“Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.”
Proverbs 7:2
Last time we finished chapter six standing over the wreckage of a man’s life. He took fire into his bosom and he paid for it with his reputation, his household, and his peace. Solomon does not leave his son at the edge of that pit without a rail, and this verse is the rail.
I want to stay on this one verse. Not the chapter — this verse.
Solomon had every picture in the world available to him. He was the richest man alive. He could have said, keep my law like your gold. Keep my law like your house. Keep my law like your throne. He did not reach for any of that. He reached for the eye.
And when we find out what that phrase actually means, and who God said it about, it is going to change the way you carry your Bible out of this room.
I. What the Apple of the Eye Is
A. The Apple Is Not the Fruit
The word “apple” is 1611 English. In that day “apple” meant any round thing, any orb. It did not have to be something you eat. The translators were describing the round black center of your eye.
So when your grandmother told you that you were the apple of her eye — did she know what she was saying, or was she only repeating a phrase she had heard all her life? Either way, that saying came straight out of the Bible, and it has more depth in it than most people ever stop to consider.
Now hold that thought, because there is fruit in this verse. It is just not in the word “apple.” It is in the next word, and we will get to it.
B. The Hebrew Word Is Ishon, and It Means “Little Man”
That is not a loose translation. It comes from the Hebrew word ish, which is the ordinary word for man. Add the ending and you have a small one. A little man.
C. Here Is Why They Called It That
Get up close to somebody. Close enough that you are not looking at their face anymore — you are looking into their eye. And in that black center you will see a tiny little person standing there.
That is you. That is your own reflection standing in another man’s pupil.
The Hebrews looked at that and named it what they saw: the little man of the eye. Hold on to that, because we are coming back to it.
D. Three Things Are True of the Pupil — and Solomon Means All Three
First, it is the tenderest thing you own. There is no skin over it. It is wet, it is open, and it is exposed. A grown man will take a hammer blow on his thumb and keep working. Put one grain of sand in his eye and the work stops.
Second, it is guarded without being asked. God built a ridge of bone above it and a cheekbone below it. He put lashes in front of it and a lid on top of it that closes faster than you can decide to close it. Nobody teaches a baby to blink. Throw something toward a man’s face and the lid shuts and the hands come up before his mind ever gets a vote. That is not a decision. That is a reflex.
Third, it is the only reason you can see. Lose the pupil and you do not just lose comfort — you lose sight. You are still breathing and you are still walking, but you are walking in the dark, and now you are depending on somebody else to tell you where the ditch is.
So put it together. Solomon says guard my law like the tenderest thing you own. Guard it by reflex and not by resolution. And guard it, because it is how you see.
II. Who Was the Apple of God’s Eye
Here is where this stops being a nice figure of speech and becomes something worth studying. Solomon did not invent this phrase. God used it first, and God used it about His own people.
A. Israel in the Wilderness
“He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.”
Deuteronomy 32:10
That is the same Hebrew word. The little man of the eye. God found His people in a waste howling wilderness — a place where nothing lives — and He guarded them the way a man guards his pupil.
And notice the word “kept.” He kept him as the apple of his eye. That is the very same word Solomon uses in our verse when he says keep my commandments. God is doing for Israel exactly what the father is asking his son to do for the law. He looks at Israel and says: you are the apple of My eye.
And that tells you why the devil comes after God’s people the way he does. Remember the grain of sand. The devil cannot lay a hand on God, so he goes for the eye. Every attack on a child of God is a grain of sand thrown at the eye of God. He is not after you because you are so important to him. He is after you because you are precious to God, and hurting you is the only way he has of reaching Him.
B. Israel Against Her Enemies
“For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.”
Zechariah 2:8
Read that again slowly, because God does not say what you expect Him to say. He does not say, whoever touches My people touches something I care about. He says whoever touches you touches My eye.
You know what happens when something comes at a man’s eye. He does not schedule a response. He does not weigh his options. The lid slams and the hand comes up. God is telling the nations that He has made His people’s injury into His own reflex.
C. David Knew the Phrase and Prayed It Back to God
“Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.”
Psalm 17:8
David is asking God to do for him what God already said He does. That is how you pray. You find what God has said about Himself and you hand it back to Him. David knew he was the apple of God’s eye — but it was a promise that stretched out to cover all the people of God.
D. Every New Testament Believer Today Is Kept the Same Way
“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”
John 10:28
He does not keep the ones who manage to hold on. He keeps the ones He purchased. If you are saved this morning, you are not kept because your grip is strong. You are kept because you are the apple of His eye, and He does not blink away what He is guarding.
