What is the meaning of "plans in a man's heart" in Proverbs 19:21?

"Listen to counsel and receive instruction, that you may be wise in your latter days" (v. 20). If, when we are young, we are rightly disposed, we shall keenly feel our lack of wisdom, and to have a listening ear is of vital importance. If so, the result will be wisdom in our latter days. Then verse 21 tells us "there are many plans in a man's heart." But a Scottish poet has written, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley." We all know by experience that our plans are too often brought to nothing; but the counsel of the Lord will always stand. How important then that we acquaint ourselves with His reliable Word, to have our plans conformable to His will.

The name Jehovah (LORD) appears eleven times in this chapter of Proverbs. The Lord has the final word, for to man belong the preparations (or plans) of the heart; but from the LORD is the answer of the tongue. It is the same thought as in our English proverb--"Man proposes--God disposes." Man loves to justify himself, his ways are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits; He is the judge of ways and motives. Our works are to be committed (literal: rolled upon) unto the LORD, then establishment and blessing will follow. It is strange that these three verses were omitted in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament.

"The preparations of the heart belong to man," that is, a man's heart devises what he wants, "but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord" (v. 1). The eventual outcome depends on what the Lord decrees by His Word. One may believe that his ways and actions are pure, but this is merely a personal opinion, which is often far from the truth, for the Lord weighs the spirits (v. 2). We may find some people "lighter than vanity," having a spirit that takes no time to consider the actual value of their ways. Therefore, before acting, how wise to commit our works to the Lord (v. 3), so that our thoughts may be properly established.

Outside the field of divine teaching is the perplexity of man's thoughts, let him be ever so abundant in ideas or devices. "Many thoughts are in a man's heart, but the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand." This is what makes wise; and firm as well as happy is he who learns and cleaves to His counsel. It is the great lie to deny the truth; and Christ the Personal Word, Scripture the written Word, is the truth, which the Holy Spirit makes a living thing to the believer.

The heart of man away from God is lawless; and, shaking off the restraint of Him to whom he belongs and must give account, is fruitful of devices. As he loves his own way, so he changes it according to the object before him, or, it may be, some passing fancy. Jehovah alone can direct his steps; but this supposes dependence on Him and obedience to His Word, when it is His way, and not the man's own. So Moses (Ex. 23:13), when Israel forsook him and bowed down to the golden calf, prays, Show me Thy way.

"A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps" (v. 9). A man may spend hours in planning what he will do, but the believer might well spare himself such hours of planning, and rather depend on the Lord to direct him in the way that is good. Of course we should not act without considering the way we go, but it is vital that a believer should take the Lord into his plans, leaving those plans flexible enough to allow the Lord occasion to change them if He will, and with the full confidence that the Lord will direct us rightly.

The word again condemns false confidence as to the intentions of our own hearts. The heart of man afar from God thinks to direct his own steps, and decides what he will do, without thinking of the will of God, or even of God at all. Possibly the thing intended may not be evil, it may not wound conscience, nor make it uneasy; but God is entirely forgotten; the man acts without God, as though the earth had been left to man, and God had withdrawn, and as though His will counted for nothing. Such a man, as far as regards religion, in the practical things of everyday life, lives in atheism. God is not in his thoughts; money and worldly ambition govern his heart, though he may not be exactly living in sinful pleasures. He has no sense that he belongs to God - bought, if he be a Christian, with the precious blood of Christ. He lays out his plans according to his own will, his own wisdom, and his worldly interests. God has no place in them, he is without God in the world, he seeks earthly things, and truly it is not in them that God is to be found. It is according to the will of God that we should labour to obtain what is necessary, and His blessing can be sought because it is His will. But this is not the question here. James speaks of one who would dispose of his time, and go and seek gain for himself without thinking of God, or looking to Him for guidance and the manifestation of His will. He does not know what the morrow will bring forth; he does not know whether his life will be prolonged until the next day; it is as a vapour which vanishes away. Such is life down here. It becomes us to say, "If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that."

The child of God who walks in godly fear, trusting the Lord, planning as under Him, will constantly remember that all depends on the Lord and on His will. It is a wholesome habit to add always, when we speak of the future, "if the Lord will and we live"; this is pleasing in His sight and a testimony of our submission to Him and dependence on Him. Otherwise it is the boasting, vain-gloriousness of the self-secure world, which boasts and plans, without thinking of God and His will. The last verse must not be detached from what goes on before. "To him, therefore, that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Sin does not consist only in doing evil, but if we do not the good we know, it is also sin. If we do not act according to the fact that we are entirely dependent on God as to the future, we sin.

Comforting to faith is the ninth verse. We may devise, plan, and often worry as we make our plans but behind it stands the LORD and in spite of our failures and mistakes "He directeth" the steps of the righteous.

It is pre-eminently a scene under the governing hand of God. He would and did control the feelings of such as witnessed the colt taken, even as He afterwards directed the deeds and acclamations of the multitude by the way. "The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord." Indeed, this is so much the case that I suspect "the Lord" is here, as in Mark 5:19, left purposely vague. The Lord had need of the ass's colt, whether they referred the title to Jehovah or to the king who thus came in His name. If their faith really recognised the Messiah in Jehovah it was most true, and so much the better for those who did; but I am not sure that it could be asserted as the intention of the Spirit to imply that so much was meant in either of these cases. It is only in the two closing verses of this Gospel that we can certainly gather that He is designated "the Lord." The suitableness of this reserve till the statement of His final triumph by our Evangelist, who devotes himself to His service here below, is strikingly beautiful, and equally so in its absence before and in its presence then.