says, put away from thee a wayward mouth. Verse 25, let thine eyes look
right on. Verse 26, make level the path
of thy feet. And so he speaks of the mouth,
of the eyes, and of the feet. And if we are to guard our hearts,
there must not only be this positive assimilation of the Word of God,
there must be the specific mortification of the major streams of sin. or everything we do in attempting
to guard the heart will be neutralized by our carelessness at the level
of mortification. First of all, then, notice what
he says concerning the mouth. Put away from thee a wayward
mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. It's graphic language. It's as though you're actually
taking your mouth and putting it at a distance from you. And
he says that's precisely what we must do with respect to all
speech that does not fit the category of Ephesians chapter
4. Let no corrupt speech proceed
out of your mouth but that which is good for edifying as the need
may be. Some of us were present a few
weeks ago when Mr. Garlington spoke with such blessing
of the Spirit upon that text. If you were not here, I would
urge you to get the tape for more details as to what that
means, but suffice it to say that particularly in our interaction
here, much of the guarding of our hearts in the manner previously
prescribed can be undone by lightness of speech as we get to know one
another and we get familiar with one another. It's so easy for
a relationship of intimate familiarity to drift over into a realm of
carnal lightness. And with that often comes elements
of sarcasm, elements of criticism, and sometimes talk that has perhaps
double innuendo. May I remind you of the words
of James? any among you seemeth to be religious,
while he bridleth not his tongue, this man's religion is vain."
There is a sense in which what comes out of our mouth not only
flows out of the heart, according to Matthew 12 and other passages,
but it also flows back in to defile the heart, because the
words are remembered by us and by those to whom we have spoken
And so, brethren, I would admonish you that if you're dead in earnest
about the keeping of your heart, then there must be a conscious
effort to mortify this first major stream of sin, that which
has to do with our mouths. For those of you who are new
amongst us, one of the things that has been such a delight
to us in the last couple of years has been the tremendous sense
of trust and openness that has been cultivated as we've fellowshiped
and prayed together. But as our numbers grow, the
mathematical, from the human side, the mathematical possibilities
of maintaining that climate, become fewer and fewer. In other
words, the ratio becomes higher and higher that we'll not be
able to maintain that. But God's grace is able to help
us so that instead of being instruments of defiling one another, we can
be, by the grace of God, instruments of up-building, as the need may
be. And then there's this matter
of the eyes, verse 25. Let thine eyes look right on,
and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. The eye is the inlet
to the soul. The eye is the inlet to the soul. All that is in the world, the
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes. So if we're to guard
our hearts, We've got to make sure that we've got good, well-working
shades over our eyes. And I don't mean dark glasses
when I say shades. There's got to be some opaque
shades over our eyes. The eye being the inlet to the
soul. We must, in a very literal sense,
let our eyes look right on, right on to what? Right on to the goal
of holiness that we are pursuing, the goal of becoming able ministers
of the New Covenant, and let our eyes look right on at anything
that would beckon them to materialism, anything that would beckon them
to hedonism, anything that would beckon them to anything contrary
to those goals, we pray that God will give us the fusion of
the top five cervical vertebrae that we cannot turn the head
to the left or to the right, but that the eyes will look straight
on. But not only is this true with
regard to the literal use of the eye, but certainly spiritually,
our goals, our ambitions. Jesus said, The light of the
body is the eye. If thine eye be single, the whole
body shall be full of light. And, O brethren, if we would
keep our hearts, we must guard our spiritual eyes. And there
will be many things to beckon us to this or to that, and we
must cry to God for that singleness of eye without which the heart
will become cluttered with all kinds of mixed ambitions and
mixed motives. But then God talks about our
feet, verses 26 and 27. Make level the path of thy feet,
and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand, nor
to the left. Remove thy foot from evil. The foot is the instrument to
convey the whole man into his chosen path. When you chose to
come to this room, it was your feet that carried you as a whole
man or woman into this room. And therefore, in the guarding
of the heart, we must know something of the regulation of the feet.
