“Let your eyes, look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet. Then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil.”
– Proverbs 4:25–27
I love the single minded focus that is described here in Proverbs 4:25–27 that I want in my life, that we need in our lives. You read earlier in this chapter where we’re just exhorted. Don’t enter the path of the wicked. Don’t walk in the way of evil. Avoid it. Do not go on it. In other words, don’t even flirt with it. Don’t even step one foot in that direction and so the end of the chapter closes with keep your eyes looking forward. Let your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet. Don’t swerve even a little bit to the right or to the left.
May God help us to refrain from flirting with sin. We are prone to wander at every turn, but let’s wage war on sin and keep our feet moving forward on the path to which God has called us.
Turn your foot the opposite direction from evil. Don’t even let it turn slightly toward evil and you just think about it. You think about our tendency, my tendency to flirt with sin, right? Not outright, to just jump into this path of evil, but maybe just a little bit in that direction, a little here or there, just a slight posture turn toward this center, that temptation, and the Bible says, don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Keep your eyes forward. The picture is keep your eyes fixed on Christ in a Hebrews 12 kind of way. Look at Jesus. Keep your feet in pursuit of His ways, His word. Don’t swerve a little bit to the right or a little to the left. Don’t flirt with temptation. And don’t rationalize a little bit of sin. You see how tempted we are to do this in all of our lives? We’re tempted to rationalize sin. We’re tempted to say, well, this is not that big a deal.
Proverbs 4:25–27 Teaches Us The Danger Of Straying The Path Of God
That’s not that big a deal. This is not that big a deal. That’s not that big a deal and then we start little by little to turn our feet swerving to the right or to the left and Proverbs 4:25–27 is saying, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Keep your feet moving forward in the good path that God has called you to. So God, help us. Help us to do this.
Lord, I pray that You would open our eyes right now, my eyes, eyes of others who are praying with me to ways that we are flirting with evil, that we are in any way turned toward temptation, that our feet are starting to swerve a little bit or maybe have swerved a lot. But even if just a little bit, God, open our eyes to see this and help us to fix our eyes on You, to set our feet towards You, to ponder the path of our feet that our ways might be sure.
Walking In God’s Ways
They might walk in Your path, in Your good ways. God, please help us to trust You more than we trust ourselves, certainly more than we trust the ways of this world. Help us not to be enticed by them. God, please may there not be a hint in us of evil. Please, oh God, please, please and when/if we do start to turn, we sin or we start to flirt with temptation, God pull us back. Pull us back quick, we pray by Your grace. Reprove. Discipline us. Pull us back that we might just swerve a little bit be brought back in. God, we want to walk in Your ways. We want to walk in Your ways. Keep us from wandering from Your ways, even a little bit. In Jesus’ name, we pray, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
