SERIES: Deep Relationships in a Digital World — Proverbs
TEXT: Proverbs 4:20-27
MESSAGE: “You Become What You Behold”
“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.” — Proverbs 4:18-19
“It is a serious thing…to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.” — C.S. Lewis
TEXT: Proverbs 4:20-27
Q: How do we walk in the light and gain wisdom for life in a dark world? Solomon warns us to consider our…(1. Attention 2. Intention 3. Direction)
1. Attention (v. 20-22)
“My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. 21 Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. 22 For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.”
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” — Hebrews 3:12-13
“Anyone who’s opened YouTube or Instagram to watch a video for five minutes only to inexplicably lose an hour knows the cycle…If the faintest shadow of boredom makes you compulsively check your phone, then you know the cycle…If a brief moment of anxiety makes you swipe madly through your phone looking for any unread notification, then you know the cycle…your brain is seeking dopamine…Our addiction to dopamine media is training us to love much what ought to be loved little. It’s making us miserably unhappy, hurting our relationships, and demanding more and more of our time to get the next high.” — Patrick Miller (From Amusement to Addiction)
“The more we use the web, the more we train our brains to be distracted—to process information very quickly and very efficiently but without sustained attention. That helps explain why many of us find it hard to concentrate even when we’re away from our computers. Our brains become adept at forgetting, inept at remembering.” — Brett McCraken
“The person who lives a just and holy life is one who is a sound judge of these things…a person who has ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved or love too much what should be loved less…” — Augustine
“ Sin will keep you from this Book, or this Book will keep you from sin.” — John Bunyan
2. Intention (v. 23)
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
“The heart is the source of the river of your life; it’s the command center. Everything you do flows from your heart. The way you think, talk, and act flows from your heart. The heart is the agent governing all your body’s actions.” — Daniel & Jonathan Akin
“…above every constitutes the standard by which the quality of guarding the heart is measured…Mišmār refers to a place under guard, a prison , or standing guard, the sense here. In that sense it may mean either to keep a sharp lookout to keep someone or something in custody and so restrain it as a prisoner or as a dragon, or to protect it from an enemy without, as Nehemiah’s guards protected Jerusalem.” — Bruce Waltke
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” — Jeremiah 17:9
“Since we all have heart issues, we need new hearts for real and lasting change.” — Jonathan Akin
“The truth is, no one lies to us more than our own hearts. No one. If our hearts are compasses, they are Jack Sparrow compasses. They don’t tell us the truth; they just tell us what we want. If our hearts are guides…They are not benevolent; they are pathologically selfish. In fact, if we do what our hearts tell us to do, we will pervert and impoverish every desire, every beauty, every person, every wonder, and every joy. Our hearts want to consume these things for our own self-glory and self-indulgence. No, our hearts will not save us. We need to be saved from our hearts…Jesus is your shepherd (Psalm 23:1; John 10:11). Listen to his voice in his word and follow him (John 10:27)…He is the truth, he is the way, and he will lead you to life (John 14:6).” — Jon Bloom
“What needs to be ‘put off’ in our age of expression is the myth of self-determination standing at the center of expressive individualism…As Christians, we must recover a humble acknowledgment of the divine givenness of our lives. It is God who quickens our breath, making possible every motion of being…Our moment in history, our birthplaces, our families of origin, our bodies; none of it is accidental, none of it is self-determined…If we renounce the God-givenness of our lives, it’s to our peril, not simply because the myth of self-making inflates our sense of grandiosity but because it prevents us from receiving God’s good and wise providence.” — Jen Pollock Michel
3. Direction (v. 24-27)
“Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. 25 Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. 26 Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. 27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”
“If you use your speech to hurt others, deceive others, gossip about others, or falsely flatter others, then it’s the overflow of a sinful heart. Again, Jesus told us this clearly in Matthew 12:34 — “The mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.” Jesus says that our words will justify or condemn us on judgment day. That’s not because good works — or good speech in this case — gets us to heaven. It is because your speech reveals whether or not Jesus has changed your heart!” — Daniel & Jonathan Akin
“Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.” — Psalm 119:36
TAKEAWAYS: How can we behold rightly?
- Purposely guard your heart
“Our rapid-fire toggling between spectacles—an episode of a Hulu show here, a Spotify album there—works against wisdom in the moment by eliminating any time for reflection or synthesis before the next thing beckons. But it also works against wisdom in the long term, as brain research is showing. Our overstimulated brains become weaker, less critical, and more gullible at a time in history when we need them to be sharper than ever.” — Brett McCraken (Wisdom Pyramid)
- Put off illusions of self-making
“Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” — Psalm 100:3
- Ponder your path — What direction are you headed right now?
“…he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” — John 1:29