For if the feet carry us into paths which result in the heart
being bombarded with defiling thoughts, with thoughts and with
interests and ambitions that bleed off our spiritual energy,
there is no way that the heart can be kept if the feet are not
regulated. Now let me descend to particulars.
Some of you need to have regulated feet with regard to the use of
your television. You're sports nuts. You border,
perhaps, on past and being a sports addict. Well, you need to pray
to God to have feet that are able to walk by your TV, especially
on Saturdays, when you know you can just get drunk with everything
from The first NCAA game at 145, right on through to Wide World
of Sports at 630. I know well the times, because
many times I have to talk to my feet. Now, are we being legalistic
and saying you should not? No, no, no. Simply placing the
warning before you. You've come into an area, brethren,
that is Main Street Sodom. You can't walk into a drugstore
without pornography staring you in the face. Some of you perhaps
have had problems in this area in the past. Those problems will
be increased, not only because of the area into which you've
come, but because of the peculiar vulnerability. As I've talked
with men, it seems that there is a pattern that the more intense
a man's mental activity is, the more he is susceptible to the
vicious attacks of pornography. Listen to the Word of God. Make
level the path of thy feet. Let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand. Do
not turn into that particular drugstore where you know your
mind will be defiled. Do not turn to the right hand,
nor to the left. Remove thy foot from evil, for
you will allow by the careless regulation of your feet the defilement
of your heart. Then you come and sit in a theology
class, and instead of your heart being ravished with a new sight
of God and His truth, it's all kind of dry, academic stuff. And what begins to be held in
suspension as dry and dusty, and is no longer held as a matter
of deep-felt religious conviction, is the truth that ultimately
will be relinquished or openly denied. Heresy begins with the
loss of the love of truth because of the love of sin. And if we do not keep our feet
and make level the path of our feet and establish in these days,
brethren, those patterns that will help us to keep our hearts
from being unnecessarily bombarded by sinful stimuli because of
the places we go and the positions in which we put ourselves, we
will make very little progress in becoming the kind of men God
would have us to be. Let me say then in conclusion,
brethren, this is our great duty to guard our hearts above all
that we guard, for out of it are the issues of life, and what
should be the spirit now in which we do all of this, having spent
a little time on the practical consideration of directives for
implementation, why, of course, the great motivation is at least
hinted at in this passage When Solomon would speak, he reminds
his son of that filial relationship. My son, attend to my words. This is one of those chapters
in which again and again, from the opening words, hear my son's,
the instruction of a father. Verse 10, hear, O my son, and
receive my sayings. And surely it is our father speaking
to us. not on the basis of some nebulous
universal fatherhood, but on the basis of that adoptive fatherhood
wrought in the work of His own dear Son. He speaks to us as
those who are His purchased possession. He died to purchase the whole
man. He gave Himself for us, that
He might redeem us from all iniquity. He died to have your hearts.
And so it is from the cross that this appeal comes to us as the
Lord's servants this morning. Guard thy heart above all that
thou guardest. You are my purchased possession.
I died to have your heart. I've given my spirit that I might
have your heart. And in the gift of the Spirit,
I have given both the ability and power whereby the heart may
be kept. Brethren, it is only In the light
of these motivations and in communion and fellowship with Christ, apart
from whom we can do nothing, that we will be enabled to guard
our hearts above all that we guard. May God grant that the
truth of this text will be brought home to us with power again and
again and again. And when you enter a time when
it seems as though the studies have become dry and lifeless,
ask yourself, Have I been guarding my heart above all that I am
to guard? And when you find in the chapel
times, in our seasons of prayer, that when some of the brethren
are deeply moved in their prayers and you sense that their hearts
are aflame with that fire that only the Spirit of God can give
and your heart is lifeless and dull, perhaps you need to ask
the question, Have I been guarding my heart above all that I have
been guarding. Am I calling to morbid introspection? Of course not. But I am calling
to that which this text calls the constant guarding and inspection
of the heart.