Proverbs 4:24–27
Put away from you a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from you.
Let your eyes look right on, and let your eyelids look straight before you.
Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established.
Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove your foot from evil.
After first and foremost considering the heart out of which flows the issues of life, the wise father turns his attention to the mouth and lips. If we were to count the various themes appearing throughout the Book of Proverbs, the most repeated theme would have to be the use of the tongue. Likewise, James warns of this “little member… a fire, a world of iniquity… set on fire of hell” ( Jas. 3:5-6). The power of the tongue, whether to do good or ill, is never to be underestimated. Training children to speak in a truthful and edifying way is a full time job for a mother and father in the home. Indeed, no part of our essential being requires more cleansing or more powerful, Holy Spirit-endowed self-control than speech. Communication is essential for growing relationships and overseeing economies in family, church, and business. But the unrestrained, untrained tongue acts like a wild and dangerous bucking bull in a rodeo.
“Put away from you a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from you.”
These words warn especially of deceptive, shifty, and untruthful speech. What percentage of our speech is laced with exaggeration, inaccuracies, uncertainties, imbalanced perspectives of ourselves, or any other form of untruth? The first question we should ask ourselves before airing our opinion is this: “Is this true?” And the second and third questions are just as important: “Are you sure?”; and “How sure are you of the truth of it?”
Having attended to the heart and the mouth, this word of wisdom now addresses the eyes: “Let your eyes look right on, and let your eyelids look straight before you.” The eyes are the window to the soul, and they are very much directed by the mind and heart. As if they were undercover agents for the mind, the eyes spy out that which the soul would lust after. To the extent that the mind and heart are discontent with current conditions, the eyes will flit from here to there. Out of a senseless curiosity, the eyes may be searching out that which God forbids. Thoughtlessly surfing from website to website, from one social media account to another, young men and women get themselves into trouble quickly. Throughout the preaching while the church is gathered, both adults and children sometimes glance around the auditorium at every other distraction. This indicates a lack of focus on the things that really matter. To this the wise father says, “Let your eyelids look straight before you!” This requires an intentionality and discipline—a deliberate directing of the eyes toward the person speaking (whether that be in a conversation or a more formal sermon). This discipline cannot proceed without freedom from bad habits, such as incessantly checking texts, phone messages, social media, and the like.
The wise son listens to his own voice and puts a bridle on his mouth. He intently examines the habitual behavior of his own eyes. He thinks about his own thinking and watches out for what his eyes are watching. The behavior of heart, mouth, and eyes will eventually yield to a certain lifestyle. And so, wisdom concludes with this admonition: “Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove your foot from evil.”
The life of faith requires balance (Deut. 5:32, 28:14; Josh. 1:7, 23:6). This may be illustrated in the operation of an automobile. While navigating our vehicle down a windy highway, it would be suicide to take our hands off the wheel for a second or two. The life of wisdom requires this constant correction. There are ditches on both sides of the road. The way of faith lies down the center of road, and the Word of God corrects us as we go.
There are hundreds of these ditches on both the left and the right. For example, some people will err toward the ditch of legalism, in which the focus remains on external behavior and dependence on their own works for salvation—as some put it, “to make them good enough for heaven.” Sitting in the other ditch are those who have thrown off God’s laws altogether. They deny the power of God’s grace to cleanse them from sin and enable them to obey God’s commandments. They hate God’s laws, and they purpose to live sordid lives of sin, by grace alone. The true believer avoids both ditches—that of the legalist and that of antinomian.
To use another example, some professing believers will emphasize the doctrine of God’s sovereignty as an excuse to neglect their own responsibilities to God’s revealed will. At the same time, others will emphasize human responsibility and reject God’s sovereignty over the will of man. Thus, these folks will give way to manipulation, overcontrol, and the glorification of the will of man.
In the realm of politics and government, certain individuals err on the side of anarchy (the rights of the individual), and they will ignore the obligations of the state (the rights of the corporate body). Others prefer to err on the side of tyranny (the privileges of the state), and end up violating individual liberties.
When encountering conflicts in family and church, some are found in the ditch of avoidance, flight, and suicidal tendencies, while others resort to the other ditch of gossip, attack, and assault. But Jesus strikes the right path, calling us to “go” to our brother. This is the path of biblical peacemaking, involving loving confrontation, mediation, forgiveness, reconciliation, and accountability.
Especially with child training, parents should be aware of the many ditches on both sides of the way. Some parents err on the side of affection, and neglect all correction—or others may be so taken up with correcting their children that they forget to demonstrate tender and loving affection toward them. Or they may so emphasize rules and the importance of honoring and obeying parents that they neglect the message of the grace of Christ and His forgiveness. On the other hand, some parents may be so focused on obedience to rules that they forget the importance of relationships and the critical motive of love in the parent/child relationship. Or what about the balance of heart and hands? As demonstrated in the previous section, parents can neglect the heart even as they are working diligently to train the external behavior of their children. Then there are those parents who say they are concerned about the hearts of their children, and all the while they fail to train them in godly habits of speech and behavior.
Consider the ditches on either side of the road. Those who can only see one ditch are probably standing in the other one. Every day let us ponder the path and always be ready to remove our feet from evil.
1. Are we a balanced family? Where do we err in the area of conflict resolution? What about the area of child training?
2. Do we control our tongues in this family? What sorts of sins might we fall into in our communication?