“My son, pay attention to my words; listen closely to my sayings. Don’t lose sight of them; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to one’s whole body. Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life. Don’t let your mouth speak dishonestly, and don’t let your lips talk deviously. Let your eyes look forward; fix your gaze straight ahead. Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established. Don’t turn to the right or to the left; keep your feet away from evil.” (Proverbs‬ ‭4‬:‭20‬-‭27‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

Jesus once got in trouble with the religious authorities of His day because His disciples weren’t washing their hands the right way before eating. That seems like a terribly petty thing to us, but if your relationship with God depended on getting the rules right and there was a rule about washing your hands properly before eating, it would seem like a much bigger deal to you. In response, Jesus told His critics that what goes into the body is not what interrupts our relationship with God, but what comes out of it, and specifically out of our hearts. That means we need to watch what is coming into and out of our heart pretty closely. Solomon agrees. Let’s talk about it.

Taking a chapter like this one is tough. It’s too long to try to unpack in one sitting, but each of the three sections just repeat the same thing over and over again in slightly different ways. In a day long before bold typeface to indicate importance, though, repetition like this was a way to signal to your readers that you considered something to be pretty significant. For an idea to get repeated not just once, not even just twice, but multiple times in a fairly tight context was the equivalent of shouting it from the rooftops.

Solomon is practically begging us to pay attention to his words of godly wisdom. He is desperate for us to not merely live, but thrive. He longs for us to have the kind of abundant life Jesus promised to give us.

If we are going to experience this kind of life in the here and now, doing what Solomon says is absolutely paramount. Falling even a little bit short will have us missing it by a mile. The way he calls us to walk not merely in these opening chapters, but over the course of the proverbial parade still to come, is the only path that will lead to this abundant life. So he calls us to it again and again.

Look at the ways he reemphasizes this call in these verses. “My son, pay attention to my words; listen closely to my sayings. Don’t lose sight of them; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to one’s whole body.” Yesterday we talked about the long life that wisdom can bring us. Today it is health.

In an episode of The Pitt w watched the other night, a woman came into the ER who was obviously badly jaundiced. Her liver was in bad shape. As they talked with her, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. She didn’t drink. She didn’t take any kind of drugs or smoke. She exercised actively. She was a committed vegan. She didn’t take any vitamins. The only thing she took was turmeric pills because she had learned from a health expert online (who wasn’t a doctor) about its natural health benefits. The doctors started to discount that until she said that to maximize the benefits she was taking an enormous amount of it every day. Well, that much can cause liver failure, so here she was.

Yes, the story is made up, but the medical facts and the point are not. How often do we rely on our own wisdom rather than godly wisdom to hide us through life? We listen to life experts who sound really convincing but have no idea about the kind of wisdom Solomon is begging us to consider here and so give counsel that simply isn’t going to get us where we want to go if we follow it. Wisdom is the way.

Skipping over v. 23 for the moment, look at some of the ways Solomon encourages us to stick to the path of wisdom here. We can slide away from it through so many different channels, so it really takes a full-bodied effort (not to mention the help and accountability of others—and the best way to get that is through a vital connection with a church community) to stick to the path.

We have to exercise our commitment to wisdom with our words. “Don’t let your mouth speak dishonestly, and don’t let your lips talk deviously.” Our words don’t have the same creative power as God’s do, but they are powerful nonetheless. We have the ability to call into existence feelings and beliefs in another person that otherwise wouldn’t exist. By our words we reveal if we have embraced godly wisdom or not.

We have to exercise our commitment to wisdom with our eyes. “Let your eye look forward; fix your gaze straight ahead.” There is an unending stream of things vying for control of our eyes. As Jesus would later observe, our eyes are the window to our soul. Through our eyes (and ears as well, but especially our eyes) we allow into our hearts and minds images and ideas that shape our thinking in ways both more subtle and also more profound than we can imagine.

When driving down the highway, there are always lots and lots of billboards trying to get us to look away from the road and to take in the message they are trying to convey. Yet to take our eyes off the road even for a second is to risk disaster and tragedy. The one accident I had when I was a young driver happened when I took my eyes off of the car in front of me. I didn’t even turn my head. I diverted my eyes for a second. When I brought them back, the car in front of me had stopped, and I was not going to be able to stop in time to avoid the collision.

When we move our eyes from God’s path of life to look at one of the myriad of distractions the world around us constantly sets before us, maybe nothing will happen, but great tragedy doesn’t need but a second to wreak incredible havoc on our lives and the lives of the people around us. We must not turn away from the path of godly wisdom that leads to life, not even for a moment.

This is the last counsel Solomon gives here. “Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established. Don’t turn to the right or to the left; keep your feet away from evil.” When we actually give attention to the path we are taking through life, we will experience all of the wonderful blessings of wisdom. Any other path is only going to bring us frustration and pain.

All of these are essentially external controls, though. What we say and see and where we walk are all important in terms of the things they allow in, but they themselves are controlled by what is already on the inside. It is out of the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks, Jesus said. We only go where and do what our beliefs direct us to do. If we are going to get these things right in order to enjoy the blessings and benefits of wisdom, then, we have to start at the heart of the matter.

Come back to v. 23 now. “Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.” Above all else. That’s a pretty strong statement. And it means just what it sounds like it means. Above and before anything else you do, guard what has access to your heart. Don’t let things in that are going to poison the well of your soul. Make absolutely certain that you are filtering all of your experiences and encounters through the lens of Scripture. Consider carefully what you watch, what you listen to, and which people you allow to influence you most. Do all of this because your life is going to unavoidably impacted by what comes out of your heart. If you get rot taking root there, everything else you try to do will be harder than it has to be. If you want to stay on the path of godly wisdom that will lead to abundant life, there’s nothing more important than this.