E. Now Put the Two Halves of the Phrase Back Together
The little man in the eye is a reflection. So when God guarded Israel as the apple of His eye, what was standing there reflected in the pupil? His own likeness.
He was guarding the image of Himself in a people He had chosen to bear it. That is what was so precious. Not the sand and not the tents and not the numbers — the likeness of God reflected back out of a people He picked up out of a howling wilderness.
F. And Here Is the Fruit I Told You Was Coming
The word is not apple. The word is son. A little man. And in the Bible, seed and fruit and son are the same chain, and every link in it is likeness.
Fruit — and the seed is inside the fruit — and it comes up after his kind. That is God’s own definition, and He gave it on the third day. Seed goes in, fruit comes out, and the fruit carries the likeness of what planted it. A fig tree has never once produced an apple.
Then watch Him say it about a man and his boy.
“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.”
Genesis 5:3
In his own likeness, after his image. That is the same language as the fruit tree. Seth was Adam’s fruit, and what made him a son was that he had his father’s face on him.
And the Bible calls children fruit without blinking.
“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”
Psalm 127:3
So the chain runs: seed, fruit, son, likeness. Now go back and read the chapter where God calls Israel the apple of His eye, and count how many times He talks like a father in it.
“Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?”
Deuteronomy 32:6
“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.”
Deuteronomy 32:11
“Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.”
Deuteronomy 32:18
Four verses before He says apple of His eye, He calls Himself their father. One verse after it He is a bird over her young. Eight verses later He says He begat them. That is not something I am reading into the text — God put the father language on both sides of the phrase.
So when God looked into His eye and saw a little man, He was looking at a son. And a son is fruit. And fruit comes up after his kind. We still carry two sayings from this today. One is “you are the apple of my eye.” The other is “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Both of them are saying the very same thing the Hebrew said — a father sees himself in his child. I look at my son Nehemiah and I see myself in him.
G. And That Is Exactly What We Are Called to Be
“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Romans 8:29
Take that verse for what it actually says. It is not telling you who gets saved. It is telling you where the saved are headed. Every born again believer in this room has one destiny stamped on him, and it is to be conformed to the image of the Son of God.
So if God got up close to a Christian — close enough that His own reflection stood in the pupil — what ought He to see looking back at Him? Himself.
And let me say plainly what that is and what it is not. Looking like Christ is the believer’s destiny and the believer’s duty. It has never once been the terms of his salvation. Nobody in here gets saved by resembling Jesus. We get saved by trusting what Jesus finished, and then we spend the rest of our lives catching up to a family likeness we already carry.
III. God’s Word Must Be the Apple of Our Eye
A. Solomon Is Asking for a Reflex, Not a Resolution
You do not schedule a blink. And I will be honest with you about our problem. Most of us treat the Bible like a New Year’s resolution. We resolve. We start in Genesis in January. We are bogged down in Leviticus by February and we are done by March.
Solomon is not asking for a resolution. He is asking for the thing that happens before you decide. When something comes at your eye, the lid closes. When something comes at your life — does the Word of God come up?
B. And Now Watch What the Seed Turns Out to Be
“Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”
1 Peter 1:23
There is the seed. It is the Word of God. And Peter says it is incorruptible, which means it does not rot in the ground and it does not fail to come up.
So put the chain together and look at what Solomon is really telling his son to guard. Seed produces after his kind. The seed is the Word of God. Which means the Word of God planted in a man comes up looking like the God who spoke it.
And James says the same thing in one verse, five verses above the mirror.
“Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
James 1:18
Read that again and count. Begat he us — that is the son. With the word of truth — that is the seed. A kind of firstfruits — that is the fruit. Son and seed and fruit, all three, in one verse, and the Word of truth is what did it.
C. The Word Is the Glass, and the Little Man in It Is Who I Ought to Be
“For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.”
James 1:23–24
There it is. God calls His own Book a mirror. And when you open it, there is a little man looking back at you.
“But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
James 1:25
D. And the Looking Is What Changes You
You do not become like Christ by gritting your teeth. You become like Christ by staying in front of the glass — beholding, and being changed by what you behold.
Closing
So here is what we have this morning out of one verse.
The apple of the eye is the little man. It is the reflection standing in the pupil of somebody who got close enough to see it.
God said Israel was the apple of His eye. He found them in a waste howling wilderness and He guarded them by reflex, because when He looked at them He saw His own likeness standing there. And if you are saved this morning He says the very same thing about you — and He said it before you ever did one thing right.
And He handed us a mirror. This Book. Open it and there is a little man looking back at you, and he is not who you were this week. He is who Christ already made you.
Do not behold him and go your way and forget what manner of man you were.
Stand there until you match him.